After a series of soft popping sounds that echoed strangely in the circular chamber, like champagne corks being released, numerous dark figures appeared throughout the black room.
The Death Eaters who had gathered at Malfoy Manor only moments ago, standing on that windswept terrace receiving Voldemort's commands had all materialized here in this strange underground chamber.
Like Lucius Malfoy, every one of them had donned their black cloaks. Their faces were now completely buried beneath their hoods.
Upon landing in various positions around the room, the Death Eaters immediately began surveying their surroundings with vigilance. Their wands appeared in their hands as if by instinct, and they turned in slow circles, checking every shadow and corner for potential threats or ambushes.
Only after confirming through quick sweeps that the area was secure, that no Aurors waited in the shadows to spring a trap, did they cease their agitation one by one. Their tense shoulders relaxed, though they remained alert.
Lucius Malfoy, who had been designated as the commander of this operation, quickly verified the headcount. Finding everyone accounted for, he looked toward Broderick Bode.
Bode still moving with that unsettling mechanical precision wasted no time in unnecessary explanation or hesitation. He stepped directly through the glowing portal before them.
Having reached this critical point in their mission, there was nothing left to panic or fear about. The time for second thoughts had long passed.
With a sharp wave to the silent, watching Death Eaters, Lucius steeled himself and followed Bode through the glowing doorway.
The instant he stepped through the threshold, Lucius was stunned to find himself seemingly plunged into a world constructed entirely of light. There was no up or down, no walls or floor, nothing but light in every direction.
He stood completely motionless, his feet landing on something invisible and intangible yet the linear rays of light all around him streamed back at tremendous speed.
The effect created a powerful illusion that he was hurtling forward at an unimaginable speed, racing through some tunnel between spaces at speeds that should have torn him apart. His stomach lurched with the sensation of this acceleration.
Before panic could set in, before his mind could fully process what was happening to him, the dazzling light suddenly vanished as abruptly as it had appeared.
Lucius lurched forward two unsteady steps before managing to steady himself. When he raised his disoriented eyes, still seeing afterimages of the light tunnel, Broderick Bode had reappeared in his field of vision standing calmly as though nothing strange had occurred.
The other Death Eaters followed one after another through the portal, each emerging with varying degrees of stumbling and disorientation. Taking advantage of this waiting period while his companions recovered, Lucius carefully examined the room they now occupied.
It was a rectangular chamber, noticeably different in shape from the circular room they'd left behind. Like the corridor outside, it was constructed from rough stone blocks that looked ancient, perhaps medieval.
Several golden chandeliers hung from the ceiling on heavy chains, their many candles were burning with ordinary orange flames rather than the eerie blue light from before. This made the room considerably brighter than the passages outside.
The room was almost completely empty, empty of furniture or decoration, save for one notable and immediately eye-catching feature: at its center, resting on a stone pedestal in a brass tray, sat a badge made of stone.
"Good God, that's the Hogwarts crest!"
Mirroring Lucius's reaction upon first seeing the object, one of the newly arrived Death Eaters exclaimed in astonishment.
"What's something like this doing here?" the Death Eater continued, unable to keep the bewilderment from his voice.
"If I remember correctly, Bole, you spent time in Azkaban, didn't you?" Nott Senior asked.
"Your memory serves you well on that particular point, Nott," Bole replied, gazing at the slightly hunched figure of Nott Senior with resentment.
His voice was cold and bitter. "But for security purposes, as I'm sure you're aware, the Ministry of Magic made all wizards entering Azkaban wear heavy blindfolds during the entire journey, both coming and going. The cloth was thick and spelled against transparency. I saw absolutely nothing during my transfer!"
Seeming to realize belatedly that he had offended a colleague, Nott Senior nodded with stiff acknowledgment.
"I meant no offense, Bole," he said. "It's just that I thought—"
"I trust you all realize this is not the time for idle chat or pointless speculation," Lucius interrupted sharply. He glared sternly at both Bole and Nott, before turning his full attention to Broderick Bode, who stood motionless beside the brass tray like a statue awaiting activation.
"This is the Portkey to Azkaban?" Lucius asked, seeking confirmation of what he already suspected.
Bode nodded once.
"That's correct," he confirmed in his flat, emotionless voice. "But each time before using it, approval from the Minister of Magic is required. Otherwise, the Portkey won't function at all."
The atmosphere grew visibly tense. In the not particularly spacious stone chamber, the Death Eaters slowly shifted position. They surrounded the brass tray and the Hogwarts crest within it.
Those in the back placed their hands on the shoulders of those in front. Those at the front extended their hands, fingertips hovering inches from the crest. Their gazes fixed on Bode's face.
