Chapter 47
They will know Fear
The Battle of Azkaban
Now that I am finally able to answer the triple-mountain of letters my faithful readers sent me, I saw a lot of wizards and witches asking me how it was possible for someone to escape the prison of Azkaban.
It was indeed a matter of national pride that since the official opening of the prison, no prisoner had ever achieved a successful break-out. This was in 1718. For near three hundred years, Azkaban had been the grave of many aspirant Dark Lords and enemies of the Ministry.
Hundreds of my readers asked my opinion on how this terrifying feat could be possible. Was it absolute neglect and incompetence as many foreign newspapers claimed or was it something more sinister?
After a long and meticulous search, I concluded there were a lot of issues which made the escape possible.
The first big problem, and in my mind the most serious one, was the complacency of the Auror garrison. Granted it was somewhat justified: You-Know-Who had never dared to assault the prison at his reign of terror's height and there was no recorded assault for the entire twentieth century.
Still, the defenders were far too complacent and the wards and defences meant to repel an attack from the outside were more or less obsolete. Four out of five patrols were spent in the corridors where they watched insane prisoners wither and die. The utility of said patrols can be questioned when we all know nine out of ten criminals wouldn't have managed to crawl out of their cells if they had been given the keys and a plan of the fortress.
The second problem was the over-reliance of the Ministry on the Dementors. Azkaban was over-warded with protections, no one will contest this. It was impossible for any wizard to use Apparition, Portkey, or Floo without long and difficult procedures. But this still left brooms and the prison surroundings were extremely vulnerable if the demon-guardians were not able to defeat the opposition quickly before the storming began.
This should have been taken into account. It was not hard to guess that any enemy wishing to breach Azkaban walls would bring witches and wizards able to cast a Patronus or an Ecclesial.
The third problem stemmed from the first. Due to complacency, there was no real task force organised to hunt escaped prisoners for over twelve hours. The appearance of invincibility is a nice thing, but practical measures have to be taken just in case.
Then we can speak of the skills of the Ministry wardens and the disastrous inability of any intelligence service to predict what was to come...
Extract from The Rise of Darkness, Chapter 2, by Gilderoy Lockhart
3 August 1993, Azkaban Fortress
Once again, John Dawlish was back at Azkaban. He would love to say it was only for a routine Ministry inspection, but unfortunately that would be a lie.
Due to recent events on the continent, London and the rest of the country were living in fear Grindelwald was going to attack the British Isles. In order to reassure the baying crowds massed in front of the Ministry, the Aurors and every person employed by the Department of Law Enforcement had to triple their work hours and they had not any warning to prepare for this massive schedule change.
It was an idiocy, and Director Amelia Bones had not been shy sharing this opinion with the Aurors and the Hit-Wizards she commanded. If there had been a sign Grindelwald had been observed somewhere in Britain, maybe the situation would have called for such a hunt but as it was, there was absolutely no proof the German Dark Lord was planning to attack the Ministry or any other British location in the future.
The Auror Corps was exhausting itself, tracking illusions and shadows for no real gain. With the massive cutbacks the Wizengamot and the administration in power had imposed after the You-Know-Who's fall in 1981, the DMLE was going to have difficulties operating in the next months.
But it was not the only thing the Minister and his friends had demanded, oh no.
After all, if someone had managed to organise a well-planned evasion from Nurmengard, then Fudge's reasoning was that Azkaban was at risk too. The point that the defence of the island and the prisoners had always relied more on the Dementors than on the Aurors and the wardens had apparently been lost on the wizard supposedly leading their country.
In other times, the Wizengamot would have countered or at least refused to approve these directives. But the population was fearful, the wizards and witches wanted to feel safe and the measure to bolster the Azkaban garrison had passed without contestation.
Ten Hit-Wizards, twenty more Aurors and thirty fresh recruits of the Department with no particular qualification had been shipped to this abominable fortress. Since there were already twenty Aurors and fifty warden-guards here, the DMLE had just mustered about one-fifth of its Aurors and one-tenth of its Hit-Wizards in the middle of nowhere.
If there was a massive crisis somewhere in Britain, the Department would be largely understaffed to answer the threat. Azkaban Prison had only one Apparition Point as an exit, and it was surrounded by so many protective wards that rapid deployment from this side was not possible.
"The Senior Auror wants us to keep an eye on Cole and his group," whispered Paul Williamson. The Auror had been his partner for the last four years and having his back secure in this dark place was lifting a great weight from his shoulders.
"More politics?"
"Don't think so," his friend cast a powerful Lumos to dissipate a bit the darkness inside the corridor they were walking in. Despite this, it was difficult to believe it was the afternoon. Azkaban was really dark at the best of times. "Yaxley and Cole hate each other's guts, but this time rumour is that Bones gave him a good oral beating before sending him there. Something about vanishing all the anonymous letters without investigating them properly."
"Most of those letters are rubbish anyway," John didn't want to defend Senior Auror Devin Cole, but the reality was that most of those letters were pure garbage. "You heard Shacklebolt last week: there were about sixty messages telling us they had information on Grindelwald's whereabouts...and those letters were absolutely not anonymous."
Three-quarters of these tricksters and imbeciles had to pay a lot of Galleons in fines, but the Corps was spending hours investigating for nothing.
"Yeah, but try telling that to Bones..."
"Nah, thanks I love my job." The Head of the DMLE was somewhat irritable after Fudge's latest blunders, and they were all aware that if there had been any loophole not to acknowledge their marching orders, the Director would have found and used it by now.
"How long do you think we are going to stay here?" Paul asked, as they continued their patrol in the wings where dozens of catatonic and mumbling wererats were imprisoned. This was not a section of Azkaban crawling in Dementors, but there were four or five soul-sucking demons 'patrolling' regularly there. Tales from the near-retired Aurors were that the were-beings had resisted better than humans at first. But they were not transforming into beasts more than three nights per month...and the meagre rations they received had destroyed them physically. The Dementors had finished the mental crippling months after that.
"I don't know, but I hope it will soon be over," Azkaban duty was not the reason a young wizard chose to enlist in the elite forces of the DMLE. "Cole might be here for a while though. Bones was not pleased by the way he and his force defended Hogwarts."
Between this and the recent correspondence fiasco, Senior Auror Devin Cole should have been fired. Unlike the nineteen other Senior Aurors, he was not particularly powerful, skilled, or efficient in bringing criminals to justice. By all rights, he should have been dismissed from service or demoted months ago. But everyone knew Devin Cole's patron was a certain Lucius Malfoy...which was strange because Cole was an Ancient House firmly aligned with the Light. On the other hand, Devin Cole was neither the Lord nor very high in the succession...
The patrol ended without incident – for Azkaban, it meant they had not found any prisoner to have taken his own life, succumbed to privations, or who had annoyed the Dementors too much. They saluted Bartholomew McLaggen and Arnold Maxwell as they met in the courtyard, as the two men started their own long and nerve-wracking excursion into the cold hell known as Azkaban.
"No problems?" asked Sullivan Montrose, his dishevelled blond hairs proving easy to recognise in the middle of the Auror formation waiting on comfortable chairs for the next patrol. John rolled his shoulders in amusement, before serving himself a nice cup of tea. The warmth and the flavour were heavenly after about two hours spent too close to the demons and the prisoners.
