Chapter 2: The Dementor

September 1993

Clara packed light for her second year at Hogwarts. Rather than hauling her new school books onto the train with her, her mother instead promised to send them along via owl order. This was because Daria could not help Clara with her trunk, as she would be working early that morning and not seeing her daughter off from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Instead, Mrs. Bradley drove Clara to the nearest railway station in Dover, where she would catch a train to King's Cross station.

"But aren't you going to London, anyway?" Clara had whined to Daria a week earlier. The idea of tacking another hour and a half onto her traveling time was a dreadful prospect, one that Clara didn't mind whinging her way out of. "Can't you just take me when you go to work? I can be early for the train."

"And how will you fill four and half hours at King's Cross?" said Daria, in a tone that suggested she was only humoring Clara.

Clara chewed on the side of her mouth for a moment, something she did only when she was nervous. "I'll bring my potions book with me. To study. It's my weakest subject."

In truth, Clara hoped to explore Diagon Alley by herself. Prior to her first year at Hogwarts, Clara's mother had been determined to spend as little time as possible there and devised a shopping strategy so efficient the pair of them were in and out of London in under an hour.

If Clara had calculated everything correctly, she could have at least four hours to wander around—get a pint of butterbeer at the Leaky Cauldron, eat a lavender-honey flavored ice cream cone at Florean Fortescue's, maybe even convince the shopkeeper at the Magical Menagerie to let her hold a puffskeins…

Her mother, however, could smell a ruse from an adjoining county.

"That's almost cute. Potions." She chuckled as Clara pouted. "I've already bought your ticket. You're on the 9 o'clock train."

So instead of hugging her mother goodbye on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, Clara took her leave of Mrs. Bradley on a dingy train platform in Dover. It was not as satisfying as a farewell with her mother would have been, though Mrs. Bradley fussed over Clara far more.

"You're sure you have enough warm clothing?" worried Mrs. Bradley, compulsively straightening Clara's red and gold Gryffindor scarf. "Scotland gets dreadfully cold in the winter and you're a southern girl…"

"I'll be fine, Mrs. Bradley," said Clara, smiling. Despite the many dull hours she endured in Mrs. Bradley's house in the month of August, it was impossible not to be charmed by the woman's devotion to her neighbors.

"I'm sorry your mother couldn't see you off, dear," she said, tucking a lock of Clara's hair behind her ear in a motherly gesture.

"It's alright."

This was not true, but if she told herself anything else, Clara was certain she'd burst into tears right there. Mrs. Bradley seemed to sense this.

"Daria cherishes you, Clara. You are her strength."

Hearing those words, though they were clearly meant to comfort her, only reminded Clara of the burden she was on her mother. Daria was a witch of exceeding talent, someone the minister himself relied upon. If Clara had not been born, surely Daria's life would be far easier. Perhaps the world would be better for Clara's absence.

"Thanks," said Clara glumly.

But Mrs. Bradley would not let Clara dismiss her so easily. When the train began to board, Mrs. Bradley took her aside and met her eyes gravely.

"You know that your mother lost her family before you were born."

Clara did know that. She was surprised that Mrs. Bradley knew it, too. Daria did not talk about her family very often and changed the subject whenever Clara asked about them. Clara suspected the memory was too painful. Daria's mother, father, and thirteen-year-old brother were murdered by Death Eaters two years before Clara was born.

There was one photo of her family hanging up in their house. When Daria wasn't looking, Clara liked to study the family she never knew. Her grandfather was tall, with sandy blond hair and kind blue eyes. He wore a floury apron—Clara's grandparents had owned a bakery not far from where Clara and her mother lived now. Her grandmother was a clone of Daria. They shared brown hair, tanned skin, freckles, and lovely blue-green eyes. Clara's young uncle wore a cheesy grin, a football tucked under his left arm; his right arm encircled his older sister's shoulders.

"I do."

Mrs. Bradley's eyes became very sad. "And she never talks about your father, but I think she lost him, too."

Clara swallowed thickly.

"Your mother has endured more tragedy in her young life than most people do in a lifetime. She is uncommonly resilient, to be sure. But she is also prone to melancholy, especially in times of great stress." She grasped Clara by her shoulders and met her gaze. "You keep her from falling into darkness entirely."

