Haroldswick, Shetland Islands, HMS Demeter
(Harry's Magical Ship Demeter. Hermione suggested it, and none of the muggleborn have bothered to inform the rest that HMS Demeter makes the Durmstrang ship a British Warship).
Waiting for them at the end of the gangplank was Rita Skeeter in probably the most clothes she has ever worn, as the winds coming off the sea in the Shetland Islands were fit for dragons, sheep, and the utterly mad alone. With her was her photographer, who being from Inverness was somewhat less disturbed. She waited for Harry to lead his troops down from the HMS Demeter, which sailed up onto the strand, parting the shore as it parted the sea with the sort of magical bullying that allowed a sail driven frigate to sail as a submarine, and carve a slip for itself when it wanted ashore.
"Rita, good to see you! Are you ready to record some history?" Harry cheered happily.
Rita was on the far side of nervous and only six nail growing potions had left her with anything but chewed stumps for fingers as the waiting had been murderous on her.
"Harry, you have to save me. Voldemort took the Prophet, anyone who isn't writing his propaganda is dead or in Azkaban. The prison has started negotiating terms to release the prisoners and Dementors." Rita said, clearly more focused on running for cover than covering world events.
The students of three academies, four goblins, two Hogwarts Heads of House, and a startling number of lords and ladies of powerful houses of both light and dark marched down the gangplank, as what looked to be twenty-foot serpents hung off the rigging like hissing and swaying tourists out for a lark. Rita was sure there was something off about those snakes. The heads were...different. There was something in her Care of Magical Creatures lore that was just on the tip of her tongue, but her brain skittered away from it, wanting nothing more to do with the memory or its implications whenever it got close to the word basilisk.
"Rita, Rita, Rita. Don't let the little unimportant things bother you. Don't you want to see how the Tri-wizard champions, the rumored and absolutely true illegal goblin/wizard coven of Harry Potter are going to use forbidden ritual magic to take Azkaban and make Dementors an endangered and soon to be extinct species?" Harry said cheerfully, steering Rita inland.
Draco Malfoy came past, holding a large potion bottle in his hand, Severus Snape, Narcissa Black, and Luna Lovegood surrounded him like moons around a planet, as he seemed lost to some sort of internal battle, focused on the potion bottle so hard he just about ran over Rita Skeeter before Luna guided him gently around.
Mad Eye Moody stalked down, two flesh eyes and flesh legs and an unscarred face making the Auror look rather more terrifying as he stalked down the gangplank followed by a twenty foot serpent.
The photographer finally reacted in shock. "Ere now, that's a bloody basilisk or I'll eat my camera!"
Mad Eye whirled on him and shouted "She has a name boyo. That is Constance, but if you are taking a picture of her you will use her full name. Constance Vigilance. She is a Dark Wizard hunter, my apprentice, and yes indeed, a basilisk." Moody snarled, then hissed to Constance.
"$ Say hello to the nice photographer, and if he goes for his wand, or other weapon, kill him. $" Moody hissed to Constance.
Rita went white as a sheet and almost fell down, but Narcissa caught her elbow. Stheno, her own basilisk peeked over Narcissa's shoulder at the reporter as Constance hissed a greeting to the photgrapher.
"$ This is the one that lies for a living, Venomed One? $" Stheno asked.
"$ Unless the truth will hurt more, then she uses that. As long as she is properly terrified, she will remain loyal to us darling. $" Narcissa hissed to her snake.
"$ She has limited bladder control and her sweat tastes of sweet, sweet terror.$" Said Stheno licking Rita's face once.
Rita looked at Narcissa in panic. "You can talk to snakes? What is the basilisk saying?" Rita said, her panic rising.
Narcissa smiled softly. "Stheno likes you, and knows we can trust you. " Narcissa purred.
Stheno looked at Narcissa in wonder, as the Venomed One showed again how she could poison with words the way a young basilisk needed fangs to do, bending the will of her prey with a toxic blend of truth and lies. Truly Stheno had been lucky to find such a perfect mentor.
