"Everyone's in position," Ron said. "Everyone's been practicing too."

"It's a long time since we dealt with dementors, I know," Harry said. "It's not a good memory, in and of itself."

"No, it's not." He frowned. "You know it wasn't for any lack of confidence in you that-"

"I know," he said. "I was talking about something that sounded ridiculous- I knew there was a difference between what I was suggesting and what we've already done. I've learned to be more patient when that's the situation." He took a breath. "I don't know if I've ever said this, to you, but the fact that you can go against me is actually reassuring."

His old friend said nothing more. It was only in some kind of emergency that they would exchange words to make sure that they had not offended each other, after all. That was something that Hermione never seemed to understand, not that she could take part in the present mission. That was only the beginning of the technical difficulties.

It had been a hard decision, but he had to admit that Ron was right that they could not afford to take the Legilimens with them, meaning they would be going in blind. He had mentioned the single invisibility cloak, but in addition to that, there was one Firebolt, which had earlier enabled him to get past the dementors, or played a large role, at least- the wraiths were aware of what was around them, but sometimes seemed to have a slow reaction time. They were very much inclined to get into a rut and go through the motions; whatever would depress and drive a normal person mad was exactly what they wanted, or so it seemed. When guarding a large part of the DA, they had, almost certainly, not been instructed to expect an attack, and they never once went the extra mile.

"We may not have a bunch of racing brooms, but anything that can fly is more than enough," he had said in the planning phase. "We need to form a massive circle around the tower."

"Yes," Susan said, the plan clicking with her. "That could work, given what we know about the guard. You've given us everything we need to deal with them... the humans might still be an issue, though."

"We'll force them to surrender," he decided. "With enough Patroni surrounding the facility, they'll assume that they've been encircled by a massive army, not a small band of teenagers. I've learned how to convey a message with the charm, and we can use an Amplifying Charm on the voice- it targets a sound, not a person's throat; that's misleading."

"What will the dementors do when they're cornered, though?" Neville asked. "They can be reasoned with, but they'll realize that we don't intend to let them out."

"They might be able to escape," Ginny said. "That's the only thing they could do, though. If they escape, then we'll have to kill them later, and we may never be able to do that, but at least the prisoners will be rescued."

No one said anything about how it was a sign of progress that she seemed to care about them. It could have just as easily been performative, but then, trying to do the right thing was always the first step, and only after trying and finding one's own efforts to be insufficient, could one trust the renewing of the spirit that the Phoenix promised. It was hard to say whether it was literally the same phoenix or if the legendary bird was simply a symbol for something more mysterious, but the promises were the reward of faith, and none of them needed to know every detail to manage that.

"Expecto Patronum."

As ever, the stag cantered forth. All around the prison in a circle, silver lights ignited in the distance, and as soon as all of them were there, they proceeded inward quickly, every other in the circle pulling up on his or her broomstick to have a cylindrical wall of light close out into a dome as the horizontal space between the patroni narrowed and the most intuitive method of escape for a floating nonbeing became non-viable.

"HUMAN GUARD OF AZKABAN. WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED. YOUR DEMENTORS WILL BE OF NO USE TO YOU. WITH NO OUTLET, THEY MAY SOON TURN AGAINST YOU."

His prediction was not entirely dishonest. It was, after all, one of the many things that they had discussed could happen. The wraiths had no sense of morality, but they may well judge that the guard was responsible for their plight, and after feasting on the prisoners for however long, their captors probably had more happy memories to go around, and even if they were normally kept at bay, it was a wonder if anything could stop them in their current circumstance. He got a signal from Neville, who had taken position directly above, that the enemy was surrendering and they started levitating portkeys in through the windows. They had brought twenty, more than enough, and all of them would dump the staff out on a field in Scotland, provided they dropped their wands first. The next set of portkeys would get the prisoners within about a mile of the order base, and there they would do their best to recover.

The DA forced the dementors inward, containing them within a progressively smaller dome. Blaise signaled that the human guard had been evacuated and he signaled back with red sparks, and Michael got the same treatment with his signal that the prisoners had all been given their portkeys. As heavily guarded and thickly warded and enchanted as the prison was, the only cure for portkeys was prevention; any visits to the island would see the visitors thoroughly screened for portkeys, wands, or anything that could be used either. Given that their visit did not come at a request, all that was out the window.

"It looks like they're suffering," Ginny said. "I can't tell if I'm supposed to feel bad for them."

"Well, that happens," Terry said. "I expect you to know the difference when it's an easier question, but this kind of thing would take a lot of reading and spiritual connection. In this case, I would say that they should be pitied, even though they're only getting the kind of treatment they must to protect the rest of us. I don't believe they'll go along with any kind of agreement to limit their consumption to just what they need to survive." He frowned. "We still don't know that they'll actually die."