Clara had never heard Mrs. Bradley speak so frankly. True, she was a very earnest sort of person, but in spite of her sincerity, Mrs. Bradley's character was not one that Clara thought lent itself to introspection. This entire aside was wholly out of character for her neighbor.

Clara hugged her.

"Yes, thank you, dear," Mrs. Bradley blustered when they separated, but Clara could see she was moved. "Be sure to write to your mother often. She misses you terribly when you're away at that school."

"You don't think it's a bother?" asked Clara in a small voice.

"Of course it's not a bother," said Mrs. Bradley in a highly offended tone. "I'd love any letters from my children; if I had them, that is…"

Clara hugged her again to hide her smile.

Before he was a member of Wizengamot, Pippa Hornwood's father was a traveling beauty potion salesman. According to Pippa, Mr. Hornwood was a passable potioner who only eked out a living by hawking product through sheer force of personality. But it was his invention of the collapsible cauldron—and the wildly catchy tagline: "for the on-the-go potioneer who can't cast extension charms"—that changed his fortunes overnight. Within two years of patenting his invention, Mr. Hornwood was obscenely wealthy, married to the granddaughter of beloved former Minister for Magic Leonard Spencer-Moon, and regularly on covers of magazines as big as Wizky Business.

Pippa Hornwood and her younger brother had thus been raised to expect only the most cutting-edge broomstick models, the biggest homes, the most expensive clothes. Yet, in spite of this, Pippa was the most generous, most loyal, bravest, truest friend Clara could ask for.

"How did you get a compartment all to yourself?!"

Clara's head whipped to the compartment door, headphones jerking off her ears in her haste. Grinning, hurriedly shutting off the song piping from her Walkman—"dear hero imprisoned…"; Clara loved all things Morrissey—she jumped to her feet to grab Pippa in a massive hug.

Pippa Hornwood herself was a tall girl with soft caramel brown hair and big brown eyes. When she smiled, which she did often and with great mischief, two deep dimples pocked the sides of her mouth. She favored short skirts over trousers, always carried magically reapplying lip gloss, and could curl even Aoife's pin straight blonde hair into voluminous ringlets with a single spell. Clara thought Pippa was likely the prettiest girl at Hogwarts.

"I've been here since before the train arrived," answered Clara, sinking back into her seat by the window.

"Why?"

"Pip, I live in Dover. I had to catch the 9 o'clock train to get here."

Pippa wrinkled her nose. "But didn't your mum Apparate to work? Couldn't she just do side-along?"

Clara threw up her hands exasperated. "That's what I said! But apparently I might commit a crime if I was on my own London for hours. She had to go into the office early."

Pippa's brown eyes widened. "D'you reckon she's found him?" she asked eagerly. Pippa gobbled up gossip like it was treacle tart. "Sirius Black?"

Clara snorted. "No, she's been going in early every day since that stupid escaped."

"Well, of course she has! You do know she's leading the search, don't you?"

Clara did not know that. Daria never talked about her job unless she was forced to. Even then, extracting details from her was like trying to milk a manticore.

"Dad says this is the biggest thing that's happened since the Avery-Crabbe incident," continued Pippa. Clara didn't know what the Avery-Crabbe incident was either, but already feeling a bit ignorant, she feigned understanding with a sage nod.

"The entire ministry's in an uproar, there's Prophet reporters hounding them at every turn… even the muggles know he's escaped, though of course they have no idea how dangerous Black really is. And the country's swarming with dementors, even Hogwarts…"

"What?" Clara couldn't contain her surprise. "Dementors at Hogwarts?"

Pippa's eyes glinted in triumph. She was a gifted storyteller, one with a keen talent for knowing exactly what to say to keep her audience rapt.

"Now, I'm not supposed to tell anybody this—" Clara raised an eyebrow knowingly. Pippa was a notorious gossip, but she steadfastly ignored Clara's look and pressed on, "—but just before he escaped, Sirius Black kept muttering, 'He's at Hogwarts' over and over in his sleep. The Aurors think Black wants to finish what his master started. They think he's after—"

"Harry Potter," finished Clara. A strange mix of fear and shame filled her heart. Compared to Harry Potter's problems, Clara's seemed trivial. She felt very much like a little girl pouting about her mummy's absence.

