Be Careful
37: What You Mean To Kill
By Anne B. Walsh
"Wednesday," said Draco through a mouthful of sausage. "Gets my vote for day of the week with the most unnecessary letters in it."
"There does seem to be a D going spare," Ray agreed, serving himself another helping of eggs. "For D-fense! The best class there is!"
"Kiss-up," said Blaise, peeling the paper off a muffin.
"Am not."
"Have you ever had the opposite of a Defense class?" Draco inquired. "Actual Dark Arts?"
"No…" Blaise's snort suggested he thought this question was a bit mad.
Draco met the darker boy's eyes and thought deliberately of his classes with Amycus Carrow, of being forced to practice endless variations on spells to cause pain and humiliation, of listening to screams and howls and sobs coming from other students, students he knew and was coming to respect. Whatever expression it brought to his face, it made Blaise flinch back slightly, then drop his gaze to the floor.
"I've seen things I wish I could forget," Draco said quietly. "Done to Hogwarts students, in Hogwarts classrooms. Defense isn't funny to me. It's something I thought for six years was a waste of time, and something I wish now we had back. Because the alternative is much, much worse."
The meal finished in silence.
"Today's topic is one you'll all be familiar with," said Professor Riddle (to his own surprise, Draco had scored high enough on his Defense exam to enter the advanced class, and had the same section as most of his friends). "Dementors."
The class shifted and muttered, glancing around at one another.
"Yes, I know. You learn about them from the moment you're old enough to understand. You hear stories about them every day of your lives. You wear your amulets until you've mastered your Animagus transformation, you do your escape drills, learn to check the wards on your home, get your good memories in line to cast a Patronus. What could there possibly be left to learn?" Professor Riddle's dry tone made several people chuckle, and most of the rest were smiling and nodding in agreement. "Well, ladies and gentlemen, there are a few things I don't believe you yet know. Such as the only two times you can truly kill a dementor."
The room went silent. Then Harry put up his hand.
"Yes, Potter?"
"Sir, I thought…"
"You thought that was impossible?" the Professor finished for him.
Harry nodded. "They're not really alive, so you can't really kill them. Just drive them away with a Patronus, or keep them away with wards. If you can kill them, then why don't we? Why are they still such a problem?"
"Because no one has been sufficiently cold-blooded to make the necessary sacrifices." Professor Riddle leaned back against the edge of his desk. "You see, the moments of a dementor's vulnerability coincide with the times it is most like a truly living creature. Namely, the two ends of its reproductive act." He smiled sardonically, looking around the room at his astonished students. "Yes, that's right. Dementors can reproduce. There are more of them now than there once were, and there may be more in the future. It all depends on us."
"How?" blurted Hermione.
"Do you know what, exactly, a dementor is, Miss…" Professor Riddle stopped. "I beg your pardon. Mrs. Weasley."
The class snickered. Hermione gave them all a Look promising retribution. "I've read about several competing theories, Professor," she said, tucking a strand of hair behind one ear. "Some people call them minor demons, embodiments of evil, so that they reproduce whenever there's more evil in the world than usual. Others believe they're depression made incarnate, and that whenever a person becomes depressed, a new dementor is born. And then there was one paper…"
"Go on," Professor Riddle encouraged when she faltered.
"But I don't see how it could be true, sir. It doesn't make sense."
"Tell us anyway."
Hermione took a deep breath. "The authors claimed that the first dementor was created in a Dark experiment involving humans and lethifolds, and that it got loose and Kissed its creator… and then, later, split in half, giving birth to another thing like itself."
Several girls squealed. Ron, at the back of the room, hissed a half-understandable curse.
"If this theory is true, it would mean that all dementors once were human beings," Hermione said, her face pale but her voice resolute. "That the souls of those Kissed by dementors become dementors themselves, instead of simply being ‘lost’ as we have believed to this point." She slapped her open hand down on her desk. "That never made sense to me, the idea that a soul could be lost like a doll or a book, but this is no better!"
"No better, perhaps," said Professor Riddle, his voice somber. "But research conducted within the last year shows frighteningly conclusive results. Most Defense experts now feel they can say with confidence that this theory, as unpalatable as it may be, is the true one. Every dementor in the world is the remnants of a human soul."
Students gasped, shuddered, whispered to one another. Couples sought solace in each other's arms, brothers and sisters pressed palms together. Draco folded his hands into his robes, hoping he could get them warm again and keep anyone from seeing how hard they were shaking.
Besides, concentrating on cold hands keeps me from thinking about how much I'd like to have someone here to comfort me.
