3rd Person POV:
Harry, Ron, and Hermione had finally decided, against Hermione's constant resistance, to go on ahead without a plan. They had no idea what the prison looked like, as they had never been inside it before, and since they had ridden of the Dementors, they could not just pull out their wands and cast Patronus charms everywhere. There would be guards, possibly heavy charms to keep prisoners inside, maybe even some traps for those trying to bust people out. Honestly, they had no idea what to expect just going into Azkaban and breaking out Draco's mother.
"Ron! Harry! How can you both be so idiotic? We're going to get caught without a plan."
"Look, Hermione, as of right now, the plan is get into Azkaban, grab Draco's mom, get out, and ask the Minister for a pardon for her." Harry had said it countless times, but she would just no accept that answer.
"Yes, but how? How are we going to do all those things? We can't just simply walk into Azkaban, grab her, and walk out again."
"Mione," Ron spoke up, "we have no idea what could be in there. We just have to keep a simple plan that we can change as we go to make up for that." Still, she shook her head.
"I cannot believe you two."
"Sorry, Hermione. You were out-voted." Harry gave a shrug.
They all knew how difficult it would be to do this, as the island wasn't on any map and it was in the middle of the North Sea (that much they had deciphered). They weren't even sure they would be able to find it if the prison had a concealment charm on it.
"Well, let's at least use my plan on how to get there." Hermione had made a fairly detailed plan on the excursion they were about to go on, though she accounted that there would be many, many more obstacles than she probably included. Really, most of it was no good. The beginning, however, was ingenious.
"But I told you, 'Mione, I can't do a Disillusionment Charm. You can't make me an invisibility cloak, either, because what would we do if it stopped working? I can't fit under Harry's anymore without our calves showing."
Hermione looked sour. "Then I guess you're not coming."
Harry sighed and looked at the floor as they proceeded to begin arguing.
"Well it's too late; I'm going, so fix your plan."
"Fix my plan? But it's perfect. There's no way to alter it without causing any other problems. It would just be best to leave you here and have just Harry and I go."
"Perfect? You just won't admit that there was a problem you hadn't accounted for and try to blame me for it."
"That's preposterous! I accounted for everything!"
"Guys-" Harry tried to interrupt, to no avail.
"If you had, it wouldn't have been a problem to just include me in somewhere, considering the spell skills I have!" Harry just sighed, grabbed both their wrists, turned, and apparated to the Ministry, where their journey would begin.
"What spell skills? I don't think exploding socks from your sock drawer counts as spell skills when you were trying to put them away!"
"I just as easily could have done it right if you 'adn't been there to distract me, talking about the letter you got from Krum!"
"I told you, it didn't mean anything! Viktor was just keeping in touch!"
The whole time, Harry's head had been shooting back and forth around them, making sure they didn't draw too much attention to themselves before they even started, but of course, their argument only raised in volume, and so Harry put up a spell so no one could hear them yelling at one another.
"Muffliato!" And still, the arguing continued as if no one else was there.
"…and you know how I feel about that!"
"Well pardon me for having friends in other countries!"
"Friends? You dated him! You took him to the Yule Ball!"
"Oh honestly, Ron! Are you that oblivious! I was just trying to make you jealous!"
"You were trying to make me jealous?! Well, you certainly got was you wanted, didn't you?!"
"I can't believe how much you really think that I would be interested in him after all we've been through!"
"No! Don't put this all back on me! You're the one who made me so jealous in the first place!"
Harry just stopped listening.
We're going to be late. He had his invisibility cloak with him (as Hermione had taken it just before she had dragged Harry away, leaving Draco in Harry's room) and his wand; that was all he really needed for this quest, and so he headed off by himself, leaving the bickering couple behind, completely unaware that he was gone.
He put the invisibility cloak on and walked straight over to the lift. As Hermione's plan had gone, he went to the temporary prison, where criminals were kept just before they were sent to Azkaban. Once there, he only found that there were two men there. He looked around, finally seeing the Ministry Official and an Azkaban guard come forth and place a full Body-Bind curse at the two prisoners and drag them from their cell. Harry followed them to a ferry, which was much larger than need-be for these two prisoners, looking to accommodate about 25 to 30 criminals at a time. The criminals were thrown into yet another cell, and then the Ministry official waved his farewell to the guard, and the ferry left the dock into the sea.
