"Azkaban," Bella said as she looked around the table. Gathered around were a many of Harry's friends and allies as they could get a hold of on such short notice. Once she and Hermione had figured out the cryptic clues left in the old legends, with a lot of help from especially the ever-studious Ravenclaws in Potter's Legion, Harry had figured they had a good shot at finding the Rod and ending the war, so he'd asked everyone who could to come. Arrayed around the table were teachers, students, and soldiers - Remus and Snape sitting next to Neville, Luna, and Parvati; Moody and General Rotan were there, too, and Xerina and Hiscophney finished off the round table. Harry, Bella, and Hermione were spread in between them. Harry glanced around the room; at best, this would be their chance to end the war. He knew the research was hurried, with less than two weeks since the arrival of Neville's note and this meeting, and that their chances at actually finding the weapon they were hoping for were slim at best. This week and a half had been relatively quiet on both sides; Harry and his advisors assumed Voldemort was preparing for a big attack.
"The clues we have found all lead us there. Thanks to the hint from the Legion, we have managed to narrow down our search, and all the legends, all the stories point us to Azkaban," Hermione explained further. A magical map of the island appeared in the center of the table, complete with stormy weather and dark seas around it. "This is Azkaban today. Thirteen hundred years ago, it looked like this."
Bella waved her wand and the stormy, dark island vanished, only to be replaced by what might have been a piece of Ireland. Trees lined the coast, and the sea was no longer wild and untamed. The rocky beaches became long stretches of sand, and the foreboding fortress that now housed prisoners and Dementors, built upon the layers of ruins, was replaced by a castle that was as magnificent as Nair'icaix.
"Thirteen hundred years ago, the island of Azkaban was the seat of House Polairix's mage crafters and artificers. The best and brightest mages, alchemists, and potions makers came there to study and experiment with magical artifacts and creatures," Bella continued. "That may explain the existence of the Dementors - an experiment gone awry. However, after a number of wars, House Polairix realized that Azkaban would make the prime location for military research. The artificers began developing magical weapons, the creators and alchemists began to experiment with beasts for combat. By the time the Rod of Dominion was crafted and used, Azkaban had become the center for warfare development."
"So what happened to the island? It clearly doesn't look anything like this now," Moody grumbled.
Hermione leaned forward and waved her wand over the map, causing it to change back. "History is a little vague on that, and most of what we've just told you was pieced together from various clues. But we're pretty confident on what happened to Azkaban - three centuries after the dark wars, with House Polairix's resources drained from continuing wars and the subsequent reconstruction, Azkaban's ruler, Count Gregorianus Azkaban, decided to make his bid for the throne of Polairix. He believed that with Lord Polairix weakened and the artificers at his command, he had a good chance of overthrowing him."
"Civil war," Rotan commented.
"Exactly." Hermione nodded. "The records suddenly end there, and begin again fifty years later. We can only speculate what happened, but I think it's pretty obvious that House Polairix razed Azkaban and destroyed the records."
"That's all nice and well, but what does this history lesson have to do with the Rod?" Hiscophney asked.
"Count Gregorianus was said to have found a magical artifact he was sure would ensure him victory in his insurrection," Hermione announced triumphantly. "It is described in his personal journal - of which we only have excerpts - as being a staff bearing the crest of Polairix, sealed away in an ancient tomb, warded by blood and guarded by creatures of darkness. The only way he could have come across it is if it was located in Azkaban."
That announcement caused an excited murmur to wash across the room, but Rotan put an end to it quickly. "I hate to be the nay-sayer, but what makes you so sure that it wasn't moved after his rebellion was destroyed?"
"The tomb of Gregorianus is located deep in the ruins of Azkaban," Bella replied, "which means he never got his armies off the island. I know it's a long shot, but it's the best guess we have. We can only hope that because the earlier Lord Polairix was unable to destroy the Rod, the one who defeated Gregorianus didn't, either. It makes sense, though, that they would replace the Rod where it was found, buried with a rebellion they didn't want anyone to know about. And who would ever travel to a desolate island like the one they turned Azkaban into?"
"In fact, Azkaban remained unoccupied until Amanda Argoggle stumbled across it by accident in 1823, and it was turned into a prison a mere hundred-fifty years ago," Hermione added.
