~*A Cup in a Labyrinth of Memories*~
Written by: Cisselah
(Chaser 2)
written for Cearphilly Catapults in The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition
Prompts: 2, 14 & 15
~*-.-*~
Sometime during the long hours of the night the Dementor came to the conclusion it had become bored with sucking the life out of people. This, of course, would have come as a great surprise for the Dementor if the Dementor had been the kind of creature that was prone to feeling great surprises. Luckily, the Dementor was above such petty nonsense, which was why it only felt a vague sense of intrigue at this peculiar development.
The Dementor examined these new discoveries with the methodical care only an amortal, dark, slightly sociopathic non-being can have. It concluded that it's existence so far - gliding down corridors and feeding off screaming prisoners that turned darker the longer they stayed - had been somewhat of a disappointment. The Dementor wasn't quite sure when stealing the happiness out of people had become such a boring every-day task (usually his brethren could go centuries without getting bored and the Dementor was only one and a half centuries old, barely a newborn in Dementor-standars) but it knew that something had to be done about this.
The Dementor may be a soulless monster, but it was certainly not going to be living out its existence doing things it did not like doing.
So in the true spirit of sociopathy, the Dementor started to find other ways to amuse itself. It was hard, because it was limited to a small island with few playmates, and the Dementor had never really bothered being careful with its playmates before. As a result of this, most of the Dementor's playmates had turned clinically insane, which made them very boring playmates...
... except for one.
This particular playmate was something special. She had already been cracked around the edges when she arrived, but a few years of continued life sucking Dementor exposure had turned the little playmate possibly shattered. She was the most deliciously deranged prisoner the Dementor had ever seen before. Her memories tasted like fear and pain and power, green lights dancing over bodies, smiling mouths on insane faces. And through all this, all this darkness that made the Dementor want to kiss her hungrily, there was a single memory - no, not a memory, more of a mantra - that echoed through the prisoner's mind.
Protect the cup.
The Dementor had never really bothered looking at people's dark memories before. It was much to soulless to care for such trivial pleasures. But there was something about this insane woman with the crazy hair and the thoughts of dark cups that made the Dementor return to the same corridor again and again, each time a little more curious and a little more hungry.
The cup was the darkest, most twisted thing the Dementor had ever seen. And as a guardian of Azkaban, the Dementor had seen a lot of dark, twisted things. The small golden object practically screamed with dark magic (which gave a raspberry-ish aftertaste to the soul and just happened to be the Dementor's favorite spice) and malice so strong it burned the Dementor's mind when it sucked in all the memories.
This only served to consolidate the Dementor's fascination with the cup.
Day after day the Dementor found itself standing in the same corridor outside the crazy woman's room, breathing in her memories of the golden cup. It discovered that it rather liked the burning tangle of malice and raspberry-magic on its tongue, which was another great surprise, because Dementors in general only liked one thing and one thing only (sucking the life out of people - preferably nice ones).
Now, Dementors were not fluffy kittens, unless the fluffy kittens were escaped, mutant, government-funded scientific experiments that occasionally grew claws and robbed the milkman with vicious creativity. Dementors possessed no souls (which was quite lucky or the Dementors might have kissed themselves in sheer ecstacy) and therefore Dementors were not supposed to feel, much less love. In the Dementor world there were only two types of creatures; Dementors and critters, and the Dementor was not supposed to love either one of them.
But this Dementor did. It loved - with everything impure and rotten and evil that existed in its non-existent heart - the golden cup with the beautiful badger. Never before had the Dementor found a soul that was as soulless and broken and malicious as itself. It almost wanted to slip inside the woman's skin and eat her up so that it could be taken to its beloved, even if only in memories. It found itself lusting after the cup, its days circling around the small golden object, its rotten heart filled with love, its intellect impressed by the sheer evil of the object.
These were dangerous thoughts for a Dementor to have.
The Dementor's superiors were not pleased.
"August?!" a tiny little man with a funny mustache screamed for his partner. "It's here again!"
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, Patrick, you're mixing them up again. They all look the same," a tall man said in an annoyed voice.
"I'm not kidding!" the tiny man said in a fearful voice. "The bloody creature is stalking Lestrange!"
Deciding that it didn't like the high pitches of the tiny man's voice, the Dementor glided through the corridor, past screaming and moaning prisoners and a flea-bitten dog, its cloak billowing over the floor as it drew in rasped breathes of lively memories. In the corner of C-Block, the Dementor passed another Dementor and they exchanged a myriad of images in a mockery of speech.
