Hermione couldn't sleep. She knew she wouldn't be able to; she was too anxious, too excited, too alert to relax. Instead, she very carefully repacked her Explorer's Kit, keeping only what she thought she would need. She wouldn't need a bedroll or a mess kit, she figured, and took them out. She kept the tinderbox and torches and waterskin in, and she added back in both the 50 feet of rope and the enchanted rope she'd once gotten from Hagrid. She added Luna's map of the ley lines – she'd never been to the North Sea before, after all, and she didn't want to get lost – and Tom Riddle's diary, of course – her lookout was a necessity.

Healing Potions and Wide-Eye Potions went into the pack, as well as a magical First Aid kit. After a moment of thought, she added some food she'd snagged at dinner. This was going to drain her magically, potentially more than once, and she might need to eat to help replenish it all.

It was odd, the state of mind Hermione was in. She was about to do something very dangerous, something she could die doing. She knew that. She knew she might die. She might get her soul sucked out of her, which would be worse than death. But she couldn't not do this – not when she was the only one who could.

She'd read about teenagers feeling invincible during puberty, unable to recognize that they were mortal. Hermione didn't exactly feel invincible, but she also didn't feel afraid, somehow.

Just… ready.

Time slowly wore on. When it was finally the right moment – once it would be dark enough outside — it was time. There was no benefit in delaying.

Ready as she'd ever be, Hermione closed her eyes, reached out with her magic into the ley line, and pulled the veil of mist aside.


Azkaban was four nodes away, and though Hermione did her best to float as a bubble of magic gracefully around the turns, it was a long journey, and the closer to Azkaban she got, the more volatile the ley lines seemed to be, as if Dark magic had seeped into them over time and tainted their magic.

When she popped back out, the first thing she did was fall to her knees and vomit, just over the cliff into the sea. Her stomach heaved and she gagged, taking the time to rinse her mouth out with water and catch her breath as soon as she could. Her stomach heaved again, protesting, but Hermione fought back the nausea this time, fighting to keep her breathing even and her magic grounded.

The second thing she did was take a careful look at where she had landed.

Azkaban's island was a rocky outcropping in the middle of a tumultuous sea. Even now in the dark, the sky seemed stormy, lightning passing from cloud to cloud far above them from time to time. The moonlight that did manage to make it through the clouds seemed paler and colder than Hermione was used to, and the whole place gave her the shivers. Ahead of her, there were small rocks jutting haphazardly from the ground, and beyond them, a tall, dark tower made of gleaming black stone.

Hermione carefully surveyed the area once more, reaching into her bag for the diary only once she was certain she was alone.

As her magic pulled Tom Riddle from the diary, Hermione kept alert, her eyes constantly sweeping the area for any dementor activity. As soon as Tom was fully out of the Diary, Hermione packed it back into her bag. She carefully took off her Time-Turner, wrapping it in cloth and packing it away too. The Time-Turner was too dangerous and too precious to risk getting wrecked in a fight; she would just need to come out and get it if something went horribly wrong and she needed to loop time. She glanced at her watch – 10:04pm. She'd have just about two hours to get this done.

Tom was stretching, feeling his body and magic. Hermione gave him a moment to collect himself and look out over where they were.

"We're on the edge of the island, at the graveyard," Hermione told Tom quietly.

"That's ideal," Tom said, keeping his voice low. He reached into her bag and pulled out the potions, which he tucked into his robes. They'd discussed their strategy ahead of time, knowing there would be no time to waste. "We should hide your bag here, I think – we can't risk my diary anywhere near Fiendfyre – but is there anything else you want me to take with us?"

Hermione bit her lip. "Yes."

Tom turned to look at her quizzically, stopping short. His eyes went wide at her extended hand.

"That's a wand," he breathed.

"It's a partial wand," Hermione said, standing still. "I tried duplicating Harry's – you said your old wand had a phoenix-feather core, so I thought his might be the closest fit – but I couldn't mimic the power of the runes along the inner core. I did my best to charge them—"

"It's still a wand." Tom stared at it, unmoving. "You would trust me with a wand."

