Chapter 18: Tobias
My name is Tobias.
Staring at our destination, quickly growing ever closer, I couldn't hold back the sick, disgusted feeling consuming me. I understood where they were coming from with the Dementor issue, but this was even worse than I thought.
The prison looked like a medieval dungeon from the outside and the looks I was getting through the windows as I got closer weren't doing anything to change my opinion. These people weren't only left in the constant care of despicable creatures that destroyed your mind in the worst way possible, they were left to rot in slimy, cold, uncared-for cells that barely contained a worn out blanket, unless you counted rats, spiders and cockroaches. I'm surprised that they actually had toilets installed.
I could only hope that the hell this Dark Lord and Visser three were bringing over the Wizarding world would open their eyes a little and find a way to restore common decency. I wouldn't put the Visser himself in a place like this.
My mood wasn't exactly helped all that much as we got closer. Not only was the inhospitable conditions coming into even greater detail, but the air was getting significantly colder. Plus, there were plenty of Dementors outside the structure to suck away any chance of pleasantness.
"I wasn't expecting that." Hermione shouted over the wind from my back, her face looking very grim as I turned to my three riders. All three were watching with deep frowns as Dementors flew in spirals all around the prison's walls and above it, their ragged, black robed forms reminding me of an army of enormous bats. It was hard to believe, but it definitely made the place look a lot more evil than it already was. "If we want to be able to dredge up even a halfway decent memory for a patronus, we're gonna have to do them around now."
/But with all these dark clouds hanging around the night sky, their light is almost guaranteed to tip off the wizard guards before we get there./ Ernie argued worriedly, a few 'Ooh, oohs' tumbling out of his mouth.
"No, they won't be expecting this." Ron shook his head, raising his wand. "Hermione, have your patronus fly up into the clouds above them and we'll have them dive bomb the Dementors when we get in too close!"
"Ron, that's...the most brilliant strategy you've ever come up with!" Hermione cried, shocked and impressed, earning a blush and a grin from the redhead as she raised her wand with his.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Taking a hint from their plan, I raised my altitude closer to the cloud line just as both their wands exploded with brilliant white lights that within seconds had taken on the forms of an otter and a terrier and zipped into the cloud bank on their own power, looking as if they were running and swimming through thin air.
/Tobias, are you guys in place yet?/ Rachel called with an air of impatience. /I've beached myself and am about to demorph. Harry's already wading closer to the main entrance and the others aren't too far behind./
/Almost. Give us half a minute at the most./ I replied before flapping my wings harder against the wind. I could have gotten there well before that point, but this was supposed to be a synchronised first attack, followed by the quick appearance of an army of Animgus. So I went slow, hoping that the ruse would work with the Yeerks.
The trick's effectiveness relied heavily on just how much the Yeerks knew about magic. They had to know about the branch called Animagi, or at least transfiguration, without having too much knowledge on the subjects. Animagi is a rarely touched branch of magic, and all practitioners are supposed to be registered, and self transfiguration is foolish in terms of transforming yourself completely into another animal. There's no way to change yourself back. But, if you can't use a patronus charm, it's the best defence you've got against Dementors. There powers have a far more limited effect on more instinctual, animal minds than they do on sentient ones. You still feel the cold and get unnerved, but your worst memories aren't forced upon you, according to Harry and Hermione. While you're far from happy, you can still think straight, like Marco, Ax and I did when we ran into one as wolves. We had to hope that the Yeerks had stumbled onto that information too, or at least that someone who would no doubt be involved in the many conversations that came from this would bring it up. Neville, Ginny, Ernie and Anthony were all confident that this would all come up in some conversations and any listening wizard Controllers would pass it on to the rest of their group. Still, I didn't like relying so much on unpredictable conversations, hope and rarely known facts. Apparently Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny only knew how animal minds protected you from Dementors a bit because of a framed man, who happened to be Harry's late Godfather, transforming into a dog to escape the place.
/We have caught up and began to morph for battle./ Ax stated a moment later, pulling my focus solely onto the scene. /Ginny is holding onto Luna a little further behind us. Prince Jake says that it is time to begin./
/Got it. Going in./ I announced, pulling myself to full speed. If my passengers were startled at all, they got over it real fast, for not even a second after we got in range of the more negative effects of a Dementor swarm, both patronus' shot down like arrows from above, shielding us and driving the dark freaks away from us at the same time an even stronger light in the form of a stag charged at the tower below.
The effect was immediate. I'd had serious doubts about three measly witches and wizards propelling an entire prison on these creatures away, but so far it was going good. Not great, they were forming a very big, black mass on the opposite half of the tower, but it was still enough to keep me feeling warm and free from reliving really lousy memories. Thestrals are sentient apparently, the shiny animal shapes dancing through the skies were the only thing shielding me from a darkness that would rip my mind to shreds.
