Chapter 2
TransformationHarry slowly forced himself awake; it was a most disconcerting feeling being held by a dementor. He felt cold all over but still would rather stay in her arms than on the mattress that he had.
"Morning." Harry looked up; he'd fallen asleep on Neri's shoulder. He quickly disentangled himself from the creature. Forgetting that the vision of beauty was just that a vision, he blushed.
"Sorry."
"Don't worry about me, your breakfasts getting cold." She pointed to the tray that sat in the corner by the bars.
"They didn't see you, did they?"
"No. Illusion is something that my kind specializes in." Harry thought about contradicting her but stopped himself. He really didn't know anything about dementors. Harry picked up his meal.
She had said this is breakfast, can't tell as they serve the same thing ever meal.
"Do you want anything?"
Stupid don't think of her as a human.
"No, I can go without energy for quite a while. Actually I was feeding all the time we were here. I can assure you that your neighbors got no sleep last night." Harry laughed.
"I–I wanted to say thank you. For last night and…"
"Say no more of it, I'm happy that I have someone to talk to."
She stayed for another hour, they talked. Harry didn't remember everything they talked about, save some of her past. She was always alone out in the world, like him to an extent. Her power over the collective stopped her from entering the collective and simply living. She described it as a heaven of sorts but she could only look in and wish to be apart of it. So it became a routine, the highlight of his week was when Neri visited. Slowly but surely Harry shared his entire life with her and she with him. If anything she was the reminder of the elfish girl who had lost her soul to a dementor over five thousand years ago. That soul was the centerpiece of Neri's soul. She was far kinder and understanding than any dark creature had any business being. She described dementors as upper level sentient beings, creatures that had no qualms over their nature and embraced their abilities, strengths and weakness, rather than attempting to confirm to fleeting and changing ideas of morality. She compared them to any predator; they didn't feel bad about killing their food to survive. Even if they felt something for their prey they still feed and drained souls to prosper themselves. In her words lesser sentients, like humans, where the only creatures that fought against their very nature and that was the cause of all the suffering in the world. Harry disagreed but left it at that; after all she'd had several millennia to create this argument. Nothing he'd seen in fifteen, almost sixteen years could change that.
Humans didn't know anything about dementors because they never asked. Harry apparently was the first in a long time to even see her as stronger than the average dementor. Even Voldemort, who they took orders from, didn't know about her. He gave his orders through a stronger than normal dementor that he merely called the voice. When Harry had asked why she took orders from him her answer was simple. He offered my people more feeding grounds and souls than the ministry did and she looked after her people first and foremost.
They continued to meet in secret, three or four times a week, for almost a month before Neri asked him a question that she'd been thinking about since the night he'd shared his tale of betrayal.
"Harry." They had run out of things to say and were just enjoying each other's presence.
"Yes." She paused.
"What do you plan to do?"
"What do you mean, I'm trapped in here forever."
"If you got out what would you do?"
What was she getting at?
"I don't know. I would stop Voldemort, I'm supposed to be the only one who can." He'd mentioned the prophecy to her but hadn't told it word for word. "I would fulfill Tonks' last wish and kill the Mafloys, but then I don't know. Why, are planning on letting me out?" She hesitated.
"Something like that."
"What?"
"Harry do you trust me?" Could he trust a creature who no matter how sweet she was, had a priority to protect her hive. But then again without her he would never get out.
"Yes."
"What if I could offer you a way out? It's not a sure thing but it's a chance."
"What would I have to do?"
"Kiss me."
That was how demontors stole souls wasn't it, true she was cute but it was only an illusion. Actually touching her wasn't the best experience in the world.
"What would happen if something went wrong?"
"You could lose your soul."
Yeah like I thought, but if I don't what will I have. She might leave and never come back then I'd be alone again. I've never told anyone but what I fear the most is being alone with myself, its why I feared dementors. They sent me back into the places I'd rather forget.
"Neri." He took her hands. They where as cold and hard as the first time they'd touched. "I realize that I have nothing to lose, and that I've trusted you with parts of my life that I've shared with no one else. If you think this is what we should do I'll trust you."
Harry leaned forward and kissed her, he felt nothing. Probably because she didn't really have lips and he stopped where her illusionary lips where. Then he felt a cold, far colder than anything he'd ever felt. He felt as if he was floating and losing sensation at the same time. Then he was spiraling into darkness.