"The only times, therefore, when a dementor is vulnerable enough to destroy are the moments when it is actively in the process of reproducing," Professor Riddle said when the class was back under some form of control. "Either the moment when it has just Kissed a human being and stolen his or her soul, or the moment when it is giving birth to the new dementor that soul has become. A corporeal Patronus, cast with a special three-word incantation—Expecto patronum emeritum—can strike a dementor in one of these two states and not only drive it away but destroy it completely, freeing both souls to whatever destinies they were originally denied."
Draco had never heard a classroom so silent, not even during one of Dolores Umbridge's "no need to talk" lessons.
Too bad Yaxley woke up soon enough to stop her being Kissed, the day Potter and company raided the Ministry to steal the locket. Hers is one soul I don't think I'd mind condemning to an eternity of destroying happiness. She did a bang-up job of it at Hogwarts!
And, of course, I helped her. He grimaced. "I'm a member of the Inquisitorial Squad"—Merlin's toenails, I sounded like a fool…
After the rest of the lesson, which consisted of practical advice on protecting oneself or a group from dementors if stranded outdoors at night, Draco brought up this particular point in his life to his friends.
He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting as a reaction. Uproarious laughter was not it.
When they could breathe again, Ray, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville demonstrated the origins of this particular joke. Draco thought he recognized the style, and a question confirmed that the sketch had, indeed, been written by the same brilliant madmen responsible for the film traditionally shown on the first day of a Comparative Cultures class at Hogwarts.
"Shame there's no play version of that," he remarked as the group repacked their bags for their next classes. "It'd be hilarious to see live on stage."
"Yes, it would, wouldn't it?" said Ginny, exchanging knowing glances with Ray.
Draco groaned. "I've created a monster."
"Nonsense." Ginny patted him on the head in a motherly way. "You've given us a marvelous idea for which everyone will, eventually, thank you."
"And before eventually?"
"We'll all hate you," said Neville briskly. "But we'll get over it."
"Eventually."
"Now you're catching on."
"Well, I hate you all too, so there," Draco muttered, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Oh, before I forget, can we meet in the TVP room tomorrow at lunch or sometime? I've got a first draft of a plan worked out for October and I need some help tearing it to pieces."
"Sure." "I'll be there." "Will do." "See you then," floated back over shoulders as the friends dispersed.
Draco smiled to himself. Me, I'm for the library. Find that sketch, copy it out, and then get it recopied by someone else like I've been doing with those notes, only this time I think I want a very special person to write it for me…
"What's in it for the wee little ferret, then?" Peeves peered suspiciously over the sheet of parchment at Draco. "Why's he asking Peevesie's help, when he never did before?"
"Call it a momentary lapse of judgment," Draco said. "In any case, you've got the words now. You can decide for yourself what you want to do with them."
"Hmm." The poltergeist flipped upside down and floated near the ceiling, reading over the sheet again. Draco slipped quietly out of the room.
And just in case he decides what he wants to do is turn me in, any teacher in this school would swear blind Blaise Zabini wrote that out.
His mind, thus relieved of its burden on that topic, returned to its primary worry of the day: Longbottom, Weasley, and Lovegood, and what was going to happen to them for being caught raiding Snape's office.
Everyone's talking as if it's going to be something horrible, but I'm not so sure. Snape looked angry when he found them on the stairs with the sword, but it wasn't the same angry he gets when Longbottom's potions go Fwoopers on him. It looked familiar somehow…
Draco snapped his fingers in recognition. "Last Christmas," he said aloud. "When he dragged me out of Slughorn's party by my ear and tried to get me to understand what I was doing. It was like he was angrier at what was happening than he was at me…"
What side is he on, anyway?
Not for the first time, Draco wished the TVP were just a bit more flexible. Being able to spy on his own world's Snape would have been an incredible boon. But with the soul-counterpart link the magical device needed to function, the only way they'd have been able to do it would be to enlist the help of the otherworld's version of Snape.
And he doesn't seem like he helps anybody. Probably kicks a puppy on his way to work every morning just to stay in practice. Why Mum's so taken with him, I don't know. Probably for the same reason he's still obsessing over Harry's mum even though she's been married for twenty years and has five kids with her husband…
Draco grinned to himself. His discovery of Severus Snape's unrequited love for Lily Evans Potter (always assuming it carried over from one world to the next, but he had a sneaking suspicion that it did) shed new light on a great deal of the Potions Master's conduct over the past six years.
