Author's note: I get so nervous about posting new chapters now that we're getting so close to the end. If everything goes as planned, there are only two more left after this one.
Thanks to everyone who left reviews, you're lovely.
- Mymlen
Chapter 43
Harry, Draco and Hermione descended through the tower, moving much faster now they didn't stop to draw runes. They rushed past the cells, down, down, down towards the darkness at the bottom. They didn't speak. The only sound was of their footsteps and the occasional moans or cries from the cells. Draco heard a strangled noise from Granger behind him and thought she must have looked into a cell, but they didn't stop.
Granger kept track of the floors as well as the time.
"This is the fifth," she said. "The Death Eaters are on the next one, right?"
"Yes."
And my father, he didn't say. His voice hadn't sounded right. He was walking next to Harry and for a brief moment, he felt the warm brush of Harry's hand against his own. He didn't say anything. They reached the next staircase.
They should have sped up past these cells, the ones where they all risked recognizing someone. They slowed instead and walked closer together. Draco kept his eyes on the floor, but Granger and Harry were looking now. Draco had tried hard to forget everything from his last visit, everything but the practical, necessary details relevant to their mission, but he hadn't succeeded and now he found himself counting the cells to the one where his father was. He thought it might be empty. He didn't know if they would be informed of it if he died, or if his mother would even pass it on if she found out.
Three cells from Lucius, Granger stopped. Draco didn't want to look, but he heard her gasp and couldn't help it. He followed her gaze to the human figure that lay sunken into a heap against the back wall of the cell. Chains trailed from the bone-like wrists to bolts in the wall. The hands were bloody messes, wrong and shapeless, like he had been fighting his restraints until he started breaking bones, and then perhaps beyond that. He was only half clothed. The dirty rags barely covered his upper body and failed completely to hide his genitals or the dark streaks of filth down his thighs. His head hung forward, his face barely visible. His hair was matted in thick clots but barely reached past his ears. They must have shaved him when he was imprisoned, because the last time Draco had seen the man in the cell, his hair had been long – long and clean and shiny, tied back in an elegant ponytail.
"This is… oh, God," said Granger weakly. "How can they do this?"
Draco swallowed hard, worried he would throw up as soon as he opened his mouth.
"That's Rabastan Lestrange. The one who…"
He swallowed again.
"Neville's parents," said Harry quietly.
Draco nodded.
Granger raised her wand – Draco recognized the movement of the spell, he had seen it too often by now, but had never expected it from her. He stared, too stunned to move. Then she pronounced the first syllable and he lunged for her.
"Don't!" he yelled, losing his balance in his hurry, stumbling into her and almost dropping his own wand as he dragged her arm down.
She grabbed at Harry who hauled her back on her feet as Draco disentangled himself from her. She glared at him.
"We can't leave him like that! Look at him, if you can't see how sick that is-"
"The dementors are here to keep people in," he interrupted her. "As long as we don't try to move anyone, they don't alert the aurors, that's the only reason we can do this. We don't know what will happen if we start killing the prisoners."
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. Harry was still holding on to her.
"We should hurry," said Harry.
She nodded.
"Right," she said.
She tore her eyes from the man in the cell and they began moving again. Draco checked his watch – they had only lost a couple of minutes.
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They passed Lucius Malfoy's cell quickly and without notice.
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There were torches mounted on the walls of the floors where the prisoners were kept. From the third floor down, the only light came from their patronuses and outside their reach, it was pitch black. There hadn't been people this deep in Azkaban for hundreds of years, and Harry realized he had been expecting cobwebs. There weren't any.
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The patronuses were still solid and shone brightly. They were a barrier between them and the dementors, but the patronus charm was not a perfect shield. Draco could feel the cold tendrils of the darkness boring into his mind, his sanity creaking like a frozen lake in winter.
Harry flinched and Draco and Granger both raised their wands, looking around for what had startled him.
"I saw someone," he said.
"Dementor?"
Harry shook his head.
"No."
He took a step closer to the wall to their left – or towards where it should have been. He reached out his arm and didn't touch anything.
"Lumos," he said.
It was an opening like the ones of the cells upstairs, except it looked much deeper. Harry waved his patronus forward and the stag walked a few hesitant steps into the darkness.
"It's a hallway," he said.
"Harry, don't, we need to head downwards."
"But I saw something…"
Harry took another step into the opening. His patronus was quite a way ahead of him. Then, without even a flicker of warning, it winked out and an icy fist smashed through Draco's mind, he felt himself falling as the hallway and the prison was swallowed by a vision of the polished floor of the Manor, of his father screaming and writhing with limbs twisting in odd directions, the sound of high pitched laughter ringing in Draco's ears and his mother's frantic voice: "Bella, Bella please stop – Draco is here, Bella, please!".
