Chapter Fifteen: The Revelation of a Mystery Heretofore Unknown to the Readers
In the last chapter it was briefly mentioned that vampires were attacking Hogwarts. This turned out to be true! Goyle was wandering the deep, flooded, dungeony depths of the Hogwarts library when a vampire turned into a book and bit his thick neck.
"Gurgle rargle!" Goyle shouted in rage, as he hated books even when they weren't biting him. Soon though, the Book Vampire had consumed enough of his blood to be sated, and it flapped off, leaving bloody book pages all over the studying students.
Harry then ran into Ron, who had just gotten out of Defense Against the Dark Arts.
"Oi Harry, how are you?"
"I'm okay, how was Defense class?"
"Meh."
"Speaking of Defense Class, did you hear about our new teacher?" Hermione asked.
"We have a new teacher?" Ron asked in surprise.
"Well of course Ronaldo, Quirrel's been dead since Halloween, which was ages ago. We'd have to get a new teacher eventually," Hermione scolded, as if her parents had raised her in an environment full of scalding scolds, rather than an environment full of other people's teeth.
"Who's the new professor?" Harry queried, which was a reference to Quirinus Quirrel, who would often inquire queriously, because he did not know the latter was not a word.
"Well, Fred and George were talking about him before the vampires attacked," Ron said, joining in on the conversation. "I heard it was a prison guard of some kind."
"What could a prison guard know about Dark Arts?" Harry asked.
"Maybe he sacrificed some inmates to his unseen master in a forbidden ritual?" Hermione suggested, thinking back to her book of Rituals, Things that Exist:.
"Or SHE sacrificed some inmates," Hermione corrected Ron. "Women can do things too, I read about it in Women, At least 2/3'ds as good as Men."
"Well Harry," Seamus Finnigan said in his African accent, "Should we go to Defense class, or deal with all these vampires running around?"
Harry thought about the question, even as Dean Thomas drank lots of butterbeer. Soon though, he came to the only possible conclusion one could logically come to when you were Harry Potter.
"Let's go to Defense class, perhaps this professor's lesson today will be on how to defeat vampires. If we miss it, we will be worse at defeating vampires then if we went."
Everyone nodded and agreed, impressed with Harry's clever deduction. Especially Hermione, who as the smartest person, often appreciated intelligence that was greater than hers, since she never saw it occur naturally in the wild.
So, the school went to their scheduled Defense Class, battling vampires possessed by Voldemort and not on the way, with little success, although whether that was because they didn't know enough to kill vampires, or because they were holding back was very clear since the answer was both.
But while this was going on, Goyle awoke in the bathroom, finding himself in the same position as when the Book Vampire attacked. He clambered to his feet, feeling weird and awkward, as if his body was changing, like he had gotten larger, hairier and had a deeper voice. However as he looked into the Boy's Bathroom Magical Mirror, he discovered that of those three things, none of them were true. He felt weird because he had no reflection!
Goyle looked at his lack of reflection, then at his body, then back at the mirror, but because he had no reflection he didn't focus on the correct part of the mirror so he was actually looking a little to the left of where his reflection would be, if he had one, which he did not so it basically amounted to the same thing.
"I am…invisible?" Goyle said, looking at his hand. He decided he would do the smart thing and test this theory out. So he kicked open the stall door where a third-year Hufflepuff was bathrooming.
"AAAAAHHHH!" the Hufflepuff shouted, trying to squirm away from Goyle and cover himself, while the toilet continued to magically take away his excrements.
"Can you see me?" Goyle demanded.
"NO! GO AWAY!"
Goyle smiled. "Excellent."
And with that, Goyle's reign of terror began.
First he ran into the girl's bathroom, as that was what he had heard older students say they would do if they became invisible. Unfortunately all that was in the girls bathrooms were girls, vampires and giant snakes, none of which seemed like a lot of fun, so he left. He then went to the library to go peek at the books in the restricted section, but then remembered he wasn't a nerd, so he didn't do that either.
Already Goyle's reign of terror had taken him through both the boy's and girl's bathroom, as well as the library, so he was feeling very accomplished. And hungry. He could only fix one of those things while invisible though, so he went to the Hogwarts Cafeteria Hall of Official Magical Dining.
