Milicent Bulstrode swam powerfully. In all honesty, she did everything powerfully. In a house full of fine boned delicate hot house flower maidens, Milicent Bulstrode had a face that could best be described as strong, and had less charitably been described as thuggish. She grew up in a society that prized slim hipped, small boned, delicate women, and she had shoulders broad as her father already, legs muscles that swelled like an Amazon, and arms that did not taper to tiny wrists and delicate fingers made for fine China and maidenly fans, but broadswords and battleaxe. Well, they also did fine with a bludgers bat, and at least in that way found a socially acceptable use for who she was always going to be.
She had struggled her entire life with the table manners required of a Lady of House Bulstrode. Not of course the Lady of the House, that was her aunt, nor even consort to the heir secundus, that would be her own mother. Still, she had been expected to somehow compete in the delicate dance of innuendo and insult, of status and serenity that was the battleground of the tea party and banquet. Her physical appearance would forever handicap her at the dance of manners and elegance that was Pure Blood society almost as much as her Half Blood status. She had gone into that quiet war the ugly half blood extra daughter of a minor house, and she had held her own. Her aunt never knew the tears that cost her, Milicent would pay whatever price THAT cost happily, and her mother knew enough to pretend she didn't see.
That made the current situation delightfully ironic on so many levels you almost had to be Slytherin to understand it. She was about sixty kilometers out to sea in the North Sea, swimming in two to four meter swells and winds measured in the Beaufort storm scale with a freshly killed seal in her teeth, and the blood was giving her a terrible case of the munchies.
She didn't begrudge her Hufflepuff friends the lives they had led, nor the gifts they had been given by fate. She loved all three of the little idiots, even if she would never be gauche enough to say it. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the goblin of Gringotts, who casually went around eating Dark Lord souls like canapes at the buffet and impregnated basilisks on the first date of course had a basilisk as his Animagus form. It was the totem of her house, the serpent, it was the beast of Salazar Slytherin, so of course fate gave it to a Hufflepuff because wasn't that funny?
Neville Longbottom turned into a badger, because of course the quiet sensitive boy who could turn into quite the most terrifying killer when he needed to protect someone would turn into a bundle of fangs and claws so cute that entire dorms of females wanted to cuddle him. Neville didn't just turn into the Hufflepuff totem, he literally embodied it. The dolt hadn't even an ounce of Slytherin to understand how he could parlay that particularly powerful Hufflepuff charisma to rise almost without effort to political power. It was almost painful to her to realize if he ever did realize his charisma gave him that power, he would take steps never to 'abuse' it. It was enough to make a grown Slytherin cry. She was a half grown Slytherin, so it just made her use the words Fred and George Weasley taught her. Remarkably earthy those Weasley boys.
Peter Petigrew turned into a rat, and of course as a Gryffindor his only thought was to use the single best stealth and spy form known to wizard kind to perv on underage girls in the shower. If Milicent Bulstrode had gained that power, the ability to turn into a rat, mouse, bug or even a non-descript Post Owl, she would have been a goddess of stealth and shadows, an information broker without peer whose weapons were secrets, and whose power was both unquestioned and unseen. Her hands would forever be clean, for her weapon would be secrets. It was every Slytherin's dream.
Milicent Bulstrode felt the cold wash over her fur. Felt the power of the ice clawing at all life, demanding it surrender to the endless stillness that preceded its unwanted intrusion into the perfect order of stillness, silence of the ice and void. Milicent Bulstrode didn't get a cuddly badger, a sneaky rat, or lordly basilisk. Milicent Bulstrode got a great mothering Polar Bear the size of a Thestral that pulled the Hogwarts carriages.
The cold of the sea lapped at her fur, the power of the storm whipped waves battered her, but the massive paws of the polar bear cut through the North Sea like the blades of a Destroyer, but her body moved inside the waves, rather than fighting them like the muggle warship that would fear breaking up or sinking should they catch these waves abeam. The seal clutched in her mouth tasted good, and when she got to shore, she was going to rip it open with claws the length of her human hands and tear into it with fangs longer than her human fingers. She was going to bury her face in it and be damned if anyone would say a word about her Merlin be damned table manners.
Milicent Bulstrode was never going to be a delicate flower like Daphne Greengrass or Pansy Parkinson. She would never be a stunning beauty like Narcissa Malfoy or the Black Widow Zabini. She no longer cared. Neither her gender nor her blood status would stand in her way. If she could not smile, blush and eyelash flutter her way to power and status, she would take it with her own power, and let those weaker than her gossip behind her back how she got it. They would fall silent when she passed, and that was enough.
