DISCLAIMER: Do we get any description of Azkaban, despite characters being sent to or escaping from it in all but two of the books? If not, I don't own Harry Potter.

Still have a buffer of finished writing.

Chapter 25

"And that's all of it. I rather think I understand why you and Moody get on, now." We're in a tent - a cheap magical one that fits a nice large open-plan interior space in an unassuming little two-berth exterior - and we've both got our gear laid out for the final check-list.

Remus is off for the holiday period and won't be back until the new year. The months he's spent on Wolfsbane, along with some sensible support, have him actually trusting that his condition is managed. He still sleeps in a cage on full moon nights, because he's not an idiot, but these days he has a cage custom-built by a fabrication shop in Staines. There's a bed in it, and shrinking charms so he can take it with him when travelling. (It has a latch that we designed to require two opposable thumbs to operate, and the fabricators still believed we were going to be putting humans in it for the purposes of kink.) The upshot is that he'll be staying with his dad until after the full moon on the fourth of January.

Between Tom's bribed-out-of-the-Ministry knowledge and Sirius's insider experience, we're confident we're working to good intelligence. Staging the job for the day after Boxing Day means that the guardhouse is more likely to be understaffed: Sirius remembered that food was often late or missing entirely between Christmas and New Year. Because apparently staffing the prison with fucking demons isn't enough of an atrocity for Wizarding Britain.

Sirius's crack about Moody-level preparations is a fair one, and to be honest I'm flattered by the comparison anyway. I like to think I try and practise the same kind of common sense as Moody, just with better social graces. Every bit of kit we'll need for the plan, plus backups of the same, duplicated between the two of us, makes for a fairly lengthy pre-flight checklist before we get rigged up for skydiving on top of that. "Yeah, well, extension and featherweight charms mean you don't have to make compromises to practise the Seven Ps. You really can bring two of everything."

"Oh, I get it. I'm just complaining about all the extra work. I'm one of nature's nobility, don't you know? Manual labour is beneath me." He strikes an effete pose, nose in the air and wrist pressed to forehead.

"Speaking as the one of us who's, you know, an actual lord: back to work, peasant!"

"Help, help, I'm bein' oppressed -" He trails off at the Hard Stare I give him.

"And from here on in, it's code-names only, Mr. Glitter."

"Right you are, Mr. Saville. I'm assuming there's more than my inherent rockstar nature that got me my codename?"

"The fact that I can do the voice and the catchphrases for Saville, and you can't, frankly." Obviously we can't perform a prison break under our right names, and while Magical Law Enforcement will probably drop the dead-end lead when they turn up a couple of muggle celebrities, there's a small chance they'll investigate, stuff some veritaserum down the fuckers, and do the right thing. And given the other attention this night's work will attract, there's a chance the swine will get cruciated into lifelong catatonia. Such a tragedy.

(Sirius' originally wanted Mr. Reeves and Mr. Mortimer for codenames. I spotted the stage show in Time Out, dragged him and Remus along, and the pair of them became instant fans. I pointed out that we didn't want to put people we liked in the firing line.)

It takes us the best part of an hour to get everything stowed in space-expanded pockets - both of us the same, so we can find what we need in a hurry if things go to pot - and our parachutes on. We've become members of every skydiving club in England, which got us a lot more training in a shorter period than we could have got any other way. I suspect Sirius is going to keep it up as a hobby. Me, not so much. The fear of heights was an obstacle I got over, but I'm never going to enjoy being off terra firma.

By the time we've got the tent packed up and we're standing in our chosen staging area - a little patch of low ground just inland from Duncansby Head - it's just past nine at night and it's been dark for nearly six hours. There's a high pressure front moving in from the south, and every prospect of a clear, dry day tomorrow: the sky is clear, stars are twinkling, the moon is bright, and the wind is light and steady in the southeast.

"Earpiece check, Mr. Glitter?"

"Loud and clear, Mr. Saville."

"Don't mind admitting that I am, at this point, bricking it."

"Which bit? The skydiving at night onto a dark fortress? The demons of despair that haunt the whole island? The fact that the place is stuffed full of the worst humanity has to offer? The fact that if we fuck up, we'd better fuck up badly enough to die because we'll be thrown in that self-same prison?"

Not sure I can really pick one. "Yes," I say.

"Well, I'm glad someone on this little escapade is within hailing distance of sanity." There's a bit of a tremor in Sirius, sorry, Mr. Glitter's voice. I dare say he'd have considered this a bloody good laugh if he'd not spent the best part of four years locked up in there. He's facing up to some nasty personal demons from the moment we apparate to our target altitude of 10,000 feet. From there we're apparating a gnat's wossname north of due east in thousand-yard increments until we sight Azkaban Island. When we land, the demons become literal ones.

That is, perversely, the reason this plan is going to work. Azkaban relies on those things as its main form of security: nobody with any sense goes any nearer than they absolutely have to. Trouble is, Dementors don't have the initiative and adaptability of human guards. They're sapient enough to follow instructions when it suits them, and understand that not devouring the prisoners now means more feeding over the long term. Beyond that, they ain't terribly bright and they're cripplingly over-focussed on the essentials of their nature.

The rest of the security is alarm spells to alert the human guards, who are on the island but not in the prison, of a breakout in progress. If you don't have the same cultural blinders as the people who designed those magics, there are huge and obvious holes. The alarm triggers on wand use: therefore, don't use your wand. Where the security can't be beaten by magic, beat it without magic. Magic, and the wand, are the British wizards' lifelines, and they cling to them in ways that make them vulnerable. Both Tom's original plan and my remix of it exploit that.

