Dementors sapped all the magic in their vicinity.
Professor Quirrell had said something about a particular type of magic that rearranged flesh like a Muggle smith reshaping metal with hammer and tongs…
Harry opened his eyes again.
“Was Peter Pettigrew a secret Metamorphmagus?”
Amelia Bones’s face changed. She made a single croaking noise and fell backward within her chair.
“Yes, in fact…” Minerva said slowly. “Why?”
“Sirius Black Confunded Peter Pettigrew,” Harry’s voice explained patiently, “to force him to change shape and pretend to be Black. By the time the Confundus wore off, Peter was in Azkaban and couldn’t change back. The Aurors are used to people in Azkaban saying absolutely anything to get out, so they didn’t listen while Peter Pettigrew was screaming about
it over and over again until his voice wore out.”
Even Mad-Eye Moody’s face showed the horror, then.
“In retrospect,” said Harry’s voice, which seemed to be operating entirely on automatic, “you should have been suspicious when you managed to get that one Death Eater hauled off to Azkaban without a trial.”
“We thought Malfoy was distracted,” whispered the old witch. “That he was only trying to save himself. There were other Death Eaters we managed to get then, like Bellatrix—”
Harry nodded, feeling like his neck and head were moving on puppet strings. “The Dark Lord’s most fanatic and devoted servant, a natural nucleus of opposition for anyone who contested Lucius’s control of the Death Eaters. You thought Lucius was distracted.”
“Get him out of there,” said Minerva McGonagall. Her voice rose to a scream. “Get him out of there!”
Amelia Bones shoved herself up from the chair, whirled on the Floo—
“Stop.”
Everyone looked at Harry with astonishment, none more than Minerva McGonagall.
Something else seemed to have taken over Harry’s voice. “There’s four things we still need to discuss. An innocent man has been in Azkaban for ten years, eight months, and fourteen days. He can stay there a few minutes longer. That’s how urgent those four things are.”
“You—” whispered Amelia Bones. “You should not try to be this person, at your age—”
“First. I think I should look at the complete police records on every other Death Eater that went to Azkaban while Lucius was distracted. Can you compile that by tonight?”
“Within the hour,” said Amelia Bones. She looked gray.
Harry nodded. “Second. Azkaban is over. You’ll need to start preparations now to move the prisoners to Nurmengard or other secure nonDementor prisons, and to provide treatment for their Dementor exposure.”
“I,” said Amelia. The old witch seemed bent, diminished. “I… do not think, that even with this… scandal, that the remainder of the Wizengamot will bend… and the Dementors must be fed, not so much as we have fed them, but they must be given some victims, or they will roam the world, prey on innocents…”
“It doesn’t matter what the Wizengamot says,” Harry said. “Because—” Harry’s voice choked. “Because—” Harry took a deep breath, steadied himself. He thought he could see the shape now of the immediate future, could see it stretching out before him like a golden pathway lit with sunlight. Was this also written, in the book of Time that I must not see? “Because if I’m right about what comes next, then sometime very soon, Hermione Granger, the Girl-Who-Revived, is going to go to Azkaban and destroy all the Dementors there.”
“Impossible!” spat Mad-Eye Moody.
“Merlin,” whispered Amelia Bones. “Oh, dear Merlin. That’s what happened to the Dementor that Dumbledore ‘lost’. That’s why they’re afraid of you—and now her as well?” Her voice trembled. “What is this, what is all this?”
If Hermione believes that Death can be defeated—
Whether or not she could’ve believed that before, she’ll believe it now.
“An authorized portkey to Azkaban would be appreciated—” Harry’s voice broke again. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
She can’t die. I have her horcrux.
But Hermione doesn’t need to know about that. Not for one more week.
If she’s willing to risk her own life to end this—
“Though I think, she might make, her own way there…” “Harry?” said Headmistress McGonagall.
Harry was crying now, huge ragged breaths bursting from him. But he didn’t stop talking. Somewhere out there Peter Pettigrew was waiting while Harry cried.
Somewhere out there, everyone was waiting while he cried.
“Third. Somewhere just inside the wards of Hogwarts. In a highly defensible position. But where emergency cases can be portkeyed in from just outside the wards. There’s going to be a high-security h-h-hospital. With very powerful guards, that have taken Unbreakable Vows, I don’t, I don’t care how much gold it takes to pay for the Vows, it genuinely does not matter any more. And, and Alastor Moody is going to design the security architecture, and go completely overboard on paranoia without being constrained by a budget or sanity or common sense, only it has to open soon.” Couldn’t stop talking to cry.
“Harry,” said the Headmistress, “both of them think you’ve gone mad, they don’t know you well enough to know better. You need to slow down and explain.”
Instead Harry reached into his pouch and signed letters with his fingers, and lifted out, his fingers straining, a five-kilo chunk of gold larger than his fist, from when he’d been experimenting this morning. It made a heavy thud as it landed on the table.
Moody reached over and tapped it with his wand, and then his throat made an incomprehensible sound.
“That’s your starting budget, Alastor, if you need money right away. Nicholas Flamel didn’t make the Philosopher’s Stone, he stole it, Dumbledore didn’t know the secret history but Monroe did. Once you know how it works, the Stone can do one complete restoration to full health and youth every two hundred and thirty-four seconds. Three hundred sixty people per day. One hundred and thirty-four thousand healings per year. That should be enough to stop, all the wizards everywhere, and all the goblins and house-elves and whoever, from dying. Of old age, or anything else.” Harry was wiping away tears, over and over. “Flamel had more blood on his hands than a hundred Voldemorts, for all the people he could’ve saved and didn’t. The whole time, Moody, the Philosopher’s Stone could’ve healed all your scars and given you back your leg, any time
Flamel felt like it. Dumbledore didn’t know. I’m sure he didn’t know.”
Harry smiled shakily. “I can’t imagine you as a teenage witch, Madam Bones, but I bet it looks good on you. That’ll give you more energy for trying to keep the Wizengamot from messing with me, because if they get the idea that the Stone is something they can mess with in any way, tax, regulate, I don’t care, Hogwarts is going to secede from Britain and become its own country. Headmistress, Hogwarts is no longer dependent on the Ministry for gold, or for that matter food. You may reform the educational curriculum at will. I’m thinking we may want to add some more advanced courses soon, especially in Muggle studies.” “Slow down!” said Minerva McGonagall.
“Fourth—” Harry said, and then stopped.
Fourth. Begin preparations for an orderly take-down of the Statute of Secrecy and to provide magical healing on a mass scale to the Muggle world. Those who oppose this agenda in any way may be denied services by the Stone… Harry’s lips couldn’t move. Not wouldn’t, couldn’t.