"The kid needed a few sickles to get back home and I didn't have any on me," Blaise explained as he returned to Harry's side. "Who's this?"

"Mafalda Hopkirk, Improper Use of Magic Office- sent me a letter a while back. If I remember correctly, that was where Umbridge was working before she started as Supreme Undersecretary. My guess is they've had it out for Hogwarts for decades."

"Got anything out of her yet?"

"No, not yet. I don't really want to use the Cruciatus when the Imperius will do. You did good work with that member of the clean-up crew."

"What kind of information do we want?"

"Well, where our friends are being held would be a good start. Get everything they've been doing in the castle, anything you can verify or contradict with our own experiences in there. One thing they don't know is how to get into the Chamber of Secrets. Place hasn't been touched in four years or thereabouts."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to make it look like I've just found the note. They've got to have some intended method of contact on it."

"We were supposed to go to Hogsmeade, and there's no getting out of that. Even if you did, and you got yourself caught, I do not believe they would be convinced by it. Out of anyone in the world, they probably know Ron and Hermione have been working with you the whole time, and if they weren't with you, then they would know that you were just the distraction. If they've already caught them, then there's no point to the trick."

"You might be right," Harry said after a moment, thinking about it. "Yeah, the time to try to pretend to go along with their demands is passed. What we can do, though... is another distraction. I'm going to London."

"Of all places, why?"

"Voldemort doesn't have a reason to stop attacking muggles. That's where the biggest number of them live, at least on this island. If I can get seen attacking a Death Eater or someone, then all I would have to do is warp back. Based on everything that we found out from where the Lestranges live, whatever that places is called, we need to expect that they're going to try and avoid direct confrontations with the Aurors, and with so many of them all the way in Scotland-"

"Go. Don't talk about it any longer, just go."

As he apparated away, it seemed that Ron was not the only one who had grown somewhat tired of excessive communication when they should be acting decisively. There might be no ideal solution in any given case, but acting before the enemy could predict what they were doing was always better than nothing. The streets of London were just like he remembered them, though he could practically feel the eyes on him. Quickly stowing his wand and blending into the crowd, grateful he was wearing regular clothes instead of black robes, he took a position on Brockdale Bridge, where he knew he could be seen from far away, but probably no one would notice if he used his wand from that distance. He knew from experience that casting spells in a predominantly muggle area would set off alarms at the Ministry, but it would be a wonder if they had anyone left to deal with underaged magic.

The detection charms told him there was something vaguely dark in Hyde Park of all places. Technically, it could be something as simple as a kid using the wrong incantation, but he was reasonably certain that he could get away with responding to it. Jumping off the bridge, he probably surprised a few of the more observant people right next to him, but he threw the invisibility cloak over him and mounted the Firebolt at the same time; it was a maneuver he had practiced a lot that made him effectively invincible. The last time he spoke with Mad-Eye, which was the last time they were doing joint work with the Order, he asked and apparently Auror training for invisible opponents was to listen for footsteps, which were rarely muffled, and use detection charms at the same time. Harry was not sure if there were any detection charms that would work, but they would have a hard time locating him if he kept moving, and they sure as hell were never going to hear any footprints. He had very much deliberately built an army to increase the power at his command, but not because he was not capable of being an absolute savage by himself.

There were four targets and it looked like right as he was over them, their marks burned, and he remembered that they had faded into scars while their master was dead. While they were looking away and focusing on their arms, probably as a message from Voldemort rang out through their heads, he pointed down with his wand and killed one of them before speeding off, impressed with their reaction time; though it was too quick for them to dodge the spellfire, they almost immediately guessed that he was there and what he had just done, tucking, rolling and firing back upwards in various directions, but he was out of their effective range in a fraction of a second. Most likely, they would call off the mission and disapparate, but they were inclined to get a kill every time one of their numbers fell; their master rarely forgave a low ratio of kills to deaths.

"TERRORISTS IN HYDE PARK," he announced, using the Amplifying Charm on his own neck, shortly before speeding off. Again, he was certain that he violated the Statute, but the muggles would probably think it was a police officer talking over a loudspeaker, and the Hit Wizards were more likely to respond to the content of the message than the delivery mechanism, and the Improper Use of Magic office would have an indelible record that several killing curses were used.

With that, he fled, getting high up just for the sake of getting out of the range of any anti-apparation jinxes that might have been cast without his notice, and then apparated away, catching sight of some wizards, badly dressed in muggle garb. Technically, the real violators of the Statute were the Death Eaters, but he was sure that if he stuck around, he would be the one getting blamed. It was not certain that anyone would recognize his voice, though, so he wondered for a moment if he really accomplished his objective of telling the Ministry that he was in London. He shook his head as soon as he arrived back in the Scottish grassland mountain. He had done all he could to help contain the threat that the dark wizards posed against muggles, all he could before they apparated away, anyway, and doing any more would create too many problems for the memory-erasers, and if anyone at the Ministry did good work, they did. There was no way he could just decide for everyone else that the magical world would be better off exposed to its mundane counterpart; he could not think of very much that would help his position less.