Hermione took a deep breath.

"I'm already trusting you with my life," she said. "Either I trust you, or I don't. And I decided that I do."

Something inside of Tom seemed to shift, and he took a step forward, taking the wand reverently.

"Thank you," he said. His voice was quiet. "You have no idea what this means to me."

Hermione looked away, uncomfortable. "So! Azkaban's a repurposed fortress. Any idea how we break in?"

"Right." Tom was suddenly all business, and he stepped forward, closer to the building. "It looks like it's just sheer stone, all the way to the top."

They crept forward in the dark, sneaking through the graveyard to the stone edifice. They quietly examined it, running their hands over the black stones.

"If I had to guess, there's probably an entrance hidden around here on the ground floor that requires Ministry authorization to enter," Tom said, "but there's also probably just a trap door on the very top to give access to the roof."

Hermione gnawed on her lip. "So… do we go in through the top or the bottom?"

Tom glanced upward. "The dementors will probably be lurking around the top. I imagine the cells will be at the lower floors."

Hermione took a deep breath.

"I'm here to kill dementors," she said, determined. "We might as well face them head-on."


To Hermione's happy discovery, even though Tom had a body, now, it was distinctly lighter than she expected a boy of his size would be. Her air elemental had little difficulty in carrying him up with her. Hermione could feel Tom experimenting with the magic he had as they quietly rose through the air, and after a couple minutes, he'd managed to figure out how to give direction to the air elemental magic on his own.

"What?" he said, returning Hermione's surprised glance with a smirk. "My magic is essentially your magic right now, isn't it?"

Hermione rolled her eyes but grinned. This would be easier if she didn't have to worry about dropping Tom, and she didn't think he'd try to fly away to escape. It wasn't like there was anywhere to go.

Hermione and Tom's sneaky ascent to the top of the fortress was cut short by Dementors sensing her approach, and a coldness crept down the sides of the building like an invisible fog. Hermione guarded her mind, refusing to let the depression creep in.

"They're looking down at us," Tom said, craning his neck to look up. "I can see their hoods looking over the edge. They can sense us, I think."

"Of course they can sense us," Hermione sighed. "I don't know why I thought sneaking in would work."

"Too many heist novels?" Tom quipped, watching as Hermione seemed to gird her loins. "What are you doing?"

"If they already know I'm coming," Hermione said, "I might as well make an entrance."

It was as if her magic had been waiting for this day. Her air elemental leapt in excitement as her fire elemental flared within her, and a moment later, she was flying through the air toward the top of the fortress with her wand held aloft, fire crackling behind her as she flew. She went higher than the top of the fortress to get a good look at the top – there were dozens of dementors, crowded together and looking up at her with their hoods, like an impenetrable wall of cold mist…

"Malignis Fiendfyre!"

An enormous snake made of flame erupted from her wand, and Hermione directed it as the serpent dive-bombed the dementors. The crackling fire cast light on the area, throwing the cloaks of the dementors and the roof into sharp contrast and illumination, shadows shifting rapidly as the snake coiled through the dementors, snapping at them. Hermione flew lower to watch, her hand steady on her wand, and she watched as the snake of fire flew among them, and a cold hand of horror clutched her heart – what if it didn't work—

Hermione shoved her fire elemental magic through her wand, her panic and anger getting the best of her, and there was a high, horrified shriek below her as her snake morphed into a dragon made of flame.

The dementors were scattering, trying to get out of the way of the dragon, but there were too many of them – Hermione watched incredulously as the dragon of hellfire snapped up one of the dementors, tossing its head back as if actually eating it, and there was an overwhelming burst of heat as it swallowed. The dragon's eyes seemed to glow, and a moment later, an empty cloak was belched from its mouth, drifting slowly to the ground.

The dementors ran.