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of two of their roommates and friends, Indira Chandra and Aoife O'Brien. Clara wasn't as close to them as she had grown to Pippa, but they were nevertheless friendly. Very soon, the train left the station and the four girls happily stretched out and exchanged tales of their holidays.

Clara, having little to contribute to that conversation, was the only one to notice a flash of red hair flicker by in the corridor. She poked her head out of their compartment and saw their fifth roommate, Ginny Weasley, stomping away in a huff.

She didn't know Ginny very well (or at all, really). None of the girls did. Unbeknownst to them, she'd spent a decent amount of the previous year possessed by an evil diary. Clara couldn't help feel guilty about what had happened to Ginny. She didn't think they'd had done nearly enough to befriend her and she had almost died because of it. This year, Clara was determined to make amends.

"Ginny!"

The girl in question turned around. "Oh. Hi, Clara."

"You alright?"

Ginny rolled her eyes. "My brother's just an arse."

Ginny, Clara recalled, had an abundance of brothers of varying degrees of arse-ishness. She hooked her thumb back to her compartment. "D'you want to sit with us? I got here early, so we got the compartment to ourselves."

"Oh!" Ginny was surprised by the invitation. "Yeah, alright."

To her relief, Clara's friends greeted Ginny warmly. She suspected she was not alone in feeling somewhat responsible for the events of the previous year. Aoife nudged her cat onto the floor to make room for her, while Indira immediately offered her a bite of her chocolate frog. Pippa asked Ginny all sorts of questions about her holiday (to Egypt, which sounded ace), interjecting here and there to crack a joke and make them all laugh.

Clara leaned back in her seat, stroking Aoife's sweet black cat Matilda, and let their gentle chatter wash over her. After an isolating month, there was nothing better than this: spending time with friends, gossiping about their housemates and the scandalous news of the day (Sirius Black popped up more than once), sharing sweets and listening to the rain grow louder and louder outside.

"I hope this lets up a bit before we arrive," said Indira, shivering as she peered out of the window. "That'd be an unpleasant supper. Soaking wet, freezing…"

The other girls agreed fervently, and as Pippa asked Aoife (a dab hand with domestic charms) if she could perform a drying spell, Clara sat straight up in her seat. She was certain she felt the train shudder in that tell-tale way it did when they arrived at Hogsmeade.

Interrupting two separate conversations, she said, "Are we slowing down?"

Pippa frowned. "Can't be. We're still at least an hour off."

But the train was most certainly grinding to a halt, its brakes squealing noisily even over the thunderous rain and bellowing wind. Ginny, sitting closest to the door, stood and poked her head out into the corridor curiously.

Abruptly, the train halted altogether, knocking a few distant trunks off their racks and throwing Ginny bodily against the doorjamb.

"Are you alright, Ginny?" said Clara, but her question was interrupted by screams from other students as the train's lamps suddenly extinguished.

"F-fine," Ginny's voice stuttered somewhere in the dark. "Scared me is all."

"We've probably just broken down," said Indira reassuringly, though whether it was to them or herself, Clara couldn't say.

Pippa's voice came sharply from the window. "This is a magic train; it can't break down. I think…" She wiped a circle of fog off the glass and peered out. "Somebody's coming aboard…"

Aoife clutched Clara's arm.

Shakily, Ginny said, "I'm going to go find one of my brothers."

"Wait, I think we should stay put—" Clara tried to say, but the door was already sliding shut behind Ginny. Clara shook Aoife off and sprang up, fumbled for the door handle for a few moments before muttering, "Hang it all!" and lighting the tip of her wand with a quick "Lumos!"

One of Ginny's brothers must've been in a compartment nearby that she slipped into, for when Clara glanced up and down the corridor, there was no one in sight. She cursed.

For a moment, Clara considered whether she could try to find Ginny or retreat into the compartment and lock the door. Then she cursed again, this time for submitting to fear, and stepped out into the darkened hallway.

"I'll be right back, lock the door behind me," she said over her shoulder. The narrow beam of light from her wand fell across a strange black shadow at far end of the corridor.

As though roused by her light, the shadow rippled. It started toward her.

