The Azkaban Thread, <It's about damn time!>

[Jason Frost]

(OOC: The Death Eaters come in around the time Kalia's finished with Atterton. So they don't get to show up just yet... but soon, I promise. )

There was another loud bang, and the Knight Bus bounced up into the air before slamming back down. Jason quickly extricated himself from his safety harness, but was very nearly thrown off the side when the bus bounced again. "What the..." he looked over the side, and saw that the bus was driving over bodies. Human bodies. Bodies wearing the uniforms of Azkaban guards -- Jason recognized the color scheme from Aeolus and Anya's wedding, when Tony Devincenzi had shown up in uniform. He noted that not all of the bodies were in one piece -- before the bus had even arrived, they were severely mutilated. These people had been killed using Sectumsempra.

"It's a trap!" Jason said. Even as the words escaped his mouth, a sudden chill came over the scene... dementors. He whipped his wand hand up and said, "Expecto Patronum!"

[Raina Avalon]

"Expecto Patronum!" Raina shouted laying on her back on the roof.She had let go of her harness at the same time Jason did, but hadn't kept her footing. Not that it stopped her casting her Patronus.

Her lion leapt from the roof of the bus, leaping towards the closest dementor.

[Kai Andrews]

A flash of much harsher light came from Kai's direction -- she had used her Lightning in a Bottle to blast the dementors backward. Two of them were now on fire. Discarding the empty bottle, she raised her wand and added her dolphin to the already existing Patronuses.

[Kalia St. Clair]

Kalia grinned and cast her own patronus, an elf looking exactly like Milli sprinted into the fold with other patronus'; Milli beamed happily at the patronus.

Clicking her fingers, Milli contributed her own magic to battle, in a puff of dark smoke and an inhuman wail, one of the dementors vanished.

[Ronald Weasley]

One floor below the Patronus Squad, Ron looked out the window in horror. He had just seen the severed head of his last Auror training officer, Nigel Hawksworth, roll past. The guards had all been killed -- and quite brutally -- but not by the dementors. What else was out there? "Everyone back away from the windows," Ron said. "Get toward the center of the bus... incoming spells will be less likely to hit you." He suited action to words, standing in the middle of the aisle with his wand up in a defensive position. He had been on a tour of Azkaban during Auror training, and knew that they were past the point of no return -- the bus was on the wrong side of the Anti-Disapparation Jinx now.

[Keith Irvine]

Any colour left on Keith's face drained at the site of the guards around them, or more particularly what was left of them.

"What..." His words caught on his throat and his question was left unfinished.

[Harry Potter]

Harry had also let go of his harness at the same time as Raina and Jason, bounding six feet into the air as the Knight Bus landed with a violent judder. He ran straight for the centre of the bus in battle stance, trying not to look at his mutilated colleagues, feeling sick all the same. Pointing his wand straight up at the ceiling, he thought of his primary happy moment, the Elder Wand spinning through the air, a jet of bright green light hitting his eenemy straight in the chest. Remembering the relief that flooded through him...

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" Harry yelled, as a silvery stag burst from the end of his wand. This alone was able to lift his mood greatly, and it cantered off into the night sky to battle unseen Dementors.

[Xanthe Chapel]

Xanthe was standing near Keith and caught what he said. She grinned, not looking out of the window for fear of what she might see. Taking the liberty, she finished off his sentence.

"The hell? Might be appropriate." Xanthe allowed herself to look outside, her stomach turned but she didn't change her expression.

[Jason Frost]

Jason raised his non-wand hand. He had never attempted this before, but in theory, he was armed with two wands -- this would allow him to keep his Patronus active and still use different spells at the same time. "Avada Kedavra!" he shouted, hitting the nearest dementor. Its scream punished his ears even as it died in a cloud of black smoke. He looked around -- his donkey was still charging the dementors, now running alongside Harry's stag.

[Keith Irvine]

Keith nodded solemnly, afraid to do much more incase his threw up. I'm in way over my head.... he thought to himself.


((Who else do I have in this thread? Just Luna?))

[Colin Creevey]

(I think just Luna. We might be overlooking someone, though. )

Colin conjured his Patronus and had it patrol the inside of the bus, just in case the dementors tried to get in at them through the windows. "Everything will be okay," he said. "We've taken Felix Felicis... nothing can happen to us." He said it as much to reassure himself as anyone else.

[Keith Irvine]

"Then why are we moving away from the windows?" Keith commented a harsher tone than was common from him. He hadn't meant to sound nasty, but he felt like he was drifting in deep - and fast - waters, with no way out.

[Lucy Frost]

Lucy gave Keith's hand a reassuring squeeze as she said, "The dementors' effects are worse the closer they get to you. The hopelessness and despair... those would be worse if we stood near the windows. And besides, they might not be able to kill us, but if there are Death Eaters here as well, we want to avoid getting hit with anything... er... painful." Lucy had used Sectumsempra on herself once, as Keith well knew... she never wanted to feel that kind of pain again.

[Keith Irvine]

Keith nodded quietly, squeezing Lucy's hand back as he did. He was glad she was next to him. Taking his wand out and holding it so tight that his fingers were white, he whispered "I guess it's us or them..." though his face and voice lacked any conviction of the words.

[Tawnos Fiedor]

"Bloody well right it is!" Tawnos piped up from beside Xanthe. He held his wand in one hand, and a silver dagger -- probably given to him by Jason -- in the other. He wore an expression that made him look very weird -- body of a child, face of a stone-cold killer.