"The fog is coming," announced Warren Strange, who had his eyes fixed on the sole window of the guard room. "Visibility is going to be awful tonight."
Indeed, a grey mass where Lumos and other sources of light had difficulties shining was decreasing further the visibility available to the island inhabitants. In London or other towns, it would be something to be commented on for the rest of the week. At Azkaban, it was barely worth mentioning.
John Dawlish was drinking his third cup of tea when the alarms broke their ears.
"These are the sea wards sounding the alert! All the Aurors, Wardens, and Hit-Wizards in position on the outer wall now!" Senior Corban Yaxley began barking his orders without stopping. "Catterick, you light the anti-fog measures. Montrose and O'Rourke, you sink whatever naval means they have! Lethal force is authorised. Alert the Headquarters, Priority Zero-Zero-One! Open the lower levels and let the Dementors get out."
John Dawlish was already running towards the position he had been assigned before he had the time to think about the implication of his orders. Azkaban was under attack. His brain was screaming it was impossible. For sure the prison had a lot of Dark Wizards evil organisations would love to recruit, but the prospect of fighting a reinforced garrison and a horde of soul-sucking demons was in general sufficient to stop any escape attempts before it started.
The spells and magic incantations developed for fog-dispersal use went in the air, and for the first time he saw the madmen who had the folly to assault Azkaban. Three large ships were sailing straight at the island, and these were massive Muggle-built hulls. At the top of the masts, black flags painted in red colours were hanged.
"The measures on the beach are ready to receive the enemy," Paul's voice was crisped and tense as he relayed the information to Warden-Commander Hooper and Senior Hit-Wizard Michael Pettus. "We have hundreds of Rune-based Incendio waiting for them, twice that number of old-fashioned pit traps, there are uncountable Secare-based hexes waiting near the dead tree..."
His friend hadn't the opportunity to finish the report. With a speed impressive considering their sheer mass, the ships closed the distance with the gloomy shores. They tried to, anyway. One of the three ships had been unfortunate to be directly in the middle of a whirlpool-creation ward when it activated and the effect was instantaneous: the boat was sucked in a mini-maelstrom and before it was able to correct its course the water swallowed it like it was a toy for children.
But not all its passengers were dead. Like an army of nightmares, the monsters came out of the waves. Auror John Dawlish had rarely seen these Dark Creatures in such numbers, but he knew what they were: wererats and vampires. There were far more of the former than the latter, by the look of things.
The two intact ships stopped about fifty meters away from the beach before disgorging hundreds more enemies. It was like a dark tide ready to swallow them and the fact it was close to nightfall was making the atmosphere darker and terrible.
"Wererats and vampires," commented in an icy tone their commander. In this atmosphere of battle and massacre, the visage of Corban Yaxley had never seemed so old...but there was not an inch of indecisiveness. "I want sixteen of you to slaughter the beasts with your most powerful Sagitta Argentum." For long-range, it was probably the correct option. Idly, he wondered how those applauding for each of the Chief Warlock's speech on redemption would react at an Auror privileging killing. But the thought was rapidly banished. Dawlish did not want to be killed or worse, become one of the monsters coming ashore. "For the vampires, use your most powerful light spells or decapitate them. It will stop them forever."
Between ten and twenty Dementors shrieked in hate as they descended from the skies where they had been waiting and tried to devour the troops waiting on top of the ships. But before they had the time to suck a single soul, brilliant lights appeared and forced them into a hasty retreat.
"They have wizards in support," grumbled someone. "Traitors to their blood and race..."
"Shit," and to his consternation, this was Senior Auror Devin Cole who was barely climbing the last stairs now. The man did not look like he had been in uniform when the alert was sounded, which was...bad, as the day shift wasn't officially over. "There are...so many."
"Thank you Senior Auror Cole for this useful assessment of the situation," if glares could kill someone, Corban Yaxley would have exploded the head of his co-commander.
All the while more wererats and vampires had landed on Azkaban, with more Patronus and Ecclesial guardians rising in the air. There were more Dementors coming of course, but for the moment the demons were unable to intervene.
John grit his teeth...this was going to get ugly. The wererats ran to the base of the walls...and then the order came to unleash hell.
"Sagitta Argentum!" he screamed and this was an incantation repeated countless times on the walls. Dozens and dozens of massive silver arrows were conjured from the very air and bombarded the growling mass of wererats.
At this distance, with hundreds of arrows and a densely-packed target, they simply couldn't miss. Yet the were-monsters were extraordinarily resilient. Or completely insane. In the first few seconds of magical attacks, he saw with his own eyes many of the beasts tear their own flesh to remove the silver. Whether it was an arm, a leg, or a piece of their torso appeared to be irrelevant.
This was not typical wererat behaviour, none of the veterans, British or ICW, had ever spoken of that.
The traps activated while the third cast of Sagitta Argentum was on its way to shred their furry backsides. The ground opened under the paws of the wererats, sending them to certain death, impaled by long and very deadly pointed pikes. Those who were in the vicinity of a fire-exploding trap became screaming columns of fire, breaking the formation as their comrades tried to avoid the living torches they had turned into.
"Kill them! Kill them all!"
But they were too many. The ground before the fortress was literally covered in corpses but the wererats simply kept coming. They shrieked and they screamed in hate, and worst of all they continued, no matter how crippled, to charge the walls. Rain after rain of silver arrows continued to bombard the wererats.
And then twenty steps to his left there was a monumental explosion. Azkaban trembled, and an unfamiliar odour of smoke and burned flesh spread.
"What they have done by Merlin?"
"The vampires have brought in Muggle weaponry!" And as the spells rapidly dissipated the cloud blocking their vision, Dawlish could see he was right. Many vampires had stopped well before the walls and had lengthy metal tubes atop their shoulders now raining death and destruction on the Aurors situated on his left. Others were shooting with smaller devices, but the ruckus was just as loud and explosive.
"This is a violation of the Statute of Secrecy!" exclaimed Cole. Every wand counted in this battle, but it appeared someone had failed to explain this to the Senior Auror, who was acting like he was an impartial observer.
"I will be sure to inform London and Geneva," snarled Yaxley, cutting the head of a big wererat who had managed to climb to the top despite half of its body – the lower part - being cooked meat.
The fighting grew even more violent and it was not to their advantage. The vampires' Muggle weapons were reaping a terrible toll on them. The basic magical shields like the Protego and the Contego could stop the little metal objects they were sending by the thousands, but the wizards had to take cover and stop shooting at the wererats...and given the sheer mass of enemies climbing with drool trickling from their maws, it was absolutely not acceptable.
They were tiring, several experienced fighters were transported behind for healing, the enemy reserves were entering the fray, the spells were becoming harder to cast...and then the part of the wall which had been subjected to the greatest amount of explosions was pulverised. The four Aurors close to the stable section of the outer wall had the time to run. The two wardens and four recruits who had failed to recognise the danger in the middle of the chaos did not and died where they stood.
For the first time in centuries, the outer wall of Azkaban collapsed and the wererats' army screamed in triumph.
"And here Bones was telling me the fortress needed renovations yesterday," the Senior Auror was disgusted and angry, they could all feel it. "The walls have been breached! Shockwave spells on the hole in the walls!"