She breathed a puff of white air. Suddenly, the air was very cold. The cold dipped into her body through her open mouth, sinking deep deep deeper into her chest, into her bones, into her heart—

With presence of mind that could only have come from her mother, Clara hastily jumped back inside, slammed shut the compartment door, pointed her wand at the lock, and whispered, "Colloportus!" It sealed shut.

One of the other girls—her growing dread made it impossible to distinguish their voices—asked, "Clara, what—"

"Quiet," she hissed; then, with a curt wand movement, said, "Nox."

There was no need to hush the girls again. Like Clara, they began to exhale clouds of white. They felt the misery that swept over them; that feeling that they'd never be happy ever again—

Then, distantly, as if from a poorly tuned radio, Clara heard a child crying. The sound of rain pounding against the train melted away as the child's sobs turned to screams. Louder and louder it grew until she was certain there was a child out in the corridor—but she couldn't move, couldn't stand up, couldn't try to help it—

The shadow Clara had seen was now just outside the door. It was so black that even in darkness she could see the shape of it clearly. A strange humanoid figure draped in tattered robes floated there. It paused, waiting in the window. The child was still screaming, but somehow Clara could also hear one of her friends sob softly at the sight.

The shadow lingered a moment. The screams she heard became hiccoughing sobs and desperate wails so gut-wrenching Clara clasped her hands over her ears to dull the sound, but the action only seemed to amplify it. A skeletal hand silhouetted against the glass, bone fingers twisting in dim, flicking moonlight, as though it could open the door without touching it—

Clara's face became cold, all blood in her cheeks draining at once—

Then the shadow glided on.

With it, the child's screams quietened.

None of the girls spoke until the lamps flickered on again and the train shuddered to a start.

"W-what the hell was that?" uttered Indira, ashen-faced. Beside her, Aoife clutched her very agitated cat and stared, horror-stricken, at the door.

"A dementor," said Pippa, equally shaken. "Probably looking for Sirius Black."

"On the Hogwarts Express?" said Aoife.

Pippa shrugged, uncharacteristically silent. In that quiet, Clara thought she could hear the child in her hallucination sobbing again.

Unable to bear it another minute, she leapt to her feet, startling Matilda out of Aoife's arms.

"Could somebody open a window?" she asked, feeling suddenly quite ill.

"It's raining like mad!" protested Indira.

Clara ran a clammy hand through her hair. The air lost some of its chill, but there was still cold lingering in her bones. And still the screaming rang in her ears…

"Did you hear screaming?" she asked her friends. "Outside? Like… like a baby screaming?"

The girls exchanged confused looks. "Nobody was screaming," said Pippa slowly.

Clara clutched her forehead. Now that her mind was a little clearer, she could have sworn she knew those cries. The revelation only made her nausea worse. Her friends' alarmed faces were not helping. If she stayed in that small space for another moment, Clara was certain she'd be sick on all of them.

"I'm going to look for Ginny—make sure she's alright," she said, unlocking the door with her wand. Surely doing something productive would take her mind off of terrible thoughts.

Though obviously still affected by the dementor, Pippa immediately leapt to accompany her. A rush of warm affection filled Clara's heart. Pippa was truly the best friend she could have ever asked for, and a true Gryffindor.

It did not take long to find Ginny. Clara had been correct in guessing she was nearby. Only four compartments down, at the very end of the train, Clara and Pippa found her, pale but unharmed, huddled with her brother Ron, Hermione Granger, Neville Longbottom, and Harry Potter.

Harry looked as dreadful as Clara felt. His friends Ron and Hermione had their arms around him, as though he could not sit up unaided. There was a square of chocolate hanging uselessly from his fingers, but he didn't look up to eating it. Clara empathized; she still felt rather nauseous.

"Merlin's beard, what happened here?" Pippa exclaimed.

Ron's head snapped over to them. "Who're you?" he asked rudely, shifting his body to block Harry from their view. Pippa and Clara were familiar with Harry Potter and his friends, but they clearly were not familiar with Pippa and Clara, despite being fellow Gryffindors.

"T-t-they're my roommates," Ginny spoke up, trembling violently.

"We wanted to make sure you were alright," said Clara.

Unable to speak any more, Ginny simply buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Hermione, Clara, and Pippa all rushed to her side to comfort her.

"The d-d-dementor came in," whispered Ginny. "Everything was so cold and I f-f-felt…"

"Like you'd never be happy again," said Pippa somberly, shaking her head in disgust. "I can't believe it came in here."

