Harry Potter and the Memories of a Sociopath, Ch 4, Zimbardo's Methodology was Flawed, Pt 3

Here's how it is:

Shortly after the story in HPMOR, Hermione decides it is up to her to destroy Azkaban's dementors, even knowing the risks involved. A phoenix arrives to assist her, but after teleporting away with Hermione, immediately returns to Hogwarts. Hermione is left alone in dementor-central while Harry desperately tries to get the phoenix to her before it's too late.

Draco is angry at the world; at the perceived failures and betrayals of everyone around him. In a flash of incite, Draco concludes that Harry is Voldemort and is the biggest threat to magical society. He begins planning to amass power for the inevitable battle.

"So you can't teleport directly to Azkaban and can't fly to it. The obvious solution is to teleport above the wards and fall right where you want to go. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly how high or wide the wards extend. But if you start at an altitude of 100km, several kilometers east of the prison, you'll almost certainly be outside the wards, and the earth's rotation will bring Azkaban to you. I'm not sure how resistant you are to the low temperatures and pressures in the upper atmosphere, and don't want you to have to regenerate after you land, so I'm going to transfigure a capsule for you. That will also have the advantage of having a more easily estimated coefficient of drag and terminal velocity. I'll put some fins and a parachute on the capsule so you can steer toward the prison once you see it and then land safely... Sometime soon, I'm going to either need a working computer in here or a magical way to solve equations..."

A deafening shriek filled the prison, accompanied by a noticeable tremor. An auror was coming down the spiral, now two floors above Hermione, and she could clearly hear a voice yell from his communication mirror, "does anyone know what the hell that was?"

The response also came from the mirror, "Something tore through the outer wall of the prison, sir. It's ... hold on a second ... Be careful, everyone. We must have a seriously powerful dark wizard in the prison."

"Report. What's going on up there, Nobbs?"

"A phoenix came for me, to help me defeat the dark wizard. Does anyone know if they normally arrive in some kind of big metal egg-thing?"

"What?"

"Huh. It keeps falling over." He pauses, laughing. "It looks dizzy. And confused. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it has a concussion."

Hermione had quietly squeezed past the nearest auror and continued spiraling up, occasionally having to duck against the wall to avoid aurors running up or down in no search pattern she could identify.

A few minutes later, she reached the correct level. It was obviously the correct place because of the rain falling into the prison through a roundish hole punched in the ceiling (and outer wall of the corridor above). The auror she'd heard over the mirror had put her phoenix on his shoulder and was trying but failing to look properly heroic while recounting the story to his CO, gesturing at the crumpled halves of a small metal shell. The phoenix somehow had a murderous expression totally incongruous with such an animal. At its first opportunity, the phoenix hopped to the floor and began a slow, furtive escape attempt.

Hermione checked to make sure no one was watching then pulled the edge of the cloak over the phoenix, picked it up, and quickly backed away.

"What the hell did you do?" She whispered, once she was far enough from the aurors.

The phoenix just spread its wings, made eye contact, and slowly shook its head.

"Right. After this, we have to get back to Hogwarts so I can yell at Harry." The phoenix nodded.

They carefully descended through the prison. Past the lowest level, where no humans had likely tread since the prison was constructed, was the threshold through which dementors accessed the prison. Hermione looked into the cave; there was no other way to describe it, there was even a dripping stalactite near the opening. Hermione held her breathe as a dementor drifted by. Once it had passed, the stalactite had a thin layer of ice covering it; the dementor nest was apparently made of permafrost, the obvious result of every other material decaying into dust, mixing with the ever-present rain, and freezing from perpetual dementor exposure.

She took several deep breaths and cast a patronus, then walked to center of the cavern, right into the center of uncounted scores of hovering, cloaked corpses, which quickly became locked in place. She pushed more power into the patronus, which quickly became blindingly bright.

For what felt like a lifetime she felt her life force flowing out of her wand and through the patronus, but she felt something similar flowing back in from both the phoenix and from the dementors as they were vanquished, then overflowing out again. For a moment, Hermione couldn't imagine why she would want to be doing anything else. She pushed even more power through the patronus.

Suddenly the patronus went out. Hermione blinked a few times then noticed that the phoenix had grabbed her wand. The cloaks were lying in the muddy slush, empty.

"Well, that's the biggest check-mark on my to-do list... for my entire life to date. If I were anyone else, I might be concerned about what to follow it up with, but if my life ever gets boring I can just talk to Harry... I guess I should figure out how to get out of here."

This was easier said than done; the phoenix clearly couldn't fly in Azkaban, and a few seconds of testing demonstrated that her broom couldn't either. The weird forces that kept her from running would likely crash an airplane and something like a blimp or hot air balloon would be too easy of a target. Flying away appeared to be impossible.