He easily sneaked his way in, punching several Hufflepuffs and Professor Sprout in the face, knowing that as an invisible man, no one had the magical fortitude to stop him. In all his days at Hogwarts, he never discovered any spells capable to defeating invisibility, so he was confident that he could eat all the food off people's plates that he wanted, with no fear of repercussions.
And so he did, laughing invisibly to himself at how he knew the food must appear to be disappearing in front of the students. Soon they became determined their fellow-student mates were taking their food and visible fighting broke out, while Goyle reveled in the knowledge that he must be disgusting all who could see the food being broken down and digested in his invisible bowels. And Vampire-Mort looked upon the chaos Invisible Goyle was causing, and laughed. He laughed most evilly.
Soon Goyle grew bored with his invisible shenanigans, and started to seek new avenues to cause havoc and mystery.
While the Dining Hall was crumbling into madness, Harry Potter and his friends and the Gryffindors and the Hufflepuffs went to Defense class…where there was NO TEACHER?!
"Is the professor invisible?" Ron asked.
"It must be Goyle!" Justin Finch-Fletchley shouted.
"No, he's much too young to be our invisible professor," Parvati Patil exclaimed, Ravenclawing all over her sister, who was her twin and in the same, but different House.
While the students argued over the likelihood of Goyle being a professor, the room slowly started to ice over. The students began to feel the razor edge of fear creep into their souls, and Harry heard the sound of his worst memory reverberate in his eleven-year old mind: Dudley Dursley being killed by his vampiric Zombie-Parents on the magical orders of Arthur Weasley.
Judging by the panicked shrieking of the other students, Harry was not alone in this memory, but when Hannah Abbott tried to flee, she found the door had been frozen shut, as if some kind of ice demon had cast aguamenti on the door, but then touched the wet door and made it an ice door. Blaise Zabini also thought this, but no one else did.
As the students quivered in terrified fear, a dark figure slowly emerged from the suitcase that was previously mentioned as being on the teacher's desk, but was now floating above that desk. The figure grew in form and size, until it towered over all the eleven-year-old students, much like a tower would tower over smaller towers, if they were younger and not finished being made, but even if they were finished they would still be substantially shorter than the towering tower that currently towers over the untowering towers that only tower over buildings that are not towers.
"A Dementor!" Dean Thomas said, using the wizarding knowledge he had acquired from a lifetime of being a wizard in the wizarding world. "We are all doomed!"
As if to exacerbate their doom, the Dementor made a noise that was like a thousand rotting corpses scraping together, their bodies sploshing open and releasing collapsed intestines that flopped to the ground in a particular pattern that sounded exactly like American British English being spoken by a distinguished gentleman.
"I am your Defense Professor." The creature said over the piercing panic shouts of the class. "You may call me Professor Dementor."
"Ah," Harry screamed.
"I apologize for the unequivocal terror my presence creates. To mediate my effect, I have brought chocolate for all of you." Professor Dementor said, reaching down his hood and pulling out a plate full of chocolate. DARK CHOCOLATE!
He magicked the chocolate at the students and they ate it. Immediately the feeling that their brains were going to crawl out of their noses and run screaming away, faded until it could almost be said that they didn't feel that way anymore.
"Professor," Hermione screamed. "I thought Dementors couldn't be trusted to run a class, because they'd try to eat our souls."
Professor Dementor looked down at her, the empty black void beneath his hood seeming to crinkle in mild amusement. "Perhaps that is a problem with most Dementors, but I am a Professor, and have quite a bit more class."
"You're really a Professor?" Ernie Macmillan asked.
"Yes. Unlike Snape, I went to Professor School and acquired top billing, and I did it without eating a single soul!"
Everyone clapped and shrieked.
"Now, while my history is deeply fascinating to all of you, myself included, I must get started on your lessons. Since you're all first-years, we're going to do something simple. I have here a few dozen dragons, two for each of you. Don't worry, they're quite alive!"
With that, the walls of the classroom fell down and the students found themselves surrounded by dragons. The crippling fear they felt turned into super-crippling fear, as the combined mass of the dragons present was equal to 48 smaller dragons!
"Professor! I don't think we can defeat dragons!" Harry said.
"Nonsense. Don't be afraid."