Draco
Draco!
"Draco, wake up!"
He was lying on cold, damp stone and the back of his head hurt, but it was a red-hot, physical pain that felt almost comforting after the twisted, unnatural sensation of dementors groping through his memories.
Draco groaned.
He opened his eyes and looked into the kind face of a silver otter. He turned his head and there was Harry, kneeling down and leaning over him with a hand on his shoulder. His expression was raw, scared. He pulled back when Draco opened his eyes, allowing him room to sit up. Draco carefully pushed himself upright, grimacing at the pain from his head and his bruised elbow.
"Shit," he muttered.
Harry reached out and pulled Draco in, for a short moment clutching him tightly and Draco could hear him breathing right next to his ear. It was just that brief moment of panicked closeness, then he let him go and quickly got to his feet like it hadn't happened. Draco looked past him when he stood up to where Granger was standing, her face illuminated by Harry's patronus. She was staring at him, comprehension dawning on her face.
"Harry?" she said, taking a hesitant step towards them.
Her eyes darted between them and he thought he could almost hear her brain whirring away. He stood up. Hermione's eyes finally settled on Harry and she looked like she wanted to say something else, but then she shook her head and turned to Draco instead.
"Are you… How is your balance? You hit your head when you fell."
"I'm fine," he said.
She nodded.
"You should recast your patronus," said Harry.
"Right," said Draco.
He took a deep breath and raised his wand.
"Expecto Patronum!"
His silver snake reappeared and he felt slightly better.
"Alright," said Granger, a bit too briskly for Azkaban. "Let's go."
"How much time did we lose?" asked Draco.
Granger looked at her watch. Then she frowned.
"It's not working."
Draco pulled out his own watch and tilted it so the patronus light fell on the clock face. The second hand was quivering, but it didn't move.
"Mine doesn't either."
"So we can't keep time?"
"Apparently not. We'll just have to hurry as much as we can and hope that's enough…"
The other two began moving, but Draco was still staring at his watch. It was an expensive one. Goblin made, silver with the Malfoy crest engraved in it. It had been running perfectly for four generations.
"But it just stopped," he said. "They both did."
"Nothing we can do about it," said Harry. "Come on."
Draco glanced into the the dark opening. He couldn't see far down it anymore, but when it had been illuminated by Harry's patronus, it had looked like it stretched far longer than it ought to, far beyond the extent of the outer walls of Azkaban.
He noticed a bit of water that trickled down the wall. Except it didn't. It was trickling up.
"Malfoy!" called Granger.
"Sorry," he said and hurried after them.
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They continued down the galleries, down staircases, once again accompanied by their three patronuses. Harry kept glancing back at Draco. He regretted bringing him. He should have convinced him to stay back – he should have tried, at least.
Without their watches, he quickly lost sense of time. It reminded him of the Department of Mysteries, this endless walk down dark routes where they had no idea what awaited them. Draco looked scared. His eyes darted back and forth, he kept looking back over his shoulder. Harry tried not to worry about Ron and Ginny or Neville and Luna, wherever they were above them.
His stag walked ahead, leading the way. Hermione and Draco's patronuses were on either side so they formed a small, triangular spearhead of light that parted the darkness ahead. The patronuses illuminated the space between them, but then reached only a few inches out. It looked odd too, the way the light just stopped, as if the darkness was something solid, a wall ahead of them. It had gotten colder too. Harry could see the thin mist of his breath in the air.
The way his patronus had just flickered out worried him. It suddenly seemed like a feeble protection from whatever was down here. He finally understood what Draco had meant about the building itself being evil – it was like it resonated the powers of the dementors. There hadn't been any dementors near when he went into the hallway, but when his patronus vanished, he had heard his mom screaming. He thought he would probably have passed out too if Draco hadn't collapsed first and snapped him out of his hallucinations.
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They were on their way down another broad staircase, they couldn't even see far enough to make out the wall to their left and only saw glimpses of the railing to their right.
"Harry, wait a second," said Hermione.
They stopped. He looked around, his heart pounding in his chest.
"What?" he asked.
"I think I saw something… moving."
She raised her wand above her head
"We need better light – Lumos Maxima."
Light flared from the tip of Hermione's wand, illuminating the darkness, the staircase and the dementors. They were everywhere. Close, towering over them on every side, only just out of reach of the patronuses. Draco made a strangled noise behind him. Harry felt his stomach twist. Each winded breath was a cold stab down his throat. He had never seen this many dementors in his life; they were packed together so tightly the movement of one was a wave through all of them, the mass parting ahead of their little group and retracting again behind. Harry hadn't noticed the sound before, in the dark it had seemed only a draught of wind. Now he could see the gaping mouths and the sound dissolved into hundreds of individual breaths.