Their solitary healer returned after a few minutes, saying that the Order helped him get everyone inside, but the prognosis was not what they were hoping. It would take time for the former prisoners to recover from prolonged exposure to especially hungry dementors- they had no special equipment for 'soul damage', but they could tell just by standard observation. He returned to his work after making his report.

"That's not exactly good, but they're still on the mend, right?" Ron asked. Neville looked like he was shivering and cast a Warming Charm on himself, but then changed his mind. "Are you quite all right?"

"I think I'm shivering out of fear," he said quietly. "Wouldn't want to overheat myself on top of that."

"I suppose," Susan said, looking around. "I don't miss this place. Have we gotten someone to work with us yet or are the Aurors heading here?"

"Blaise will be right back with-"

"Yes, yes, the update," the wizard in question said, flying in through a window. "They've agreed to say that the dementors turned on them because they were hungrier than normal, with a smaller stock of prisoners and a waiting period before getting them, and sucked out their happy memories, so they couldn't keep producing the Patronus Charm, and eventually they were forced to flee."

"Without their wands?" Ron asked.

"We'll send the wands back by owl post; it won't be checked until after they arrive." He looked around. "So, are the wraiths contained?"

"They are, for now. Like we've established, we don't know whether or not they'll die, or if they'll reappear elsewhere. They'll be monitored."

"Can they not eat the patroni if they're made of happy memories?" Neville asked.

"No, I don't think so," he said after a moment. "Before the last group, being a guard here was a lifetime position. If they could do something as obvious as eating the patroni, they would, and if anyone raised a problem with them about it, they would just act like working here was terrible just by the nature of the position." He looked over. "Well, it looks like they at least can't teleport, or they would have already."

"I don't think there's ever been an attempt to do something like this," Susan said, nodding. "At the very least, they don't know how to react. Even if they could get out of our trap, they wouldn't know where to go for food."

"At least that means they're not likely to expect it," Blaise said, sighing. "My overall impression of the guard here is that they were cowed. They know they don't have any other option than to act like the situation was unsalvageable and the prisoner's souls have been eaten, so there's no need to send anyone else out this way. We're effectively secure here."

"Except for the dementors," Neville said, looking over at them. "It's more of a wait and see for them. What do we do now?"

"The Order knows we're here," Harry said after thinking about it. "Soon, we're going to claim credit for negotiating with the human guard here to have the prisoners released. We'll act like since there was never a trial; they were just quietly disappeared, that the guard must have done it all on their own. It's a chance for the rest of the Ministry to let them fall on their swords. I reckon that if they ever wanted an out, if they ever wanted a way off the path they've set for themselves, then they'll take it."

"Michael doesn't think it's that good of a plan," Ginny said.

"You can just say you don't either," her brother said. "We know that they've been doubling down the whole time and it's going to look easier to double down again, but even if all it does is split them, then we'll at least be better off than we were. The Prophet's already been switching gears. They can't just keep printing nothing. It doesn't matter if they're sitting around a boardroom trying to come up with a serviceable excuse for launching a series of hit pieces against a minor who's saved peoples lives four out of the four years he'd been in school so far. It doesn't matter if they're hoping people forget about it- they won't. Now that a lot of people have been exposed to the truth, they're having fun making fun of their neighbors who didn't get on the quaffle quickly enough."

"Then we should make a statement from here," Susan said. "If we're going to be saying that we took this place over, and peacefully since we're not supposed to be overthrowing the Ministry, then we should invite someone here and say that the place has been straightened out."

"That's part of the plan," Blaise said. "It's just a matter of timing it. We'll need the Ministry to have heard and believed the cover story first."

"Why are we disproving ourselves again?" Neville asked. "I don't get it."

"We don't want anyone to think that we attacked a public asset, and technically we didn't; technically we only constrained the actions of the dementors and then said that we didn't know how they would react," Harry said. "The statement that we're going to release is going to make it look, though, like there was no even slightly coercive element to it; we're going to thank them for stepping aside and allowing the prisoners to go free, and allowing us to assume control of the nonbeings. Because it comes after what they said, with no proof, and contradicts it, with proof, everyone is going to think that they made something up about losing control of the situation and being forced to flee."

"Why are we lying, though?" Ginny asked. "Isn't lying wrong?"

"Killing people is as well, when you don't have a legitimate reason for it. Unfortunately, we're at war. The first statement won't be lying either, because they did lose control of the situation, and the dementors were especially hungry, and could have eaten their souls if they didn't flee. The reason that people are going to be misled by these two statements and the way that we time them is because of their own tendency to go too far in the other direction every time they hear something that contradicts the first thing they heard. We were just saying that about our so-called supporters. They might be supporting us, but they're not interested in doing the right thing. They weren't there when the same amount of evidence existed and they're not going to be there when people stop caring about this."

