Chapter Two – The Dementor's Heart
The window in Harry's private suite overlooked the green fields rolling toward the Forbidden Forest, where a familiar and comforting curl of smoke rose from the chimney of Hagrid's cabin, and spanned the eastern expanse of the lake. The room was certainly a step-up on the dormitories he'd shared in Gryffindor Tower for the last five years.
Harry placed his trunk at the foot of the queen-sized bed, sunk back into the firm mattress and goose-feather blankets, and sighed. His room was ideal—like something at a fancy hotel—complete with an en suite bathroom that held a spa bath a person could almost do laps in.
He stood and stretched his arms over his head. On the fine mahogany desk in front of the window with the impressive view, he spied a scroll of parchment. He broke the wax seal bearing the Hogwarts crest:
Dear Mr Potter,
Welcome to the Hogwarts Summer Apprenticeship Program. I hope you enjoyed meeting our visiting academics at the welcome event yesterday evening.
Please note the following academics have expressed an interest in providing you with a four-week intense-learning apprenticeship, with the option to extend your studies during the regular school year via owl correspondence and site visits. You'll find appointment times and room numbers have been assigned today for your convenience:
Professor of Alchemy Fernanda Oliveira (Castelobruxo)
09:30am, Charms Room 7
Master Spellcrafter Lucas Faraday (Beauxbatons)
10:30am, Charms Room 4
Defence Instructor Sara Quinn (Ilvermorny)
11:30am, Charms Room 2
Professor of Demonology Mathias Hoovian (Durmstrang Institute)
Midnight, Astronomy Tower - Western Viewing Balcony
If you could please endeavour to arrive five minutes prior to each appointment, and note that a maximum of three (3) apprenticeships may be accepted by the student.
Warm regards,
Charity Burbage
Hogwarts Professor of Muggle Studies
Harry considered the parchment, read it again—noting the late hour Professor Hoovian wanted to see him—and nodded once. He had found the visiting Durmstrang man a touch odd last night, and couldn't help but wonder if he was on the level given the headmaster at that school was a former (or maybe not so former) Death Eater.
"Hmm," Harry said and furled the parchment.
As the hour crept toward midnight, so did Harry up the winding, narrow stairs of the Astronomy Tower. An old hand at moving without being seen—with or without his invisibility cloak—Harry's sneakers made no sound on the well-worn stairs. Moonlight through the tall arched windows along the curve of the tower played with his shadow on the white-stone walls.
His busy morning of interviews had stretched into a long afternoon, where he barely had time to grab lunch with Hermione and some of the other students. He'd had a run in with Malfoy, who seemed even smugger than usual being followed around by Theodore Nott. Junior Death Eaters in training, Harry thought, though the shine on that particular insult seemed darker these days. Because Malfoy wouldn't see it as an insult?
After the events in the Hall of Prophecy, losing Sirius through the Veil, and unmasking Lucius Malfoy, so to speak, Harry knew the time that he and Draco Malfoy's rivalry was anything more than playground bullying had long since passed.
But other than that his day had gone well, and he had accepted apprenticeships with Professor Oliveira of Castelobruxo, the Brazilian magical school, and Instructor Quinn from the Ilvermorny Academy in the United States. Harry and the Beauxbatons professor, Faraday, hadn't seen eye to eye. Harry had got the sense the man was looking for nothing more than apprentices to carry his burgeoning cases of scrolls and books, offering very little in actual instruction. If he'd wanted to be a chore horse all summer he would have stayed at the Dursleys.
At five minutes to midnight, Harry stepped out of the tower onto the western balcony and beheld a night sky thick with stars and a rind-full moon. A cool breeze cut through the warm summer night, blowing his hair back, and a ripple of goose bumps ran up and down his arms.
Harry shivered and, without knowing why—perhaps the quietness of the evening, perhaps simply habit at this point—drew his wand.
He was alone atop the tower. His watch read three minutes to midnight.
On one of the balcony's parapets a glass diamond about the size of a quaffle shone softly, pulsing with a light that matched the stars. It drew Harry's eye and, as he approached, he saw the diamond was cradled in a nest of spun gold on four lattice legs like an egg in a cup. The warmer air took on a deeper chill nearer the diamond, and Harry reached out to touch—
"You know, you're not as thick as they say in the Slytherin common room," Daphne Greengrass said, stepping into the moonlight on Harry's left. "You're thicker. Do you know what that is, Potter?"
Harry blinked and let his arm fall back to his side. His scar… tingled, as if he'd spread a numbing ointment across his forehead. He turned to face Daphne. "What is it?"
Daphne rolled her eyes. "Have you seen Hoovian? He's already fifteen minutes late."