First there was darkness and then he awoke. The place he was in wasn't his cell but before he dealt with what was around him he studied himself. He could rotate in every direction, but he couldn't see himself. He waved his arms, but while he knew he waved them he couldn't see himself or feel the air passing by his arms. Speaking of which he couldn't feel air at all, he didn't appear to be breathing but was okay. He took a step forward, well he could move even if he couldn't see the ground around him or feel it. The best way to describe the place he was in was a galaxy. It looked like the star charts he saw once at a science museum. Dudley had gone there for his seventh birthday and Harry had been forced to come along. What a horrible day that was. Anyway, it remained him of a Nebula, that was what they called it. The place looked like several fog machines had been set up to spew a light pastel fog of many different colors. Countless bright lights doted the place; some were so close together that it was hard to see how many there were. The strangest thing was some of the stars seamed to be made up of many smaller stars clustered around a darker star that pulsated with a strangely dark light. A dark light that he'd seen before. It was the same light that Neri gave off when she created that illusion of herself.
These dark stars are dementors. Which meant that this was the collective Neri had spoken of.
One of the dementors was coming towards him, he moved to meet it and marveled at the creature's complexity. There where so many bright lights orbiting around it. This one was much more complex than the others.
"Neri." The dementor stopped and began to glow, then in a flash the familiar shape of the elfish woman stood before him. He looked down he had his body back as well.
"These are only illusions the souls you see is the way we look in the collective."
"There so many souls here, why?"
"They provide the collective power, and in return they are at peace."
"How can something trapped here for all eternity be at peace?"
"A dementor feeds on the darkest thoughts of a person, not the happiest ones. When confronted with happy thoughts, either as a patroness or otherwise, we drain off those thoughts. They are stored here." She gestured to the mist that surrounded everything.
"Every soul here is surrounded in the happiness of untold billons. They either form groups." She indicated on of the large glowing spheres. "Or stay by themselves, reliving these memories or creating their own. I said that the collective was a heaven of sorts; they have everything they could ever want."
"So why am I here?"
"I'm offering you a chance to join us, to receive our power."
"First off, am I dead? And secondly don't I have to die to become a dementor?"
"Well to answer the first question, your soul is currently out of your body, it will live without you for a while then die. As time travels much slower in here we have plenty of time before your body expires on its own. For the second question, I am not offering you the chance to become one of us, but for a chance to share our power."
"What do I have to do?"
"Well first off you have to drop your mental shields, no harm will come to you, but you may have trouble paying attention."
What did that mean?
Harry concentrated on lowering the barriers that he'd raised over the past two months, it was hard. He'd gotten used to leaving them up even when he was sleeping and to suddenly drop them all. Several minutes passed while he was lost in concentration.
"There." Harry gasped as emotions just slammed into him from allover, much like a dementors aura, except he felt warm and at peace. He was swimming in a sea of love and happiness. It wasn't memories but just the overwhelming feeling and emotion.
"HARRY."
"W-what?"
"That was the third time I called your name, I warned you the feeling can be overwhelming."
"Yeah." He smiled sheepishly, no that he knew what it was it wasn't so intoxicating but for someone who'd had so little love in much of his life just wanting to stay here was all he could think off. He was interrupted from his musings by Neri putting her hands on his shoulders. Her she wasn't cold or hard, her hands were soft and warm.
"Are you even listing?"
"Sorry no." She gave an exasperated sigh.
"Now you know why I called this place what I did. As I was saying you have three choices. One stay here and float forever, your body will die if you do that. Choice two is to leave and go back to your body. If you do that you can never return. Choice three is to accept the power I would give you, you would be able to see me here but this place would never again affect you the same as it just did."
"Not much of a choice, how do I get this power?" She smiled and stepped back. Pointing her hands at him she closed her eyes and once again that darkest light began to surround her. Something pulled out of his chest; he immediately missed it even if he had no idea what it was. She held up a smoke ball, it looked like a cage of some sort, but he could not see inside.
"This is the representation of your animagus form. I propose that we turn this into a dementor. This would grant you our powers, our abilities and increases your normal abilities several fold."
"Okay what do I do?"
"You just had to agree, I've been thinking about this for a while. I'm thinking nine souls to augment your own."
"Wait, wouldn't that make them leave this place?"
"Every dementor here that you see roaming is not here, but their souls are. Once you join the collective you will always be here. Your soul will be the exception as it will never truly join."
"How will we pick out the souls?"
"I've already done that." She waved her hand and nine stars moved from where they sat and floated to her side, each was the size of a golden snitch.
"Each of these are the souls of powerful wizards and witches. I chose each one because they have knowledge that would be useful to you."
"I can absorb knowledge this way?"
"Yes, and after we are done you can browse the collective like a library and pull the knowledge from as many souls as you want." She pointed to one of the nine she'd gathered.
"This is the soul of one Xavier Slytherin. The grandson of Salazar Slytherin, like his grandfather he spoke parseltounge, and like his grandfather he learned hundreds of spells that need to be spoken in parseltounge."
