Harry needs to get outside. It's the only thing he can think of as he sees the billowing robes of the two dementors outside in the distance - they're coming towards the castle, but everyone's in the great hall, and he doesn't want to draw them inside.

"Bombarda!" Harry yells, and the male corpse flies backwards, away from him, chunks of red-grey flesh spattering across the wall, but barely any blood does the same - it's like they've been chilled, or- or exsanguinated, somehow.

"Reducto!" Flitwick squeaks out, and the walking corpse of Darla Fenton flies hard against the wall, hitting it with a sickening crack of bone as a fair bit of her chest and a few ribs are sent flying. Harry runs towards the front door, and Snape tries to grab at him, but he succeeds only in grasping at the hood of Harry's dressing gown.

He shrugs it off before Snape can get a better grasp, his slippers pounding wetly on the grey brick of the courtyard.

"Potter!" Snape yells, and Harry can hear the teachers in pursuit of him but he ignores them, focusing only on running forwards and through the courtyard, out onto the hillside of the Hogwarts grounds. He can see them in the sky, hundreds of them in the distance with their dark robes illuminated by moonlight and by lightning flashes: close to hand, there are maybe a dozen, and the chilly night air is made bitingly cold by their presence.

Rain water soaks into Harry's hair and the flannel of his pyjamas, drops of moisture clinging to his glasses, but he ignores it, stumbling down the hill. He can hear teachers yelling as they exit the castle, but he focuses just on the dementors, on dementors and Sirius - he thinks of Sirius and Remus at Christmas, thinks of laughing with Hermione after a terrible kiss by the Gryffindor fire, thinks of feeling like a Weasley sibling, thinks of the way he knows Sirius will hug him after all of this is over, and how he'll kiss the top of Harry's head.

"Expecto Patronum!" Harry screams, his voice twisted by the whistling wind, and the burst of white-blue light that flies from his wand has four hooves, a broad, tall body, and its antlers shine brilliantly silver as it lets out a silent warcry, charging at the dementors around him. They're forced back, drawing in their horrible, rattling breaths as Harry makes his way further down the hillside, drawing them further from the castle.

The two corpse puppets are slowly stumbling down the hill toward him.

"Sir!" Harry yells up the hillside, and he scrambles towards Snape, who is back to back with Charity Burbage, the both of them casting their Patronuses to the sky. "How do we destroy them?"

"Get inside!" Snape hisses.

"They'll follow me! They're the same as the toads!" Harry yells back, refusing to pack away his defiance, and Snape stares at the figures in the distance. "Can't you just use acid again?"

"Of course, Potter! Just find me a cauldron big enough!" Snape retorts - they have to shout to be heard over the howling wind, and Harry casts his Patronus again, rushing over the grass as the two corpses slowly step towards him. They're slow, at least - he's glad they're not actual dementors. "You saw the runes carved into the flesh of the toads? You need to destroy the runes carved into their flesh!"

"How the fuck am I meant to do that!?"

"Ten points from Slytherin!" squeaks Flitwick as he comes up behind Harry.

"Is this really the time?" Harry demands incredulously, and Flitwick rolls up his pink pyjama sleeves, brandishing his wand.

"Remember your explosive charm, Potter," Flitwick says, and Harry stares at the two sliding, slow figures.

"They're still alive," Harry says.

"They're not!" comes Burbage's voice as she ducks slightly, letting Snape cast at a dementor over their heads. "They're Inferi, Potter, they're not alive any more." But they're breathing, Harry wants to cry. They're breathing, how can they be Inferi?

But they're coming too close, and Harry doesn't want either of them touching him.

"Bombarda!" Harry yells, aiming at the male corpse's neck. He tries to remember where the runes had been carved into the toads - just the chest and the back, he thinks, but will it be the same for these things? The grey flesh comes apart easily once it's torn from the monster's body, and Harry hopes he doesn't step in any of it as he casts again, and again, and again.

Flitwick is doing the same beside him, but it gets worse - more Patronuses are flying over their heads, pushing back the dementors, but like Sinistra had said inside, there are too many dementors converging on Hogwarts for the Patronuses to be any good. They circle over head, occasionally dipping down towards Harry, completely focused on him - Harry doesn't think they're even aware of what's happening. There's a magical focus in their heads, and they want Harry.

