- Chapter Sixteen -

Dementor Killers

'Is it possible that Dumbledore lied?'

Ginny asked the question, but no one wanted to answer.

All five of them were gathered in the sitting room of the Dumbledore house in Godric's Hollow, but Aberforth was the only one in a cheerful mood. Harry suspected that the old man, as a downtrodden, looked down upon brother, was particularly cheered by the thought of how low his brother must have sunk in his youth.

Harry thought it was possible that Professor Dumbledore had lied about the Fourth Tower, but unlike his friends, he was not in the least bit depressed. He knew Dumbledore well enough to know what his ideas about the power of wizards had been and what they had later become.

He did not deny that when he heard Borgin's words, when he learned that the Fourth Tower and the inner circle were one and the same, he was shocked, but he quickly remembered that he had already made that mistake once. He had despised Dumbledore once before, felt the immense disappointment, the anger, the sense of betrayal; he had learned that the Dumbledore he had known before was only a mask, and the real man behind the mask he has perhaps only seen once, in a strange place...

'We can easily find out,' said Aberforth, returning from the kitchen with a floating teapot and five cups behind him.

The four good friends looked at him questioningly as the wizard pointed his long index finger at the ceiling.

'My brother has a painting here,' he said. 'We can ask him why he lied.'

'It's not at all sure he was lying!' Hermione defended the professor. 'It's quite possible Borgin was lying!'

Ron snorted.

'I think we can rule that out,' he said. 'The old man nearly shat himself when we rushed at him.'

'Maybe he saw right through us,' Ginny speculated, 'Borgin eventually realised he wasn't talking to Death Eaters.'

'He didn't realise!' Ron protested. 'Believe me, Borgin was honest, which...'

'But...'

'Which,' Ron continued, not letting himself be interrupted. 'Which doesn't necessarily mean he's right. Maybe he just thought what he was saying was true.'

Harry glanced around at his friends; they seemed to think what Ron said was possible, almost grasping at straws, just to keep believing in a Dumbledore who he showed he was, not who he really was.

'Yes, there is something to that...' said Hermione thoughtfully. 'Perhaps he had been misled by the Fourth Tower's leaders, whoever they are, or perhaps even they were wrong about Dumbledore's role...'

Harry just smiled. He didn't really care if Dumbledore was really the founder of the inner circle, of the Fourth Tower. Maybe Rita Skeeter was right: Dumbledore might indeed have organized the inner circle with Gellert Grindelwald; he could almost see them sitting at a table in the dark kitchen of the Godric's Hollow house with some very powerful wizards and witches, discussing how they could seize power. He imagined the sound of Dumbledore's voice as he made it clear that only as many people should be harmed as was absolutely necessary, and that it was all in their own interests; and he imagined Grindelwald's young face as he acknowledged his friend's words with an understanding but careless smile.

Maybe they did start something then, which Grindelwald used to build up his power, but Dumbledore got out of it and left them when he realised his mistakes. And he may have managed to take others with him in the process - the Diggories, Scamander, Bathilda Bagshot, or that jewel-making witch.

'And what about that building project at Hogwarts?' Ginny asked. 'Which Skeeter thinks Dumbledore had something to do with.'

'We didn't talk much at the time,' Aberforth interjected, and Harry saw him pour a large measure of whisky into his tea. 'I don't know anything about the building site, though I think he could've had something to do with it... After Ariana died, I didn't see him for years... except for the front pages of the papers.'

The foursome listened intently to what the old wizard was saying.

'Then, at forty-five, everything changed. He had already decided to step in and stop Grindelwald. He already had a lot of famous and talented friends, admirers and colleagues. But for some reason, he came to me and persuaded me to go with him. I was there when he disarmed Grindelwald and took that wand from him... the first Deathly Hallow...'

While Aberforth was talking about it, Harry felt a strange tingling at his side. It took him a moment to realise what it was: his wand in his pocket seemed to be charged with electricity.

'I didn't see exactly what happened,' Aberforth continued, 'We were fighting with his servants and the dementors, Albus was fighting him along with four other people. Among them was Grindelwald's wife... Grindelwald killed her too, in the blink of an eye.'