Rita smiled at the snake cautiously as the ritual circle was set up, and Draco Malfoy and Luna Lovegood took central position. Harry, Milicent, Neville, and Hermione took the four quarters and began to call the quarters to begin the ritual, and their battle.
This time, the ritual was conducted without any explanation given to Rita Skeeter, and she felt like a first year at Hogwarts again, as magic she could not explain or understand moved in the world around her so powerfully she had to work hard not to shift to her animagus beetle form in terror.
Neville Longbottom's wand grew into a great golden scythe, and he used the base of it to strike the ground, and from the earth in a circle around the drumming and chanting witches and wizards a ring of Scottish Thistle nearly three meters tall tore from the ground, vibrant green with thorns long and terrible, yet crowned with purple flowers that gave forth sweet scent.
Milicent Bulstrode's wand grew to a spear of ice so white it bordered on blue, and she struck the ground with a cry and shouted word, and the ground beneath the thistle went white with frost, and ice grew upon the thistle, turning every thorn into a cruel dagger of ice, yet not harming the plant beneath.
Hermione raised her arms up to the sky, and her body ran with fire, she gave a scream closer to the cry of a bird and the ice burned with flames of blue that burned but not with heat, the circle was warded over by earth, ice, and fire when Harry turned to the sky and with his runes blazing, raised a wand that grew into a spear of lightning and cried out to the sky, and was answered.
A storm wind rose and howled, whipping around the circle to flatten the bracken and heather, but not touching the thistle circle, nor moving its flames. Lightning tore down from the sky and danced across the tops of the thistle crowns, weaving a web of power that lit the face of Draco in stark relief, leaving his face a stark set of bright white lines and dark hollows, while Luna Lovegood's eyes shone with light that disturbed Rita in ways she could not actuall describe.
Draco took the potion he had been staring at in his hand, and drank it down. He threw back his head and screamed, and his eyes threw back the lightning in with the double reflective lenses of a night hunter. Rita understood an animagus initial transformation when she saw it, but the power of the ritual raced through the earth and sky calling to something beyond Draco, something beyond the circle, and it called with power that made Rita want to take cover. Her photographer began to snap photos as fast as he could change films as Draco Malfoy raised his head to the sky and roared, and the sky roared back.
Dragons from the nearby reserve were taking to the air, circling above the ritual and roaring out their challenge, and Draco Malfoy was wracked in a transformation that tore his body asunder as his legs twisted and grew, his arms bent and lengthened. His feet tore from his shoes as they grew long and clawed as a dragon but one toe above the foot grew long and sharp as a sickle sword.
From the circle, Harry Potter shouted. "Bloody hell, Draco is a dinosaur."
Hermione corrected. "Deinonychus, the Terrible Claw"
Neville looked confused. "He's got feathers."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Dinosaur's had feathers, at least many of them in the raptor lines."
Milicent snickered. "He's got peacock feathers!"
Hermione sighed. "Of course they are peacock feathers, he's still a Malfoy."
Luna stood before the giant Deinonychus, it terrible gutting claws, the long wing claws of its functional feathered wings and stroked his neck.
"He is my Dragon." Luna said, and hugged his neck. Draco for his part threw his head back and roared his challenge to the dragons of the sanctuary, and when his roar split the skies, flame blasted from his mouth in a stream of primordial magic.
Draco rose through the crown of lightning above the ritual, and his feathers seemed to drink in the power of the storm as he rose. His voice sounded again in challenge, and this time, the power of the ritual, the power of the sky itself gave answer, and the sky shook with the rage of Draco Malfoy, in the form of that most ancient of the dragon races.
Turning out to sea, the Feathered Serpent born from the memory of the world, and the magic of a time before man, led his people to war with an abomination that mankind had brought into the world, and magic called upon her dragons to burn away.