The wererats rushed into the breach, jumping on the bodies – of wizards or their own allies – which were still twitching to devour them and the invaders surged inside the prison.
"CONFIRNGO!"
"REDUCTO!"
"BOMBARDA!"
It was a massacre. There was no other word for it. The first score of beasts which entered Azkaban had not the time to celebrate their victory they were torn apart in a magnificently synchronised explosion. For a full minute it seemed that nothing was going to survive the butchery. It was raining blood and body parts over the breach and the walls, the corpses of the Dark Creatures were starting to cover everything...but it wasn't enough.
The enemy was acting like its losses were not important and the Aurors could not stay where they were, at the risk of being outflanked. Wererats were still climbing the walls and a voluminous beast profited from all the distractions to attack Devin Cole and squelch his head like a bloody tomato. Paul killed it in the next second, but the damage had been done.
"Retreat!" The order spread rapidly, and despite the shame burning in his heart, John had not the will to protest. He was exhausted and the wererats were pouring into the courtyard like there was no tomorrow. "Retreat to the dungeon!"
One last look at the ships told him the wizards there were still holding the growing darkness of the Dementors at bay. Their light was fading, but it was neutralising the demons for now.
And as long as the Dementors were out of the game, there were not enough troops to counter-attack.
The enemy had planned their operation well. Despite the reinforcements, Azkaban Prison had been broken for the first time in its long and dark history.
It is difficult to write a lot about the vampire race as a whole. There are so many bloodlines and covens from Japan to the Americas that what is true in Norway may be completely false in India.
The few common points are their thirst for the blood of the living and their awful weakness to the light of the sun and emotionally charged Light Magic.
For the rest, forget garlic and holy water. I don't know how the bloodsuckers managed to fool the authorities and sell these idiotic books to the Muggles, but worst case scenario the vampire will sneeze in wet clothes.
Crucifix, rosaries, verbena, the invitation into your house, holy ground and free water: all of these measures are worse than useless. At best, you will amuse the vampire and he will lose time mocking your naivety. At worst, he will have an herb-tasting buffet.
The stake in the heart is a correct method but alas it is easier said than done. Vampires are far stronger physically than humans and faster to boot.
Many novice vampire-hunters do not come back from their first hunt...
Extract from The Rise of Darkness, Chapter 3, by Gilderoy Lockhart
When Operation Alcatraz had been discussed with his patrons, Peter had been rather confident. It was not arrogance. As one of the four Marauders – whose infamous reputation had long spread well past the walls of Hogwarts – and a veteran of multiple clashes against Death Eaters, Peter had thought he had a fairly good notion of what war consisted of.
The first seconds of the Battle of Azkaban had been sufficient to change his mind in a drastic manner.
The screams, the hundreds of spells and traps activated by the Aurors, the mass charge of the wererats, the sheer noise made by the weapons of the vampires...Peter was utterly out of his depth in this environment and he was not going to deny it in front of witnesses.
This was nothing like a fight with two dozen spawns of You-Know-Who at midnight in a deserted village. This was a large-scale battle involving sorcery on a terrifying scale, concentration of power and no quarter for anyone losing his wand.
For half a minute as he evaded silver arrows falling endlessly on them, fire creatures materialising to burn flesh and metal alike, and attacks that would kill him in one shot, the last thing Pettigrew considered was that the International Confederation of Wizards may have had a point with their damned Statute of Secrecy.
Skinchangers, vampires, and other species had become overnight second-class citizens in a lot of countries and their existence had become immensely difficult, but at least the wars between Lord and Lady-level wizards and witches had become exceptions, not the norm.
"We need to press on the attack," hissed one of the wererats next to him. Peter couldn't bother to remember his name, but he noticed very well how big and unnatural the teeth in this human mouth were. Another one who had abused the Rat's Surge, this was becoming a terrible problem...although at the end of this night, it would be solved one way or another.
Fortunately, ten seconds later, a large gap was created in the outer wall of Azkaban and all semblance of rationality was lost: the last wererats transformed and jumped into the fray – sometimes literally as they climbed on top of the walls just to jump moments later into the great courtyard.
"Our turn then," he told Brutus. The large vampire only grunted in answer. If Peter had not heard him talk twice, the rat Animagus would have bet the bulky guy was mute. But since there had been a confirmation of his speaking ability, Peter had temporarily increased his intelligence estimate. Brutus may very well be smarter than the grunts of You-know-Who.
They raced into the chaos, taking great care however to climb magically – or in the case of the vampire, physically – an undefended tower, profiting from the huge diversion their were-being 'allies' were providing.
"We aren't going to have a lot of troops left from this operation," he murmured to himself as a short Bombarda blasted off several old metal bars, allowing him and the three vampires following him to enter the prison proper.
Granted the theory had been that everyone involved could and would be sacrificed if the worst-case scenario happened. But he had hoped it wouldn't come to this.
He had been wrong, he admitted as his silvery rat Patronus forced the two Dementors floating in his direction to go elsewhere in search of more souls.
The escape of Grindelwald had undoubtedly contributed to facing a bigger defence force – the wererats had been warned but had wanted to proceed all the same – and it looked like Amelia Bones still had some competent troops in the Corps. The Aurors had fought brutally and efficiently from the start: the directives established by Crouch had clearly not been forgotten after a decade.
Losing one of the three ships in the first minutes had also been a serious blow. The first assault was a bloodbath and by his conservative observation, over four hundred rats were already dead or dreaming to be. A third of the vampires sent had also received a permanent stop of their attempt at immortality.
Their visit inside Azkaban corridors was extremely quick. A wizard unaware of what the prison was would have told them to open the cells and release the prisoners to create a maximum of confusion and chaos. But it would have ignored the basic fact that prisoners in Azkaban had no fight left in them.
There was a reason why the majority of the world didn't like Britain, and hundreds of reasons started and ended with Azkaban – hundreds more lay in how their laws treated the 'Dark Creatures' and the 'Dark Wizards'.
Being thrown in a cell at Azkaban was a guarantee you were going to be subjected to atrocious physical deprivations – hellish cold, lack of food, and deplorable hygiene to name three of the main problems along with a mental torture even the vampires didn't inflict upon their mortal enemies: the Dementor.
Peter and the Calpurnius leaders had concluded months ago only prisoners sent to Azkaban mere weeks before Operation Alcatraz had a chance of being fit to walk on their own. Mentally, you could last a bit longer...if you were an Animagus or a particularly gifted Occlumens. And if the Dementors didn't decide to enjoy your soul for dinner, of course.
These predictions were unfortunately verified now as they ran in dark and cold corridors that looked like the perfect antechambers for a cold hell. The sounds of battle were quite loud in the distance, but the prisoners were barely moving at all. In Muggle prisons – and yes, he had visited some in recent years in the guise of his rat form – the agitation would have been extreme. But the non-wizards treated their criminals with far more benevolence than the Ministry of Magic. Each occupied cell had someone who was looking like a barely breathing skeleton at worse and a mad barbarian at best.
It was a depressing ambiance and they were forced to endure it more than he liked: the lifts were impossible to use if you had not the proper passwords, ward-authorisations, and magical signatures, so they had to take the stairs.
A glance at his watch informed him the battle had started eighteen minutes ago. It felt far longer for him.
