64 unleashing calamites

The group of three were lead inside the shed by the warden, astonished to found that it was the actual living quarter of the prison guards.

"The life inside those walls has become unbearable, nothing would keep the cold away for too long, when we report the situation to the Ministry two years ago, do you know what was their response? they send coats! Fucking coat and a message, 'keep the prison safe.' nothing else! We have been left alone on this fucking island to fend of by ourselves. Those in the lower and middle-security cells need a coat or they would never finish their sentence alive, as for the higher one? Good riddance, those fucking Death Eater where the second craziest thing inside."

All the while he was venting his frustration, they prepare themselves. Once equipped with a coat, they apparate at the door of the prison.

"You hear that? You would think that silence would be a benediction before, now? This place has transformed into a barren land of death."

On his words, they all realize what was strange with the place, not a single sound was hears, inside the inmates need every bit of energy to stay alive, the cries have long since stopped when their owner dies of exhaustion under the cold, sapped from every bit of energy inside them.

"How can you keep them alive? What are you feeding them?"

When they hear him, all the guards of Azkaban look at the young Auror before bursting in laugher.

"Feed them, boy? We don't even have enough to feed ourselves properly, you think we will spend resources on them?"

"Then how?"

"Magic"

At the serious declaration of the warden, they look at him like he was crazy.

"Their magic keeps them alive, they only need to eat once a week to let them survive for the next, those in the lower cell are given three meals a week, nothing more. The Ministry has refused to shorten their sentences and is not willing to allocate more resources to the prison, so they will continue with that much until their sentence is served."

It was only for this that they start to understand why the boatman says that the situation was worse, those in the lower cell where simple thieves and the like, small offender, when one knows that they will need to serve at least two years inside, they shudder at the thought of the state they will exit the prison if they do.

"We will start to climb for the middle and high floors, beware of the stairs, they are slippery." Say the warden while seven of the guard fix wooden sled on their back. Their internal question was answered when they see the stairs, a part of them have been adapted to let the sled slide on.

The first part of the climb was relatively easy, while a little dangerous as the young Auror slip more than once on the frost coated steps. When they attain the middle of the tower after an hour-long of harder and harder climbing, the first ices start to appear on bars. The stairs soon take a crystalline appearance when ice covert them entirely. Slowly the walls turn from black to dirty grey to white and finally blue-white when they arrive at the entrance to the high floors.

At this moment, the guard of the prison takes out climbing-irons, fixing them on their boots, showing to the three how to do it.

"Starting now, it unknown territory, we only have tried to go their once, that was two years before and we lost fifteen men."

"What?! How?!" Scream Bartimus, shocked at the news who never made to the ministry.

"A new creature than we never have seen before. They take the shape of a horned rabbit with blue-white furs, their two times the size of normal ones. Don't be fooled by their cute appearance, they eat meat and have rip those men apart in less than a minute, leaving nothing beside them, not even bones. One of their most dangerous features is that slightly crooked horn that looks like a dagger. They are incredibly stealthy and will impale you with that horn of them in a single leap. You will fall under their weight and the rest of them will swarm you like locusts. If I were to rate them, they should be at least XXXX creatures. Thankfully, they seem unwilling to exit those Iceland, others wise the prison would have been cleaned long before. The only way we have found is to left fishes here for them to feed on and pray they won't crave for a more lively prey."

When they hear him, all shudders from either memory of the blue-white monsters, or the terrifying images forming in their heads, not a single one of them were thinking that they could lose their lives today when the rise this morning but all have a mission whose consequence could be far worse than a quick death.

Because of the accumulated ice over the last two years, they need to constantly blast the step to tear chunks of ice out of them in order to climb up. They know that this way they would alert the rabbits but they couldn't make otherwise.

So for the next hours, they continue to climb up those stairs in an hour and a half long climbing when it previously takes a little less than half an hour to do so. The nearer they were for the last floors, the more the guards became nervous, throwing gaze everywhere every ten seconds. Like the stairs, the corridors need for a passage to be craved in as the previously humid air has left plenty of water to be frozen all around.

Where they not in mortal danger, they would have been astonished to see actual snow falling constantly in those corridors. It was the same clumsy Auror that remark it first.

"Warden..." Say it while pointing a particular spot.

When they look at it, they see a well-concealed hole in the snow, looking all around, they start to see more and more, becoming whiter every second.

