Chapter 32: Happiness is a resource
The shower was set to the highest setting Petunia could manage. Still, the deep chill refused to leave her. Her teeth chattered and her throat was horse from the hours spent screaming. The things she saw, her worst memories swirling together to bring about an image of absolute fear.
The set of knocks on her door would usually elicit a response. Not right now, Petunia needed sleep and the biggest vail of Dreamless Sleep. The set of knocks was more frantic, then the taps turned themselves off.
Still no response, from Petunia, apart from the shivering. They had done it without a Patronus today, a stupid idea and now Petunia felt cold. The coldest she had ever remembered feeling. Without the shower going the frequent gongs of screaming rang in her head and moans of pain. Petunia tried to scream in hopes that the sound coming out of her mouth would stop the sounds in her head. She couldn't get anything out and that sent her into a panic.
Clothes and fire, that's what she needed. The sun had started setting and it marked the third day they had spent on this project. Petunia broke off the tiniest piece of chocolate and the warmth it offered was glorious. There was no way she was going to be able to it again the next day, not with how poorly it had been planned out.
"Meeting in the sitting room."
The sonorous sounded like a whisper. Petunia got dressed and tied a pair of trainers on her feet. There was no way she would be fine to sleep without a run, not tonight.
Petunia grabbed a chocolate frog from the pile in the sitting room. It was juvenile chocolate but not bitter which was mostly what Damocles liked and therefore stocked in his home.
"We can't be sitting in the room with a Dementor without a Patronus," Damocles said. The circles under his eyes washed him out.
There was a rustle of papers ordering themself and the pages of Petunia's notebook were filled with Domacles handwriting.
"Well then conjure one," Petunia said snappily. The thing with bad moods is that they never stayed with just one person. "I can't. I can't spend another hour with constant exposure."
"Then how do we separate a Dementor's cloak, Petunia?"
"I don't know, but knives aren't cutting through it and no one in Knockturn is willing to touch it with a ten-foot pole. I asked." Petunia added, Gaunt would always ask if she asked.
"What did you try," Gaunt's voice sounded frantic.
"It doesn't matter what we try, without a Patronus, I can't do another hour in that room either."
Petunia hadn't expected that from Damocles. The cloak is what gave Dementor's power. Most dealers cut it into tiny strips and sold the bottles for hundreds of galleons. Dementors didn't mind giving people scraps of their robes for the smallest taste of their emotions. In all of Wizarding Europe, there was only one person who could acquire a whole cloak and cut it without asking and Petunia dreaded the next words.
"You are going to go to him and asks how he does it. I don't care if you have to beg, borrow or sell yourself for it, you will get it done."
Petunia had to hold back a scoff. Like hell, she would go there. If the Dark Lord wanted the cloak cut so badly, he had enough power to go himself. She couldn't stand the tension anymore.
"I'm going for a run."
Runs seemed to attempt to solve a lot of things these days. The running seemed to get rid of the chills and shivers; however, her mind mulled over the horrors that the Dementor made her see. She couldn't anymore, not like this, not with this type of Magic.
It was like they had never moved when Petunia walked in with terrible beer and a pack of cigarettes. She threw both on the table and sat in front of the fireplace. She opened one, almost cursing the fact that she promised Jean that she wouldn't seek out a dealer in this village.
"Can either of you even cast a Patronus?" she asked.
Both men's faces changes. Petunia knew men, they didn't like to seem incompetent which now seemed to be an unfortunately universal truth.
"You need a strong happy memory for it," the Dark Lord said.
Petunia laughed. She didn't mean to, but there was something incredibly tragic, too tragic in fact, about two grown men not having a single happy memory between them. "That is so sad. Have neither of you had earth-shattering sex or been so high that the sky called you-"
"Do you always equate the best experiences in your life to sex or drugs? It's terribly crude."
Petunia rolled her eyes, "I'm not the one who can create a guardian with those experiences. Because let's be honest, we would not be having this conversation if I was the problem." She gestured to the beer. "It's muggle stuff, but drunk actions are sober thoughts. So, if we are going to get to the bottom of this, I need you to be at least tipsy."
"Ok, let's live vicariously through you. Why potions?" The Dark Lord asked.
Petunia got comfortable. Her back against the fire and if she closed her eyes, she could pretend that this was like any other evening with Jean.
"I asked Dumbledore to let me into Hogwarts. I sent letters, what felt like a million letters, begging him to let me in and obviously he refused. I was horribly naïve to think I was special in that sense, so I threw myself into life at Cokesworth before Eileen took pity on me. She showed me how to create magic to use my normal hands and create something glorious. There is something that people don't tell you. Creation is better, way better than most intimacy." She finished her bottle and grabbed another one along with a chocolate frog. It wasn't a deep secret, there were other secrets in her life that didn't need anyone else's ears listening to them.
