Rufus Scrimgeour had visited Azkaban more in the last few weeks than in the previous five years. Salt clung to his beard. The oars dipped and lifted through the chop, regular as a metronome, and he wondered when his career had turned into a ferry schedule. The reason for this visit was no different from the others. Another matter about House of Black of course. This time the youngest. The Durmstrang prodigy who took the international U18 trophy without breaking stride while Hogwarts applauded from the floor. If there was a single point on which he and the Traditional benches were in rare agreement. It was Hogwarts and how it had made itself a public embarrassment.
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The sea pressed in from every side, slate and iron. Wind needled through cloaks and gloves. The auror on the tiller kept his mouth shut and his eyes on the line. Sensible lad. Azkaban taught silence even before the pier came into view. Rufus flexed his fingers until the ache in his knuckles settled. Amelia sent him to the island because he kept his head when the temperature of a room dropped and the light went thin. He did not argue. Everyone served where they were useful.
Across from him, Corvus Black let the boat rock and considered the history under the mist. Long ago the island belonged to a peaceful hermit witha nack for research, a grandfatherly wizard named Ekrizdis. He hid the island from Muggles as he was a shy lad, the big bad sailors try to invade the island even though it was hidden. This of course led them to their deaths and as the kind researcher Ekrizdis did not waste the opportunity and conducted some innocent experiments. That would be the history of the island if it was written by Ekrizdis most probably. The honest historians would write the truth though. Ekrizdis was luring and hinting muggle sailors to conduct sick experiments on them. To make sure he was hidden he kept the whole island under wards to so muggles would not notice it. As for the wizardkin, the ministry was not established yet, let alone the ICW.
What waas strange in this setup was Dementors. They came to this island after the little old hermit. It seems the host was so charming that they decided to stay, which says enough about the host.
Contrary to tavern tales, those hovering cloaks were not a pet project of Ekrizdis. They are what happens when a species spends centuries perfecting despair. Wars over belief, wars over gold, wars over the color of skin, wars over strategical lands, holy or not was not Corvus' problem, then more wars over belief again. Magical or mundane, humankind with diligence rained death and misery over other humans. Dementors are the maniefstation of this. Give a continent a few generations to sharpen cruelty and something will arrive to eat the results.
The boat slid through a fold in the fog. Cold crawled under collars as if the air had grown teeth. Corvus let the sensation pass over him and watched for the telltale drift of thought that marked a Dementor's reach. Occlumency set like a shield behind his eyes.
Ekrizdis died in the fifteenth century. The guests did not leave. They settled and made the place comfortable in the way frost makes a window comfortable. The Ministry arrived later with ledgers and badges. Someone negotiated terms because the island became a prison in the eighteenth century with the luffly suckers as the guards. Corvus always pictured that meeting as a very long afternoon that ended when the clerk was kissed and a Dementor signed by pressing the quill through the parchment.
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Rufus glanced past the bow. Black stone lifted out of the fog, slick and sheer, a stack of walls hammered from basalt. No gulls circled. Even the sound of the sea seemed to keep its distance. He had walked these passages in winter and in what passed for summer. The place did not change. The only season Azkaban knew was hunger and despair. He tested his wand hand and felt the familiar comfort of readiness. The lion slept behind the thought of a Patronus and would wake if called. He preferred not to call it. One does not ring a bell unless the fire is visible.
The auror at the tiller angled the bow toward the stunted pier. Rope coils shifted. A faint scrape carried over the water, like wet glass dragged across stone. They crossed the outer wards. The skin prickled along Rufus's jaw and the air thinned another measure. Two shapes moved on the upper parapet, then stilled. Human guards. Good. One dealt with them first. The other committee introduced itself soon enough.
--
Corvus studied the masonry and the pattern of embedded charms with the mild interest of a craftsman evaluating a rival's work. The core warding was old, older than the Ministry seal, bound to the foundations with a depth that spoke of blood and basalt. Ekrizdis must have used human sacrifices to settle the wards over and over again. The later layers were bureaucratic. There was competence in the simple parts and carelessness where cleverness had been attempted. He made a quiet note of it. A man learned even from poor work.
Wind kicked spray across the gunwale. Rufus wiped the salt from the back of his hand and watched the boy who had put half the continent on notice with a wand and a cool voice. Calm face. Bright eyes. No tremor. He knew the type. People who stayed calm in the wrong places either broke late or broken already. He hoped for the first. Britain was already a patient with too many fevers. Another one would not help.
The keel kissed the pier. Oars rose and turned. Rope found a cleat and held. The auror jumped out and steadied the hull with a boot and a palm. Rufus stood, joints stiff, and stepped forward to the bow. Corvus rose at the same time and looked up into the gloom where the walls met the sky. A curl of mist slipped along the stones and vanished over an angle of battlement. Somewhere inside, doors would be opening, logs would be signed, and the day's work would begin.
Azkaban waited at the edge of the world. The boat had reached its shore, and the cold welcomed them in the only language it spoke, with a shiver.