"Harry," said Hermione. "Look."
He tore his eyes away from the dementors right ahead of him to see where she was pointing. They had walked along the rail of the staircase, close enough that there were no dementors immediately to their right. Instead there was the drop to the floor below, the air was filled with thick, grey mist that vanished into obscurity and at first Harry thought that it was simply too deep for them to see the bottom. Then he realized that what he saw beyond the fog was the bottom, because the dark down there was moving too. Waving. Breathing. A cold chill ran down his spine. There were thousands.
"We're going to die," said Draco weakly.
"We're not," snapped Hermione. "Come on. They can't touch us."
And they couldn't, but now that they could see them, their presence felt smothering. How long had they walked in darkness without noticing them, Harry wondered. Were there as many dementors behind them as there were ahead?
Hermione took another step down the stairs, her patronus moved forward with her and the dementors pulled back. Draco didn't move.
"Why?" he said.
He stood rigidly, the knuckles where white on the hand that clutched his wand.
"We have to find the source. We have to kill them, and we're in a hurry, so now is not the time to be a coward."
Her voice was firm, but her eyes were wide and scared. Harry wished suddenly that they hadn't left Ron upstairs. He was better at keeping his head than Hermione, and she looked like she was about to panic.
"The source?" Draco gestured to the drop. "There isn't one! There's only dementors down there. This is it! This is the core of Azkaban, just thousands of dementors breeding and sucking the life out of this place. I never thought there would be so many in one place, but that certainly seems evil enough to me to explain this place."
"But that doesn't make sense-"
"Nothing here makes sense! Space is wrong, time is wrong, did you see the condensation on the wall upstairs? The water was running up. We're going to go mad down here."
"The ones down here aren't feeding on the prisoners! The prisoners aren't enough to keep this many of them alive, they would starve or suffocate, like what we're trying to do to them with the patronus chain – or they would go somewhere else, or if they are all feeding on the prisoners then the ones down here would all be trying to get upstairs, but they don't."
"Or maybe we were wrong about suffocating them, they were all just theories we came up with, we don't really know anything about them, maybe we're wrong about all of it-"
"Draco, shut up!" Harry cut him off. "Pull yourself together. We're here. We keep going."
"I can't."
"Of course you can-"
"I'm not a Gryffindor."
"This isn't about your house!" said Hermione turning around to face him. "And if we die down here, it'll be your fault. So we're not going to die."
Draco flinched. Hermione looked like she wanted to break his nose, and maybe he remembered that she almost did once. He drew himself up.
"Alright," he breathed.
He took another step down the stairs, the snake moved with him, the dementors surged back. They moved on.
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At the bottom of the stairs, Hermione cast a tracking spell on the wall.
"So we'll be able to find our way back."
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Then they went into the sea of dementors and it parted for them, but only just. Draco walked quietly beside him now, his wand held steadily, his snake patronus beside him. It had been easier for Harry to forget his own fear when Draco was panicking before. Now he could hear his words echoing in his mind: space is wrong, time is wrong. Harry was slightly out of breath. His legs were heavy and each step took effort – this was the lowest floor of Azkaban and somehow it felt like all the rest of the tower's weight was pressing down on them, as if they were deep under water. It was like running in a fever dream, limbs weighed down by lead. They had no way to watch the time, but they were supposed to hurry. Harry could feel a headache growing behind his eyes. They had only been able to make out a fraction of this floor from the stairs, but none of it had held anything but dementors.
"Hermione, maybe Draco was right," said Harry.
He spoke quietly, keeping his eyes on her, but he thought he saw movement amongst the dementors. Could they hear? How intelligent were they, that wizards were able to give them orders and use them as guards and weapons?
"Maybe… I mean there might be a source," he continued. "But we don't know that it's something we can find, it might not be something tangible-"
"Right. We don't know. So we're not going to go back before we've looked."
"I'm not saying we give up; I'm saying we might have to think of another solution – the others are waiting for us, if we're not back at the castle by morning-"
She cut him off again:
"It doesn't matter if we make it in time, we're not leaving here until we've broken this place. And if we get caught, then we'll break the Wizengamot too. It's all so-"
She stopped.