Harry and Ginny had heard this story before, but Ron and Hermione were stunned to hear it.

'Wow, it's been a long time...' Aberforth muttered, rubbing his temples with his fingers. 'I remember that all the people who fought Grindelwald died there. Only Albus survived. And Grindelwald... It was like he'd gone mad. I don't know what my brother did to him, but when I saw that bastard, I almost felt sorry for him. He just collapsed when it was all over.'

'Then we got a little closer again, Albus and I,' he continued, and Harry couldn't recognise the reason for finding his tongue. He spoke in a light tone, unlike the bitter, tearful way he had spoken when he had first told them about his sister's death. 'Or rather, we were trying to get closer. In fact, we were strangers to each other. He bought me that pub – maybe he felt that if he was giving his protégés houses, his brother deserved an inn.'

Aberforth laughed softly.

'Sounds like I'm insatiable. I'm not, I just don't fall for my brother like everyone else did, even his enemies. But we did get along for a while. Everything was fine and dandy until Riddle showed his true intents. Albus got his little army together, which included me, but he was careful to keep me out from under his feet. He sent me and Hagrid abroad to plot against Riddle.'

'Is that when you came in contact with the inner... I mean, the Fourth Tower?' Ginny asked.

'It is an exaggeration to say that I have been in contact with them,' said Aberforth. 'This name, the Fourth Tower, I have never heard of in connection with the inner circle. I had, of course, heard from my brother's early friends that they called themselves by that name, but I had no idea until now what sort of circles Albus moved in.'

Aberforth finished his monologue, and there was a long silence in the Dumbledore house. Ginny, Ron and Hermione could not utter a word, and Harry just stared at the cracked oak floor, feeling the wand in his pocket, the phoenix wand that had once been broken in two, repaired by the Wand of Destiny itself, tingling nonstop, as if it felt something inexplicable...

The eastern horizon was already violet-blue with the approaching sunrise as Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny apparated home from the Dumbledore house to the garden of the Burrow. Everyone was sleeping peacefully, no one was expecting them home, because before they left with Aberforth for Knockturn Alley, they had left a note for Mr and Mrs Weasley that they would spend the evening at the home of a former classmate who had organised a birthday party.

Exhausted, they took off their clothes, and Ron and Ginny hid the Death Eater robes and masks under a loose plank of the rickety staircase where the twins used to hide their experiments from their mother.

'Anyway, it's irrelevant what Dumbledore's role was in all this,' Harry said, with a sudden idea, as if continuing a conversation he had started. 'We've learned something more important: we know where Ciaran Diggory is... and Malfoy, by the way.'

Ginny sat down on the stairs and Hermione stopped yawning.

'Yes!' Ron responded. 'At Durmstrang! But Mr Diggory said it wasn't enough to just turn up there in September.'

'Unless the school belongs to the Fourth Tower – and as we know, it does. Just take a look at its coat of arms. It is obvious from the school that the inner circle is in control there,' said Harry in a contemptuous tone.

No one contradicted him.

'Borgin said they had a man there,' Ginny added. 'Most likely Moloh.' Harry agreed with her.

'Now from him I could imagine!' he thought back at the half-giant headmaster and his Umbridge-like methods.

This thought put him to pondering:

'What do you think, did Umbridge have to do something with the Fourth Tower?'

Ron and Ginny were baffled, but Hermione shook her head.

'I don't think so, Harry,' she replied. When Umbridge was on trial, she gave up everyone she knew – that's how she was able to get her sentence reduced to sixty years. If she was a member of the Tower, she must have known hundreds of black sorcerers, and then betrayed them.'

Harry was sure it would have happened that way. Black sorcerers had one thing in common: they would have given up their own mothers if it meant escaping prison. However, he was not at all pleased that Umbridge would ever get out of her cell.

'You know, don't you, that we can't make proper use of what we've learned tonight,' the girl looked round at them. 'If the Ministry knew how we'd interrogated Borgin, we'd be in a lot of trouble.'

Her face also reflected her fears, Harry knew her well. Hermione had been just as anxious when they were about to break some rule during their school years.