Milicent Bulstrode felt the cold and cruelty of the North Sea, the power of the storm, the cold elemental fury that hated all life, and knew she was home. Her Animagus form was a polar bear, not a subtle spy, not a cuddly or cute mascot that masked its lethality behind a nature issued tuxedo, she was a primal hunter of the ice, an apex predator. A very young apex predator with a Slytherin's understanding that as powerful as a polar bear was, to the Orca she had seen pass earlier, she too was just food. Still, to what waited on the island she approached, she was not food.
Azkaban, the forbidden prison of wizards sat on a storm tossed island in the North Sea, half way between Scotland and Scandinavia, nobody ever wanted the place because the confluence of ley lines that warped magic where they crossed were some of the darkest in the world. A Dark Lord had lived, been left alone, and eventually died here. When wizarding Britain went to deal with the starving Dementors who began to leave the island they eventually struck a deal with the Dementors they did not have the strength to wipe out, but had no intention of letting onto British shores.
Azkaban would be left to the Dementors, but the wizards of Britain would use the island as its prison. The prisoners would be the Dementors food. In return, they would bow to Ministry control, as long as they were well fed, and keep prisoner all those witches and wizards deemed too dangerous to be allowed free. Granted, half the time this meant politically not criminally, but the Dementors were remarkably non judgemental about the morality or even legality of their buffet. As long as the food screamed and twitched, they were happy. They fed on happy. They drained all the positive memories and emotions from their prey, feeding on that as they fed on the life energy and magic that was bound in those memories. In a very real sense, those memories were bound to your soul, and Dementors used them to tear off tiny pieces of the human soul to feed and sustain them. Eventually, you ran out of bites, and died. Stronger witches and wizards both lasted longer and tasted better, but nobody lasted forever. That was fine. Wizard politics and actual crime continued to provide Azkaban's Dementors with all they could eat, and in return, no one given to them escaped.
Milicent felt the tide rush, smelled what humans persistently called "the smell of the sea" which was really the smell of the shore, or particularly the tide line that was the eternal war zone between sea and shore. Wizard or muggle, humans were very good at ignoring facts that got in the way of their beliefs, so thousands of years after they had gone to sea and realized that the smell they called "the sea" was really only about the last few hundred meters before shore; polar bears knew better. She felt the powerful wards of Azkaban wash over her, and fail to grip. After all, they sought witch and wizard. The odd magic of House Elves was so very vulnerable to Dementors that none of them would dare apparate her, nor have the power to defend themselves or leave if they did. The wards did not care about animals, nor could the Dementors that cruised overhead. They could not taste her, and the pathetic cold of the grave that was their weapon was less than nothing to a being of the endless and eternal cold that was Milicent Bulstrode. Her belly rumbled. Shore meant she could finally open this seal. Sirius Black was her gift to Harry Potter. Oh, she also had plans for him with Draco Malfoy and Narcissa Black, what Slytherin would fail to squeeze as many uses out of expendable assets as she could? While she was here she would pick up another gift for Neville. It was simply accepted that when Slytherin ladies travelled they would shop, and the gifts they bought would be wildly and outrageously expensive. It was the done thing, and Milicent Bulstrode was too well raised a Slytherin lady not to follow the done thing.
She had no idea what to do for Hermione. The girl was practical to a fault. A very glaring fault she was somehow proud of. Honestly, breaking someone out of Azkaban was less daunting than shopping for Hermione Granger's gift for turning 13, a witch's majority. How annoying was that?
Milicent Bulstrode, polar bear and Lady Selwyn by right of conquest tore open the seal with her claws and burrowed her muzzle inside and tore with her fangs. She bolted the meat, fat, and entrails steaming raw, and it was the best feast of her life. She tore and growled and ripped, her snow white fur going pink, but in no way ever approaching the cuteness that a girl in pink supposedly naturally generated, but that was her life in a nutshell. Removed from all need for decorum, table manners, and delicacy, she ate like Ron Weasley set loose in the desert tray, and regretted nothing. Then she curled up on the shore in the sun and napped. Prison breaks were traditionally done in darkness, and she was a well brought up Slytherin. Tradition was important.
Covered in seal blood and guts, Milicent found that she could still be revolted almost beyond reason, by climbing up the great sewer pipe that oozed from Azkaban prison like the drainage shunt to the most corrupt wound in the universe.
In her innocence, and to find she had one at this point as a well raised Slytherin past her first murder was a bit shocking, she had thought herself prepared for the grim realities of climbing up what was essentially the waste chute for all the internal sewers of a major prison. Well, she was wrong.
Polar bears have an excellent sense of smell, they can smell a seal on the ice thirty kilometers away, and catch the scent of a single breath from one using a breathing hole in the ice at at least six. The sewers of Azkaban were filled with the natural human wastes, as she was prepared for, but they were also filled with the rotting corpses of prisoners. Dementors ate souls, not bodies. The bodies of the expended prisoners were simply dropped down the sewers with the rest of the waste. Dementors do not smell physical things, just magic, memories, emotions and souls. They know the smell of human filth and decaying human bodies helps break down the minds of their prisoners and make them easier to digest, so they make no effort to clean up.