One more series of stairs, and Peter along with the vampires arrived at the wing where the Ministry had secured the 'Inner Circle of You-Know-Who'. The Marauder had laughed at many dinners when he had heard this. Prongs after Hogwarts had been strong in Transfiguration, but his fellow Marauder had often known defeat in duels. The idea of Voldemort making the unsubtle and headstrong Gryffindor into one of his closest confidents was absurd. Lord Victor Aemillius had been a reluctant ally of the Death Eaters, not a subordinate. Vampires and non-humans had never reached high ranks in the Death Eater hierarchy, the Orders and the Aurors had discovered it in a matter of weeks. Antonin Dolohov and Ian Jugson were creative when it came to Dark Arts curses, but their skills were severely limited on every other magical subject. The two were butchers and torturers, maybe low-level commanders, but certainly not of the Inner Circle.
In turn, it posed an interesting question. Was the Ministry trumpeting they had caught the Inner Circle because they were quite aware they had let many of them buy their way to freedom and were waiting for them to make a mistake? Or was it just one more proof of the incompetence of the London administration combined with a total intelligence-gathering failure?
The good news was the absence of Dementors.
The bad news was the red liquid covering the hard floor. For an unfathomable reason, he didn't think it was syrup.
This was bad, very bad. The prisoner they intended to break-out could not be freed without the keys from the Boreas Prison – a ward-enchantment of incredible complexity. That left the Death Eaters...
The three male vampires were louder when they saw the situation. Well, two of them spoke. Brutus threw himself in the direction of the red substance and began to lick it with no sense of decorum.
"What in the name of the Blood happened here?"
"Has someone preceded us?"
There was movement at the other end of the corridor and Peter Pettigrew moved brusquely when an object flew in his direction. It was not a lethal spell however. It was not one of those devilish Muggle devices either. It was the decapitated head of Rodolphus Lestrange – in theory last Lord of House Lestrange and major money-backer of You-Know-Who.
The Death Eater had not died in a peaceful manner. The last expression fixed on his traits by death was a grimace of agony.
Peter cleared his throat. If he had rightly assessed the situation, they were dead men – or dead vampires for his companions of misfortune, he supposed.
"I know you are here." His voice was as calm as it could humanly be, but he could tell his heart was beating several times faster than it had been seconds ago. "Bellatrix Lestrange."
A feminine chuckle was heard from the shadows.
"It is Bellatrix Black now. Haven't you heard of my recent widowhood?"
Peter was familiar with many methods of disguise, courtesy of his Marauder past, the obvious spying potential of his Animagus form, and his curiosity towards self-concealing spells. But even with this knowledge, the lieutenant of You-Know-Who literally caught him off guard. In a blink of an eye, the shadows of the corridor merged into a humanoid figure.
Bellatrix Lestrange...or Black, as she had so justly remarked a moment ago.
Like the prisoners they had watched in their cells, the pure-blood witch was wearing an ugly dark-grey uniform. Like the wretches of the lower levels, her appearance was as removed from the standards of beauty as it was possible to be. The black hairs were so dishevelled a new word should be invented for them. Her skin was gaunt and slightly yellow under the weak light of the torches and his wand. Her mouth was slightly opened, revealing missing teeth.
In short, Bellatrix Black looked like a deranged madwoman whose place was behind the bars of Azkaban...until he looked at the black eyes. The black irises were calm and cold, with no trace of madness in them.
"How did you escape from your cell?" He demanded, fearing already the answer.
"Someone," the tone was almost conversational "forced all Dementors and wardens on this floor to go elsewhere. The wards began sending so many alarms one more did not attract the attention of the Aurors."
The daughter of House Black clicked with her fingers. Instantly, the old and unflattering prisoner clothes were replaced by a dark robe used by duellists. Her bare feet disappeared in black boots. The woman stretched out and Peter had the very unpleasant feeling he was a rat in the sight of the most dangerous feline predator he had ever met.
"Where is Lord Victor?" demanded one of the vampires. Brutus was still drinking the blood on the floor, and his two friends clearly wanted to join him as their eyes were shining with hunger.
"The vampire is dead three cells away." There was amusement in the Death Eater's voice. "He died begging for his life..."
The three vampires, including Brutus, hissed and opened maws which had nothing human. Faster than the human eye could follow, they attacked Bellatrix.
It was over before it truly began.
The first vampire had not the time to deliver the first blow when a sort of massive invisible scythe devastated the corridor, shredding warriors and the stone walls without distinction. Peter cast a shield in reflex and this saved his life as he was thrown in the air and finished his temporary flight against the back wall.
He raised his eyes and regretted it bitterly. His bodyguards and hired muscle were lying in hundreds of pieces, torn apart beyond any existing power of regeneration. Bellatrix Black had not moved a single inch and as far as he could tell, not a drop of blood had tarnished her conjured robe.
"Stupid," the Dark Witch commented, mimicking the act of removing the dust on her shoulders. "They had no chance against me."
Since the damned woman had just spent more than a decade in Azkaban without training and the vampires had not lasted ten seconds, her assurance may be a bit justified. Oh, and she had killed them without a wand. A tiny detail, but one ninety-nine percent of the wizards and witches of Britain were unable to accomplish in their entire life.
Peter stood on shaking legs, trying to ignore the pain the impact with the wall had created. The mission had just become suicidal. Whether Lord Victor was alive or not, one of You-know-Who's elite was standing between him and the vampire prisoner. And she didn't look weakened at all. Ridiculous and impossible, but it was the reality he had to face.
He had no plan to face a situation like this and running with her in hot pursuit looked like a Very Bad Idea. So he tried gaining a few minutes, hoping reinforcements were on the way. Merlin's pants, he would welcome Aurors if they managed to neutralise her.
"Why did you kill your husband?"
"Don't take it wrongly, but I killed every Death Eater on this floor." The damn woman smirked at his horrified expression. "Antonin Dolohov, Randall Travers, Augustus Rookwood, Bartemius Crouch Junior, Julien Ardoch, Aiden Mulciber, and my dear brother-in-law Rabastan Lestrange...I ended each and every one of their miserable lives."
If anything, it made even less sense. The hostility between Bellatrix and her husband had been anything but a secret. The marriage had been the blood seal of the political alliance between two of You-Know-Who's greatest supporters, the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black and the Noble and Most Ancient House of Lestrange. Love had not been invited to the debate, and according to the gossipers of the Light, the Dark, and the Grey, the enmity between the two had been such that they were rarely sleeping in the same Manor.
But Bellatrix's loyalty to her Dark lord had been apparently unshakeable. Or at least that was the point Dumbledore and bloody Snape had conveyed to him. Was it possible that on this too, the Headmaster had been in the wrong?
"And the reason why you killed them?"
"Oh, they were annoying me." She was lying. Peter knew she was lying, and she knew he knew. The woman was a Slytherin...but he had to try.
"And why were they annoying you, Lady Black?"
"They refused to let me read the newspapers." The traits of the Death Eater woman took a thoughtful expression. "Or did they refuse to play charades with me?"
"She demanded they forswore the Dark Lord and acclaimed her as their new Dark Lady," said a tired voice. Limping and leaning against the walls, the familiar figure of James Potter came into view.
