Harry had ultimately lost to Gemma Farley, the Slytherin prefect who'd gotten ahead of Marcus Flint and stood at the front of the line of sixth-years. She'd managed several NEWT-level spells Harry had never seen before, the last of which proved impossible to dodge. But she was at least gracious in her victory in a way that Flint wouldn't have been, so Harry considered it a fair beat. He was just sad that he hadn't figured out how many XP sixth-years were worth.
Dawlish had finished out the match by pointing out that Harry was clearly breaking the curve, and none of the rest of them had beaten You-Know-Who as a baby, but they could still pay attention to what he'd been doing and try to emulate it to improve their own casting.
But even the aging auror didn't seem to totally believe it. He had never seen anyone able to dodge for as long as Harry did without tiring out. Another mystery about the Boy-Who-Lived…
Harry only briefly agonized about his two level-four perks. While he was very curious about what it meant to get Finesse or Perception to 20, his scores of 11 and 12 meant he wasn't going to get them with two increases of +3. And he'd been eyeing Fey for doing Luna's quests and The Sight for making his ever-increasing Divination score more useful than just sometimes giving him more information on an inspect attempt.
Taking Fey had the more obvious immediate effect. It did, indeed, highlight anyone he focused on in a colored aura, essentially a few inches of translucent light around them as if they were standing in front of a pane of glass cut to their silhouette but too large. There were also interesting flickers in many peoples' auras such that he could see how Luna would regard them as some kind of bug or sprite, but he thought they were more like motes or sparks. He was hoping that he'd get a better sense of what the various colors and particle effects meant over time.
It took him until the next day to notice what The Sight had changed, expecting that he'd actually have to do some divinations to get it to kick in. He hadn't been actively tracking his main quests, but when he happened to check his quest log, he found that each now had a new entry at the end:
THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (MAIN QUEST)
A secret from your past has escaped.
* Get to Hogwarts
* Learn about the crimes of Sirius Black
* Learn about Dementors
* Learn more about Ekrizdis
O Investigate Azkaban for what Ekrizdis left behind
O Defeat the guardians
THE GOBLET OF FIRE (MAIN QUEST)
Who will be the greatest mage in Europe?
O Attend the quidditch World Cup
O Escape the riot
"The Sight is showing me the next quest goal that's going to pop up after I check the active one off!" he almost shouted at his friends, when he noticed it. Fortunately, Tuesday was a pretty light day for second-years, and it was just Harry, Ron, and Hermione at their favorite table in the library, without anyone else around to notice.
"What?" Ron asked, not getting it.
"After I investigate Azkaban, there's now another one after that. It says I'm going to have to 'Defeat the guardians.' Then after I attend the world cup, it says I need to 'Escape the riot.'"
"But… what if we took steps to prevent a riot?" Hermione wondered. "We've changed what happened in a main quest before… but, yes, this does seem very useful. You'd have gone into both places not expecting a fight. You should tell the headmaster about these guardians."
That revelation certainly changed Dumbledore's planning. He was only slightly mollified when Harry suggested that main quests probably would never be too difficult for him to complete. He was sure that they were talking about guardians that might give Harry a bit of a challenge, but with a 20th level archmage along, it should be easy, right?
The headmaster also seemed worried about a potential riot at the World Cup, but that was a problem months away.
Consequently, Harry spent less time in the library in March than he spent getting private training with Remus and sometimes even the headmaster. It wasn't enough that he'd gotten the shield spell and stunner to work, he needed to be great at them. Based on the types of "guardians" one might expect in a dark wizard's hidden sanctum, they were also drilling on the fire-making charm and various specific counters to the kind of defenses and creatures that might be able to survive for hundreds of years.
It had taken weeks, but he finally also got a fully corporeal patronus. He'd started off trying to use Hagrid telling him he was a wizard as his happy thought, and then the first day he had the game system, but neither were powerful enough. Eventually, he realized that he should be thinking of the great winter holidays he'd just had, particularly culminating in realizing he got to live with Sirius and not the Dursleys.
Somehow all the thoughts had merged, and the imago of his protector was a large canine that seemed to be somewhere in between Sirius' animagus form; Remus' wolf patronus; and Hagrid's dog, Fang.
Dumbledore had quietly been wielding his influence over the last several weeks to get an inspection of Azkaban that he could bring Harry and Remus on. He'd bundled the whole trip up in mentions of Harry's strong reaction to dementors, finding out how Sirius had escaped, and suspicions that there might be something akin to the Chamber of Secrets on the island that Harry might be able to access. He'd planned to take one of the aurors that was part of his Order of the Phoenix.
"If anyone's going, it's going to be me," Dawlish insisted, having found out about the trip through his sources.
