Set after Dead Beat; some spoilers for Dresden Files and Harry Potter series. Some selections borrowed from various Dresden Files books.

Chapter 1

Don't borrow trouble. It's a motto I've come to embrace. The reason is that it will find you in its own good time anyways.

Which is why I was immediately concerned when I received the invitation (and stipend for travel expenses) to go to London for a case.

After the whole debacle in Evanston, where I'd been unceremoniously tapped as a Warden during an uprising of neo-necromancers, I was more wary of where my jobs came from. The Red Court hadn't gone away in the interim, while we were dealing with Native American spirits and body-snatchers. The Reds had actually scored one of their biggest ever victories against the Council; bad enough they had to recruit me. The Sidhe Courts were as active as ever, and constantly trying to ensnare me.

This led to some cause for concern when I identified the message I'd received (by mysterious means; it was put on my little kitchenette table, inside a locked and warded apartment.) I'd made some calls to people I knew had access; Murphy claimed ignorance, and Thomas had been gone for three days on whatever errands (read: females) took him across the city (one of them called him Toe-mas, which worried me in ways you can't fathom). Butters didn't know me well enough to get into my apartment yet. Eb McCoy was in Missouri. The only one I hadn't checked was Elaine, but last I heard she was in LA and didn't have time, funds, or inclination to come to my place and leave a prank.

The letter I'd been given was made of parchment, and written with what looked like a genuine quill, in clean handwriting.

Who even makes parchment anymore?

It was to the point and brief; a job was in the offing, certain to need my unique skills. Come to blah blah blah Charing Cross Road, London, United Kingdom, soonest convenience. A. P. W. B. Dumbledore.

I was tempted to pocket the money and just leave it be, considering it was a tidy sum (more than enough to cover a flight to London), but my moral sense kicked in (right after my pragmatic one). After all, the letter had been delivered to a locked and warded apartment, without any evidence to me at all of how it was done, apart from a single red-gold feather. Would it be a good idea to anger this person?

My outstanding moral sense (and justifiable paranoia) saw me getting a business class ticket to Heathrow from O'Hare. It was a red-eye flight, where I'd need to be up all night to maintain some form of control over my magic (via magical suppression spell; I'd thoroughly tested it during an appearance on the Larry Fowler show - hopefully I wasn't sitting next to a vampire on the flight) lest a bad dream leave us landed on a deserted island, Lord of the Flies style.

I hate my moral sense sometimes. My paranoia, though, gets quite cozy with me.

By the end of a flight whose normal disturbances were thankfully light, everybody else was sleeping, while I was forcibly willing myself to calmness; although there had been an alarming moment when one of the flight control computers went out.

Not sure what could have caused that. It certainly wasn't the wizard sitting halfway back near the wing, praying to whatever God would have me that the plane didn't crash. Must have been a parts failure.

Right.

A (blessedly) welcome reunion with Terra Firma followed when I got off the plane (I'm not a bad flyer, just a nervous one.) The Ways weren't a real option at this point, as there had been reports and rumors from my Warden contacts that despite our guaranteed Way access from Winter, there were plenty of nasty Wyldfae that wanted a taste of wizard meat. This was was followed by a 40 minute ride in a smelly little cab to my hotel, garnished with 125 pounds of excitable dog; didn't they make cars designed for real people here?

Survey says; no. The cabbie was kind of a jerk, so I didn't feel bad when his radio stopped working correctly, instead playing Romanian pop music.

Numa numa, baby. My Murphyonic field hard at work, as Butters coined it; anything that can go wrong will.

Thankfully, I'd perused the newspaper racks, for less fragile sources of information and entertainment (it was embarrassing, trying to pick out the right change). I picked through each paper quickly, scanning for keywords which popped up repeatedly. One name was of interest to me, for the number of times it popped up.

I was confused though, when I'd gotten out of the cab again (having paid off the cabbie with this weird Brit money) and didn't find the place I was looking for; the Leaky Cauldron. After 5 minutes of looking, my apparent rescuer appeared a few feet away.

"Mr. Dresden?"