It doesn't make the plan any less scary, the reasons Sirius just mentioned being only the executive summary. Even if everything goes perfectly - and we've planned and trained to the point where we can recover from most hitches - this is going to suck. "I think we left sanity back in Surrey. A minute to get our night vision, and we can get going."

"Sooner the better. Hate waiting. It was the worst part of being a Hit Wizard."

"Thought you never worked for the Ministry?" I distinctly remember him saying that.

"Retained Hit Wizard. Don't know if they still do it, but they had a roster of part-timers. You got paid if you were called out and a bonus if there was fighting. You had to be on call so many days a month, able to get in to the DMLE on five minutes' notice. Only the full-timers were actually Ministry employees." Firefighters do something similar. Again with the wizarding common sense: it turns up in the oddest places.

Because muggles are so much more sensible.

Fuck off, Tom.

"Well, balaclavas and goggles on. Ready?"

"Ready." Sirius's voice has firmed up.

"On your mark, get set… GO!"

As the squeeze and whoosh of apparition takes hold, Tom can't help but chime in.

You're going to die.

I don't dignify it with a response, I'm about to get a respite from the prick. One brilliant side effect of the Patronus is that it shuts Tom right the fuck up.

-oOo-

Check altitude.

Azkaban Island is teardrop-shaped, oriented east-west, with the guardhouse on the western 'tail' of the teardrop and the fortress on the bulging end in the east. The island is mostly storm-swept rock, nothing can live there. Except, ironically, in the little patch on the western tail where the graveyard is. A couple of centuries of inmate corpses buried in broken and pulverised rock have fertilised it to the point where thin and scrubby marram-grass can cling to life.

Not sure if it's any comfort to the poor bastards who stand guard one week in three in the squat stone blockhouse by the jetty. At least they only have to go to the fortress once a day, to deliver food.

I'm studying it all from up in the air because for all Tom memorised the survey drawings, he'd never actually seen Azkaban island or its eponymous fortress. What's more, the drawings are missing quite a lot of important information. Whoever did them worked from ground level and relied on mapping charms in an unplottable location. Which is theoretically okay provided you don't try and tie anything to exterior landmarks. In practise it'll give you confused and confusing results if you're, for example, trying to get the job done as fast as possible to get away from all the fucking Dementors.

So I get a bit of a surprise while plummeting from several thousand feet up. It's almost enough to distract me from how much I really, really, really, truly, sincerely dislike being up in the air and falling. Azkaban fortress is a trace italienne star-fort.

Check altitude.

Or such is my first impression, but a longer look - check altitude - corrects that. It is, in fact, a seven-vertex magical geometry, realised in slabs of obsidian (possibly basalt, I'm no geologist. Polished black stone, at any rate.) sloped inward to form something that just looks like a gunpowder-era fortification. The points of the 'star' are arranged to make quite credible bastions, and from the look of it whoever built the thing cleared and levelled the ground with big earth-moving spells that left piles of rock between the points that look at first glance like ravelins.

Check altitude.

Stop panicking. This is the best part, you coward.

Fuck off, Tom. Check altitude. I am not panicking, I am in full control of my faculties despite this entirely disagreeable experience.

Azkaban has no exterior windows or openings of any kind: all of the usable space of the fortress opens on to the inner circular yard. Which suggests that the most magically-important bit is that outer formation. All straight lines so it's none of the Dho-Na geometries, no bounding circle so it's not any of the Solomonic series, the sound of the magic is a bone-deep ominous rumble like the earth itself is snarling a warning -

I'm distracting myself when I should be paying attention, but fortunately I've brought a complete idiot along to break me out of my ruminations.

Loudly enough, the arse, that I can hear him singing without the aid of my earpiece. "Fighting wiiiiiiiiiizards, from the skyyyyyyyy!"

"Fuck's sake, they'll fucking hear you," I snap back. "Also, don't you dare sing the next line, we're not jumping to die, thank you very much." Check altitude. His war movie kick reached the near-pinnacle of John Wayne's career in unintentional comedy (the actual pinnacle being The Conqueror, of course) a couple of months back, and he bought a big floppy lime-green beret to wear down the pub. He and Remus thought it was hilarious. So did everyone else there once they had a couple of drinks down their necks: they'd all had a wear of it by closing time. I'm on a one drink limit until my body's old enough to handle more, and never has sobriety sucked so hard.

"Spoilsport. Nearly there anyway."

Check altitude: so we are. One pulled cord and several disagreeable seconds later, I have an open canopy and I'm spared the prospect of a hurtling, splattery death.

Until the next time you do this, of course. Besides, what are you worrying about? You're only risking inconvenient discorporation.

I don't know that, I might well be able to actually die if I don't bail out of this body in time, and if I don't have a body to hide in what's that dirty great big piece of geomancy going to do to me? Not to mention being a disembodied mind and soul in the middle of colony of fucking soul-eaters, you fuckwit. Now shut up and let me concentrate on flying this wretched thing.

Sirius, the prat, left it to the last second and I see his canopy bloom below and to my right.

And, through my earpiece, I hear a weird, high-pitched groan.

"Sirius?" He looks in good shape.

"One of my straps worked a bit loose, I think." There's a definite squeaky tone to his voice. "Nothing serious, but my, ah, pride has been hurt. And it's Glitter, remember."

I wince in sympathy: the jolt of opening a parachute, if it's not spread out by properly-tightened straps, tends to impact right in the crotch. I decide to save yelling at him until the mission is over. "Suffer in silence. Be just our luck for someone to be making late-night rounds and hear you skrikin' about yer plums."