And Harry ignored the rules just as much as he used to. In fact, he was even proud of the five of them for outwitting Borgin. The Auror methods would not have got them further, and the failure of Proudfoot and Dawlish in the matter proved it. Harry felt in his heart that as an Auror he had not signed up to do this, and if he took the Ministry's laws seriously he would probably have to arrest himself immediately – but he did not take them seriously at all.

He knew that his friends felt the same way he did: they welcomed the lies and the secrets, of which there had been too many a year and a half ago, almost as old acquaintances.

The four of them said goodnight to each other for the few hours they had left to sleep, and then went up to their rooms. A large brown owl was waiting for Harry on the windowsill as he entered the room. He immediately opened the window and let the bird in, then untied the envelope from its feet. While Ginny changed, he went through the letter.

'What is it, Harry?' Ginny asked, jumping down on the bed and yawning profusely.

'Another invitation to Durmstrang. For the second task,' he replied.

Harry also suppressed a yawn and put the letter aside on the bedside table, then crawled into bed next to her.

Kingsley will definitely have him report to his office tomorrow to discuss another spy mission at Durmstrang. He was not overjoyed to have to go back there, but he hoped that if nothing else he might have another vision of the young wizard, or his little furry niece, or perhaps Marius. He strongly doubted he would learn anything about the Fourth Tower itself that Kingsley was so curious about. As an Auror, he was as helpless as Dawlish or Proudfoot.

As he lay in bed, watching the faint rays of light playing on the ceiling, it occurred to him for the first time that perhaps he had made a mistake in choosing this profession.

Harry's prophecy came true first thing the next morning: as the lift doors opened and he and Ron stepped out, they were confronted by Kingsley and Dawlish. The Minister immediately escorted them to his office and they discussed in detail the new plan of the next trip to Durmstrang. This time, however, Kingsley did not entrust the spying to Harry, but to Dawlish and Ron, who were tasked with escorting Harry under an invisibility cloak and finding out what they could about the inner circle and Marius Prince while the second task was in progress. Harry offered his own invisibility cloak for the purpose, but left the rest of the planning to Ron and Dawlish – he himself somewhat smugly thought that they would get nowhere either. The Durmstrang member of the Fourth Tower would probably keep a cautious low profile while the Tournament was ongoing.

Harry had to stay at the Ministry until late, because the employee of the mystery department, with whom he had only exchanged in-house messages, had set a rather unfortunate time for when she was able to receive him because of the dementor head. So Harry could only look on enviously as Ron packed up and went home at four in the afternoon, but before he did, he asked if he should stay with him. Harry smiled and refused, knowing full well that Ron had no desire to stay with him – he had told him earlier that morning what he had been thinking for some time, and to his surprise Ron felt exactly the same about their workplace.

'The biggest problem with all this is that people who do something small are punished straight away, but people who should be put in prison for life can't even be caught!' Ron admitted.

'That's exactly right!' agreed Harry.

'Borgin always got away with everything. And look what happened last night: he sang like a little bird,' Ron laughed at the metaphor, and Harry laughed with him, even though he knew in his heart that there was nothing hilarious about it.

Dawlish would have them arrested on the spot if he found out, and even Kingsley wouldn't be able to do anything about that.

'You know...' said Ron again a few minutes later, 'I'm starting to regret leaving my brother's shop.'

Harry picked his head up from a boring house search report he was reading.

'I didn't have to study, no one bothered me with stupid legislation, and I would have made so much money I could have drowned...'

'You can't complain much about the salary though,' Harry remarked, thinking of the four hundred galleons a month.

'Yes, yes,' said Ron. 'But do you get what I'm saying? This whole Auror Office is a huge disappointment to me.'

'So it is for me, Ron,' Harry replied, lowering his voice, because just then Chief Gawain Robards was passing their office. 'So it is for me, but we can't tell Kingsley that we've changed our minds and don't want the job. You heard Dawlish: there's a shortage of Aurors. And at least this way we hear the news.'

Ron scowled doubtfully, but didn't comment.

'I'm not saying I want to be stuck in this cubicle forever,' Harry continued, 'but we can't say goodbye just yet. We just... we can't. Just think what Hermione would say!'