The years had not been good for the man who had been the leader of their prankster group. Lestrange had suffered a lot, but physically James looked far worse and his haunted eyes gave a good clue his mind had not endured very well these last years. Being an Animagus was not and would never be a perfect protection against the Dementors.
"I thought you killed all the Death Eaters on this floor?" The words of Bellatrix could definitely not be trusted, obviously.
The damned woman bayed in laughter at his declaration.
"This fraud isn't a Death Eater," the Dark Witch managed to utter between bursts of giggles. "He tried to be a double agent and fix a proto-Dark Mark on his arm, but he was so pathetic the dumbest of our security trolls didn't believe him."
Peter could not stop a smile on his lips. At long last, after a decade of virtual exile, he had the confirmation he had been in the right no matter what Sirius and the rest of the Order were convinced.
He wanted to ask more questions. Like who had been the Secret Keeper of the Longbottoms...
The temperature brutally fell down and screams resonated in the distance. War was closing on them. Bellatrix Black's face had returned to a pure Slytherin expression reflecting nothing of her inner thoughts.
"It seems our discussion will need to continue at a later date," the cousin of Sirius told them like they were discussing the weather for tomorrow over Azkaban Prison. "Dementors are coming, and I have lost enough years in this cold place."
The dark-robed witch's long strides carried her rapidly to the stairs' access. She paused before the first step and turned her head in Prongs' direction.
"I almost forgot...Lilian wants a divorce, James."
No answer was awaited, and she disappeared into the darkness.
The wererat is one of the thirty-six were-species recognised by the International Confederation of Wizards. While far less infamous than the werewolves, their bite is contagious to the point that contact of their cursed saliva with human blood is a guarantee to scream loudly the next full moon if your body can handle the transformation effects.
Unlike werewolves who are degenerate experiments created in the Dark Ages on the last Lycans, the wererats are the result of attempts to imitate the Animagus transformation.
The attempts failed, obviously.
The first generations of wererats dispersed thorough the world to cause countless headaches to the various governments and later their ICW successors.
In our era, wererats are commonly gathered in clans they called rodere and their leader is called the King. Three times stronger than a normal human and vulnerable to silver weapons or constructs, they represent a great danger when gathered in large numbers.
Extract from The Rise of Darkness, Chapter 3, by Gilderoy Lockhart
Dudley had played enough war video games to know the battle was not going well.
Okay, it was a disaster.
Good news, he was in human form again. No one had commented on it. He had seized a nice Panzerschreck from the corpse of a vampire. He had several rockets. He had the strength to fire it himself.
Bad news, Dudley was walking on a mountain of corpses. And these were the corpses of the other wererats.
Guns also didn't look to be very useful against the 'wand-wielders'. Every time someone shot, there were ten or twenty of these 'shields' coming up and defecting the bullets.
And when they couldn't deflect things like the rockets? They were cheating and suddenly the rockets malfunctioned or suddenly changed direction to harmlessly explode in the sky.
Magic was bullshit and completely unfair.
If he survived this, Dudley promised to not anger Alexandra anymore.
If he survived. The carnage was so huge they were all going to die. It was raining arrows, and not the ones of Valentine's Day. Half of the beach was on fire. One ship had sunk under the waves, and one was totally wrecked against a dangerous reef.
He recharged the Panzerschreck with another rocket and fired it vaguely ten feet below the top of the middle tower. This time, the wand-wielders didn't see it coming in time and the explosion was spectacular. The tower began to crumble. Dudley saw many wizards flee before they were caught in the collapse.
There was no time to jump in joy. The other wizards were still firing and he wasn't seeing the wererat teams in charge of the break-out coming back. No one was coming back from the breach.
They were taking too much time.
He felt suddenly cold. Terribly cold.
Dudley looked towards the ships. The brilliant lights were almost gone.
The demons chose this moment to attack.
The old wererats and vampires had told them these things were invisible if you had no magic in your blood. Right now, Dudley envied the non-magical people.
The demons filled the sky in darkness and swarmed the last ship where their wizards had used their sorcery stuff. From the breach more of their friends came like a torrent.
There were hundreds, maybe thousands of them. A few wizards made some lights and a few columns of fire.
The demons didn't stop. All around the fortress, the ground started to freeze. The blood of the wererats was mixing with ice.
The wand-wielders on the ship screamed and screamed in agony. It was horrible. Dudley saw some demons grab the men and the women and raise them in the air before...no, he could not describe it.
In despair, he fired his last rocket in the middle of the dark cloud but it didn't look like it had any effect...apart from angering the demons a bit more. The shrieks they made hurt his ears and his body was trembling in fear.
Scream, scream and scream, it was like the entire world was screaming. Memories he had wanted to bury forever were once again filling his head.
Father told me freaks like you are monsters.
Big D, you haven't met the monsters of my world. Pray hard you never will.
His cousin had been right a year ago. These were the monsters and he couldn't do anything against them.
He threw down the Panzerschreck and ran away as fast he could. In the distance, he heard the shrieks, the sounds of battle, the roars and the explosions.
He ignored them. They weren't his friends anyway. He rushed across an ugly cemetery. And then there was nothing but a small cliff and dark waters ahead.
It was the castle or the sea. Azkaban and its demon-guardians or a long swim he wasn't sure he had the strength for, the strength to fight the bad currents and reach England.
Dudley turned his head and saw a small group of demons floating slowly in his direction, their nightmarish skeleton arms promising endless torment.
The teenager of Privet Drive drew a long breath and then jumped into the frigid North Sea.
Bellatrix Lestrange-Black was a bitch.
Peter didn't even know why he was surprised. The Marauders had spent several years pranking the girls of House Slytherin, so he knew how vindictive the pure-blood 'Princesses' could be when they felt scorned.
As it was, the lieutenant of You-Know-Who had mixed truth with lies. All Death Eaters imprisoned on the highest level were dead long past any point of recovery. In fact, she had been very thorough. All her old accomplices had been decapitated, their bodies branded with marks which were infused with a sort of anti-Necromancy ward and some bodies had been subjected to illegal Liquefaction Curses. Different methods and levels of punishment had been enacted. The corpse of the man who had been once Augustus Rookwood was almost intact apart from the decapitation. Rodolphus Lestrange, by comparison, had received a very long and hideous demise.
By these standards, Pettigrew had to wonder what Lord Victor had done to deserve the woman's wrath. The Lord of the Shadow Blades was alive – barely. A Fortress of Boreas was a magical cage based on the infamous Air Fortress Merlin had been imprisoned in. It was of course less secure and far easier to break – as long as you had the Boreas Keys to unlock the magical keyholes.
These minuscule flaws in the Boreas enchantment were not really exploitable in the best of cases. It would take an Arithmancer Master several months to exploit the weaknesses and the vampire had been transported to Azkaban where no easy rescue was possible.
Bellatrix Lestrange had used these holes to fill the space where the vampire was kept prisoner with acid.
Peter honestly had no idea what the viscous substance was called, but it was bad. Vampire Lords were by their very nature extremely resistant to any Dark Magic – and extremely vulnerable to Light Magic to satisfy the good old balance of nature. Bellatrix had not been free for more than ten minutes before he had the opportunity to open the Boreas Prison. And yet Lord Victor Aemillius was looking more like a boiled corpse than a terrifying vampire leader.