"So what's the plan, then? I don't suppose that this thing is unguarded, and we have no idea what could possibly be protecting it," Neville asked, looking around the table.
Bella ticked off her fingers. "We can count on wards, blood wards from the looks of it, which means Harry needs to be there. Any other wards I can take care of. As for what's guarding it… we haven't got a clue."
"We're going to take a complement of the Ice soldiers that are sitting the place with us," Harry added. "If we run into a dead end, we'll pull out and come back another time, with the support we need. For now, we need to go as far as we can. Maybe we'll even manage to get to the Rod itself."
"I'm coming along, too." Hermione speared Harry with a pointed look. "Aside from Bellatrix, I'm most familiar with the legend, and I might come in useful."
"What about the rest of us, then?"
Harry glanced around the table. "Okay… Count Hiscophney, Queen Xerina, please begin moving your troops into position. You can coordinate with Kinglsey Shacklebolt at the Ministry to set up defensive positions and wards, spelltraps, and whatever nasty surprises you can think of for Voldemort's forces. Professor Snape, Remus, Moody, please help them with that. Neville - I'm sorry, but the Legion is going to sit this one out. General Rotan, I'd like to make a request. Minister Mockridge will no doubt be a prime target for Voldemort, right after me and Dumbledore. I was wondering if you could personally arrange for his security."
Acknowledgements rang out from across the table, and Harry stood. "Any further questions or suggestions?"
"How will we know if Voldemort has taken the bait?" Hiscophney asked from across the room.
Moody answered for Harry. "Trust me, when he does, we will know," the old auror said.
"Potter, if you're going to go through with this hare-brained scheme of yours to go down into the ruins beneath the fortress of Azkaban, then I'll be coming along with you," Snape called out. "I can do a better job breaking wards than I can baby-sitting soldiers who I know nothing about."
"Amen to that," Moody agreed. "I'd go, too, but someone's gotta tell these Ministry nitwits who is friend and who's foe."
The fortress of Azkaban was an eerie place to be, even without the Dementors and the prisoners. The sea was rough as always, and by the time the boat had arrived, Neville was green in the face, looking like he was going to throw up any minute. Luna, on the other hand, was smiling serenely as usual. Harry glanced up at the walls he'd spent the worst days of his life behind. That seemed like a lifetime away now. He felt Bella squeeze his hand in a gesture of comfort, and smiled grimly. Some good had come out of that, after all. As they moved closer to the fortress, he could see the changes the guard of Ice soldiers had made. New fortifications had been built, and old ones reinforced. The gates had been replaced and magical lights were littering the place, bathing the formerly pitch-black courtyard in light.
Once the boat settled on shore, they all hurried into the fortress, Harry and Snape leading the way. They were received at the gates by a group of Ice soldiers from the contingent that Harry and Xerina had left on the island when he'd repossessed it from the British Ministry. They exchanged few words, General Rotan having informed the men of Harry's plans and his party's arrival, and then four Ice soldiers led the way down into the deepest level of the fortress they had uncovered.
"We've begun excavating the ruins beneath the fortress," one of them explained as they climbed down rickety stairs in the flickering torch light, "but it's been slow progress, mainly due to the collapse of three different structures on top of each other. There may be more that we haven't identified yet." The soldier gave Harry an apologetic look. "Sorry, milord, but this fortress has been rebuilt so many times it's almost impossible to tell one stage from the next. As it is, we managed to uncover doorways that lead down into the lower ruins, but we have not found anything resembling a tomb or a gravesite yet."
They stopped at the bottom of a staircase that seemed to abruptly cut off in mid-air, and the leading Ice soldier gestured down into the dark space below them. "We have gotten this far, but it appears someone deliberately destroyed any means of going deeper down into the fortress ruins. No matter where we excavate, we encounter the same difficulty, as if any path further down into this castle's history was sabotaged."
Harry glanced down the sheer drop before them and kicked a pebble over the edge. It vanished after only a second, swallowed by the darkness beneath. He frowned and then kicked another pebble down, straining his ears to listen for the sound of impact. When he heard nothing, he looked around for something bigger. The rest of his party had noticed his odd behavior and was standing back, watching him in confusion as he picked up a galleon-sized rock and hauled back, hurling it down where the stairwell was broken off.