Ron shuddered visibly, and Harry had to suppress a grin.

'I'd rather not think about it...' his friend muttered, then later grabbed his robe and his bag. 'I'm going down to the MCR and try to drag Hermione home for dinner.'

'Don't mention to her that I'm still here!' Harry half-jokingly warned him. 'If she hears that I'm also doing overtime, she is going to stay even longer. She's not going to let herself be outdone.'

'Thanks for the tip,' Ron said back from the corridor, where he was putting on his robe, because the space in the cubicle was too small and he would have knocked everything off the shelf.

Harry was left alone between the screens and soon all over the headquarters. One by one, his colleagues said goodbye, the last to look in was Dawlish.

'You are still here?'

For the first time, Harry thought he heard genuine surprise in his voice.

'Yes, I have an appointment at eight with a member of the mystery department,' he replied frankly.

Much to his surprise, Dawlish smiled slightly – the first time he remembered him doing so as well.

'Of course. Because of the dementor head.'

Harry realized that Dawlish was smiling at him, and he didn't like it at all.

'Not everyone is as narrow-minded as some people,' he replied, as dignified as he could manage.

'Of course,' the Auror quickly replied, 'I forgot that you are always looking for exceptions and loopholes to rules and laws – be they human or magical.'

Harry looked up at him questioningly.

'You're a living exception as well, Mr Potter,' Dawlish pointed out, before bidding him goodnight and stalking out of the headquarters.

'Exception my ass...' growled Harry under his breath.

Until eight in the evening, he spent his time reading, not the first volume of Dawlish's Introduction to Wizard Law, but Skeeter's infamous work. After Aberforth had told him about the old days, about the fight against Grindelwald, Harry was keen to learn more. True, Skeeter had never proved to be a credible source of news, but Harry wanted to know what the scribbler thought of the events.

The famous duel

By 1944, Gellert Grindelwald was in full power across most of Eastern, Central and Northern Europe, holding the offices of the International Confederation of Wizards on the old continent, and built Nurmengard. Contrary to popular belief, the infamous fortress was not merely a prison, although it is true that hundreds of political prisoners were held in Nurmengard. The giant island was raised from the ocean using an enchantment that is still unrivalled today. The tallest towers of the fortress built in the centre of the island housed the centre of Grindelwald's rule, and Nurmengard itself was its 'capital'. Albus Dumbledore, after much pleading from the wizarding world, finally set off in 1945 to match magical powers with his childhood friend. Popular anecdotes paint a rather colourful picture of the famous duel, which has since become a historical event. For example, it is popular to tell the story that Dumbledore sets off alone to confront Grindelwald.

That's not what happened. Dumbledore travelled to the heart of Nurmengard with a dozen well-trained witches and wizards – we can't blame him, since the 'Master of Death', as Grindelwald liked to call himself, wasn't expecting them all by himself.

'Master of Death?' Harry raised his eyebrows. 'He had style, I see...'

When Dumbledore and his companions arrived, Grindelwald welcomed them not as enemies, but as negotiation partners. Surely he did not expect that after their initial friendship, Dumbledore would come to him as an enemy, after they had together invented everything that had laid the foundations for Grindelwald's new magical world.

However, negotiations broke off quickly, and on 2 May 1945, a skirmish broke out between Dumbledore's and Grindelwald's followers in Nurmengard. Dumbledore's plan was known to take Gellert hostage in his own office and force his followers to take up arms, but the plan failed. Grindelwald freed himself from Dumbledore's grasp, and then fled Nurmengard – but his last orders were to unleash his entire army of followers on his childhood friend and his twelve companions.

As we know from the history books, Dumbledore was saved from certain death only by the help of three thousand ragtag men sent by the International Confederation of Wizards – not to mention the largest wizarding army in written history.

However, what is more interesting and important for those of us who wish to gain a deeper insight into Albus Dumbledore's past is the final duel at Durmstrang Academy. Here, only Grindelwald, a few of his close aides, and twenty or thirty Dementors faced off against Dumbledore who had followed them all the way. We cannot know anything of substance about this substantive part of the duel, unless we accept as fact the rather biased and sugar-coated 'heroic song' of Mr Elphias Doge about his friend's triumph, which has been told in as many different ways as there are Bertie Bott's Beans.