Hermione shivered. "I don't want to think what would have happened if Professor Lupin hadn't been here…"

Pippa asked, "Who?"

"New DADA professor," grunted Ron.

Hermione continued, "He cast this spell, a silvery thing—the dementor ran off at the sight of it—er, floated off—"

As Hermione recounted the moment Professor Lupin drove off the dementor, Clara studied Harry. Everyone in the compartment looked pale and scared, but Harry appeared actually ill from the encounter. His face was dewy with sweat, the scar on his forehead prominent on his sickly pale skin. There was something about the sight of him so disturbed that made her head swim again.

Wordlessly, she got to her feet, clambered over Harry's outstretched legs, and stumbled out of the compartment. She ignored Pippa's worried calls after her.

Clara made her way to the end of the car and opened the door to outside. Indira's earlier wish had not come true; the cold Highland rain lashed against her face at the same steady deluge it had for hours. She shivered—the ice in her veins that the dementor had left felt like it was recrystallizing in the cold—but the air outside settled her stomach a bit at least. She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled slowly.

The opposite car door rattled open. Clara opened her eyes and peered through the mist and rain.

A tall figure backlit by the train lanterns stepped through and paused at the sight of her. She must have made an odd one. A little girl, soaking wet in a muggle jumper and jeans, clinging to an iron rail and gasping for breath as though there was not a storm buffeting her about.

"The cold air won't help for long," said the figure, reaching out to take her hand. "Here—eat this."

A square of chocolate was pressed into her hand by a much larger, rougher one. She tried to push it back.

"I don't want to eat—I feel ill—"

"Eating it will make you feel less ill," he assured her.

Suspiciously, Clara stared at the chocolate in her hand but took a nibble. At once, the roiling in her stomach and the chilliness in her extremities faded as warmth rushed through her body.

"Oh! You're right. I do feel better."

He might have smiled at her in the darkness. "Wonderful! I'm sure you'll feel all better once we get out of this storm."

"Oh—" Now that the chocolate had warmed her insides, the icy water soaking into her clothes did feel unbearable. She retreated back into the train car. The man followed her in.

He was a surprisingly young man, though in the light Clara could see the brown hair at his temples was streaked liberally with grey. Deep lines on his face and dark circles under his eyes suggested he did not sleep well or often. The scrappy, now soaked robes he wore had clearly been repaired multiple times by an amateur tailor, probably himself.

He waved his wand over his body and muttered a spell to siphon rainwater out of his robes. When he appeared dry, he turned his wand to her.

"May I?"

She nodded. In a moment she too was dry and toasty warm.

"Are you Professor Lupin? The new Defense teacher?" she asked. There was no one else this could be, surely. The only adults usually on the Hogwarts Express were the driver and the trolley lady.

He smiled tiredly, but not unkindly. "I'd forgotten how quickly word travels at Hogwarts. Well, on the Express, I suppose. Yes, I am. And you are?"

"Clara…" she replied absently. Lupin's brow furrowed at her casual tone. Hastily, she tacked on, "Er, Clara Durant, sir."

He nodded once, his tired smile becoming tight. At that moment, he seemed to remember that the water he siphoned out of his robes was puddling around his frayed loafers and needed to be directed out of the train car lest his socks get soaked.

Clara watched him for a moment, chewing the inside of her cheek. Lockhart had been completely useless as a Defense Professor, which (probably unfairly) cast Clara's opinion of Defense professors as a group in a negative light. But if Lupin managed to ward one off, surely he had to know a few things about dementors.

"Professor…" she began slowly, ordering together her whirling thoughts into something more coherent, "…can dementors make a person hear things?"

Lupin's back stiffened. When he turned around, his light brown eyes were pained.

"Did you speak to Harry?" he asked evenly.

"Potter? No—I mean, yes, but not about—" She shook her head, paused, and before she could think better of confiding in him, a complete stranger and possible incompetent loon, she began to speak rapidly, "Professor, I heard a kid crying when the dementor passed by. I thought I recognized it but I don't know who or what it was and no one else heard anything… I don't know why I'm the only one. Am I just mad or—?"