I turned about on my heel, duster flapping, and laid eyes on an outlandish looking guy. If we were at a Lord of the Rings Convention, I'd have said he was a Gandalf impersonator. A pretty good one too, although the hat design was a bit off. Also, this Gandalf was a bit more colorblind than the book version would indicate.

"That's what it says on my boxers."

The old man smiled through his beard, and his eyes twinkled merrily. "Albus Dumbledore. I see you received my note."

"Uh, yea. Look, I hate to ask, in case there's been a horrible misunderstanding; you're wanting to hire my services for a real case, right? You're not just an unconventional conventionist?" I said, hearing the lyrics for The Time Warp echo in my head.

"Oh, we're quite willing to hire your services, Mr. Dresden. Ebenezar said, and I quote, 'You owe me for the satellite, hoss.' I'd be interested in hearing more about that story, by the way."

Shit. He knew my old mentor and the only father figure I'd ever had. The man was also the Blackstaff, the only member of the Council allowed to totally disregard the laws at his convenience; he was an assassin, a killer, one that had been under orders to kill me if I got uppity when I was his apprentice. I hadn't gotten over that.

"Okay. You got somewhere we can sit down and talk about the job?"

"Of course. I've rented a room for us to meet in at the Cauldron."

"Uh...where is it? I've been looking for a while now." I said, looking around again. I noticed now that my eyes seemed to slide away from the building behind the old man; I focused harder and opened the Sight momentarily, and suddenly saw the aged wooden door, with a battered wooden sign overtop. Both door and sign, as well as the whole storefront, were laced with energy, pulsing with power. It was cloaked though, only revealing itself to someone who's looking already; and most wizards didn't just walk around with the Sight open. At least, sane wizards didn't.

"Ahh. Clever use of concealment." I murmured, dropping the Sight. The storefront stayed visible, and I guessed that because I'd blasted through the concealment the first time, I was more or less attuned to the door now.

"It works quite well against Muggles. I forgot that you aren't usually part of our world, so I assumed you'd be able to find the building. My apologies." he said, turning and heading for the door. I followed, staff in my leather-gloved hand. It clicked off the cobblestones directly in front of the ancient wooden door, and I pushed the door open as I walked through.

The place was a dive, looking like a role-player's dream. Dark, dreary, all in wood and antique glass...it looked like Billy, Georgia, and the rest of the Alphas should be sitting in here with me, setting off on our next dice-rolling adventure, not meeting with a Gandalf-impersonator and talking about a job; or maybe that's exactly what we'd be doing.

Dumbledore nodded to the tragically stereotypical old bartender with a bit of a hunchback, cleaning glasses with a rag, who nodded back stoically. There were a number of other patrons, and more arriving for lunch; the usual handful of barflys that mumbled and cackled over pints of ale or a foamy concoction that looked like cider or something similar, and the rest were singles, pairs, or small families as well as a few small groups of kids. The kids all appeared to be between 10 and adult; some wore black robes with colorful badges on the front, while others wore either robes or quite conventional pants and shirts of various kinds and styles. The adults looked like either vanilla mortals, colorblind crossdressers, or a mix of the two.

Dumbledore led us up the stairs at the back, and to a room where he gestured inside with a wave. I stepped in warily (I've had enough clients try to kill me that I don't take anything on face value anymore), examining the room for things I could use as weapons, worse come to worse.

Truth is, I felt naked. The damned airline restrictions on what you can carry on a plane left me with more or less just the magical items I was used to; no athame (an old K-bar combat knife), no gun (a Dirty Harry Special), just staff and rod and all the various implements I usually carried on me. No Bob either, as the airlines wouldn't look too kindly to finding a human skull in one's luggage. A couple of carved sticks and a bunch of weird jewelry was apparently acceptable, though.

I did have Mouse in the motel I was staying at; he was able to sleep through the flight, and had been indecently chipper during the cab ride to the motel. I didn't want to share the cab interior with him any longer though, unless I felt like having 125 lbs of dog sitting on my lap, so I left him to guard the fort.