In fact, if the Shadow Blades Lord wasn't that powerful, he would in all likelihood be reduced to a soup of blood and unrecognisable parts.
So far the prisoner he had come to rescue had avoided this fate...but now he had to transport him across the prison of Azkaban while saving his own skin.
"We should leave him here," Peter didn't turn his head in direction of James as he secured the unconscious form of the vampire in a conjured sheet Healers used to move the critically wounded patients. "We are not going to make it out of here with him slowing us down."
"If I leave him here," the rat Animagus replied, "either the Ministry is going to kill him or Dumbledore will try to cast a new esoteric prison around him to avoid new break-outs. In the first case, my life will be forfeit. In the second, I will probably need two more decades to find how to dismantle this new prison and execute a rescue operation."
For some unknowable reason, he wasn't convinced the interim leaders of the Shadow Blades would accept his failure with smiles, a pat on the head and a glass of fifty-year-old whiskey.
"And here I thought you had come to help me escape," the gaunt face of the stag Animagus could not hide his disappointed expression.
"Don't be offended, James, but you have not the thousands of Galleons in your pockets to make an escape from Azkaban worth the risk."
"But the vampires had them, right?"
Peter Pettigrew rolled his shoulders, completely unwilling to apologise. The Shadow Blades were not a wealthy coven of vampires. Truthfully, they were somewhat at the bottom of the vampire hierarchy in wealth, influence, and prestige.
The Calpurnius couple were still multi-millionaires at the very least. Vampires of this coven who had survived the last century were millionaires, minimum.
Since he had not had the luck to be born in a wealthy family – he had learned only at the end of his NEWTS his mother had borrowed a lot of money they didn't have the means to repay in order for him to go to Hogwarts – the large income he was paid by his new 'masters' for his services was very much appreciated.
"Please tell me you didn't betray us to the bloodsuckers during the war."
Ah, here was the sanctimonious and ever-present judgement of the Gryffindors. In spite of everything, Peter was fairly surprised the long decade spent in Azkaban had not been enough to destroy this in James Potter.
It was followed by annoyance, of course. Friend or not, Gryffindor or not, James Potter had lost the right to judge his actions long ago.
"You are not in a position to accuse me of anything Prongs," the tension in the former Marauder's muscles proved he understood he had gone too far. "But no, I didn't betray the Order of the Phoenix, no matter how disgusted by them I was."
The 'package' represented by the Vampire Lord was made weightless and less voluminous before he grabbed it in his left hand and began to walk away.
"I left Dumbledore's organisation two months after You-Know-Who got killed. It was only a year later that I contacted the Shadow Blades when I learned they were willing to hire Animagus wizards."
A decision he rarely regretted. Dumbledore may play the image of the incorruptible war-leader in public, but the moment Pettigrew had left the Order, the people who had owned his debts had returned with an amazing alacrity to empty his pockets.
There was no proof the Chief Warlock was behind this. But it had resulted in a few ugly duels near Knockturn Alley and he had to maintain a very low profile until he began working with the coven and disappeared from the world ruled by the Ministry of Magic.
The descent down the stairs was too long for his taste. There were screams and explosions in the distance, with more human voices shouting and the cold announcing Dementors were present in great numbers.
"Why did you leave? You were one of the members most convinced the Order was necessary to reform the Ministry once the war would end..."
"The Order was a different beast after You-Know-Who was destroyed by the Boy-Who-Lived." It was not a secret revelation. He had discussed it many times, and several friends had shared their grievances. But it was like speaking to a wizard painting you had not the password: fruitless and exasperating. "Known Death Eaters were allowed to bribe their way out to freedom when we should have locked them away for decades. The Old Guard of the Ministry retired to let a new generation of idiots take power. The non-human creatures caught on the wrong side of the law were persecuted without mercy. The Light technically dominated the Wizengamot, but we did nothing with this power. Britain was in a terrible state, and we had fought a war for nothing."
"I'm sure the situation is salvageable," James Potter lips were pinched and his eyes looked furious. Well too bad for him, but it wasn't going to change the reality. Goblins were about to revolt, the only question was when. The Shadow Blades and the wererats were technically at war with the Ministry right now. The Soul Drinkers were neutral, but how long would they stay on the sidelines when the Wizengamot voted new anti-creature laws? The centaurs loathed Fudge. The harpies had killed four emissaries before accepting the latest cease-fire. Any control they had over the Dementors was threadbare. Species like the leprechauns, selkies and other 'creatures' paid their taxes because some Lords were chivalrous enough to let them live on their lands.
Whatever one might say, it was not a situation promising long peace and prosperity for the British Isles.
"Well, I'm not." He simply answered before casting 'Expecto Patronum!' in a hurry as four Dementors came directly from the next series of stairs. The soul-sucking monsters were repulsed by his silver-shining rat, but one thing was sure, this escape exit had just become unavailable.
"Prongs, if you have any wandless abilities, now would be the good time to use them!"
"Never...cast...a Flipendo..." The other Marauder gasped with difficulty as other Dementors arrived behind them.
"Right. This calls for a change of plan, then." He ran to the end of corridor and began to climb to the top of the other tower.
"Should we not go down?" The cold was getting more pressing and Peter could hear the noise of boots and other shoes far away. Aurors, most likely, he really had overstayed his welcome here.
"Sure, if you fancy kissing a Dementor..."
The progression from this point was hellish. The Dementors were coming from every direction and as much as he hated to admit it, Peter was not a powerful wizard. His magical core was average and the fantastic demonstrations of raw magic powerful wizards like James and Sirius enjoyed as their trump cards would kill him in short order.
Casting several times a Patronus, while not exceptional, was taxing for his small magical core.
"What is the plan, Wormtail?" asked Prongs as the last stone steps stopped and they arrived at the top of Azkaban dungeon – the very summit of the island.
The view was...terrifying. There were Dementors crawling everywhere. Several parts of the walls of Azkaban were falling apart, sending masonry and screaming prisoners into the dark abysses. In the distance, black lightning was burning sections of the prison. Bellatrix's work, no doubt. The screams and the shrieks produced an unimaginable song of atrocity and darkness. He could only see a single ship now and there was no sign of resistance or magic near it. This method of retreat was cut off and the forces sent for Operation Alcatraz had to be considered a lost cause.
The battle of Azkaban was over. The attacking force had done its best, but they had failed. Now it was time to escape before all sacrifices were in vain.
"The plan is overkill." He searched in his pockets for the two brooms he had prepared for this alternate plan and returned them to their normal size. The rat Animagus threw one to James. "I trust you have not forgotten how to ride a broom?"
For the first time since he had seen him, James Potter tried to chuckle. It broke in a series of coughs.
"I am the best Seeker..." the boast was amusing, "House Gryffindor has ever seen since the Crimson Knight. I'm ready to bet they weren't able to win two Quidditch Cups since I left school!"
"Sucker's bet," said Peter and on this, he uttered the incantation to activate the Light Implosion Sphere and threw it as far as his arms allowed. It was an enchanted device worth tens of thousands of Galleons, but for the moment it was his life insurance.
For an instant, it was like a new sun burst into existence, lighting the skies of Azkaban in a great pyre of light. The Dementors shrieked in pain and this was a sound which filled his heart with joy. The demons abandoned the idea of stopping the break-out and tried to get away from the phenomenon wounding them.
