//------------------------------//
// Chapter 48: Declaring War on the World 
// Story: Harry Potter and the Prancing of Ponies 
// by The Guy Who Writes 
//------------------------------//

9:01 PM, June 13th, 1992.

They appeared above Azkaban in a blaze of fire. The phoenix who brought them did not slow their descent; its wings were not nearly powerful enough to defy gravity while carrying two ponies.

But they were both alicorns who could defy gravity on their own. They did not fear the plunge; they fell directly through the triangular opening.

The Dementors were contained by three tall walls, but no ceiling. Azkaban was their playpen. It had been built to keep them occupied and contained, not trapped. The government of Magical Britain would not be able to use them as weapons if they were locked in place, after all.

Harry felt the Dementors below, saw the Dementors in their pit. They were scattering, trying to eat through the walls, trying to enter the prison, trying to press themselves further into the mud below. They likely sensed Harry's firm expectation that they were about to be destroyed, but the Shadows of Death had no quick escape aside from up, where they dared not go. That meant they were trapped. Their playpen would be their tomb.

With the will of a phoenix fanning their fire from without and from within, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger – who might have been more appropriately called Silver Life and Memory Sunshine in that particular moment – shouted in unison, "EXPECTO PATRONUM‼"

Their Patroni blazed into existence, already too bright to be seen as anything more than twin, blazing suns. They were so bright that it wouldn't be possible to see the spells as anything other than glowing spheres. Harry didn't put any effort into changing it. He didn't even know what shape his had taken. He was pouring all his strength and all his life into the spell. He wasn't wasting thought or effort on anything else.

He could feel the prisoners being touched by his light. He could see the unseeable voids fleeing before, and now he felt the unseeable voids fraying. The Dementors stopped moving the moment they fell within the aura of the true Patronus charm, the moment that expectations could no longer reach them. They frayed more as the two ponies and their charms descended, and yet more as the spells grew in size and brightness.

In the span of about five seconds, Silver and Sunshine had destroyed all the Dementors in hell.

They performed sweeping air cushions just as they were about to reach the ground, then hovered over the mud that had kept the Dementors from eating through the earth's crust and sinking into the planet.

But even with all the Dementors destroyed, Silver felt that it wasn't enough. He knew he could grow his Patronus even more, make it even stronger, heal the prisoners just that little bit extra if his spell blazed brighter.

As it expanded outward, encompassing every spark of life within the walls of Azkaban, he noticed that he wasn't getting tired. He also noticed that there didn't seem to be a limit to how big or bright he could make his magic.

With a thrill of excitement and triumph that didn't care about reasons or consequences, his Gryffindor side assumed direct control over all his faculties, deciding then and there to make his Patronus so bright that it would burn away all the wounds in the world from right here.

"Leave two alone," said a soft voice from directly behind him.

Silver was not so surprised that he almost lost his concentration. He was doing what he'd always wanted to do, what he'd always been meant to do, and in that state of mind he could have taken a flashbang to the face without losing focus.

What actually caused the spell to stop growing was recognition. Even while the Gryffindor aspect of his personality was firmly in control, Silver still had enough sense to understand what it meant.

If that particular voice was here, that meant Lord Voldemort was gone forever, or...

"Why leave any at all?" Silver asked in reply.

"To help future generations learn the Patronus charm," was the answer. "If you have fine control, do not destroy the closest Dementor in that direction-" Silver's front left hoof was manually wrested to point at one of the walls of Azkaban "-and the closest one in that direction." His back right hoof was jerked to another wall in the opposite direction.

Silver would have objected to the manual treatment if not for the fact that he literally couldn't see anything right now. It was probably the best way to convey directionality. Actually, it wasn't just simple directionality. His hooves seemed to be precisely pointing at two sources of emptiness, one for each hoof. He could somehow sense them, even though they were very far away.

"Also, we should not be seen. I am returning your cloak," continued the voice. "I have one for you too, young mare, and your phoenix shall have to hide with me for now. We are lucky your spells are so bright."

"It's not mine," said Memory in wonderment. "You can let go of my hooves now... thank you."

"Can you do as I requested?" Riddle Tome asked Silver Life.

"I don't think so," said Silver as his invisibility cloak was draped around him. He could feel those distant voids of the world, but he could no sooner spare a Dementor than he could stop healing the prisoners. Both were natural consequences of the charm. It hadn't grown big enough to destroy any non-Azkaban Dementors just yet, although its great size was probably at least interfering with their reliance on expectations, even at this range.

"Then stop growing it for now," said Riddle. "If it gets any bigger, you might violate the statute of secrecy, and at this point in time, such an upset would threaten the world's safety."

Silver stopped growing his Patronus at once. He would take no chances with the world's safety, after all. 

"In fact, shrink it to normal size. Miss, dismiss yours entirely. Once we regroup, I can get us to the other Dementors quickly enou- get down."

Silver was suddenly and forcefully shoved into the warm body of another young pony. He still couldn't see anything thanks to the brightness of his charm, but he heard something like electric sparks. His Patronus couldn't stop spellfire, so that meant one of the aurors had probably decided to start shooting blindly. Since he was unharmed and unhexed, either they'd gotten lucky, or Riddle had raised a shell shield – the dome kind that are weaker and harder to maintain, but can cover multiple people and block spells from all directions.

Reluctantly, his Gryffindor side allowed Ravenclaw to swap back into place as the dominant aspect of his personality, which then consciously forced his Patronus to shrink to normal size by realizing that the murderers and rapists in this prison had probably been healed enough, and any more healing might cause future problems for the aurors. He wished he could continue healing the non-moral-monsters, wished he could selectively heal the innocent, but he couldn't, and that thought caused his spell to diminish further. His Ravenclaw side noted that, as it shrunk in size, he sensed fewer and fewer voids at range, until he couldn't sense any at all.

Memory had already dismissed her Patronus by the time his own shrunk to normal size, so now his was the only one left. From the auror's perspective, it should look like there had only ever been one Patronus all along. He made absolutely sure to keep it as a pony, not a human, though he had to do that by pure will of thought, without visual confirmation. 

If not for his enhanced pegasus/alicorn eyesight, the shift from 'brightest day the earth has ever seen' to 'ordinary night' might have been harder to handle. Instead it only took a few seconds to see the shield spell surrounding them, and a second more to see through it. It was wide, large, pink, and translucent. It was also formed off-centre from their own position, as if Riddle was trying to throw off the aim of any attackers. If an auror cast something that went through it, like a killing curse, and aimed for the centre of the shield, it would miss them by a mile. The fact that the centre of the shield aligned so perfectly with the dead-centre of the former Dementor pit had to be deliberate. It would only reinforce the deception.

On the other side of the see-through shield, riding a broomstick and ignoring all that subtle misdirection by aiming a wand directly at their invisible forms-

"Crap," Silver whispered. "What's he doing here?"

The blue eye of Mad-Eye Moody was fixed firmly on him, not spinning in its socket, and Silver had the sinking feeling that things had just gotten much more complicated.

"Whatever you are," said the harsh voice of the retired auror, "you're under arrest for declaring war on Magical Britain."

"Don't flatter yourself," said the voice of Voldemort. "We're declaring war on the whole world."

By the delivery of that one line, and with a massive pit dropping into his stomach, Silver was immediately and completely convinced that he'd made a massive mistake, and that his plan at redemption had failed.