Although, there were other options. Hermione was reasonably sure she was immune to hypothermia, and even if not, with a phoenix she should still be able to tolerate the water long enough to swim past the wards. Swimming while wearing an invisibility cloak was likely to be problematic but preferable to aurors being able to see her. And if she jumped off the tower through the hole left by her phoenix's arrival, she'd break a few bones but recover quickly enough. It seemed like a viable plan.

She began climbing stairs back to the upper levels but only made it to the second lowest level when she saw aurors. There was a giant spider (nowhere near as large as an acromantula, but still terrifying) behind them, weaving a web across the landing. After it completed the web, they cast a series of wards on it. The web was tightly woven enough to catch even an insect animagus, though casting animagus detection charms would have been far easier. Hermione realized they must have either detected or guessed the presence of the cloak of invisibility, and were prepared to catch a dark wizard with additional options for escape.

After finishing the detection wards on the web the aurors moved down the hallway, stunning the prisoners who Hermione could now hear attempting to escape their cells and fight the aurors. But there were few prisoners this low.

"Oh, no", Hermione whispered. They would seal the lowest level and begin searching it in only another minute. She moved to the center of the corridor, walked into one of the cells and paused to think. She didn't know what wards were cast on the webs or how to bypass them. It was possible she could escape directly, but she didn't know any spells powerful enough to break through the metal walls, especially not quickly enough.

She smiled, "oh, yeah." She drew the rocket launcher from her pouch and fired at the corridor wall. The anti-tank round easily tore a large hole in the structure, allowing rain and light from the overcast sky in. As Hermione got back up from where she'd been blown against the far wall, she made a mental note to always use a blast shield and hearing protection when setting off explosives in the future; she'd been hit by a small amount of shrapnel, which her body quickly expelled, but the burns from the explosion weren't healing as quickly. And not being able to hear anything over the ringing sound was quite annoying.

The aurors heard the explosion and ran toward it from both sides, but Hermione was already in the water, where the phoenix tried to climb onto her back, still tangled in the wet cloak. Hermione slowly swam away from the island, wondering whether unicorns had some prophetic ability. It was improbable to the extreme that the first thing she asked Harry to get after being revived was exactly what she needed on her first mission afterward. Or maybe RPGs are just one of those things that are useful in every situation.

"I don't think we should tell people about you crashing my phoenix. Or me blowing myself up. In the future, when we can talk about all this, I mean. We should just say I... I don't know, flew in and destroyed the dementors with no particular difficulties."

"Yeah, that's probably for the best... Hermione, wait, what do you mean 'crashed'? The parachute failed?"

"There was a parachute?"

"Caw?"

"What do you mean you don't know what a parachute does? I asked if you understood everything and you nodded... Anyway, I don't have time for this. I have to time-turn and test an hypothesis. You might be interested too."

Harry went backwards several hours. Hermione appeared in his office a moment later. They quietly (so as not to disturb past-Harry on the roof) exited the office and walked to the third floor corridor. "So there's a legend that phoenices come from this magic mirror that happens to be in Hogwarts. The mirror has other magic as well, so it would be preferable if we use the invisibility cloak to prevent it from reacting to us."

A few minutes later, they stood invisibly before the mirror. Harry had first noticed the phoenix two minutes from now. They waited. Harry couldn't help trying to count the seconds in his head. He had reached 140 when there was a bright flash of phoenix fire. They found themselves back in Harry's office with the phoenix hovering in front of them.

"Hermione, your phoenix is interfering with science!"

"You asked us to move the prisoners and then less than a week later, the dementors are mysteriously gone? And you don't expect us to suspect that you're involved? How naive do you think we are, Ogden?"

"I'm not an idiot or a vigilante, Umbridge. I objected to torturing prisoners but I never advocated acting against the will of this council nor depriving our country of its dementor deterrent. Your attempt to tie me to this act due to my political beliefs would be disturbing if anyone still took you seriously. Next you'll probably blame me for somehow causing Voldemort to kill all your friends."

Umbridge made an offended noise and turned away, looking up toward the podium. "And you... you told us the prison was more secure than ever. Are we to believe you knew nothing about this?"

Bones frowned. "I can neither confirm nor deny that being Chief Warlock comes with special foreknowledge of crazy crap that's about to happen." Then muttered quietly "I hate this job so much. And that kid."

The headmistress' office was never quiet. Despite having countless silencing charms applied, at least one object was always making noise, even when no one was around. Now, the only sound came from behind the empty desk, where a cube made audible 'blorple' sounds at regular intervals. And a 'click' as the door unlatched and swung slightly ajar before fully opening a second later. A moment later there was another click as the door closed and latched. Then only the sound of the cube remained.