Tom had been right – there was only a trap door back down from the top, and all the dementors were trying to get down it as fast as they could, but there was a cluster of them all trying to go at once. The ones on the edges glided and floated around in a panic, trying to escape the dragon, but the Fiendfyre was fully burning now. Hermione watched as two dementors caught fire from the wings of the dragon, and they thrashed and flailed as their cloaks burned. Nothing was left save a scattering of ash on the wind, and Hermione saw several dementors look like they were seriously considering attempting to jump off the building.

Hermione grinned maliciously, hatred burning bright through her as she held a leash on the Fiendfyre.

The hellfire dragon swallowed another two dementors as it raged around the roof, catching another three aflame, and two of the dementors opted to take their chances with gravity – they both glided up and over the edge of the building. Snarling, Hermione flew after them, determined none of them would escape.

The dementors couldn't fly (they seemed to only be able to hover, as far as Hermione knew) but they were gliding downwards, almost in a slow, controlled fall. They both turned their hoods towards her as they fell, and Hermione felt a wave of rage nearly overcome her at the thought of two of these demons escaping her wrath.

"Malignis Fiendfyre!"

A giant snake erupted from her wand, another tenuous string connecting itself to her magic by way of her fire elemental as she fought to keep control of both spells. The snake crashed into one of the dementors, pinning it against the black stone of Azkaban as it burned, screeching an inhuman shriek.

"There's another one!" Tom called, floating down next to her.

Hermione couldn't summon a third Fiendfyre beast without losing control of all three – she probably shouldn't have even impulsively done two. With a scream of rage, she lashed out with her magic at the dementor, trying to pin it in place. Her air magic was keeping her flying, her fire magic burning in wings of flame behind her and helping her control her spell. Her normal magic required verbal spells to be cast; all that was left to respond was her earth magic, which sat up, stretched, and lashed out with relish.

Giant arms of black stone erupted from the side of the building, leaving great, gaping holes in the side of the fortress from where the stone had shifted from. Azkaban was made of solid black stone, one of the few things Fiendfyre didn't burn, and it was clear the stone seemed to remember that it was stone, still connected to the earth.

"Merlin alive," Tom breathed, his eyes wide. "What on earth—"

The giant stone arms pinned the dementor between them, and as soon as Hermione was certain the first dementor had been burned up, she directed the snake of flame after the other. She was still dimly aware of the dragon raging atop the building – there was a flash of dark, vindictive satisfaction each time it ate a dementor or burned one alive – and as the second fleeing dementor burned into dust, Hermione realized she had an opening – a literal one.

"We go in through here," she said, gesturing at the giant, gaping hole in the side of the fortress. "The dragon will guard the top, and we can either chase the ones left up to meet it or hunt them down in the halls."

Tom nodded, and Hermione swooped closer to the opening in the side of the building, landing on one of the giant pillars and carefully making her way inside.

Azkaban was dark and shadowed, but the interior was abruptly thrown into flickering light upon her entrance. Hermione spared a moment to appreciate her drama had unexpected practicality – maybe wings of flame weren't entirely superfluous – before she realized there were people looking at her.

Her eyes went wide, and she slowly looked around in horror.

If they could even be called 'people' anymore.

Rags hung off thin, bony frames that stood on shaky legs to get a better look at her. Hair was overgrown and matted, dark eyes peering out of sunken faces, and Hermione was starkly reminded of just how desperate Sirius had looked when she'd first seen him.

There was a noise at the far end of the row of cells, and Hermione whipped around, her wand aloft, and her snake went chasing down the dementor with a screech, a flare of heat pulsing from it as it ate the dementor alive.

"Right." Hermione swallowed hard. "Stay focused. We're here to destroy the dementors, not conduct a prison break." She forced herself to look away from the desperate creatures in the cells. "Still…"

Hermione strode down the path between the cells, refusing to look at the prisoners or turn to see if Tom was following her. There was only one path – the cells were arranged in a circle, with some on the outside and some on the inside. Eventually she reached a break in the inner cells, and she pulled open a door to see a spiral staircase going both up and down.