Well over a hundred dragons formed into a series of large V as they flew out to sea towards Azkaban, their roars of challenge lit by flame as they followed a creature that had not walked the earth or dared the skies in a hundred million years.
Narcissa looked at her son riding to war wearing a form too ancient and terrible for his magic to sustain without support, and her heart twisted and spasmed inside her as she knew her place was in the ritual circle, leading the team that would make the magic sustain Draco, and the work they would begin now.
Harry drew upon his runes and his magic, he drew upon the circle and its connections to magic, the earth, and the patterns that nature wanted, and needed. He extended himself until he felt the wrongness, the violation, the corruption that was Azkaban. Rather than trying to reach it, and fighting the Ministry's wards, Harry wrapped his power around those wards that set Azkaban apart from the rest of the world, and he called out to the sky.
"I deny you!" Harry screamed, and his power called to the sky, filling his soul with revulsion for the thing that was Azkaban, and the sky answered. Most mercurial of all the elements, it turned itself away from Azkaban, and no thing that passed through the air that was not woven into this ritual would find it.
Milicent had been to Azkaban, tasted its foulness, felt its taint and that of its keepers. While she was the most cynical and jaded of the four, so was she also the one who stood deepest in the dark, and knew what even the darkness could not abide. Reaching into the primordial cold of the time before creation, to the mists of water and cold that were before being and non being, before potential and form had been sundered from each other, she called to the mists of the formless, to the mother of waters and into them poured her memories of the taint of Azkaban and its denziens.
"I deny you!" Milicent roared, and the seas rose at her words into a wall that blocked the sky, then slammed down in a wave towards Azkaban, to smash that which man built upon its shores, and turn the waters of the world against Azkaban, that no thing that was not of this ritual would find it.
Neville had been sinking into the earth since the beginning of the ritual. The earth was slowest to move, hardest to move, but into its bones had seeped the most of the taint. The foulness of Azkaban was a pustule of corruption that tainted the rock and stone, that turned the living earth into a thing that only corruption and decay could take hold in. The Lord of the Living Earth, he reached into his rune Jera, the rune of the cycles of the earth, sewing, growing, reaping, consuming, the cycle of life and death, and in the endless harmony of that cycle he found a note that did not fit. A theft. Lives taken that did not return to the earth, power taken that did not return to magic.
Neville did not shout, nor scream. He knelt upon the ground, and placing his hand upon it, the Lord of the Living Earth passed judgement. "I deny you."
The ley lines, the lines of power that ran beneath the earth, the ones that powered the ancient wards of Azkaban and made it a prize for wizards too dark for even history to remember bent their path away from the islands, no power would flow to them, nor path connect to Azkaban save as it was part of this ritual.
Hermione blazed with the fire of the phoenix, the fire of creation, the borrowed power of the sun and ultimate source of all life's energy. She felt the shadows that were not born of the light, nor were they part of the night. A darkness not born of this world, but called into it, bleeding from a place that denied life and light, brought solely in to devour, corrupt and destroy what it could not create. Hermione who had always been fire's daughter poured her revulsion of Azkaban and its Dementors into the fire within her, the fires of this world, the fires of the sun that birthed and fed this world, and she filled it with all the rage in her soul, all the innocence that she had brought to magic that turned to horror at what these abominations made of that force of purity and wonder.
Turning her face to the sun, she screamed out her rage. "I deny you!" And every fire lit on Azkaban went out, as fire itself turned its face from the island. No fire would burn there that was not part of the ritual, nor would any path through fire find the island until the ritual ended, or Hermione willed it so.
Rita shook as she felt magic equal in strength to that of the very wards of Hogwarts move through wind and wave, stone and sky at the command of witches and wizards not even old enough to use magic outside of school. She had covered dueling championships, the great works of the Ministry, and she had grown jaded about the gap between the claims of witches and wizards and the so called wonders they could actually produce. Never had she seen the might of magic so powerfully demonstrated. Witches and wizards come together in ritual, blending their will and intention with the natural forces of the world, not to command them but to beg for their intercession, to seek the will of magic to accept their will, and join them to reshape the world.