The dementors ahead of them had parted and instead of more dementors, they stepped into thick fog. Illuminated by the patronuses it glowed pearly grey, and through it they could just make out the wall and the corpse of a man slumped against it. Thin chains trailed from his wrists to bolts in the stone and made him look a mirror image of Rabastan Lestrange in his cell above. Only Rabastan had been beaten and filthy to look at, whereas the figure in front of them seemed strangely undamaged by his imprisonment. His robes were beautiful and looked untouched by time, though the style and fabric seemed foreign and ancient. The dead wizard was thin as a skeleton, but the skin still clung tightly to his bones and it was impossible to tell what age he had been when he died. The hair on his head was white, but thick and strong and it grew long enough to reach his waist.
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"This is not…" Draco began, but stopped himself, because he really didn't know what he had been expecting, even if it wasn't this.
"I thought – I was hoping maybe it hadn't been made by wizards," said Granger quietly.
Draco looked at her. Her skin was sallow in the ghostly light. The need to hurry was gone. Here, time stood still.
"Why?" he asked.
Granger shrugged and the movement made her look brittle and small.
"It could have been a natural occurrence. A place that made people evil, not a place made evil by people. But it looks like this was always the intention. It was made to be a prison. Makes you feel sort of hopeless, doesn't it?"
"We're here," said Harry. "That's not hopeless."
And then Granger's otter twisted slightly and Draco flinched and Granger gasped as they all saw it at the same time when the light flickered over the face of the dead wizard and caught in his eyes – because they were eyes, not empty sockets as they had seemed at first, only they were mirror-black and had looked like empty holes until the moment they reflected the light. Now they did see the eyes, the face of the corpse looked a lot less skeletal. He looked a lot less dead.
"He's breathing," said Granger tonelessly.
Draco felt a shiver run down his spine, and he wanted to tell her she was wrong, but now he could see it too; the gentle rise and fall of the man's chest.
"That's not possible," he said.
Harry took a step closer and Draco jerked, wanting instinctively to pull him back out of reach of the man, but he fought the impulse and didn't touch him. Harry crouched down in front of the figure so they were face to face.
"Be careful," said Granger.
"Can you speak?" asked Harry.
The skeletal man didn't move. His chest rose and fell and Draco was uncomfortably aware that his own breathing had synchronized with that slow rhythm.
"Who do you think he is?" asked Harry, not looking away from the shrivelled wizard.
"I don't know," said Granger. "He looks ancient."
"He has to know about the source. He would know where the dementors come from."
"I'm a legilimens," said Draco.
It was only halfway true. He was an excellent occlumens. His mother had taken it upon herself to teach him during the war when their home had been open to Death Eaters and to the Dark Lord himself, and it had turned out that Draco had inherited her natural talent for it. He was never quite as good as she was, he never could have lied to the Dark Lord's face the way she did, but he was good enough. Legilimency on the other hand, had only been a minor point in his training, so that he would know what he was defending himself against. He had only ever done it to his mother.
"There might not be much of a mind left in him, but I could try and see what's there?"
Harry glanced up at Granger, who nodded stiffly. Then he stood up and allowed Draco to take his place. Legilimency had always been tied to Slytherin house, and because the Dark Lord had been so skilled at it, it was closely associated with him. Draco couldn't tell if the expression on Harry's face was one of worry because of what Draco was about to do, or distaste because he possessed the skill at all.
Draco crouched in front of the shrivelled man and pushed Harry from his mind. He could feel every hair on his arms standing up, his heart picking up speed at the proximity, as he kept half an eye on the spidery fingers, every second expecting them to jerk forwards and wrap themselves around his neck. He stared into the inky wells of the ancient wizard's eyes and saw his own reflection mirrored in each of them. He levelled his wand at him.
"Legilimens."
There was no resistance at all. He fell forwards into those black eyes, the floor disappeared under his knees as he was swallowed by a storm of memories.
The hard part of legilimency was getting into someone's head and staying there long enough to find what you were looking for before their mind pushed you out. This mind wasn't trying to push him out, and so instead of a slow crawl dragging through memories that clung like spider webs, the images rushed by like streaming water, too fast and too chaotically for him to make out anything but glimpses in the rush, too fast for him to tell them from each other, and he strained to hold on to that sensation of his own body far away, trying to stay tethered even as he felt himself slipping away between glimpses of someone else's past.
The smell of smoke filled his nostrils, he saw a house collapse in flames over and over again, or perhaps they were different houses, hundreds of homes. He saw his own hand raising a wand and flashes of green light, and then in between death and destruction were childhood memories of praise, of catching frogs in a garden, a field littered with dead animals, gashes open in their sides and guts spilling onto the grass. A distant, physical sensation of bile rising in his throat, the strain of holding on to invasive thoughts.