All I get in return is a snort of amusement. If the damage is light enough that he can still laugh, I can dismiss it. Below, the magical geometry of Azkaban is becoming more apparent: as well as the big star-shaped outline, there are inner rings and figures executed in the shapes of the interior construction. Most of the central compound is in shadow, but the bit that's moonlit seems to have grooves carved into it. I suspect if you wanted to break the power of this place, you'd do better to build disruptive additions rather than demolish anything. Although not before consulting a really top-flight geomancer and ritualist, preferably both specialties in the same person.

Dropping below the hundred foot mark, steering so as not to land on Sirius who's already down, I start to feel the clammy deadness of depression settle on me.

Oh no you fuckin' DON'T.

Dementors. Living embodiments of depression, and the nastiest psychovores known to wizard-kind. Probably infovores into the bargain, that chilling effect could readily be them feeding on local entropy and moving things closer to absolute zero. A single dementor wouldn't be affecting me from beyond line-of-sight, but a whole nest of the bastards?

Enough: I have more urgent business. Occlumency clamps the mind down, anger keeps the spirits up. I have a serious case of the arse with the Dementors of Azkaban, as only someone who's lived decades with depression can, and I hold that firmly in mind.

Down. Roll. Thank fuck for that. No sprains, strains, or bruises worth the mention. Speak the command word to re-pack my chute. Pop the harness and stuff the rig into the expanded-space satchel I've brought for the purpose.

(Sirius doesn't think the parachute-packing enchantment he came up with is entirely trustworthy, but it's good enough for getting the thing stowed even if you wouldn't use the results outside a dire emergency).

None of the disgusting abominations are close enough to be having a serious effect. Just enough to know they're there, which is why I'm more angry than depressed. I asked Sirius why nobody ever tried fiendfyre, and he reckons it's because nobody has good enough control to risk it. The ones that do have good control of fiendfyre generally see Dementors as an asset. Rather than, you know, a disgusting stain on creation that ought to be purged without hesitation or mercy.

Sirius has taken a knee a few yards away. Hunched shoulders, head down, darting looks all around. As I get closer I can hear him panting. It doesn't look like a panic attack quite yet, but I bet he ain't far off.

The fortunate thing about the Patronus Charm is that it is not, in fact, a Charm properly so called. It's not a call on magic outside the self: it brings out the spirit of love and protection and joy that the caster has built and nurtured within. Really primal stuff. While the plan was not to go active until we were in among the buggers, my boy is hurting.

Three little babies opening their eyes for the first time. Little kids frantically mugging their way through nativity plays. Long drives to Halls of Residence, singing along to cheesy folk songs. The trick is not using just one happy memory to get in the right state of mind, but using years of them. And then, not stopping at happy but picking the ones that embody the fierce protectiveness you feel when you hold your kids for the first time, when they do things that make you proud and you see that look on their faces when you tell them you're proud of them.

It comes completely naturally to speak the incantation in Dad Voice. No need for shouting or theatrics: Daddy is Here, and going to Sort It All Out. "Expecto Patronum," and warmth blooms in my heart and runs down my arm to my wand. My Patronus is fortunately a little more impressive than my Animagus: fourteen feet of growling Ophidiophagus hannah, the King Cobra.

I have named him Hissing Sid, and he slithers out of my wand and coils protectively about Sirius, rearing up with flared hood to look about for threats. Sirius visibly unclenches, the set of his shoulders straightens, and he straightens his back.

"Thanks, Sid," he murmurs. Fortunately he doesn't understand parseltongue, so he doesn't hear Sid tell him to get his fuckin' finger out and get a fuckin' wiggle on and stop being such a cunting great wet wendy. I dread the day I have to use him to send messages. They're going to arrive littered with f- and c- bombs. My Patronus has no chill.

And is the only spell that won't set off a Caterwauling Charm in the guardhouse. The only wand spell, made an exception because nobody comes in here without it running. Enchanted items and wandless magic are a gap in the security cover: the prisoners are stripped on the way in and British mages just don't think in terms of wandless magic having any real power. Tom would have just cast regardless, confident in his ability to slaughter the human guards when they investigated.

"Left pocket, Draught of Peace," I say, moving up next to Sirius. "Half dose only. You need to be relaxed but alert. And for fuck's sake don't eat any of the chocolate stored anywhere on your right side." Between the ones laced with Draught of Living Death and the ones with doses of poison in them, we're stocked like the Confectioners From Hell. "And crank up your Patronus now, the plan to stay stealthy until we're off the roof turns out to have been a bad one. Besides, the human guards can't see up here and they'll be indoors at this hour."

My own chocolate stash is a load of Bourneville bars in my left jacket pocket: the one brand of chocolate that I actually like won't be on the market for a few years yet. I put up with the stuff for its medicinal value and get a couple of bars down my neck as a preventative. I'd had a vague idea of trying capsules of neat theobromine to boost the effect, but even if I'd had the time this would be a bad choice of field trial. Still, we've a thermos each of cocoa for the boat ride out: Sirius thinks me quite mad for preferring it with chili and salt, while I can't stand the sickliness of all the sugar he puts in his.

The inner courtyard of Azkaban looks like a circular version of an Indian stepped well, maybe eighty yards across at the top and forty at the bottom. Most of the floor is flat and paved, but there's a central well that the Dementors nest in. It's all much smaller than the bastion fort it looks like from the air. There's a weak light from the archways into the interior: gubraithian braziers that give the prisoners round the clock light and just enough heat that it isn't hypothermia that kills them.

Most of the prison is unoccupied, of course. If Magical Britain imprisoned at the same rate as their muggle counterparts there'd be maybe a dozen people in here at any one time, or three dozen if the non-wand-carrying population got included. They don't do non-custodial sentencing, though. If you don't get a fine, or get one that you can't pay, it's prison time or the Kiss.