"I appreciate the assistance, John," Dumbledore stalled, surprised to have met the man at the Hogwarts gates as he, Harry, and Remus were leaving the building. It was an overcast morning on the Sunday before Easter. "But Kingsley was going to meet us, and I'm sure you're needed here…"
"Hasn't been a Black sighting for months, and if anything maybe I can pick up some more clues looking over his cell. Kings has other things he could be working on. And I don't want to see Potter come to harm," the auror explained, giving Harry a nod. He figured this was his chance to get in better with the Boy-Who-Lived, and maybe get some more insight on what was up with his phenomenal skill.
The headmaster pursed his lips, considering. Even with his prodigious intellect, put on the spot he couldn't come up with a perfect answer for why it didn't make sense for the auror to come. He finally just admitted, "It could be dangerous. Even beyond the dementors."
Dawlish gave a slight smirk at catching that there was more going on than Dumbledore wanted known, and said, "Good job I've been practicing all this dueling lately, then?"
[Party] Harry Potter: I wonder if we'll have to invite him to the party if there's a dungeon…
Harry was currently the party leader, but he assumed he'd have to make Dumbledore the leader to invite a fourth member. And it would mean they couldn't use party chat to communicate without raising even more questions.
"I suppose you have us, there," Dumbledore nodded, managing not to glance at Harry and Remus and acting like this was all perfectly fine. "Shall we go down to Hogsmeade to apparate, then?"
The walk off the grounds was quiet, Dawlish just trying to read into the silence and the other three hurriedly communicating over party chat and replies to Harry. They basically agreed that what they were going to do was probably not going to be secret for long anyway: they were always going to have to notify the Ministry if they found secret rooms on the island. As long as they got first crack at investigating them, it would hopefully all work out.
Dumbledore side-along apparated Harry, who still did not enjoy the sensation of being turned into an infinitely thin stream of matter and sucked through an extradimensional straw to his destination. He got his bearings on a forbidding strip of rocky coastline facing into the morning sun as it peeked beneath the clouds that had sprawled across the country overnight. At least it wasn't raining at the moment, but it wasn't at all warm. There didn't appear to be any civilization for miles, other than a small, unassuming hut a short walk away, above carved rock steps down to a small pier with an oversized rowboat moored to it. Remus and Dawlish popped in near them, and Dumbledore called, "Hullo, the house."
A pair of dots started moving from within, and an auror-classed man with Ministry guild tags exited and exchanged pleasantries with the headmaster and Dawlish, before leading them down to the pier. "Keep hands and legs inside the boat at all times for your own safety," he admonished, by rote. There were a couple of boards across the interior to serve as benches that they all sat on. The man unmoored the boat, took the seat at the back, waved his wand at the rudder, and they began to set off into the sea, much like riding the spelled rowboats as first-years entering Hogwarts.
The boat seemed to pick up speed as it went, skimming like a stone across swells in the water at certain points. Dour and silent, their pilot grew even more grim as they traveled. The day had already been overcast and chill, but it seemed to sink into Harry's bones as they sped across the waves. They managed to catch the drizzle that had been heading from west to east across Britain, and the sun rose high enough to vanish behind the vast cloud bank.
But even if the day had somehow been clear, something about where they were going probably would have changed the quality of the light. The longer they were on the boat, the more it seemed like color was leaching out of the world. And Harry eventually realized that it was because they were in a long shadow of an Unplottable building. They were almost upon it before the tower shimmered into a visibility as if it had always been there, a mirage on the ocean, only revealing itself when right on top of it much like the door to Sirius' townhouse. But its magic seemed unable to fool the sun, and the immense edifice had been holding them in its shadow for some time, due to its massive height.
How powerful had Ekrizdis been to raise such an imposing tower from a bare scrap of land in the middle of the sea? Had he transported it stone by stone across the water, somehow managed to make conjured materials last centuries, or just transfigured it from a larger rocky island that had once been in place? The tremendous triangular tower loomed. Even in the daylight, far above, Harry could make out the distant flicker of user interface over black robes, as dementors circled the prison, ever watchful.
"That whole thing is Azkaban?" he asked. Shouted, really, over the sound of waves breaking against the island, wind streaming past them, and the boat racing across the water. He'd been expecting a small fortress, with maybe a hidden basement. Instead, the prison would have been listed as one of the biggest buildings in Britain if the muggles knew about it. It had to be a couple hundred yards wide on each of its three faces and was clearly taller than its width. He started to count windows and figured it could have hundreds of rooms. The wireframe of the building that appeared in his map couldn't even show the whole thing at one time. "How many prisoners are there?"
"More than you'd expect," Dawlish explained. "Not many go in for just a short stint. But most of the building is empty. Some of it, no one's ever even opened up."
As the boat made for its mooring at the base of the tower, it fully eclipsed the sunlight, plunging them into a shadow almost as dark as night. Harry didn't know what he'd been expecting, but he was definitely now wondering what he'd gotten himself into.