And then in the chaos, he began to see the pattern, a story that was dark and terrible enough that through it all he wondered why he had not heard of this, how much time had had to pass for something like this to be forgotten?
It's long before Voldemort and long before Grindelwald, it doesn't look like England, the sense of recognition he feels towards the landscapes is part of the memories, not his own.
There is a sense of purpose, but it is stretched thin, it is revenge at first and then fear and thirst for power, the pleasant thrill at the looks of fear when he enters a house, a village, the way whole cities seem to cower.
Corpses hovering in the air along the roads.
The library burning. An old man flinging himself into the flames in some desperate attempt to save the sacred texts, but there is nothing left to save. A whole history and culture lost.
His purge through the country and a resistance so feeble it seems non-existent.
There are potions and protective charms and he grows stronger and it becomes harder to discern the faces of friends from enemies.
He crowns himself and retreats into the dark caverns of a palace big enough to be its own world.
And in between there were memories that didn't belong to this man, memories of the ones who saw him coming, memories of the people who survived, and Draco felt the strange ache of watching the same memory from two people's eyes at the same time.
Avada kedavra.
Draco felt flinch in his own mind.
He doesn't block the spell, there is a stab of fear and then of joy as he is hit, the light whirls around him, for a second all he can see is green, and then triumphant laughter rises in his throat.
But he is also the caster of the curse watching it hit and then vanish with no effect, watching the wide mouth split into a grin, hearing that laugh and feeling everything fall apart.
Immortal – repeated again and again to himself.
Immortal – repeated and rejected by people who cling to hope or dreams of revenge.
And then a scorched island in the middle of a grey, frothing sea. Three harrowed faces, a man and two women, so young they are almost children. His wand lies broken at his feet. He does not recognize their faces, even now he is not afraid of them, even now he knows they still fear him. The killing curse cannot touch him, but he has heard of their cursed fire, a spell made with the purpose of destroying a soul like his, it has burned at his heels as they chased him all the way here. He throws out his hands as if he still owned the world, and tells them to burn him, laughs because he cannot imagine why they haven't already, he can see the hungry flames in their eyes.
Through three pairs of eyes Draco sees this man that is no longer human, who took everything from them, they have lived to kill him and when he is dead there will be nothing left for them. They know it all instinctively that they cannot give him death, killing him would not be revenge. It would feel like mercy, because death is nothing compared to what they have endured, nothing compared to knowing that they will have to live on with this grief, that they will have to live on after having lost everything and everyone.
Another curse, still no fire, but pain shoots up his legs, he collapses to the ground and he can no longer feel anything from the waist down. Then the darkest of the women comes towards him and she kneels over him.
Through his eyes, her face is horribly disfigured by burn scars.
Through her eyes, he looks both young and old, his skin as smooth as silk, but still somehow worn.
Her voice is rough, she hates the sound of it, she hasn't spoken much since the fire.
"Be me," she says quietly and puts the tip of her wand to her temple, drawing out a string of silver.
Draco's heart was beating too fast and so hard he could feel it, he thought he might be dying. He had already watched an entire life, but now the stream of images was picking up speed, the scorched island didn't fade, but he could also see and feel a second life starting over. He had already seen some of those images, he thought, as the woman poured all her memories of grief into the man.
And then the second woman kneels and pulls a strand of silver from her temple.
And next to her the young man, who pulls a strand of silver from his temple.
He can't move, the tears are warm and sticky on his skin, they dry quickly in the wind.
From a pocket in her robes the disfigured woman pulls a small glass vial filled with silver, he whimpers when she puts it to his lips, she covers his nose and he chokes, he cannot remember the last time someone touched him.
Three overlapping memories, three vague distortions of the same image of a man whose eyes are turning black as he relives his war through their eyes. Fog is seeping out of his skin, condensation running down his arms and tendrils of mist rise from the corners of his eyes and from his mouth.
They don't notice the monster at first, it is the same colour as the mist and the sea and the sky. It stands behind the immortal wizard, vaguely human in shape, with grey skin, an eyeless face and a gaping hole for a mouth.
Draco's skull felt like it might burst. He saw hundreds of memories of war and felt hundreds of people's grief like beetles scurrying through his brain, a thousand tiny legs, he watched stone walls being erected around his limp body, he watched his own hand as he erected a building to hold the immortal wizard and the monsters he had spawned forever. A heaviness had settled in his chest, he was so afraid. He could feel razorblades pushing out behind his eyes and needles growing in his gums – and then the clammy touch of a mind burrowing into his, he remembered the wrists of Rabastan Lestrange and then the astronomy tower and Harry laughing and a sloppy kiss and-
Draco had the nauseating sensation of being able to feel his own brain contracting like a muscle as he heaved his occlumency barriers into place, and then he was alone in his head. The memories of the ancient wizard were gone and he was looking at the tip of a wand pointed between his eyes, and behind it, Hermione Granger. Then he buckled over and coughed out a mouthful of vomit. He had been throwing up in his mouth, he could feel how it had drippled down his chin.