Even so, there's maybe a hundred and fifty in a prison that could comfortably take nearly three times that. (Six times, if they make the inmates share cells.) Since there's no gate and the way in is over the wall via a staircase between the western bastions, the upper level prisoners get bigger cells, fed first and by the human guards, and spend their time further from the Dementors' nest.

The actual cells are in corridors behind the wall with all the staircases on it, and naturally we need the lowest level of seven. Dumbledore made high-minded speeches about the need for national healing, but the DMLE was in a pretty vindictive mood at every level from the office tea-witch on up. Between the lines of some of the things Moody has said, the Crouch Approvals were more about recognising facts on the ground. Nobody had been waiting for orders to take the gloves off, they just needed official sanction to include it in written reports. They were still losing, of course, because the justice system was compromised at all levels. But they took a grim satisfaction in making the bastards pay for it.

The descent into the central courtyard we take briskly, but methodically. Stone steps rimed with icy brine do not make for sure footing. We can't use assistive charms and there aren't any handrails. With hindsight I should've made enchanted segs for our boots. Fortunately, the stepwell construction of the place means we can go down anticlockwise . This lets me, with my considerably stronger Patronus, steady my off-hand side against the wall. More evidence that the place wasn't built as a fortification: if it was, there'd be stairs in only one direction to hamper an attacker fighting his way up or down them. Not sure which would apply: what magic means for defensive architecture I haven't had occasion to think through in full yet.

Hissing Sid and Sirius's recently-corporeal monkey Patronus - named Monkey, but you have to pronounce it the way they do on the TV show - are doing their job and doing it well. The Dementors that are haunting the courtyard area in a slow widdershins spiral tighten their orbits to give us a wide berth. I'm not saying that the poo-throwing mimes and non-stop parseltongue profanity are helping, but I'm not not saying that either. The low comedy is definitely a lift to the spirits in this trying time.

What I'm not seeing - yet - is any of the beasts leaving to raise the alarm. They're doubtless used to seeing people with active Patroni moving about the place. They're also sapient enough to grasp that tolerating Patronus-wielding staff is what gets them their regular diet of the tasty, tasty misery of the prisoners.

Death Eater Row is right at the bottom, on the south side so it gets no sun, ever. As I say, the DMLE were in a proper mood at the end of the war.

"Well, Mr. Glitter," I say as we face the archway, with its corridor leading deep into the rock the fortress is built of, "we haven't been able to drill this bit. You going to be okay without a Patronus?" We can't let the inmates see our protectors. They're not quite as distinctive as a fingerprint, but it'd be a poor show to have one's defence against Dementors amount to confession evidence.

There's a pause. Sirius is jamming his face full of a brand he likes because of the talking rabbit in the advert. Which, fair enough. Everyone is furry for the Cadbury's Caramel Bunny. "I am taking it eeeeasy."

"I'll take that as a yes. Cloaks on, and get the portable door ready."

"Cloak and door, aye aye." The invisibility cloaks aren't for stealth: it's going to be blindingly obvious we're there. They're to make sure nobody can give a useful description of us. Not that the gloves, balaclavas and goggles we're wearing against the cold reveal much, but we're going belt-and-braces. The charms on our undies that prevent any hair, fibre, or skin cell trace evidence dropping off us are just common sense. Sure, hardly anyone can use the vestigium series of charms worth a damn, but I'd bet the larger of my testicles that Moody has mastered them.

"Right then," I say once we're cloaked up. "Time for Jim to Fix It," although I'm not making a very good effort at the voice to go with the catchphrase.

We drop our Patroni and step in smartly. Sirius is quick about getting the portable door up. It's just a great big heavy slab of pine joinery with rune charms carved into it. A wand tap makes it expand to fit snugly in the doorway, and incidentally keep the bloody Dementors out. Of course, if we've trapped one in here with us we have a problem.

We haven't. We weren't expecting to. Sirius recalled the Dementors came in to give the prisoners their rations in the morning, then returned a little later. It gave the wretches time to eat, so the Dementors could feed when the prisoners were at their strongest. They get all night to recover.

Death Eater Row is a semicircular corridor with stone bays around the outside of the curve: the archway to the outdoors is at the midpoint, with a blank wall where it forms a t-junction with the indoor corridor. The close-set bars across the front of the bays that convert them into cells were added when the building was converted into Wizard Clink. In one of those amusing little twists of historical irony, this move permitted the closure of the magical wing of the original Clink, the loss of which protections allowed a rioting mob to burn it down in 1780.

"I'll check left, you check right," I say. I'm suddenly feeling a lot less inclined to make jokes.

"Right you are, Mr. Saville," and from the sound of Sirius' voice, he's holding up reasonably well. Unfortunately the acoustics in this place are such that he could never be sure which way any particular scream of despair was coming from: the most he can say is that he wasn't marched past her cell on the way out when he was released. The search won't take long, there are only twelve cells on each block down here at the bottom of Azkaban.

The prisoners aren't asleep yet. It's a little short of eleven at night, and sleep don't come easy in this place. So the sound of our voices has the prisoners riled up, making it hard to concentrate as I walk along and look long enough at each particular wretch to ensure it's not female. None of them are: while the wizarding world is a touch more egalitarian than their non-magical contemporaries, there are still widely held Views on the Proper Conduct of Ladies. Not to mention that Tom came from the muggle world, and that informed his recruiting decisions.