"I'll count down from three," Bode announced in a tone utterly devoid of any emotion or urgency,. "Then we all touch the Portkey together, simultaneously. Make sure you maintain contact."
After pausing several seconds and receiving no objections or questions from the Death Eaters, Bode raised three fingers in the air where everyone could see them clearly.
"Three," he began and finished. "Two. One!"
Whoosh!
The world suddenly spun violently around them.
Lucius found his vision abruptly blur. Everything and everyone in his field of view appeared in multiple overlapping images. Intense dizziness and nausea attacked his nervous system with overwhelming force, making his stomach heave and his head pound.
After several dozen seconds, the Death Eaters found themselves collapsed in a sprawling heap on the floor. They lay tangled together, groaning and gasping. Slowly, very slowly, some color finally began returning to their ashen faces.
"Now I understand why they blindfolded me when they brought me to this cursed place," Bole said weakly from where he lay against the wall. "Being unable to see made it marginally less—urgh!"
His attempt at dark humor was cut short as he retched against the wall.
But when Lucius finally managed to raise his swimming head and actually saw what lay before them, when his eyes focused enough to take in their surroundings, he cried out shrilly in alarm and confusion.
He leaped to his feet despite his lingering nausea and pressed his wand firmly to Bode's temple.
"What's going on here?!" Lucius demanded, his voice was rising to a near-shriek. "Why are we still in the same place? The Portkey didn't work!"
Many of the other Death Eaters had noticed it too. They looked around in growing panic and anger. They were still in that same small rectangular room in the Department of Mysteries, apparently unmoved. The brass tray and stone crest remained in their exact original positions on the pedestal!
One Death Eater after another scrambled to their feet and drew their wands with aggressive movements. Bole, having recovered enough to stand, shouted angrily at Nott Senior.
"Your Imperius Curse malfunctioned! He's broken free of your control and sabotaged us!"
"That's absolutely impossible!" Nott protested with indignation; his voice was rising defensively. "I would know immediately if the curse had failed! He's still under the Imperius Curse's complete control—I can feel it!"
Nott's manner and definite conviction made Lucius's face show doubt and growing suspicion rather than certainty. His wand remained pressed to Bode's temple, but his finger hesitated on the trigger of a curse.
"Then what exactly is going on here?" Lucius demanded to Bode directly. "Explain yourself. Now."
"This is a two-way Portkey," Bode explained calmly, seemingly completely unfazed by the many wands pointed at him from multiple directions. His voice remained flat, like a professor lecturing students.
"There are identical spatial coordinates established on both ends for positioning—the same room exists in two places simultaneously, connected by the Portkey. They're perfect duplicates of each other."
He paused, then added the crucial information: "We've already arrived at Azkaban."
Then, completely disregarding the wand threats and the aggressive postures of the Death Eaters surrounding him, Bode squeezed between Crabbe Senior and Goyle Senior. He moved to the exact spot where they had first appeared in this room.
Bode extended a single finger and began tracing an arcane, complex pattern on the stone wall. His movements were much like the way goblins at Gringotts opened vault doors.
Where his fingertip passed across the stone, bright white light began to glow, following the path he traced. The light seemed to sink into the wall, marking invisible layers.
Then the accumulated light became a widening crack that suddenly contracted in all four directions simultaneously, spreading like a spiderweb of light. In the blink of an eye, a doorway had appeared before all the astonished Death Eaters where only solid wall had existed moments before.
Whoosh... whoosh...
The air from beyond the newly opened doorway rushed eagerly into the sealed room, bringing with it a thick, overpowering salty scent of the sea.
The bone-chilling cold that accompanied this air swept in like an attacking force, immediately turning all the Death Eaters' faces pale and bloodless. They began shivering in unison, their teeth were starting to chatter despite their heavy cloaks.
"That's right..." Bole said in a trembling voice, his eyes went wide with recognition and growing dread. "That's the feeling I remember... that particular cold that gets into your bones. Outside that door is Azkaban. We're really here."
Azkaban.
The very name carried weight and terror. The British Ministry of Magic's ultimate instrument of punishment and fear. Save for one or two notable exceptions in magical history, everyone who heard of this place, everyone who knew what horrors it contained, felt an involuntary tremor of dread run through their body!
"Follow me—" Bode said, turning to address the Death Eaters with his blank, expressionless face.
Then he walked directly into the darkness beyond the doorway without hesitation or apparent concern, disappearing into the gloom as though being swallowed whole.
"Wait!" Lucius called out urgently, his expression changed abruptly to one of alarm. "Those Dementors, you—"
But seeing Bode's figure vanish completely into the darkness, the alarmed Death Eaters could wait no longer. They hastily pursued him through the doorway, none wanting to be left behind in the room.
