For disclaimer and author notes please see chapter 1. (Also, please don't look too closely at the science!)
1988-09-18 03:00 UTC, Azkaban
The following Sunday, the plan went into operation. "Operation Patronus", as Sirius jokingly named it, had two phases. The first phase would bring in one dementor, and they would perform several experiments on it in order to find some fast and easy way to kill it.
In preparation for that, Sirius had bought tickets to Alton Towers, including two nights at a hotel nearby, for all the residents of the werewolf sanctuary. The kids were a little too young for the rides (actually much too young), but the parents would enjoy themselves. Panacea's mother had taken the two kids for the weekend, even Elizabeth's daughter being now used to being in the care of the kindly old lady.
Hobby was now in Azkaban, with two portkeys in his pocket. The return portkey had an activation phrase that was unlikely to occur in normal conversation, yet was easy enough to remember ("back, thou foul beast"). This would put whoever was touching it back in Azkaban, just behind the front doors.
The other portkey would take the dementor to a closed off, bunker-like, room (but with small windows on all four sides) at the sanctuary. This was in a different building than the one that Panacea and Liz and their families used, and set far enough away from both the main habitation as well as the surrounding areas where they had seen the kids play. Which was good - there was no telling what it would look like once their experiments were done.
At this point, Hobby had managed to get the attention of one of the dementors, which appeared to be alone. He threw the portkey at it, and shouted "prepare to die".
Nothing happened. Well, the dementor started moving toward him but nothing else happened.
Rats! I forgot the damn anti-portkey ward. I need to lure this thing out of the building proper, grumbled Harry to himself, somewhat shamefacedly. How could all of us have forgotten about that?, he wondered.
But getting the dementor to exit the building was easier said than done. At one point he was almost sure one of the human guards had seen him, so he quickly turned himself invisible.
As soon as he did so, however, the dementor lost interest and walked away. And because this happened very close to the front doors, and thus very close to success, Hobby was not too thrilled. He was also beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea, because if he was going to have this much trouble getting hold of one dementor, how were they going to nab all fifty or so of them?
He turned himself visible again, and doggedly set off in pursuit of the dementor, trying to remember why they had less trouble when he suddenly remembered and mentally face-palmed. Of course! I was bringing out some of the prisoners!
He looked around the jail a little. There was a slight chance that the prisoner he used to lure a dementor out could accidentally get kissed. Too bad none of the hard-core death eaters are still here, he grumbled. The prisoners that were left were not as much of an open and shut case.
He suddenly remembered that Alecto Carrow should be here now. He hadn't kept track of what happened to her after the incident where she and her equally gullible brother had been incited to kill Rookwood, but it was a safe bet that she would be here.
He did not want to spend too much time searching, but he would feel better if he found a genuine death-eater. So he wandered around as quickly but unobtrusively as he could, looking into various cells. Did they segregate women prisoners? Was it by seriousness of crime? He wasn't really sure - and whatever it may have been earlier, may have changed after the bulk of the death-eaters were "released".
His task was made difficult by the patrols. He'd always assumed that only the dementors patrolled the old fortress, but human guards apparently did too. Again, was this new, since Bones became minister? He didn't recall having this much trouble when he managed to "release" Fudge, Umbridge, and Wormtail from the shackles of life (as he had grandiosely put it to himself then). Maybe that was pure luck - they just happened to be on the same floor, and within a few cells of each other.
It was not that he had a problem being undetected. Elves were powerful at that, and Harry the wizard was no less so. The problem was many of the prisoners were - almost literally - hiding deep in their cells, and he had to either pop into each cell to determine who it was, which was tiring, or use a weak, focused, lumos to identify the person from outside, which might be seen by a passing guard. His previous forays had been at a time closer to daytime, and lighting (or rather, the lack of it) was not such a big issue.
And even if this succeeded, he would have another problem. If it took this much trouble to lure one dementor out, it would be a lot more difficult to lure all fifty (or however many there were) out. That would definitely get noticed, and he would have a fight on his hands - a fight with honest, decent, aurors who were just doing their jobs. A no-win situation for Hobby, since he didn't want to accidentally hurt them.
Just as he was about to give up, he came upon Alecto Carrow. She was sitting with her back to the cell door, but slightly in profile and was clearly her, or at least someone who looked fairly similar. What were the chances that there were two like her here? None, thought Hobby, and he popped her out of the cell.
