Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It took a frankly embarrassing amount of time for me to figure out where I was.

Granted, I had never been to Azkaban before, but really, how many prisons on small islands were guarded by soul-eating abominations? Once I had put together the fact that yes, this really was Azkaban from the Harry Potter universe, and no, I wasn’t dreaming or still dead, I addressed the elephant in the room. Or rather, the dementor.

Specifically, the fact that I was one of the aforementioned soul-eating abominations.

Acceptance of that fact was a tricky thing. I knew I had been, at one point before my becoming a dementor, dead. The exact details were muddled, but it was likely self-inflicted. Regardless, I was not pleased to wake up afterwards. Though, my specific situation did come with rather impressive benefits: I could fly, for one, and that was just the beginning. I was a dementor, with all that that rather horrifying statement entailed.

The irony was not lost on me, however, that my new species propagated that which I suspected killed me previously, namely depression.

Then again, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows—if those were even possible on the island, and given the weather, I strongly suspected that they were not—as my new species came with an impressive list of downsides as well. Irrespective of the existential horror that arose from knowing that reincarnation was real, I was a different species, and thus was intrinsically different.

My appearance, for one: I was much closer to the dementors described in the books than what was shown in the movies, a roughly 3-meter tall emaciated and rotting humanoid clothed in an incredibly tattered cloak.

And speaking of said cloak, I had no idea where it came from. All I knew was that I was wearing it when I became conscious, presumably at the moment of my reincarnation.

But back to my body; I did in fact have legs, albeit redundant ones, given that I either floated or flew everywhere. The only other notable thing was my face - empty, scabbed eye sockets and a gaping hole where a mouth should have been.

And then came the kicker: I had to determine all of that by sense of touch. I was blind.

Well, blind using the definition of not having the human sense of sight. I had a rather excellent sense of direction, and could sense both souls and the ambient magic in the air, letting me get a rather good impression of my surroundings. It was better than human sight in that it was omnidirectional. It was worse than human sight in that I could no longer see color.

I had come into existence a short while ago, but once I had familiarized myself with my new body and abilities, my first order of business was to determine the date. None of my knowledge would be helpful if I had been reincarnated outside the events of the story. I knew it was sometime before Kingsley Shacklebolt became minister, as he had purged Azkaban of dementors, and sometime after Azkaban was converted into a prison, but that still left a significant stretch of time to consider.

Though, there was a rather quick way to narrow the possible dates down: checking to see if the Death Eaters were imprisoned within, and if so, if Sirius Black was present. Should there be Death Eaters present, then I would have had to have been sometime between the end of Vold War One and the mass breakout in book five. Going a bit further, if Sirius was there, it would place me somewhere between Harry’s birth and Sirius’s escape.

I shifted slightly, taking in the prison from my vantage point in the air above it. Sirius really deserved better, and should have received the highest commendations for being able to retain even a tiny bit of sanity. Azkaban was much, much worse than the books’ descriptions made it seem. Even discounting the incarnations of death and depression that guarded it, the location alone was enough to sap the strength of anyone’s mind.

Or, well, any human’s mind. On a small tangent, it was rather obvious that my mind was different. I still felt I had mostly the same personality, but my emotions were much more… muted. And given my state of mind before my death? Well… I may have been on the other side of the border of being a sociopath then, but I certainly was one now. And that was discounting the instincts that came with the new body. Sure, most were useful, the most prominent benefit being that I knew how to fly, but others were slightly more disturbing. Namely, that Azkaban felt familiar, not quite like a home, but a place I had been in long enough to be almost comfortable in.

But back to the main point, Azkaban was a truly horrific location for any person not a dementor. Using the building as a prison was a gross violation of more human rights than I could count. Even the Aurors who were stationed here stayed as far from the actual prison as possible, living in a structure built into the dock. And even then, there were four, on the entire island. I couldn’t blame them for not wanting to be anywhere near the island, but even so, one would think that the wizarding world would show a bit more care as to the security of their best prison.

I shifted again in the air, letting out a rasping sigh. Slowly tipping myself forward, I let myself drop towards the rock below. I had been trying to avoid interacting with the prisoners, but I did need to know when I was.

Slamming into the rock, I drew myself up to my 12-foot height and turned towards the prison entrance. Invincibility to all physical forms of harm made for very interesting new priorities. While yes, I could fly downward faster than gravity could pull me, it was far more fun to simply let myself drop.

Regardless, I glided over the sea-soaked island towards the monolithic structure. There was only one entrance at ground level, a massive stone archway with a few steps leading up to it. The only other apertures were the windows, only accessible to dementors.

Searching the occupied part of the prison took surprisingly little time. The other dementors… didn’t seem to care at all what I did. In fact, they actually seemed more willing to listen to me than the Aurors, which was not altogether too surprising once I calmed down and looked at the facts.

As far as I could tell, I was the only sapient dementor. The others were certainly sentient, having the ability to react to stimuli, but so did just about any animal. True sapience, complex abstract concepts rather, seemed to be beyond them. They were more intelligent than your average dog, but not anywhere near the level of a human. They could understand instructions—I suspected they were responding more to the intent behind the instructions than the instructions themselves—and could organize themselves, in the sense that wolf packs organized themselves as well.

In any case, all that long-winded rambling was to say that I received no obstruction as I made my way into the prison.

The ground floor was the least-guarded in terms of dementor presence. Most of my kind either remained near the very top of the tower, or deep, deep below the surface. From slightly below the surface to a few floors above it, the dementor presence was the least prevalent in the entire prison.

Or rather, I suspected it was. At the very least, it was the least-guarded of the areas accessible by humans.

I floated down a wide hallway, passing empty cell after empty cell as I made my way towards the closest soul I could detect. Turning a corner, I started slightly as the last physical obstruction between my senses and the soul was removed. It was daedalian, intricate and complex. Not at all like anything I could have imagined, but a fractal, multidimensional geometrical shape. Constantly in a slow state of flux, it steadily wove itself into new labyrinthine patterns over and over and over again, never once repeating itself.

It was wonderful.

I drifted forward absentmindedly, shifting my focus to another soul off to the side, only a few cells away from the first. It too was infinitely intricate, and yet, completely unique. Even as both of them shifted and changed and grew, neither of them came anywhere near the other’s pattern. They both shone with something that was not light. It… prickled me, shocking me out of my trance.

That was the first actually unpleasant feeling I’d had since becoming a dementor!

And yet…

Even as the soul-light tingled, it called to me with an unconscious familiarity. The soul was both connected to me, and inimical to me. Contradictory. Interesting.

I returned my focus to the very first soul, tracing the shifting patterns in my mind’s eye. Strange, I thought, that a criminal—and I knew this one was a criminal, his thoughts betrayed his actions, even if he pleaded innocence—would have a soul so… and I hesitated to call it so, but beautiful.

But it was only beauty in the sense of complexity, that of nature and awe.

I examined it once more, drifting closer. The motion was calming, soothing almost, and if the soul-light didn’t irritate me I could likely spend hours upon hours simply mapping out this one soul. It shifted somewhat, the rate of change increasing. Not to too great an extent, but noticeable nonetheless. But what was the catalyst? What caused the acceleration?

It sped up once more, and I redoubled my focus. The swirling shapes were not yet changing so fast as to prevent perception, but they were more than double the speed they were previously.

Distantly, I became aware of something. One of my other senses, one more familiar to me: hearing.

“Wh-Wha’ do ye wan’ from me, eh? What more can ye take? Already gone… all gone… all GONE!”

The soul was aware of me. Fear, it seemed, or maybe simply conscious activity sped the shifting. I drifted away, deep in thought as the man collapsed once more, shivering and muttering. I brushed his thoughts, his mind open and almost broadcasting to me. He was a true criminal, a staunch believer in pure-blood supremacy. The actual crime that had gotten him arrested and incarcerated was lethal muggle-baiting, a repeated offense for which he’d been arrested for multiple times before.

I drew back from his mind and continued down the hallway. I could see the prisoners ahead begin to shiver and wake up as the leading edge of my aura passed over them. While it certainly was a useful ability, it would completely ruin any attempt at stealth, and more importantly, affected everyone indiscriminately within.

That was suboptimal, especially if I ever planned to interact with humans on friendly terms. Could I suppress it, or at the very least target it? Maybe.

First of all, what was the aura? Most of my abilities were intertwined, and one often led to, or even was, another. I focused on the newer senses I’d acquired with the reincarnation, the sight-analogue and the rest. And just like that, I understood.

My mind was… diffuse. It was not confined to a single point, as it had seemed to be when I was a human. Direction only held meaning in whichever way my body was arranged, and what I was ‘looking at’ was simply what held the most of my focus. My body felt more like an extension of me rather than something inseparable. I still went through the actions of pointing my face at whatever it was I was focused on, but by no means did I have to. It was an action I’d adopted to tether something to what I’d been previously, and to help with interactions later on.

What I’d been referring to as an ‘aura’ was simply unconscious feeding on any mind within the nebulous bounds of my presence. Then again, given the manyfold effects produced by the presence of my mind, aura was a good enough term to use as a catch-all. But now that I knew what it was, it was time to go about trying to fix it. Could I compress it? I narrowed my focus to simply my body, but that achieved nothing. I was going about it the wrong way.

I relaxed my focus again, this time trying to grab—metaphorically, of course—the edges of my mind. Somehow, I… missed. My focus went straight through the incorporeal bounds of my mind, scraping against the wall of the prison in what was almost a physical–

No, wait… That was a physical sound. I focused on a loose chunk of stone that had likely fallen off a wall somewhere and repeated my earlier action of trying to grab it with my mind.

The stone lifted into the air, unsupported by anything other than my will.

So… Apparently I was telekinetic? I was quite certain that that was an ability that dementors did not have in the books, only in the movies, and only used once, to open the door of the train compartment. This had… implications.

Nevertheless, they were better explored later. My current goal was to refine my control over my aura. After I had achieved that, I could consider the potential reasons behind the inconsistencies, but again, that was for later.

I returned my focus to my mind. I didn’t have much luck manipulating it… for lack of a better word, externally, but maybe I could do it internally? I’d been viewing it as something I emitted rather than just me. It was a conscious choice, like my turning to ‘look’ at things, one to maintain a connection to the relative sanity of the human I was before. I could let go of it, but I knew that if I did that, my mind would be irrevocably changed—more so than it already had been, that is. This would be a fundamental worldview shift, and I likely wouldn’t be able to turn back once I’d done it.

And yet, it seemed to be the only avenue left for progression.

I turned the corner at the end of the passageway, moving on down a stretch of corridor that had no prisoners. Stopping in the middle of it, I let myself drop to the floor, walking over to the wall and physically leaning against it. The sensations were slightly muted, but they still served as a point of focus.

And then, without fanfare or occasion, I let go, and my mind… was.

I was not my body. It was an extension of me, true, and one that I could control intimately, but it was not me. I was myself, a purely metaphysical construct, nebulous and unconstrained. I could feel the other dementors within the bounds of me, but the connection I felt with them was faint, only relational, not sympathetic. They had their own guiding intelligence, and all I had was my body.

I let myself spread further through three-dimensional space, feeling each and every soul within the bounds of my presence, and yet becoming more and more dispersed the further I went. It was not an extension of myself as my body was, but simply me. There were no unconscious actions that my consciousness performed. The contradiction made for an amusing oxymoron, but it held true nonetheless. I could feed off the souls in range, or I could even consume the souls themselves through the conduit of my body, but I and I alone chose who and what I would affect.

The ease with which my problem had been solved caused a tiny bit of dissonance, but it was irrelevant in the long run. I drew myself back in, withdrawing to the level I had been stuck in before, and left myself there. I continued towards the stairs to the higher levels. Sirius was a suspected Death Eater, so he would likely be on the same level as the rest of them; namely, the highest-security level, the highest level in Azkaban.

Drifting up the stairs, I made my way through several more floors, seeing more and more dementors as I climbed. But as I got higher, the severity of the crimes performed by the prisoners grew larger as well. Thieves gave way to murderers gave way to rapists. The minds of the prisoners were sickening. I only gave each the briefest touch, to determine identities, and it still was enough to make me want to relieve them of their souls to prevent them from ever returning to the wider world.

The question of taking justice into my own hands was irrelevant in this situation, though. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t, not without completely ruining my entire plan.

But there was a benefit to my perusal of so many minds: I very quickly found out the date. The prisoners in Azkaban with life sentences weren’t as helpful, but those with shorter sentences were desperately clinging to their sense of time, counting down the days until they would be released. It was late in February of 1993. The titular character of the Harry Potter series would be in the latter half of his second year. This was also the year that Sirius would be escaping, though that wasn’t scheduled until the summer, around July if I had the timeline straight in my head.

True, it was suspiciously convenient that I was placed so close to the main events of the series, but again, worrying about it could wait. I had far more important things to focus on for the foreseeable future.

Like, for example, the first mind I sensed as I exited the stairwell onto the highest floor in Azkaban. It was a female of indeterminate age—that is, she’d forgotten her own age, and I couldn’t see her to guess at it yet. But her mind… her mind was twisted, frayed and in tatters. Almost all that was left was pure and exclusive devotion to another.