And this meant...the skies in front of them were free. The path to liberty was opened.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," he said calmly mounting his broom, the unconscious body of Lord Victor in one hand and his wand in the other.
"Mischief Managed!" James added. One second later and they were in the sky.
Operation Alcatraz was successful. For the first time in living memory, someone had escaped Azkaban Prison.
The Athenian Classification of the magical cores is an extremely old system, but one which has never truly been replaced in the magical communities.
It has the advantage of being simple and easy to read.
The twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet are providing twenty-four categories to classify the magical potential of humans with. Alpha is the most powerful and Omega is the weakest. Furthermore, each power core level is sub-divided into five new categories based on colours: from weakest to most powerful these are red, yellow, green, blue and purple.
Except for dangerous rituals and great acts of High Arcane, there is relatively little one can do once a witch or a wizard has reached full adulthood. It is true the magical core is still growing a bit, but not enough to rise from a red to a yellow or a blue to a purple. By tradition, the rare magical nations to have made Aura Readers legal test the volunteers at the age of twenty-one.
Omega is the letter for Muggles.
If you have a core between Psi and Upsilon, you are a Squib by definition: able to notice some magical phenomenon and break the simple Not-Notice Charms, but fundamentally unable to cast magic.
Wizards who have Pi, Rho, Sigma and Tau levels are considered weak or very weak, and the use of high-consuming incantations is vigorously unadvised.
Omicron, Xi, Nu, Mu, Lambda, Kappa and Iota are categories where about six out of ten adult wizards and witches can be classified. Use of a wand is ordinary, and though some jobs may cause problems, education in a great school is no problem. Durmstrang demands the equivalent of Omicron-Green from its students at age ten.
From Theta to Gamma, the power of the core is augmenting increasingly fast. Epsilon or above cores are large, and the wizards who have them can certainly reach high ranks in their respective Ministries.
A Beta-level core is the classification for Lords or Ladies of Magic. Correctly trained, a wizard or witch able to channel wisely this power is able to strike down dozens of Theta-level opponents with ease.
The Alpha-category is rarely used. There are currently only two beings to my knowledge which have the raw power to fit in it. The world calls these monsters Emperors.
If we have to play the game of comparisons, let it be known I am a Kappa-blue wizard.
My well-appreciated editor Martin is a Mu-Red.
Albus Dumbledore was a Beta-Blue Lord-level wizard. There are rumours You-Know-Who was Beta-purple, though it was never confirmed.
But Bellatrix Lestrange née Black, while inferior to the Leaders of Light and Dark in Britain, was found to be a Beta-red Lady and a battle-hardened Dark Witch.
Once she had escaped her cell during the break-out of Azkaban, the outcome was extremely predictable.
Extract from The Rise of Darkness, Chapter 4, by Gilderoy Lockhart
They could not beat her.
It was a bitter Potion to swallow.
But to quote the crazy Auror 'Mad Eye' Moody, "When you faced someone far more powerful than you, you either cheated or you fled to save your life."
John had tried to retreat after the first exchange of spells. He had not been fast enough.
Dragon's breath, he was not sure he understood what kind of spell had hit him. He had been readying a powerful Confringo when his enemy had done...something.
The next thing he knew, he was paralysed on the courtyard grounds several feet below, half of his body was buried under the rubble, and he didn't know where his wand had gone.
He was defenceless, trapped, and from what he saw, bleeding from several wounds. He was in the middle of Azkaban Prison, defenceless, and he could not do anything as Paul was fighting the most dangerous witch of Britain.
The darkness had come and most of the Aurors were either dead or in the infirmary. His vision was limited since he could not move, but there were only four of the Corps left to fight the Lestrange monster, Senior Auror Yaxley leading them.
They weren't winning.
In fact, if John Dawlish wanted to describe impartially this magical duel – not that he particularly wanted to – he would describe the affair as a one-sided spanking.
"Come on, Corban! You can do better than this poor Transfiguration!"
The worst part was definitely the insults she delivered every ten seconds or so, however. Two gigantic stone dogs convulsed and were transfigured into ashes.
"The standards have fallen horribly in the last years," the Dark Witch chuckled. A twirl of the wand she had stolen from the first Hit-Wizard she had beaten, and the spells flying her way were stopped by an extended shield pulsing in a violet light. "During the war, the kids of your task force would have stayed to babysit the Minister or some other unimportant job."
Paul Williamson was ejected from the battle, his chest covered in boils and his legs transfigured into something looking like the tentacles of an octopus. It was now one against three.
"Hogwarts students had more skills and brains in my time." The smirk was large and provocative, sending shivers down his spine. "Amateurs."
The last Auror belonging to Cole's group rushed at her, a Bombarda incantation on his lips. Somehow, he was sure this was what the favourite of You-Know-Who had wanted from her opponents. The fist not holding the stolen wand pointed to the ground.
"Gravitas."
It was like an earthquake had struck Azkaban. The ground shook violently, forcing the Dementors to soar in loud shrieks. The Aurors trying to subdue the Death Eater were completely unprepared and lost their equilibrium. Not for long, they had all been seriously trained. But two seconds on a battlefield could have been eternity against an enemy the calibre of Bellatrix Lestrange.
Ugly-coloured spells slammed into Yaxley and the two men left standing. The Aurors collapsed silently on the blood-soaked soil of the island.
"Well, this was a poor showing," Bellatrix joked. "I really hope for the Ministry's sake I faced the dregs of their forces today."
John Dawlish at this moment wanted with all his heart to stand up, carve this bitch's heart from her chest, and feed it to the Dementors. But he wasn't able to stand on his own and thus remained silent. There would be a reckoning for this; he swore it on his on the name of his family.
Bellatrix in the next seconds stopped completely watching the immobilised and crippled Aurors. New moves and twirls were imposed to the wand she had no right to own, and from the rubble an animated construct began to emerge.
It took nearly a minute and the amount of power sunk into the effort was stupendous. But when it was stabilised, a thirty-foot long winged serpent worthy of appearing on a creature's book cover was bowing largely to Bellatrix Lestrange.
"Time to leave Azkaban, I guess." The Dark Witch jumped on the back of her creation that began to soar slowly into the sky. Some Dementors tried to prevent this escape, but a terrifying Ecclesial – the Dark counterpart of the Patronus – forced the demons to abandon their attack.
And then the courtyard began to fill with Aurors. Despite the losses, despite the blood and the wounds suffered in service of duty, despite the horror and the wrongness of the day, Dawlish smiled at the sight of the reinforcements. Leading them was Director Bones in person, and next to her was headmaster Albus Dumbledore and even the hard-and-sour Crouch of the International Cooperation.
They were saved.
For an instant, he wished the Lestrange murderess was stupid enough to turn around and challenge Dumbledore, but alas it was not to be. The winged serpent flew away with an acceleration most modern brooms would be unable to match, and the bright gold spell the Chief Warlock illuminated the sky with lost its target in the clouds.
And yet somehow the evil laughter came to their ears one last time.
"Free..."
Twenty-four nautical miles south of Azkaban, there was a tiny island that had never endured human presence for long. The climate was a bit unpleasant for everyone not able to cast Warming Charms, and there was simply nothing here, animal or resources, with which to build a watchtower or another enchanted castle.