Darkness. Screaming. Hungry. Prisoner 194. Prisoner 163. Prisoner 139. Drooling mess.
Darkness. Screaming. Hungry. Prisoner 255. Prisoner 298. Prisoner 317. Drooling mess.
Darkness. Hungry. Men with long sticks. Screaming tiny man with mustache. Running in circles. A kitten.
Darkness. Hungry. Dementors. Eating. Soul-sucking. Soul-sucking screaming tiny man with mustache. Soul-sucking a kitten.
Hungry. Hungry. Soul-sucking a Dementor.
Hungry. Hungry. Soul-sucking a Dementor.
If the conversation of images was to be translated into human speak, it would probably translate into something like this (although please note that this is a primary translation, censored because of the children and therefore not 100 % accurate):
Hello, what a nice day we have here. Nice atmosphere. All my prisoners are clear (but may need a change of clothes).
Hello, it really is a nice day today. Lots of happy things. All my prisoners are clear (but may need help closing their mouths).
Hello! Watch out. Wizards around the corner. A very upset wizard that screams a lot but does nothing. Harmless like a kitten.
Hello?! I'm a Dementor. I eat people for breakfast. I eat souls. I'll eat the screaming man's soul. I'll eat a kittens soul. Yummy.
Bye. If I had more time I'd eat you.
Bye. Ditto. Sucker.
As this conversation ended, the two Dementors gave each other small brushes with their skeleton hands as they passed each other into new corridors. The exchange took no less than 1.9 seconds, although if Dementors had been more emotional creatures capable of feeling kinship for creatures of their own race, the exchange might have taken as long time as fifteen minutes, which was the average time it took for a Dementor to kill another Dementor.
Dementors weren't that big on kisses and hugs.
The world was lucky they didn't celebrate Thanksgiving.
Refocusing its thoughts towards the golden cup, the Dementor slid down the corridor in a state that closely resembled daydreaming - if now Dementors had been the sort of creatures that daydreamed.
Years came and years passed, and the Dementor remained fascinated by the evil golden cup with the badger. After a while, the Dementor started to notice that the other Dementors edged further away from it when they passed him in the corridors, neglecting to converse with it or acknowledge it in any way.
The Dementor didn't like that at all.
But never mind that.
The little playmate with the tasty memories was starting to break. Her mind was all delicious edges and razorblades, her hair wilder than a thorn bush, her eyes crazier than a raccoon. Somewhere along the way she had started to croon at him, making lewd gestures and toothily grins that glittered like madness. In the destruction that was her mind, the Dementor slipped its mental claws and started digging out the familiar memories of the cup.
She was holding it in her hands, letting it sing her masters power into her veins. It pulsated, like it was a live being, not just a golden cup.
"I'm trusting you with this, Bella"
Grabbing her masters robes, kissing his feet (Oh, his golden feet, how she adored them-him-The Dark Lord).
Grinning savagely as she cursed her opponents. "I am his most trusted lieutenant!"
He has entrusted me with the golden cup of Helga Hufflepuff.
I am his most trusted lieutenant.
The golden cup.
The golden cup.
The cup.
Protect the cup.
For my Lord.
Feeling a sting of what a human would call excitement, the Dementor let go of its playmate's mind. She slumped to the floor, unconscious. Hovering outside her cell, ignoring a tiny man's upset voice whispering; "See, August! What did I tell you! The thing is following Lestrange!", the Dementor considered what it knew.
The cup was guarded somewhere safe. It was given to its guardian - the woman with the crazy hair - by a pale man with a dark, dark taste. So dark that there was no doubt he would end up in the prison the Dementor guarded, sooner or later (but possibly sooner).
The Dementor's mouth twisted into something so horrible and terrifying it could literally kill - a smile.
When the dark man - this Dark Lord - arrived to Azkaban, the Dementor would be ready. It would make him tell it where the cup was - of this the Dementor was sure, because the Dementor was very good at making people talk - and then it would leaves this tiny island and these tiny playmates that were far to boring for their own good. It would find the cup, its immortal love, even if it had to circle the entire world and eat every single one of those puny humans.
Because the Dementor had found something more fun to do than suck the life out of people the entire day.
The Dementor had found the cup... or well, it would find the cup... soon...
But for now, the Dementor waited...
... and the Dementor dreamed.
The End.