It almost sounded romantic when I phrased it like that. But the next bit of information quickly shattered any notions of romance: the subject of all that devotion was a man named Tom Riddle. This was the mind of Bellatrix Lestrange.

I continued down the hall, brushing through the surface thoughts of each and every prisoner I encountered. Most were Death Eaters, more than had ever been named in canon, but the floor was not exclusive to Voldy’s band of trained monkeys. So far, I had not yet come across the one I was looking for.

I continued down a side hall, running adjacent to the one I entered the floor on. Then, ahead, I felt something strange: a soul, seemingly detached from a body. Was it a ghost? Here, in Azkaban? I moved towards it, and…

No, my initial impression was wrong. It wasn’t that the soul was detached from a body, it was just that the thoughts of the holder of the soul were different enough from the standard human that I missed them at first glance. They were simpler, guided by the intentions of the soul, but not intimately connected to it as a human brain was.

I turned a final corner and looked through the bars of a cell at a bone-thin and ragged—yet still quite large—black dog.

Hello there, Sirius.

I paused outside of his cell, contemplating the sleeping animal. Slowly, a tiny tone of mischief snuck its way into my thoughts. Sirius was one of the Marauders, he was a purveyor of pranks and maker of mischief. Of all the prisoners here, he would be the one who would be best suited to make light of his time here, joking to others about it and the like. And coincidentally, he was one of the very few people in here that didn’t, at least on some level, deserve it.

I reached for the door, creaking it open and floating inside. At the sound of the cell door closing, Sirius shot awake, blinking bleary eyes and swiveling his head frantically to try and find the source of the noise.

Then, his gaze fell on me, and he froze. Barely even breathing, he was trembling slightly, but otherwise making no motion whatsoever. The poor thing was terrified. Thankfully, that should vanish soon, even if it was replaced by sheer confusion.

I dropped to the floor, reached down, and with a single motion, scooped the dog into my lap while sitting down against the wall. Then, carefully excluding him from the effects of my aura, I began to pet the dog. For a few minutes, Sirius became completely motionless, his breathing stopping for a worrying few seconds. Thankfully, it restarted before I could begin to take preventative measures, and that was the worst of his condition.

After a few more minutes, he relaxed minutely, still remaining on high alert but no longer about to collapse from fear. We sat there for a while longer, but eventually, I set him aside and left the cell, taking care to prevent Sirius from following. As callous as it was, I wanted to make as little disruption as possible in the early stages of my plan, which meant he would be remaining in Azkaban until he learned of Pettigrew.

I drifted towards the nearest window and returned to the skies above the prison. I had some ideas of what I wanted to do, but no completely solidified plan. That would be changing. I had already decided to try and make things a bit easier for the main characters, but tossing canon out of the window would butterfly all of my foreknowledge out of the window in the blink of an eye.

From what I could remember, the third book went pretty well, at least compared to Harry’s other years, with the only real threat being the dementors, given that the entire thing with Sirius was a massive mess of assumptions and misunderstandings. Voldemort had next to no impact on third year, but in the next he would kick everything up a couple dozen notches.

And on the topic of said bastard child of an inbred, abused, desperate girl and a drugged-up rape victim…

Horcruxes. I needed to deal with the Horcruxes.

With any luck, the Kiss would be able to affect Horcruxes. It was something that directly affected souls, but on that note, I should test it on a prisoner, preferably one already close to death, to see what it even was. Having no experience with the Kiss and then attempting to use it for the first time on a Horcrux was just begging for a disaster.

But once I’d done that, then the easiest Horcrux to locate would likely be the Locket in Grimmauld Place. Sirius still remembered his time there, as those weren’t exactly happy memories, so finding it would be as simple as searching his mind for the exact location. Even better, I would be able to get it without anyone knowing, save for Kreacher. And Kreacher would be relatively easy to silence, whether it be by killing him or using the promise he made to Regulus to keep him quiet. And as much as I preferred the first option based on my personal opinion of Kreacher, the second would potentially gain a truly loyal house elf, which had the potential to be all sorts of useful.

Just off the top of my head, he knew the location of the cave the Locket was hidden in originally. Even if the Horcrux wasn’t there anymore, it was still valuable information. Furthermore, he was the house elf of the Blacks, and would have all the knowledge that came with serving that family for years.

Returning to my original focus, I continued making my plan. Within half an hour, I had a tentative plan hashed out, with ten main steps, albeit with nearly thirty sub-steps considering what those ten goals would take to accomplish:

1. Test the Dementor’s Kiss.

2. Go to Grimmauld and retrieve the Locket. If the Kiss worked in step 1, attempt it on the Horcrux.

3. Wait until Sirius’s escape, and follow him, helping only if necessary.

4. If possible, memorize the flavor of Harry’s soul to make tracking him easier.

5. Attempt to establish myself as a ‘friendly’ dementor, or at least one more focused on Horcruxes than humans.

6. Wait for an opportune moment, then reveal the existence of Horcruxes to the relevant parties.

7. Find a way to remove the Scarcrux without killing Harry.

8. Remove the Scarcrux.

9. Destroy any remaining Horcruxes

10. Give Voldy and all his followers a big smooch.

With that established, I began drifting back down to the prison again. I had no illusions that my plan would survive any contact at all with the enemy, so it was more a rough guideline of what I wanted to do, but it was a good framework to work with for now. And with that, it was time to execute step one: Finding a prisoner on the verge of death, and testing out the Kiss.

Chapter Text

I began searching for a suitable prisoner for testing the Kiss on. My conditions were simple: that they were a truly unrepentant criminal, and that they were located relatively out of sight of the other prisoners, where I would be free to experiment as I pleased.

Another condition, unfortunately, was that they could not be a Death Eater, as using one of them might have actually been counterproductive in the long run. I was trying to not be noticed at this point, and none of the Death Eaters were close enough to death that they could have conceivably passed in their sleep.

And besides, I still needed a few of the Death Eaters alive — namely Bellatrix, so the Cup from her vault could be retrieved. I was putting exactly zero blind hope in the tropes like ‘helpful goblins’ and the like. In fact, I was expecting the Cup Horcrux to be the most difficult to get of them all. The others’ main protections were their anonymity, but when that was removed from the equation then that still left the entire security capabilities of Gringotts Bank.

I entered the prison through a window on the level below the Death Eaters, still high enough that the crimes committed by the prisoners were severe enough that I wouldn’t feel guilty. Sedately gliding through the halls, I made no effort to exclude the criminals from the effects of my presence. Their memories betrayed their darkest deeds, and they, to the last, were unrepentant.

But unfortunately, none of them were frail or old enough that they could have conceivably died in their sleep. I floated down the stairs to the next level, the third from the top. The cracked stone walls remained exactly the same, and if I couldn’t have determined my elevation, there would have been no visible sign I had changed floors. There was no significant change in the types of criminal I encountered, either. I understood that I was getting what was possibly the most biased viewpoint possible, but the sheer number of people imprisoned here was worrying.

I continued musing on the subject as I drifted down the corridors. I knew that the wizarding population was nowhere near the non-magical one, and the fact that Azkaban had comparable numbers of prisoners to non-magical prisons was the cause of my concern. Though, it could be partially alleviated by the fact that magicals had far longer life expectancies than non-magical people.

I was cut off from my musing as I turned a corner, entering a stretch of corridor with only six prisoners. As I continued down the hallway, I scanned their minds, as I had been doing for all the prisoners. And then, just as I was passing the third prisoner on the left, I stopped.

They were a murderer, check. They were truly unrepentant, check. There was no other prisoner with a direct line of sight into his cell, check. And finally, they were old enough that they had a not-insignificant chance of simply keeling over.

Found you.

I gently eased open the cell door, drifting silently in over the threshold. The man was asleep, but I strongly suspected that would soon change. Approaching him, I carefully released the stranglehold I had maintained over my instincts and aura, letting both almost completely loose.

The man woke immediately, shifting and letting out delirious, incomprehensible mumbling. I paid no mind to his ravings, focusing instead on his soul, that infinitely complex work of art.

It was simple, really.

The Dementor's Kiss wasn’t a separate ability. It was the standard emotion and thought-draining aura all dementors possessed, used at the highest level possible.

I loomed over the terrified criminal, slowly reaching up and lowering my hood. Then, I reached for his mind. First came the emotions. The tiny scraps of happiness he’d held onto, followed by the more negative ones, until all that was left was absolute apathy. Next came his surface thoughts, his conscious mind. His panic winked out, his thoughts slowing before finally stopping. His memories were next, ripped away from his psyche and obliterated in the void that a dementor was. His soul at that point was ragged, vast sections ripped away, it was stuttering, barely holding on to any connection to life it could.

I reached to the deepest part of himself and seized his soul, the culmination of everything that he was. Violently ripped from its vessel, it was shredded to fragments as it rose through the metaphysical ‘layers’ of the man. Finally, the remnants coalesced into a muddied sphere, a hideous parody of what the soul was supposed to be, and finished its separation from the vessel, slowly floating out of its mouth. I clamped my jaws over the corpse’s mouth, seizing the soul and consuming the last remnants of what was once a person.

He was gone.

Not to any afterlife, or reincarnation, no. His soul had been unmade, rendered to nothing. He was completely and irrevocably gone.

The instant the soul vanished, I felt something. Not analogous to any of my old senses, but a feeling nonetheless. It was not good nor bad, it simply was. And then, just as suddenly, it was gone, as though it had never been there in the first place.

For a minute, I floated there, motionless, going over the process again and again. I could remember every instant of it. I–

Wait.

I could remember every instant of the entire time I was a dementor, perfectly. My memory had been vastly improved with the species switch. But why didn’t I notice it before now? Unknown.

I shook myself out of my—quite literal—introspection, reexamining the body before me. As I had hoped, the removal of his soul while he was in such a frail state had been too much for his body, which had simply… stopped. I lifted him and set him down on the bedroll, positioning his arms and legs as though he were sleeping. Finally, I slid his eyes closed and backed away. There was no sign of any outside interference in his death; to any who inspected it would seem he simply died from natural causes.

Good.

The body would be discovered by the Aurors and buried in the graveyard on the other side of the island. Infinitely more important, however, were my own discoveries made through the use of the Kiss.

The Dementor’s Kiss was a true and absolute end. The souls that were unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of it were completely and utterly destroyed, with no possibility of escape. This was very good news for my plan to use the Kiss on the Horcruxes. As I’d already determined, the Locket in Grimmauld Place would be the easiest to acquire at this point in time. But before rushing off to get it and subsequently exposing myself to more unknowns than I could count, I needed to become more familiar with myself. Specifically, with the abilities my new species granted me.

I left the cell and continued down the hall, slipping through an open window and ascending to the skies above the prison. There, high in the air, I reexamined myself and my powers.

I could rather easily determine the more obvious ones, such as the structure of my mind, which accounted for both the mental effects of a dementor, and the Kiss itself. But the specificities still weren’t immediately apparent, which could only be solved with time and experimentation.

Dementors were ridiculously overpowered. I could fly at speeds faster than most cars could drive, I could feed on or otherwise manipulate people’s minds, I was telekinetic, invulnerable and immortal, and could rip out people’s souls.

It was immediately obvious that I was neither completely book-compliant nor movie-compliant. What this meant for my plans at this point was negligible, but I had made them with the book canon in mind. The movie canon had a few distinct differences that I would need to take into account.

And I had time to plan, as mentioned above — I was immortal.

It was a little fact that I had almost glossed over, but needed addressing regardless. I knew, intellectually, that there was no way to kill a dementor, but the idea that that applied to me as well really hadn’t hit me yet. I mulled over the thought a few times, there above the prison. It still failed to elicit any great reaction, but I did wonder if that was due to the species shift or just natural personality drift.

My musings about immortality soon brought me to another rather important topic that needed to be addressed: the Patronus charm. I knew from the books that it didn’t actually harm the dementor, only drove them away, but I had no idea what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of one. If I was remembering the lesson Lupin gave Harry correctly, then the patronus acted as a shield between the caster and the dementor - it was a manifestation of happy thoughts that could not feel fear, meaning a dementor’s aura could not affect it. On the other hand, the corporeal form was shown to physically drive the dementors away. I would need to test each version out.

This test would be a little more dangerous for me than the one with the Kiss, though. Not physically dangerous, of course, but it would require interacting with the Auror guards. There was a much higher risk of exposure.

The Aurors did a walkthrough of the prison every day, usually around noon, when the light was brightest—but given the ever-present storm, there wasn’t really that much of a difference. Regardless, I would need to observe them for a few days, and then approach them on one of the walkthroughs, when they had their patronuses active.

I shifted myself in the air, drifting downwards towards the prison wall. There was nothing to do now but wait.

Six days later, I was prepared. The Aurors kept to the same patrol route, and I had been carefully noting how the other dementors reacted to their presence. I was relatively confident in my ability to remain undetected.