"That makes sense, I guess, shall we get started?" She positioned his hands around the hazy cage of his animagus form and then did the same with her hands. She began to chant. Harry didn't recognize the language but focused on her words letting his power ebb and flow as she commanded. The nine souls began to spiral around the cage, pulling tighter together and moving faster with each rotation. When they got close they pulled into tight and fast moving orbits. The hazy cage was now glowing with the same darkened light of a dementor. The light grew brighter and Neri's voice grew louder and louder. He could feel weak but he focused all of his power into his hands to the animagus part of himself. Then the light returned to a normal slow pulse and he let his arms sag in relief. That part was done. She smiled and nodded, then she pushed the orb and he could fell it melting into him. He shouldn't have relaxed so early. The dementor part of him hurt as it melded into him. Okay hurt was an understatement, he could feel a ball of solid ice trying to drill its way through his stomach, every part of him hurt, far worse than the cruciatus curse did. As each one of the souls bonded to his magical core, he felt as though the pressure would tear him apart. Foreign memories flooded into his brain, he felt like an army of midgets where in his head with sledgehammers. And this was only the knowledge; the souls he was bonding with weren't even giving him their experiences.
When it was over he still hurt. He felt the warmth of the place grow dark and cold. The collective faded out, now he could her his heart beat and feel the wind. He was back in his cell, next to Neri. It seamed that only a moment had passed. His everything hurt, and he was tired. It was worse than anything he'd felt. Neri laid him down and raised her hood over her face. As she did that he noticed the illusion shimmer and fade.
"Rest now. I have to go and recharge. I will see you soon." She rose and disappeared, Harry was too tired to notice.
At first it was faint, buzzing he thought. Then it grew louder to the point that it would deafen him, light appeared and it grew as well. He fought against it, fought threw it and then, he was awake. Opening his eyes slowly Harry looked up. He was not in his cell; the cell didn't have a large florescent light in the ceiling. No magical place he knew of had a large muggle light in it. He stayed still flexing his muscles and trying to think about why he'd be where he was. Wherever that was. After Neri had given him this new power he had passed out. No lots of pain then he'd passed out. Speaking of pain his muscles protested even these small movements; there was still a pain in his arm. He lifted his head to see, there was a needle sticking out of his arm. It ran up an IV tube to, a plastic bag of a nutrient potion of some sort. Harry sat up and carefully pulled the needle from his arm, he was in a sterile medical facility, besides the IV and the light the place looked like it was a dungeon in the prison. This must be the medical office, but why was he here? He shifted his weight and hoped off the bed, bad idea. His protesting legs collapsed beneath him. Grunting he pulled himself up and looked around the room. His noise prompted a familiar cold presence forward. A dementor looked in past the privacy curtain that surrounded his bed. When it saw he was awake it silently drifted out. Pulling the curtain away, Harry looked around the room. He was in a modestly appointed healers room. There was no one else around and everything was locked inside of glass cabinets, but that didn't catch his attention. Harry hobbled over to a window and looked outside, he hadn't seen the sun in so long. It was midmorning, the always-overcast sky around Azkaban never looked so inviting. He simply revealed in the beauty for a while before noticing that the dementor had returned and was floating next to him. He had been so lost in the sight of clouds that he hadn't noticed it creeping up on him. No what he really didn't notice was the cold or the memories. His mental shields were still not in place yet her felt nothing. The dementor didn't affect him.
"I was wondering when you'd wake up." Harry spun around. A healer dressed in the customary green robes of his profession stood on the far wall. Harry noticed that the man was doing everything possible to avoid him, no probably the dementor. Could they really see him as a threat?
"H-how did I get here?" Harry croaked out.
"You went into a comatose state, you weren't eating so they moved you here."
"How long?"
"Almost three weeks. Now that your awake the guards are on their way to escort you back to your cell."
"K." Harry turned around and continued to stare out the window. Sure enough the guards came and demanded he turn around with his hands over his head. It took them almost ten minutes to realize that he was too weak to walk without using his hands to hold himself up. Eventually they gave in and carried him back to his cell. The two that held him up dumped him unceremoniously on the floor, but the healer left him some food that was better than the standard fare. Thanking the healer Harry pulled himself into bed and struggled to eat. He didn't feel tired but his muscles didn't want to move, they must have been asleep for too long. He spent the time doing exercises to strengthen his body, when ever a dementor came through he waved to them. Most ignored him but he though that one or two nodded. Before going back to sleep he remembered to raise his occulmancy shields, no point in getting blindsided by snake face's visions and nightmares. Not when he felt far to good for a prisoner in the supposed hell on earth.
Neri didn't return that night or the next. He spent his time rebuilding his body and sorting through all the things he now knew. Most of it was magic related and he couldn't test it in the cells with the wonderful anti-magic wards.
Three days after he awoke a dementor appeared in his cell while he was doing pushups. Harry quickly stood and found the shirt he had taken off.