"Draco!" – Someone gripped his shoulder and almost pushed him over.
Draco spat on the floor. His head hurt like hell.
"Say something! Are you there? Are you alright?"
He nodded. He was not alright.
"I'm fine," he croaked.
"We thought you were dying," said Granger.
He had thought so too. He wasn't sure how to navigate the tight hold of the hand on his shoulder. He scrambled clumsily back from the corpse, his limbs still felt weirdly disconnected from his mind.
"Didn't know you were a legilimens," he muttered.
"I'm not-" Granger began, but Harry cut her off, clearly not interested in her amateur mind penetration.
"Is he still in your head?" he demanded.
Draco wasn't sure there was anything in his head at all.
"No," he said. "I'm fine."
"Did it – did it work?" asked Granger, forever the practical one; she wouldn't pretend to be more worried than necessary.
She was looking past Draco at what was behind him and he twisted around to follow her gaze. He wasn't surprised to see that his patronus was gone, but Granger's and Harry's were still keeping up the protective barrier around them. Their light made it harder to make out the dementors in the dark, but they were there. He could still hear their rattling breaths, and for a moment Draco felt like he was back in the wizard's memories. He looked away.
"Yes. It worked."
"You saw something?"
Draco nodded.
"A war," he said. "Something like a war, it was all in his memories. And the dementors are feeding on him. He's the source."
He tried to get to his feet and immediately, Harry was there, dragging him upright.
"We have to burn him. Fiendfyre," he said tensely.
"Why-"
"You don't need a fucking explanation!"
Draco's head ached. Harry looked at him.
"I don't know the spell," he said.
Draco was about to tell him that yes, of course he did, they had been taught in school, but of course Harry hadn't. He hadn't had a single lesson of dark arts. He wouldn't know it.
Draco did.
Crabbe had known it too.
A second wave of nausea hit him. He was drained, unfocused - he might be able to cast the spell, but he definitely wouldn't be able to control it.
He had known from the start that this was a suicide mission, but only vaguely, as an abstract concept, scenarios he could imagine, but didn't believe in.
And here it was. He was going to burn to death. He tightened his grip on his wand, tried to recall the details of the wand movements, and all he could think about was how painful it would probably be, and that after that, there would be nothing. He didn't want to die; he didn't want to die here in the dark-
"I know it," said Granger.
"What?" said Harry and Draco at the same time.
Granger was rolling up her sleeves.
"I know the spell," she said. "I know the theory, at least."
Draco's heart was still hammering away, for some reason his confusion felt like disappointment.
"It's not just about casting it, you need to keep control-" he began.
"I know, Malfoy," she said facing the still unmoving wizard. "I was there too. You're sure it has to be that spell?"
"I'm sure."
"Alright," she said. "Maybe stand back a bit?"
She sounded nervous. Harry, who was still holding on to Draco, took a step back and pulled Draco with him. Granger raised her wand and her voice seemed to drop an octave as she enunciated the complicated syllables of the curse with perfect precision. The sound of it sent a chill down Draco's spine, he inadvertently took another step back and then almost stumbled when he was momentarily blinded by the bright, white light of the fire bursting from the tip of her wand. The flames shot forward and coiled into the fiery body of a monster – the heatwave blew back Draco's hair, the smell of sulphur and molten iron hit his nostrils and for a second he was back in the room of hidden things, inches from his death.
The fire was a chimera, a phoenix, a dragon; predatory muscles of white-tinged flame that moved beneath its shoulder blades as it turned its massive head to look at him. There was only the one creature, and it was still leashed by Granger's wand. Her face was wet with sweat.
"Come on!" she grunted as she stepped forward, herding it towards the wizard.
The demonic fire still burned nothing but her magic, but its eyes were on the three of them, not on the slumped and shrivelled figure ahead, and Draco could sense the single minded sentience behind them, the desire to consume him and everything else in this dungeon that would burn. Granger flicked her wand again, like a whip, and slowly the creature turned away and walked – surged – ruptured – towards the undead wizard.
His robes caught flame even before it reached him, and then it engulfed his whole body and the flames were wrenched apart, losing all semblance of an animal. Tongues of fire shot out and coursed and curled along the body, and for a moment the body in the middle of the inferno seemed completely unharmed. Then Harry screamed: "Down!", and Draco didn't have time to react before the blast wave hit him in the chest and threw him to the floor. White hot pain shot through his shoulder and it was all he could do to still hold on to his wand. The world dissolved in the roar from the explosion.