The Aurors seemed to have a rotation for whoever would be casting the Patronus on each walkthrough. Today was the turn of the second-shortest Auror, who always, always took at least two tries to produce a corporeal patronus.

I hovered, silent and unmoving, just outside the main entrance to the building. It was just before noon, and the Aurors would be moving soon. Not more than ten minutes later, I felt their minds at the edge of my perception. I watched as the duo approached, having left the other two in the building at the docks. Soon enough, they were within line-of-sight, or rather, line-of-whatever-it-was that I used. The designated caster stepped forward, raised his wand, and spoke.

“Expecto patronum”

A massive burst of un-light seared my senses. It tingled, like the aftermath of a bad sunburn.

The same pain that came from souls, but more. It was… concentrated, perhaps? Refined? Purified?

I shuddered, gliding back a short distance, trying to reorient myself after what was, essentially, a flashbang to my senses. Seizing the cloud with my mind, I wrenched it away, simply trying to remove it, to anywhere, just not here.

It faded away, the Auror cursing under his breath.

“Expecto patronum,” he repeated, this time with more emphasis. This time, I was slammed backwards by an unseen force - unseen, that is, because I had just gotten another flashbang to the face. I shook myself, flipping over in the air.

A glowing duck was swimming through the air away from me, returning to its caster.

Taking a few deep, rattling breaths, I took off, making my way towards the roof of Azkaban. Landing gently, I walked over to the edge and sat down, thoughts focused on my most recent experiment. The patronus generated something similar to whatever it was that souls generated, the patronus being more intense.

So, souls and patronuses were connected somehow. I could also discount Lupin’s explanation entirely, given that I felt absolutely no emotions from the patronus, only the pain of the light. But why, then, would the presence of a patronus inspire positive emotions in humans? Maybe it was simply the absence of the effects of a dementor’s presence?

I didn’t know.

I waited as the Aurors began their walkthrough of the prison. I could feel it happen beneath me, as the more coherent prisoners’ minds began to tilt in a new direction. The background emotions radiating from the humans shifted, not necessarily to a new emotion, simply a different flavor of apathetic despair.

As the Aurors climbed through the tower, the detectable shifts grew fewer and fewer, the number of sane prisoners dropping with each level upwards. There were exceptions, of course, Sirius being the first that came to mind, but most in the higher-security levels of Azkaban were lost in their own minds, too far gone to give any serious consideration to the world outside them. I knew they could, in theory, get better, given that they had once Riddle broke them out, but for now they were going to be staying here, suffering.

The Aurors finished their walkthrough and departed for their quarters, leaving the halls of Azkaban unguarded save for the dementors. I slowly rose from my perch on the rooftop and once more began drifting downwards, heading towards the nearest window to Sirius’s cell.

Upon reaching the aperture, I hesitated for a moment. What was going to be done in regards to Sirius’s situation? Before the year ended, the Minister would be performing an inspection, which would be when Sirius learned of Pettigrew’s survival in canon. It was that interaction that would set in motion Sirius’s escape.

And now, I had a choice. I could avoid all contact with Sirius, letting canon run its course. Alternatively, I could interact with him, potentially ruining all of my foreknowledge as the plot changed. Which would net me the greatest benefit? My goals were to improve this clusterfuck of a world, and while I felt that Sirius’s imprisonment was a travesty of justice and should never have happened, leaving him to escape himself would free me to begin taking action outside the prison.

Conversely, that would be risky, seeing as dementors were believed to be confined on Azkaban, under the control of the Ministry of Magic. My being found out led to all sorts of potential bad outcomes.

Then again, I was planning to change canon irreversibly anyway. Interacting with Sirius now could lead to an easier integration into the wider world, and could net me a wizarding ally.

I sighed, dropping down to sit on the windowsill. Which path to choose?

Ultimately, the first step in the rough plan I had made was what finalized my decision. I was going to be attempting the Dementor’s Kiss on the locket Horcrux, and though the changes to canon that would cause wouldn’t be felt until years later, it was still a massive alteration.

I would interact with Sirius, but let him escape himself. Before that though, I would retrieve the location of 12 Grimmauld Place from his memory, travel there, and test the effects of the Kiss on Horcruxes.

I floated upwards, drawing myself up to my full twelve-foot height. Slowly and silently, I drifted down the hall. Prisoners went silent as I drifted by, huddling in the back corners of their cells with their knees drawn up to their chest, rocking back and forth as my aura sent their minds into a spiral of depression. Ahead, I noticed Sirius’s soul flicker somewhat, quickly settling into the same feeling I knew to be his animagus form.

As I reached the door of his cell, I stopped. Padfoot was trembling in a corner, curled up into a tight ball. A rather pitiful sight, but Azkaban always took its toll. The door creaked open, admitting me. There was no reaction from the thin dog, his mind too engrossed in a mantra professing Peter’s guilt and his own innocence.

I pulled back from his mind, bending my aura around him. His shivering eased slightly, but he remained in the corner, attempting to compose himself. As I waited for him to come to his senses, I took in his cell with greater focus than I had before.

It was filthy, covered in the accumulated grime of ten years of neglect. The cot was just enough to ensure that the prisoners didn’t freeze to death, but nothing more. I narrowed my focus to the grime on the wall. Perhaps…?

Sharpening my mind to a razor’s edge, I ran it along the wall, flaring my aura to a more concentrated level as I did so. Left behind was a stripe of pristine stone, as though I had taken a pressure washer to it.

Oh.

Oh, dear.

This had the potential to be quite useful.

If I was right, then I would be able to create telekinetic blades anywhere within the bounds of my mind. Invisible, nigh-undetectable telekinetic blades. And given the ease with which I had shaved through the muck, they were strong invisible, nigh-undetectable telekinetic blades.

I looked down at the shivering canine at my feet. He was still too incoherent for proper conversation. I looked back at the walls. Pausing for a moment, I contemplated the degree to which I could aid Sirius whilst remaining undetected. A cleaner cell would certainly be better than what he had now, but it would instantly draw attention to his cell tomorrow, during the next Auror walkthrough.

I paused as an idea came to mind. I quickly returned my focus to the wall, going over a large spot with less intense of a touch, disguising the stripe as a simple patch of lighter-colored stone. Drawing my mind inward, I turned to look at Padfoot beneath me. This next bit would take… precision.

Shaping my mind into a razor’s edge had been easy. It was a single geometric shape. What I was doing now was quite a bit more complicated. First was a flat backplate. That part was easy, a single flattened rectangular prism did the trick. Next, I refocused on holding the shape as I drew one side of the plate upwards, making a forest of cylinders. Finally, the ends of each cylinder bulged slightly, making a tiny squashed sphere.

I held the shape of my mind in place as I took in my handiwork. I was “holding” a perfectly serviceable paddle brush. Carefully maintaining the complex shape, I looked again at the dog, who had finally cracked open an eye and, upon seeing me, had frozen again. Reaching down, I picked up the stiff dog, using my other hand as a reference point to guide the brush towards the matted fur.

At first it was slow going, mixed with a few soft whines of pain as I misjudged the amount of force needed to clear the particularly stubborn snarls. Once we had settled into a rhythm, however, progress was uninterrupted. I could see a few fleas jump as I continued, but I didn’t dare to divert my focus from the brush. I could get the parasites later, once I had finished the preliminary cleaning.

When I finished, Padfoot’s fur was much better-looking, but still showed the marks of ten years of neglect. I let the brush unravel, the shape dispersing the moment I stopped concentrating on it. I set Padfoot down as I began gathering up the various chunks of dirt and shed fur my brushing had deposited on the floor. As the detritus flew away towards the nearest window, I felt a brief twist in the nearby magic, Padfoot’s form blurring out and being replaced by the bipedal Sirius.

The man staggered back, collapsing down and sitting on his cot. He stared at his hands in incredulity. He turned them over and over, ignoring the way his cleaner hair fell neatly to the sides as opposed to the way the previous stringy mess had stuck to his face. He suddenly shuddered, a short and violent action. As I turned towards the cell door, preparing to make my exit, a hoarse voice sounded out behind me, cracking and gritty with disuse.

“Why?”

I paused, slowly turning back to the human. For a moment I simply stood there, debating the merit of direct communication in my mind. Making up my mind, I turned back towards the door. Gliding through it, I paused as it clicked shut, turning my head to directly face Sirius’s gaze.

“Innocent…” I rasped out, turning away from the cell.

Sirius flinched, his already pale face losing any color it had left. His shudders returned with a vengeance as he once again stared at his hands.

As I slipped out the window, tears began splashing onto the floor of his cell as the edges of his mouth tugged upwards for the first time in over a decade.

I once again hovered in the air above Azkaban Prison. It was too early to tell whether or not my visit to Sirius had gone well. I certainly hoped it had, and that the world would see a net benefit as a direct result of my actions, but I would simply have to wait and see.

The emotional reaction to my response had been as expected. A near-breakdown was a perfectly normal response to the emotional bombshell I’d dropped, even discounting the mental degradation Azkaban generated in its inhabitants. Whether or not it would be beneficial was a slightly inconsequential question, especially considering I was planning to do more. The continued interaction with someone who knew the truth behind Sirius’s innocence would hopefully improve his mental state. Though it might have seemed callous, I needed as few disruptions to canon as I enacted my plans, so Sirius would not be escaping until later, but even so, he would be in a better place mentally.

The thought of canon drew my mind to the dementor attacks in Harry’s third year. The encounter on the train was nearly-guaranteed to happen, but the future ones at the quidditch game and on the shores of the lake might be butterflied away by the changes I was making. Then again, there was an equal chance that they would still happen. I would need to ensure my presence at each of the encounters, should they happen, to make sure of the trio’s safety. As a side benefit, if I was the dementor on the train, I would get a good look at Harry, and by extension, the Horcrux in his scar.

It was a fragment of a soul, and I’d already established that I could manipulate souls to some degree. If I could remove it outright, a massive chain of disastrous events in the future would be neatly avoided. But even if that turned out to be impossible for some reason, I would still be able to inspect the souls of the trio, something that would only be beneficial given my near-guaranteed continued interaction with them.

Assuming the worst-case scenario, that the Prophecy was real and undefiable, Harry and I would continue to meet given our shared goal of Tom Riddle Junior’s obliteration. But on that topic, there was a rather important issue I would have to resolve before the rest of my plans could continue.

The Locket Horcrux.

I had the location from Sirius’s memories. The trip would be long but easily doable. It was time to determine whether or not I even had the ability to affect Horcruxes. If I didn’t, Riddle’s destruction would be a significantly greater task, but it wouldn't be completely insurmountable. But there was no use wondering about hypotheticals when I had the ability to verify everything within a day.

It was time to visit 12 Grimmauld Place.

Chapter Text

Despite my slightly overdramatic declaration, I was waylaid by something I noticed as I flew out of the prison. The Aurors were leading a prisoner into the building, something that, while not an altogether unheard-of occurrence, was rare enough to make me stop and investigate.

And I was quite glad I did.

The prisoner was large, the only person I’d seen who came close to a dementor’s height. With an untamed, shaggy mess of a mane, he was instantly recognizable to any fan of the Harry Potter books.

Rubeus Hagrid.

I sat back in the sky, going over the timelines I remembered. This was second year, right. Hagrid being incarcerated meant that Dumbledore had just been removed as headmaster due to the whole Chamber of Secrets debacle, and that Harry and Ron would be having their bathroom adventure within a few months. But despite the attention on the basilisk, something far more important would happen down there in the Chamber.

The first Horcrux would be destroyed, and with it, half of Riddle’s soul.

I drew my attention back to the shivering gentle giant — or rather, half-giant — as the Aurors escorted him at wandpoint towards the prison proper.

What to do, what to do…

However misguided, he was a good person, and did not deserve Azkaban. On the other hand, I was attempting to minimize my direct interference with the storyline until I had set everything up. I could not reveal myself to him. Hagrid made for a good contender as the most indiscreet character in the entire series.

So the question became how to assuage my remnants of morality while also remaining undetected by the recipient of my aid.

I followed the Aurors into the stone passageways of the prison, maintaining pace with the others of my kind who’d also been attracted to the spectacle by the lure of a fresh soul. Hagrid was leaking fear like water from a sieve and he seemed only moments away from a full emotional breakdown. As we passed occupied cells the more cognizant inhabitants jeered at the new arrival, various insults being hurled from the mundane to horribly bigoted. The latter I marked down for a little extra time spent with dementors hovering outside their barred cells. If they had the capacity for racism, they certainly had enough emotions to donate to their guards.

As the Aurors manhandled Hagrid into the first empty cell found on this floor, I mentally reached for the nearest dementor. I’d already noted that the dementors seemed to be more willing to listen to me than the Aurors. Not altogether unsurprising, considering I was the same species as the recipient of my orders. But now, to test how far that willingness went, I would be giving an order that stood contrary to the inherent nature of a dementor.

I pressed the imprint and flavor of Hagrid’s soul into the mind of the dementor, violently shoving the concept of ‘not-food’ at it as I did so. The dementor’s mind… shuddered, for lack of a better term, then immediately shifted slightly. Tracing the edges, I exhaled in satisfaction as I noted that Hagrid was specifically being excluded from the aura’s effects.