The Ministry had temporarily surveyed the island in the early eighteenth century, before concluding any enemy wanting to watch over Azkaban at this distance was welcome to do it. A few anti-Apparition wards had been engraved in the very rock as a measure of precaution, but in the end this island had been forgotten by all.
As a result, there was no alarm screaming to warn the Ministry a human figure wearing violet robes had carefully monitored the Battle of Azkaban in spite of the significant distance between this location and the infamous prison.
"Your Majesty, Operation Bloodbath is over," reported Knight Necromancer in a tone which would have scared most living creatures. "Auror casualties are approximately at forty-six percent. Hit-Wizard and warden losses are higher. Heavy damage has been inflicted to the walls of the island as per the plan. Between the attacking force and the prisoners, there are five survivors who managed to escape. The ships are sinking at the bottom of the North Sea, and I have personally erased the infractions to the Statute."
"You have done very well, my Knight." The voice of the King boomed out of the conjured dark mirror levitating two feet above the sea. "You can come back to headquarters. I see no reason to intervene openly against the British Ministry of Magic tonight."
"Your Majesty, I could wipe out half of their Auror Corps as they're vulnerable!"
"Yes, you can," agreed the Master of the Exchequer. "But I want Fudge and his administration to be considered incompetent by the rest of the world."
For twenty seconds there was only the noise of the waves and the wind. Then the King spoke again.
"I do not want martyrs. I do not want any rallying cry for the Heroes and the Champions of the Light to save the day."
"Your Majesty..."
"Nothing must endanger Paradox. Understood?"
Knight Necromancer bowed. Ten minutes later when the magical mirror shattered in the North Sea, the minuscule island was empty once more.
4 August 1993, MacDougal Manor, Ireland
"I suppose it was too much to ask the Ministry to have competent people guarding Azkaban."
Morag had expected an explosion of anger the moment she had seen the headlines. But wrath was almost absent in Alexandra's answer. There was annoyance yes, disgust certainly and maybe a certain form of tiredness, but no anger.
"I was thinking you were going to be furious," the Heiress of House MacDougal said to her friend.
"I'm not exactly happy to hear of this break-out, Morag."
The new edition of the Daily Prophet was thrown on the wooden table, revealing the dreadful title.
BATTLE AT AZKABAN PRISON!
MASSIVE DEATH EATERS BREAK OUT!
"By the look of things, the Aurors and the wardens guarding the prison had no idea their enemies were coming until they were literally on top of them." The bright green eyes were outwardly looking like they were burning in ethereal fire. "The letter we sent them aside, this is a monumental display of incompetence. The opposition included newly created wererats, newborn vampires and fifth-rate wizards and witches. To experience the casualties they took in this battle, they must have been caught totally off-guard."
The glare sent at the picture of Fudge trying to reassure the population that everything was going to be fine – an affirmation only an idiot would take seriously – was very nasty. Alex's opinion on the Ministry and the policies it enforced was plummeting day after day. And to her dismay, Morag was more and more sharing her point of view. London's rule was haphazard and comical in times of peace, but when there was something which really needed to be done, their lack of competence stopped being funny.
"What are we going to do?"
Alexandra sighed loudly.
"First, I'm afraid I will have to contact Grimjaw. I know I signed a lot of documents saying James Potter has no rights to any of the Potter vaults anymore, but I want to make sure my genitor will find closed doors if he tries to enter Gringotts."
"It should not be too difficult." For most wizards and witches it would actually, but not everyone in their community was a Basilisk-killer. "The good will you gained from the Basilisk kills is sure to trump any promise from your father."
Bankers loved people who brought them gold, after all. James Potter, by comparison, had not really won anything with his own hands in his life.
"Aside from that, our options are definitely limited." Alexandra used the owl feather of her quill as a fan.
"Beauxbatons looks more attractive incident with every incident," she did her best to not look too sarcastic.
Her friend just huffed in a big sigh.
"If there was the slightest chance we five could enter the Academy and their tariffs were not that ruinous, I think we would give it a chance."
It was one of the rare points to which Hogwarts could say it was superior, in the end. You paid fewer Galleons for a Hogwarts education than for a Beauxbatons one. Of course, the other side of the Channel had not a boring ghost to teach the History class too.
"But paying for five or six years of education once more would leave my trust vault empty," the raven-haired Ravenclaw continued. "And the escape of Grindelwald has proven France and the rest of Europe are not necessarily safer than Hogwarts."
"There's always Durmstrang,"
"Let's be serious, Morag." Alex's eyes temporarily fixed upon the ceiling to show how good she thought the idea was. "The school has at least one former Death Eater in its staff and unlike our dear Head of Slytherin, the man got released because he betrayed enough of his own comrades to the Ministry. We may be accepted at the school if we make the demand, but it would be a permanent battle not to be crushed by elder students. At Hogwarts, I think I can duel every student with a good chance of success and win if lives are at stake. Against the elder students of Durmstrang..."
She would certainly take a severe beating. Unlike Hogwarts, Durmstrang had classes in Dark Arts, Duelling, Offensive Magic, and other subjects which made sure every graduating student was an acceptable fighter. And they would have an advantage of several years in every fundamental class.
"Besides, Hermione and Nigel would never be accepted there."
And so the 'going overseas discussion' ended like the previous ones.
"This is not the only bad news," she cleared her throat before delivering this announcement.
"Of course, of course," Alexandra's expression was fatalistic this time. "What dramatic event is on its way to ruin my summer? Bellatrix Lestrange had a vendetta against my mother? They have found Dudley in the mass of wererat corpses? My father has shouted in front of the Minister he has sired another child he was going to give the entire Potter fortune to?"
Morag chuckled a bit before becoming serious again.
"Nice tries, but no," this had come directly from her father's personal owl and she had burned the sensitive information after memorising it. "The escape of James Potter has convinced several Ministry flunkies that your guardianship audience had to be a new priority of their services."
The insult Alex uttered was extremely rude and certainly anatomically impossible.
"They have just been on the receiving end of the bloodiest battle in the last decade, and they think a guardianship audience for a teenage witch is the new priority?"
There was no 'are you kidding me' uttered but the incredulity under the question was a good substitute.
"Please tell me the name of the genius behind this idea." Alexandra raised her hands over the desk and suddenly all the books and parchment levitated in neat and ordered columns. Morag did her best not to look too impressed. She knew her friend was powerful, but sometimes it was getting kind of ridiculous.
"A non-entity from the Department of Education," Morag had certainly not heard of the name before today, although given how many witches and wizards were working for the Ministry, it was not that surprising.
"Dolores Jane Umbridge."
Author's note: I hope every reader will have enjoyed the first big battle of third year. I had it in mind for a long, long time. A lot of arcs are finding their conclusions in this battle and of course new ones are going to follow. The dark prison is breached, prisoners are free, Death Eaters are killed and darkness is on the rise. And in the shadows, the Exchequer is waiting.
But for Alexandra, there are going to be closer and more important problems...
Links for the story:
On P a treon: ww w. p a treon Antony444
On TV Tropes: ww w. tvtropes pmwiki / pmwiki .php/ Fanfic/ TheOddsWereNeverInMyFavour