I never thought to question why he hated Potter so much, I just played along because I hated Potter too, but now I can see it's not really Potter he hates—it's Potter's dad, for stealing the girl he loved right out from under his big greasy nose. Of course, she was a Muggleborn too, that might've had something to do with it…
Draco shook himself out of thoughts of the distant past and returned to thoughts of the near future. Snape had overridden the Carrows on the matter of the intruders in his office, saying that since it was his office and the sword was school property and therefore under his protection, he should have the final say on what was done to them.
Of course, by that logic, the whole school's under his protection and he ought to have the final say on everything… but I suppose he can't go around sticking his nose in everywhere. It may be big, but it's not that big.
The punishment, whatever it might be, had not yet been announced, and Draco was starting to worry. What if he lets Filch have them? It's funny to hear him talking about thumbscrews and chains and whips when you know it can't really happen, but now it can, and just like Defense getting replaced by Dark Arts, suddenly it's not so funny anymore…
"Malfoy!"
Draco spun, wand already in his hand. Nott took a step back, holding out his hands to show he was unarmed. "Jumpy much?" he asked.
"I was thinking," Draco said, tucking his wand away again. "You startled me. What's going on?"
"We've just heard what's to happen to the blood traitors." Nott grinned. "Snape announced it himself. They get a week of night duty out in the Forest with that great oaf Hagrid, and they're still to go to class and turn in all their work on time, or they get detentions just like anyone else who shirks."
Draco's grin took no acting at all, though he had to swallow his sigh of relief. An oaf Hagrid might be, and the Forest at night was hardly safe, but at least the three leaders of the DA ran a decent chance of coming home alive in the morning. They'd be exhausted at the end of the week, and have however many detentions they'd racked up to deal with, but Draco's little bag of Painless Potion shards was far from empty.
And if I do run out, I can just make more. Might have to come up with a new way of delivering them eventually, but for now, shoving it through their skin when I push them down in the hall seems to work just fine…
Nott was still talking, and Draco realized he'd missed a couple sentences. "Back up the carpet," he said, holding up a hand. "What was that about going out?"
"We're all going tonight." Nott assumed an expression he probably thought made him look evil and secretive. To Draco's eyes, it looked like someone had slipped him a double dose of the Weasley twins’ U-No-Poo. "Lure Hagrid off, get him to leave them someplace he thinks is safe. Then we'll lay the trail. By the time he gets back, they'll be treed by a couple dozen acromantulas—assuming they haven't fallen and been eaten yet."
Draco sucked in a breath involuntarily and quickly turned it into a gasp of amazement. "That's brilliant!" he said, then glanced over one shoulder before leaning in. "But you know, they are pureblood. We're going to need them eventually. Granted, there's loads of Weasleys, but just the one girl, and Longbottom and Lovegood are the only ones in their families…"
Nott looked at him sideways. "What's wrong with you, Malfoy? You almost sound like you care about them!"
"I care about our future!" Draco retorted, using anger to mask his fear. Too close for comfort, that one. "The future of the wizarding race! Don't you?"
"Nope." Nott shook his head cheerfully. "I care about my future. And I don't need Divination to see acromantulas there tonight." He gave Draco a searching look. "Everybody else from our year is in on this, Malfoy. If you don't want to come, at least don't spoil it for the rest of us by going and telling."
Draco considered this for a moment. "Fine," he said at last. "I won't tell. But I'm not coming, either." He put on his best haughty look. "I need my beauty sleep, you know. A problem you're obviously unfamiliar with."
"Bugger off." Nott shoved Draco's shoulder, hard. "Have a nice time sleeping. We'll wake you when we get in and tell you how it went." The weedy boy grinned suddenly. "Bet you a Galleon they drain Longbottom dry in under two minutes."
"That's disgusting." Draco pushed past his Housemate. "And I have homework to do, even if you don't. Excuse me."
Homework, oh, that it is. He stalked down the hallway, intent on getting to his dorm and privacy. But not the sort you think. I need to find a potion that will make it dead obvious where you nine are, without leaving any trace when I slip it into your pumpkin juice at dinner tonight…
Draco growled under his breath. Tight-arse little bumkissers, all of you. Planning on murdering three people just because you think it'll get you in good with the people in charge.
The titles he was so lovingly bestowing on his Housemates mixed themselves up with his need for a locator, and all at once Draco knew what he was going to be brewing tonight.
Perfect. It's quick, it's easy, it dissolves right away and doesn't leave any taste behind…
Only trouble is, there's about a one in ten chance it won't take. Which doesn't give me very good odds at getting all of them.
No help for it. I'm going to have to go out there myself. Make sure Hagrid doesn't leave those three for a second.
But I can't go like this. They'll hex me before I can get a word out of my mouth.
He put a hand to his chest and smiled to feel the half-familiar shape hanging under his robes.
Good thing I don't have to…