"We are in their lair..." Whispered the man, shaking at the meaning of this, while cursing in his mind the bumbling buffoon Fudge that didn't send a team to exterminate then or at the very least relocate those hellish creatures. They choose to use piercing Hexes rather than blasting one for now forth, moving those chucks with levitation charms after that.

Like they were thinking, all the cells were long since empty, their residents if not dead by then, having acted as meals.

Another nerve-wracking fact was that the light seems to dim the further they advance. When they finally reach his cell, they were relieved to have made it alive, but before they could settle down a little, two piercing orb light up in the darkness, looking up for them, frightening them senseless.

"It been a while since the last time I see someone alive, is that buffoon still Minister?"

They were flabbergasted to hear a young voice resounding from the darkness, much less that it seems unbothered by his surroundings and not afraid of the beast around. Did they take a second, they would found strange that he was still alive while living in the middle of the flesh-eating monsters.

"Alexander Evans?" Ask Barty, once able to gather his mind on the task at hand still uncompleted.

"Mr. Crouch, what kind of business the head of the department of international magical cooperation would have for me?"

The man was once again taken aback to be know from and remembered by the young who seems to be completely sane after all this time of starvation and soul-sucking exposure to those monsters.

"This year Hogwarts House the Triwizardtournament along with Beauxbatons and Durmstrang..."

"My name came out of the goblet, didn't it?"

"How?"

"That the only reason why you would come for me, otherwise all of the concerned party would lose their magic, in other words, the entire of Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang students, and the three ministries employes. That what you obtain when morons tried to revive a defective tournament with a contract written by drunks centuries ago. None a single on of you have tried to change the contract?"

When he didn't receive a response he chuckled, before the sound of chains could be heard as those piercing eyes start to raise, soon exceed their height, adding a little more of the fear still gripping them. Those same chains scrape on the iced floor as he came nearer. When he was finally in the light, all were taken agape by his appearance.

From a fourteen-year-old, the boy was a giant, with a height of two meters, he was towering above any of them. His wild crimson red hair falling in his back until his knees create a striking contrast with the ice all around. His shirtless body was leaving nothing to imagine, as a perfectly slim and sculpted body showing the faintest trace of muscules even in a relaxed state, was in front of them. His unblemished face was only enhanced by those startling green orb overflowing with raw power, leaving no doubt to never have been affected by Dementors.

His sight was nothing of someone having past the last three years in a place without food and haunted with soul-sucking monsters. His presence alone was giving off a blaring warning from their deepest instinct. It was only when they snap out of their daze that they notice that he was carrying something in his arms. To the horror of the guard, a fluffy over-sized rabbit was resting in his arms, enjoying the petting he was receiving.

Unlike the one they seen before, this one was at least three times the size of a normal rabbit, it horn long of a good twenty centimeter long. Its fur was perfectly melting with it's surrounding and astonishing deep blue eyes could be seen when it briefly opens them.

"What, you wouldn't think that I would have to keep sane without something to do, right? So, does it means that I will exit this cell?"

"Yes, for the duration of the tournament, as your name was drawn, the Ministry will provide you immunity."

"Yeah, right, the Ministry, it the ICW laws that grant it to me, the British Ministry has nothing to do with it, don't take me for an idiot."

Barty grit his teeth at this, knowing full well the advantages they could have squeezed out of him should have he been ignorant of them.

"You know that your tentative of subversion of the ICW laws just means that the British Ministry as directly tried to coerce me, right? It's a breach of the treaty that you have all signed, meaning that all links between me and Wizard Britain are forever cut should I ever want, and I do. For now on, everything coming from your Ministry would need to be sent to the Goblin nation, I will not have further contact with it the instant we land on British ground."

On this, he pushes the door of his cell, breaking the bars long frozen and weakened. His chains soon followed and under the utterly terrified gaze of the thirteen, twelve other rabbits follow him. When the snap out of their state, they rush to the stairs where they have left their sleds, only to found nothing. Now that the beast where gone, the transfigures the previous chunks of ice in news one, and climb down as fast as possible. Three minutes later, they exit the prison and rush to the shed.

To their surprise, Alex was waiting for them in a boat, ready to go and bringing the beast with him.

"Well, I don't have the entire day, let's go."

With a quick word, Barty thanks the guard before taking another boat with his Aurors. When they start their ways back it was only 1 A.M in the morning and would return on British ground around 6 A.M.