The guard cast a spell over the ferry, and the colors faded away until it seemed that all that was there was the water underneath the ferry, the guard, and the prisoners floating in midair, still under a Body-Bind. The ferry went on, and Harry sat on the invisible floor, careful not to reveal himself under the cloak. It was generally a very casual ride. Even when the ferry came upon a thick mist, the guard merely tossed a spell at it like it was nothing. When the thick mist parted, there was Azkaban. The building was much shorter and thinner than Harry thought it would be, but just as dirty and solid looking. The midnight water turned black around the island, and the guard steered the ferry to a small dock. Another guard from the dock felt around on the side of the ferry, finally finding something, and tying a rope around it. Once the rope was secure, the normal color of the boat returned, and the first guard went and got the prisoners.
Harry followed them off the ferry and into the stone building, parting from them only after they had thrown the criminals into the cell.
"Hey, Traker," The ferry guard had called to the other, "D'ya think I could stay here for the night. I'm so tired, I don't think I could ride that boat without fallin' asleep."
"Yeah, that's fine. Must warn ya, though. This isn't no hotel. It's a prison."
"As long as there's a bed, I'll make it to morning." Seeing his time to get off the island, Harry figured he had until dawn to think of a way to get Draco's mother out with him. He tip-toed away, regretting not casting a silencing spell on his feet before he had reached stone floors. Harry walked around on each floor, passing doors and reading their inscriptions, looking and not finding what he was searching for. He went up levels and levels, still not finding her. He had reached the ninth floor, trying hard not to breathe too hard, as all his rushing and running up staircases was stealing his breath. Continuing to look, but at a much slower pace, he read each inscription and passed them by. Harry had been focusing more on how to quiet his breathing when he almost passed her door.
Narcissa Malfoy. Slowly, he sat down beside her door, now thinking of how to get her out of the cell and what to do with her once he had succeeded, assuming, of course, that he would succeed.
I'm pretty sure Alohomora won't open the door. I must need some sort of spell or something to open it, but what? He looked around, seeing a guard asleep on a cot in the middle of the hallway. It was so dark now, Harry wouldn't have seen him if he hadn't looked hard enough. He didn't know how long he had until sunrise, but he couldn't really do anything until the sky began to lighten up.
But then again, Harry couldn't just sit there and wait to save anyone either.
Harry stood and pulled on the door, expecting to have it not budge a little bit, but instead almost falling over when the door swung open. He quickly caught himself and crept inside, taking off his shoe and placing it in the door, because the door clearly wouldn't be opened from the inside so simply. When he was about to turn around to Ms. Malfoy, a hand came to his throat with a knife.
"I don't know who you are," said a high voice in a hoarse whisper, "but I have no toleration for practical jokes among the guards. If you would be so kind as to leave without any further hesitation, you are very free to tell your guards what you want without losing your head. Next time, you should not be so foolish as to reveal your feet under your Disillusionment charm."
With a weapon to his throat, it was quite difficult for Harry to raise his voice enough so she could hear him but control it so that he did not let out a yelp of any sort.
"Mrs. Malfoy, it's Harry Potter. I've come to get you out so we can beg the Minister for your pardon."
Narcissa removed her knife from Harry's throat and he gladly took off his invisibility cloak. He saw her glance at the door that was open and cast a charm at the door, creating a bubble so they could talk freely without being heard. Harry turned back to face her as if nothing had happened, but quickly realized something.
"Mrs. Malfoy, you have a wand?"
Narcissa drew her lips together in a sort of pout, looking more royal than child-like with her chin high in the air. "Why yes. The only reason I have not escaped is because I am innocent."
Needless to say, when she said nothing else on that point, Harry was confused.
"Wouldn't you break out because you're innocent?"
