Chapter 10:
Assault On Azkaban Part 2
Regulus stepped out of his cell with the others as they were all opened.
To his right Bellatrix and Antonin Dolohov did the same. To his left Augustus arose. The clink of their cells being opened by the two Crouches stirred the rest of the prisoners on the floor. But before the two Bartys could advance any further, Bellatrix confronted them.
"Which one of you is the real Barty Crouch?" She asked.
The one that seemed significantly less dazed, with the less glossy eyes, answered with a strange glee.
"Both of us, my dear Bella!" He exclaimed cheerfully.
Bella stared at him for a moment and came to the answer before Regulus.
"Junior?!" She hissed.
"Guilty as charged! But we all knew that already." Barty Junior joked, his personality sounding so strange in his father's voice.
"And him?" Augustus asked.
"Imperius. He had me under it for years. Shockingly good at casting it, but couldn't take it very well." Barty explained. "Now come on! Our new leader is waiting for us."
New leader?
Regulus shared a look with Bella, Antonin and Augustus. The same question was surely on their minds. If not Voldemort, then whom?
Crouch Junior marched past them down the hall, opening cells as he went, while senior stayed near the exit to the rest of the prison. Glassy eyed and dazed. The man was surely only alive because he was of some use to his son and their new leader. But what life he had now surely involved a lot of cruciatus in addition to the imperius he was laboring under.
In short order Mulciber, Rudolphus, Rabastan and Travers were released from their cells. Gibbon and Jugson came last at the end of the hall and took some coaxing to come out. It was all strangely solemn, like none of them could really believe they were being released. Everyone was dazed and confused and certain that they were dreaming. Not Regulus though. He was terrified. This was all very very bad.
He needed to get to Sirius.
No! Sirius needed to get the hell out of Azkaban and as far away as possible. Sure, the wizarding world thought him a traitor and mass murderer, but everyone there knew better. Knew he was never one of theirs. His constant insistence that he was innocent was proof enough of that. And once they all got their wands back, which was surely the next order of business for their rescuers, they would surely kill him. If not sooner.
"Whose cell was this?" Junior asked, breaking Regulus out of his internal debate.
Time to put on his game face.
"My blood traitor brother." Regulus answered with a snarl. "Don't kill him. I want him to stay here and rot."
Junior blinked at him, then back into the cell.
"There's nobody here." Junior said with a thumb pointed into the cell.
Everyone stalked over to the cell in question, Regulus did his best to seem as confused and shocked as everyone else. Junior went so far as to cast a homenum revalio in it. Nothing.
"Could you have opened the door earlier and let him out without looking?" Bellatrix asked.
"And slinked away while we were preoccupied?" Antonin asked in his thick, Russian accent.
"He would have had to go past all three of us without us noticing though." Bellatrix pointed out, indicating Herself, Antonin and crouch junior.
"Was anybody awake and aware before we came in?" Junior asked.
Everyone shook their heads.
"So if guards came in to take him out to put him in a private location, none of you would have noticed?" Junior clarified.
Regulus shared a look with Bella.
The only time guards took prisoners out of their cells for a private room was to share news of a death. To let them mourn. But if somebody in their family died, then they would have removed Bella and Regulus too. Of course, Regulus knew he wasn't removed, but Junior seemed to think they might have. Which means...
"Who died?" Bella asked.
Sirius patted down the dead and maimed aurors for any sign of a wand, but with no luck. Of course the attackers would snag any wands they found, no doubt intending to re-arm the prisoners inside. Death Eaters in particular, if his suspicions were right.
His best bet would be to find someone dead from the artillery.
He half sprinted and half limped away down the corridor from the mess hall, where the deceased line cooks he had searched lay dead. Found the lead cooks office, with all of the inventory and requisitions paperwork splayed out for him to see. No head cook though.
"Come ooooon. Let there we a wand or weapon or SOEMTHING!" He pleaded as he began rifling through the drawers.
Employment contracts, background check forms, scheduling and a very loud whistling noise in the wooden cupboard at the back. Following the whistling sound he opened it to find a sneakoscope. The opposite of useful when trying to sneak around, especially since it was surely detecting him. He grasped it and threw it out of the barred window, then went back to checking the cupboard. Just photos frames and some spare cooking utensils... including a knife set.
"It'll have to do." Sirius said to himself, pulling each knife out of its housing until he found one he liked.