Harry blinked and looked at his watch. Sure enough, it was quarter past the hour. He was certain only a minute ago that the hand hadn't hit twelve yet… He glanced back at the strange diamond. "That thing stole fifteen minutes from me. Is it… like a weird looking time-turner?"
"Nothing so crass," Professor Mathias Hoovian said, sweeping from the shadows in striding, confident steps. He wore a set of pale-green robes, and his eyes—bloodshot again—held the moon. "Miss Greengrass, good evening. And Mr Potter, were you about to touch my demon-genesis attenuation device?
"I was about to, yeah," Harry replied, as Daphne said, "He's very dumb."
"I'm certain I shouldn't be surprised given your reputation for recklessness," Hoovian folded his arms across his chest, "but do you make a habit of touching strange and dangerous objects of which you know nothing about?"
Harry considered, then nodded. "Actually… there is a pattern."
Hoovian grunted. "Well, points for honesty. Do you know what would have happened if you'd touched it?"
"I feel like you want me to say no. So, no, Professor."
"Neither do I," Hoovian said ominously. "It is both attuned and sensitive to wave forms and emanations of dark magic, for want of a better term. Or at least the sediment upon which dark magic flows. Miss Greengrass, who do we know on this tower that's taken a killing curse to the face and lived to talk about it?"
Daphne inclined her head in Harry's direction, her silver hair shining in the moonlight and her lips forming a slow smile.
"And who do we know on this or indeed any tower that's taken part—albeit unwillingly, if the rumours are true—in ritualistic magic twisted enough to resurrect the most fearsome dark lord on the face of the earth?"
Daphne gestured again to Harry.
"Bitten by a basilisk?" Hoovian said.
Harry sighed. "I get it."
"Nearly had his soul sucked out on more than one occasion?"
"Did Dumbledore give you a file on me or something?"
"Has used at least one of the unforgivable curses, only a few weeks ago?" Hoovian finished softly.
Harry glanced at Daphne. She was no longer smiling. Her look had turned speculative, as if seeing him for the first time.
Harry cleared his throat. "So what does your… demon-geni-attenuating-doohickey actually do?"
"Demon-genesis attenuation device. It is an invention of my own design, one of only two in the world," Hoovian said. "For the sake of convenience, I think of it colloquially as the Dementor's Heart."
Harry shivered again—and not from the cold. "That's a depressing name. And what's it doing?"
Hoovian approached the Dementor's Heart and, without hesitating, placed his palm flat on the face of the crystal diamond. Harry took an unconscious step back, expecting the sky to fall. When it didn't, he untightened his grip around his wand a little.
"Right now, Potter? Right now it's testing the atmosphere, the castle grounds, the village of twinkling lights—Hogsmeade, yes?—and out beyond the lake toward the distant mountains for signs of demonic possession, infestation, or tears between this world and the next where something alien may squeeze through."
Harry shared a look with Daphne. "That… that happens often, does it?"
"Where do you think the dementors came from?" she whispered.
That gave Harry pause.
"Do not let Miss Greengrass intimidate you," Hoovian said.
"Too late," Harry quipped.
"Or dissuade you from what could be a promising apprenticeship." Hoovian gestured to his softly glowing diamond. "What say you, Potter?"
Harry considered, but only for a moment, and then offered Hoovian his hand. Once again, Durmstrang's Professor of Demonology didn't take it. He smiled and folded his arms into his robes. "Tomorrow, sunset, you will be here. Miss Greengrass, provide my newest apprentice with his reading list."
In a shaft of butter-golden sunlight shining on one of the faded, bowed tables in the Hogwarts Library, Harry and Hermione sat between a stack of books a foot high. A plate of half-eaten sandwiches and tall glasses of fizzy water rested on the table, as did Harry's snowy-white owl Hedwig, picking at the scraps of ham on Harry's plate.
"Thanks for helping me find all these books," Harry said, slapping the four tomes Daphne had prescribed him on a slip of parchment last night. "I think I'll start with The Dead Sea Demon Hunter. Sounds almost like a muggle spy novel, doesn't it?"
"I scanned the foreword," Hermione muttered, without looking up from her studies. She splashed ink across the parchment in front of her, her script tidy and swift, in neat lines. "It's a biography of a wizard who claimed to talk to God and was possessed by evil spirits."
"Wasn't written by Quirrell was it…?" Harry muttered. "I'm sensing you don't approve."
Hermione looked up. "Well, of all the apprenticeships available, the hocus pocus demonology one wouldn't have been my first choice, Harry."
"What was your first choice?"
"Professor Oliveira, of course. She rivals Flamel at his best!"