They did not raise their wand to reshape the world. They opened themselves to magic, connected to it so deeply that they could make magic understand their need, and judge for itself if it was necessary. They called, and if their call matched the needs of magic, then magic would reshape the world in the form the ritual asked. It was the witch and wizard as servant of the community, as the guardian of nature and life, not as it's master.
Rita wondered if this is why it was forbidden. Denied their role as servant and protector of the people, the muggles, denied their place as the intercessors between the people and magic, how could those who worked such magic keep themselves shut away forever from the muggles who shared their world? How could they set themselves apart from, and above the other magical races of the world?
This was power no modern witch or wizard even dreamed was possible, but only in a service they no longer felt they owed the other races and their non magical brethren any longer.
Grim faced children, three schools of magic, marched back up the gangplank with only four goblins and two Hogwarts professors as backup. The HMS Demeter tore free from the shore with a groan of protest, and her lines howled in the rising wind as she put her prow out to sea, and drove through the wind and wave, lit by lighting and dragon's fire as they pointed their prow to Azkaban.
On the prow of the ship, a cauldron flamed with power, and green light licked the hull and lines, as fairy song rang out to sea and sky. Three Queens of the Tuatha DeDannan asked the sea to make way for them, and the sea parted for the Demeter, and behind the blazing light of the Cauldron of Heroes, the HMS Demeter sailed a sea of endless storm, to the forbidden shore of Azkaban.
-Ministry of Magic,
Voldemort stood smiling, a mix of Death Eaters and properly vetted Aurors at his side as he spoke to the audience of followers and those too terrified to oppose him as he strode to the Ministry Floo fireplaces.
"Tonight, we free our brethren from Azkaban, and put paid to the traitors who attempted to oppose our return. When we return, the Dementors of Azkaban will come with us, and all who thought to speak my name, all who dared to whisper of resistance, all who fail to bow down before their Dark Lord and his Eaters of Death will know the kiss of soul destruction!" Voldemort said, as his followers, and those too terrified not be seen as such, all cheered.
Stepping into the Floo with Barty Crouch Junior and Lucius No Name at his side, they stepped into the green flame as the Dark Lord commanded the flame simply "Azkaban!"
When Barty and Lucius hit the Dark Lord who had reached the back of the fireplace and stopped in confusion, they actually rammed him into the back of it before stopping. Wondering why the Floo which lit like it was transporting them, took them nowhere.
Stepping out. Voldemort shouted. "Where is Kramer?"
The Head of the Department of Magical Transportation, Edmund Kramer stepped forward, his dark mark displayed proudly as he scurried forth to serve his Dark Lord.
"What is wrong with the Floo, I commanded it to Azkaban, and it didn't work." Voldemort demanded.
Edmund Kramer beckoned to his two assistants, he was more an administrator, but they were the magical technicians that made the system work. Like him, they had been followers in the last war and had been the reason so few people managed to escape Death Eater raids, so they gave their all to Voldemorts needs in this moment.
After a few minutes of spellwork, the head technician turned to Edmund and muttered something. Edmund blanched, and turned to Voldemort and whispered. "We cannot get through Dark Lord. it is as if fire no longer remembers Azkaban. "
There were no portkeys to Azkaban, save the official Ministry DMLE keys, so an Auror went to fetch them. Taking the great prisoner tranfer portkey chain in his hand, Voldemort keyed it to action and they spun up into the air, but the space between the Ministry and Azkaban refused to open to them. Their spin slowed and the Death Eaters and Dark Lord settled back to ground. This time Barty Crouch did the spell work to confirm what his own senses told him.
"Dark Lord, it is as if the sky no longer reaches Azkaban." Barty said.
"Impossible!" Roared Voldemort. Then after a heartbeat. "Dumbledore, the old fool has found some way to shield the island, to cut it off from us. Probably trying to deny us access to our troops and the Dementors., All he can do is delay us, not deny us."
