And Harry thought with a tinge of desperation - knowing, even as he thought it, that he was motivated in part by a desire to reject reality, and that wasn't how the technique was meant to be wielded -
There was internal silence. None of the parts of himself seemed to have anything to add to that.
And Harry continued to take stock of the moderately hopeless-looking situation.
Did Harry need to re-evaluate the probability that Bellatrix was evil?
...not in any mission-relevant sense. It was a
That was one resource, then. But Bellatrix was starved and nine-tenths dead...
Bellatrix had said that, in her shattered voice, after Harry's Patronus had blazed out of control.
Harry thought, and he couldn't have quite said
Harry looked at Professor Quirrell's snake form.
...maybe enough for an
If awakening Professor Quirrell
Some of the despair came back to Harry, then. He couldn't trust Professor Quirrell, couldn't trust that reviving him would be wise, not after what had just happened.
Bellatrix might
That could be step one, anyway. It wasn't exactly getting everyone safely out of Azkaban, and the Aurors
...and
Bellatrix could carry Professor Quirrell's snake form, which Harry dared not touch or levitate.
Harry turned and strode quickly toward where Bellatrix was waiting on the stairs. He could feel his spirits reviving a little. It
What to do with Professor Quirrell, or for that matter Bellatrix, after the portkey took them to where they were supposed to hand Bellatrix over to the psychiatric healer... well, Harry could work that out along the way. Harry would probably have to bamboozle the healer into doing something - which was going to take one hell of a bamboozling, and Harry wasn't even sure what he
The main problem Harry saw, as he quickly ran the whole process forward in his imagination, would come when they reached the roof. Professor Quirrell had been supposed to sneak around invisibly and Confund the monitors that would notice visitors in the aerial surroundings of Azkaban, causing them to see a repeating loop of scenery for a few minutes. Professor Quirrell had said that he couldn't Disillusion Harry's Patronus; and if they switched
Harry's train of thought stumbled.
There were times when 'Aw, crap' just didn't seem to cover it.
Li's hands were sure despite the adrenaline, as he unlocked the bars on the Vanishing Cabinet that linked Azkaban to a well-guarded room in the interior of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. (A one-way Vanishing Cabinet, of course. The wards permitted a few fast ways
Li stepped well back, pointed his wand at the Cabinet, spoke the incantation "
The door of the Cabinet burst open with a bang, and into the room strode a heavy-set, square-jawed witch with greyed hair cropped close around her head. She wore no rank signs as she wore no jewelry or other ornamentation, it was only an ordinary Auror's robes that she deemed fit to grace herself: Director Amelia Bones, head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and said to be the only witch in the DMLE who could take Mad-Eye Moody in a fair fight (not that either of those two were the sort to fight fairly). Li had heard rumors that Amelia could Apparate within the bounds of the DMLE, and this was the sort of thing that gave rise to rumors like that, he'd called in the alarm not fifty seconds ago.