"Don't you knock?" She laughed, the strange feeling that he'd felt before when she laughed had faded. Even though the neighbors shrieked at the sound of her voice, good thing those who could overhear us are completely insane.
"How are you feeling?"
"Better." As usual Neri sat down, she didn't remove her hood this time. Harry continued to stretch.
"So what's next?"
"Next, you need to learn how to transform. There is nothing to bar your way anymore, you just need to find that part of you, we can do that now if you'd like."
"Sure." Harry sat down beside her.
"Close your eyes, you want to shut out everything but sound of my voice." Harry did as instructed, while his mental shields came more from necessity than training, Snape's lessons on mind clearing worked here.
"You remember what the aminmagus core felt like when it re-entered you. Concentrate on that." How could he forget the pain was almost unbearable, concentrating he found a spot of darkness that didn't belong, that felt cold.
"Once you find that pull it up towards you. This may be difficult; you have to feel it coming towards you. It should pulse, as it gets closer and when it's pulsing rapidly flood it with your energy."
The numbing coldness grew closer to him but it didn't want to go all the way. He paused and the pain came, but it was brief and when it subsided he felt his whole body grow cold and then a light warmth replaced it and seamed to energize him.
"Harry you did it, open your eyes."
"I don't feel much different." He looked himself over; his body looked the same too.
"You can feel it though the spreading warmth and power."
"Yeah, but that's it, that what being a dementor feels like. I expected…"
"What." She snapped. "You expected to feel dark and evil."
"No that's not what I meant. Sorry for even sounding like that. I just thought that I'd be able to tell."
"You will. Sorry for snapping. I can sense your aura; you should be able to sense mine. You're actually a lot stronger than I expected obviously your soul is more powerful than I gave you credit for."
"So can you tell me just what I feel?"
"Well the feeling of warmth is all the power you're sapping from the surrounding area."
"Okay. W-well…"
"What you were expecting wings or something?"
"Well no but that would have been cool." She sighed.
"Harry dementors are magical beings, we don't place any value on the physical. Your entire magical profile has shifted, even while in human form Harry James Potter ceased to exist. The reason dementors look so old and decrepit is because we don't eat and the body shrivels and dies. This affects you as well, you don't need to eat when you're transformed but that doesn't mean your body can go without food. You have to remain human and eat or else your body will fall apart on you."
"Alright got it, can I learn all the neat abilities now?"
"You need to ask nicer."
"Oh great master can you teach me your ways." She laughed again.
"Yeah, lets get started shall we."
Over the next couple of months his training progressed. He spent the mornings working out physically, with no need for his food to provide him energy he was able to use every thing he got as building blocks. Not that it was much but he began to gain some muscle. He spent the afternoons practicing the abilities he'd learned and his new and improved magic, Neri had turned off the nullifying ward completely. After the last meal of the day he teleported down to the dementor's common, a place beneath the fortress where humans didn't dare go. There he learned new things for the rest of the night. He spent the next day in his cell meditating. While this allowed his body to rest his mind was linked to the collective where he learned even more theory and history. He didn't need to actually sleep more than once a week. In the four months since he mastered his transformation he learned more than most people do in a lifetime, the knowledge that 5000 years of existence had was amazing.
As a dementor, he mastered both the passive aura and the active aura. His passive aura was strong enough to send most people into shock and when he really tried, well the results were just nasty. He tested his powers out against death eaters in the prison. He could fly, or hover depending on the situation. His unique advantage over the others was a decently powerful physical body to work with his mental powers. He conjured a sparing dummy and then hovered around it while fighting. The freedom of movement made him deadly. He could teleport to anyplace he had previously been or could see. This wasn't as powerful as apperation as it had a maximum range just over a quarter mile, but the fact that no wards could stop it made it madly useful. He could actually see magic, the auras and the intricacies of wards and even cast spells. That type of knowledge was sure to come in handy latter. He could also create almost foolproof illusions and mask his voice to sound like a dementor. Neri couldn't make her voice sound more mortal because she had no vocal cords. The only dementor power he didn't try out was soul eating, mainly because he didn't have anyone handy to test it on. By the time February rolled around Harry left his cell entirely. With Neri's help, well she did almost all the work, they conjured a construct of him that remained in his cell. It was inhabited by a pair of souls that allowed it to do the only the most basic functions. Good thing it wasn't designed for much. Take the food that was given him and place it in the toilet, then go back to the bed and lay there. As none of the guards talked to the prisoners, at least not these, the dementors liked that cellblock too much, no one ever noticed. The bed he moved to was just as old and ratty but a little conjuring and transfiguration fixed that. He didn't have a wand but was able to perform most magic wandlessly now. So things continued with Harry living deep below the fortress taking food from the house elves in the kitchen, and basically living among the dementors. Which meant living with Neri as none of the others did anything but feed outside of the collective.