It only lasted a moment and then everything was quiet except for a distant ringing in Draco's ears.
Slowly, he climbed to his feet.
He was still halfway blind from the light of the explosion, but in the faint glow of the stag patronus he could make out the shape of Harry staggering towards a dark shape on the floor.
"Hermione! Hermione, are you alright?" Harry called.
The otter patronus lay nestled against her side, fuzzy at the edges, mostly see-through, but it was still there, so she had to be conscious. She had to be alive.
Draco looked towards the wall where the molten remainders of the chains glowed dimly red. He stood up. His balance was terrible and he swayed dangerously as he staggered to where Harry was leaning over Granger.
"I know a spell," he said.
Harry didn't seem to hear him, so Draco crouched down too, breathing in the acrid scent of burnt hair. Granger's robes were singed and he could see burns on her hands and wrists as well as around her nose and mouth. A soundless cough shuddered through her. He pointed his wand at her throat, muttering the incantation. He moved to her chest, repeated it. Her breathing became easier.
"What are you doing?" asked Harry.
"I don't know any healing spell that would help, I'm just taking the pain away."
Harry started and looked back over his shoulder. A second later, Draco felt it too. A ripple. A chill. They were huddled with their backs to the wall where the wizard had sat and they could still feel the stones emanating heat like a fireplace, but on their faces, despite the protecting light of Harry's patronus, they felt a biting chill and all around them they could hear the rattle of dementor breaths. The fog had thinned.
"Draco, your patronus," said Harry.
"Right," he said raising his wand. "Expecto patronum."
His snake curled in the air. Granger was holding on to Harry as she pushed herself upright.
"What's happening?" she muttered.
"We cut off the source," said Draco, the realization dawning on him as from all sides dementors turned their faces towards them.
"They're choking."
"What?" said Harry, putting an arm around Granger's back to help her sit.
"The wizard's gone, we're all that's left for them to feed on down here."
Harry's eyes widened.
"We need to get back upstairs," he said.
He grabbed Granger's arm and pulled her up. Her eyes were unfocused, she blinked slowly. Her wand slipped between her fingers and clattered to the floor. The ghostly remnant of the otter patronus vaporizedt, the dementors flocked closer, and Draco felt the endless misery drift from his mind throughout his whole body like a cold shiver, the sort of sadness that meant he would never be happy again. The nostrils of Harry's stag flared wide as it tripped a nervous step backwards. Draco inadvertently followed the movement.
"Draco, come on!" Harry snapped.
And then he plunged ahead into the bodies of the dementors, herding his patronus forward. Draco snatched up Granger's wand and followed.
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Hermione leaned heavily on Harry, he felt her trying to shift her weight away from him, but her legs and feet were unsteady and he had to catch her from falling. He could hear Draco right behind him, breathing over his shoulder. They were moving ever so slowly back through the dementors. They kept close to his patronus, but where before the spell had meant that the dementors shied away from them as they made their way through, the stag now had to jostle them out of the way with it's antlers, and from all sides they pressed towards them, desperate, starved mouths open, the ones in the front pushed closer by the hundreds behind them. They crowded against the shield, sucking in the white light. This deep in Azkaban, even two corporeal patronuses wasn't enough to keep them out entirely and Harry could feel their effect seeping into him. He thought he could make out the light from Hermione's tracking spell on a distant wall and he kept his eyes on that when he could, and when it disappeared from view, he just hoped the patronus was leading them in the right direction.
"I think I see the stairs," he called.
There was no answer and Harry glanced back over his shoulder. Draco was still following closely behind him, but he wasn't looking ahead; he had his eyes fixed on the nearest dementor and the light from his patronus had faded to a dim glow. The snake was only a thin thread of silver. As Harry watched, one of the dementors surged forward and the patronus snapped and winked out. Draco flinched and raised his wand reflexively:
"Expecto patronum!" he cried.
The snake reappeared, it threw itself at the dementors, a rotten hand reached out and dragged through it like it was only mist.
"Expecto patronum!"
Silver light, the shape of a snake blinked into existence, then collapsed. Hermione shifted her weight against Harry, her breathing was beginning to sound troubled again.
"Expecto patronum!" cried Malfoy; there was no light, no patronus.
"Cast it again!" said Harry.
"Expecto patronum!" he yelled, but it didn't sound like a spell anymore; they were just words.
"Cast it again!"
