Second Chance Chapter 3

Harry and Hermione were taking part in the most leisurely prison escape of all time.

The two of them strolled through Azkaban. There were lots of disoriented prisoners blinking in their cells. Slowly, dementor victims were getting their sanity back.

…The ones that weren’t too far gone, anyway. Plenty were sitting and drooling while staring vacantly at walls. Or they were hugging themselves and laughing hysterically.

These were people whose minds had already snapped.

Hermione was uncomfortable with some of the more deranged laughing they could hear. Harry held her hand.

She leaned against his shoulder.

They reached a balcony on whatever high floor of the prison the two of them were on. Together, they stopped and looked out.

A black cloud was visible flying away from the island. It was a dementor swarm as every single one of the dark beasts fled toward the mainland.

“What are they going to do?” Hermione asked. 

“Run and panic, for a while,” Harry said. “They’ve always believed that they were invincible. I could never find out exactly how it works, but I think that they’re something like a hive mind. They sensed one of their own being stripped away. They’re likely freaking out.”

He and Hermione stepped onto the balcony. Hermione shielded her eyes to watch.

“Will they hurt people?” Hermione asked.

Harry didn’t want to lie to her. “Almost definitely.”

“Can’t you… stop them?” she said. She sounded desperate.

“No,” Harry said. “Maybe if I reached them sooner, and if I had my wand, things would have been different. Right now, this is the best I can do.”

He lifted his hand. His palm glowed.

He conjured the same magic that he used to kill the dementor. Instead of using it on his body like a glove, Harry fired a spear of the ethereal light.

It was the width of a sewing needle and as long as a pool cue. 

The beam of night sliced through the sky a hundred times faster than the dementors could run.

It hit one in the back and tore through its cloak, along with everything that was underneath. The light kept going. Three more were skewered. At the end of its path, the light blew up like a firework, setting three dementors alight with white fire that couldn’t go out.

The rest of the swarm gave the area a wider berth and abandoned their six fallen brothers. That made seven dead dementors today. 

Harry collapsed to his knees.

“HARRY!” Hermione screamed.

She grabbed his shoulder and held him, horribly frightened. Harry smiled at her and patted her hand.

“I’m fine. I promise. I know my limits,” Harry said. “That spell is just magically exhausting to use. It’s not this bad when I have a wand.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Hermione asked.

Harry stood up and smiled, a little bit sweaty. He hid the fact that he felt nauseous—a sign of magical strain—from Hermione for the moment.

Her worrying wouldn’t do either of them any good.

“I’m fine,” he swore. “It’s better this way.”

He looked at the fleeing dementors, squeezing one of his hands into a fist.

“They’ll kill people,” he said. “Innocent people. Towns will probably be wiped out, honestly. It isn’t much, but getting rid of six more will save at least six lives. It could save thirty, or more. If I can do that much, I should.”

Hermione nodded. She still looked nervous.

When they resumed walking through the prison still holding hands, it felt like she was the one supporting Harry now instead of the other way around.

“Do you have a plan?” Hermione asked. “We have nowhere to go now. The only way off of the island is the ministry boat, and even if we get on it…”

“And even if we got on it, what, Hermione?” Harry asked.

She looked at him with eyes that looked like they saw nothing.

“There’s no one to go to,” she said. “They all abandoned us. All of them.”

Harry felt a creeping feeling down his spine. When he arrived in this body he had planned to think about its situation later, but there were lots of things that bothered him.

This world’s Harry Potter had died in an Azkaban cell. Hermione had been put in the cell next to him with a death eater in her cell, almost like somebody was hoping for a tragedy.

The fact that there were death eaters in Azkaban was already strange. It meant that they weren’t in control of the place.

So it was the ministry that put Harry and Hermione here. It had to be.

How did that happen?

Harry didn’t like Hermione’s tone. Her voice sounded broken. He would have to figure out the whole story.

At a later date. Right now, escaping came first.

“Do you know your way around this place?” Harry asked.