Turning to Lucius, he smiled sofltly. "Lucius my old friend. Take a team of our Death Eaters and go free our brethren. If you have to broom, then broom. If you are a Charms Master like you claim, then surely you can enchant one of the muggle ships in port to take you in more comfort, but take a ship that can hold our brethren and anchor the Dementors for the trip back.
Hogwarts is the next target, and we will need the Dementors and our captured brethren before we dare face those defenses. It is almost over Lucius. You will have your name, your wealth, and a much more obedient wife restored to you soon."
-Hogwarts
"I cannot reach them Minerva. I cannot reach them at all. it is like they are no longer in the world. Azkaban may not even exist as far as magic is concerned, and all the children that left with Harry are as beyond my reach as the moon in the sky." Dumbledore muttered darkly as he stroked his beard.
"Albus, that is good news certainly? Voldemort announced his intention to claim Azkaban and free his people, and the Miinstry people in Azkaban only held out long enough to get rewards from him, not even pretending to resist. If no one can reach Azkaban, that has to be good news." Minerva McGonagall insisted.
Dumbledore turned to face her, his face snapping around and the fury in his eyes and magic pressing on her in a way that left her more scared of the Headmaster than she could remember feeling.
"No it is not." Dumbledore snarled. "There is no magic that can do what they have done, not without touching the ancient dark rituals. They were forbidden for a reason. Those rituals knew and cared nothing for the light, nor the laws of reason and rules of man. They did not obey the will of the wizard, but treated magic like a pagan god, as if the will of the world and magic should matter, not the will of the wizard."
McGonagall sighed. "I don't know why you hate ritual magic so much Albus, it is what built Hogwarts, what has defended it for centuries."
Dumbledore gripped his wand and stared at his former apprentice and current deputy. "It is not the way of Merlin. It is not the way of the will of the wizard and the rule of wands. It is not the path of humanity. Magic serves us. To allow anything else is the way of madness, darkness, and abominations best left in history."
McGonagall wondered if this is how Morgana felt, facing Merlin so long ago. When had Albus Dumbledore crossed from Champion of Light to fanatic? There was magic before wands, and a time when witches and wizards openly sought to learn the will and needs of the land and peoples before working magic in their name and for their benefit. She felt herself wonder, just for a second, if the Lord of Light served the light, or simply ordered it to serve his own will.
No. That path she dared not walk. Albus Dumbledore was the champion of light, the one who had been their salvation against Grindelwald, and their only hope against Voldemort. She just wished he would trust her more, and be open with Harry Potter about his sacred role in saving them from the Dark Lord. He was a good boy, if Dumbledore only told him the truth, surely he would not hesitate to sacrifice himself to save them all?
She had to trust him. Britain had already fallen. Dumbledore was all they had.
-Azkaban Prison
Warden Kim Philby wrung his hands, testing again and again that his wand was at his hip, and his protection amulet was around his neck.
"I can't even get a patronus message out. The Floo doesn't work, I can't apparate to the Shetlands let alone the mainland. The dock has been smashed, and any attempts to fix it get smashed faster than we make it. It is like the sea has gone mad. The storm is terrible, the Dementors won't fly any distance from the castle, even though the wind shouldn't really affect them as much as something that was, you know, all the way real." Colonel Volker said, the chief mage of Azkaban looked at his director as the two of them fought down a shudder at the true nature of their "guard force".
Warden Philby pointed to his Foe Glass. The rise and fall of a sailing ship cutting through the waves and storm like a knife through an unprotected throat showed in the Foe Glass, a strange fire danced on the prow and over the ship, and lightning seemed to dance around it like an escort.
"That is the Durmstrang ship! I know Karkarov isn't driving it, Karkarov is dead. The Dark Lord doesn't own it, and the last place it was docked was Hogwarts. I can't see anything except that it is coming. If Dumbledore is on that thing, what are we supposed to do about it if we can't summon the Dark Lord for aid?" Warden Kim Philbey whined.