It's hard work, constantly moving over the grass and casting a new Patronus whenever his fades: he's tired, and he's freezing cold and wet, and he feels like he's going to die at any moment. "Bombarda!" His spell misses the half-skeletal female corpse, hitting a standing stone and sending chunks of sharp stone flying through the air - Harry feels a thick, jagged piece of stone bite hard into the side of his cheek, smacking his teeth, and can only be grateful it didn't hit his eye.

Harry stumbles, slipping hard on muddy grass, and he loses one slipper: he kicks the other off too, his bare feet better able to gain purchase on the surface of the ground beneath him. "Expecto Patronum!" he yells, and he produces only silvery mist - the staff's Patronuses are flagging, too, and Harry looks to the stumbling body of the male corpse. The female lies still on the ground, missing most of its flesh, but the male is still moving.

Harry is exhausted, feels like he's going to be sick or faint or drop dead any second now, so he yells at the top of his lungs, casting forwards, "Bombarda maxima!" It hurts. Merlin, it hurts worse than anything else he's ever felt before - it hurts like it had in first year, the tearing, burning pain of magic biting and clawing under his skin, but he doesn't care: the skeletal figure bursts into shards of bone and gore, and Harry drags in a breath, dropping to his knees.

A hooded figure ducks down towards him, and he flinches away, but Hagrid lifts him off the ground, his brown cloak hanging heavily on his body. The dementors seem disoriented as they fly higher into the sky, and Harry chokes down a gag as he tastes his own blood in his mouth, dripping down from a cut on the side of his nose.

"Am I gonna die?" Harry asks hoarsely as Hagrid carries him inside, and then he chokes on his own blood, coughing and spitting it out onto the floor.

"Nah, nah, course not," Hagrid assures him, though he sounds doubtful. Harry struggles in the groundskeeper's arms, pushing himself onto the ground, and he tries to stand on his own two feet, but his knees are weak and he drops onto the floor in the entrance hall. He spits more blood on the ground, and then realizes the blood isn't coming from the cut on his mouth. He puts his thumb in his mouth, pressing, and the damaged gum shifts under his touch, dropping out the tooth it had been holding.

Putting his other hand to his cheek, he feels the thick, wet wound the stone had left earlier, cutting right into his flesh. He spits the tooth out, staring at it where it lies, surrounded by red, in his palm. He's been punched a lot of times in his life, but he's never been hit hard enough to knock out a tooth, and he can't believe a piece of rock has done the job.

"Harry!" he hears Remus yell, and Harry touches the man's sleeve, pressing the tooth into his hand.

"Keep that safe, would you?" Harry says tiredly. "I think I want to keep it." He breathes in, heavily, and he drops back on the ground, lying on the cool stone of the entrance hall: he's bloody and muddy, he's missing his tooth, and he can't move his right arm.

Other than that, he thinks to himself, the day could have gone worse. He laughs to himself, unable not to, and he lets his eyes close. Not the best place to sleep, really, but you can't take points of an unconscious student, can you?

---

"Here," Remus says quietly, and he puts a jar on the desk beside Harry's bed. Harry picks it up with his left arm, peering into the glass: in a pool of clear, thick liquid settles his tooth, perfectly suspended. "Madam Pomfrey couldn't put it back in."

"That figures," Harry mutters. "What does Harry Potter need a tooth for? He's got loads of them."

"Glad to see you're so light-hearted," Remus says, sitting slowly on the edge of Harry's infirmary bed, and Harry watches him for a few seconds, meeting the werewolf's gaze.

"Crying never got me much," Harry says. "I'm more of a grin and bear it sort of bloke. You want to see something cool?"

"Sure," Remus says, and Harry shifts slightly in bed, pulling the sheet away from his right arm. Remus gasps, looking horrified: Madam Pomfrey had easily healed the nasty cuts on Harry's face, but he'd missed a shard that had cut through side of his pyjamas on the left. The scar bites past Harry's chest, jagged and red on the skin. "She couldn't heal that?"

"She could have," Harry admits. "Asked her to let it scar." Remus lets out an obviously uncomfortable, forced laugh, reaching out and gently touching Harry's hair.

"Sirius will be here tomorrow," Remus says quietly. "What about the exertion damage?"

"It's not as bad as last time," Harry says, shrugging. Remus stares at him.

"Last time?" he repeats, and Harry nods his head.