Outside the chamber they discovered a damp stone stairway that led up at a steep angle, the steps were slippery with moisture and what might have been ice. Clearly, the reception room they'd just left was currently underground.
The stone stairs were not particularly long. The Death Eaters, who had hastily lit their wands to see in the darkness reached ground level after a dozen seconds or so of hurried climbing.
What they emerged into made their hearts sink.
Azkaban had no starry sky above it, no glimpse of moon or stars to provide even minimal comfort. The heavens themselves seemed to have been blotted out, replaced by an oppressive darkness that pressed down.
What the Death Eaters perceived through their terrified senses was coldness. And in the near distance, they could hear the successive, rhythmic sounds of violent waves crashing against the rocky shore.
Clatter, clatter, clatter—
The sound of many chattering teeth merged together throughout the group, creating a rather pathetic and comical chorus.
The boundless darkness stretching before them in all directions, and the profound, instinctive fear welling uncontrollably from the depths of their hearts caused more and more Death Eaters to make their wands emit brighter light, as though the light could somehow protect them.
As numerous pale white lights gathered together, pooling their radiance, they finally saw what stood directly ahead, looming out of the darkness like a terrible monument to suffering.
It was a massive gray-black structure, a fortress or tower of enormous proportions. It rose to an incredible height, even more imposing and tall than Hogwarts's highest tower.
The walls of this high tower, from its base all the way up to its barely visible top, were studded with many small windows or rather, given their tiny size and irregular shape, "holes" would be a more appropriate description.
These were not windows meant to provide light or air, but rather gaps just large enough to let sound escape. From somewhere within that terrible structure came occasional sounds that might have been human once.
The wand-light illuminated the ground immediately around them.
Some of the Death Eaters were horrified to discover that from here, from the base of the stairs all the way to the tower's entrance, the uneven terrain was literally littered with countless bones. Most appeared to be cattle and sheep.
From these animals' gaping jaws, frozen in their final moments, one could easily tell their deaths had been far from quick or pleasant.
Of course, the most terrifying things present were certainly not these scattered bones or even the ominous tower itself, but rather the Dementors that guarded this place.
Lucius's gaze pierced through the dim space and fell upon the area surrounding the tower base. There, dozens, no, hundreds of creatures draped in tattered black cloaks glided through the air.
The instant Lucius saw them clearly, the moment his eyes focused on those nightmare figures, he felt as though an icy hand had penetrated through his chest, passing through flesh and bone without leaving a mark.
The invisible hand seized his stomach and was kneading it at will, twisting his insides. The chill rising from his very soul, from some place deeper than the physical body, tried to freeze his thoughts completely and drag him down into despair.
The moment the Death Eaters spotted the Dementors hovering in the distance, the Dementors discovered these uninvited guests as well.
When hundreds of Dementors suddenly began moving as one, massing together into a black cloud of darkness, and descended toward the Death Eaters, it felt as though the sky itself was collapsing upon them.
"I can't take this anymore! I'm leaving!" Bole shrieked, his mental defenses were utterly shattered by the overwhelming terror. His composure, all his supposed strength and ruthlessness, crumbled completely in the face of the Dementors' approach.
He backed away frantically, waving his wand uselessly, but he had forgotten about the stone stairway behind him. His heel caught on the top step, and he fell straight back down the steep stairs. After a terrible clattering and clanging of body against stone, all sound from him stopped completely.
"Someone help me... I have to—I have to get out of here!" someone among the remaining Death Eaters began sobbing, their voice was breaking with panic. They waved their wand desperately in the air.
"Expecto Patronum!" the voice cried out, attempting to summon the one charm that could drive Dementors away.
Nothing happened. Not even a wisp of silver mist appeared from the wand tip. The spell required happy memories, required hope and light, and none of those things could exist in this place, not with the Dementors so close.
"Avada Kedavra!" Crabbe Senior called out in a voice filled with desperation.
But his wand tip only produced a few pathetic green sparks that sputtered and died.
The space through which the great swarm of Dementors flew saw moisture rapidly condense into tiny ice particles as the temperature plummeted far below freezing.
These glittering particles whitened the very air itself, making it difficult to see or breathe. The creatures rapidly approached the terrified Death Eaters.
Lucius even saw with rising despair and horror the pairs of grayish-white hands beginning to emerge from beneath the ragged black cloaks that shrouded the Dementors, sinister, and gleaming covered in slime and dark blotches. Those were the hands that would remove the masks, that would perform the Kiss.
"Where is it?!" Nott Senior could no longer contain himself. He shouted desperately at Bode, grabbing the man's robes and shaking him.
"That thing the Dark Lord mentioned—the object that can restrain the Dementors! Take it out, quickly!"
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