/First post is mine./ Ernie declared as I descended close to the roof. Waiting just until was about to pass it, he jumped off and landed squarely on the roof of one of the watch stations and smashed through a window. Screams of surprise and the easily recognisable screech of a primate reached my ears while a few flashes of light decorated the windows before a sudden BANG announced the instant end of it all.
By that point, I'd already slowed down enough for Ron and Hermione to jump off and each of us were heading to a different house. I paid just enough attention to the others to know that they'd both blown the windows apart, Hermione sending the resulting glass shards flying in at a sharp angle with clear intent to pierce the legs of those inside, before sending in red flash after red flash and sidestepping whatever came out until it all stopped.
At the same time, I galloped right to the last one, reared up and kicked as hard as I could with my front feet, instantly bringing the door down to find myself facing two wizards jumping to their feet, both with wands pointed right at me only to freeze in confusion.
"Who's there?" One of them demanded, frowning hard as he took a step forward. His partner muttered something and his wand released a flash my way, causing me to panic, but that quickly abated when I felt nothing happen and the guy only grew more confused.
"No disillusion or invisibility spells." He muttered, lowering his wand unsurely. I on the other hand almost laughed. These two worked in a hellhole where suicide would be in its prime, but they'd apparently never actually seen someone die. I was completely invisible to them without use of a spell, which apparently meant that they couldn't remove what made me invisible.
That didn't meant that they wouldn't figure out I was still here though, or that they wouldn't notice what the others had done and did the magical equivalent of hitting the emergency switch, so I moved fast, leaping right into the small room and body slamming them right into a wall.
"ARG-OOF!" Banging their heads hard against stone, both slid down the wall. They were out cold before their heads even made it to the floor.
/All wizard opposition is down./ I reported as loud as I could, watching as the others all ran toward a door imbedded in the roof and revealing a staircase. The roof of the prison was much higher than my altitude had been when I'd last talked to the others. Thought speak has a range limit. I could only hope that I was still within it. /We're heading in now./
/Harry's just blown down the door. We're heading in too./ Jake responded, albeit very faintly. We were dangerously close to our distance limit. /Be careful, we don't know the full extent of this place's defences. Who knows what the dark wizards have added?/
/Or anything the Ministry didn't reveal to the public./ Ernie sighed as he ran down on three limbs, using the fourth to adjust the bag of wands strapped to his back. Ron and Hermione could only nod grimly as they created a bright light from the tips of their wands and sent the otter patronus ahead while the terrier rand circles around us, keeping the Dementors off of us. not that it would last long, there were far too many Dementors moving in for one patronus to shield us, but we only needed it up there long enough for Ron and Hermione to levitate me after them and close the door right after the dog ran in. Down stairs is a big problem for a horse body too, but thankfully the corridors were more than big enough for me to leap into the air and spread my wings, gliding down to the floor. Both patronuses positioned themselves into circling around me and the staircase as swarms of black so big that they looked like solid walls surged right at us from both sides.
"Bloody Hell! Look at them all." Ron exclaimed, visibly shaking as he ran down to join me with Ernie, Hermione only delaying herself long enough to magically lock the door and block the demons outside. "Hermione and I...we could never..."
Stop them all. He didn't have to finish his sentence. I could already feel it, the cold, the growing doubt, fear and an image. A flickering memory of a particular Andalite screaming as he was thrown into an overgrown mouth.
/Then we give the patronuses a hand!/ Ernie snarled. Running up to the nearest cell containing a moaning man in his fifties, he grabbed two bars and ripped them right out of the stone before tossing them as hard as he could with a furious scream. Ever see a chimpanzee angry? That peaceful, cute little guy turns into something right out of a nightmare. Vicious as humans or gorillas, it also has five times the strength of a human. More than enough to rip your arms off and apparently enough to take on a Dementor. Those bars each ploughed horizontally into a robed freak and sent them reeling back into their own. Seemingly encouraged by the result, Ernie ripped out another bar, leaving a gap big enough for the prisoner to escape from, walked right up to the perimeter the patronuses had created and started swinging it like a baseball bat. It proved pretty successful too, his swings were so fast and strong that they sent freak after freak flying back into their own with impressive force, none of them succeeding in blocking or removing the pole from his grasp.
"I...I'm free?" The man stuttered, moving shakily into the hallway. His skin was greyish, he looked malnourished and in need of therapy, but as he stepped into patronus circle his completely miserable, broken expression did gain a very slight bit of hope.
"Not yet, you're not. It's a work in progress." Ron stated with a strained voice, thrusting a wand into the guy's hand. At the same time, I couldn't help but notice his terrier patronus was growing duller too. "Please tell me you know the patronus charm?"
"I...I um,...could never get past mist." He responded slowly, observing the wood in his hand as if he couldn't believe it was there. "And this is mine...the spell...and I can barely remember the last time I was..."