"Exactly. I am innocent, and therefore there is no reason that I should act as if I'm trapped here. I did nothing wrong, and therefore I should in turn continue to do nothing wrong." She glanced at Harry. "And what makes you think that breaking me out of Azkaban and bringing me before the Minister would get me a pardon? Would he not just scowl and throw us both in a cell for your stupidity?"
Honestly, she had a great point, but he was (and he hated to play this card) Harry Potter, the boy who defeated Voldemort when he was seventeen; he figured waltzing into the Minister's office with an Azkaban prisoner should provide the Minister with enough evidence that she obviously did not belong there.
"No. The Minister is…understanding. There's no way he would put you back into Azkaban if I went through the trouble to get you out."
Harry had a horrible view of what exactly the cell looked like, as the night was becoming pitch black, but he felt a sort of filth as he had never felt before.
"And how, exactly, do you plan to get me out of here, that is, if I decide to go with you."
"If? You don't want to get out of here?" Narcissa sighed. That was a complicated matter.
"It's not that I do not want to leave; I do. But would it be a smart decision to escape? If I do not receive a pardon, all your effort would be wasted, and I would most likely lose my stolen wand."
Even though she could probably not see, Harry rolled his eyes.
"You stole a wand but you're having doubts on escaping from Azkaban?"
"I'm tired of your criticism of my choice to attempt to remain well-behaved inside my cell." Her voice had grown quiet with each word sharpened to a point. "Why have you come here?" Narcissa was quickly losing her temper with the boy who had caused Draco so much trouble with his father.
Harry felt horribly beneath wherever Ms. Malfoy stood, even if the floor they stood on was even and flat.
"Well, it was actually Hermione. She suggested we get you out." Harry attempted to look her in the eyes directly, but found a large amount of darkness in his way. "Draco hasn't been faring so well by himself. I'm not sure if you know, but your husband has been beating him a lot lately."
It was as she had feared.
"He returned back to the manor? Why would he do such a thing?" Her pale face lost what little color it had left.
"I have no idea. I don't have the full story, I just know that there was a trial for Draco where Lucius used the Imperious Curse to try and get Draco sent to Azkaban. He ended up kidnapping him, but Draco had been back to the manor before that, so I don't think I know that part of the story. You'll have to ask Draco when we get you out of here."
Sparks started flying from Narcissa's stolen wand.
"That damned bastard…" she whispered, every consonant cutting right into Harry's ears. But as Harry guessed she would have, she agreed. "I will go, for Draco."
Harry nodded.
"Good. Now, just before sunrise, we'll have to leave and go down to the first floor. There will be a guard leaving to return to the Ministry on a ferry and we'll join him."
"How will we get past the barrier?"
Feeling rather worried for a moment, Harry asked, "What barrier?"
"There is a magical barrier around the entire island so that prisoners who try to escape can't leave. No prisoner has gotten out since the last breakout by the Dark Lord, meaning the barrier has never let a prisoner out."
"Well, is it just prisoners or can the guards not leave without having some method of stopping it."
Narcissa crept over to her small window. "I have seen guard after guard leave, but I think if they had a way of getting out, the prisoners would have found it and used it. It must only be for prisoners."
Harry thought a moment before replying, "What happens when a prisoner gets caught by the barrier?"
"An alarm goes off and the prisoner is knocked unconscious."
"Wonderful," Harry muttered. Together, they pondered what to do, letting the cell fall into silence.
In the next cell, the man began talking to himself once more. Narcissa was completely unaffected and continued to think of how she would get past the barrier so she could go back to her Draco, but Harry was listening to him intensely, trying to make sense of the muffled sounds as they faded in and out with the man's voice level.
"It's so simple! How could I not see before…needed was a giant butterfly, get on its back and fly on forever without a care in the world…and a cape for… and just a few…oh, brilliant!"
Suddenly aware that Harry was listening to the man, Narcissa explained. "He has gone insane. Many times he has tried to escape and he has failed every single time. His plans only get more unrealistic."
"I see…" He was disturbed, to say the least. He had always heard that people went insane in Azkaban, but he figured it had been because of the Dementors. And yet here he was, listening to a crazy man blabber on about plans to escape this prison that will never happen. Harry knew that there were things worse than death, and he thought that insanity was one of them.