None of the other four wizards who fought with Dumbledore in the duel survived, and the victorious ICW troops, arriving at the end of the fight from Nurmengard, only saw Dumbledore take the wand from Grindelwald's hand.

How could this happen? You would think that as long as one of the century's most dangerous dark sorcerers has a wand in his hand, he would fight for his life and power. So why did he let Dumbledore take it from him?

If we look at Gellert and Albus' history together, the question is not so puzzling: Dumbledore has probably managed to convince his good old friend that surrendering would be a much better option for him. By then, news of Nurmengard's defeat had spread across Europe, and Grindelwald had already lost by the time he actually faced Dumbledore. I can almost hear the protests of Dumbledore's supporters that everyone is perfectly aware that he saved the world from the Master of Death's carnage. But indeed this was all thanks to the shocking scene when he took the wand from Grindelwald. But the Battle of Nurmengard and its outcome are historical fact, and it is hard to believe that the Master of Death would have been as much of a threat to the world without his army, so to say that Dumbledore saved the world is a great exaggeration.

And the question remains: what did Dumbledore use to make Grindelwald surrender? And why is there not a single person who actually witnessed the Master of Death agreeing to this? Were there some dark secrets between the two of them? Something to do with the Fourth Tower? Could it be that Dumbledore had made Grindelwald, who had lost his army, believe some kind of false promise, that the old case, the childhood dreams, had not yet been completely lost, and that the years in prison would be shorter than Grindelwald thought? That, as the saviour of the world, Dumbledore will have the opportunity to see his childhood friend released from prison and enthrone him to a by then fully subdued wizarding world?

If so, Gellert Grindelwald was finally defeated not by magic, but by lies.

The large clock on the wall of the headquarters chimed, distracting Harry from his reading.

'Damn, I'm late!' he cursed to himself when he saw that it was already eight o'clock. He slammed the book down on the table, which made a few pages fall out again, but he ignored it. He grabbed his things and ran for the lifts. He was halfway there when he remembered that he should lock the door to the headquarters. So he ran back and pointed his wand at the lock and muttered the colloportus incantation.

It was ten minutes past eight when he reached the ninth floor and started down the windowless corridor towards the black door. He already knew his way around, having been through the Department of Mysteries almost all the way through with a pack of Death Eaters in tow.

He walked through the gloomy door and into the familiar round room. When he closed it behind him, the walls suddenly began to move – the room began to spin rapidly, so much so that the blue candle flames of the wall brackets were washed into lines before Harry's eyes.

When the rotation slowed and the room stopped, Harry raised his wand and said:

'Harry James Potter, Trainee, Auror Office. Where is the Room of Knowledge?'

There was a clicking sound, like a lock turning, and one of the doors to his left swung open. Harry started towards it, a little anxiously.

Before Christmas, he asked Mr Weasley how he could even get into the Department of Ministries without having to try all the doors, as they used to do. The answer was obvious: an authorized visitor just had to ask and the room's blue-flame black wax candles would point to the right door.

Harry was mildly surprised when his eyes adjusted to the light inside after the darkness; he recognised the golden chain lamps hanging from the ceiling, the strange contraptions on the tables and the huge glass tank full of green liquid, full of ghostly, floating brains.

'Ah, Mr Potter! You're late...' the witch called to him, entering the brain room through a back door.

'I know, and I'm sorry,' Harry replied as calmly as he could, trying to ignore the witch's white medical apron, stained with blood, and the equally stained handkerchief she was wiping her hands on.

'I'm Mrs Parker,' she introduced herself, and then got down to business, 'We've examined the body part in question, which you sent us...'

Harry just stood there with his hands in his pockets, still a little anxious to see the brains floating in the tank. One of the organs, resembling a cauliflower head, was pounding insistently on the wall of the tank right where Harry was standing in front of it. Mrs Parker fiddled about, finally fished a notebook out of a desk drawer and consulted it.