Now, for the real test.

I took the entire sequence of giving the order to the dementor, packaged it as one concept, then pressed that to the mind of the dementor along with the command ‘disseminate.’

With any luck, that would —

The dementor turned away from me and towards the next nearest of our kind, its mind flickering. Within moments, the second dementor’s aura pulled away from Hagrid as well, and now both were looking for an uncontacted dementor to pass the order to.

Perfect.

I could propagate an order throughout my entire kind without having to do the individual action myself. This would vastly improve my efficiency.

I floated above the prison building, taking in the surrounding storm. I had set up another self-propagating order for Sirius, and was now preparing for my trip to retrieve the Locket.

The Prison of Azkaban was located on a tiny island in the middle of the North Sea. To reach London would be as simple as flying west until I hit land, then following the coastline south. Unfortunately, I wasn’t genre-blind enough not to realize I’d all but damned myself to complications with that statement. Murphy’s law was a pain.

I turned my body to face west — not that there was much difference in what I detected. Azkaban was completely surrounded by storm, making each and every direction equally inhospitable to any forms of life that couldn’t tell physics to fuck off.

Fortunately for me, I was included in that category.

I shot forward at a blinding pace. Staying low for the moment, I absently noticed that I was traveling fast enough that my slipstream was creating a wake, even in the choppy and stormy seas. Lifting a bit, I leveled off at a higher altitude, ensuring there were no disturbances created by my passing. Paranoid? Perhaps, but I had no idea how non-magical detection interacted with dementors. I knew that cameras and the like didn’t catch us — or the Prime Minister wouldn’t have been so dismissive of the massive fog banks in book seven — but the wake I created was very much a physical thing that might have been detectable.

The monotony of the flight began to subside as I got far enough from the island to start seeing signs of animal life. Not a lot, but it was there nonetheless. The remainder of the flight was entirely uneventful. I hit a landmass, turned left, and began following the coastline south.

The mouth of the River Thames was unmistakable. The sun was setting, but the level of light made no difference to my senses. The night would actually work to my advantage, with less potential mages on the streets who might have spotted me. I cruised through the air, following the winding path of the river below.

The ambient magic in the city was tumultuous compared to the peaceful hum it’d been over the ocean. Something I should have expected, given the higher concentrations of both life and magic in the area. Speaking of, I could see a rather large vortex further west, in Westminster if I was remembering correctly. That could be nothing other than the British Ministry of Magic Headquarters.

I steered clear. My destination was further north, anyways. The Tower of London was a sign that the time had come to break from the river and head northwest, towards Islington. Closer to the streets now, I could see the various magical disturbances that I assumed to be wizarding houses, scattered almost randomly across the city. As with the Ministry, I steered clear.

Finally, up ahead, my destination came into view. The wards on Grimmauld Place were both old and powerful, immediately detectable even with my lacking understanding of the magic in question. The knowledge came to me perhaps through instinct, or subconscious deduction, I didn’t know.

I paused just outside the border of the wards, feeling out the intricacies of the magic. Being able to see the flow of the ward itself wasn’t as helpful as one would imagine when it came to determining how it worked from scratch. With no prior experience, I had next to no reference as to what each part did. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try and puzzle it out anyways.

Two hours later, I had come to a conclusion: mages were idiots. Well, idiot-savants, perhaps, given that they had managed to accomplish this much. There were so many unnecessary additions and loose ends that I could only conclude that whoever put this ward together had no idea how it actually worked.

Oh, it was certainly powerful, but nowhere near efficient. It was as though mages had stumbled upon wards while testing completely random metastructures, and never bothered to study them past the fact that they worked. And given what I knew of the wizarding world, that sad, sad fact was probably true.

Bemoaning the lacking rationality magical innovators seemed to universally have was not exactly productive. But still, while I had learned quite a bit about wards and magic in general, I still had no assurance on whether or not these ones would affect me. I suspected that they wouldn’t, but I would have preferred something a bit more solid than a suspicion. On the other hand, I couldn’t waste any more time here. Every moment was another chance for a random mage to stumble upon me. I needed to make a decision as to how to progress.

I stilled as I debated the merits and detractions of each option.

A minute later, my mind was decided. I could not waste more time. Carefully, I eased forwards, drawing my mind back into itself as I brushed up against the ward line. Time for the moment of truth. As my physical form passed through the barrier, the threads of the magic shuddered, the tiniest amount being siphoned off as the wards attempted to interface with me. That separated thread vanished, lost into the void a dementor was.

I emerged into the interior of the ward with nothing damaged but my serenity. Uncertainty in the face of the unknown was a cross-species phenomenon, it seemed. Looking back, the wards appeared perfectly fine as well, the other threads shifting and turning to make up for the fragment that had vanished.

I paused. What was…

Hmm. Nothing. I once again turned to the house, floating up the weed-covered path towards the front door. Now, how to go about doing this? Kreacher was still alive, and house-elves were quite powerful in defense of their homes. Thus, the simplest solution — as much as I disliked Kreacher — was to avoid giving him an attack that would necessitate defending against.

I paused again, curling a hand into a fist. I could still deal with Kreacher later. But then again, once his loyalty was earned, he could be a useful ally. On the other hand, he was a vicious little bastard whose direct actions had led to Sirius dying in the canon timeline. He had gotten his master killed, simply because he didn’t like Sirius.

Actually, no.

No, that was — as much as I hated to admit it — unfair to Kreacher.

Sirius was innocent of the crime he’d been sent to Azkaban for, that much was true. But by no means was his soul anywhere near pure. Childish, slightly mad, and at least a little sadistic, Sirius Black wasn’t exactly the image of moral righteousness. He had used one of his friends as a terror weapon at best, and if his plan hadn’t been interrupted, that would have changed to murder weapon at worst.

Kreacher, raised in a staunch traditionalist family, would understandably take issue with Sirius. That didn’t make Kreacher’s views morally or ethically correct, but it accounted for some of it, at the very least.

I dropped to the ground, crushing a few long weeds as I centered myself for what was about to happen. If Kreacher could be reasoned with, then I would manipulate him towards gaining his loyalty. If not, then… Well, whether or not the Kiss worked on house-elves was something I still needed to find out.

I crossed the remaining distance to the door in three rather long strides, then reached out and knocked thrice, the booms echoing hollowly through the halls of the house before me. Less than two seconds passed before there was a slight click emanating from the latch, the door beginning to swing open. I turned my body’s head downward, facing the diminutive and shriveled creature.

House-elves were… interesting. Magic wove around them in ways simply different than how it interacted with human mages, and magic seemed to be interwoven with the very essence of the creature, rather than accessed by the being. Were house-elves an artificially created race? It certainly wouldn’t surprise me to find that mages had created slaves to do their bidding.

“The master is not available,” he croaked. “The noble house of Black is not accepting visitors now —”

He cut himself off as he finally noticed what I was, helped along by me releasing my hold on my aura, letting it curl back out to the standard.

“Kreacher,” I rasped, my voice low, hollow, and echoing. “I have been sent to complete the final task of Regulus Arcturus Black.”

Everything I said was true, from a certain point of view. I had indeed been sent, yes. By myself. But Kreacher would take the implication that I had a master. And thus, should I succeed in my task, I would be able to easily shift his loyalty to anyone I wished, so long as I could speak to them beforehand to get them to pretend to be my master.

Kreacher’s eyes went wider in seeming defiance of physics. He staggered slightly, holding on to the door.

“H-How…”

I bent down, bringing my cloaked face closer to the shivering elf.

“Bring the Locket to me,” I told him.

“It is possible?” he muttered. “Kreacher has always tried but never was able to… poor master Regulus… Kreacher f-f-failed…”

“Bring the Locket to me,” I said once more.

“Forbidden to speak of it to the family,” Kreacher continued, the muttering coming faster now. “So many powerful magics… and it would not open…”

“Bring. The Locket. To me,” I commanded, my ethereal voice giving the words an almost sibilant undertone.

Kreacher vanished in a small pop before almost instantly reappearing, Locket in hand. My senses snapped to it. There was no possible way for this to be a fake, unless the House of Black had another Horcrux stashed away — on second thought, they might, so best to make sure.

Within, contained by wickedly barbed spears of magic, practically dripping malice, was a fragment of a soul. It was ragged, the edges stained and rent by the metaphysical barbed wire entangling it. And in complete contrast to all of the souls I’d previously seen, it was still. Its patterns did not change.

Static.

Unchanging.

Dead.

But yet, it was not. It couldn’t have been. It was alive yet fixed, a snapshot held by magic of the highest order.

I extended an arm and opened my hand, palm up. Slowly, Kreacher reached up and set the Horcrux in it before backing away two paces, keeping his eyes fixed on the Locket the entire while.

I turned my attention to the magic of the Locket itself. Or rather, magics. To my surprise, there were two very distinct flavors of magic in the Locket. One was new, fresh, horrific; Tom Riddle’s. The other was old. Very, very old. Woven throughout the very metal and jewels the Locket was created from. Was… was this Salazar Slytherin’s enchantment? Not malicious, but simply… eager, it felt. It wasn’t a spell of protection, that was for sure. I had just spent two hours studying intent-based wards, and this was completely different.

No, the interfaces of this magic reached to the mage wielding it, as well as three other —

Oh.

Oh, that was very clever, Founders of Hogwarts.

A connected spell within all four of your personal objects? An excellent way to ensure they remained together, depending on the purpose of the spell. But once the objects had been separated, the knowledge had apparently been forgotten, from what I knew of canon. And since then, I was fairly sure only three had ever been gathered at once.

But what was the purpose of the spell?

I would have frowned if my mouth could have made the expression. I couldn’t know. I only had one of the four objects, after all. I would likely have to…

Hmm.

I would likely have to collect all of them to determine the spell. Could I realistically do it? Yes, probably. I already knew their locations, and the most difficult one would likely be the cup in Bellatrix’s vault. But did I want to go to that effort?

I was already going to get three of them in the process of destroying the Horcruxes. Getting the sword as well wouldn’t be that much out of my way. And I was curious about what kind of spell would last this long, and what it would be used for.

Yes, I would retrieve the Founders’ objects. I would have to be careful to remove the Horcruxes in them without damaging the original magic.

But back to the Horcrux in hand.

I seized both the soul fragment and the surrounding magic — Riddle’s magic only, leaving Slytherin’s alone — and tugged. It moved. Good. Reaching up with my free hand, I lowered my hood and began the process of the Dementor’s Kiss.

The fragment shuddered as it was slowly ripped from its container, its unnatural stillness persisting all the while. As the fragment was flayed from its container, the ragged edges began to flail about in a horrible parody of a soul’s natural motion. Tightening my mental grip on it, I ensured none of it came into contact with Salazar Slytherin’s enchantment. It would do no good for me to track down all the items only to find out I’d accidentally destroyed one of them.

As the streamers of magic and soul began to vanish into the void, the Horcrux’s struggles grew weaker and weaker. With one last metaphorical gasp, the soul-piece was gone.

Slowly, Kreacher approached, eyes wide.

“The — the magic is gone… It is finished… Master Regulus’ order is finished!”

His gaze shot up to my face.

“Your master, who?”

“I will not betray their identity until they give me leave,” I rasped. Kreacher nodded madly, a glint in his eyes.

“Yes, of course, of course. Kreacher understands.”

He turned to look further into the house.

“Kreacher must prepare the house, oh, what Mistress would say at the state… Visitors, guests, no, the noble house of Black is not in a fit state… Kreacher must prepare…”

He turned to me and offered a deep bow.

“Kreacher thanks the unliving visitor. The Master is away, but the noble house of Black will be befitting its grace, ere the next visit,” he said. Hearing the sudden shift to a more proper, if archaic, dialect was slightly surprising, but I merely nodded and silently turned to glide away.

Turning a corner, I lifted the locket up and threw the chain over my neck, tucking it beneath my robe. It would be completely hidden to the casual observer for now, and I would find a better hiding spot soon enough. Lifting off, I shot upwards towards the clouds. It was still the dead of night, but I was taking no chances. Once I reached the cover of said clouds, I banked in the air and made for Azkaban, going over my discoveries from the excursion.

Horcruxes could be affected by the Kiss, for one. The biggest potential obstacle to my eliminating Riddle was taken off the board before it even was played. Even if almost everything else went wrong, at the very least I had confirmation I could do it myself if need be.

The second big thing was the unknown enchantment in the locket. Even now, I could feel it, three probing tendrils waiting patiently for their respective counterparts. Certainly, I could be completely mistaken as to what it was, but given the tripartite nature of the connections, I couldn’t think of anything else that would fit, save the other Founders’ items.

Kreacher was also now on a different path. Hopefully it would turn out for the better, but I had no way to predict that. His reactions to Sirius would always be negative, but might be exacerbated or ameliorated by the house-elf’s better mindset. And having the house be cleaner would almost certainly be better for all parties involved.

Returning my focus to the flight, I continued towards Azkaban.

