Title: Kiss.
Author: AspergianStoryteller.
Genre: Supernatural/General.
Summary: When a dementor tried to Kiss Harry Potter, it got more than it bargained for. And Harry did not walk away unaffected. Don't own Harry Potter.
Chapter 22: Class: CoS, Subject: Dark Magic.
'Yes. You may go Mr. Potter. Eat a good lunch.'
The only kid in the room stood up to leave, and turned around at the door. 'Thanks for coming Healer Nathaniel.'
'You're welcome Harry. See you next week.'
...
Harry was so cold. He could barely remember ever being warm. There didn't seem to be any hope of escaping the freezing, crushing darkness pierced with screams of terror and grief.
'Not Harry! Please!'
'Stand aside, girl.'
A flood of fog was drowning him. He was falling. Harry wanted to scream but fog and gravity stole his breath away.
He wondered if he'd suffocate before he went splat.
Thump!
Something caught him. Thank god. Harry sighed in relief. Oh hang on - just what had caught him?
Relief turned to horror. Thin, bony arms closed in around him. They were draped in long, tattered robes, which enveloped him like a blanket. The tall dementor pulled Harry into its cold body as close as possible. Harry could feel his heat and energy being leached away. His body was gong numb. He couldn't remember anything beyond the nightmare embrace of the dementor.
Death-rattle breath got impossibly louder. Harry raised his head, and immediately wished he hadn't. A gaping black hole filled his vision and sucked him in.
Harry opened his eyes. There was no frost on his curtains. No unnatural chill. He was not floating above the mattress.
Harry grinned warily. Just a normal nightmare tonight.
About two weeks ago, Harry, Ron and Hemione had been down in the Chamber of Secrets preparing for their investigation of the Dark Arts. Hermione was rereading her Defence textbook and class notes. Ron and Harry were putting together target dummies made from tree branches smuggled in under the invisibility cloak, bones from the chamber floor and held together with sticking charms.
After thinking about what Healer Nathaniel and Madam Pomfrey had said about Dark curses being put on him affecting him, Harry had wondered what actually performing the curses would do. His magic was naturally adapted to the Dark. Maybe doing it would use up the Dementor magic. At least that was the idea.
Being the smartest of them, Hermione was going first. It was interesting to see her torn between fear of doing something so dangerous and illegal, and her eagerness to learn something new.
'Ready when you are Hermione,' Ron presented her with the finished dummy and grinned nervously.
Hemione squeaked in surprise. 'Oh! Yes, okay. I'm ready too. Well, out of the way.'
She looked in her notes one last time and raised her wand. Harry and Ron quickly scrambled out of the way.
'Incide nigra.'
A faint purple light flashed out from Hermione's wand and cut into the dummy's arm. It was only a small cut, but they could tell it would really sting if it hit a real person.
'You got it.' Ron came closer to inspect the damage.
Hermione walked over to see her work. 'I missed a bit,' she said.
'Not by much,' Harry noted. 'How did it feel Hermione?'
She furrowed her brows in thought. 'Like casting a normal spell, except... I think, it felt more, powerful. I'll have to try again to be sure. But first,' the girl waved her wand and thrust it down to point at the ground.
'Reset quis carmine.' A transparent purple light rippled out, clearing her wand of the previous spell. It had taken days to get down, but the hard work was definitely worth it, for now only a specialised kind of forensics would reveal anything cleared by the reset. And the reset itself would have to found as well.
Raising her wand against the dummy again, prompting the boys to back away, Hermione focused on her feelings while she cast her spell. Normally she'd be concentrating on wand movement, incantation and visualisation- the key steps to spell casting in class. But Dark magic often required something more emotional to work. It wasn't what she was used to, but Hermione would try, because after three years at Hogwarts she had learnt to try new things.
'Incide nigra!' A brighter purple flash this time. A new, deeper cut appeared on the dummy.
'It's deeper this time,' Ron pointed out.
'It still felt, normal.'
'You'll get the hang of it,' Harry reassured her.
Hermione reset her wand again and they took a ten minute break to see if she displayed any odd effects. There were none, so Ron proceeded to take his turn.
'Incide nigra!' A faint purple light shot out, clipping the dummy's torso. Ron immediately noticed a weird feeling within himself, particularly in his hand.
'It feels weird,' he said. 'I'm not sure if it's a bad weird or not.'
He reset and tried again.
Ten minutes later, Ron also had no strange symptoms to show, though his weird feeling went away. When Harry cast the Dark cutting spell, it felt fairly normal to him too. The deeper cut and brighter light he produced was attributed to his magic being used to exposure to Darkness.
When they left the Chamber and put their books back in the dorms they went on a long walk around the castle and grounds to work off any leftover Dark magic. They were very hungry by lunch time.
Before Harry went to sleep that night, he practised the meditation Healer Nathaniel suggested. Since the dementors induced cold, mist and darkness, Nathaniel told Harry to imagine the opposite: warmth, clarity and light. They also went over using good memories and positive thinking to combat depression, Nathaniel practising the meditation alongside Harry. They tried out several different ideas, including imagining pushing the darkness and cold into a small ball and expelling it, draining it, and burning it. Harry found it best if he pretended he was flying, rising above the dark into the sky.
When Harry had his next hospital appointment, Nathanial got out the Dark magic hula hoop detector before patronus therapy.
'Hey, Healer Nathaniel?' he asked.
'Yes Harry?'
'Can that be set to just scan for dementor magic?'
'It can be.'
'Would you set to that now? You said that I was used to having Dark magic in me, so that might interfere with the scan.'
The healer blinked at Harry and smiled. 'You're right.' He pushed a button the hoop.
'All set. Step in.'
He placed it on the floor and Harry stepped into it.
Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep...
The beeping sounded slower this time.
'The level of dementor magic in you has gone down,' the Healer confirmed. 'Excellent.' He wrote the stats on his clipboard and put the hoop away again. 'Okay Harry, let's move into the ward for your therapy.'
A few days later, the friends returned to the Chamber and practised two new Dark spells: a hallucination to make a person see something they feared, and an jinx that made you feel like bugs were clawing over your skin.
Seeing his friends' discomfort when, after targeting the dummies they tried it out on each other, Harry felt bad that he couldn't be put under the spells himself.
'It's alright Harry,' Hermione told him. 'We don't mind. We'd much rather this than put your health at greater risk.'
'But you and Ron are at risk too, Hermione,' Harry argued. 'Even if you're not so sensitive to Dark magic.'
'And we're being very careful,' she countered. 'You however, are recovering from an extremely close call and I refuse to make it worse.'
'Don't feel left out, mate,' Ron put in. 'When your healer gives you the okay, you can join the fun. We'll have a great time cursing you! Especially that-' he shuddered, 'bug jinx.'
Since then, he hadn't had any real dementor nightmares. Just the space outs and a normal nightmare tonight. Not that that was pleasant, but it was better than waking up floating and freezing.
And to makes things even better, in less than two weeks time, the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang would arriving for the Twiwizard Tournament!
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