But Draco's expression was vacant, he lowered his wand as if he had suddenly forgotten the use of it, and gazed up at the dementors, his breath forming white clouds in the freezing air. In the back of his mind, Harry could hear his mother screaming.
"Come on, Draco, focus!" he said, but Draco didn't seem to hear him.
He was still within the circle of light from Harry's patronus, but only barely, and they were still so far away from the stairs and Harry wouldn't be able to drag him there when he was holding up Hermione. His heart was pounding and his throat swelled as the fear and helplessness welled up in him. And then a dementor slid between him and Draco, and another one, and then they all crowded around him like flies around an open wound and he was swallowed up in the mass of them and disappeared from view.
"No!" Harry screamed.
He threw himself towards him, still holding on to Hermione, dragging her with him as he tried to physically shove the dementors aside with his free arm, but his hand just sank uselessly into their flesh and shards of cold shot up his arm.
Malfoy screamed.
"Get away from him!" – Harry's voice broke on the panic, a high desperate pitch.
He couldn't even tell how many dementors were between him and Draco now; his patronus was doing nothing to push them away, it stayed by him and Hermione but Harry could feel his own mind starting to slip; for a second his vision was swallowed by the memory of a bright, green light. He shook his head violently and the dementors swam back into view. Harry aimed his wand at them, his mind empty except for the knowledge that he wasn't going to lose him, that he was going to get all of them home safely.
"Expecto patronum!" he cried.
The soft silver glow flowed out around him and condensed into the shape of an animal that bolted forwards, pushing itself between the dementors until Draco came back into view. He stood as he had when Harry lost sight of him, stiff and frozen with his arms hanging down his sides, but as the dementors pulled back, he turned to look at the patronus. Slowly and with a dazed expression, he put his hand against it's side. Harry's breath was fast and shallow, his heart still pounding away. There was a strange buzz in the fingertips on his wand hand, like a mild electrical current. The edge of his vision was blurry, making the apparition in front of him even more unreal. The second patronus was a dream thing, bright and warm and safe, yet he couldn't really believe it was there, even when he was looking right at it, even as Draco ran a hand over the silver fur. It wasn't a stag either; it had no antlers.
The doe took a step towards Harry and Draco followed, the dementors had retracted into the darkness, leaving a narrow path for Draco to be led back to the others.
Harry wanted to grab him as soon as he was within reach, to shake him and scream at him and hold on to him and never let go again, but Draco hardly even looked at him.
"Did they get you?" Harry managed.
Draco shook his head almost imperceptibly. He walked with his eyes empty and fixed straight ahead, his hand resting against the doe's flank, his wand held limply down his side.
"Draco, look at me, did they get you?" Harry tried again, but Draco didn't answer him and so there was nothing for Harry to do but walk with him, his familiar patronus to his right on the other side of Hermione, Draco and the strange patronus to his left.
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"Harry," Hermione whispered. "Who's here?"
"No one's here."
"Then whose patronus is it?"
"It's mine, I think."
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They reached the wall, the stairs, and they climbed slowly upwards. Hermione's breathing was laboured and gravelly, but she was carrying more of her own weight. When Harry glanced over at Draco, he looked like he was about to throw up again, but also more like himself; less empty. The two patronuses were still with them, Harry's whole hand was buzzing and as soon as they reached the first landing, they stopped. Hermione disentangled herself from Harry and leaned against the wall breathing deeply. Harry pulled three chocolate bars from his pocket and handed them to the others. Draco took his gratefully and had devoured it before Harry had even gotten the paper off of his. Harry watched him pull a second one from his own pocket.
"Where are the rest?" asked Hermione, her voice hoarse and not at all like her own, and in the brighter light up here the burns on her face and arms looked worse.
"The rest of what?" Harry asked.
"The dementors. The stairs were packed when we came down, so where are they?"
Harry looked around. They hadn't risen far above the pit yet, but she was right: There wasn't a single dementor on the landing or behind them, and none ahead of them either.
"Maybe they headed upstairs," said Harry. "For the prisoners."
"Or maybe it's working," said Draco quietly.
He stood by the railing and was looking down to the floor below. Harry went over to look with him. He could see billowing fog and dementors down there and it took him a second to realize what Draco meant. There were still dementors down there, but now there were also spaces where they weren't; holes in the mass of bodies. They hadn't been there when they came down.
Harry felt nervous hope stirring in his chest – they couldn't be sure yet, he told himself, they couldn't be sure what was happening or why, but still-
"We need to get back to the others," he said.
"Right," said Draco.
"Harry, will you give me a hand?" asked Hermione.
He took her arm again and they turned to the steps. They ascended in silence, but he knew they were all thinking the same thing: It had worked.