--
Corvus stepped off the skiff and let Extreme Speed bloom. The wind flattened, the surf became a slow white muscle, and the grit under his boots pressed down grain by grain. In that long stretched second he watched the black air between the towers for any ripple that was not wind. Dementors did not speak. They fed and they listened. If the sinister part of mind arts had a monarch in Britain, it was not a wizard at a lectern. It was the thing that could find a man's worst day without even an eye contact.
He turned his thoughts toward the memories he got from the shards he absorbed. The ring. The cup. The locket. Tommy's habits were written there in thin ink and cold rooms. Corvus found that Riddle as well came to the same conclusion as him. Hence to be able to list the Dementors he repeated his mind painted with scenes of harvest nights over Muggle terraces, a sky seeded with cloaked shapes, the ground running white with breath. The swarm turned its faces toward the image, the offer was simple. Follow hunger. Feed where he pointed. Return when called. That was the conversation and the agreement between two sides.
He let the world resume. The salt hit. The cold bit the throat. Scrimgeour's boots rang up the stone steps ahead, steady as a metronome. Azkaban's gate took them like a mouth. The registry arch smelled of rust and mildew. Lamps burned with narrow yellow flames behind wire cages. A clerk with a pinched face pushed out a slate and did not look up.
"Wand," said the clerk without lifting his head.
Corvus set Arcturus's gift on the plank. Black yew and silver fittings, the length a hair shorter than his primary. The clerk scratched the wood with a quill that glowed, logged the core, and slid the wand into a slot. A tag hissed into place on the hilt. Scrimgeour laid down Amelia's writ with the red seal unbroken. The clerk glanced at it once and nodded after reading it.
They climbed. Stone turns. Iron doors. Breath fogging to thin ghosts. Every landing carried the same draft of old seawater and old fear. The higher tiers held the worst of the worst. The air changed there, as if the corridors resented lungs. A Dementor drifted past an archway and the temperature fell like a curtain. The dull calm of his inner wards pressed back the chill. He kept his eyes on the runnels of damp under the torches and counted doors.
Scrimgeour stopped at a black painted panel and rapped once with a knuckle. "Meeting room," he said, opening it with his badge.
A square table. Two iron chairs bolted to the floor. Chains coiled at each arm like sleeping snakes. A single lantern made a pocket of copper light on the boards. Corvus crossed the space and set two fingertips against the walls. The stone did not hum. No listening charms. No clever peephole.
"I will bring Rodolphus Lestrange," Scrimgeour said at the threshold. "You will confine yourself to negotiation. No casting. When you are done, knock." He left the writ on the table and closed the door.
Keys struck plates outside. Hinges complained. Scrimgeour stepped in first, jaw set. Behind him came Rodolphus, shackled at wrists and ankles, beard clotted, eyes sunk and glittering with the thin fever that Azkaban breeds. He moved like a man pulled by wire.
Scrimgeour fixed the cuffs to the chair and checked the chain. Corvus fixed his gaze on his. "I would not like to be disturbed during my meeting, Auror." His tone was as warm as ice. The answer was no different. "I will be outside the door," said Rufus and withdrew.
Silence settled. Corvus' wand was in hand the moment door was closed. He started with a thin net of silencing ward throught the walls. The air dulled. He layered a second weave that set a hard, simple block to the only door.
Corvus watched the line of Rodolphus's throat as the man swallowed. The stink of damp cloth and old rage sat on him like a second coat. He lifted his chin and tried for hauteur. It came out as gravel.
"What do you want, Black."
He leaned back and measured the how much the man could endure the first rounds. "Nothing complicated," he said, voice even. "Before we begin, a courtesy."
His wrist turned. Power gathered clean and cold between knuckles, red light burned from the tip and struck Rodolphus full in the chest. The man arched until the chains sang. The first sound that tore out of him was not a scream. It was a surprised breath that broke wrong and then fell into a howl that would have carried through three tiers if the silence had not drunk it whole. The lantern shook on its hook.
Corvus lifted the curse an inch shy of collapse. Rodolphus sagged hard against iron, drawing breath that whistled. A thread of spit hung from his mouth to the floor. He found his voice and fumbled for words. The second Crucio took him before he could shape a vowel. Nerves turned to wire. Fingers clawed at nothing. Boots hammered the planks in a pointless run that went nowhere.
He let it fall again. The chair steadied. Rodolphus lurched forward and stayed up only because the shackles kept him there. His eyes were wide and filmed. There was recognition in them, and something like disbelief.
"You have felt worse," Corvus said, calm as if remarking on weather. "So you told yourself." He watched the man's face crack under the memory of other nights and other rooms. "I am not here to explain what you already know. I am here to discuss a paper you signed. You will unmake it." He did not let Rodolphus to consider or answer.
The warded air held the noise. The lantern flame leaned and righted. Corvus watched the tiny sway and timed his breath to it. He counted to five and loosed, then counted to ten and loosed again, to fifteen, to twenty. Precision was a kindness he did not extend often. Today it had a purpose.
Azkaban listened. The cold reached in and tasted. Shapes gathered beyond the door, curious as gulls. Corvus tilted his head and studied the seam where light met shadow.
"I wonder," he murmured to no one in particular, "how near a Dementor must drift before it notices the banquet laid so neatly on a plate."