Milicent decided she hated Dementors. The memoirs of Salazar Slytherin caution his followers to ration hate like the most precious of resources. Do not spend it idly, for fools waste it on mere annoyance or enmity, while the wise reserve their hatred to that whose existence is toxic to their very soul. Hate only that whose existence you would expend your very life to expunge. Even placing her life upon those scales, she still determined that she hated Dementors and those who made pacts with them.
She climbed up through the sewers to the internal stairwell. The great tower was hollow, and in the pits swirled an endless eddy of dark within the dark, the Dementors of Azkaban. Some rose up the column to the cells, and the prisoners inside would scream as the Dementors fed.
The guards rarely patrolled, and then in force. Usually only for feeding time, as the protection amulets of the guards kept Dementors from attacking them, but anyone with the magic to be a guard could not block out the awareness of the Dementors feeding. Even a human sadist could not enjoy this, as the feeling made it quite clear the Dementors wanted to feed on all humanity. To them, all were prey. Milicent Bulstrode was about three hundred kilograms of juvenile polar bear, unusually large for her gender of the breed, but Animagi tended to be exceptional. To her, the Dementors were simply unappetizing prey. To them, she may as well have been the stones of the castle, impervious and uninteresting to them in almost equal measure.
She had the scent of Sirius Black. His motorcycle and his leather jacket had been with Hagrid. As the jacket would not have fit Hagrid past age eight, he had never touched it and it had sat in Sirius saddle bags untouched for years with his old spare muggle clothes.
Stalking up the tower, Milicent was in a bad mood. She had two scents that were close to the one she wanted, but so mixed in the air she couldn't tell which was which. Soon she heard one of the Dementors feeding, and a witch began laughing hysterically, calling for her Dark Lord's vengeance, swearing that when the Dementors bowed to her Dark Lord again, she would teach them the meaning of pain.
Milicent tasted the air. That was one of the scents. Like Sirius Black, but not. Smelled a bit like Narcissa Black (formerly Malfoy), but not. Ah. Bellatrix LesStrange (ne Black). She was on Milicent's list.
With a growl Milicent padded towards the Dementor who turned and projected its cold and despair. Milicent felt her magic stir within her. The dark ley lines of Azkaban and the cold of the North Sea, the natural power of her element had never been so thick upon the air as now. Intellectually, Milicent knew animagi cannot cast spells. The wild magic of the elements did not require spells. Sure you could shape it with spells, amplify it with wands, and make it perform like wizard magic, but at heart it was the primal stuff of the universe. It was power from before words, before language, when humanity was a tiny scuttling thing cowering in holes and trees while ancient beasts ruled the earth.
Milicent roared, and the ancient power of the void, the eternal cold of the night before creation sang. The Dementor froze, the bars of the cell froze, the stones of Azkaban froze and the magic woven into all of it froze.
A great white paw and dark claws slammed down and the Dementor shattered. Milicent turned and shattered the bars. Bellatrix LeStrange laughed madly to see her, she gathered her wandless magic and struck with a cutting curse that would have killed a guard, as she had when she was still pretty enough they thought of rape. Of course, the guards were not three hundred kilogram polar bears with heavy fur and fat between the vulnerable bits and enemy fang and claw.
Milicent charged. Bellatrix LeStrange did not show any fear as she died. Milicent decided that she did House Black and House Slytherin reasonably proud for a psychotic murderess at least in her end. She also decided she didn't really like the taste of human. Seal was better, but needs must when Morgana's dancing. She tore Bellatrix head off, and stacked it in the hallway. Must remember to take it on the way back.
The next two cells were Rabastan and Rodolfus LeStrange. They did not resist, and did beg. She hoped Bellatrix had been sold in marriage to whichever of those idiots had been her husband, because if that represented her free choice, she thought less of the witch.
The forth cell she opened and faced immediate attack. A great black Grim. It was more than half starved and not more than fifty kilograms, looking like the largest wet dream of an Irish Wolfhound with hair black as night and fangs that could double as daggers if you needed one. The Grim would never have been her physical match, she was a polar bear and unless you were as well, about the only thing she needed to fear were orca, and dragons. Still, like Bellatrix, the Grim gave it his all.
His bite was ignorable, and her cuff was not. She swatted him tail over teakettle back to the bed built into the wall, then shifted back to human form.
The Grim rose growling from where the pad of her paws had tossed him, aware and confused that she had avoided using her claws, and shocked to see a teenage witch in Slytherin House robes staring at him with a frown.
"Are you Sirius Orion Black, godfather of Harry James Potter?" Milicent said firmly.
Sirius shifted into his wizard form, the tattered rags of his long ago Auror robes now almost unrecognizable in their filth and disrepair.