"Please just try." Hermione grunted, her breath becoming laboured. The Dementors' effect was increasing over all of us. even Ernie and I, not quite as affected by them as Ron and Hermione, were really starting to shiver and more of my unpleasant memories were surfacing. Especially the ones dealing with water, my most hated memories. Judging from the spasms and increasingly distressed 'OOH OOH AH AH's, Ernie was feeling the same.
Not waiting for the man to try, I followed Ernie's lead and galloped right toward the Dementors breaking through the patronus barrier and went on a frenzy. Seeing me so close, many of them came surging in my direction.
"BBBBRREEEEE!" The cold and horrid memory flashes increased dramatically as they did, but fortunately for our side, instead of leaving me wallowing in depression, the Thestral proved that it did still bear some traits from its non-magical cousin and panicked. Desperate to relieve the anguish, I threw my wings out as hard as I could and knocked two Dementors away, before whipping around and kicking with my back legs. The second they were back on the ground, I pulled my body up onto them and lashed out with my front legs, stomping another one into the ground while my head snapped forward and clamped my sharp teeth around an corroding arm reaching out for my neck and tossing the Dementor away as another two were shoved back hard by another thrust of my right wing while another was shoved down to the ground as the wing came down. It was pretty impressive really, just how much power the Thestral had. If I was fighting just about anything else, most of my targets wouldn't be getting up.
Unfortunately, these were Dementors. None of my attacks were doing much more than pushing them away. Delaying the inevitable. Ernie's weren't doing much better either. And by much better, I only meant that his swings were sending his target falling back into others more than mine.
"Expecto Patronum! Expecto...Expecto..." The old guy was stumbling over his words and from a quickly glance in his direction as I kicked with my back legs again, I saw that his hand was shaking even more violently than the rest of him. He was frowning hard, as if struggling to remember something, which was highly likely considering the others told me that you need to focus on a very happy memory to use the spell. A feat that may prove impossible for him. Even from the very centre of our weakly shielded area, the effects of the Dementors were still breaking through to him and he'd been feeling the full influence for who knew how long. He was lucky he had a mind left intact at all.
/This is hopeless!/ Ernie groaned, extremely distressed. It only got worse a moment later. His body was shaking so much that his swings were losing their effectiveness. A few more strikes and they'd grown so wobbly that a Dementor managed to grab the bar and jerk it from his hands. Ernie retorted by grabbing the same Dementor by the wrist and tossing it at its allies with a mighty swing over his head, but he'd lost his edge. And at the same time, the Patronuses were growing dimmer. If Ron and Hermione fell any deeper into the Dementors' misery inducing effects, they'd disappear completely and we'd all be doomed.
"Everyone move to the left. Toward the cell." Hermione said weakly, taking large breaths. Grabbing Ron's hand, she guided him over, the rest of us following. That alone seemed to help, because strangely enough, the otter and especially the terrier both started to glow a little brighter again, reducing the misery inducing effects, if only by a little. Something that happened again as we got our backs to the wall and turn the Patronuses' circle into a smaller dome. It meant that the Dementors grew a lot closer to us, but the smaller range to protect did seem to give the silver light creatures a better grip on protecting us. The cold actually became just barely tolerable.
"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" It seemed to be just enough for the man to find some long, almost forgotten memory too, for suddenly, though his hand was still far too shaky, he actually succeeded in releasing a silvery mist from his wand. It was pitifully dull and weak, not doing a great deal at all, but with how in over our heads we were, it actually made a noticeable difference. I learnt long ago to take what you can get.
"Hey, wake up in there!" Ron shouted into the bars as Ernie ripped two out and swung them like a pair of bludgeons while I went back to kicking and whipping out a wing. With the Dementors growing more and more compacted around us, the benefits of compacting our shields was fading fast. The bright side was that for every one we hit, three more went tumbling with them now and the movement pushed heaps of others away too, if only for a second or two.
My position allowed me plenty of glances into the cage, this one bearing two prisoners slowly pulling themselves to their feet. Again they were middle aged, both women. One of them had grey streaks all through her long black hair and was as shaky as the man as she shook her cellmate. The other one however, once she'd woken up, had a very different air about her.
Though as malnourished and filthy, dressed in what could pass for rags, just as the other two, once she took a look at what was going on, her form grew tense and firm, ready for battle. Standing up, though her legs were still shaky, she stalked right to the hole in the bars, dragging her cellmate by the arm along with her.
"It was very foolish to come here." She stated as sharply as her croaky, clearly unused voice could allow. "A witch, a wizard, an Animagus and a Thestral against Azkaban's army? Ridiculous."
"We're not alone. We're just the roof division." Hermione stated as she dug two wands out of her bag and offered them to the newly freed as I delivered a very satisfying kick to a Dementor's head. "Are you two willing to help us even the odds?"