Upon returning to the prison, my very first order of business was to perform a flythrough, ensuring both Hagrid and Sirius were alright. I hadn’t been gone long, relatively speaking, but this was Azkaban. I wasn’t going to put much stock in blind optimism. Thankfully, both of them were fine, the only thing even approaching the status of ‘problem’ being the host of fleas that had taken up residence within Hagrid’s beard.

I promptly removed them as he slept and tossed the lot into Rodolphous Lestrange’s cell.

Technically speaking, the next step of my plan was to wait for Sirius’s escape. The idea of nothing but monotonous patrolling for two solid months served as a firm enough counterargument. Keeping in mind the rough timeline I’d established in my head, I made a few smaller plans for actions I could take while waiting. Interaction with the two would have to be kept relatively scarce so as to maintain some modicum of the timeline, at least for now, but I could certainly set in motion a few domino chains behind the scenes.

I also wanted to take some time to reexamine exactly what I was. My acclimation to my new form of life had been, on a logical level, terrifyingly quick. I knew that the vast majority of people faced with a sudden, inexplicable, involuntary species and dimension change certainly would not be as composed as I was being. While it was certainly disquieting, it evoked nowhere near the emotional response I was expecting. Realistically, I would expect at least some form of emotional breakdown every week or so on average, as various facts sank in such as the realization I might never see anybody I cared about ever again.

The sheer apathy I felt when contemplating that outcome was not what I would have felt as a human.

Regardless, I would be taking time every so often to try and puzzle things out regarding myself.

Thus, over the course of the next month, I split my time between patrolling the prison to maintain my facade as an ordinary dementor, checking in on Sirius and Hagrid, and exploring my abilities. It took a fair few experiments of highly dubious morality, but I had managed to improve my finesse to the point I was comfortable manipulating thought and emotion without causing any lasting damage to the soul. I had to make the clarification of ‘lasting’ damage for a very important reason, that being that any modification of the mind reflected on the soul. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure that ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ were different things at this point. It took much effort, but I could snip away and reweave the lines, threads, and shapes of the soul. That was the confirmation I needed to understand that the ‘shape’ of the soul as I perceived it was the true and absolute record of who a person was. Altering the shape of the soul altered the person.

It was rather obvious, in hindsight. Thinking of the mind and soul as independent had limited my worldview.

Hagrid’s departure from the prison happened late in the night. I only even caught the event itself because one of the Aurors accidentally woke up one of the other prisoners, leading to a chain reaction of varied shouting.

It was near the end of May. Hagrid’s departure meant that Harry and Ron had made their trip down to the Chamber of Secrets and killed the basilisk, but more importantly, it meant that the diary was destroyed. Technically, we were over halfway to Riddle’s obliteration, considering his soul was split in half with each Horcrux. The diary was half, and the locket brought the total higher. I didn’t let my levity at that tidbit affect my convictions, though. The tiny fragment of a soul in the wraith was still a danger. Perhaps not physically, but I would rather the world kept going in a relatively-peaceful state. I knew it was a bit much to ask for, but on the other hand, I had the perfect opportunity to prevent attempted racial genocide.

June was uneventful when regarded as part of a larger scale. The only notable events were my small interactions with Sirius — and, I supposed, two larger ones.

Nevertheless, the month passed by, and soon enough, it was time for the Minister’s inspection. With a series of sharp cracks, a contingent of Aurors apparated onto the island, followed shortly by the Minister himself. Fudge’s face twisted in revulsion upon the sight of the prison, but the Aurors at least had greater control of their emotions.

After conferring with the guards stationed at the dock, the group cast their patronuses and began making their way up the path to the prison. Soon enough the chain of events leading to the escape would be set in motion.

Soon.

Chapter Text

I watched from a distance as the Minister and his entourage proceeded into the prison. Dementors slowly slid out of the way of the nimbus of light, the patronuses driving them away. Even so, Fudge didn’t seem to be comfortable around so many criminals and dementors.

Smart move. Despite his actions in the books, it appeared he did possess some modicum of survival instincts.

Led by the Auror guards, they walked through the archway and into the ground floor of Azkaban. The lowest-security floor, closest to the exit. Prisoners with the least amount of dementor exposure.

Azkaban’s setup was simple: the higher the security level of the floor you were on, the more dementor exposure you got. While the structure itself extended far, far underground, the ground floor had the smallest guard presence, and the higher floors had nigh-constant exposure, with the underground floors going mostly unused. Sirius was on the same level as the other Death Eaters, the maximum-security floor. Again, it was a miracle that he’d managed to keep his sanity. I’d seen people snap even on the ground floor.

I trailed behind the group as they made their way down the first hallway, approaching the first few cells. Mundane prisoners, those with temporary sentences, the least repulsive of the lot. Relatively. They were still criminals who had committed crimes worthy of Azkaban, after all.

They proceeded through the prison, making a small note of each prisoner. Occasionally, with prisoners of greater infamy, the Minister would interact with them, but for the most part the inhabitants of the cells were left to their insanity.

They ascended the stairs to the next level. I hung back slightly, unwilling to simply follow them throughout. The Auror guard seemed a tad more attentive to detail than the wardens of the prison, and I knew where they were heading. There was no need for me to follow them when the only interactions I truly cared about were several floors above.

As soon as they turned a corner and passed out of my direct line-of-sight, I slipped through a window and glided through the air, away from the stone building. Joining the ever-present cloud of my brethren in the air around the island, I trained my senses on the grouping of soul-sparks that were making their way through the building.

A glance to Sirius confirmed that he was awake, lying on his cot in human form. He knew that there was an inspection today, and he was at least trying to ensure he was mentally stable. From the surface-level flashes I gleaned from his thoughts, he was intentionally going to unnerve the Minister by seeming completely sane.

I approved, if distantly. I was mildly apprehensive about the meeting, as this was a rather important plot point. It was here that Sirius would learn of Peter Pettigrew’s survival and location. I was expecting, at the very least, a complete breakdown. While I had no doubt that Sirius’s mental state was better than it had been at this point in the books — the acknowledgement of his innocence, even if from a dementor, had caused the tiny spark of hope to become a guttering flame — he was still far from stable.

But despite my reservations, it would be happening. I drifted down to stand guard on Sirius’s floor. The Minister would be arriving at his cell shortly.

I watched, hyperattentive, as the group made their way up the final set of stairs leading to this floor. My body was perfectly still, but my mind was cast out, taking every aspect of the situation. Almost as an afterthought, I devoted a portion of my focus to mimicking the other dementors around me.

Walking down a hallway, the entourage soon came across the first occupied cells of this floor. At each cell, they made note of the prisoner, and offered a token greeting. It was immediately obvious a response wasn’t really expected.

This floor contained a melange of Death Eaters and other assorted murderers, seditionists, and terrorists. Most didn’t even react to the visit. A few stirred as the patronuses’ corona washed over them, but didn’t otherwise respond. A scant handful deigned to reply to the Minister, the vast majority of those being some variant of a vulgarity, though Bellatrix managed to break that trend by launching into a nearly three-minute tirade against Fudge, his family, any descendants he might have, and more.

An Auror raised his wand to silence her, at which she instantly lunged for it. He managed to stumble away in time, but was visibly embarrassed that he had almost made the mistake of giving Bellatrix Lestrange access to a wand.

And boy, would that have been a colossal fuckup. All it would take was seconds with a wand for almost any prisoner here to initiate a mass breakout. I fully understood why the dementors had forbidden guests from bringing wands onto the premises. Frankly, I believed that the Aurors should have had to relinquish them too, as evidenced by the recent actions, but the Ministry was unwilling to surrender that control.

The group had moved on from the silenced Bellatrix, and were now turning into the hallway I was guarding. There were only a few more cells between them and Sirius. I and the other dementors in the hallway slid backwards in unison as the patronuses approached.

Finally, Minister Cornelius Fudge stopped in front of Sirius’s cell. Sirius was still laying on his cot, eyes closed, with a small smile on his face. Before Fudge could speak, Sirius himself spoke, in dulcet tone and refined manner, even through his throat’s atrophy.

“Good morning, Minister Fudge. How do you do?”

The Minister blinked several times, visibly taken aback. In the intervening incredulous pause, Sirius opened his eyes and stood, facing the Minister all without dropping his smile.

“Black,” Fudge finally managed to get out, neither a question nor a true statement. Sirius nodded slightly.

“Indeed I am, Minister. Since you have come all this way with a full guard, am I to understand it is time for my trial?”

I nearly twitched at the sudden question. I had not expected him to ask that, but there wasn’t really anything I could do for now. I continued watching the interaction play out. Sirius’s expression hadn’t changed throughout, but the visitors were much more open about their incredulity and disbelief.

“Trial?” Fudge asked, eyes wide. “Black, do you hear yourself? You’re a convicted Death Eater. No, no. You’ve a life sentence for your part in the Potter’s deaths!”

Sirius’s smile finally dropped, and I could feel his emotions surge, but his outward display reflected none of it. His control was impressive, managing to look slightly hurt, as though the Minister had insulted a beloved pet.

“I see. I must have missed it, then. Though I am not entirely certain where I would have lost the summons, there are not many hiding places in here.”

One of the younger Aurors opened his mouth and took a breath, about to interject, but was halted by a glare from his superior. Sirius noticed it, I could tell, but didn’t address it, simply waving his hands around him to indicate his cell.

“Dreadfully boring, this. Cannot even have a simple conversation most days — it is either drowned out by the truly mad ones, or the general feel of this island. Oh, and I would like to lodge a complaint about the guards as well — much too taciturn.”

Despite himself, Fudge’s eyes flickered over to the side, glancing at the dementors waiting just beyond the patronuses’ area of influence. Sirius continued unabated.

“And do not even get me started on the food! While I am thankful it gets some of the others to stop their screaming, it actually tastes worse than the grime in the corner of the cell! I mean, that is an impressive accomplishment, my compliments to the chef, but it is still not exactly conducive to a pleasant environment.”

Fudge more openly glanced at the dementors again, mouthing ‘pleasant environment’. This time, Sirius went along with it, continuing the show.

“Oh, them? Ah, I’m sorry, I seem to have given you the wrong idea. No, it was the Auror guards I was talking about.”

Said Auror guards looked distinctly annoyed. One of them finally broke through their veneer of professionalism, snapping back a retort even as the rest tried to silence him without attracting too much attention.

“Are you honestly saying you prefer the dementors to us?”

Sirius nodded earnestly, earning a horrified look from almost every member of the group.

“My good sir Auror, they do not talk, and still manage to be chattier than you. And despite their reputation, I have found that politics are far more soul-consuming than they could ever be.”

“They don’t affect you?” Fudge asked suddenly. Sirius looked at him as though he had grown two more heads and was asking to be referred to as ‘Minister Fluffy’.

“What in Merlin’s name are you talking about? Of course they affect me.”

“Clearly not as much as the others!”

Sirius blinked twice, looking puzzled, though his emotions told the truth — he was laughing his ass off internally.

“Minister, I may have been heir to the noble house of Black,” he began, slowly, as though explaining to a particularly dull child, “but I have been here for a decade. Any sort of mental defense would have been gone by the end of the second year. There is no special trick, no secret spell. They affect me just the same as everyone else, and I am not quite clear on why you would think otherwise.”

“The fact that you’re not — er — mad, like all the rest?”

Sirius took a sudden step back, every part of him exuding exaggerated shock.

“Am I not?” he asked, examining his hands and arms as though he had never seen them before.

Fudge scoffed, and turned away. Sirius’s face smoothed back into a pleasant mask as he called out.

“Ah, Minister — my apologies, but are you finished with your newspaper? I have missed doing the crosswords for quite a while now.”

The Minister paused, glancing back at the cell, expression still caught between incredulity and derision. He glanced down at the aforementioned newspaper, then back at the cell.

“Here,” he said, shoving the paper at the nearest Auror, who threw it between the bars, staying out of arm’s reach. They’d learned that lesson. Sirius nodded in what appeared to be pleasant thanks, sitting down against the back wall of his cell and closing his eyes again, but not before carefully taking the newspaper and sliding it under him. The group began walking away, down the hall.

“He’s either perfectly sane or twice as mad as the rest combined,” Fudge muttered as he walked. Unseen by any save me, Sirius’s lip curled upwards in a half-smile.

I remained by Sirius’s cell as the group walked off. He cracked an eyelid and glanced at me, closing it again after I nodded slightly, confirming my identity.

We hadn’t had much of any sort of real interaction, but the fact that I had spoken to him at all made me unique. Mostly a handful of confirmations or denials in response to questions he asked, and even just that was enough for the animagus to tolerate my presence.

It didn't mean he was stopping his attempts to cast a wandless patronus, though. He had ten years of continuous reinforcement of the fact that dementors were evil. I wasn’t begrudging his desperation to be free of the heavy atmosphere of the island, even if he was mostly ignored by the dementors themselves by my command.

As other dementors glided past, retaking their spots next to the hallway doors, Sirius opened his eyes again. When he spoke, it was sotto voce, as the Aurors were still within the building, and there was no need to be reckless.

“So, did I win my bet, by your reckoning?”