Hermione shook her head. “They took me to my cell with my head covered.”

Of course. It wasn’t like Hermione had been freely wandering around Azkaban like a tourist.

“Trial and error it is!” Harry said.

He laughed, pulling Hermione after him. She protested the new speed… while smiling. Harry was grinning.

He was in a good mood. This felt like one massive second chance. 

Just being able to hold Hermione’s hand like this, not feeling the scars that had been all over her knuckles in his world, made him feel like the luckiest man in the world.

And he still had the other six to track down.

He and Hermione took plenty of wrong turns before they found the first floor. When they came outside, the cloudy Azkaban sky had become clear. The sun was shining.

“Dementors have an effect on the weather when they gather in numbers,” Harry explained. “Azkaban’s perpetual rain was actually because of its guards. Now that they’ve run away, the weather will return to what it was before the prison.

Outside the prison building, the island was in chaos. The island was mostly rocky and only had one major building, but there was a dock and a two story barracks building near the beach for stationed officials to stay in. 

At the start of the dock, twenty robed wizards and witches had formed a crowd. They were looking toward shore where the dementors disappeared.

Hermione stopped walking and tried to back up. She pulled Harry’s hand. He couldn’t really resist, since his body was in such a pathetic state.

So he smiled to show her that it was alright.

“Don’t be scared,” he said. “They’re nothing to be afraid of.”

“Hey! Over there!” yelled one of the wizards.

They pointed at Harry and Hermione. The whole group turned around and noticed the young pair. Almost all of them aimed their wands at Harry.

Hermione flinched, so Harry stepped in front of her. His legs were shaking from malnutrition, but it gave the annoying impression that he was scared.

Harry looked behind the grout that was aiming their wands at him. He was focused on a boat near the end of the dock, bobbing on the waves.

“Are you using that ship?” he asked. “If not, do you mind if I take it off of your hands?”

It looked for a second like they were going to curse him. However, a man in red robes walked to the front of the group.

The man in red lifted his hand. The others behind him dropped their wands.

“So. You got loose,” the man said.

“It definitely seems like it,” Harry said. “But… who are you?”

People looked incredulous. Hermione frantically whispered: “Warden!”

“The dementors must have had a bigger effect on you than we realized. I’m the warden of this place. My name is Proudfoot,” said the man. “Now that you’ve taken advantage of your lucky break and gotten a walk in, why don’t you go back to your cell, Harry?”

“What lucky break would that be?” Harry asked.

“The dementors running. You didn’t think you could walk out of your cell without someone catching you on a normal day, did you?” Proudfoot sighed and shook his head. “We have bigger things to worry about than you. Go to your cell with the rest of the criminals. Don’t make this day any harder for me… or I’ll make it your last.”

Instead of answering Harry started walking forward. He staggered clumsily because of this body’s accursed weakness. One of the human guards came forward and blocked his path. Proudfoot stood behind the guard, totally unbothered.

Harry looked at the man, who looked meanly back at him. This man had overly thick eyebrows and a jaw that protruded way too far. 

Harry cocked his fist back and punched the man on the side of his jaw.

Harry’s weak body didn’t get very much power into the swing. It didn’t knock the guard out or anything. All it did was make him let go of his wand.

Harry bent down as fast as he could (which wasn’t very fast right now) and grabbed the dropped wand. He immediately felt his magical core form a bond with the disarmed wand.

Hawthorn and dragon heartstring. It wasn’t similar at all to Harry’s personal wand, but it wasn’t the first time he would be using what he could get. Because Harry and Voldemort didn’t want to activate the unintended effects of their brother wands whenever they fought, Harry had started collecting and using the wands of fallen friends and enemies.

He could confidently say that he was the most adaptable wizard he’d ever met when it came to using ANY random wand. Sometimes, like in cases where you had been separated from your wand (and probably had it snapped, since he was in Azkaban already) that was a lovely skill.

