Without anyone to warn them, the Ministry of Magic might have remained ignorant of everything that happened that night until long afterward.
Scotland was bitterly cold on winter nights. The biting wind left people shivering, and tonight, snowflakes filled the sky.
A group of Death Eaters shrouded in black robes traveled through the wind and snow, with a pitch-black, heaving sea beneath them.
Heavy snowflakes battered Lucius as he rode his broomstick, drawing a few muttered curses from him.
Will, beside him, said nothing at all, leaving Lucius to marvel at his fortitude—he did not even shiver in weather this cold.
Azkaban stood on an island in the middle of the North Sea. It had been difficult to find ever since its construction in the fifteenth century, and after England made it a wizarding prison in 1718, numerous spells had been cast to protect it.
Besides the widely known Muggle-Repelling Charm, the most important was the Anti-Apparition Charm—in other words, wizards could not enter Azkaban directly through Apparition.
The island on which Azkaban had been built had never appeared on any map, either, making it extremely difficult to reach.
Even Ministry officials could not travel there directly. Their main means of reaching Azkaban was by Portkey.
First, they had to obtain a travel permit, which also served as a Portkey. However, this Portkey could not take them directly onto the island; it could only transport them to a transit point near Azkaban.
Once they arrived at the transit point, they still had to ride broomsticks for the final stretch to reach the prison on the isolated island.
This was why Azkaban was known as England's most secure prison. As far as the public knew, nobody had ever escaped except Sirius, that "tragic hero" (the wizarding world still did not know