Xerxes laughed loudly and stood up, leaving his wineglass on an end table, and he yanked Harry into a crushing hug.
"The look on your face! As if I would turn this visit into a formal one. No, you go and sit with Rabastan and greet one another properly. I'm just glad to see that you are well and happy." Harry smiled at the huge man in utter relief and he sat himself next to Rabastan, squashing himself between the arm of the chair and his betrothed. He definitely didn't want to sit between the brothers. He didn't want to come between Rabastan and his brother in any way. Rodolphus had been his brother's support system for so long, through so many long, hard years. He understood that Rabastan still needed his brother and that he would likely always need his brother after what they had suffered and survived through together and he also understood that, because of that dependency, even if it lessened over the years, Rodolphus would always be extremely overprotective of Rabastan. It was something that he understood and had already accepted.
Lucius walked into the room and he looked at Harry squashed in next to Rabastan and one eyebrow rose a little, but he didn't say anything about his choice of seating. He broke the small layer of ice by sitting down and immediately drawing Xerxes into a conversation, leaving Harry free to shift his body more towards Rabastan and start a conversation with him.
"How have you been?" Rabastan asked, beating him to the punch.
"I've been well. A little stressed over school, but nothing that's worth complaining about." Harry said with a smile. "How have you been? Have you been busy?"
Rabastan sighed. "It has been a little hit and miss, I won't lie. I've had some dark days, but they are fewer than they once were."
"I would have been very surprised if you hadn't had any bad feelings or moods. It's normal." Harry said soothingly. "I wouldn't want you to hide those feelings or moods from me either. I want to help you, Rabastan. I can't do that if you hide everything from me. You never mentioned any of those moods to me in your letters." "I didn't want you to think any differently about me."
Harry smiled wryly. "Do you think any differently of me because I told you that I was upset on some days and angry on others?"
"No. Of course not."
"Exactly. I wouldn't have felt or thought any differently if you had just told me that you were having a bad day or dark thoughts. I don't mind hearing about it, Rabastan."
He got a thin smile for his efforts, though it was interrupted by an almost full-body spasm that locked Rabastan's jaw and made him drool slightly.
"Will you control yourself?!" Rhadamanthus yelled at a shrivelled, humiliated Rabastan. "You're an embarrassment. A complete disgrace!" "You will not speak to him in such a way." Harry said coldly as he took out his handkerchief from the inside pocket of his robes and he wiped Rabastan's chin, ducking his head so that he could get eye contact with a cringing Rabastan. "You can't help it and it's completely fine." He said firmly. "This isn't your fault, Rabastan. That place is utterly vile and isn't fit for human habitation. I'm already looking into ways to have it shut down."
"You can't shut down a prison." Rhadamanthus scoffed at him. "The Ministry would never consent to such a thing and thinking otherwise is just a child's dream."
"I'm sure that all such ambitious plans are seen to be just 'child dreams' in the beginning, but I am determined to see this through until the end. An island in the middle of the North Sea, protected by all the wards and spells that Azkaban has around it should be enough on its own. The Dementors, however, are another matter entirely and I will not sit back and allow people to be tortured in such an inhumane way just because the Ministry wants to look the other way because it's the easiest option for them to take. Those creatures should not be allowed near humans and they certainly should not be allowed to freely feed on whomever they please. Human guards would be better able to take care of the prisoners and can actually evaluate potential flight risks and suicide risks, unlike the Dementors. I won't rest until I have achieved this, even if I'm knocked back again and again, year after year, I will achieve this before I die."
"You don't have to." Rabastan said quietly.
"Did you not listen to a word that I just said?" Harry asked him with a hard tone. "I'm already doing it. I've already started researching everything that I need to, to make this an issue that people will listen to. I won't stop just because I fail once, or even several times. I won't back down and I will keep forcing people to listen and I won't be quelled just because people won't listen to me. I'll force them to listen and I'll make them see that giving the Dementors such a free reign will ultimately make them harder to control. They need to be evicted from the prison and bound somewhere that no humans currently, or will ever, populate. We don't need them, they are not helping us or our world, they are actually endangering us!"
"If you keep talking like that then you'll even convince me." Xerxes laughed.
Harry fumed at the condescending comment.
"I requested records from the Department of the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement." Harry said calmly, reigning in his temper and controlling it. "Did you know that since Azkaban became a prison in the early seventeen hundreds, Dementors started going missing from the fortress? The number of Dementors going missing increases every single year, running the risk of exposure of the wizarding world to muggles and of Dementor attacks on the entire population of Britain, which is before taking into account that they might have gone even further into the world than just the British Isles. They are dangerous creatures and it greatly concerns me that they're just leaving the prison and going missing and no one is doing anything about it! They could be doing who knows what without any regulations placed on them at all. Imagine if they were breeding in the remote corners of the world without any control? We need to act now and get rid of the lot of them."
Xerxes and Lucius shared a look and Harry quivered angrily before turning away and ignoring them both. He didn't care what they thought, he was doing this whether anyone backed him or not. For Sirius and for Rabastan. He had always hated the Dementors and, to an extent, he feared them and what they were capable of and particularly how they affected him. The wizarding world was biased and prejudiced against any and all magical creatures, they slammed tighter and tighter restrictions on them needlessly, yet they happily ignored the one creature that needed controlling the most. It was infuriating.
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