"Might as well start at the bottom," she said, strategizing. "That way, if there is a second way in, I can block it off."

Mind made up, Hermione leapt over the railing of the spiral staircase, falling straight down the middle on wings of flame. Tom hurried after her, struggling to keep up.

The bottom floor was one large chamber with a couple of haphazardly marked-off areas, and Hermione found two dementors guarding a heavily-runed archway in the black stone of the wall. They began gliding toward her as soon as she entered, but the evil creatures stopped short as her Fiendfyre python billowed out of the stairwell after her. Tom emerged a moment later, casting a Patronus to guard the way out, which caught Hermione by surprise – she hadn't realized he'd had enough magic put into him to allow him to cast so complicated a spell – before she turned to face her foes.

Hermione smiled. It wasn't a kind smile.

"You can try to run," she advised them, "but I wouldn't recommend it."

The runes in the archway seemed to prevent dementors from going through it – the dementors couldn't escape despite being right next to it. Instead they scattered throughout the room, avoiding the snake of fire as best they could. Tom's fox Patronus pulsed in front of the stairway door, blocking them from escape, and Hermione watched with grim satisfaction as both dementors were eventually consumed in hellfire.

"One floor down," she announced. "Only… a lot more to go."

Tom snickered, and they headed up the stairs.

Whereas the first floor had seemed administrative – there had been desks and papers, before the Fiendfyre had burned them all to dust – this floor seemed more functional. It looked like fully equipped kitchen, complete with a wood stove, and it was spotless. Hermione grew angrier and angrier the more she looked at it.

"They've never used it," she said. "They've never used it. They don't bother to feed the prisoners. Not really."

"No one cares about the prisoners," Tom reminded her. "Once they're locked away, society likes to conveniently forget that they're there."

"There's such a thing as humane treatment," Hermione snapped. She did another lap of the kitchen to make sure there were no dementors there – she was suddenly struck with the absurd image of finding a dementor clad in a white lace apron, rummaging through the pantry – but there was no one on this floor.

"Two down," Hermione announced. "Let's go."

The third floor did have dementors – a lot of them. Giving Tom a wand had proved an unexpected masterstroke – instead of just a lookout, Tom stood outside the door to the staircase, actively helping with his Patronus glowing in the doorway to block their only escape, and Hermione chased after the dementors, her snake of hellfire morphing into a cheetah, pinning them down and clawing them to death until they burned away into nothing.

Each time a dementor died, there was a thrill of dark triumph that pulsed back through to her. The Fiendfyre fed from this, off the cruel satisfaction in her heart at watching the creatures perish. Dementors were evil, a scourge upon the world – but the Fiendfyre only cared about the desire for execration smoldering deep inside of her. Hermione stayed very aware of herself as she directed the Fiendfyre around, making sure to keep control. Dementors weren't the only threat here, after all – if she lost control, even for a moment, she could burn herself up too.

The fourth floor was a little different – it was the first floor she'd found purposefully with cells. That meant she couldn't just cut loose and burn everything – there were people here, along with straw bedding and metal bars. Gritting her teeth, Hermione pulled in her Fiendfyre sharply, as if on a leash, and it was with painful control Hermione walked slowly around the floor in a circle several times as a velociraptor of flame destroyed the five dementors that had been here.

As her hellfire dinosaur ate one of the wraith-like creatures, Hermione looked around. Here, too, people had sunken faces and looked starved. She recognized none of them, but would she have, with them in this state? Even if she'd been familiar with their mugshots, everyone had lost most of their body weight and hadn't had a haircut in decades.

She decided there wasn't a point in lingering, only danger. Once the Ministry investigated the siege of Azkaban, they'd see the state the prisoners were in, and someone would try to do something. There was bound to be one person on the expedition team with some empathy in their heart.