"Get anything out of her?" he asked. Blaise had a somewhat strange method of interrogation; he had a transfigured set of chairs like they were calmly talking about something and he looked up as if there was nothing wrong as Mafalda Hopkirk stared with an expression of the deepest confusion he had ever seen.

"I suppose the weakness of the approach is not that she reveals too little, but too much, and then I just have to sit there sorting through it. It's reliable information, though." He sighed. "Most likely, our friends are being held in cells in a separate facility."

"She can't be resisting the Imperius?"

"Oh, she could be, but she's resisting it by spitting out irrelevant facts. I have no doubt that any of them are correct. I've combined my approach with a terrible Confunding Charm. I can be quite certain she has no idea where she is."

"What kind of separate facility is it, then?" he asked.

"That's going to take a bit longer. Find something else to do in the meantime."

He was thinking about getting out to another location, perhaps finding Skeeter, and right in the middle of that thought, another showed up in his mind.

"Harry?"

"Hermione? Are you and Ron-"

"We're in the Room of Requirement."

"How did you manage to get through the castle's defenses? I thought you couldn't use Legilimency there."

"Well... we're in the Vanishing Cabinet. The short version is that it opens up a path through space and time out of the school, and if you go far enough into it, you're outside of the sphere of control imposed by someone in the school. I don't think you could apparate to me, though."

"I thought that thing was broken. Did you manage to fix it?"

"Well, the superficial damage, yes, but there's something else the matter. If I devote another... I don't know how long, it's a matter of hours- I might be able to get to where you could apparate to me. The point is that I don't want you to worry about us. Ron is doing some experiments on the room."

"Bad news on our end." He went ahead and explained all that they had learned.

"Well, I don't know how to respond to that, I admit, but I very much cannot help you from here. I wonder about the Aurors, though. Why have them here when there are Death Eaters in London?"

"I'm afraid the answer's in the question. Either someone in the Ministry is working directly with them and wants there to be muggle deaths, or someone figures that they can use an attack to their advantage."

Their experiments with replacing government services had not made them turn around and develop sympathy for their enemies. It was not because they found it was easy to rule on some issue brought before them, but because the massive backlog in the court system was probably not the result of that essential problem; it was probably the result of bloated departments siphoning off the funding. The enemy had become more concerned with the ability to project more force than the reasons why they should deploy that force, and the results spoke for themselves. Even at the end of the last war, there were countless sham trials for various Death Eaters- there was nothing theoretically wrong with the Imperius Defense, but anyone who had any exposure to them could have testified that they did not show any signs of being controlled, and the most likely reasons those witnesses had been excluded was because there were a few allies in various positions that had never been properly unmasked. Much of what Snape said about the enemy was tossed out due to what was called a 'zero-tolerance' policy, a particularly ironic name given that it resulted in the exoneration of countless dark wizards due to lack of concrete evidence.

"For now I'll have to leave it to you," Hermione thought after a moment. "Ron's calling me over about something. I really want to thank you for getting that little girl out- somehow, at some point, we'll have to get the rest of them out."

"Yeah. Reach out whenever you get through."

He said nothing more to her if she had still been listening, though he found himself somewhat taken aback by how quickly she got into his head. How much better had she become after practicing with Ron? Was there any end to it? At some point, he needed to work with her again, though he was sure he would have more practice before that, whether he wanted her or not. He was, after all, going to the island where they were putting Azkaban back together.

"I've thought of a place to search," he said.

"You're mad."

"I haven't even told you where it is."

"I thought I would see if I could prompt you into revealing it. No matter. I know that it's mad-"

"It's the only place I can search. I know how to get there, and I'll make sure I'm not seen." He went ahead and revealed to Blaise what was going on with the other two, which he correctly took as an attempt to change the subject. "I know you don't approve. Get more information, something we can use, out of this old hag, and come up with a plan to get those kids out of Hogwarts. I'm going to the North Sea."

"That's where you're going?! That's worse than I thought."

"I'll be fine. I've got the cloak, I've got my Firebolt, and they're not expecting me. If our friends are in there for too long, there's no telling what can happen to them. It's just like last time; we have to strike before we think they're in position."

"Then don't screw it up," he said.

"Believe it or not, you're not the first to tell me."

Harry disapparated and started heading northeast on the broomstick. It had been a hot minute since they were in the Hebrides, but while there, Hermione had given him a general direction on how to get to Azkaban. Of course, there were spells in place to prevent people from finding it that easily, but the depressive feeling was unmistakable. He wanted to cast a Patronus, but he doubted he would really draw any dementors to his position without one, just the human guard. While the wraiths wanted to protect their livestock, it did not really make a difference to them whether they fed off one person or another, so his first task was simple enough.

