There wasn't a sound but the unforgiving whaling of the freezing wind that the storm brought.
Snow was beeing blown into the aurors faces and clothing alike, without mercy.
But they continued searching, painting the white landscape with their footprints.
The Lestrange Brothers, Augustus Rookwood and Antonin Dolohov escaped Azkaban together.
It was the biggest loss of prisoners since the mass outbreake of 1996.
They needed to find them, or else the public would loose faith.
The search party didn't have high hopes though.
The criminals were probably long gone.
And if they weren't, they were probably dead.
The only lead they had, was that the deatheaters apparated near Hogwarts.
Under the aurors were also people who fought in the war and teachers of the school.
All of them came together to give the dying organization of Voldemort's goons one last kick.
But when Hermione announced to the others per patronus that she thought she had them, and everyone came together to break the rotten door of the small wooden cabin down, no one felt as satisfied as they thought they would.
Yes, the deatheaters where there.
Hermione took a few deep breaths, her eyes watering and she asked herself why.
These men tried to kill them, have killed some of them.
And now she stood here, about to cry real tears.
But she wasn't the only one.
The sight was just something they hadn't expected.
They all laid there, tangled together like a ball of yarn, bodys pressing against each other as if they were young mice, waiting for their mother to return.
But she never came, and the mice froze in their borrow.
Rodolphus Lestrange sat there as if he was just sleeping, his head had fallen on his brothers, which layed on his shoulder.
Rabastan had huddeled himself to the side of his older brother like a crying child would to its mother. He looked younger than the others, too.
He couldn't have been older than sixteen when they brought him to Azkaban.
Now his form was lifeless, cold and pale. The freckles on his face which had probably made it look friendlier once, now blended with the rest of his skin, thin and frozen over.
The only limb that wasn't held as close to his body as possible was his hand, which was gripping his brothers.
Both were limb now, their once tight grip loose.
Dolohov was on Rodolphus Lestranges other side, leaning against him for warmth and support.
In his arms he held Rookwood, who basically sat on Dolohovs and Rodolphus' lap, and in return held Dolohovs hands.
Rookwoods head was resting against Dolohovs chest and Dolohovs head rested on that.
On the floor before Rodolphus was a book and the hand that wasn't gripping Rabastans layed slack beside it, as if he held onto it as long as he could.
It all looked so intimate, so sad that for the first five minutes, no one dared to speak.
Harry swallowed a lumb, that was building in his throat.
Even though they found them, it felt like failure.
Even though they knew the storm was raging and the prisoners were wearing nothing but their striped uniforms.
Even though they expected some or all of them to be dead, this they didn't expect.
Hermione was the first one to start moving again.
The weather was still seeping into her bones and the scenery seemed to give of another sort of coldness.
She slowly walked up to the dead men.
She leaned down and took the book
It was an old, tattered copy of "Beedle the Bard", the page opened on "The Warlocks Hairy Heart".
Childrens storys.
Rodolphus Lestrange had read chrildrens storys to his dying comrades, their bodys pressed to his own, listening tightly, waiting for his voice to carry them to the void.
He read until his lips were blue, until he stopped shaking because his body went into shock, until his voice died and the book dropped from his stiff, frozen hands.
Hermione started shaking herself. It was so ironic, because just a few hours ago, these men and the audacity of their outbreak made her shake in anger. Now she was crying for them.
She still wasn't sure why. Mabey just because all of this was so brutal.
Why was there so much death, so much pain still left in the world?
Voldemort may be gone, but his effect on people lasted.
Mabey she was crying because they were so desperate for freedom and each others company, that they were ready to die, instead of going back to Azkaban.
Mabey it was the innocence of the book which she now closed carefully, and put it back on Rodolphus Lestranges lap.
"We should take them to the castle." Harry said silently.
No one dared to speak another word in the presence of the dead, so they worked without sound.
The bodys were seperated and put on stretchers, to be hovered back to the castle.
Hermione carefully picked up the book again.
She noticed something handwritten on the first page, so she opened it.
She gripped the soft leather back of the book tightly, as she read the lines they had written.
"I know the light grows darker down below
But in your eyes it's gone before you know
This is the moment of just letting go
He said, if you had life eternal
Can you hear me say your name forever?
Can you see me longing for you forever?
Would you let me touch your soul forever?
Can you feel me longing for you forever, forever?"
"What are you doing?" Harry asked, when he reentered the shack.
She looked up and wordlessly showed it to him.
Was it a poem? A song?
Or just the thoughts of one of them, aware they were going to die.
When he was done, he sighed.
"I don't know how to feel." she admitted.
"I hate these people. They killed Remus and Tonks and Fred and so many more.
But somehow I can't stopp... pittying them?"
Harry nodded slowly.
"Death always affects you, that is just how people are and how you are. I think it would be weirder if you would be apathetic towards all of this."
She hugged him. The cold that has reeched both of them deep inside subsides just a little bit.
She heard steps and onther set of arms held them both thight.
"We should go back." Ron said, but didn't let go.
They leaned on each other for a bit, just beeing there for each other and beeing together.
The storm continued to rage on for days, bringing more snow, hail and fog with it than Hogwarts had seen in years.
That meant that nobody went back to the old wooden shack, to investigate further.
No one saw the white, silvery shining animals, that almost looked like patroni, but not quite.
A black mamba that laid on the back of a cheetha, a ferret cuddeling its paws and a dragon, who protected the others from the snow with its wing.
Their forms were transluscent and the next time someone would come here, they would be gone.
But they just wanted to spend one last moment together, hoping it would last forever.