The night went on and still they made no progress. Harry had eventually decided (to himself) to just wing it and hope for the best; that's usually how he did things anyway, but Ms. Malfoy continued to think on, trying to reason something in her head.
Well, what deciphers a prisoner from a regular person? The uniform? I'll transfigure it. The crimes committed? I am innocent. The level of insanity? If so, I may have a problem. But surely new prisoners have tried to escape and fail, too. There has to be a certain trick to the barrier.
When the black sky was just barley beginning to lighten, turning to a dark shade of blue once more, Narcissa voiced her suspicions.
"I have reason to believe that the barrier may have some way to distinguish between guards and prisoners, though I do not know what it may be."
Harry nodded, thinking there may be a way to get her out after all without making mistakes and blowing their only shot at getting off the island.
"Well, what does every prisoner do when they try to escape?"
"Well, they always are wearing their prisoner uniform; that may be it. They all have actually committed crimes. Always, they try some sort of way around it, shooting spells at it; using a wand to blast their way through the ground, that plan failed miserably. Once, a man shot a killing curse at it and it rebounded. He wasn't a very intelligent man. Then again, this is a prison…"
Uniform, crimes, magic… Harry listed off in his head. He looked at Narcissa's stolen wand.
"Where, exactly, do they keep your wands when they take them?" Puzzled as to what relevance his question had, she narrowed her eyes.
"If I knew that, I may have my wand and not someone else's."
"Well…" he thought harder, so close to discovering something, but unable to exactly grasp what it was yet. "Has anyone ever gotten their wand?"
Narcissa looked rather annoyed.
"No. I don't even think it's on the island. What difference does it make what wand I have? As long as I can do magic, we may be able to get out of here."
"But, don't you think it's odd that you've had it for so long? You said you stole it," Harry was on a roll, getting closer to what little detail was nagging at him, "so wouldn't that mean that the guard would notice it was missing?"
"Well yes." Narcissa did not understand what he was talking about. He was just wasting time with this nonsense.
"So if the guard noticed it was missing and did nothing about it, he must have figured you would try to escape with it. That must be how the barrier knows. You said every prisoner has escaped trying to use a stolen wand, and that's why they all failed! You have to leave that wand."
Startled, mostly by the fact of how obvious it had been now that Harry had explained it and how she had not thought of it first, Narcissa blinked.
"Oh," she said simply. She looked the wand over and dropped it like it might have contained a filthy disease on it that she had not realized was there until just now. "But how will we get out if I cannot use a Disillusionment spell?"
Harry handed her his invisibility cloak. "You use my invisibility cloak and I'll use a Disillusionment spell." He turned toward the window and saw the first beams of sunlight peaking over the horizon. "Let's go."
He went to the door, replacing his shoe on his foot and walking out into the hall, Narcissa under the cloak right behind him. It took him a moment to realize, he could not do a Disillusionment spell on himself (he had an invisibility cloak that would never wear out, why would he need the spell?). He turned awkwardly to Mrs. Malfoy.
"Could you, uh, put a Disillusionment spell on me?" Without question, Narcissa took his wand and smacked him on the head (possibly a bit too hard) and Harry could feel the familiar sense of having an egg cracked on his head. Narcissa poked her hand out, offering it back to the now concealed Harry. He took it and then made his way to the stairs. They walked down nine flights of stairs, and Harry had the growing feeling in his gut that the guard was the kind who would wake at dawn, leaving them only so much time to get to the ferry before he left without them. On the last flight of steps, Harry could feel his feet becoming mutinous. He could feel each additional step add to a certain stiff pain in his shoes.
When they reached the bottom, Harry's instincts had been confirmed as the guard gave a goodbye salute to another and walked right out the door. They quickly fell into step behind him, keeping close so it wouldn't look odd that the door was open for too long after he had walked through it. Their feet had reached the rock of the island now, there quiet feet unheard by the stomping of the guard as they drew nearer and nearer to the barrier. Narcissa grew worried that she had accepted Harry's idea too quickly, no matter how convinced she had been back in her cell. It could have very well been the uniform, or maybe they even had some sort of magical tag on her that marked her as a prisoner and she would walk right into the barrier only to fall unconscious on the ground, letting down the Disillusionment charm she had cast on Harry and ruining everything all with one step.