The small room looked like it had been set up for meetings; a pair of battered wooden chairs and a thick oak table, with a chest of drawers off to the side. The lamps on the wall were conventional oil-burning lamps (or possibly even candles) which I lit with a whispered "Flickum Bicus". I turned to see Dumbledore closing the door behind him, but his eyes seemed to light up when I lit the lamps.

"Wandless. Quite remarkable."

"Uh, that's just a simple firelighting spell. I learned it when I was a kid."

That only seemed to spur him on. "Curiouser and curiouser. In any case, the reason I have asked you here is-"

"Sirius Black."

He looked faintly surprised at that, and It occurred to me that this was an unusual look on his face.

"How-"

"He's all over the papers, both the mundane UK papers I read this morning and the one I saw on the way up the stairs, the Oracle."

"Daily Prophet."

"Whatever. The point is, it's kid's play to connect the dots."

"I suppose that's why I was interested in hiring you in the first place."

"Well, let's cut the BS and you tell me some more about Sirius Black."

Turns out Sirius Black was a murderer. And a betrayer. That's...what, Seventh level of hell? I hadn't read my Dante in a while.

I could tell that Dumbledore was lying about something. What, I'm not sure. He described his view of Black as being two different frames; the eleven year old boy who eagerly was sorted into Gryffindor (whatever the hell that was, other than a symbol in heraldry), befriended a werewolf, played pranks and "snogged" his way through every broom cupboard in Hogwarts; vs the twenty-something raving lunatic who'd betrayed some of his friends to He-Who-Must-Be-Hyphenated and killed his other best friend in cold blood, along with some collateral damage (in the form of a full dozen "muggles").

The whole image seemed off to me. Some of that may have been an artifact of an outsider looking in on the magical world, which seemed about 160* off kilter from normal (not completely turned around, but skewed). All the same, I'd developed an instinct over the years.

Somebody was lying. I wasn't sure where the lie was, but there was distrust and deception shot through the whole case.

This was nothing new to me.

As we were preparing to leave the Leaky Cauldron, my file folder stuffed with notes (I'd had to note down practically everything about the case, considering my unfamiliarity with the subject) a little owl fluttered down to Dumbledore. He took the note on its leg (wait, owls used for the mail?) and his face fell slightly.

"Oh, Harry." he whispered, but shook his head fractionally at me when I looked at him, thinking he was using my name. "Wrong Harry." he muttered.

"Trouble?"

"I fear that one of my students is going to need a place to stay for the night. He's apparently blown up his aunt."

I stood stunned for a moment, wondering at the cavalier way he referred to murder. He looked at me and chuckled.

"Oh, dear. You mistook me. He has reportedly inflated his Uncle's sister like a balloon, accidental magic I wouldn't have expected from a student past his first year. She must have been sorely trying."

"Jeez, you scared the crap out of me. I thought you meant he blew her to pieces." he chuckled again, without much mirth.

"I shall make arrangements with Tom for him to stay here. You may run into him from time to time if you come to the Cauldron before the First of September; he's a rather skinny boy with unruly black hair and green eyes."

"Should I be worried that he matches the description of the person you said Black betrayed and is probably after?"

"Harry Potter, the rather reluctant Boy-Who-Lived. And Black's godson."

That wasn't connected or troubling at all.

I arrived back at the cheap motel I'd taken a room in (generally for me, the cheaper the better. Cheap motels rarely had the modern amenities that broke down around me, so I generally never had to cover damages to room equipment) to the ecstatic greeting of an overgrown puppy.

"Hey, boy. All quiet on the home front?" I asked, rhetorically; if there had been any trouble at the room, Mouse would have taken care of it. Expeditiously. Or at least made a hell of a racket.

The room was no more trashed than it had been by my original arrival, where my bags seemed to explode all over the room with the force of my unpacking. Mouse licked my hands enthusiastically. Once our traditional greeting had been observed, and I'd washed my hands of the remnants, I sat down at the small table and chair that had been provided with the "luxury" 2 bedroom accommodations. (My knees touched the bottom of the table, which was about 6 inches too short for even normal, non-giant sized people.)

I opened the folder of notes, and took out the copy of the Daily Prophet and the half dozen papers I'd bought earlier as well.