This time, all of them heard it, the distinct crack of stone against stone, even as they watched the rock sail down into the darkness. "Not sabotaged," Bella finally commented, "warded."
Snape and Bella took a step forward, standing precariously on the edge of the very last stair they could see, and drew their wands. " Finite Incantatem," they intoned in unison, hurling the dispelling charm at the wards before them. When nothing happened, Bella frowned and began muttering more complex charms, Snape matching her phrase for phrase as the two attempted to unravel the spell that had been woven around the ancient ruins.
While they were working, Harry pulled Neville and Luna aside. "Did Bella talk to you about the potion for your parents?"
"Yeah." Neville nodded. "I'm… she wants to wake them up as soon as possible."
"I'm sensing a 'but' coming…"
"I don't know," Neville shrugged. "I'm not sure if we should wait till this is all over, you know? They already lived through one war… and what if… what if we wake them up now, only to get killed when the fighting starts again?"
Harry didn't quite know what to say at the distraught look on his friend's face, even as Luna put an arm around the other boy's shoulders. "The only guarantee for victory is love," the girl said with a soft smile, causing both boys to look at her strangely.
"It's your call, Neville. But honestly, if it were my parents… I'd want to talk to them, at least once." Harry smiled sadly. "But I understand your reasons. Whatever you decide, let me know, and we'll arrange things, all right?"
Neville nodded, sniffling slightly. "Thanks, Harry."
"We're done!" A brilliant flare of light lit up the ruined staircase, and when it faded, gone were the moldy walls and crumbling bricks, replaced by gleaming marble and fine mosaics.
"What the-"Harry gaped at the sight around him. The group slowly wandered into the exquisite mausoleum, looking around themselves in awe at the statues and paintings that presumably depicted the failed uprising. At the center of the grand hall was a sarcophagus, intricate designs carefully chiseled into the sides and lid. A flowing inscription ran along the side of the stone coffin. Neither Snape nor Bella could begin to translate the strange writing - it wasn't English, or Latin, or Gaelic. Oddly enough, it was Luna who offered a translation.
"Here lies the last master of freedom in eternal rest. Peace to all, but death to those who dare to enter," she recited, her eyes unseeing, once again making Harry wonder if Luna wasn't the seer Trelawney always claimed to be.
The small group looked at each other in confusion. "Are we in the wrong place?" Neville asked, "I mean, I thought this guy led the rebellion against Polairix, didn't he?"
"No, this is the right place." Bella countered as she examined the mosaics that were set into the walls of the chamber; mosaics that were, uncharacteristically, unmoving. "This is the rebellion, look. And here's the rod he's holding."
"Then I don't get the inscription."
"Longbottom, once again you fail to look beyond the obvious," Snape replied, though Harry noted that he was lacking his usual acerbic tone. "In war, history is always written by the victors, and sadly, that history is often very biased. It may very well be that the history books, which give only a brief description of the uprising, have omitted significant details. Maybe the Lord Polairix of the time was a tyrant. Maybe Gregorianus was more than a power-hungry usurper. I find it difficult to believe that in millennia, not one of the heirs of House Polairix was corrupt or tyrannical."
"So if he's buried in there, then that's where the Rod is?" Harry asked as he approached the sarcophagus apprehensively.
"Most likely," Snape agreed.
Harry was about to reach out and touch the lid when one of the Ice soldiers stopped him. "It may be dangerous. We don't know what kind of protection is on this, milord. I suggest you allow one of us to try opening it," the man said.
The young lord of Polairix was about to protest when Bella caught his eye and she shook her head. He reckoned it was just one of those things that came along with being a ruler of so many people. It didn't mean he had to like it, though, he thought with a frown as he stepped back to let the soldier to his work. No, putting someone else in harm's way just because everyone else believed him to be more important was not something that sat well with him.
The sarcophagus opened without problems, and the small party gathered around to peer inside, only to find that it was-
"Empty." Bella swore under her breath. There was nothing in there, no mummy, no remains, no rotting corpse or magically preserved body.
"We made this whole trip for nothing?" Snape grumbled as he looked around the chamber, trying to figure out what was going on. While he didn't exactly like Bella - especially since he knew just what the woman was capable of - he held no illusions about her intellectual ability. Nor did he doubt Hermione's ability to conduct research, not after having to deal with the Muggleborn witch for six years. No, if both of them agreed that this was the most likely place for the Rod of Dominion to be, then it was here. Or it had been, at some point.