Colonel Volker sneered at his cowering boss, a bureaucrat hard to respect serving the Ministry, and harder to respect serving a Dark Lord who took power based on his personal strength, not family connections.
"We have thousands of Dementors, and about sixty Death Eaters to augment our own twenty Aurors. Even if that is Albus Bloody Dumbledore, he isn't Merlin. No one can face a thousand Dementors and live." Colonel Volker's voice shook a bit at the end of that statement. Being in Azkaban changed a man, as a prisoner more so than as a guard, but it was a matter of degree not direction. Those who thrived as guards of Azkaban were more comfortable with horror and torment.
The saying went, you don't have to be a sadist to work here, you have to be a sadist to survive here. Every sadist on the guard force had grown both more comfortable with Azkaban and more terrified of Dementors in equal amounts. New guards who hated the demons of despair never lasted, they transferred out largely before they could discover let alone attempt to report the abuses by the guards themselves.
To say that none of the guard force had a problem with siding with the Dark Lord was a true statement, but to say that all of them were terrified of Albus Dumbledore, the self styled Lord of Light was putting it mildly. They feared Dumbledore like they feared the truths they learned about themselves here on Azkaban. Enough fire whiskey could make self reflection stop, but Dumbledore on a frigate was a bit harder to face.
Dementors were all they had to trust in, the Death Eater former prisoners and their own power were a thin reed to hold to against the might of the defeater of Grindelwald. Then again, the prison didn't just hold all the Ministry's prisoners, but it's dirty secrets as well. Forbidden research, forbidden funds, forbidden objects. All the things the Ministry wanted, but could not ever admit to having were housed in Azkaban. After all, even the auditors here never strayed below the maximum security wing, and very few descended that far.
Warden Philby gave in to his fear, and indulged in a fit of common sense.
"Break out the forbidden weapons. Get ready to set loose the werewolf packs the Unspeakables were doing their little experiments on. Spool up the wards. I know the ley lines stopped working, but we have enough runic power crystals here to run it for days without worry, and that damned ship is moving too fast for my liking."
-HMS Demeter, closing on Azkaban island.
"Land Ho!" Harry shouted, his Sonorus charm reaching the deck as he and Noodle enjoyed a nice seat on the Crows nest. The snake had taken to the rigging like all of his kind, with absolute joy, and Harry being a beater thought whipping back and forth through a stormy sky clinging on barely with a let to a bit of wood sounded like a smashing way to spend a morning.
Alastor Moody shouted, because he didn't need a Sonorus charm and people generally listened to him.
"Anybody who isn't Potter keep your eyes down. I spelled your wizard hats to stay on in this blow for a reason. Our basilisk are in the rigging and when they clear for action, anything that see's their eyes dies. Just worry about sea level and about spell stuff like proper witches and wizards." Moody shouted, as Victor Krum surveilled the scene through his Omnioculars.
"Dementors ho! Off the starboard bow, about a kilometer and closing fast. Clear for action!" Victor shouted, his own Sonorus blasting up the rigging as Harry used his power as Speaker, the Speaker, to hiss commands to the basilisk in the rigging.
"$ Clear for action. The sky is our hunt. We kill all the Dementors that pollute our sky near the ship. We do not look past Azkaban where the Dragons roam. Mind your arcs. Daddy is with you, make Mother proud. KILL DEMENTORS! $" Harry hissed.
High in the crows nest, Harry drew his wand and hissed "$Expecto Patronum$"
Shifting into his basilisk form, Harry felt the parselmagic version of Expecto Patronum work its odd magic, weaving his soul powered Patronus into his animagus flesh. Normally to sustain this would be almost impossible, as it took so much energy, but plugged into the ritual, the power of the sky flowed through him, and he shone like forty feet of goblin silver.