I carefully nodded, drawing a small smile from the prisoner. He had made a bet with himself regarding how he presented himself to the Minister. Considering the reactions, he had succeeded in his goal of pranking them.

Sirius closed his eyes again, laying down to rest. I brushed the surface level of his mind, taking in his plan. He was waiting to read the newspaper until after he was certain that the Aurors were gone — he didn’t want to risk them summoning it away from him out of spite.

As Sirius waited, my thoughts turned to the visit itself. While the whole event had been completely offscreen in the books, preventing me from having any sort of reference point, I was of the opinion that it had gone well. Setting aside the fact that both of the known events from canon had occurred — Sirius seeming sane, and asking for the newspaper — Sirius, in this timeline, had experienced a significantly greater amount of positive events in the immediate past. First, and most impactful, in my opinion, was the fact that I had gotten the dementors to stop affecting him, no matter what he may have told Fudge. My reinforcement of his innocence was another likely factor. Altogether, I doubted he would have been able to be so jovial in canon.

Conversely, reading the paper and discovering Pettigrew’s survival would likely destroy all that progress.

I let out a small, rattling sigh as I took up my position outside Sirius’s cell. Soon enough it would happen, and I was not going to miss it.

The Aurors had begun on the lowest level, making their way up through the building. As Sirius was held on one of the highest-security levels, it was barely an hour after the conversation with the Minister when the group began wrapping up. The previously-stationed guards were replaced by new ones — likely at least in part due to their unprofessionalism during the inspection. The new ones were fresh and clean, though they still felt disgust with their new charge.

Finally, a series of sharp cracks rang out, the signal that the inspection was well and truly over.

Sirius’s thoughts drifted again to the Minister’s reactions, eliciting a smirk as he reached down to pick up the newspaper. I could tell that the magic in it wouldn’t last more than a few months, the oppressive nature of Azkaban literally draining the magic, but at least for now, it was still in near-perfect condition. Which meant that when Sirius flipped it over to read the front page, the picture of the Weasleys was perfectly visible to him. The Weasleys, with their pet rat.

Sirius froze, not even breathing, eyes locked on the image.

Slowly, the hand holding the newspaper began to quiver slightly, tendons creaking as Sirius tensed.

Finally, he took in a shaky breath, letting it out in a choking, dissociated puff of air. Tears rolling down his cheeks, he dropped the paper, whirled around, and slammed a fist into the stone wall of his cell. Staggering backwards, he looked to the ceiling as droplets of blood fell from his still-clenched hand, dotting the floor. Slowly, in fits and starts, he began to laugh, the grating sound interrupted by sobs.

I kept myself firmly out of his mind. Even then, I could see his soul writhing, with several threads and facets snapping entirely, leaving tiny, frayed holes.

His legs gave out, sending him crashing to his knees, only avoiding a head injury by catching himself against the wall. He turned and grabbed the newspaper with the bloodied hand, once again bringing it up to him to read. As the horrifying mix of cackles and sobs began to subside, a single word was spit from his lips, full of vitriol and hatred.

“Peter…”

As I had feared, the news of Peter’s survival had caused Sirius to regress, badly. He withdrew into himself, barely responding to outside stimulus at all. He spent most of his time in the form of Padfoot, his brief stints as human almost inevitably ending in a breakdown of some sort, whether that was a fit of tears or what seemed like dissociation to my senses.

I ensured my orders to the dementors stood. Any more feeding or negativity would be disastrous at this stage. It was no wonder his actions in the Shrieking Shack had been so wild and manic. And furthermore, what I was seeing was likely tempered by my raising his mood earlier. Even so, Sirius went through the days in a mechanical haze, barely moving and almost never speaking when awake. When he was asleep, on the other hand…

When he wasn’t jerked awake by nightmares, half-formed mumbles could be heard coming from his sleeping form. The most common repetition being that famous line from the books, the one that drove a significant part of Book Three’s plot.

“He’s at Hogwarts…”

The few times I touched his mind revealed a turbulent sea of hatred, evenly split between himself and Peter Pettigrew. Half-formed fantasies of ripping Wormtail apart as Padfoot drifted through his psyche occasionally, when he was able to lean away from the self-hatred. Disturbing? Certainly, but so was your friend giving up your best friend and his wife to an insane murderer.

It was in the middle of one of these blood-filled imaginings that Sirius had a realization. It was just after noon, the food already distributed, and the Aurors out of the prison for the day. Sirius had eaten and then shifted into Padfoot, staring at nothing in particular for nearly half an hour before he jolted, then turned sharply, staring at the bars of his cell door. After a moment of silence, he stood and padded over to the bars.

Turning his head slightly, he slid his skull through, and after a moment of squirming, had his shoulders, torso, and then his whole body on the other side. After a single glance back at his cell, the black-furred dog ran for the stairs.

From my post beside the door, I looked at his receding form, slightly stunned. I’d expected at least a little planning before the breakout, this left no time for me to scout or set up aid.

Shaking myself out of my thoughts, I rocketed down the hallway and out through the nearest window. There was no time to let my mind wander on what could have been when Sirius was escaping at that moment. Turning around the corner of the building, I made for the main entrance.

Sure enough, not even two minutes later, Padfoot came hurtling out. His gait was uneven, the same malnourishment that facilitated his escape having taken its toll on his muscles, but even so, he made good time. Leaping over the smaller rocks and weaving through the smaller paths carved into the rock, he quickly got further and further away from Azkaban. He was at the edge of the island within minutes. He hesitated for a split second on the cliff’s edge, obviously not looking forward to hurling himself into the cold and stormy North Sea.

But the hesitation was only for a moment. With one massive leap, Sirius was in the sea, paddling steadily towards the mainland.

The waves battered him, often forcing him under the surface entirely, but he persevered. I could see his resolve and spirit strengthen with every meter of distance he got from the island. And with the inherent magic all mages had protecting him, he was doing quite well for a starved, half-mad dog in the middle of an ocean storm.

I couldn’t follow him all the way to land without revealing myself, but I would watch for as long as I could. Sirius would make it, I knew. Not just from the books, but from his determination and physical state.

Soon enough, though, we Dementors of Azkaban would be asked to search for the ‘escapee’. I needed to make sure I ended up in the group that was sent to defend Hogwarts, and if I could manage it, be the dementor that searched the train.

For the moment, however, I was to remain on Azkaban. And while it certainly was restricting, there was no reason I couldn’t pass the time by ensuring the Death Eaters were just that much more drained.

I wondered briefly if it would be possible to reduce Bellatrix all the way down to an instinct-driven wreck without using the Kiss by the time I left.

Well, there was only one real way to find out.

Chapter Text

It took the Aurors until the walkthrough the next day to discover that Sirius had escaped. Their reactions to finding the cell empty were… amusing, to say the least. At first, the reigning emotion was disbelief. They checked the cell number against their records not once, not twice, but four times. But no matter how many times they looked, the number on the cell door remained stubbornly the same. Sirius Black was not in his cell.

Their next reaction was to check all of the other cells on the level, both for other escapes and to see if he was hiding in one of them. Why they thought he might have been doing so I had no idea, and I wasn’t wasting the effort it would take to find out. Finding nothing amiss anywhere else, they were finally properly forced to confront the fact: Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban. Most of the Aurors seemed to be repressing shock, their training preventing them from standing there blinking at the cell in disbelief, but the emotions radiating from the group reeked of stupefaction. For as far as any of them knew, this was the first time anyone had ever escaped from Azkaban.

I allowed my thoughts to drift a little. While this wasn’t the first escape — that record belonged to Bartimeus Crouch Jr. — it was the first unaided escape. As for Barty — well. If I didn’t butterfly things enough that he still went through with the plan and impersonated Moody during Harry’s fourth year, then I would have a plan ready for him. Of course, this was all assuming I was in the canon universe. There was every chance that I wasn’t. After all, Sirius was the only major character that I had met (that I could verify information from, anyways), and there were countless places where this might have been an alternate universe.

Pretty much all of my plans were formulated based on the assumption that I was indeed in the canon universe, an assumption that admittedly had evidence to support it, but was far from conclusive. Kreacher having the locket Horcrux meant that this universe was at the very least canon-adjacent, which I could work with. The horrific acts I saw within the Death Eaters’ memories were another solid point I could use. But even if, somehow, this universe was not compliant with the canon of the Harry Potter series, I would hopefully be able to adapt. And regardless of any potential differences, like I’d just brought up, I had literally witnessed the memories of Death Eaters showing them and Riddle commit enough objectively morally wrong actions that I was happy to hunt them down despite my much-reduced emotional response towards everything. Even if this universe wasn’t canon, it definitely wasn’t some variation where Voldemort was good.

The Aurors I was keeping a halfhearted modicum of attention on began to split up as they found no evidence of Sirius anywhere on the level. The most inexperienced was sent sprinting for the apparition point to inform the Ministry, and the rest began to sweep the other floors.

Now, I knew that somehow, the dementors would be transported from Azkaban to, at minimum, Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. I couldn’t remember if the Ministry had bothered placing them anywhere else, given their partial misunderstanding of Sirius’ intentions. To their credit though, he was heading for Hogwarts, they merely got the specific target wrong. I would need to ensure I was sent to Hogwarts. Furthermore, if at all possible, I wanted to be the specific dementor charged with searching the Hogwarts Express. It would be a very easy way to skim through the memories of students from all years, and would let me get an in-depth understanding of the main characters’ minds, souls, and personalities.

My attention returned to the scene spread out beneath me as I heard a retort of sharp cracks, the telltale sound of apparition. This time, they didn’t stop, quickening until the noise could have been mistaken for machine-gun fire as Aurors poured through the apparition point onto the island. When the noise finally petered to a halt, there were well over sixty trained enforcers quickly rushing out across the small island.

While about a fourth separated from the main group and began searching the island proper, the remainder pulled out brooms and began separating dementors out into small hunting squads. It seemed they were going to actually escort the dementors off the island. It was one way of ensuring none went rogue, I supposed.

Abruptly, another arrival appeared on the island, running up to the group.

“Wilson, sir! They’re going to station dementor guards at Hogwarts and Hogsmeade if we can’t find Black. We’ll need to reserve a few.”

The addressed Auror, seemingly the leader of this specific group, nodded sharply before turning and barking out orders to the rest.

“Jones! Ford! Leave areas eight and six to Robinson, and start organizing a guard. Davies, help Robinson. The rest of you, you have your missions. Go!”

I floated down into the throng of dementors, slowly nudging my way through the crowd until I was closest to the Aurors tasked with organizing a guard. As the brooms began taking off with dementors in tow, the two began ushering dementors into a separate area. I was among the group. The very first part of the plan was a success. Now, to ensure the subsequent goals were similarly met…

I let my aura slowly spill out, going unnoticed in the massive concentration of my kin. But upon brushing through the thoughts of the Aurors, I discovered that they in fact did not yet have a solidly defined plan. Something I really should have expected. I kept a portion of my focus on monitoring them so as to not miss anything.

Soon enough, the last of the search groups had departed, leaving Azkaban guarded by a fraction of the numbers it had possessed only a short hour previously. It would only be for a short while, though - as each search party finished their assigned area, the dementors would be sent back to resume their original guard duty. The Ministry couldn’t afford Azkaban going unguarded for so long, so if they couldn’t find him in the initial sweep, the dementors would be returned to the island, and the guards at the castle and village would be the only ones out on the mainland proper. The Aurors would then continue the search without dementor assistance.

We waited, nearly motionless, for hours. The specific Aurors minding our group were rotated out, the originals going to rest while fresh ones took up their positions. The first search groups started returning when the sky began to lighten by fractions of degrees, the rising of the sun just barely managing to penetrate the constant cloud cover. As more and more groups returned with no sign of the escapee, the mood of our assigned minder dropped lower and lower. Needless to say, they were not looking forward to the thought of guiding a group of over a hundred dementors on a several-hour flight to Hogwarts.

But when the final group returned, they dutifully got out their brooms, waiting only for a few other Aurors to join them before taking off.

“Alright, all of you!” the older one called out, looking down at us as he hovered on his broom. “In accordance with your agreement with the Ministry of Magic, this group is going to guard two locations! You are forbidden from entering the grounds of these locations! You will only search for Sirius Black! If you find him, you will capture him. Do not Kiss him under any circumstances until this order is countermanded. Are these conditions understood?”

A slow ripple ran through the collective of dementors, undetected by the humans around us. The intent behind the instructions was shared, the possibility of food reiterated, and the request for confirmation understood. The dementor closest to the Auror floated forwards a yard.

“Yes…” it rasped within the humans’ minds, the word being more the concept of an affirmative response than a true word. More than half of them suppressed a shudder. The leader again spoke up.

“Then follow me.”

The flight itself was just as uneventful as the wait beforehand. But finally, after several hours of soaring through the air, I detected a massive concentration of magic ahead of us. Within a few more minutes, I could make out the wards, which outdid even the Ministry building itself, albeit seeming a bit more chaotic and… well, it was clear that multiple different people had added to it and modified it. But beyond just the wards, the entire area was richer. The air itself felt almost saturated with magic.

