A/N: Dementors belong to JK Rowling.

Chapter 5: Flitwick

The Dementor

The next chapter, however, didn't begin right away with the dementor, but rather with Harry and his friends preparing to catch the Hogwarts Express…and a bit of idle gossip.

"Mrs Weasley was telling Hermione and Ginny about a love potion she'd made as a young girl. All three of them were rather giggly."

"Whoa, love potions are real?" asked Natalie. Then she thought a moment longer and added, "and they're allowed? I would've thought people didn't want magic interfering with true love or something like that."

"They're allowed within some tight limits," Fred explained.

"Ask us how we know that," George added, winking at the older girls at the table. Some of them giggled.

"Of course, anything Mum would make wouldn't be too serious," said Fred.

"Anything she'd make now," Ginny corrected them knowingly, and they wisely refrained from enquiring further.

However, the main point of conversation at the moment was Mr. Weasley warning Harry about the same things about Sirius Black that he had already heard by eavesdropping the night before. But he had one additional warning on that day.

"'Harry, swear to me you won't go looking for Black.'"

"Wait, what?" said Harry's friends.

"Why would he do that?" asked Neville.

"Even Harry's not that crazy," added Dean.

"'Why would I go looking for someone I know wants to kill me?' said Harry blankly."

"See?" Dean said.

"What was that about?" Neville asked. "Did he think you'd want to play the hero again?"

"No, it's more complicated than that," Harry said. "I'm sure they'll explain it later in the book. He had a reason…Honestly, it was really frustrating at the time 'cause I didn't know what was going on."

After that, they just barely made it onto the Hogwarts Express as it pulled out of the station.

"'I need to talk to you in private,' Harry muttered to Ron and Hermione as the train picked up speed.

"'Go away, Ginny,' said Ron.

"'Oh, that's nice,' said Ginny huffily, and she stalked off."

"Should've just stayed and made you tell me," Ginny said. "Not like it was a secret or anything, right?"

Harry shrugged, but in retrospect, she had a point. Even Malfoy had known about Sirius's supposed crimes that year. It was only really himself that people didn't want knowing. And in the book, the trio promptly undercut Ron's words to Ginny by talking about it in front of a teacher, even a sleeping one.

Hermione reacted to the news about Sirius predictably.

"'Don't go looking for trouble, Harry—'

"'I don't go looking for trouble,' said Harry, nettled. 'Trouble usually finds me.' Well, it certainly does based on these books," commented Flitwick.

Down at the Gryffindor table, Harry rolled his eyes at Hermione. "Everyone kept telling me that that year, too."

"You have been known to go looking for trouble yourself," Hermione objected.

In fact, in the book, Ron provided evidence of exactly that as he began talking about Harry sneaking out of the castle to go to Hogsmeade, which they all knew he eventually did that year.

"'Ron!' said Hermione sharply. 'I don't think Harry should be sneaking out of school with Black on the loose—'

"'Yeah, I expect that's what McGonagall will say when I ask for permission,' said Harry bitterly.

"Which I would not have said if he had had his permission form," McGonagall cut in. "At least not until Black's first attack. We did have other means prepared for protecting Potter."

"'But if we're with him,' said Ron spiritedly to Hermione, 'Black wouldn't dare—""

At that moment, Percy, remembering the events of the previous book, did one of the most un-Percy-ish things his brothers had yet seen from him and called out loudly, "How thick can you get?"

The Great Hall roared with laughter. Fred mimed having a heart attack from shock and yelled, "You told a joke, Percy! It's a miracle!" Ron turned bright red as even he realised how dumb a thing that was for him to say.

Once everyone calmed down, in the story, Malfoy and his cronies made their usual visit to try to antagonise Harry, but they were scared off by the fact that there was a teacher in the car. Probably a good job he was, Harry thought. Knowing what he knew now, he suspected that Malfoy had been coming to taunt him about Sirius and egg him on to go after him.

Ron, meanwhile, was more direct about his feelings.

"'I'm not going to take any crap from Malfoy this year,' he said angrily. 'I mean it. If he makes one more crack about my family, I'm going to get hold of his head and—'

"Ron made a violet gesture in midair."

"Someone ought to speak with Mr. Weasley about his anger issues," Snape said.

"Idle talk among students, Professor Snape," Flitwick retorted. "Mr. Weasley did not attack Mr. Malfoy, nor even threaten him to his face. We hardly need to chase after every students' disagreement. Now then…"

Flitwick continued with the story, and it was here that it began to take a dark turn. When the Hogwarts Express came to a stop several miles from the station, Hermione added another question to her list: Who stopped the train to search it and why? Were the dementors able to do that themselves? Unlike the previous book, she was finding a fair number of questions to be answered about the events of their third year, except this time, it was the Ministry's fault rather than Dumbledore's, and she had a nasty feeling that it was all based in sheer incompetence.

"There was a soft, crackling noise, and a shivering of light filled the compartment. Professor Lupin appeared to be holding a handful of flames. Ah, quite an impressive bit of wandless magic."

Harry blinked in surprise. With all the shock of the dementor, he'd forgotten about that little trick of Remus's. He'd have to ask him about it on his mirror.

Unfortunately, Remus was as ignorant as the students of why the train had stopped because he didn't seem to put the pieces together until the dementor came gliding into their cabin, ostensibly looking for Sirius Black.