"Yeah, I did this in first year, too." Harry looks up as the infirmary doors swing open, and Harry is disappointed when he sees Snape instead of Hermione. "Does that ten points Flitwick took off me earlier count?"

"Yes," Snape says firmly.

"They were extenuating circumstances," Harry argues.

"Shut up, Potter," Snape says, and Harry lets out a loud, exaggerated sigh, but at Snape's utterly serious expression,, he sobers slightly, sitting up. "The Auror force has just sent word to Professor Dumbledore. Azkaban is in ruins."

"What do you mean, in ruins?" Harry asks. "They can't have destroyed the whole thing - it's been there like, half a millennium." Snape gives a very small shakes of his head, and Harry goes silent. "What about the other prisoners? They got Lockhart and Arnett, right, but...?"

Snape and Remus go very, very quiet, and Harry glances between them.

"They've all escaped?"

"Some are dead. Thirty or so prisoners. A few were injured seriously enough to be left behind. The rest are gone." Harry is silent for a long, long while. Snape doesn't say anything more - he slips quietly out of the room, and Remus stays still, watching Harry as he thinks about the prisoners that had been in Azkaban. How many were murderers? How many were Death Eaters?

A fair few, Harry guesses. A lot.

---

Harry doesn't read the special on Azkaban's destruction in the Prophet. He specifically goes out of his way not to do so, simply because he knows he'll only find extra information about the escaped prisoners depressing and upsetting; he'll only feel more guilty and stupid for not having been able to somehow stop it sooner, and he'll only obsess over the names of the people now free.

It doesn't make any difference.

It's the talk of the school. Why wouldn't it be?

Wherever he walks in the halls, he hears someone discussing one prisoner or another. Some of the names he recognizes, and others he doesn't, but he learns the names as the next week or so goes by. Sightings of Bellatrix Lestrange are reported in Essex, and of Keating Travers in Durham - there are sightings of murderers and monsters all across Britain.

"It's not your fault," Hermione murmurs. Harry sighs, rubbing over his chin. "You couldn't have done anything different."

"Maybe," Harry says. "Maybe not. I can't believe she was able to just- Five people. Just five very dedicated, very crazy people, and they brought Azkaban to the ground." That particular explanation Harry has heard a hundred times over - they sent in Chad Arnett with a date in mind, so he could communicate to Lockhart to get himself safe, surrounded the place with Muggle explosives, and it was really that simple. It was that simple.

The idea makes Harry sick with anger. How could anyone rely on only dementors to keep a jail running? How could there not have been any human guards?

He glances to the side as Draco slides into the seat beside him, and Hermione and Harry both frown at him, silent for a few moments. "I don't want to sit at the Slytherin table today," Draco says, reaching for a jug of pumpkin juice. His hand shakes, and Hermione takes it off him, pouring his glass for him. Draco had had his curtains shut tightly around his bed, but Harry can see from the greying bags under Draco's eyes that he'd barely slept.

"Ask Snape if you can Floo your mum," Harry says quietly. Draco shakes his head, drinking from his glass, and Hermione frowns at them.

"What are you so worried about?" Hermione asks. She speaks in a very soft tone, but it's clearly audible - the whole school has been under a state of complete hush the past few days, with people quietly, constantly, discussing Azkaban, and nothing else.

"You know how I explained to you," Harry murmurs, "About how Drom Tonks is Sirius' cousin, and how Narcissa is too? But that Drom was disowned?"

"Yeah..."

"Bellatrix Lestrange is the third Black sister." Hermione pours Draco a little more pumpkin juice, pushing a little buttered toast his way, but Draco just drinks, avoiding even looking at the food on the table. Harry reaches out, very gently patting Draco's back, and the other boy doesn't lean away or complain, like he usually would. "If you don't Floo her, I will."

"He's going today," Draco says quietly. "To see Father. She'll want him dead. She'll want so many people dead."

"Me included," Harry agrees. Draco's laugh is hoarse, and awkward, and it makes Harry flinch slightly. "They'll be fine. Don't worry."

"I'm not," Draco lies.

"Good," Harry lies back. "Nor am I." Harry shoves a piece of toast into Draco's hand, forcing him to take a small bite, and he meets Hermione's concerned gaze. He's never felt as out of depth as he does this week, and he can't help but wonder if she feels the same.