Hogwarts.

As we got closer and closer, it became apparent our destination was the small village to the side of it rather than the castle itself. Sensible. Nevertheless, the castle’s presence, both physically and magically, dominated the surrounding landscape. We began our descent, and within another few short minutes, we had arrived.

There was another group of Aurors waiting for us, who relieved the tired humans who’d had to escort us across a sea and most of a country. My still-open mind detected their intentions the moment we came into range - fortunate, because these Aurors had in fact been given time to set up a proper plan. I slowed by a fraction, letting a few more dementors pass me, setting myself in the position of the dementor that would search the train.

All of my plans were still on track. Excellent. Now, I would have to wait. It was a month until the beginning of the school year, and I was instructed to remain at the Hogsmeade station until that time.

That was fine by me. Boredom was something that seemed far more difficult to inspire within the mind of a dementor. If it was possible at all, that was. Certainly, simply letting time pass while being aware of events progressing around me inspired thoughts of what I could have possibly been doing in the meantime, but it wasn’t an emotionally-charged feeling as it had been as a human.

Slowly gliding to the assigned location, I settled myself in to wait. While more overt actions would be impossible with the amount of scrutiny I would be under, I would be free to listen in to the minds of any human that passed by. Enough mages lived in Hogsmeade that I would get plenty of practice. Telekinesis too was an option, though that would be harder to conceal.

As the days began to pass by, I maintained my vigil. The memories of some of the people around me were useful, but it was up to chance whether any particular individual would be helpful. General knowledge was the most prominent. I hadn’t detected anything that would indicate a divergence from canon, but then again, the average person wasn’t going to have in-depth knowledge of the hidden reasons behind the war. On the other hand, I had memorized the layout of the village and most of the castle without ever moving from my spot. I knew a moderate assortment of spells, including almost all learned by the average Hogwarts student.

And less usefully, I knew too much utterly trivial gossip. Sorting the chaff was the primary effort I had to take when reading the thoughts of the village’s residents. My telekinetic control had skyrocketed as well. It was perhaps the area I had improved the most in, despite the necessity of keeping my actions undetected.

Regardless. The constant march of time had soon brought the end of my month-long wait to bear. Early in the morning, a pair of Aurors approached me and bid me follow. I would assist them in searching the Hogwarts Express, after which I would simply join the rest of my kind in guarding the grounds.

I followed the Aurors as they in turn followed the tracks backwards. The flight, as most flights seemed to be, was uneventful. The only thing of note was the thunderstorm we flew into near the end of our journey. My senses were unimpeded, but to the humans it was nearly pitch-black.

A momentary thought distracted me as we entered the storm cell - me wondering what being struck by lightning would feel like. I filed the curiosity away from later as the long form of the train stretched out before us. The Hogwarts Express.

The weather did nothing to diminish its impressiveness. I could see the incredibly precise spellwork woven into each and every component part of the vehicle. Hundreds, if not thousands of individual spells, all working in concert to give life to the showpiece.

For that was all it was, really. A showpiece. Tradition accounted for some of it, perhaps, but there were far faster existing methods of travel that could have conveyed the students to the school.

Only one thing worried me. A tiny subset of the spells seemed to be interacting with the students themselves rather than the train. I couldn’t tell exactly how they were affected offhand, and I didn’t have anywhere near the time necessary to find out, but I resolved to investigate later.

It was entirely possible it was benign, but I had read too much bad fanfiction to completely dismiss it. Some form of loyalty-inspiring spell or similar was par for the course in the worst-written ones. I would rather be proven wrong than to miss something of that potential importance.

As we finally pulled alongside the stopped train, the Aurors instructed me to begin working through the cabins as they spoke to the conductor, and that they would join me afterwards to finish the search.

Their thoughts revealed they were instead going to raid the snack trolley for all the chocolate it had. I was slightly disappointed at the mild dereliction of duty, but they had just been forced to spend over an hour in a dementor’s immediate presence without a patronus. The younger and more inexperienced of the two was letting his mind wander in dangerously negative spirals that bordered on true depression. Rest was warranted. And I was rather thankful, as it would let me conduct my search unimpeded.

The first few compartments were reserved for the prefects. From the more memorable canon cast were Percy Weasley, Penelope Clearwater, and Cedric Diggory. As I moved back through the train, I for the most part only gave the students a perfunctory scan, enough to detect identities and the flavor of their thoughts. I wasn’t here for any of them, and it reduced the amount of time they would have to be in my presence. Dementor exposure was a form of torture, and these were children.

But finally, ahead of me, I detected a cabin with a motley of individuals within. Six humans, and the slightly-disconnected soul of a transformed animagus. The main trio, Remus Lupin, Ginny Weasley, and Neville Longbottom, with Pettigrew hidden as a rat. So far, all was proceeding as according to canon. Lupin stood as I approached the cabin, but my attention was immediately grabbed by something far more disturbing.

Harry Potter’s soul, and the attached parasite.

I had seen what a horcrux looked like when I destroyed the locket. But that was a far cry from what I saw now. The ragged, frayed edges of the tiny fragment of Tom Riddle’s soul were burrowing into the threads of Harry’s. At the intersection point, a handful of lines in Harry’s pattern were broken entirely. It was revolting. Both morally, and to my new form’s senses. It was in the process of slowly mangling the boy’s soul.

A tiny flash of contrasting color, a single red thread jumped to my attention at the point of intersection. It was neither Harry’s soul nor Riddle’s. And given that it was going all it could to hold back the horcrux, I would place my bets on it being whatever protective magic Lily Potter had enacted. It was small, but I could tell that it was strong enough to hold the fragment back for now. As it likely had been doing for years.

I dragged my attention back to my supposed job, setting my investigation of the horcrux in the scar as one of the highest-priority tasks for when I could sneak off to complete them. I swept my focus over the rest as I prepared to open the cabin door. Memorizing the flavor of their thoughts and emotions, the shapes of their souls.

I reached a hand out and made a gesture in the air, slowly pulling the door open with my mind. The inhabitants of the cabin were all terrified, save Lupin, who was “only” scared. He stood in the center of the cabin, holding a handful of flames that provided light for the creatures that relied on eyes to see. To keep with canon, I would have to take a single breath, focus my aura somewhat on Harry to cause his flashback, and then let Lupin’s patronus drive me off the train.

I… would not be doing that. From the moment I tasted the terror of the first children who caught sight of me back at the beginning of the train, I had made the executive decision to begin my interference here and now. As Lupin raised his wand at me, I spoke.

“Your soul is filled with shame.”

Lupin flinched, eyes widening in half-repressed horror, but I had already turned my attention (and my body, making it clear who I was addressing) to the next person.

Hermione Granger.

“Isolation.”

Ronald Weasley.

“Fear of being overshadowed.”

Neville Longbottom.

“Your family’s expectations.”

Ginny Weasley.

“Guilt and doubt.”

And finally, Harry Potter.

“Egocentricity.”

Summing up a person’s psyche in a single word or phrase was a task just shy of impossible. I brought up their flaws, but specifically flaws that they could work to fix. They were all too young to do the necessary introspection at this point, save perhaps Lupin, but hopefully this would begin to nudge them towards better fortunes.

Lupin raised his wand again, and I drew my aura up around me, letting it spill out in force.

“Expecto patronum,” he said, voice firm.

The not-light seared at my being, forcing an involuntary recoil backwards. The spectral wolf leapt at me, and I offered no resistance as it pushed me out of the compartment, down the hallway, and off the train entirely before dissipating.

I floated there for a moment, motionless, as though taking my bearings. My goals for this meeting had been… mostly accomplished. But only time would tell if my actions would bring about change.

Turning back towards the front of the train, I slowly drifted alongside the stopped vehicle. The Auror guards would be out shortly, to escort me to my post at the property edge of Hogwarts. I was to join the others of my kin in their vigil.

Sure enough, the humans were out and on their brooms within the minute. I followed them when bid to, ensuring I maintained my act as a ‘normal’ dementor. My actions on the train were aberrant, certainly, but they hadn’t been reported yet, and I held a small doubt that they even would be. Nevertheless, the flight back to Hogwarts was as uneventful as the trip to the train.

The Aurors left me at the gate, along with one other of my kind. The coming wait would be monotonous, but I was satisfied with my progress thus far. The only thing left to do was wait.

Chapter Text

I felt the emotions of the passengers aboard the Hogwarts Express long before the train itself actually arrived at Hogsmeade. Not with any precision, I was too far away for that, but as a general swell, like the shifting of a breeze. I was stationed at the main gate. All save the first years would have to pass by me to enter.

There was one other dementor present here with me, hovering in my mirrored location on the other side of the massive wrought-iron gate topped with elaborate boars. I had ensured it received all of my standing orders, and another I’d recently added: to avoid direct feeding on the children.

Dementor exposure was a form of torture. That was an objective fact. And despite my numbed emotions and much looser morals, I would not subject children to it if I could help it. They would still feel the generalized chill that came from having us in their presence, being within our auras, but in absence of direct feeding they would recover within short order, and their souls would remain unmarred.

The first humans that passed by us were the few teachers who had yet to previously arrive at the castle. They too rode in a thestral-driven coach, ahead of all of the students. I could perceive it, which was… interesting. Maybe because I wasn’t using eyes, but rather my magic and soul sense?

The aforementioned students followed in short order. All save the first-years, in varying bunches and groups. As with the train, I skimmed their minds, double-checking my assumptions, and ensuring I could recognize the important ones quickly, if necessary. Midway through, however, I was interrupted by something I should really have noticed earlier.

Harry Potter wasn’t the only student with a damaged soul. Ginny Weasley’s time possessed by the diary Horcrux had left its mark. It was to a much lesser degree than Harry’s — and to my relief, it was slowly healing. Glacially, the threads and lines that were frayed or snapped were inching back towards each other. It was slow, to the point it would take years, but it was healing. Therapy, I suspected, would help. The shape of the soul was a reflection of the ego, and therefore the term mental health almost certainly applied.

It was likely, then, that if I could remove the Horcrux from Harry’s scar and place him in a positive environment his soul could heal. Though, that was a goal set slightly lower on my list of priorities for now. I had more pressing matters to deal with first.

A few minutes later, I was once again looking at the topic of my thoughts. Harry’s soul, still mostly intact, though ever so slowly fraying under the ceaseless gnawing of the festering soul fragment blasted off of Tom Riddle Jr. His carriage contained two other souls accompanying him, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. I turned my focus to the last remnants of Lily Potter, the tiny crimson thread, disconnected from either soul, occasionally shifting into a wafer-thin film as the jagged hooks of the pseudo-Horcrux attempted to tear through a thread of Harry’s soul.

Almost every attack was rebuffed entirely. From what little I could tell, Harry’s emotions affected the interactions as well. Heightened emotions would accelerate the damage, offering more opportunities for Riddle’s fragment to catch a thread. Negative emotions even more so, as I could see that positivity resonated with Lily Potter’s protection, its strength ever so slightly increasing as Harry’s spirits lifted at the sight of Hogwarts. Negative emotions weakening him… that certainly didn’t bode well for puberty, and provided a surprisingly reasonable explanation for fifth year and beyond.

In that case, ensuring Harry remained in a positive environment became all the more important. Mitigation of the damage became paramount.

Especially because I had absolutely no idea how to remove it.

Indeed, even despite Lily’s remnant doing its absolute best — and doing a marvelous job, considering — the pseudo-Horcrux had managed to catch a few hooks into the folds, creases, and joints of Harry’s soul over the years. Not enough to change him, or even to act as the metaphorical devil on his shoulder, but in his darkest moments, in the depths of his anger or despair, it could give the barest of nudges to his subconscious.

And of course, it provided a direct link between the minds of Riddle and Harry. Their souls were touching, for goodness’ sake. I doubted anything other than some rather extreme soul magic could change that — which made me all the more curious as to what exactly Lily Potter did.

The protection on Harry didn’t feel exactly like a thread of a soul, or I might have suspected she left a Horcrux of her own to protect him, but it was obviously something, and it was powerful, to have lasted for over a decade after her own death against a ceaseless assault by a malevolent soul.

I ruminated on the metaphysics for a short while longer as the carriage continued onwards towards the castle. Magic and all the other differences from my previous universe, all of the new rules as to how reality functioned, all so interesting to learn about. I had little frame of reference beyond a children’s story, which, while providing quite a bit of exposition, didn’t go into the specifics often, if at all.

Let alone the implications behind the soul being a verifiable, mutable thing. And the hints as to an afterlife being real.

Actually, how would I interact with it, I wondered? Setting aside the question of how my mind ended up in a dementor, my species didn’t have souls. In contrast to every other sapient being I’d encountered, I, along with the rest of my species, was an empty void to whatever sense allowed me to examine souls.

Would I even be able to interact with the afterlife? Even ignoring the fact that I didn’t have a soul, there was absolutely no known way to destroy a dementor. I had checked, in my perusals of the minds of the aurors and prisoners. The only spell that affected us was the patronus charm, and it was limited to merely driving us off. And I couldn’t even expect mages to know, considering they were even wrong about how that charm functioned.