Harry stroked Hedwig and raised an eyebrow. "Churning out Philosopher's Stones, is she?"
"Well… no, but that was more fluke than precise magical design on Flamel's part—"
"I liked the demonology professor. I mean, he's a bit dramatic, but the Dementor's Heart was cool."
Hermione frowned. "It sounds almost as bad as divination to me."
"She said, to her best friend who is a victim of prophecy." Harry picked up one of his books and tapped the cover. "I'll hunt my first demon before the summer's over, mark my words."
Hermione smiled and then frowned again, looking thoughtful. "Knowing you, that's exactly what will happen. Please try and keep things theoretical, Harry."
Harry flipped open the book, hoping for pictures but expecting walls of text. He was pleasantly surprised to find maps and diagrams as he turned the pages, interspersed with paragraphs of small, cursive text. On some of the pages the ink had run, as if the book had been left open out in the rain, or if someone had been crying over it.
"Did you know Daphne Greengrass has been studying with Professor Hoovian since her first year?" Harry asked.
"She's quite pretty," Hermione replied.
"I mean, sure, yeah," Harry stammered. "She got all weird when I asked her why she already knew Hoovian. Apparently he's a family friend."
Hemrione tsked. "The pureblood families always have a leg up on their studies."
"None of them hold a candle to you."
Hermione gave him a wry grin. "You'd be charming if you weren't so goofy. Now leave me alone—write some letters to Ron and everyone, letting them know how we're doing."
Hedwig chirped up at that.
"Yes, ma'am," Harry said.
At sunset, Harry once again scaled the twisted innards of the Astronomy Tower. He'd skimmed most of the books Daphne had listed him and gotten the general gist of the subject matter. What he hadn't seen was any proof of actual demons, just a whole bunch of theories and interpretations of certain magical phenomena.
After a long afternoon running defensive drills with Instructor Quinn, his back ached and he wondered if accepting the third apprenticeship—which seemed to operate primarily in the evenings—was the best use of his time. He'd already learned a new jinx from the Ilvermorny instructor, and she had been suitably impressed when he'd produced a patronus with no visible effort.
Long practice, Harry had said. Instructor Quinn, a shorter woman with shoulder-length blonde hair and a smattering of freckles below blue eyes, nodded once. Seeing is believing, Potter. Now show me your disarming technique.
The practical experience of firing off spells felt good, particularly given the target on his back, and made Harry feel like maybe his time was best spent focusing on his studies there. He more than expected another encounter with Voldemort and his crew, given the prophecy. Wasting his time with Hoovian on strange theories when he could be training was probably the wrong move.
Hermione agreed, and Hermione was quite smart.
Harry dashed up the last flight of curving stairs, his mind made up to ditch the apprenticeship, as the sun dipped below the peaks of the distant mountains and a shadow under twilight fell across the castle.
At the top of the tower, Harry met a demon.
Within a circle of flame, which licked and danced along her blood-red skin, a tall figure stood wearing nothing but a cloak of what looked like liquid shadow. Harry had no other word to describe it—the cloak flowed like water, but was as black-fleeting as shadow, hanging to her ankles and billowing softly in the light summer breeze.
Uncertain on just what was expected of him, Harry averted his gaze from her nakedness and locked it solely on the demon's face. Apart from the crimson skin, she appeared human...ish—two legs, two arms, and a sharp face that Harry would put on someone in their early twenties. A flow of jet-black hair cascaded to her shoulders, spreading out over the shadow cloak and making it impossible to tell where her hair ended and the cloak began.
Her eyes, which settled almost lazily on Harry, were orbs of cerulean light cracked with yellow lines, like splintered glass, devoid of any white surrounding the iris.
Harry ever so slowly reached for his wand. The demon smirked. Harry paused and kept the wand in his back pocket.
"Eh... hello," he said. "Can I... would you like a jacket, or something?"
The demon licked her lips. "Or something. What is your name?"
Harry looked past the demon and saw the large diamond in the Dementor's Heart, Hoovian's wacky gadget, was spinning madly in its nest. The clear gemstone had rusted over.
Daphne Greengrass stepped across the balcony with a heavy book cradled open in her arms, her silver hair tied up in a neat and practical ponytail. "Be nice to him, Alice," she said. "He's a little slow."
The demon, Alice, nodded once. "Oh, but if you could see him as I see him, Daphne, perhaps you would not be so dismissive. He burns, my dear. So many conflicting currents all spinning about his head. He wears a crown of prophecy."
"So this is... normal?" Harry asked Daphne. "How worried should I be?"
"Alice is an old friend," Daphne said, without looking up from her book. "And a close confidante of Professor Hoovian. Just remember the ground rules and you'll be fine."