She grew anxious as she realized she was three steps just before the barrier, and her heart stopped beating as she took another step…
…and another…
…and one more…
And she almost stopped, but continued on as she passed the barrier, letting the distance grow between her and the un-seeable shield.
All three got onto the ferry, not at all missing the prison that shrank from view until the thick mist finally covered it completely, shielding the prison from eyesight.
While Harry had figured they would make it off, Narcissa could not believe it when her feet walked off the ferry and onto solid ground back at the Ministry. At once, Harry grabber her hand and turned, forcing her into side-along apparition (which no one enjoyed). Her feet touched ground and it took everything in her to not vomit up her food. When she had finished containing her nausea, she realized Harry was asking if she was alright.
"I'm fine," she looked at Harry and realized the Disillusionment spell had worn off, but then saw where exactly they had landed. The last time she had been here, she had regretted coming and distinctly remembered switching to the winning side somewhere after a chaotic search for her son. "Hogwarts? I thought we were going to beg the Minister for my pardon."
Shrugging, Harry stated simply, "I thought you'd want to see you son first."
At once, Hermione and Ron came running at him, not with smiles on their faces, but somber expressions.
"Harry! How could you just leave us there? We were supposed to do this together."
"Yeah, mate. Look, I know we were having a round-"
"We were not having a round. We were merely discussing certain matters of interest that concern Ron's jealousy."
"I'm not jealous. What in Merlin's pants gave you that idea?"
"You told me-"
"GUYS!" Harry yelled, silencing them at once. "Just stop arguing for two seconds. I've got Draco's mom. She's under the cloak. Let's just go and see him. I highly doubt he's asleep, anyway."
They nodded and made their way through Hogwarts to Harry's room.
"My son has a room in Gryffindor?" Harry stopped himself from laughing at the shock in her voice.
"No, it's mine, actually. Madame Pomfrey didn't want him to leave the school and go to wherever he lives now, so I let him stay in my room."
Hermione was the first to make it to the door, and knocked. When Draco opened the door, hair a mess and his grey eyes thoroughly bored looking, Hermione smiled and Ron jumped out from behind her and said, "Surprise!" when his mom took off the invisibility cloak.
Draco's mouth opened in shock. Narcissa smiled and enveloped her son in a hug.
"Draco, I'm sorry," she whispered in his ear.
Without really knowing whether or not he was just hallucinating from not sleeping for too long, Draco slowly wrapped his arms around his mother.
Hermione was the only one to see Draco's inner struggle to make sense of real and not, she said, "We went all the way to Azkaban to get her."
"We?" Harry questioned behind her.
"Oh alright," she sighed, "it was just Harry. Ron and I were bickering and Harry went and got her himself."
Draco was speechless but thought to himself on how he had such a great boyfriend, which only brought back his thoughts before on how Harry could be cheating on Cygnus with Draco. Oh, he hoped that his life wouldn't get that messy.
"Okay, well," Harry said awkwardly. They seemed to be having a sort of tender moment and he felt as if he was spoiling it. "We'll just go, now. You can just stay in my room." He nodded and turned, Ron and Hermione just behind him, shutting the door.
Draco finally regained his power of making words with his vocal chords.
"Mother, how…why are you here?"
Narcissa smiled down at her son and squeezed his shoulders.
"I escaped Azkaban. Harry Potter is going to ask the Minister for a pardon of whatever crimes I've been inaccurately accused of committing. But most of all, I'm here for you. He told me only vague stories of what has been going on while I was away. Dear Draco, why of all things did you go back to the manor after being free from your father?"
Tears welled up in Draco's eyes.
"I thought you would be there. He never told me you had gone to Azkaban. I ran away after some time, had a new start, but he dragged me back and…and then he told me what he did. He took me to the Throne Room, and I was…" A rebellious drop fell down his cheek. "Mother, I missed you."
"I missed you too, Dragon." Narcissa and Draco held each other in the soft moment. "And I'll never let your father take you again, no matter what happens."