Instantly, he was accosted by two dementors. They were very close to him - too close for comfort, so he popped to the inside of the front gates, just behind a corner where the guards in the main guard room could not see him, and waited.
In a few seconds there were four dementors upon him. This was fascinating. He knew dementors did not patrol here except when called by the guards, because there were no prisoners here, and the guards needed to be rested and alert, not be constantly enervated by the presence of dementors.
Which means, clearly, that they have some way of communicating with each other. If they weren't so disgusting, Hermione would have loved researching them, he smiled to himself at the thought.
He popped out of the door with his prisoner, because he didn't dare to actually open the door. He wasn't sure if the dementors would sense that and follow him out, or walk away, having lost the "scent", so to speak.
Luckily, the door opened, and first one, then another, and finally all four dementors had come out.
Before the fourth one was fully out, Hobby slapped the portkey on the first one and muttered, quietly but clearly, "prepare to die".
Then, a quick brainwave having occurred to him, he popped off with Alecto Carrow first to Grimmauld's dungeons, securing her there before going to the werewolf sanctuary to make sure the dementor had arrived and was contained.
1988-09-18 08:00 UTC, werewolf hideaway, Black estate grounds
The dementor was pacing about in the room that they had designated for this test. The door was locked, of course, and it could not escape.
Sirius, Penny, and Nick were looking in from a small window, and they had what one might call a "plan" in place, which is to say that they had a list of things to try. They'd already crossed out the first item on the list - non-lethal curses. After all, who knows? Maybe a tickling charm has a much more debilitating effect on dementors! Well, it didn't even register, as they found out.
Now they were moving up to somewhat more damaging spells. The room was sturdy enough, and Penny had layered some strengthening and protection charms to buttress the physical structure, so they were firing destructive curses at the dementor within.
Dementors were slow to move, so it's attempts to dodge were not very good, and their curses did hit their mark most of the time. But it didn't appear to do any damage. The dementor would pause a bit, and look down (did it even have eyes?) for a second or two, then it was back to normal.
"Have we tried any unconventional curses? Freezing water and ice, for instance?", asked Hobby.
So they tried it. It only appeared to make the dementor happy.
"OK wait, if that is making it happy, what about fire?", suggested Remus.
They all fired incendios at it together. This had a noticeable effect: the dementor now appeared to be angry as hell, but not hurt in any manner.
"Well, if nothing else, we know how to get the whole lot to leave the prison. Just fire incendios at them and pop out!", said Hobby. He had not yet given them any details of what happened at the prison, so they took a breather from their experiments while he filled them in.
"Yes that may work", said Nick. "But you said you kept Carrow away... that would be even easier", he said.
"Yup; I was hoping I could use her. My guess was that if I pop back to just outside the gates with her, even though the guards may or may not notice, the dementors will recognise that a prisoner is outside and will come swarming out. Is that what you mean?"
"Exactly. And their instinct to kiss an escaped prisoner should override their self-preservation, as in, even the sight of some of their brethren being portkeyed away will not stop that from happening. So... keep about fifty portkeys handy". Sirius grimaced at that; "I'd better start now", he said.
"Meanwhile, we have not solved the more important problem", reminded Mooney.
They heard a car horn outside, and Remus literally ran to head off whoever it was. It was taking all their self-control, as well as dancing around to keep to the furthest window from where the dementor was, for them to retain their minds. Whoever was in that car - most likely Panacea - would be really badly hit.
"What are you doing here?", Remus shouted at her from the front door. "I thought we told you not to come back till late Monday evening?"
"I forgot some things I need for work, things I simply cannot do without", she said a little shamefacedly.
You couldn't really be mad at Panacea; not only was she a very nice, sweet girl who would marry a were for love, the fact that she was an absolute knockout and could have had her pick of men made it even more remarkable.
Remus waved her out of the car, but stopped her at the door. "Now you listen to me carefully, missy", he said. "At the first sign of trouble, you run. You get into the car, lock the doors, and sit tight. If you're feeling up to it, drive - but don't risk an accident. They can't get into locked doors so - even if you feel miserable - you'll at least be safe until the dementor has been dealt with and someone gives you the all-clear".
"I was half expecting you to wag your finger at me", laughed Panacea. "Sure, I'll be careful. The stuff I need is in the nearest cupboard in the front entryway anyway."