"I must apologise in advance for this," Professor Flitwick said before he read the scene. "This may be difficult for some of you to hear, but I suspect it will be important to the story later on. And our older students will be all too familiar with it regardless. I want all of you to know that any student who wishes to leave the reading because of this may do so."

"Now, and on the other days," McGonagall agreed.

"Quite.

The first time the dementor appeared in the story—the first time Harry had encountered one—was mild, if you ever could apply that word to a dementor. Harry had almost forgotten what it was like after the much worse encounters he'd suffer later on. He had braced himself for the negative parts of this book, hearing his parents' deaths narrated aloud. It was a price he was willing to pay to get Sirius freed, but he knew it would be difficult.

But in this case, it didn't come. His first encounter with a dementor was "only" a literal bone-deep cold washing over him, hearing a scream that no one else did, and fainting at the monster's feet (did they have feet?), which in fact was even more dangerous than he had first thought, given what they could do. Many of the students had had uncomfortable close encounters with the dementors at some point that year. Some of them had even snapped under the prolonged exposure, but it was unusual to them that Harry had fainted, and there were whispers around the Great Hall now, wondering what it might mean.

For his part, Harry found himself almost unconsciously glaring at Malfoy. Malfoy was the one who had spread the news of him fainting all over the school. Looking around, for the older students, it was different hearing it from Harry's point of view. Even that small taste of the dementor, plus their own memories, made Malfoy's mockery seem in terrible taste, especially with Professor Flitwick's offer for people to leave.

Harry shivered from the memory, but then something occurred to him—something very worrying. He leaned in and whispered to his friends, "Was the dementor really looking for Sirius on the train?"

Ron looked back in confusion. "Well, they were supposed to be looking for him, weren't they? Why else would they be there?"

He looked around nervously. "Maybe for me?"

"Harry!" Hermione gasped. "How can you say that? There's no reason the dementors would want you."

"They came after me last summer, didn't they."

"You said that was because of Umbridge, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but the dementors worked with Voldemort in the last war, remember? Maybe one of them wanted to finish the job. And it sure seemed like it was coming for me."

Ron looked thoughtful, but Hermione shook her head. "It didn't really go after you in particular," she said. "It just affected you the most."

"Now hold on," Ron said. "Now that I think about it, they searched the whole train, but none of the others had to be chased off with a Patronus. Feels like there was something not right about it, beyond the obvious, I mean."

"That…" Hermione stopped and started frantically scribbling notes. "That does seem a little odd. If Professor Lupin hadn't been there…I've never really thought of dementors as thinking intelligently, but…or do they just target people who are more susceptible to them? Didn't they ignore Sirius when he was in dog form? We probably ought to look into that…" She trailed off, still writing.

"And we've lost her," Ron said with a grin.

In the story, after Remus drove the dementor away, gave them chocolate, and apparently talked to the driver to get the train the rest of the way to Hogwarts (who did drive the Hogwarts express? Harry wondered), they settled down in a carriage to go up to the school.

"Neville's pet toad croaked loudly from under his hat."

Everyone turned and stared at Neville.

"What? It keeps him from wandering off," Neville said.

They weren't out of the woods yet, as Malfoy still came along to taunt Harry about fainting at the dementor, though now, that had a lot of people glaring at him. However, once they reached the castle, McGonagall called both Harry and Hermione aside for a private discussion.

"Professor McGonagall had a way of making him feel he must have done something wrong."

"Really," said McGonagall. "I should think I've been quite professional in my dealings with students."

"You can be rather intimidating, Headmistress," Flitwick suggested delicately.

"I merely do what I must to maintain order," she said. "Although I admit Potter has something of a family tradition of causing more trouble than most—not a word, Severus."

The students laughed softly. As it happened, the McGonagall in the book had only called Harry aside so the he could go to the Infirmary for dementor exposure (over Harry's protests). As for Hermione…

"Why did Professor McGonagall need to talk to you about your schedule?" asked Dean.

"It was nothing," Hermione said a little too fast.

Harry frowned. He leaned close to her and whispered, "You know the book's probably gonna tell it, right?"

Hermione blushed. "I don't know. I wonder what the teachers will say about it. We're still not supposed to tell anyone. Maybe I should—"

"No," he said. "Dumbledore and McGonagall know, right? They can work it out."

"Professor Snape, the Potions Master, was staring along the staff table at Professor Lupin. It was common knowledge that Snape wanted the Defence Against the Dark Arts job, but even Harry, who hated Snape, was startled at the expression twisting his thin, sallow face—Sorry Severus," Flitwick added. However the real Harry was unsurprised when he saw Snape turn that same expression upon him now. "It was beyond anger," Flitwick continued, "it was loathing. Harry knew that expression only too well; it was the look Snape wore every time he set eyes on Harry."

There was some scattered laughter, which did nothing to improve Snape's mood. However, the rest of the chapter mainly consisted of Dumbledore telling the school about the staffing changes and warning them about the dementors—including a personalised warning for Harry not to try his invisibility cloak against them.

"They reached their familiar, circular dormitory with its five four-poster beds, and Harry, looking around, felt he was home at last. Well," said Professor Flitwick, closing the book. "I do believe that is an appropriate place to stop. As we discussed earlier, the reading will resume tomorrow morning, as usual."