Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

"Get into the air, now!" Amelia barked over her shoulder at the female Auror trio following behind her with police broomsticks, they must have all been crushed in there, waiting for Li to activate the Cabinet. "I want more aerial coverage on this place! And make sure you keep up your anti-Disillusionment Charms!" Then her head turned toward him. "Report, Auror Li! Do we know how they got in yet?"

Another Auror trio holding broomsticks materialized in the Vanishing Cabinet and strode out after them even as Li began talking.

They were followed by a trio of Hit Wizards in full battle gear.

Then another trio of Hit Wizards.

Then another broomstick team.

The emaciated form that was Bellatrix Black was resting motionless on the stairs when Harry got there, eyes closed, and when Harry asked in a cold, high whisper whether she was awake, he got no response.

A brief twitch of panic was countered by the thought that Professor Quirrell had knocked her out to prevent her from hearing the Dark Lord's cringing servant suddenly turn into a hardened criminal and then an expert battlemage. Which was good, because she wouldn't have heard Harry's voice saying 'Expecto Patronum'.

Harry drew back the hood of the Cloak, pointed his wand at Bellatrix, and whispered as gently as he could, "Innervate."

From the way Bellatrix's body jerked a little, Harry didn't think he'd managed to get it quite gentle enough.

The sunken dark eyes opened.

"Bella dear," Harry said in his cold, high voice, "I am afraid we've run into a bit of a problem. Have you recovered enough to do small magics?"

There was a pause, and then Bellatrix's pale head nodded.

"Very good," Harry said dryly. "I won't ask you to walk unaided, Bella dear, but I am afraid you must walk." He pointed his wand at her. "Wingardium Leviosa."

Harry kept the flow of force down to something he could sustain for a while, and it was still probably lifting two-thirds of her current body weight. She was... thin.

Slowly, as though for the first time in years, Bellatrix Black pushed herself to her feet.

Amelia strode into the duty room, Auror Li and his silver badger following behind her. She'd spun her Time- Turner the moment she'd heard the alarm, and then spent a tense hour preparing her forces for entry. You couldn't loop time within Azkaban itself, Azkaban's future couldn't interact with its past, so she hadn't been able to arrive before the DMLE had gotten the message, but she should have arrived in time...

Her eyes went straight to the corpse, uncloaked and looking very dead, floating beyond the viewing window.

"Where is Bellatrix Black?" Amelia demanded, showing no fear before the creature of fear.

Even her own blood froze for an instant, as the corpse parted its lips, and gurgled, "Do not know."

Harry watched, now fully invisible once more, as Bellatrix slowly leaned down, took Professor Quirrell's wand (which Harry dared not touch), and slowly straightened again.

Then Bellatrix pointed the wand at the snake, and said, her voice precise though it was still a whisper, "Innervate."

The snake did not stir.

"Shall I try again, my Lord?" she whispered.

"No," Harry said. He swallowed the sick feeling. Harry had decided to say the hell with it and try to revive Professor Quirrell after he'd realized that the Dementors had probably alerted the Aurors by now. His high, cold voice went on, unperturbed, "Do you think you are able to perform a Memory Charm, dear Bella?"

Bellatrix paused, and then said, hesitantly, "I think so, my Lord."

"Eliminate that Auror's last half-hour of memory," Harry commanded. He'd thought a bit about whether he wanted to provide any justification for that, what he would say if Bellatrix asked why they weren't just killing him, in which case Harry would explain that they were pretending to be a different power group and then tell her to shut up -

But Bellatrix simply pointed her wand at the Auror, stood silently for a time, and finally whispered, "Obliviate."

She swayed, then, but did not fall.

"Very good, my dear Bella," Harry said, and chuckled thinly. "And I will ask you to carry that snake."

Again, the woman said nothing, demanded no explanations, didn't ask why Harry or the apparently-invisible Patronus caster couldn't do it. She only staggered to where the long snake lay, slowly bent over, picked it up, draped it over her shoulder.

(A tiny little part of Harry observed that it was very relaxing to have a minion that would just follow orders so unquestioningly, and even got as far as thinking that he could totally get used to having a minion like Bellatrix, before that mind-fraction was screamed into silence by his mortally offended remainder.)

"Follow," the boy commanded his minion, and began to walk.

It was starting to get crowded in the duty room, almost too crowded to breathe, though there was still space around Amelia herself; if needing to breathe meant that you had to crowd Director Bones, it was better not to breathe.

Amelia looked at where Ora was fiddling with Auror McCusker's mirror. "Specialist Weinbach," she barked, causing the young witch to start. "Any response from One-Hand's mirror?"

"None," Ora said nervously, "it's... I mean it has to be jammed, not dead, carefully jammed because it didn't set off the alarms, but the line is so blank the mirror might as well be broken..."

Amelia didn't let her expression change, though the part of her that was already mourning One-Hand got a little