The picture on the Daily Prophet was moving, unlike the picture in the mundane press. Honestly, I loved magic as much as the rest, but this was just showing off.

For a while, I didn't look at the notes, or even the words on the papers. I studied my quarry. The picture in the Prophet was the mugshot that had been taken the night of his arrest. The disheveled young man was screaming and yelling, (silently because of the lack of audio on the photo), and his eyes were wild and crazed.

I've met bad people before, and nearly become one myself; it's a war I wage every day. I've dealt with and killed one-trick-pony black sorcerers, Vampires of every stripe (White, Red, and Black), creatures out of the NeverNever, scions of said creatures, and even world-class necromancers while riding on Zombie Sue. Hey, it's not my fault that the Heirs of Kemmler had no imagination, and that I got to the dinosaur skeleton first.

I've also run into mundanes that run the gauntlet from sleazy, dangerous, beautiful, ugly, cunning, clever and thick. It's given me a bit of perspective on motivations and facial expressions.

Black did look a bit crazed in the photo. But he also looked stricken. The despair was etched into his face, and his overwhelming madness seeped out of every pore and echoed in every silent scream.

I've known men (and women) to kill for money, power, envy, lust, and even wrath. All seven of the sins. This man (if he did indeed kill people) didn't kill for those reasons. His crimes must have been rooted in madness and despair, at the very least. If he were tried today, in the States, any competent lawyer could probably get him a plea bargain based on the insanity plea. It would be trading one prison cell for another, but the new cell would be very comfortable and padded, and come with an array of wonderful drugs standard issue.

And no Dementors. I shuddered a bit as I recalled what Dumbledore said about the creatures.

"The guards of Azkaban are among the foulest creatures in the world. To be in their presence is to feel all warmth fleet away, and all your best memories vanish like smoke. Instead, all the worst of experiences are dredged up in their place, and you are forced to relive them over and over. Every memory of heartache, loss, pain, and regret is laid bare to you."

Any culture that can guard even its relatively minor prisoners with what seemed to me to be Outsiders, creatures from outside our normal reality, and not subsequently commit suicide for sending these people to their worst hells, is not a society I'd really want to be a party to.

I shook my head to clear it of these thoughts, and got to work.

I shivered slightly as the small boat to Azkaban bucked and hopped on the cold North sea. My shivers weren't related to the cold though, as I had my trusty duster pulled tight around me, collar turned up against the wind.

The old boatman (what was referred to by the other wizards as a squib, although how squib differed from muggle baffled me, when both referred to somebody without magic) looked at me with pity, and tossed me what looked like a bar of chocolate.

"Fer later. Ye'll need it." he said, voice carrying just over the howling of the winds. I looked oddly at him for a moment, but thanked him anyways. The two aurors with me, ostensibly to protect me from Dementors (as I'd never faced one and had no clue how to deal with it) chuckled.

"He always does that." said the younger woman, her pink spiked hair clashing wildly with the dark blue auror robes. "Bloke has an obsession with chocolate."

"You didn't seem to mind on your first trip to Hell, junior Auror." said the other, a large imposing black man who reminded me of no-one else than Samuel L. Jackson. He had an earring in one ear, and wore his auror blues with what looked vaguely like an African pillbox hat.

Tonks and Shacklebolt had been placed more or less at my disposal for this trip and for future need; as far as I could determine, they were either my handlers or my guardians. Not being from this wizarding world, the overeager obliviators might accidentally erase my memories of magic if they ran across me.

That thought filled me with nearly as much dread as dealing with Dementors. People mucking about in my head is one of my top-five fears. Justified, as far as I could tell, by the crap I'd dealt with during my last case, dealing with that Corpsetaker bitch. Her (his?) grasp of mental magic was just a bit too advanced for my tastes.

"You always were resistant to such magic, weren't you, my host?"

I heard the whisper in my head, and tried my mightiest to ignore it. Lash would have no say in events, if I had anything to say about it. The little hitchhiker in my head was an annoying bitch, but occasionally useful, if I had to admit it. I'd probably be drawing on her skills for this case, and hopefully I could limit that. No reason to invite her in my head further.

