Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Until Next Time	By : sinfulsanctuary Category: HP Canon Characters paired with Original Characters > Het - Male/Female Views: 1828 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Restless
Usually, a rather harmless word.

Restless was the only word I could find to describe it. Never had that ordinary and rather harmless word inspired so much fear in me. But fear wasn't a feeling I should have. Being afraid meant either giving up everything I had, or losing my soul.
Neither was an option for me.
I had worked hard and sacrificed a lot to be where I was. This job was the only thing I had going for me, the only thing I found myself suitable for. Professor McGonagall had tried to get me interested in different jobs during career advice, highlighting my skills and the subjects I excelled in, but nothing interested me. I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. I liked keeping to myself, had few friends at school – those that I had were more like acquaintances. When I one day in seventh year learned about this job, I knew it was my only option. So here I was, as one of those in charge of the most dangerous people and creatures in the world, a world preparing for war.
I sat in my office chair, looking out over the railing and down through level after level of cells, filled with murderers, thieves and all kinds of criminals. The Dementors glided past the cells, their dirty robes flowing gracefully around them as if they moved through water. I never figured out why that was, but I guess it added to the creepiness.
Most of the prisoners shrank away in horror as the ghastly guards passed them. Only the fiercest Death Eaters were unaffected.
Voldemort was alive. Azkaban had had two breakouts in its history – one of them in the past two years. The Dementors were slipping through our fingers. If we didn't secure the prison enough to work without Dementors, we might as well open the doors and save everyone the hassle of breaking out themselves.
Nearly three weeks had passed since I learned about what happened at the end of the Triwizard Tournament. For nearly three weeks I had seen the slow change in the Dementors' behaviour. For nearly three weeks, my terror had grown from being almost non-existent, to very very real.
Restless. There was no other word for it.
I looked over at Walter, my partner. He had his face inches over a parchment, sketching away at a new level in the wards. He noticed me looking, and lifted his head. Despite the seriousness of the situation and the place we were in, I had to laugh at the black smears on his nose.
"What?" he asked.
I shook my head and pointed to my own nose. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his robe, but it only made it worse. "Don't bother," I said. "At the rate you're going, your face will be covered in ink at the end of the day anyway. Done with the sketches yet?" I was itching for the new wards to be ready.
"The second level is done soon. But take a look here." He stood up and walked around the desk to my side, brining the parchments with him. "This line here, representing the third level of runes. I'm afraid it might interfere with the second level of runes that tie together with the organic wards that are already in place."
I gazed at the line he mentioned, cross checking with a parchment that was full of runes. "You mean the use of lagu?"
"Yes. We've set up odal in a way that will make the fifth level inherit properties from all the levels above, and the sea is such a large part of the organic wards around here, that I'm afraid that water itself might cause... corrosion in both the old and new wards, and maybe even the physical structure of the building. Every droplet of rain might create holes in the wards. Easy to break through." His eyes were large, to emphasise his point. I saw that the whites of them were bloodshot from the hard work we'd put in on the wards every day these last few weeks.
"Huh," I said and looked closer. "I think you might be right. Who set up the odal in this way?"
"Didn't Paula calculate the heritage of each level last week?"
"Go find her," I ordered, and Walter was out of the office before I had time to blink. While he was out, I stared at the drawings and the lists of runes.
There were runes already in the wards, but we wanted to add several new layers to them. There were also all kinds of spell wards, organic wards, and even blood wards. All of them needed to be strengthened and added to. We had to make Azkaban work as if the Dementors weren't there to suck the hope and fight out of the prisoners.
"What's wrong?" Paula was suddenly standing in the doorway, an anxious looking Walter behind her.
I began explaining what Walter and I had done, and then let Walter explain what he had discovered in the layers. Paula's eyes widened as he explained, and when he was done, she bent over the parchments. She leafed through them, setting her finger here and there, muttering. She did this for several minutes, before she put both hands in her hair and screwed her eyes shut. I recognised this as her mind being overloaded.
Paula breathed, and pulled out the parchment with the drawings. "Lagu is Old English, and lögr is Old Norse," she thought out loud, one hand moving across the drawing of the wards, the other deep in her hair. "That's sea and waterfall... Of course that would cause problems... Because the two aren't distinguished good enough!" she finished as a conclusion. "I'm sorry." She looked up at Walter and me. "I should have seen this. Thank Merlin you did before we tested it. I'll stay here today to fix it and recalculate."
"You can't do that alone!" I said. "If we're going to get the second level done this week, I'm staying to help."
"Me too," Walter said.
"Let's get to work then!" Paula said enthusiastically.
The three of us worked long into the night, the summer sun setting outside, clouds gathering and rain occasionally falling on the windows. Being at Azkaban at night was quite an experience. Only our offices were fixed with lights, so as to add to the fear we wanted the prisoners to wallow in. This exact spot in the North Sea was highly vulnerable to storms – raging winds, flashes of lightening right outside the walls, thunder rolling through your very bone marrow, rain that stung against a cold face no matter how warm the summer was.
We had all learned to not be affected by it, while some people might find thunderstorms frightening, it didn't even phase us. But for some reason I felt very relieved when I landed my broom on the Apparition Station outside the wards and Apparated home.
I was worried about the growing fear and the consequences that could follow. This wasn't my first war, but I had been so young last time, that I hadn't fully understood the ramifications. I did now, and had to swallow down a lump of cold fear before I managed to get any sleep that night, despite my body being exhausted. But dreams plagued me – dreams of me falling into the ocean and drowning. It took forever for me to actually drown and all around me in the water I saw elegantly floating robes and heard restless feet.

Authors Note
This took a bit longer than planned, but here it is. It's a bit short as well, but I expect you'll survive that. It's basically just to show a bit of the work at Azkaban and how things are changing there.
BTW, June 6^th was my 6^th year anniversary as a Trusted Author over at HPFF!
Review? :)
Until next time.
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Until Next Time