"I'm Sirius Black, and who in Merlin's name are you? Some Death Eater come for a laugh? What do you think you can do, the Dementor's can't?" Sirius snarled his half mad defiance.
Milicent massaged her forehead. She felt a Gryffindor headache coming on. She sighed deeply.
"I am not a Death Eater," Milicent began, but she then found herself having what she termed a "Harry Potter" moment where her brain just hung a quick left in conversation and went places it shouldn't, and took everyone else along for the ride.
"Of course if you are what you eat, I suppose I am a little bit of at least three Death Eaters, which is a whole lot of ironic if you think about it a bit. I would be a whole lot more Grey Seal, and possibly a fair bit of treacle tart." Milicent mused.
Sirus Black was shocked out of his outrage, shook his shaggy, bearded head and forced his cold grey eyes to focus as he shouted.
"Who are you and what are you doing here?" Sirius demanded.
Milicent, blushing that she had been caught having a "Harry Potter" moment in public wrote the lapse off to too long thinking in her head as she swam from Haroldswick in the Shetland Islands to Azkaban though open ocean, answered his question.
"I am Milicent Bulstrode, Lady Selwyn by right of conquest. That means the old geezer pulled a wand on me over dinner and I killed him. That one I didn't eat. That makes four Death Eaters killed, and only three chewed, so it's not actually habitual, but you can't really cast spells in Azkaban without setting off all the alarms." Milicent said as if this explained almost everything.
Sirus Black blinked and answered simply "What?"
Milicent decided this was a Gryffindor and she needed to communicate clearly using small words or he might get lost and cost them valuable time. This was a jailbreak and it behooved her to be swift.
"I am a well bred Slytherin and my closest friends in the world are having their 13th birthday. What Harry Potter wants most in this world is family, and you are his godfather, so I am clearly here shopping." Milicent said simply. Gryffindor or no, he was raised Black and understood there was no reasoning with a Pure Blood noblewoman shopping.
Sirus blinked again. "I'm a present?"
Milcent sniffed, and pinched her nose. "Clearly I will have to wash you before wrapping, but since we have quite a few miles of the North Sea to swim through, I'm sure most of the stink will come off."
Sirius looked offended, but she tossed him her school bag.
"Hold this and stay human. I left Neville's gifts in the hallway. I don't want them dripping on the outside of that bag." Milicent said as she turned and walked away.
Seeing no reasonable alternative. Sirius Black followed. His shock was not diminished as he found himself holding out the teenage witch's school bag as she stuffed the heads of Rabastan and Rodolfus LeStrange, and his own demented sister Bellatrix LeStrange into the bag. The heads appeared to have been torn off, supposedly in polar bear form. Sirius shuddered.
Milicent saw Sirius shudder and snarled at him, unwilling to deal with his Gryffindor squeamishness when there was real work to be done. Honestly, she was afraid the Hufflepuffs were actually corrupting her.
"Do not think to judge me, Black. These three and Barty Crouch Jr tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom so badly they had been trapped in endless torment for my friend Neville's entire life until he had to end their suffering himself. He lived his entire life in fear of these Death Eaters, his only memories of his parents filled with his shame at being terrified to be dragged to his parents bedsides to see them writhing in agony and unable to even recognize him. He is too good a boy to ever murder for simple revenge, but he needs it. I am Slytherin, I do what is necessary while Gryffindors rot in cells because they were too busy being brave and bold to be effective." Milicent said.
"You are very important to Harry, but I don't actually know or even like you. If you fall behind, you will finish the trip like the seal I ate; dragged through the North Sea in my fangs. Keep up." Milicent threatened.
Sirius Black found himself laughing. You almost had to be a Marauder to appreciate it. Sirius Black, Lord Black, hit wizard, known and feared by all of wizarding Britain was being threatened by a little Slytherin girl headed into her third year, and being threatened effectively.
"Ah pronglet," Sirius mused giving the nickname of Harry, son of James "Prongs" Potter. "what have you gotten into?"
When the girl turned back into a polar bear, showing the slower transformation of a relatively new Animagus, Sirius was even more impressed. To be that new an Animagus and decide your breakout prank would be an Azkaban raid was too extreme even for the famous Marauders. His own transition to Padfoot the Grim was seamless and natural, faster than blinking and requiring even less thought.
He passed what looked like frozen Dementor bits and took a long and satisfying pee on them. The polar bear looked on with the superiority of a well born noble girl to crass and boorish behavior. Honestly, how she could act the Slytherin noblewoman covered in blood and bits of people that ought to remain unseen on the inside, was beyond him. Still, it did firm his resolve to keep up on the swim.
It was a long swim. By the end, he was shamefully sprawled on her back like a cub while she finished the swim, seemingly immune to the bitter cold and pounding waves. Sirius held on to the one thought. He would see Harry again.