The sixth floor was the one that Hermione had accidentally ripped a hole in. As she did a circuit of this floor just to be sure, she saw the two people who had had their cells ripped open staring at her. One was a man with thin, straggly sandy brown hair, and one was a woman with black curly hair in a messy, matted cloud about her head. Both were avoiding the giant hole in the floor and the wall, both of them staring at her, and Hermione winced and gave them a strained smile and a nod.

"What am I supposed to say to them?" Hermione hissed to Tom, as they ran up to the seventh floor. "'Sorry you're stuck in jail; hope it's not as awful now'?"

"You say nothing," Tom told her. "Nothing. You're an avenging angel of flame. A myth. A legend. The last thing you want is some Legilimens recognizing your voice in someone's memory."

The seventh floor had seven dementors, one of which managed to get past Tom's Patronus. Hermione raced after it down the stairs and to immolate it at the very bottom, where it had tried to get through the enchanted archway. By the time she'd taken care of it, Hermione was exhausted, sweaty, and panting, and she hurried back up the staircase to meet Tom, whose face looked strained.

"Holding a Patronus this long…" he said, trailing off. "I don't know how much longer I can do this."

Hermione glanced at her watch as she downed a Wide-Eye Potion. "We don't have long left anyway. We'd better run."

The eighth floor held three, the ninth floor held five, but it was the tenth floor that Hermione suspected had the most – there was a cold mist leaking out from below the door, and there were no more floors above it.

"Get ready," Hermione murmured. "Ready? Set…"

She threw open the door, a tiger of Fiendfyre running ahead of her and directly into a room crammed full of dementors. There were so many of them she could scarcely see individual dementors, it was so packed, and she stayed close to Tom as he held his Patronus aloft to protect them, though it seemed to fade over time, a chilling coldness slowly creeping over them.

"Hermione…" Tom's voice was strained. "Hermione, please…"

Biting her lip, Hermione nodded, and she raised her wand. Reconnecting with the dragon of flame on top of the fortress took a moment, and one overpowered blasting curse in the roof later, the dragon was roaring about next to the tiger, devouring dementors left and right as if it were a race.

Which it was, really, Hermione thought, looking at her watch. Even if Tom faded away and she had to finish things alone, she was rapidly running out of time to take the ley line back. Her siege on Azkaban had taken time, as she been methodical to make sure to destroy all the dementors, and midnight was rapidly approaching. Hermione kept an eye on her watch as her fire monsters devoured the last of the dementors, watching her window for escape narrow and slip away.

By the time the final dementor was gone, Hermione was growing desperate. Dismissing her Fiendfyre, she grabbed Tom's hand, looking at him urgently.

"Just let go," she told him. "I'll pull you out again soon."

With a deep breath and a solemn nod, Tom seemed to dissolve in front of her eyes, and Hermione grabbed his wand as it clattered to the floor.

All-too-aware of her ticking clock, Hermione sprinted down the staircase towards the sixth floor, where it would be a faster leap from – she didn't fancy fighting to get up a rope ladder to the roof with her level of exhaustion.

As she burst out onto the sixth floor, she froze.

"Who are you?" she breathed.

A mysterious figure in a dark cloak and robe was floating outside the giant hole in the wall, sitting on a broomstick with large blood runes on it. One of the prisoners whose cell she'd blown open was climbing onto the back of the broom as well – the woman – and shivering in the chill ocean gales as the broom hovered.

"You made this remarkably easy for me," the cloaked figure said, voice disguised. "Or maybe the luck potion did. I was expecting to have to perform a jail break, but I simply had to fly in and get it done."

"Who are you?" Hermione demanded. "How do you know who I am?"

The figure only shrugged, and a moment later the broomstick took off, mysterious figure and freezing prisoner astride. Hermione ran after them and thew herself from the building, wings of fire and air elemental springing to life to help her give chase.

It was no use, though – the broomstick was impossibly faster, and Hermione quickly gave up and spiraled down through the air to the graveyard where she'd stored her bag. She grabbed it, slung it over her body, and with a last glance at her watch – 11:58pm – leapt into the ley line to escape.