"It's a punishment, then," Susan said. "It's an oddly fitting one. If everything that we've said is correct, then it's only going to work on people who don't really care about the truth." She shrugged. "What about the people who really support us?"

"They'll know why we're doing it. They'll understand when we tell them everything." He took a breath. "They might even understand before that. I mean, it's pretty transparent that they wouldn't just surrender the prison for no reason, not even if all the inmates were low priorities and they hated working here."

"Are they worth anything in a fight?" Ron asked.

"What do you mean?" Neville asked. "We wouldn't know now."

"I was just thinking that if they weren't really the best o' the best, and they're probably not, working here and all- here I thought that security would have been massively ramped up- maybe people would think that they surrendered under a veiled threat, something they didn't want to risk... so something close to the reality rather than just handing it over for nothing."

"I think security wasn't ramped up here because of what we've said," Blaise said. "It was a low priority, and political prisoners are almost a non-starter at this point, with so much of the public against them, so they figured that either the dementors would be enough to keep us away, or nothing would. The Death Eaters weren't coming back, so there was no need to fortify it against them."

"It made sense before seeing the place that they might have increased their security, because they wouldn't have wanted to lose the same position three times," Susan said, shrugging. "At some point, it becomes non-viable as a prison and they just have to find some other place to put everyone. Most likely, they already have, or at least they've found a temporary location, because we know some of these people were arrested before we were put in here, and we never saw them. They ere only moved here because there was someone behind the scenes who decided that we needed Azkaban up and running again to feed the dementors. That's the only reason to move people from a place that must have been secure to one that could be less secure, at least taking recent history into account."

"I'm curious," Neville said. "Did that even work? Did it even contain the dementors here?"

"Well, probably not every last one of them," Terry said after coming back from helping Michael. The two of them had a tense relationship, but it seemed like they could at least not fault each other for misplaced intentions. "I did a small amount of looking into it and basically there have been sightings in Ireland. I'm not looking forward to having to round them up, but I don't know what the time frame for that is. Perhaps we should go over there and help them."

"If we had someone's permission, then I would be all for it," Ron said after a moment. "We're not accountable to anyone, though, so they wouldn't have any reason to trust us to help them. They couldn't send someone a bill if we broke something."

"What if we went through a gathering of believers, then?" he continued. "There should be at least one place left in the country where people still read the Phoenix Script. I did some reading on the subject."

"I see," Harry said. "If people could at least say that we were invited by a church native to that country, then they would have somewhere to go with their complaints. They might not entirely trust that group, well, they wouldn't, because otherwise they would belong to it too, but if we're successful then they might enjoy a bump in their membership." He shrugged. "It'll depend on how we phrase it to them, and that's probably our only option. We'll have to delay our other plans to get this done, but those dementors are a Secrecy matter."

"How do we do it, though?" Susan asked. "Our patroni have to stay here to keep these dementors trapped."

"That's right," he said after a moment. "We should be able to decrease the amount if we keep them closer together. If we had six of them, in a cube, then-"

"We haven't even used them like this before," Blaise interjected. "How do we know that they don't disappear after a while? Don't they usually disappear after they've delivered their message? The caster wouldn't be aware of when they've reached the target."

"That's true as well." He felt caught off-guard. Terry had suggested something that he wanted to back up, but there were issues with it. "We might not be able to leave only six people here; there might have to be at least ten here." He frowned as he looked around. In reality, there were only nine, since Hermione and Daphne had not been able to make it. "We can't send the recruits; that would be an insult even if we had enough that could use the charm."

"I suppose that after we make our announcement, we could offer along with that lessons on how to use the Patronus," Ron said. "It might seem patronizing, but that might be the only help we can offer." He raised his eyebrows for some reason. "We could form a... joint operation with the church over there if that's what we're calling it now."

"Teaching others would be better for the long term," their chaplain conceded. "Perhaps we can't always rush off to help everyone in the world."

"Might as well start on the speech, then," he muttered. "If anyone wants to contribute to it, great, I just... that's all for now."

He walked off before he could yawn in front of everyone. It had been a couple days at least since he had gotten a good night's sleep and he knew it was because he was not looking forward to another dream- it seemed unlikely that his soul had healed in just the time he had since he dreamt last, and that meant that he would have to face another dream, another attempt by the Lord Voldemort to further break down his soul. The others had no idea, initially, but he had not been able to hide it for long, and he was sure they would find out if he kept himself awake long enough. More than anything else, he wanted to get to sleep, because he felt like he could not accomplish anything intellectually demanding before that, certainly not a speech that would decide the future of their whole resistance organization. He took a breath. Could he try facing the same thing, no better prepared, and not fear it?

Harry found an empty cell with a serviceable cot. Even then, it was probably the worst place to try to sleep in the world. He could mutter to himself that the dementors were contained, but they were contained with happy memories, and maybe that was the place to start.