"Please don't laugh! This is not a laughing matter, and I would hate to see anything bad happen to you", grumbled Remus.
But when she went in, she stopped dead about twenty feet away from the nearest window to the room in which the dementor was being kept.
"That's a very strange sensation", she said. "It's vaguely similar to what I get when I am working. Similar, but in many senses the complete opposite".
"What do you mean", said Remus.
"Well... as I said it's kinda hard to describe. When I am working on or near one of the heavy duty transformers, I feel the electricity, or rather the EM field I guess" - Remus frowned at the unfamiliar term, trying to place or guess what it meant - "I'm very sensitive to it. My skin feels tingly and my hair stands on end, or at least it seems so", she said.
"While here", she gestured toward the room at the other end, "it somehow feels the opposite - as if everything is wet or damp".
"Hmm, I wonder if that tells us anything about the dementor", Remus thought aloud. He knew a bit muggle science of course, but was nowhere near a professional electrical engineer.
"You know what we could do? I've got some spares in the shed down at the end, let me see if I can rig up something to test", said Panacea excitedly.
She quickly ran to the shed, and picked up a bunch of random-looking wires and coils and other similar things. She then drove the car right up to the front door, and spent about 20 minutes carefully doing something to the car. As she worked, she talked through it for Remus's benefit, so he could at least pick up the general idea.
"This battery puts out 12 volts. The ignition coil transforms it to a few tens of thousands of volts - needed for the spark plugs to do their job and ignite the fuel".
"So you're pushing those tens of thousands of volts into these two wires?"
"Yes, but it will only be a short zap - then we have to make and break the primary coil connection again to recharge it."
"Great! Lucky you had such long wires, I guess?"
"Yes indeed, and lucky they're pure copper - very little line losses, and since I will be twenty or more feet away, I need you to follow my instructions carefully".
"What happens if we touch it ourselves?"
"Well you'll get the shock of your lives", grinned Panacea.
"But nothing permanent?"
"Oh no not at all! An old man might suffer a heart attack or something I suppose, I don't really know. But at your age, nothing lasting".
"Then this may not be sufficient", said Remus with a slightly morose air. "I can't imagine something that kills a dementor but does not kill a human. Anyway let's try it".
Once the equipment was ready, they wound the extension cables around two long wooden stakes that Sirius conjured, and poked both through the nearest window to reach the dementor. (This was mostly Nick - he seemed to be the least affected by those things.)
The dementor jumped a foot, but then resumed his angry demeanour after a bit more time recovering.
They tried it again, and he took a bit longer to recover this time. After the fifth shock, he was slumped down, but to their disappointment, he was nowhere near dead.
"You're right, this won't work. Even if it does, I'll have to bring in a truckload of batteries to do all fifty, and it's just too impractical to even test properly", she said despondently.
Remus gave her a brief sideways hug and an encouraging smile. "Well we all learned something, and we still appreciate you thinking of these problems from a fresh perspective, one which absolutely none of us here have. It's just too bad the current was too weak to kill it".
"We were upping the voltage, not the current, Remus", she smiled indulgently. Sure he was a private investigator in the muggle world but his science education had never really even started, let alone completed.
Then she went all glassy-eyed and stared into thin air. Then she smiled, and said, "thank you Remus! You gave me a wonderful idea! I'll be back in a few hours", and she quickly got in the car and backed out fast, tyres squealing.
Remus looked on after her departure, wondering what idea she had got, and then turned back to Sirius and Nick and the others, and the regular spellwork.
"Well, nothing really worked, yet. Even the vague things that may work, are not scalable when it comes to fifty or more dementors", summarised Hobby morosely.
"Except we haven't tried fiendfyre yet", said Nick. "We just need to transport them to a place where we can use that spell safely".
"Yes, and that was fine for the horcruxes, because they don't move off on their own. By definition, any place we can cast fiendfyre safely is also a place where the dementor has a fairly good opportunity to escape. Or, worse, turn on us in some way".
They all nodded, some more grumpily than the others.
"Is there any enclosure that can withstand fiendfyre?", asked Hobby.
"Well, a room made of heavy stone masonry, magically reinforced, would be safe. But other than Hogwarts, I'm not sure there is any that is strong enough. I mean, sure, there are a lot of castles around, and some of them may have a room or two that is sufficient, but we'd have to test them out. And after fifty applications of the fiendfyre almost anything will give up the ghost".