"Still utterly stupid sending a group of three and a steed on their own. Especially with only two capable of Patronuses." The woman muttered. But none the less, both women took the offered wands and she pointed hers straight at the black blanket of doom around us. "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Instantly, she raised the wand and out from it exploded a huge eagle owl Patronus. Ron, Hermione and Ernie stopped stunned as they watched it shoot off and join the other silvery light creatures, not that I could blame them. With that one extra patronus, warmth was actually returning to my skin and all my unpleasant memories were receding.
"Amazing. It's as powerful as Harry's stag." Hermione muttered, watching in amazement as the Dementors recoiled back and the owl moved out ahead of the others, creating a clear path to the next cell. It couldn't do anymore than that and the re-swarming Dementors were barely being held at bay at all by the otter, terrier and mist on the other side, but it was still a lot more than what we could have done before.
"We are fortunate. By some fluke, this wand actually chose me." The woman muttered, walking briskly to the next cell, the rest of us close behind her. "Gale dear, please open the cell while we deal with the corroding pests." Her former cellmate nodded quickly and got to work while everyone else went back to our efforts.
/We can't forget the cages on the opposite wall./ I stated, already making a move I was sure to regret. Braying loudly, I pulled my wings close to me and ran straight across to the other side, right through the Dementors.
"Are you nuts?" I barely heard Ron's voice behind me, but I did make a mental note to thank him later as his terrier came up beside me, offering me a little protection. It was all I needed as I slammed into the opposite cell, only to mentally groan.
/It's empty./ I muttered, thoroughly irritated as I returned to the group. All that risk for nothing.
"How many cells on this floor still have occupants?" Hermione asked as Gale came back out of the cell with another two middle aged men. Looking at them, I was starting to grow a little hopeful again. These two looked as hardened and fierce as the witch taking charge, and though no animals left their wands as Ron and Ernie handed them one each, the silver mist was much stronger and brighter than the first man's.
"We are it. The rest all died or were kissed by the Dementors and tossed aside." The woman replied briskly, looking around left and right. "That's why all our cells are so close. It was easier for the feeders."
"That explains why so many Dementors are in this area too. This entire level's assigned guards are all feeding off you at once." Hermione assessed, getting a sharp nod. "Normally, they'd be scattered throughout the entire floor, not concentrated like this."
"True. This is what the middle floors are generally like. Now, what is the next step in your ill-prepared plan?" She asked sternly, causing all of us to fluster, feeling like kids getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Hopefully no one noticed the reaction from me.
"Find the stairs, work our way down to the others and free everyone we find up here while half of them move up and the other half ensure that the first two floors remain clear. Most of the team are unregistered Animagus and are using animal forms."
"Animagi! Like that's going to do much here!" She scoffed, but taking the lead once again. no doubt she knew where the stairs were. "What could animals do in Azkaban?"
"You'd be surprised." Ron muttered, though he shrunk back as she turned a reprimanding scowl his way.
"Now, now, be nice Clair. They've risked their lives to come save us." The shaky man stated, surprising me as his voice came out much stronger than before. And now that I was looking at him, I was amazed at how alive he'd grown. His spell didn't look much stronger than before, but he was jabbing away with his wand like a knife repeatedly and the result was bigger clouds of silver mist actually pushing a Dementor back each time. "It's too late to stop them from coming, so you might as well show them some gratitude. All you're doing right now is breaking their focus and weakening the dog and otter running about."
"You're...right of course." She sighed, conceding defeat. "I apologise. Let's just try to make this work."
/Then we better pick up the pace./ I cried, barely remembering to limit my thought speak to Hermione, Ron and Ernie as my ears picked up the loud, scraping sound of blades hitting stone and the gravelly shouts above us. Judging from their paling faces, the others had heard it too and it didn't take much more than my announcement to make them realise just what it was.
We'd overlooked something when we were planning this. Besides everything Clair had pointed out and the unexpectedly high concentrations of Dementors here. The Yeerks' Pool Ship was floating above Azkaban. So, of course, the first wave of the Yeerks' shock troops would most likely to be sent down to the roof.
We were expecting to have gotten a lot further and have more battle ready wizards by our side before we had to deal with them. And we were hoping to have the bulk of Dementors fleeing by then too. As it was now, too much focus had to go into just stopping Dementors and Hermione and Harry had made it plenty clear that splitting their focus from the patronus to cast anything more complex than a Lumos spell was a disaster waiting to happen.
Not waiting for the others to warn the freed prisoners, a grabbed the shaky guy and Gale, ignoring their panicked cries as I flung them on my back, and galloped to the stairs the second they were in sight, assuming that they others would catch up. We had to put distance between us and the Hork-Bajir NOW! We had to get more fairly mentally stable prisoners armed or join up with the others before they could catch us. Otherwise we were goners.