Harry considered that. "Ground rules?"
Daphne looked up. "You didn't do the reading."
"I did some of the reading."
Daphne closed her book and gave Alice an apologetic glance. "Dealing with demons. Rule One: Don't. Rule Two: politeness and respect go a long way. Three, unless you like being spellbound, never walk into the circle." She gestured to the ring of dark orange fire around Alice. "Four, no full names freely given. Only ever part with a piece of your name, and only if you must. His name is Harry, Alice."
A frustrated frown creased Alice's brow.
"She's upset you didn't tell her yourself," Daphne said. "There's power in names. But only you can surrender the power of your name. Me telling her does nothing."
"Spoil sport and childish," Alice muttered, but gave Daphne a warm grin.
"Rule Five," Professor Hoovian said, stepping onto the balcony from Harry's left and walking through the fire surrounding Alice, and never-you-mind Rule Three. He embraced the demon as if they were old lovers, and Harry saw her hands left burning prints on the back of his white shirt. He seemed otherwise unharmed. "Nothing offered is ever freely given. Everything has a price."
Alice kissed Hoovian's cheek and he stepped away to tinker with the Dementor's Heart. He soothed the device and placed his palm flat against the diamond, drawing out the rust, and returned the gem to clarity.
Alice caught Harry's stare again. "Rule Six, Harry," she said, "and given the maelstrom swirling about you this is an important one, not over or under, but in-between, is where you'll find the unblessed unseen." A halo of pale white light flared into existence around Alice's head before disappearing just as quickly.
Hoovian gave the demon a troubled look, and Harry read the look on Daphne's face as mildly offended. "Don't riddle the boy, Alice," Hoovian said, and the jovial tone in his voice was gone. "He's bound enough as is."
"Years..." Daphne whispered, before turning on the spot and marching past Harry away from the balcony. He thought he saw tears edging in the corner of her eyes.
Harry asked the obvious question. "Why... how is there a demon named Alice here?"
Hoovian gave him a sharp glance. "Thinking of ditching the apprenticeship, weren't you?"
Harry guarded his mind as best he could, which was still quite poor, with a shield of flimsy occlumency. "Are you a legilimens? You have to tell me if you are, that's the law."
"I don't need to be a bleeding mind reader to know your thoughts, Potter."
"Harry Potter," Alice whispered and gave him a wicked grin.
"If I was thinking about quitting, I'm no longer thinking that," Harry said. He echoed Instructor Quinn, "Seeing is believing."
Hoovian stared at him for a long moment and then nodded sharply. "Alice is here as a guest speaker for your first lecture under my apprenticeship," he said. "I don't have time to convince you this is all real—and there is no better teacher of demonic culture on this or any side of the Seam. Alice, Demonology 101 for young Master Potter, if you'd be so kind. Harry, grab a chair from inside."
Harry summoned a chair and sat down slowly. "I thought nothing was freely given," he said, not quite making it a question.
Hoovian stroked the rough stubble coating his cheeks and grinned. "The price for Alysheshka's services has long since been paid. Listen close, Harry, and listen well."
Some hours later, Harry's head throbbing with new and absurd information on life, death, demons and all that stood in between—some of which sounded outright hellish—and the fiery circle Alice remained poised in had dwindled to a thin line of fire no wider than candle flame.
Hoovian withdrew a golden pocket watch and checked the hour. "Quarter to midnight, Alice dear. Best you be across the veil before the clock strikes twelve."
Alice stretched her hands over her head and sighed. Harry, for the first time, noticed that what he'd taken for a cloak of shadow was, in fact, a pair of wings. Thin, dragonfly wings comprised of liquid smoke. Alice could fly. "I was having fun scaring Harry," she pouted.
Hoovian gave her a wry grin. "This one doesn't scare so easy. Now away with you back home. 'Ware my powerful magicks of sending, demon."
Alice snorted. "Oh, please." She inclined her head to Harry. "Very well, though. Harry, remember what I said, remember all of what I said. We will meet again."
The fire flared up, the heat forcing Harry back in his chair, and when he blinked Alice was gone. A precise chalk circle remained in place around where she had stood, without complaint, for the last few hours. Hoovian set about sweeping it away with a quick spell. His wand, Harry saw, was a curve of some white wood and cracked, as if it were petrified.
"Professor," Harry began.
"No," Hoovian said without looking at him.
Harry bit his tongue... for all of three seconds. "Why did Daphne leave upset?" he asked.
Hoovian sighed. "Not over or under, but in-between, is where you'll find the unblessed unseen."