Most of what's coming through the bars at me is incoherent screaming, insults and so forth. No bodily wastes or fluids, which I'm thankful for. A couple of the fuckers are loudly declaring their loyalty to the Dark Lord, and I make a mental note to be sure they get a nice choccy treat. I had been having second thoughts about the whole 'poison them in their cells' plan, but when you hear someone loudly declaiming that he wants out to 'get back to killing all the fucking muds,' well, it's hard not to come over all Frank Castle.

"Mister Saville!" Sirius' voice in my earpiece - and echoing down the corridor - sounds a little bright and brittle. He is, at least, remembering to put on an outrageous accent.

"Yes, Mister Glitter?"

"I 'ave our gel." Unfortunately, his attempt at Cockney has a distinct hint of Dick Van Dyke about it.

"With you in just a moment." Most I seem to be able to manage is a generic Yorkshire and a bit of a nasal tone to it. I'm not as good at celebrity impressions as I remember being before I died.

Sirius has, indeed, found our girl. She looks a little less broken down than the other prisoners, just the rough condition that five years of bad food and no exercise will visit on a body. The mind-control isn't any kind of defence against the Dementors, but she seems to be managing anyway.

The obsession reasserts itself while the Dementors aren't feeding on her. A strong fixated idea for her mind to rally around. The loyalty compulsions in the Dark Mark will do the same to a lesser extent for my other Death Eaters.

Huh. That was actually helpful.

Whatever.

The trick here is explaining the plan to the star of the show without saying anything aloud that can be repeated to an investigating auror. Or even just to one of the guards, or shrieked in the course of a nightmare where a Dementor can hear and pass it on. The solution, of course, is a set of flash cards for her to read.

GOOD EVENING MME. LESTRANGE. WE'RE HERE TO GET YOU OUT. I am, of course, making the gesture to 'ping' her Dark Mark. Tom was right to think it was a good security measure and recognition sign for followers who mostly only saw each other masked. Security-by-obscurity has a respectably low failure rate, but only so long as the obscurity is maintained. He pretty much couldn't plan for someone devouring a complete copy of his mind.

Her eyes widen and she rushes to grasp the bars and re-read the card.

"He lives? He is returned?" There's a desperate yearning in her voice. Tom might've been right about the obsession with him holding her together.

Next card, though. DON'T REPEAT ANY OF THE PLAN ALOUD. IF THEY LEARN HOW WE'RE DOING THIS THEY'LL PLUG THE GAP IN THE DEFENCES.

Frantic nodding. There's a noticeable chilling in the air, and Sirius is facing away from the cells to lift his mask. I hear the crinkle of chocolate wrapper. At a guess, the Dementors are crowding around the blocked door, stacking up on the other side of that wall. Which is several feet thick, but apparently that's not enough to do much more than mute the effect. The ever-burning braziers have dimmed somewhat. The prisoners have fallen quiet. They know what this sensation means. I hold a Bournville bar out to Bellatrix; I need her coherent. And the look on her face makes my heart go out to the poor woman. Even if she's just as awful under the brainwashing, nobody deserves this. Except that one guy over on the other block. He can get fucked.

She looks at it with suspicion, so I pull a glove off to have skin contact with the flashcard. That lets me transfigure the ink on it into different text without using my wand and setting off the alarm. MUGGLE CHOCOLATE, SO WE WEREN'T REMEMBERED BUYING THE STUFF BY ANYONE THE DMLE WILL TALK TO. IT'S NOT BAD, UNLESS YOU PREFER MILK CHOCOLATE?

She shakes her head and unwraps. Hungry and tormented she may be, but she doesn't resort to cramming it in like Sirius and I do. Not delicate bites like I suspect she was raised to take, but still maintaining at least some ladylike decorum. Another transfiguration, held up in one of the moments when she's not got her eyes closed in enjoyment and relief. BETTER?

She nods, then reaches out a hand to touch the flashcard. Her magic sounds exactly like a virtuoso violin. Like it's actually playing tunes, too, a trait her magic shares with her big sister Andromeda. She can do touch transfiguration too, it seems. Her message reads I SERVE OUR LORD. NOT TOO PROUD EAT ANIMAL FEED. It comes with a small smile.

I have to pretend to find it funny. She needs to think I'm a fellow Death Eater, after all, and my pretence of humour under pressure of a whole nest of Dementors outside is limited to a brief snort. Time for the next flashcards.

ESCAPE METHOD HAS WEIGHT LIMIT.

NEED TO TRANSFIGURE YOU PORTABLE.

CHOCOLATE W. DRAUGHT OF LIVING DEATH.

YOU MUST BE CLOSE TO BARS SO I CAN REACH YOU.

She deliberately overacts a questioning look.

I change the flashcard. TOUCH TRANSFIGURATION, ALARM ONLY ON WAND SPELLS.

Hammed-up disbelief.

NO, I REALLY AM THAT GOOD. I give her a thumb up for good measure. I didn't have any problem turning Fawley into more convenient forms, and doing it without the wand is just slower, more effort, and limited to touch range. The downside risk is that she gets a cleaner death than this place offers, at the price of us losing the opportunity she might represent.

Eye roll. She beckons the flash-card closer. TURN ME INTO WHAT? JUST ME?

DOLL. ALSO YOUR HUSBAND AND B-IN-LAW.

"I'm feeling pressure of time, Mr. Saville," Sirius says, with a distracted note in his voice. Amusingly, his cockney is much improved by the lack of ham.

"Our lass has questions, Mr. Glitter. Only polite t' answer 'em."