He settled for a boning knife. He was very tempted to take the pretty Damaskas chef's knife, but the boning knife would make for better stabbing and was more easily concealed. And could still do the job of cutting or slicing materials if need be.
"Don't move." Sirius heard a voice from behind him as he felt the tip of a wand pressed to the base of his skull. "Put my knife down."
He obeyed the voice, relieved to find out it was a chef and not any of the people attacking the fortress. But he didn't relax too much. While his likelihood of surviving this encounter just skyrocketed, he was still in a suboptimal position.
"Okay. You're in charge. I will do as you say. Let's stay calm." Sirius said as he raised his hands.
The next second something happened. A loud bang and bright flash of light stole his senses and his feet from him and he fell to the ground. For a moment he thought the chef had blown his brains out with an explosive hex and he was somehow still aware of his bodily pain, and that he was going to enter that tunnel any moment now. But then the sound of the bombardment returned to his ears and the sight of the ruined ceiling returned to his eyes.
Half of the room was gone. Just, gone. Smoke and dust was still settling and Sirius' brain was still stalling as he tried to figure out what just happened. He coughed up a lungful od dusts and ash but managed to slowly pick himself up off of the ground and confirmed the evidence of his eyes. Yup. The wall with the barred window and a good chuck of the ceiling, floor and two other walls connected to it was erased from existence.
He had just narrowly survived a shelling.
He patting himself down to make sure he had all of his body parts and checked for blood. He didn't feel any injuries but his heartbeat was so loud in his ringing ears that he was pretty sure he was too high on adrenaline to feel the cruciatus curse at the moment. Finding no harm to his person, save a lot of dirt, he checked on the chef that had stuck him up.
One look at him was enough to determine he didn't need to check for a pulse. The girthy man had blocked most of the shrapnel and stone that would have gotten Sirius.
He felt like a bastard for it, but Sirius dived straight for the wand still clutched in the man's lifeless hand.
he tested it out by waving it over himself with a skin cleaning charm and it worked... kind of. The charm normally didn't prickle so much and tended to get the inside of ones clothes. So he cast a clothes cleaning charm on top of it and felt good as new. Or as new as he could be until he got himself a hot bath.
Now for the real test.
He jabbed the edge of his hip, the one he had broken as padfoot, and cast a numbing charm. The sweet relief of the ache felt like heaven. Alright then, the wand was a decent enough match. Not perfect, but not bad. And now he had a new route out of here with less risk of coming across any of the clearly well-armed attackers, whom he somehow suspected were not his friends.
"Whoa." Sirius gasped as he reached the edge of the cliff face now accessible by the wall-turned-window.
The prison was at low tide, with the sea water lapping at the rock faces just five meters beneath him. But out at sea was a Muggle battleship, its cannons trained on and firing upon the cliff face. It looked old, and was certainly poorly kept based on what little of its condition Sirius could make out in the bright moonlight. It could have been a world war one vessel, but he wasn't an expert on these things.
He looked below to the choppy waters and back through the door to the hallway.
Now seemed like the right time to flee. But without Regulus? he had no idea if these attackers were friends or foes of Death Eaters. They could just as easily be a vigilante militia intent on killing Voldemort's surviving followers before they could be reunited, as they could be the Dark Lords forces. The latter DID seem more likely. By a lot. But if it was the former fleeing now was still the best option.
If Regulus were to die, he would still be able to get word of Voldemort's horcruxes to those able to do something about it. If They both survived then there were two of them, one in the Dark Lord's ranks, able to do something about it. But if he went back and it turned out the attack was meant to kill him he would risk both of them dying. Fleeing now ensured at least he made it out alive and there was a good chance Regulus was going to as well.
With all this in mind he recast the numbing charm on his hip, placed the wand in his teeth and dived.
The icy cold water seeped into his bones as he plunged into the inky depths. He screamed through his gritted teeth, not just at the physical cold, but the spiritual cold of the dementors he could now feel deep below. The latter died away when he resurfaced as padfoot, wand still clenched in his jaws.
And so, he paddled away towards where he hoped the far shore awaited.
Tom stood in front of the two small tombs in silence.
They had chosen a lovely place to entomb Harry and Ginny. The small island at the mouth of the black lake, far away from the castle, where it opened out into the river. Two small, wooden bridges connected the island to either shore of the black lake and the two paths back up to the castle. Quidditch players and fitness fanatics would now jog past them for the rest of time, on days when they didn't have the pitch. Something about that pointless thought felt right.