"That does nothing for me. So you're going to Nuremguard tomorrow, bat your eyelashes and get Grindelwald to tell you how he did it," Damocles said
"Information doesn't work like that. People need to either like or fear you to give something off themselves." They all knew that. "Besides if we are talking about eyelash batting, that's your area of expertise."
There was a sound of utter frustration and the fireplace flared up, Petunia jumped out of the distance of the flare, but the smell of burnt hair filled the room. It was enough, Petunia had tried to be amicable to the entire thing, but a small misstep made her feel like her life was in danger.
That was a lie, her life had always been in danger and she was only just realizing that the glory of a brilliant potion discovery was probably not worth it.
One didn't just get a pass into Nuremberg by batting one's eyelashes. There was a due process and that process wasn't open on the weekends. Regardless of the money that Petunia had promised to throw at the guards.
Damocles had Petunia working on drafting the final bits of the research paper to be handed into Potion Committee, it would be up to them to run the trials and then decide who got to access the potion and how. While he went to bat his eyelashes to get stuff done. Neither of them mentioned the Dementor that they had chained to the corner of the potion room.
The deadline was looming over both of them. Petunia dipped the quill back into the ink, she had put on her work overalls. Ink always got everywhere and the dark, stained material held up against the ink much better than her blouses did. She was terrible at writing with a quill and Damocles believed it was bad luck to write articles in fountain pen. There were too many things that could go wrong without the energy of someone believing in bad luck, they couldn't afford to have anything go wrong.
The house was empty apart from the howling and angry noises the Dementor made. There was still no Patronus, which was really sad, two wizards (both arguably powerful) and neither of them had a memory happy enough to cast a Patronus.
The evaluation would take place in a week over the next month. Four potion masters, randomly chosen from around the world would test their potion from every angle and should they not reach the same conclusions as the ones stated in the paper Petunia was writing, the potion itself would be named void. St Mungo's themselves had put a lot of money into Domacles pocket to make it work. Or that's what Odgen had told her when Petunia went to get the Belby's monthly order of alcohol.
Petunia kept concentration as the doors opened. The rune she was drawing was a complicated one, Eileen had been better at her when it came to drawing Runes, which she attributed to learning Arabic as a child. The rounded shapes and straight lines of runes were a struggle to get perfect and her fingers wanted to shake with the effort.
Runes in blood were so much easier to etch, even those with a knife, but runes that didn't belong on paper with ink, now those were the tricky ones. Many writers of Runes and their dozens of derivative languages, had written about the nature of runes and the warnings always were to be remembered. To be fluent in one didn't mean you were fluent in them all.
The Dementor howled in the distance and Petunia's heart chilled at the sound. She didn't know for how long she would be able to ignore the sounds. Earlier in the day she had stood at the door with silver in her hands as if she was preparing to deal with Fenrir as if the sight of silver could make the Dementor leave her alone. Petunia heard of men drowning themselves as sirens beckoned them, she had never heard the same from a Dementor.
Without noticing it she had left the desk and stood in front of the Dementor. The room didn't get any warmth of the summer sun streaming in. Cold, with a heavy cloak of sadness, that was a shackled Dementor. What Petunia didn't expect was instead of screams for the Dementor to talk to her.
"You are they speak of," the voice pitched high, like a whisper straining to be heard against a windy day.
"They?"
"The one who I give my cloak too."
Her teeth chattered as she noticed the cold. A strange realization to have. The Dementor knew what she wanted, then why weren't they giving the cloak to her?
"Then please give it to me." The added politeness was not meant to be taunting. But the Dementor laughed and then drifted closer as the chains would allow.
"Stupid vermin, thinking polite thoughts could get you anywhere. Let's see where you are, shall we?"
Petunia's soul dropped, the obvious answer would be to leave, but there was something holding her right here. Dementors tended to hunt and feast in packs, however their love for human souls, especially wizarding ones made them selfish. The fog clouded her senses and before she could run, every thought and insecurity that Petunia had ever experienced was brought to the forefront of her mind. Her throat was too hoarse to scream.
Memories muddled into other things, the fantasies in her head started rising and like a wave, it crushed down. Cold, so incredibly cold and then light. Light so sharp that Petunia's shut eyes couldn't keep it out.
"Open your eyes Petunia, I didn't raise you to crouch like that." It couldn't be Eileen's voice because she was dead, her pyre was burning in front of Petunia.
Petunia didn't believe in angels and when she opened her eyes all she saw was the stone wall of the potion room, a Dementor in the corner and Fiendfyre barrier on the floor.