We approached the dock at the imposing building that had seemed to spring forth out of the mists full-formed. It was triangular in shape, I could see; towering over us like the Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I fell asleep 35 minutes into that film last time I'd tried to watch it.

We stepped out onto the dock, and the little boatman hurried belowdecks on the small passenger boat, probably to get some coffee, I guessed; or maybe tea, given this was Britain. We were met by red-cloaked figures, ostensibly the human guards of Azkaban.

"Visitor for investigation of Black escape." Shacklebolt, my taller, darker guardian said. He handed over a small sheaf of parchment, and the lead guard riffled through it briefly.

"Go ahead. Wilkins, show them around."

"Right. This way, gentlemen." said the younger man on the right. He was brown-haired and -eyed, and looked too young to drink or vote. A second look at his eyes confirmed, though, that he was probably older than he looked, and that he was a hardened guard.

We walked in the lower entrance door, and Shacklebolt cast a spell. "Expecto Patronum."

A silvery-white creature that I recognized as a Lynx streamed out of his wand, and circled around us (not quite touching the ground). It prowled around us, and each time we passed within 20 feet of a Dementor, it bared its teeth and growled.

A guardian spirit. An Honest-to-God guardian spirit.

Color me impressed.

The spirit's warmth protected all of us from the aura of the Dementors, and we made our way up to the high-security section.

I had to scoff; the old-school way of imprisonment was iron bars in mildewed stone. Impressive, and it looked well-maintained, but not particularly secure. Even the detention area at the SI Headquarters in Chicago had stronger jail cells. I knew from personal experience; not that a Loup Garou can be held in by bars.

Intellectually I knew these cells were warded against most of their normal methods of escape; portkeys and apparition and probably even magic-use, but to my naked eye they looked...inconsequential.

No wonder the guy escaped.

"So what were the circumstances of his escape?"

"About 2 days after a visit by Minister Fudge, where he left behind his newspaper for Black to read, he apparently said he wanted to do the Crossword, Black was missed at a cell-check. We do them with humans once every 3 days or so, although Dementors are used to deliver food and such."

"Apparently one of the patrolling Dementors heard him to say; "he's at Hogwarts" in his sleep. Several times, as a matter of fact." Shacklebolt said, keeping an eye out for approaching Dementors as he held his guardian spirit up.

"So we know where he's headed, I guess."

"That's the best guess so far."

"What's the triggering action though? Can we get a copy of the paper he was given?"

"Sure, I think the Prophet would sell you a copy." Tonks said, my other, pinker companion.

"When we get back then."

We piled into Black's cell (with Samuel L. just outside it) and I began to investigate. I immediately decided against using the Sight; I didn't want to catch a Dementor in it as it passed by, nor did I really want to see the spiritual residue of centuries of despair and nightmares; each prisoner in here would be a well of madness.

Color me a coward; that sort of thing just doesn't float my boat.

I inspected his sleeping area, a straw pallet in the corner. It was soggy and mildewed, much like the rest of the place, but more interesting was the coarse black hair I found and collected for samples. Then, I checked the two places I most suspected of being used to escape; the window and the door. The window was high enough that those without stilts in their shoes, like myself, would have trouble reaching it. I inspected it visually, but it looked to be intact; a bit rusted and old, but not bad.

The door, a series of rusted iron bars, was pay dirt though. I found more of the coarse black hairs, and collected them in a separate film canister.

After a few more cursory checks, we left. As we were approaching the exit, Shacklebolt's patronus unexpectedly failed. A Dementor that was nearby immediately drew closer to me, surging forward like a predator.

My mind was immediately drawn to dark places. Not being a party to much else in my life, it was an easy road to go down. Memories flashed into my head.

I was throwing myself at Cowl, feeling the hot sting of Kumori's knife on my throat, as I watched the spiraling vortex of the Darkhallow descend.

"DIE ALONE!" and purple flash of light.

I was reading the note and seeing the photograph that could land Murphy in jail or worse, of her blowing the hell out of a Renfield with a big old shotgun, while a centuries' old vampire leered at me.