"Harry?"

"Daphne? Your range has improved."

"Yes, there hasn't been much else I can do in this hell hole."

"How many guards are there? I was thinking I could get the wands away from them and the dementors wouldn't see any difference between them and you."

"There are only four of them. I'll leave it up to you whether you think that's better than just stunning them. Whatever you do, get it done quickly because some of us aren't handling this well. I count three panic attacks."

She was probably right; simply disarming the enemy might not work because they would have a stash of wands they could use to moderate effectiveness, but he had also heard that dementors had a hard time feeding off people while they were asleep, making that a common defense mechanism. A better idea came to him and he cast the full-body bind on a witch at the top of the spire. It looked like her Patronus, which took the form of an insect, was still defending her, and it would even after she died, but it could be banished like a poltergeist, at least according to Hagrid, who had cautioned them about all kinds of spirits. The dementors started moving up, but only slightly.

"Petrificus Totalus," he incanted when he saw the next guard. Most likely, it had been hard to convince the wraiths to come back, especially after losing their whole supply, but they did not have a better alternative; splitting up and going all over the country was an unnecessary risk; they could go for days without finding anyone if they went to the wrong place, and if they went to an overly populated area, there was a decent chance someone would find a way of getting rid of them for good. They were not exactly fearful, but they seemed to prefer a steady supply of happy memories, even if that meant they had to keep getting them from a dwindling source.

Harry could not contact Daphne again, and he assumed that the only reason she was not contacting him was because she was doing her best not to lose it, or else she was trying to counsel someone else. Before their current problems, he would not have counted her as one of the warmest, most freely helpful people, but at least it seemed she cared enough about the group that she would do whatever she could to help the weakest link. The third human guard did not see him coming any more than the previous two, and he hit the floor just like they had. Could they really only find four units to guard the whole prison? Did they think that dementors would care if they went unconscious?

He cast his own Patronus before the wraiths could start to take advantage of the situation. It no longer mattered if the last target saw them; he needed to get his friends out before they lost it, and he could figure out the rest later. The enemy practically took the form of a black cloud and made an unpleasant noise as he approached with his silver stag. A basic unlocking charm did not work on the cells, and he also could not apparate inside, but Ginny saw her wand sticking out of his pocket and grabbed it, jamming the tip into the lock and getting it open, though he had no idea what she did. It looked like Ernie was having a mental breakdown and he took him to the campsite first, as they were still getting the others out, taking him past the boundary on the Firebolt and apparating with him. The interrogation was not concluded, but Blaise was perfectly willing to go out and help get the others, and it was much faster with both of them. A panicked guard found out what they were doing and while Terry used a wandless summoning charm to distract him, Ginny killed him right as Harry was getting back.

"Let me help with the wands," she insisted in the middle of getting everyone out. It seemed everyone who was having a panic attack was still in the middle of it, just miles and miles to the southwest.

"Cast a Patronus," Harry said.

"Expecto Patronum." Nothing happened, except her jaw slowly opening.

"That's what I thought. You're in no condition to help. I need small numbers when I go down there. The stag can't protect more than just me from all these dementors."

"There are other prisoners in here," Hannah said. "It's your call if we free them as well, Dragon Marshall."

"They're regular criminals," Terry supplied. "It's a question as to whether or not Azkaban should have existed in the first place."

"There's nothing else we can do with the dementors," he said. "You two have most of your marbles; work with Blaise to get everyone else out while I get the rest of the wands." He looked around. Looks like it's just Neville and he's passed out; won't be an issue."

He went downstairs by himself while letting the others use the broomstick, not expecting an issue. Daphne, after all, would have looked around with Legilimency to see how many there were first thing, but he supposed there could still be someone other security measure, or someone with better Occlumency. He found, though, that there was no one there, just most of the wands, making him think there was a chance a few of them had gone elsewhere. It was unfortunate, but there was nothing for it at the moment. He took all the ones that were there and went back upstairs, grateful that his Firebolt was still there to get him out of the range of the prison's anti-apparation jinx. Harry did not want to be there much longer.

The crew was a mess when he returned. Some of them had passed out, and others were just staring blankly. The recruits had been informed, of course, that they had been taken prisoner, and were not going to be happy until there was an explanation. Many of them would probably demand that demotions were handed out, no matter what the reason was, and from the looks on their faces, it seemed some of them would find it hard to disagree. If it was something that no amount of them could have prevented, though, then he, Blaise, and the other two should not be spared whatever happened, and if they all lost a rank, it would make no difference.

"What's going to happen to everyone?" Hannah asked, giving voice to his thoughts as she gratefully took her wand again.

"Focus on healing," he said. "That will all be decided later."