"This makes no sense," Bella commented as she traced the inscriptions on the sides of the sarcophagus with an expression of intense concentration. "Why put up all of this for an empty coffin?"
"Grave robbers, maybe?" one soldier offered.
Bella shook her head. "I don't think so. Nothing's been damaged, and I highly doubt any robbers would have made it past the wards. Not to mention the fact that in recent times, Azkaban has been inhabited, and not exactly by friendly creatures, either."
"So the body got moved, then, maybe?" Neville suggested, looking a little lost. He was there more to support Harry, knowing full well that he wouldn't be much use when it came to curse-breaking, but wanting to do something nevertheless.
"Maybe…"
Snape stopped short at one of the walls of the chamber, the one opposite to the stairway they had entered through. "I don't actually think the body was ever here to begin with," he finally said, after studying the inlaid mosaics. When he had everyone's attention, he pointed out three separate places on the wall. "Look here, here, and there."
Harry squinted at the wall, trying to figure out what the potions master was talking about. The wall Snape was standing in front of was depicting the death of Gregorianus at the hands of the ruling Lord Polairix, the mosaic painstakingly put together from thousands of little, one-eighth inch square pieces of colored stone and almost frighteningly realistic, down to the vivid sky-blue color of the mantle fluttering around the dying Gregorianus.
Wait a minute… Harry thought as he took several steps closer to the wall. The mantle Gregorianus was wearing was a solid sky-blue, but there was something off about it, something that he couldn't quite put his hands on. He reached out to touch the mosaic, feeling the smooth stones beneath his fingertips, and traced the outline of the cape, the rest of the world forgotten for the moment.
And then he froze when he felt a roughness that was completely out of place. Looking down at his hands, found a little silver spot embedded in the place of one of the blue tiles in the mantle, the color completely alien amidst the rest of the mosaic, small enough to be missed on anything other than a close inspection. Glancing around at the other places on the wall Snape had pointed out, Harry could make out faint glints of silver, now that he knew what to look for.
"What are these?" he asked, not really expecting an answer.
"Blood gems," Snape replied after a moment, a hint of awe in his voice. "They're very rare and very powerful magical catalysts, usually used to key blood magic. They're very expensive, because they cannot be made, and must be mined from very specific locations deep beneath the ground. Dwarves used to mine them centuries ago, until they became extinct. A number of wizards tried to use the old mine shafts to do it themselves, but very few actually managed to survive that deep down, much less return with usable blood gems," he clarified a moment later.
"So… what are they doing in this wall?"
Snape walked along the wall then turned as he reached the end, and started on the adjacent wall. "There's some here, too. This is odd… they're in no particular pattern. This isn't a rune. At least not one I recognize."
"Runes?" Harry blinked, wishing Hermione was there to explain things to him. Bella was off on the wall opposite to Snape, looking for a pattern, herself, which left Harry, Neville, and Luna standing next to the sarcophagus along with the Ice soldiers. Feeling like he wasn't being much help, Harry resigned himself to looking at the walls, trying to see if he could spot the gems. With a lot of squinting and moving his head around so the ambient light caught the small slivers of silver, he managed to distinguish fourteen on the wall Bella was standing in front of, and fourteen in the wall Snape was looking at.
Harry turned around, looking behind him at the mosaic and again found fourteen gems. I'm beginning to see a pattern here, he thought in amusement. The gems were arrayed in squares. Fourteen gems formed six adjacent squares in the shape of an elongated cross that was three squares wide and four squares tall. He brushed his hand over one of the gems again, trying to see if he could maybe push it in or pry it loose…
"Ouch!" Harry pulled back his hand, even as every eye in the room fixated on him at his sudden outcry. "The wall stung me," he said, wiping his now bleeding index finger on his robes.
Bella was about to berate him for not being careful when the ceiling opened up with a loud rumble, but instead of the stormy skies of Azkaban, it showed nothing but a brilliant white glow that forced them to shield their eyes. Harry barely noticed as the gems in the walls began to glow and pulse with the opening of the ceiling. A second rumble went through the hall, and the gems turned from silver to a blood-red hue that he assumed had given them their names.