I heard the wrenching crack and saw Thomas fall from his father's arms, head twisted the wrong way. "NO!"

"Harry. Nicodemus is afraid of you. Afraid that you saw something. I don't know what." an old man wheezed with his dying breaths, as he lay tortured and mutilated in a desecrated chapel after sacrificing himself for me.

"If you kill me, they will be executed. By surrendering, you preserve them. Your Miss Rodriguez. The policewoman. The investigator you apprenticed under. The owner of that bar. The Knight and his family. The old man in the Ozarks. The wolf-children at the university. All of them."

Ursiel charged towards me, eyes glowing green and orange, that damned sigil glowing in green on his bestial forehead, between the curling ram's horns and swirling patterns of runes.

I saw Aurora dragging Lily to the Stone Table, obsidian knife in hand.

I saw Susan's eyes fill up with blackness, and heard the vampiric hunger purring within her as she approached me sinuously.

I was in the mud pit at Marcone's estate, Marcone dangling above and a loup garou snarling down at us.

I looked up at the demon over me, as I hung from the railing by my handcuff link, seeing the flames glow prettily above.

I felt the cold, damp stone of Edinburgh under my teenage knees, with that musty hood over my head, hands tied behind my back while old men with swords debated my fate in a language I didn't understand.

I saw my old Master's body ignite in flames, from the power I'd been granted by Leanansidhe, saw my Elaine naked, covered in twisting, savage forms that were painted on her skin, as she had held the binding on me.

"FUEGO!" I screamed, pushing my blasting rod forward, andfeeling my will spool into the implement, along with a tiny surge of the element called Hellfire.

I called forth combat fire for the first time since my hand was nearly burned off, and it responded.

The Dementor hesitated a moment, as my blasting rod glowed red, then white with power, then was enveloped in flames, terrible flames that clung to the offending creature like napalm. It shrieked terribly, like a Nazgul, wordless and formless but still burning.

The other Dementors nearby all surged away, not wanting to get anywhere close to me. The creature I'd struck with my power shuddered, and screeched, then finally the remnants of the burning robes collapsed to the ground, while a tiny shockwave of power detonated outwards.

I fell on my ass, blasting rod still held in front of me, panting like a dog. The aurors and the guard looked on in awe, as I successfully did what no other person in the history of Dementors had done; I destroyed one.

I was still panting with exertion when I looked up and saw the looks of awe and fear.

"I'll be goddamned." Shacklebolt murmured, then helped me up. "How in the hell did you manage that?"

"Uh, it was just fire." I lied, trying to catch my breath. Tonks still stayed a few feet away, her eyes wide and paler than any human being had any right. Wilkins looked like he was going to wet himself, or already had.

"We've used fire before to fight off these things. It doesn't work. Something different happened."

I thought back, remembering a time long ago when I was set upon by a creature I couldn't see, except in reflections, a monstrous creature with thick fur and razor claws. He Who Walks Behind. An Outsider, one of the descending hierarchy of their kind, a servant of the Old Ones.

"You know the reason my Host, even if you don't recognize it yet."

These Dementors must be cut from the same cloth, like a Mist fiend. They had the same cold, void feel of mordite. I shrugged. "I have a theory, but nothing substantial. Sorry about the mess."

"Heh, no problem. Self-defense and all that. You're not going to find too many advocates of Dementor welfare." Shacklebolt said, chuckling. "Remember what the boatman gave you."

"What?" I asked, confused. Then I remembered the chocolate. "You mean..."

"Yep. Chocolate's one of the best remedies for Dementor exposure."

"I'll be damned." I said, pulling the thick bar of chocolate out and opening the wrapper that said Honeyduke's. I took a bite and began to chew, immediately feeling the warmth spread through my body, warming a chill I hadn't realized I had. I took another two bites, then wrapped it up for later.

We made our way out of the prison, noticing that at each point where we'd have to pass a Dementor, they would shy away from me, getting as far as possible without abandoning their posts. I grinned, wishing that all of the myriad creatures I faced were that easy.