Author's Note: Huzzah! Two chapters in one week! I'm on a role! I hope y'all enjoy this chapter, and I should have the next one up soon, as well. I'm working without a beta at the moment, so that makes things go a bit slower than I was hoping.
On The Nature of Dementors
Dementors were, by far and away, the most feared creatures within the Wizarding World. More than Vampires, more than Werewolves, it was the Dementors who truly struck fear into the hearts of all men, no matter how stout their hearts.
None knew the origins of Dementors, but in true Wizarding Fashion, they never truly thought to ask. Dementors simply were, like the air they breathed and the summoning or healing charms they had known all their lives - there was no beginning to such things, and certainly no end.
Dementors, however, remembered a time before they had become the silent guardians and executioners of Wizarding kind. A time when Free Magic had not been allowed to run rampant. A time before they, themselves, had been contaminated by it's pervasive touch.
Charter Magic was capable of many things - both wondrous and dangerous. To understand the rune structures of Charter Magic, however, was a something one might spend their entire lives in study of. Perhaps the most complex of such studies was the creation of Sendings - beings created out of magic itself. Their bodies were not flesh and blood, but rather Charter Runes layered one atop another. To touch a Sending, then, was to touch Magic itself - to be swept up in it's neverending tides. One could easily lose themselves in the swirling abyss that was the Charter. For so long as one was kept in physical contact with such runes, they could reach into Magic itself.
Such an idea, of course, would have been considered blasphemous to the Free Magic wielding Witches and Wizards of Earth. To even consider such an idea as touching upon Magic, itself in such a way would earn a one way trip to Azkaban, at the very least.
If Sendings were capable of emotions such as humor, they may have found this to be particularly funny - for the very creatures used to silence such ideas, were themselves capable of granting a Witch or Wizard access to such wonders.
Charter Magic and Free Magic were never meant to co-exist side by side. The only time this had been accomplished had been within the instruments of the Abhorsen - those necromantic tools used to lay the dead to rest, through the use of both the Charter and Free Magic. These instruments were wholly unique, however, and carefully planned down to the most minute of details.
The Dementors ... Dementors had not been planned. The fusion of Charter and Free Magic within them had come about spontaneously, and the end result had been both horrifying and amazing.
Where Charter and Free Magic met, the laws of physics and magic had become twisted; there was little left that was recognizable in Dementors as the Sendings they had once been. Their creators - those Charter Mages who had walked the bridge between worlds, and left Azkaban Island as a silent testament to their passing - would surely never recognize what their servants had become.
But the Dementors remembered.
That was the funny thing about magic, though - particularly Charter Magic. It was bound by rules, however strange those rules might have seemed. In the creation of the Sendings who would one day become known as the Dementors of Azkaban, a single order had been laid down ... obey the commands of the masters of Azkaban. And now, over a thousand years later, those commands came from one place - The Ministry of Magic.
But the Dementors knew no loyalty to any but their current master. Should that master change, as control of Azkaban slipped from one hand to another, then they would simply follow the commands of their new masters.
But like calls to like, and in the blood of Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, the Dementors sensed the blood of the original builders of Azkaban - and their original Masters. And in the magic that had formed them long ago, that was enough of a connection for the Dementors to now follow their commands.
Magic was a tricky thing. But sometimes, just sometimes, it opened a door when all hope had fled.