Written for the Daily Prophet Mini-Competition on the QLFC (Team: Appleby Arrows): Write a story about a canon scene you would change.

Thanks Em for betaing for me!

Word count: 598

all things dark and terrible

It was almost funny, Harry thought, how completely he had managed to forget the intensity of the Dementors' cold terror. His nightmares never seemed to get the way it seeped into your very soul, gripping at your very heart with icy tendrils, quite right, and the Tournament had given him new fears to dream about-new nightmares to focus on.

But he shouldn't have let himself forget. He should have remembered, should have kept himself ready, the way he had always been in his third year: his happiest memories just a thought away, the Patronus on the tip of his tongue and ready to be called at the wave of his wand.

(Merlin, so many things he should have done)

He had been taken off guard though, had been attacked somewhere he had (somehow) thought safe, and now he was going to die for that mistake.

Harry Potter, the boy who had survived Voldemort's attacks only to die at the hands of Dementors beside his muggle cousin, in Privet Drive. The situation was painfully ironic, but Harry couldn't even muster the will to laugh, his amusement melting away to the Dementors' chill.

"Come on, Dudley, we need to run," he tried again, pulling at his cousin's arm. Dudley was frozen in place though, and Harry's head was still ringing from his earlier hit-the one that had led to him losing his wand, their only mean of defense.

Distantly, Harry realized that Dudley would have left him by now, had he been in Harry's place. And maybe, maybe that's what Harry should do-run, and try to get someone (though who, in Privet Drive, would know how to deal with Dementors?) or draw them away-but he couldn't. He was only too aware that his presence, right by Dudley's side, was the only thing keeping the dark creatures away, but even that wouldn't last forever.

Desperately, Harry tried to hold onto his happy memories (Ron, Hermione, the Weasleys, Sirius telling him they could be a family) but they slipped through his fingers like smoke.

"Dudley, come on," Harry repeated, growing more and more desperate. Unshed tears froze at the corner of his eyes as he realized that, no, he didn't want to die.

And miraculously, Dudley finally moved. The rush of relief was so strong it overwhelmed Harry, and he stumbled back.

That was all it took. The first of the two Dementors swooped in and Dudley tripped trying to fight off something he couldn't see. It felt like the worst kind of déjà-vu, this horrified fascination that overtook Harry as he watched the Dementor pull up his hood, unveiling the dark, monstrous mouth that seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the air. On the ground, Dudley moaned and convulsed once, twice before falling still as glittering lights rose out of his mouth. He looked like he was sleeping.

"No, no," Harry moaned, hands scraping against the concrete as he blindly searched for his wand. His vision was blurry with tears and his fingers so stiff with cold they felt ready to snap, but he still forced himself to fight as the other Dementor flew closer, its face unveiled as well.

Something pulled tight inside him, and someone screamed. It wasn't his mother this time-no, it was him.

He hadn't thought losing his soul would feel so much like getting a part of himself ripped out.

When he woke up (surprise, surprise, he thought dryly, he had escaped death again), he felt lighter than he ever had.

Emptier, too, somehow.