"No," said Professor Lupin at once. He reached out as though he wanted to clasp her shoulder, but instead gripped his other elbow. It was an oddly vulnerable gesture for such a tall man. "You're not at all mad. It's not unusual for those who've experienced trauma to be more affected by dementors."

"But I haven't—"

"Clara!"

Pippa appeared beside her and grabbed her arm. "There you are. Why'd you run off like that?"

Clara was still staring at Lupin in confusion. He gazed back, an odd look on his face.

It was almost like he was studying her.

"Come on, we've got to change into our robes; we'll be at Hogsmeade in fifteen minutes," said Pippa, tugging on her sleeve, though glancing between Clara and the Professor, mad curiosity dancing in her eyes.

Lupin nodded at Clara reassuringly. He was smiling that odd tight smile again. "We can discuss this more later, Clara. Stop by my office any time."

Clara had been on the receiving end of such a tone enough times by her mother to know when she was being dismissed. She resented it from her mother. She would hardly tolerate it from a random adult, professor title be damned.

Clara met his eyes defiantly. "Expect me."

His mouth twitched. "I certainly will."

When he was out of earshot, Pippa tugged Clara's arm to make her face her and whispered, "Do you know him?"

"Not at all!" she replied in an equally hushed voice, though there was no need. Students in Hogwarts robes rushed in and out of their compartments, clutching spare quills, ink bottles, sweets wrappers—all the things that made appearances over the long train ride. Others hauled trunks and pet carriers off the overhead racks, chattered loudly about the dementor and the upcoming feast. No one could overhear them even if they were speaking at a normal volume.

"Maybe he knows your mum," suggested Pippa before another juicier thought occurred to her, "Oo, maybe she arrested him once—"

"Don't say that; you've got no idea," scolded Clara, gnawing her lower lip anxiously. Pippa's mischievous smile slid off her face, a worried frown replacing it.

"Tell me what's wrong."

Clara glanced around. "When the dementor was right outside the door… I heard screaming. Like a kid screaming."

"Are you sure you heard something? Maybe you were just imagining it."

Clara nodded emphatically. "I definitely heard it. Because I felt like I had… heard it before."

Pippa hesitated. "Clare, I know you don't have any younger siblings or baby cousins, but kids crying usually sound exactly the same."

"I know that! I don't know how to explain it, I just—why don't you believe me?!"

Clara paused, her face feeling uncomfortably hot, and took a deep breath.

I'm not angry with Pippa, she reminded herself. I'm just upset. Be still. Be calm.

Clara was hot-headed, she knew this. She often wondered how she was so fiery when she couldn't recall a time when her mother even raised her voice in anger. Daria was calm as still water. Clara was nearly always at a boil.

Sensing an outburst, Pippa quickly hustled Clara out of the churning crowd.

"Of course I believe you," she whispered fiercely. "So you heard something—but I told you, didn't I? Dad says people in Azkaban go mad within weeks. It's probably not unusual that dementors make you hear things."

"When I asked him, Professor Lupin said that people who've 'experienced trauma' can be more affected by dementors."

"I mean, have you?"

"Of course not!" exclaimed Clara.

Pippa sighed and rubbed her forehead. "We're not getting anywhere with this. Let's just drop it."

"You asked me what was wrong," retorted Clara. "I'm telling you, this is freaking me out—"

"Let's just drop it for now," said Pippa sternly. "It's been a long day, we're both tired and hungry, we ran into a dementor—all I want to do is eat some warm stew, take a hot bath, and then go to bed. I think that would be good for both of us. And then tomorrow we can try to figure this all out. Alright?"

Clara sighed. Pippa had a point. She was rather hungry and weary and crawling into her cozy four-poster bed did sound divine right now…

"You're right. Tomorrow, then."

Pippa wrapped her arm around Clara's shoulders reassuringly. "Tomorrow. Let's get back to Hogwarts tonight and worry tomorrow!"

In spite of her hunger and weariness, Clara grinned.

Back to Hogwarts.

Edit: I obviously love HP (wouldn't write this FF otherwise) but there are definitely a lot of things wrong with it and the author. JK Rowling has been saying and supporting terrible opinions for years, but for real today. Sucks she's a TERF. Here's the truth: trans women = women and trans men = men. Don't be a weird little freak like JK. Thanks friends. Looking forward to the reviews on this.