'There it is,' she said. 'The head...'

'Yes?' asked Harry, a little impatiently. He wanted to get off this floor as soon as possible.

'What, are you busy with other things, Mr Potter?' the witch suddenly snapped, looking at him with darting eyes.

Harry opened his mouth, then changed his mind and said nothing.

'Good,' the witch acknowledged. 'You know, there's some serious work going on here...'

'I bet,' thought Harry.

'... and at Mr Weasley's express request I have put aside all other matters to deal with this case.'

'Thank you very much, Mrs Parker,' said Harry politely.

The witch ignored the comment, just put on her monocle and started reading her notes.

'Judging from the wounds around the neck, the cut occurred after the victim's death, assuming it was human.'

'You assume?'

'Could you please not cut me off again? Thank you. So the person was already dead when his head was removed, but it couldn't have been more than a few hours between the two. From the wound, I also determined that the victim must have died about fifty to sixty years ago, but I could not determine exactly what killed him. Which is a problem...' she muttered, folding up her notebook and took out the head hidden under the glass dome from a compartment in the desk. 'So, the problem is the head's excessive dehydration. I can't think of anything other than that the head was preserved in some... way unknown to me... for some purpose after it was cut off, but...' the witch opened her arms, 'I can't find any known preservative charms on the head.'

Harry absorbed this, thought for a second, and asked:

'So is it possible that the dehydration occurred during the life of the dem... victim?'

The witch frowned and looked at him.

'What?' her voice cracked. 'Mr Potter, I don't know how much you know about magical diseases, but nothing could cause this much damage without killing the victim. As I said before, it can only be achieved by preservation methods. African and South American wizards are more familiar with such procedures than I am. If you like, I can consult a colleague in Brazil, who has a collection of shrunken heads at home...'

'No need, thank you,' said Harry. He knew very well that it would be of no use: if it was a dementor's head, the expert on shrunken heads could tell no more about it; and if it was not, it was useless to go round in circles with it.

'Mrs Parker, do you think it is possible that the head is not human?' he asked the question that concerned him most.

To his surprise, the witch did not snap him up as he had expected, but instead made an interested face.

'Well, I don't think it's possible...' she admitted, 'The bone structure is entirely human, as is the muscle tissue and skin – apart from the extensive drying, of course. I have never heard of a magical creature that resembles a human so closely. A veela corpse behaves essentially the same as a human's, vampires burn after death. But of course, this could still be some new kind created by black magic, but I can't tell from this. I'd have to see the rest of the body.

Harry didn't give up, determined to keep questioning the witch until she threw him out of the department.

'You mentioned veelas and vampires as being magical creatures similar to humans. Can you think of any other creatures that could come into question?'

Mrs Parker shook her head.

'No... I couldn't say.'

'What about dementors?'

His words were followed by silence. The witch just stood there, and Harry couldn't decide whether she was seriously considering what he was saying, or about to scream at him.

'You can't kill dementors,' she finally declared, as some sort of magical axiom. 'Apart from phoenixes, dementors are the only creatures in the world that can never die.'

'Yes, yes, I know,' Harry nodded quickly, 'But what if... I mean, suppose...'

The witch suddenly smiled, but the smile was more of a wry, mocking "I see right through you" type of smile that made Harry turn silent.

'Who told you about me, young man?'

Harry looked at her, stunned; he had no idea what Mrs Parker meant. The witch continued:

'You've heard of my theory, right? Well, yes, at one time I was the laughing stock of the ministry. Perhaps you've read about my research, Mr Potter?'

Harry still didn't understand anything, and it obviously showed on his face, because Mrs Parker stopped smiling.

'I don't know what you're talking about, ma'am,' Harry admitted.

Now it was Mrs Parker's turn to be astonished, but she quickly composed herself.

'So you haven't heard my theory?'

'What theory? Ma'am...' he added hastily when he realised he had been a little blunt again.

The witch came forward from between the tables and stood facing Harry by the clay tank. Her bloody apron was stained black by the mysterious light reflecting off the green water, casting interesting shadows across her face, as if she herself were one of the mysteries of the department.