It also felt right for them to be the first two people to ever, officially, be entombed on Hogwarts grounds. Well, since it had been a school at least. Rumors of mass graves from invading forces and of graveyards for the older inhabitants of the castle from the many centuries before it was a school didn't count. On account of them being unverified.
He couldn't come up with anything to say. He'd already said it all in the chamber, when he had wept for them. Wept for somebody else for the first time in his life. As far as he knew, for the first time in either of his lives. But he would find out in time if that was true. If the other him he absorbed from Harry really did wind up sharing his memories in time.
He looked up and about. Nearly everybody had already left, mostly because the student curfew didn't change for the funeral. The head boy was still meandering about, either one of his minders or deciding to be on patrol of the grounds for students sneaking out that night. He had a little spy scope to watch the grounds nearer the castle so probably the latter. It made sense for the tombs to get a specific prefect patrol, the idea of somebody vandalizing them was enough to make his blood boil.
Hagrid was standing nearby too, watching him. The half giant had been his most consistent and gleeful minder. When he found out from Harry's memories that his old framing had gotten the loveable man not only expelled, but also put in Azkaban, he understood why. As if his crime laying in the earth before him wasn't reason enough to hate him and make sure he didn't get away to do more damage.
"What will happen to me?" He asked loud enough for Hagrid to hear.
Hagrid sighed and seemed to take pity on him.
"Look, I been thinkin and we all know yer not going to have an easy time of it goin forward." Hagrid admitted. "You now have all of the weight on lil Harry's shoulders and all of his enemies to worry about. And you owe the world so much, I don know how you're ever goin ter pay those debts. But I imagine it'll be in the form of pain. A lot of pain. And you will payin it. Not because we'll me makin ye, but because you must."
Hagrid always had the power to put in simple words the totality of exceptionally complex turmoil or issues. And he was right. He was always right. Came with being so honest and kind, Tom supposed. It also perfectly, and succinctly, summarized his own thoughts.
"There's going to be a lot of blood isn't there?" Tom asked.
"Aye." Hagrid confirmed.
"A lot of it will be mine, won't it?" Tom clarified.
"And sweat. And tears. Yeh." Hagrid answered stoically.
Tom withdrew his wand from his robe pocket. Harry's wand. The holly wood felt as natural as his old one but weighed so much more than any other wand made in history. Save, maybe, the smooth and twisty wand of Ginevra he had holstered to his ankle.
"Bring it on." Tom declared, staring back up at the tombs.
Then came the sirens.
Tom, Hagrid, and the head boy twenty or so yards away all stared up at the castle that had come to life. Bright lights on the exterior walls as a siren rang out into the night. They watched as the bright white light of the siege wards slowly fell around the castle like a protective bubble. Before any of them could even wonder aloud what was going on a phoenix patronus darted from the castle to the tomb and Dumbledore's authoritative voice told them everything.
"Azkaban has fallen. All prisoners and Aurors are either dead, captured or released. The war has begun again far faster than any of us could have guess. The entire country is under martial law. Ensure everybody gets inside before the wards lock them out."
With its message delivered, the patronus faded out of existence. They all jumped into action.
"I'll circle around the lake on the left! Make sure there aren't and stragglers." The head boy yelled at them before sprinting off.
"We've got the right! Make prodigious use of homenum revalio!" Tom yelled back.
He shared a glance with Hagrid and they both nodded. He withdrew his umbrella wand and they both were off.
Tom sprinted flat out to try and keep up with Hagrid's massive strides but keep up he did. They cast are area homenum revalio charms into the forest as thy ran past it. House elves popped in and out of existence all around them searching for any stragglers. The mermaids of the lake peaked over the surface and curiously called to them in the clicking language.
"War!" Hagrid yelled back to them. "Prepare yerselfs!"
They nodded and disappeared back beneath the murky water. They need not have wasted energy on the spells because the only two people they encountered out past curfew were a couple that already got the message from a house elf and were sprinting towards the castle themselves.
Their sprint back to the castle was punctuated by the slow descent of the ward, like melted golden chocolate over an invisible sphere. They crossed into the great courtyard just as it finished falling around them and its light faded. They looked out on the now dead-silent grounds as they caught their breath. No invading army, no fires, no booms. Of course, Azkaban was far away, and there was no reason to expect whatever was going on there would make a beeline here, but still.
"You know, when I said bring it on. I didn't mean right this second." Tom said in his best attempt at humor.
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