The other guards should have attacked him when he threw the punch. They were so surprised by such a muggle act of aggression that they hesitated long enough for Harry to pick up the new wand.

In doing so, they lost their only chance at winning.

Harry’s magic core had been protesting because of his attack against the dementors… But getting ahold of a wand gave him way more wiggle room. 

Advanced magic used wandlessly used infinitely more stamina than casting normal spells with a wand in your hand. 

Harry got started.

He cast a stunner that split straight into four beams. Each of them hit a different guard and knocked them unconscious. When other guards tried to revive them with the counter charm, Harry picked off anyone who took their eyes off of him.

In seconds ten of the twenty guards were unconscious. The ones that were left were too savvy to try and revive their friends. They fought with everything they had.

It took 38 seconds for Harry to have left them scattered across the beach with their limbs splayed.

He didn’t kill or maim anyone. Since they weren’t death eaters, he held off on taking things that far for now until he understood what happened in this world.

Although frankly, he didn’t have much hope that they weren’t as bad as death eaters. They were, at minimum, complicit in the treatment he and Hermione faced to come here.

“What the fuck are you?” asked Warden Proudfoot.

He was the last one conscious. Harry had hit him with a pretty powerful disarming charm that threw him into the wall of the garrison building. He must have been made of pretty tough stuff if he was still talking.

“I’m Harry Potter,” Harry said. “Oh! Not exactly the one that you know, though.” 

He said that part at a volume Hermione couldn’t hear. She was so shocked, gaping at all of the defeated guards, that there was no chance of her overhearing.

“I got rid of a couple of your abominations, and the rest ran for the mainland. Then I find you guys, and you attack me,” Harry said. “That wasn’t very hospitable. So I’m going to take your boat. Consider not killing you as payment.”

“Do you think it’s that easy to get away from here?” Proudfoot asked. “The island is layered with the best wards out there. If you don’t use the right charms at the right times, the wards will sink your boat. No magical communication can reach the outside world, so you can’t bring help. Not that there’s anyone out there that would be willing to help YOU.”

“What does that mean?” Harry asked curiously.

“That you’ve been abandoned!” Proudfoot said. “There’s no way you forgot.”

“I forgot most things that have happened to me,” Harry said. Or, he never knew them in the first place. “Thanks for your advice, though. Take a nap.”

Proudfoot waited for a stunning spell to hit him.

Instead, his head was telekinetically slammed into the wall hard enough to knock him out. He dropped onto his side on the rocky ground bleeding from his head.

Harry really didn’t appreciate the tone that the man took with him. Hence why Proudfoot got that kind of extra treatment.

Harry hobbled down the dock and stopped to stare at the boat. Proudfoot rubbed him the wrong way, but he didn’t think the warden was lying about Azkaban’s defenses. Harry turned his eyes upward from the boat, staring at the sunny sky.

Hermione came over and joined him. She stepped gingerly between the guards like she was worried they would wake up and attack her.

“Are we leaving?” she asked.

“I think… that I might have just had a better idea,” Harry said, continuing to look up. “You said that we have nowhere for us to go, right?”

“That’s…” Hermione looked down. “It’s true.”

“Then let’s stay here!” Harry said.

“Sorry? I mean, if we have the chance to leave, anything would still be better than here,” Hermione said.

“I don’t mean we go back to our cells,” Harry said. 

He turned to Hermione and stretched out his arms.

“HARRY POTTER IS NOW IN CHARGE OF THIS ISLAND!” he said. “IF ANYONE DISPUTES THAT, SPEAK NOW!”

He and Hermione were the only ones that were conscious and lucid. She didn’t say anything, so it was decided.

“Okay, that’s that,” Harry said happily. “Are you ready to start remodeling, Hermione?”

Before she could answer, her stomach grumbled.

Hermione looked like she wanted to crawl into the sand out of embarrassment. 

“Change of plans,” Harry decided. “Lunch first. Remodeling second.”

Hermione didn’t complain as they went into the guard barracks to see what food they could pilfer.