Then he opened his eyes, and opened them again. The great magical lids that reduced his gaze to safe, then the ones that reduced it to petrifying slid away, and the naked power of the basilisk, amplified by his runes of power and amplified again by the magic of his patronus burned through his eyes and blazed out like searchlights, and where they touched the shadow and taint of a Dementor, that Dementor fell into the sea screaming as it dissolved.
His children opened their own eyes, and from their eyes the magic of Slytherin's Monster blended and amplified by the blood of Harry Potter and its connection to not only the coven, but the ongoing ritual filled them with power, and forty sets of eyes blazed the fury of magic towards that which violated her sacred order. The basilisk was magic's answer to decay and death, magic's ultimate destroyer, and amplified by the ritual circle, that magic blasted out at the sky full of howling Dementors and began the reaping.
On deck, Fleur Delacour stood surrounded by witches only, as the magic she made now belonged to her Veela bloodline and was for women only. She drank in the power of those witches who had pledged to support her from Beauxbaton, and she channeled it into her Veela power.
Veela were creatures of charm and fire, creatures of Fairy that had been left behind when the fairy turned sideways from the world and left to make their own way in a human world that loved them not, but would use them if it could
The heart of the Veela was fire, the passion, the fire of love, lust, life. They were a fragment of the primal act of creation given flesh and will. The allure was treated by wizards as if it was a simple lust spell, and it could indeed be used at its crudest level for that. At its heart it was something else. Something more pure and potent.
Fleur Delacour was the greatest living Veela with her allure, she had learned it to a degree not seen in centuries, not seen since the Statue of Secrecy drove their entire world underground from the mortal one. With the power of a dozen witches augmenting her, she stretched out her allure and touched all of those aboard the Demeter.
Life wrapped them, the love of life, the lust for experience, for discovery, for love, for touch, for battle for friendship. She let her allure run wild and asked of it only that that those she reached should love life beyond all reason.
A cloud of Dementors descended upon the HMS Demeter, and with them the power of despair was unleashed, hundreds of Dementors lashed the ship with power that should have stopped the hearts, and reduced the strongest witch and wizard to a writhing weeping helpless wrech on the deck, helpless to do anything but wait for death, but that is not what happened.
Fairy song sang from the Cauldron of Heroes as the three wives of fallen Dagda sang the song of champions to strengthen the hearts of those who would fight. This merged with the allure of Fleur Delacour as those who defended the ship wrapped themselves in the sheer love of life, and they laughed as the gave themselves to their own magic and to battle.
Neville was not allowed to transform, as he was tasked for the final breach, so he had not summoned his patronus, but rather let his wand manifest his rune of Jera has the great scythe of the reaper. He whirled and struck as bold as any of his Viking ancestors with an axe as he harvested Dementors, letting the touch of his rune connect them to the cycle of death and rebirth, that their own magic sought to subvert and parasitize.
Three singing Queens stood around him, the great bronze blades of the Tuatha DeDannan striking with the inhuman speed and power that made the Morrigan, Macha, and Badb into goddesses of battle remembered centuries after their folk turned sideways from the mortal world. The despair of the Dementors touched them not, they were not, had never been human. Their blood was filled with passions that were their own, but not those of men. Despair and fear like age and time could not touch them, so they killed with a song on their lips, and a joy that wove itself into the Veela allure as if written to be one song.
A great polar bear stood the size of a truck, its white fur shining with the Patronus magic, its aura a white cold that left each Dementor it struck frozen and shattered. Beside it raged two scarlet lions who blazed with a golden light, defending her flanks with the seemless teamwork that made them seem almost one creature.
Those who noted that battle with endless diving Dementors resembled beater drills, and that the Weasley Twins and Milicent Bulstrode were legends at that very position are indeed not wrong.
As the castle of Azkaban loomed before them, the great Runestones of its outer defenses blazed with power, if they could not hold forever, they had never been breached by any force in history.