After what looks like a moment of internal debate, Bellatrix gives a firm nod and holds out her hand for the dosed sweetie. From the look on her face, she really likes Thorntons' Rum Truffles, and she eats it sitting down with her hand through the bars. I pick up her wrist - thin and fragile - and when her pulse finally stops I get to work. I take it slow and steady: retaining the form factor, just changing size and composition so she becomes Prison Witch Barbie over the course of half a minute or so. Shrinking her striped woollen prison robe and socks to fit - prisoners are not permitted boots - takes a tiny fraction of my attention, it's not like I have to be careful with it.

The Brothers Lestrange don't ask questions at all. Sight of Bellatrix in doll form, the flash cards explaining the plan, a ping on their Dark Marks and they just follow orders. The out-of-hours Dementor pressure must be making them compliant.

Don't overlook the fact that they're a pair of utter dullards. The father wasn't much better.

I suppose I shouldn't expect too much from a lad who asked the likes of you for help with marital concerns.

I leave Tom to yucking it up in the back of my mind. Out loud, and in as strong a voice as I can manage, "You take this side, Mr. Glitter, I'll take that. These poor people need a little treat after we brought the Dementors down on them. We've enough for one each." More than, actually. Not all twenty-four cells on this row were filled, and three of them we just emptied.

"We're leaving now, we brought spare chocolate, enough for us to leave you one. Don't try and save it, the Dementors are going to be up in arms and the place'll be crawling with Aurors in the morning. Don't tell them anything, we want to be able to do this again." The same spiel repeated ten times, ten contaminated off-brand liqueur chocolates, unwrapped and dumped through the bars. The wrappers are leaving with us, being as they are evidence - and mister kill-the-muds gets two, with a reassurance that enthusiasm like his deserves a reward.

I meet up with Sirius back at the archway to the outdoors. "There's a lot of them," he says, nodding at the portable door, which is covered with ice, visibly warping in the cold, and might well fail altogether soon.

"Smoke first," I say. The prisoners are going to know that Patroni have been cast, but they'll not be able to describe them. Their cells define their 'place' tightly enough that viewers of pensieve memories won't be able to roam out of them, and at that they'd have to bring the thing inside the prison if they want even a chance at full-function viewing. The place has anti-scrying magics that limit pensieve function to normal recall if you're outside, as Sirius and I found when we tried to examine his memories of the place. Screening smoke will work here better than it would most other places.

I made censers. A hundred grammes of granulated white phosphorus, a couple of sparklet bulbs of compressed oxygen, and some clockwork to give it a five-second delay before it opens and starts spewing smoke. Rapid prototyping: really easy if you've got a wand and some basic mechanical and chemical know-how. Sirius charmed them to stay cool even while the contents were burning, and they have long chains attached. They're smoke grenades that we can retrieve and bring home with us. Again, no evidence left behind, other than a thin film of phosphoric acid on everything.

It's important to have the Patronus fully in being before you get hit with the full effect of the Dementor. Once the smoke screen is up, I get Hissing Sid lit before Sirius can even get his incantation out. He's having trouble, what with the Dementors paying close attention to the change in routine. With my cobra swearing and spitting his defiance, the pressure comes off a bit and Monkey surges into existence a moment or two later. I command the door to shrink - "'Ow's about that then?", a Jimmy Saville catchphrase - and bring it to my off hand and into my satchel with a firm tug of magic.

We're faced with a scene you'd never see in a nightmare, because you'd wake up sweating and shivering before it got this bad. The Dementors were pressed up against the door. With it gone, they surge forward like a January Sales crowd at opening time.

"Get back, yer bastards! I'll bite yer goolies!" Hissing Sid is to the front, hood flared and advancing to meet them. Monkey is all bared teeth and waving arms as he charges.

There's a collective hiss, and thin shrieks, and in a swirl of tattered cloaks the tide of Dementors ebbs. Not that either of us is exactly fizzing magical mojo right now: I think the Dementors just assume that we're staff.

"God, I really want to try fiendfyre," I mutter, and march forward. I have to lean into it. Even past Sid and Monkey there's a miasma of gloom: I have to dig deep into my reserves of bloody-mindedness to get past it. I grab Sirius by the elbow. He's at grave risk during this bit. They can't make him relive his worst memories with his Patronus lit, but they don't have to. He's quite capable of having flashbacks all of his own. The brand-new brain I have these days doesn't have a lifetime of trauma burnt into it, and my theory that I'd be thereby less vulnerable is holding up. It still sucks to be anywhere near these things.

"Stay with me, Mr. Glitter," I say, and he edges closer as we're walking. He's keeping Monkey going nicely, and I shift my arm to hold him around the shoulders and hug him close. Don't know if it's doing any good, but it can't hurt, right? He's a lefty, so it's not like I'm fouling his wand arm.

We get out into the open, and we're the centre of a swarm of darkness, creeping decay and cold. I turn us left, so I'm between Sirius and the Dementors.

Monkey comes and perches on Sirius's shoulder, while Sid goes into overdrive, feinting strikes at any Dementor that comes close. "G'yaaaan! Gerrowt, thi shites! Ah'll fookin' twat t' fookin' lo'a' yez" Parseltongue with a Lancashire accent. That's new.

The climb back up the pit of Azkaban is an ordeal: seven stories in the bitter cold would be bad enough, but we have our charming companions swooping and schooling about. The stairs are narrow, so I can't keep my arm around Sirius. I have to move him ahead of me and reach up to keep a hand on his shoulder to remind him I'm here. Soft words of encouragement keep him putting one foot in front of the other, but Monkey fades out before we've got as high as level five.

Sid coils in tighter around us, bunching up like my determination. The Dementors shriek when he lashes out and howl when he gets lucky and bites one: I can't see any actual injury on the thing, but from the noise it made as it fled, it definitely felt pain. This puts a nasty grin on my face and the example makes the fuckers back off a bit. I suppose it's too much to hope that I've got the world's first venomous patronus.