"OK, next question: can dementors travel over water?"
"No", said Penny, and then she shrieked and hugged Hobby. "Perfect! Problem solved!"
"Well, not quite, but likely", said Hobby with a grin.
Sirius had a puzzled expression and was clearly on the verge of asking anyway, so Hobby explained. "We just have to find a smallish island, less than a few square metres in area. Get the dementor there, and use fiendfyre on the creature from the safety of a broom or something. Neither the dementor nor the fiendfyre can escape."
"Where would be find such an island? That could take some time", said Sirius.
"There's actually a cave I know which would have been ideal. Infested with inferii too, so we'd be killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. But I really don't want to go there if I can help it", said Hobby with a shudder.
"Might not that area have other caves which are smaller in size?", said Penny. She and Nick had already heard of this cave of course, and knew about the fake locket lying there.
"Sure, we'd have to go looking, and it will take time. I guess we could have planned the 'testing' better", sighed Hobby.
"Rockall", shouted Remus, beaming at everyone, and clearly expecting applause.
What he got was stunned silence.
"I think the phrase - such as it is - is rock on", said Hobby with a grin.
"Huh? No! I was talking about the island called Rockall", he clarified.
Penny and Nick both knew of it of course. "It's a few hundred miles from any other land mass. Sirius would have to overpower the portkeys significantly, but before that we'd have to travel by broom to find the place and get its portkey co-ordinates", said Nicky.
"There are also several possibilities north of Scotland, but they may be too close to Azkaban and attract attention. I definitely do not want even a remote chance of this becoming known to anyone in that vicinity. Our best bet is to look in the Hebrides", said Penny.
"Yup, not something we want to do today", said Hobby. "Let's have lunch; I think better when I'm not starving!"
They had a good lunch - all of them being hungry - and were just about to discuss whether to send the dementor back, when they heard the sound of a heavy vehicle - or at least something heavier than a car - coming up the drive.
It was Panacea, but not her car - this was a smallish truck. She stopped as close to the door as possible again, and looked at them with a grin when they, all of them, came to the door.
"I need help pulling this off the car. Two guys can do it - no magic please!", she said.
Sirius and Remus walked to the back of the vehicle, and - although he looked puzzled at first - Sirius quickly followed Remus's lead in opening the two doors at the back, and then manhandling the piece of equipment off of it and into the entryway. Panacea directed them on where to put it, and which way to orient it.
She then got another piece of equipment from the passenger seat of the mini-truck. "This is a transformer", she told them (only Sirius was completely clueless - the others had some idea).
"It looks very different from any other transformers I have seen", said Remus. "Why is the top coil so thick, with only 3 turns?"
"It's all thanks to you, Remus", Panacea twinkled. "You, and a friend who owes me, and allowed me to borrow his genset".
Remus looked like he almost got the answer, but not quite, so she continued, "I realised that increasing the voltage may not have helped, but increasing the current almost certainly will. Especially because, unlike the previous time, this is not a single discharge - we can keep this going for more than a few seconds before we have to stop and let the wire cool down".
"So... reducing the number of coils increases the current?"
"Yes. In this case it gets up to 800 amperes - melts most metals, which are not as conductive as copper. It's also why the copper is so thick - anything less would quickly overheat. Anyway, enough talking; let's get to it", she said.
She had Sirius fetch her the same wooden stakes they had used previously, and tied the two thick ends of copper wire trailing from this transformer to them. Unfortunately it wasn't long enough to wind around the stakes so she used pieces of twine to tie them. It was still somewhat short, so they'd have to chase the dementor into these ends by sending patronuses from the other windows, but if this worked they could always spend the time and money to buy more of this cable.
She showed Nick how precisely he was to connect the two stakes to a dementor (briefly, anywhere you like, but keep the ends within 2-8 inches of each other).
The dementor could not sense anything specific, so - possibly overcome by curiosity - it grasped one end each.
The screams were horrible, and the sight and stench were promising to be as bad, if not worse. Fortunately the sound lasted only two seconds, and in those two seconds the dementor's two hands, and most of its torso, flashed into one huge burst of flame. And, while no one really knew what a dead dementor looked like, this was certainly one destroyed dementor, so one hoped it was also dead
"Alright Sirius, how fast can you make portkeys?", grinned Hobby.