"Easier done than said," Ron grumbled in fear-terror as the dragons started eating the Hufflepuffs.
Cho Chang was the first to do something, by throwing her wand at a dragon. It flew straight and true, her time spent as a Seeker helping guide her magical aim as it plunged deep into the dragon's skull, plowing into its brain and blowing up, raining bloody chunks of Hufflepuffs all over the students.
"Ten points from Ravenclaw." Professor Dementor said.
"Professor?!" Cho Chang yelled.
"You killed the Dragon. They are rare and valuable. As is this lesson, which you have failed."
"Let's try this then," Hannah Abbot said. She punched her dragon, which caused the creature to eat her arm.
"Ten points from Hufflepuff."
"Damn it!" Theodore Nott said, casting Stupefy on one of his dragons. It fell unconscious and crushed two more Hufflepuffs.
"Ten points from Slytherin."
"Don't worry," Hermione said. "I'm super-smart, I got this."
She stepped towards her dragon. Seeing her bushy, orthodontist-fueled head, the beast breathed flames at her, but she responded by casting Aguamenti. The two elements met and burst into steam, broiling off the faces of the remaining Hufflepuffs.
"Ten points from Gryffindor."
"Dammit, what do you want?" Harry demanded, unknowingly using a Muggle curse in the wizarding world, which would have deep long-lasting ramifications that shall be dealt with in a later chapter.
"Ten more points from Gryffindor."
"This test seems impossible! How could we possibly complete it?!"
At Harry's question, Professor Dementor smiled. "It is quite simple. A professor, even one as Demented as a Dementor, would not rationally expect his students to be able to defeat this many dragons on their first class, even if they had been through dozens of years of dragon-defeating classes. Additionally he would not sit idly by and allow even the puffiest of Huffles to die due to the carelessness and callousness of their classmates."
"But you did do that!" Hermione shouted, overcome with terror at correcting a teacher, and also overcome with terror because he was a Dementor.
"I did not. All I did was allow your deepest fears to manifest."
At that, Professor Dementor waved his hand, causing the dragons to fade away and the classroom to look normal again. Additionally all but one of the Hufflepuffs realized they were alive and even better, Cho Chang's wand hadn't exploded and was in fact in her hair!
"What sorcery is this?!" Blaise Zabini demanded.
"Burn the Dementor!" Mandy Brocklehurst demanded.
Professor Dementor merely chuckled. "No sorcery. What you saw was magic, powered by my Dementor's demention. I used my natural talents to create an arena of your deepest fears. Ravenclaws, you found your intelligence not up to the task. Gryffindors, you quailed in the face of 40-foot tall murderbeasts, while the Slytherins were unable to manipulate the dragons into fulfilling their ambitions. And as for the Hufflepuffs, it seems their fear was dying, which was not what I expected, but it seems quite reasonable."
Everyone oohed over his amazing teaching methods.
"Now I shall teach you how to avoid falling for such base fear tactics in the future. I shall teach you…the Patronus Charm!"
Everyone cheered…except for Goyle, who punched Malfoy in the face.
"Ha ha! Now Draco will think Harry did it, because he is behind me and I am invisible!" Goyle shouted, his power fueled by evil.
"Unfortunately Goyle, you are not invisible."
"What?!" Goyle demanded.
"Everyone can see you. Even I, a professor with no eyes, can see you quite clearly."
"That's not true! It's impossible!" Goyle shouted, but a quick look at his visible hands made it clear it was true and it was possible.
Goyle shouted in terror and rage and screamed out the incantation for the Patronus Charm. Immediately a shining silver swordfish appeared. Tears streaming down his visible face, Goyle grabbed the swordfish and drove it deep into his body, plunging and tearing until the swordfish died. Then, only after the swordfish was dead, did Goyle allow himself to die as well.
"GOYLE!" Pansy Parkinson said, overcome with shock and horror upon seeing Goyle's suddenly visible dead body.
"POTTER!" Crabbe shouted, "Malfoy declares a blood feud with you!"
"Harry accepts!" Ron shouted back.
Before Harry could agree or disagree, Professor Dementor spoke again.
"I would be wary about talking about blood feuds. It seems Goyle was a vampire…and Voldemort is coming out of him."