Neville reached into his potions belt, and withdrew two potion bottles. In them were seeds and nutrients. Banishing them with a shouted "Depulso!" His wand directed each to a runestone, and as they shattered, the seeds hit the rune marked stone, and life blossomed under his will and inside the song of the ritual that still sang from far off shore.
Roots dug deep into the stone, shattering the rock in which the runes were anchored, and their formation came apart. As the magic destabilizied, power roared wild and Hermione shouted "Kenaz!" As she took that unleashed power and turned it into the fire of primal creation.
The Runestones of Azkaban shattered and burned, lighting the castle and the defenders in a firelight that was all the more terrible for the cold darkness of an Azkaban in which no fire would burn without Hermione's will.
Warden Kim Philby had failed in his loyalty to the Ministry, so his failure in loyalty to Voldemort should not have been that much of a surprise. As his guards and the Death Eaters prepared to give battle to the ship that they feared contained Dumbledore, he saw the great Wardstones of Azkaban shatter and fall, the stone actually burning as it fell into the sea. All hope died in him then, for anything but escape.
Clutching the Firebolt that had been his one concession to luxury, Warden Philby took to the sky away from Azkaban, aiming not for the Shetland Islands and Britain, but for distant Norway. Dementors answered to his call, hundreds of them surrounding him. He knew if he used his authority to let them free of the Azkaban wards, he was dooming thousands of Norweigens to die to Dementor attack before the ICW and the Denmark and German Ministries could possibly contain them, but he would LIVE!
That is what he thought, right up until the roaring reached him. Looking upward, Warden Philby saw dragons, hundreds of Dragons from the Shetlands sanctuary and the Norwegian dragons from Vraga descended on him and his Dementors.
The sky was torn by storm he and the Dementors had to fight, but it only made the dragons soar faster, as the wild magic beasts drew upon the magic of storm and ritual to give themselves to the task dragons were born for, to purify the world of unclean magics.
The fires of creation blazed from their mouths and a fire that was more than simply an element, a fire that was the ideal of purification and cleansing cut into the Dementors, who burned like so many paper lanterns in a torch.
The Dementors did not go down without a fight, as they turned to claw and bite at the dragons, the undead Dementors being a mockery of life, a parasite to it, and being forged of despair and corruption they were willing to die to drink the pure and shining souls of dragons even once before they passed. The Dementors began to swarm the dragons, seeking to bring them down by numbers if nothing else.
One dragon, a feathered serpent smaller than the great scaled larger but somehow lesser beasts of this fallen age, shone with a rainbow of light as each peacock feather blazed with the silver light of a patronus powered by a ritual unseen in hundreds of years. That rainbow light drove back the Dementors, forcing them to flee before the dragons, even as the flame and fang of the pursuing dragons cut them down.
Philby looked upon that shining dragon, and its rainbow light laid his every dirty secret and shameful deed bare. Ignoring the struggle to stay on his broom, he drew his wand and screamed his denial at the cleansing of his treasured Azkaban. "Avada Kedavera!" He shouted, and a jade beam of soul cleaving death lanced at the shining rainbow dragon.
The dragon that had been/was/will be Draco Malfoy had the reflexes of a seeker and the mind of a dragon. He rolled around the incoming beam the way he would roll around an incoming bludger. For a second, he wondered who or what this thing was that dared to fly the sky that belonged only to Dragons, and who it was that sought to come between him and his prey.
Then the rage of a dragon flared in him, and he roared his anger at this gnat, this insect, this human who dared to defy him. Warden Philby fell in flames to a storm tossed and uncaring sea. In the sky between Azkaban and Norwary, dragons banished darkness with flame and fury. Not one Dementor reached shore.
When the sky was clean, Draco scanned the sky and saw hints of darkness over distant Azkaban. They stained his sky.
With a roar, he beat his tired wings back seaward, and all but the most injured dragons took to the hunt with him. The wind rose beneath their wings, and the great beasts rested as they soared, their bodies restoring the flame within them. There was corruption in the skies, and the magic in their blood demanded they cleanse it.
To Azkaban they returned.