'Have you ever wondered why the world is not full of dementors?'

'Actually, there are quite a few of them,' Harry blinked. Mrs Parker laughed.

'The very first records of dementors date back to the Dark Ages, when they were called shadow demons...' the witch continued. 'Since then, they have only increased in number, and nowhere in the world has a dementor been recorded to have died or been killed, nor has their life cycle been described.'

'I'm still not sure what you mean, ma'am.'

'But there is one thing that can be monitored quite well,' Mrs Parker continued, 'new dementors. It takes a long time for a poor unfortunate soul who is preyed upon by a dementor to become one himself. It used to happen that dementors preyed on Muggles living in out-of-the-way places, and by the time the poor thing realised something was wrong, it was too late. But nowadays, this can only happen in isolated cases; most new Dementors are born in prisons and stay there. Well... in most cases,' the witch shook her head.

Harry didn't want to interrupt again, so he just listened quietly.

'The problem is – as I have discovered, and as far as I know no one else has noticed – that if you take into account the new dementors that have been born in the last five centuries, there should be so many of them that you're bound to stumble across them. But the surprising fact is that there are currently no more than ten thousand of them in the world.'

Harry just gaped like a fish, unable to say anything.

'Where have the other dementors gone?' Mrs Parker asked the obvious question. 'What happened to them?'

'You mean...' Harry said, when he finally found his voice, 'that they're somehow killing the dementors to keep their numbers under control?'

'I'm talking about the stability of the dementor population, Mr Potter! They keep multiplying, and yet there are always the same number! How is that possible, how?'

Harry's interest was piqued by the theory, but he couldn't find an answer. The only thing he could think of was that someone or someones were hunting the dementors, but he couldn't imagine how such a thing could be done, and in complete secrecy, and even stranger: why would they keep it secret at all?

Mrs Parker continued:

'Of course, during Fudge's ministry, I could not expect anyone to take my theory seriously, no matter how much evidence I could have listed...'

Harry's mind was racing, flooded with thoughts. The image of masked dementor hunters flashed before his eyes, hunting down very old creatures before they could cause too much trouble or become as powerful as the Viking who had been walking the earth for at least a thousand and two hundred years.

'... everybody had their heads in the sand, except Dumbledore, who supported me for a while...'

These dementor killers could certainly kill Marius, because like the dementors, he is also not affected by the death curse. He would have to contact them somehow, but how?

'By the way, the head in question must be handed over to the inventory officer of the Department of Mysteries, as is customary with unknown cursed objects. Sorry, Mr Potter, you can't take it under Department regulations, but you'll have access to it here,' Mrs Parker explained, bringing Harry back to reality. 'I've listed it as a category B cursed object on the inventory form, so it won't be destroyed, just locked away indefinitely. All right?'

'Of course, of course...' Harry muttered.

Mrs Parker didn't wait for him to give his opinion on her theory, obviously believing that he thought she was insane, just like Fudge and the likes. Harry, however, did not think the witch was insane in the least, quite the contrary.

'Please close the door behind you, Mr Potter,' the witch called after him.

'Okay... And thank you!' he finally remembered, to which Mrs Parker just acknowledged with a wave of her hand and went back to the back room.

Harry came here in the hope of learning something about Marius Prince and his troubling abilities through the dementor. He knew that he had something dementor-like about him, and that was surely why he was not affected by the death curse, and why he could suck out a human's soul. He hoped that if he could find out the secret of the dementor head, he could find out how to stop Marius, but he was only cleverer in that somehow someone could destroy a dementor, but that got him no closer to the mystery: Where did Marius, the blue-skinned man, come from? What made him this way? Why do his eyes glow? These were the thoughts that ran through his mind.

'Where is the exit?' he asked the round room, after closing the door of the Room of Knowledge behind him and the rotation stopped. The door to his left opened immediately, revealing a windowless corridor leading to the lifts.

Harry sighed.

'Who are you, Marius...?' he muttered in a low voice, and then left the room to go home, because he was fed up with the Ministry.

He could no longer see that a door at the other half of the round room opened, and behind it a rickety archway, on which a black curtain was floating in the soft breeze...