I need to lift Sirius's spirits, though. Which is why the first ever non-inside-job escape from Azkaban - in this universe, at any rate - is accompanied by me belting out cheerfully filthy songs, stamping out the rhythm as I go to ensure my footing on the stairs. "Oooon board the Good Ship Venus…"

We're passing level three when I realise that the swarm is concentrating below us. They're trying, it would appear, to drive us out. Do they think we're part of the human staff? Or do they just want the nasty, bitey, sweary Patronus out of their nice cold hole? I don't care. Seeing them cowed like this is a lovely boost to morale.

It takes until halfway up level two and the final verse of Bollocky Bill The Sailor before I get a wobbly, uncertain chuckle out of him, and it's as I'm getting my breath for a rousing rendition of the Woad Song that he's able to talk. "You mad bastard. Expecto Patronum!"

And Monkey's back!

The Dementors back off even further, swirling down into their hole like runny shit down a drain, so we're able to give it some welly and pick up the pace a bit. We reach the roof of the fortress prison with exquisite timing. We turn around and deliver the final "Booolllllocks, toooooo…. the breeeeeze!" accompanied by vigorous two-fingered archers' salutes as our goodbye to the Dementors of Azkaban. Oh, a few have followed us up like a bad smell, but they're a lot more manageable by dribs and drabs, particularly when you've got two Patroni up.

Getting down to the beach is easy. The grapnels that we hook onto the parapet are charmed to release on command and not before, the outer slope of the wall is about forty-five degrees and easier to abseil than the wooden tower I learned on in the Scouts. I slip on the icy stone about halfway down, and although I pick up a couple of bruises about the tailbone, the injury to my dignity is by far the worse.

At the bottom, on the shingle beach of Azkaban's northwestern shore, I stand guard with Hissing Sid while Sirius gets out the Zodiac and inflates it. It's too big, when inflated, to fit in the mouth of any of the space-expanded pouches and bags we had. We ruined and repaired the thing half a dozen times trying to get a shrink-and-restore enchantment to work on all parts at the same rate. There was some weird interaction between the materials and the shape and the fact that it was inflated. I suspect there was also the problem of transfiguring something that of its own nature was meant to change forms, but there's bugger all in the literature. The magical world just doesn't have enough theorists to keep up with muggle engineers.

We could probably have tracked down the problem and fixed it, but the level of effort needed would have caught Remus's attention. Besides, the only reason we'd not have the five minutes that the hard way takes would be because we were discovered. At which point we'd have to go active with our wands anyway.

(My original plan was to hang-glide off the top of Azkaban, about a hundred metres above sea level. That'd be enough to get us beyond that disapparation jinx before we hit the water. Experience with the boat suggests that maybe shrinking a hang-glider to stick it in a pocket wasn't as trivial an exercise as I assumed.)

"Nearly done," Sirius says as he gets the keel of the zodiac inflated, "I'll need a hand getting her in the water. You better do the engine, you're bigger and stronger than I am."

"Okay. You up to getting Monkey back in the game? Going to need both hands."

"At this point? After what we just pulled off? Top. Of. The. Fucking. World." His grin is infectious, and Sid pulses a little brighter.

It's only another five minutes before I'm pulling the starter cord, and the motor catches on the second pull, muffled by the runes I carved around the exhaust. "I name this ship HMS Fuckery, may gawd bless 'er and all who sail in 'er."

As we pull away from the beach and the alarm spells on the island, Sirius emblazons the name on the prow in glowing red-and-gold letters. Then, for good measure, conjures a mast with a jolly roger flying from it. Monkey swarms up it and screams his defiance back at the shore.

"Arrr, matey!" Sirius cries, saluting the monkey, as I twist the throttle and get us up to speed and heading for the horizon. Getting the thermos of cocoa open one-handed is an old and much-practised skill, even if I don't have the muscle-memory of it established in this body.

We're only going a few miles in this thing before we scuttle her and apparate back into the sky. Get above the height brooms fail at, and you deprive the aurors of the stable platform they need to cast tracking charms. So we might as well get what fun out of it that we can. "Avast, ye swabs!" I yell out between swigs of warming, chili-laced cocoa, "Hast seen a white whale?"

"Arrrrrrr!" Sirius agrees. Then, after a moment of cross-eyed concentration, "You were right about the flight jinx. Doesn't just cover brooms."

"Fuck's sake, Sirius." I'd have had to haul him out of the drink if the attempt succeeded. He's learned Tom's flight spell, and unlike me he can actually do it without basic performance trouble. Trouble is, he ain't had much chance to practise, and what little he did get ended with bone-mending charms and doses of skele-gro. It seems that when it comes to wizard flight, brooms handle a lot of the fine control for you. Although to be fair, the mid-air collision with a seagull would have happened whatever flight method he was using, and I was too helpless with laughter to try any spell to soften his impact.

For my part, after much effort I can sort of do a wobbly hover-and-drift about three inches off the ground.

He shrugs. "It was worth a try." Then, after a minute or two, and some fortifying cocoa, "Did you see the rat in there?"

"No. I assumed he was somewhere on the side you searched, past the Lestranges."

"He wasn't. There was only Dolohov and someone I didn't recognise past them. Rookwood, possibly?"

I shrug. "I didn't recognise any of them, sorry. Other than none of them being Pettigrew or Bellatrix."

"We're sure he got sent to Azkaban? I'd rather hoped he'd be put in my old cell." Which was on the block I searched. Sending Sirius the other way wasn't a random choice.