Beams of light, their red a stark contrast to the white light from overhead, arced through the room, crisscrossing in the middle of the hall, forming a pattern Harry had never seen before. Before long, the light from above and the beams from the gems faded again, leaving them in the ambient light from the chamber itself, but what hovered in the center of the room was what had gotten everyone's attention.
Though the beams from the gems had been cut off, a glowing figure remained, sustained by magic. Lines of glowing red light crossed each other, forming a series of eight cubes, four of them stacked vertically with the remaining four arranged near the top, forming a kind of three-dimensional cross. It hummed serenely as it hovered, like a sleeping guardian, over the marble floor.
"What in Merlin's name is that?" Bella whispered in awe as they approached it carefully. Snape shook his head to indicate that he, too, had never encountered anything like this before. He reached out a hand close to one of the glowing lines, only to yank it back quickly, looking at his hand in confusion. The skin was red, as if he'd almost been burned, though for that to be the case, the entire chamber should be warming up at an alarming rate.
Harry, noting Snape's reaction to the apparition, took a different approach, and began inching the tip of his ivory wand closer to one of the corners of the thing. When nothing happened and the wand didn't burst into flames from the same heat that had almost burned Snape, Harry closed the remaining distance and touched the corner formed by three glowing bars of light. To his surprise, his wand passed right through it. A sudden rumble went through the room again, and the object in the air solidified, sheets of light forming between the vertices of the structure. The outside of the tesseract glowed blood red for a brief moment, before fading to a dull, semi-transparent light red. Inside, hovering in the air, was a jet black staff.
"Merlin!" Bella had moved to stand behind Harry, and was gripping on to his shoulder in awe. "We did it," she whispered.
"Are we sure this is it?" Neville asked dubiously. "I mean, it doesn't look like a powerful magical artifact." And he was right. The staff was a simple rod, roughly six feet tall, and an inch and a half in diameter. Whether it was painted black, or that was the natural color of the material it was made of was impossible to tell.
"Only one way to find out," Harry muttered as he reached for the staff.
Bella's cry of horror echoed around the chamber as Harry was thrown a dozen feet through the air to land hard on his back. He tumbled and rolled for a few moments, before groaning in pain. The witch was at his side before he could try to rise. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?" she asked frantically.
"I'm fine… I think," Harry muttered. "Lost my glasses somewhere."
Bella glanced around and located the errant visual aid. Summoning it silently, she passed them to Harry, who promptly placed them on his nose. "Guess I won't be trying that again," he managed with a weak chuckle.
"No, you're not."
Harry glanced back at where Snape and the Ice soldiers were looking over the now solid construct. "Any idea what the heck that is?"
Bella shook her head. "It's unlike anything I've ever seen, I'm afraid. Usually when you're breaking or erecting wards a skilled mage can 'feel' the connecting magic threads, and then with some effort and time, he or she can figure out how to unravel the spell and neutralize it. This…"
"There's nothing," Snape commented from the other side of the hall. "It's not giving off any magical signature. It does not trigger any of the detection and identification spells I've been using, and it seems completely incorporeal, despite evidence to the contrary." Snape nodded at Harry, then proved his point by chucking a small rock at the thing. The surface rippled as the rock passed through, only to completely disappear. It reappeared an instant later, but not where they had expected it to. Instead of coming out of the other side, the rock had emerged from the top, falling 'up' towards the ceiling, before gravity took hold again and forced it back into the construct. It bounced around, emerging from random locations for a few more minutes, before finally dropping out the bottom.
"For all intents and purposes," Snape commented, "this thing shouldn't even exist."
"So what do we do now?" Neville asked.
Snape grimaced. "As much as I hate to say it, the headmaster would probably be of more help here. Maybe he has seen something like this before. As it stands, I have no idea where to even begin to deconstruct this ward. If it is, in fact, a ward."
"I have to agree," Bella admitted sourly, her expression softening as she noticed the dour look on Harry's face. "It's the only thing I can think of, Harry," she told him. "We don't have the time to go looking for more information in the libraries."
"I know." Harry nodded grimly. He was getting the sinking feeling something bad was about to happen, even as they all hurried back to the surface to get back to Nair'i'caix.