"The riddle?" Harry frowned. "Honestly the less I have to do with riddles the better."
"It's not a riddle. Not only a riddle." Hoovian cracked his knuckles, one by one, and seemed lost in thought staring out over the parapets of the castle. The Dementor's Heart sang a soft song, a low chime, like distant church bells. "A part of this story is not mine to tell, no, not in the least. And still..."
He turned back to Harry and pointed a finger at him.
"You, Harry Potter, are selfish. A knack for finding trouble, surviving the unsurvivable, and being treated as both hero and villain has made you... expectant. You draw all kinds of unwanted attention."
Harry stood and crossed his arms over his chest. "I don't follow."
"No, you don't, and it's not your fault. Mostly. Mostly not your fault." Hoovian ran a hand back through his hair and sighed again. "What Alice gave you in that riddle, for want of a better word, was a key—an invitation, even—to call on her and her kind for a favour."
"That doesn't seem like something-"
"I've known men spend a hundred years fighting and clawing for a scrap of what you were just given in a moment." Hoovian paused. "And for what Miss Greengrass has been striving for since she was born. That is all I'll say on her business."
Harry considered pushing his luck, but the shadow that settled on Hoovian's face convinced him otherwise. He changed tactics. "What favour could I possibly want from demons?"
Hoovian laughed without humour, with malice. "Can you truly think of nothing?"
Harry had little to no understanding of what Alice and her ilk were capable of, but the evening had given him a glimpse. Dark and terrible magic. What had Hoovian said two nights ago at the welcoming dinner? Soul-splitting good fun. Harry guessed the cost of his favour might be something he'd find it difficult to part with.
And still... He could ask for a way to defeat Voldemort, a way to bring Sirius back from beyond the veil...
"There it is," Hoovian said. "That look on your face. Mark my words, Potter, I will beat the sense into you needed to deal with demons. Remember that nothing in this or their world comes without a price. Now away with you."
Lost in his thoughts on the way back to his room, Harry found himself out of habit heading for Gryffindor Tower. It wasn't until he was through the portrait of the Fat Lady and in the empty common room that he remembered he was staying on the other side of the castle in the hotel-style rooms Hogwarts kept polished for visiting guests and, in this case, academics and apprentices.
With a frustrated sigh, he mapped out the quickest way back in his head, ducking through a secret passage or two, and decided not to bother. He climbed the stairs to his dormitory and, shrugging down to his underwear, collapsed into his familiar bed. He drew the curtains across the four-posts, cocooning himself away from the world, and shoved his wand under his pillow.
He wondered on Daphne Greengrass, on why she'd be searching her whole life for favours from demons, and thinking such thoughts Harry fell into a sleep plagued with troubling dreams.
The next morning, Harry rose early and headed back across the castle to his room—he wanted a shower and a change of clothes before breakfast. As he approached the third-floor rooms he and the other apprentices were staying in, he caught the edge of hurried and disturbed conversation from around the corner.
"Well, where is he?" Hermione demanded. "Professor, has he been taken?"
"Miss Granger," Headmaster Dumbledore said. "Although the scene is disturbing, there is nothing to indicate such a thing."
A gaggle of other voices chimed in as Harry rounded the corridor and found, not much to his surprise, a group of familiar faces standing outside of his private room.
"Has who been taken?" he asked.
Hermione gasped and barrelled into him at full speed, enveloping him in a double-armed hug. Her curly hair tickled his chin. Harry hugged her back.
"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said. He wore a pair of striped pyjamas, in the muggle style, which seemed both oddly out of place and endearing to Harry. "We were about to send out a search party. You are well, my boy?"
"As well as can be," Harry said, scanning the other faces. Professors McGonagall and Snape were in attendance, as was the caretaker Filch clutching his nasty cat. Instructor Quinn from Ilvermorny, in a bedroom robe and pink slippers, was casting quick and muttered magic under her breath at the floor. "Why wouldn't I be?"
Dumbledore stepped aside as Harry untangled himself from Hermione, allowing him access to his room through the ornate wooden door which, Harry noticed, hung on broken and splintered hinges as if it had been kicked in—or suffered the brunt of a blasting curse or two.
Harry stepped into the doorway and found his room had been tossed.
The bed was overturned, the sheets torn and feathery pillows shredded. The heavy mahogany desk was hanging in the shattered remains of the window, teetering like a seesaw in the breeze. His chest of drawers had been thrown open, his clothes scattered, and across all the walls and floors were splashes of red that could only be blood.
His trunk seemed to have withstood a few blasts of spellfire, but the lock looked scorched and warped.
"Well," Harry said, "I have a few questions."
NEXT UPDATE 21-DEC-19.
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