I take a moment to think as we scud across the light chop that's building. "They knew about Wormtail, yes? They'll have wanted to convert a cell that he couldn't just walk out of, maybe take some other measures. Whoever did the work wouldn't have wanted to go any further down inside the prison than they had to, he's probably on one of the upper tiers. Plus, they'd want a human guard looking at him regular. Rats burrow and gnaw, they'll want to watch him for that."

Sirius has been nodding along with my thinking-out-loud. "Probably for the best, I wouldn't have been able to resist gloating. Which would've given the game away."

-oOo-

Twenty minutes later, after a chain of apparitions that took in the sky above the North Sea, Duncansby Head for a brief recovery period, two separate spots in the sky over Britain, and an undignified splash into Guildford Lido to lose the falling velocity, we arrive in the garage of the house at Wisteria Walk.

The soaking we took on that last Apparation was a simple matter of physics. There's a minimum time between apparitions as you Deliberate on your next Destination, and you pick up speed while you're falling. Even the quarter second we spent in the air after leaving the boat meant we hit Duncansby Head falling at a fair clip, and had to drop and roll into the heather. If you're doing more than one mid-air jump, the last one needs to be over enough water for a splash landing. Or, rather, it does if you're not up to right-quick-smart charms work. Or, as we did earlier, parachute. Neither of us is good enough at unsupported flight to apparate while doing it, and apparating while riding a broom is in the manual under the bold print heading "DON'T". You could, in theory, pull out a broom and fly out of the resulting dive, but neither of us wants to do that in the busy air-lanes above Surrey, nor have reports of a Secrecy violation on the same night we raided Azkaban.

I rip off my goggles and my sodden balaclava. Urgently, because it's waterlogged enough that I was nearly waterboarding myself. I turn to Sirius, who's done the same. "We did it. We fuckin' did it!"

"We did." Sirius is grinning his exhilaration-of-survival somewhere in the megawatt range. "Just, you know, let's never do that again."

AUTHOR NOTES

JKR had Lupin transform only when the light of the moon hit shone through the clouds, the one time it happened 'on stage'. Which sort of implies that a werewolf who stays indoors once a month might as well not be a lycanthrope. That clearly can't be the case, or the curse'd be a non-issue. So: a werewolf has to transform on the nights around full moon either when the moonlight hits or for, regardless of whether he can see the moon, some number of hours around the exact time of astronomical fullness. It also means that if they're careful they can miss some moons entirely because astronomical full moon is during daylight hours, although I suspect they suffer regardless. Remus will need his cage while he's visiting his dad, though, the 4th January '88 full moon is just before one in the morning.

The bit about the fabricators believing the cage was for a sex dungeon? Yeah. I'm told the cover stories are usually laughably thin.

Saville and Glitter: as at '87, uncaught celebrity child-rapists. Be a crying shame if Death Eaters turn up on their doorstep.

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer were performing Vic Reeves' Big Night Out as a stage show in New Cross in '87. The TV show they scored a few years later is all over Youtube, and if you care for surreal humour at all, look it up.

I've picked just south of the Skerries for the location of Azkaban. Duncansby Head is the closest mainland point.

I've only ever made one parachute jump, a sponsored one for charity. It was a long time ago, and I hated it. This undoubtedly shows in the description of Our Heroes descending upon Azkaban.

Hissing Sid is a Reference. Captain Beaky and his Band were Hissing Sid's great nemeses, but as any British child of the 70s will tell you, Hissing Sid Is Innocent, OK!

The TV show "Monkey" was an english dub of the Nippon TV series based on Journey to the West. Done in the less-enlightened times of the early 80s, all the voice actors put on outrageous "oriental" accents that those of us who were kids at the time found hilarious. It also had a theme song that absolutely slapped.

(Mal's favourite chocolate, like mine, is Green & Black's Ginger Dark chocolate, with their Maya Gold a close second. They used to do a Chili-infused one, but like all good things it passed from this fallen world.)

Yes, the Clink was a real prison, old and notorious enough to give its name to other jails. There's a museum on the site where it once stood. Also, I had to tear down and rebuild my mental Azkaban about a dozen times: I think I've got it consistent with what's said about the place in the books while still keeping a 'mad-scientist-dark-wizard-lair' feel.

I am, of course, completely disregarding the 'Black Family Tree' in the hope of making sense of the things said in the books. Andromeda has to be at least three years older than the Marauders (If Nymphadora was an unplanned teenage pregnancy during OWL year) more likely five (if she was the result of post-Newt celebration) or more, and Bellatrix has to have been close enough to Snape's age to be part of the crowd he joined, as Sirius tells us in GoF. Andromeda has to have been the older sister. The Blacks of Sirius and Bellatrix's generation also have to span no more than seven years, so Slughorn could have hoped to 'have the full set.'

If you want to look up the words to Good Ship Venus or Bollocky Bill, on your own head be it. The Woad Song is only on Youtube in the clean version, I checked.

The two-fingered gesture dates back to the middle ages in England: archers in particular are depicted in mid-late medieval art doing it toward the enemy. It gets used about when and where an American would raise the middle finger. The story that it comes from the Hundred Years war in response to the French cutting the index and middle fingers off captured archers is almost certainly a myth.

Finally, if you were paying attention you'll have noticed that there were more inmates on Death Eater Row than the ten who escape during Order of the Phoenix. Some of the people Mal and Sirius just poisoned wouldn't have made it anyway.

Fanfic recommendation: The Brightest Witch And the Darkest House, by Belial666. On FFN only as far as I know, it's about a muggleborn who is somewhat, but not entirely, similar to Hermione Granger. She gets sorted into Slytherin. Hijinks ensue.