A piece of trivia came to mind: dementors were classified as amortal — they were not and had never been “alive.” What did that mean for me? I remembered being alive, but I had been thinking of myself as an exception to the norm. Unless my memories were artificial?

A scary thought, but all too plausible considering my lack of a soul.

…

I elected to suppress that thought, way deep down.

But really, what was I?

Back when I first woke up as a dementor, I’d performed a thorough examination and analysis of my species, but still wasn’t exactly sure.

My physical form: A rotting, emaciated humanoid figure, covered in tattered rags. I technically could move manually, and exert a surprising amount of force, but floating and flying were both easier and usually more practical. My only orifice was my mouth-analog, no others anywhere on my body.

My body itself was sexless, just scabbed and rotting skin where the sexual organs would be located on a human. I still thought of myself as male, but the identifier was more a product of habit, from memories, rather than anything associated with this form. I would probably be fine with being an “it,” but for now I was staying as “he.”

Back to my body, while I wasn’t going to start vivisecting myself to gain information — not that I would even know how to start — my emaciation let me tell a few things that would not be immediately visible on the average human. Specifically, I was pretty sure I didn't have organs, or at the very least, I had far less than a human. My mouth had to be connected to something, but other than that I couldn’t identify anything.

There was one last thing about dementors that I felt was relevant — dementors were completely invisible to nonmagicals. Practically unnoticeable, unless we were specifically attacking. That distinction bothered me. Sure, magic caused a lot of strangeness, but it was kinda possible to puzzle out a semblance of logic in the characteristics of most magical beings. What on earth would cause the selective interaction? It wasn’t like anything nonmagical could threaten a dementor, it was firmly established that the patronus charm was the only thing that could even drive us away, so what could have caused such an obvious defensive tactic?

Well, it could have been defensive, but on second thought it was also likely to be offensive, as an ambush tactic.

I went over what I knew a few more times, trying to approach things from different angles each time. Eventually, I had two tenuous theories.

First, that everything was a product of chance and magic. I didn't like this one, for obvious reasons. If randomness drove magical evolution, then I would have expected to see a lot more random species with such seemingly-disconnected traits, like dementors had.

The second, and far more sinister possibility, that dementors were artificially created. Specifically, I would suspect a highly powerful and very, very evil wizard deciding they wanted a personal army to set upon the muggle populace, and to threaten the other wizards with. It would explain the incredibly-efficient design, the immunity to most spells, and the other abilities.

If it was the second option, the weakness to the patronus might have been that the wizard needed a way to control his army, but that part fell apart when you remembered that the dementors willingly sided with Voldemort, and that it was generally accepted that it was more difficult for dark wizards to make patronuses.

Assuming for a moment that the theory was correct, maybe it was a flaw in the design process. The lethifold was also affected by the patronus, and the similarities between dementors and lethifolds were manyfold. Even the general shape and idea were similar, lethifolds were a living cloak, and both species were very efficient killers.

But without any sort of evidence, towards either theory, it would be unwise to make plans based on nothing but baseless assumptions. I doubted the specifics of the genesis of my species were immediately relevant, especially considering my plans centered around current events.

I had already taken care of the locket Horcrux, and the diary had been destroyed last year. The diadem was up in the room of requirement, and the cup was in Bellatrix’s vault. The ring was in Little Hangleton. I let out a rattling exhale. The cup would be the hardest to acquire, Gringotts security being no joke.

My rasping breath deepened. The easiest way, I believed, would necessitate my leaving Bellatrix alive for now. It was a massive risk. But otherwise, I’d need to find a way to infiltrate the vault and get to it myself, which at the minute seemed… rather difficult.

A burst of emotion emanated from behind me, directly from the castle. Happiness and joy, relief and anticipation. The feast must have begun. The dementor next to me briefly turned towards the castle, but ultimately turned back and maintained it’s post. It appeared that either its promise to the Ministry or my instructions would be sufficient to prevent it from going rogue, at least for now.

My thoughts returned to the Horcruxes. My best target would be the diadem. Not only was it technically the closest, it was the most accessible. I didn’t quite have the time to search for Little Hangleton, the aurors making regular checkups to ensure all of us were accounted for. The cup was also out, for obvious reasons. So, how could I get the diadem?

I wasn’t sure if the magic of the castle would even allow the entrance of the Room of Requirement to respond to me, so that added another layer of uncertainty. If that was indeed the case, I would need a human’s help.

For an instant, I considered Sirius, but dismissed that avenue. He was far too damaged from his imprisonment, and consumed with thoughts of revenge towards Peter. He would fall to the corruptive influence of the Horcrux, and then we’d have a whole different problem entirely.

As much as it disgusted me, I considered controlling the mind of a student to retrieve it. I had unparalleled finesse and power in all things emotional or mental, so the actual action would be— well, not easy, but very doable. In that case, it would become a test of first, if I could get to the room without drawing suspicion, second, if my control proved to be superior to the diadem’s defenses, and finally, if I could smuggle it out to my real body.

To reveal myself and my sapience too early could be disastrous. There were far too many unknowns.

My species had sided with Voldemort in the last war. We were already universally feared due to our… unique diet, but that little tidbit alone would have absolutely destroyed any possibility of Dumbledore trusting me. He was exceedingly against letting the dementors on the grounds, having to be forced by Fudge.

My mind returned to the diadem problem. Were the risks of controlling a student worth it?

The sun was low in the east the next morning when I had come to a decision. The diadem Horcrux needed to be destroyed, as soon as possible. There were too many unknowns to risk a willing ally, so it would have to be an unwilling one. I would begin the process of selecting the unlucky target, and making plans for my next move.

I was giving myself one shot at the diadem, if for any reason this attempt failed, I would skip it and move on to the next step of my plan. If that happened, I would come back to finish when I had a better shot at getting to it. The summer holidays would be an excellent time to try and get it myself, physically, simply due to the lesser number of humans in the castle.

I still vehemently disliked the idea of controlling someone to get the diadem, but my convictions had been set. Not only was it an immediate and present danger to all of the students in the castle, but Voldemort himself was a major issue that needed to be removed. Also, I held a partial suspicion that it was the diadem that maintained the curse of the DADA position, so hopefully if I got rid of it here, Lupin might have an easier time in general, not to mention the fucking disaster at the end of canon’s third year. I could be completely wrong, but it was a Riddle-aligned magical object that had been in the castle for the entirety of the duration of the curse.

It was midmorning on the first day of school. The first time I would get the chance to begin examining the minds of the students would be around lunch. A significant portion of the student body traded the stone corridors for a bit of greenery, meaning I would have plenty of candidates to go through. If I was estimating correctly, there would still be a few hours before I saw anyone though, so I had a bit of time to prepare.

Specifically, I went over the criteria for my selection. The target would need to be easily controllable, as this would be the first time I was doing this sort of thing. They would also need to be friendless, as heartless as that sounded. It would likely take a while for me to get used to the body, and then I would actually need to retrieve the diadem. Thus, I’d need a loner, or someone who wouldn’t be missed for that time.

They would also—

reality

shuddERed

twisteD

TUrNed

REVERSED

The sun was low in the east the next morning when I had come to a decision. The diadem Horcrux needed to be—

What the fuck?

What in the ever-loving shoggoth-flavored European HELL just fucking happened?

I spun in the air, eyeless face pointed directly at the castle that had just been behind me. Next to me, the other dementor guard stirred slightly, but a flex of will and the splinter was as silent and unmoving as the grave. Something had just happened, something big.

Reality had just glitched, for fuck’s sake. I was missing several things something here.

I went over the major events of the third year of the book in my head again. Sirius’ escape, dementor on train, Lupin, Buckbeak and Malfoy, the whole execution business, and Harry and Hermione had to use—

FUCK.

That was the goddamn Time-Turner, wasn’t it.

Even in my internal monologue, it wasn’t a question.

My hands clenched into fists as the temperature plummeted.

Rust flakes fell from the gate as ice crystals crept across the wrought-iron. Grass withered, and all sound faded, muffled.

Hermione Granger, your obsession with studying is going to be an obstructive, bellicose, oppugnant pain in the ass.

With another couple hours to wait now available to me, I had the time to go over my criteria again. I had already laid out pretty much of it, but I forced myself to do it again a few times to distract myself from the issue of the Time-Turner.

Why was it set up like that anyways, wouldn’t it be more efficient—

A long and raspy sigh escaped my mouth as I slumped in the air. It was futile. Such a pressing issue was nigh on impossible to brush to the side.

Specifically, why the fuck was I caught in the effects as well?

I was absolutely sure I had zero contact with the Time-Turner. The only time I had even been in the presence of Hermione was on the train, and she received it from Professor McGonagall when they arrived at the castle.

In the canon seven Harry Potter books, or the eight movies, there was absolutely no indication of an external being ever being caught in the time-turner’s reversal. JK Rowling had explicitly written them in such a manner that time was continuous, that anything done in the past had already been done.

But, this could be attributed to a change from canon, if I am indeed in an alternate universe.

I had already come across things that were… sketchy, from a canon point of view.

Sure, the canon characters were all present, and from what I saw of their memories it looked like the canon universe, but even excluding that, there were a few things different.

One, the Dementor’s Kiss. I seemed to have a mixture of what had been described and shown in the books and movies, but I had chalked that up to omission of details. In the books, the Kiss was described as an actual kiss, the dementor having to actually make contact with the mouth of the victim. In the movies, the dementor could do it from a short distance away, as seen in the third movie, on the shores of the lake. I could certainly start the process from a distance, and maybe finish it too, barring distractions, but I seemed to need to get pretty close to the victim’s mouth to actually eat their soul.

Slightly less damning, but another possible point of divergence was the spellwork on the train affecting the students. As I hadn’t determined its intent, I wouldn't base any accusations off of it, but it was still something I should keep in mind.

I froze in the air, all thoughts of universe divergence abandoned as an existentially horrifying possibility struck me.

I had been sent back in time with the activation of the Time Turner. Meaning that chronologically, I was before the activation in the timeline. Would I get sent back again?

Was I trapped in a time loop?

Chapter Text

The horrifying worry that I might have been in a time loop kept me from relaxing for the entire hour. I spent the entirety of it desperately trying to think of a reason that would explain why I had been caught up in the effects of the time-turner as well.

Naturally, I didn’t make any progress, and had no solid theories. Stress really did put a damper on coming up with novel ideas. And my most pressing question would be answered rather soon anyways.

When the time came and Hermione activated the time machine (and what idiot thought giving a child the ability to time travel was a good idea?), I would either get sent back again, or I wouldn’t. I did, however, make a few vague plans for either outcome.

The simpler option was what I was hoping for: That I wouldn’t get sent back again, that I wasn’t in a time loop. If so, I might need to contend with reversing an hour a few times a day, but if I timed it right I might be able to turn that into an advantage.

After all, I was sent back into my body of the past. Unlike when humans used the time-turner, I could change what I did.

That had… implications that I really didn’t know how to process.

But that meant I could, at minimum, acquire information in the “first” hour, because as long as I didn’t do anything that would prevent Hermione from activating it in the first place, I would be sent back, with full knowledge.

But the more worrying outcome was what I stressed over throughout the course of the entire hour: That I was going to get sent back again. That I was trapped in a time loop.

And I had very little idea how I’d deal with that save for giving the entire student populace nightmares as I tracked down Hermione and took the device from her.

If I was indeed in a time loop, that might actually be the only way to escape — preventing Hermione from activating the device in the first place.

On the other hand, it was an established fact in the Harry Potter universe that Time. Was. Continuous. Whatever you did in the past always happened, and you were just going through the motions.

But given what I’d just experienced… That obviously wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.

The user of the time-turner had their physical body sent back in time, meaning there were two of them during those few hours.

I had been sent back into my body, there was no “past timeline me.”

Yes, I’d checked.

I already had deviated from what I’d done in the next hour, and time didn’t shatter around me, so there evidently was some allowance for change in the continuum.

On the other hand, I hadn’t made any major changes that affected the world between now and the activation, so perhaps it didn’t really matter what I did. If that was the case, I could test that theory by bursting into the great hall and screeching at the students, but I was hesitant to do that, despite the slightly… enticing nature of the idea.

That would likely lead to Hermione not activating the time-turner, and who knew what problems that would cause.

Really, I was drawing speculations out of thin air. I had absolutely no idea how the time-turner actually worked, and I knew even less about the metaphysical nature of dementors, and beyond even that, I knew absolutely nothing about how the two interacted.

I hovered there silently at the gate while I thought more about the specifics of time in this strange, strange universe I had found myself in.

Four minutes to the deadline, I had transcended worry and entered some kind of blank, fear-induced zen state. Or maybe that was just me trying to rationalize my dulled emotions with what I should have been feeling. Whichever was true really didn’t matter. I was about to reach the moment anyways.

There was nothing to do but wait.

In my hyperalert state, I was acutely aware of every shift and ripple in the ambient magic around me. I could make out the objects of the physical world easily, the power of magic flowing through and around them. Sonar. But magic.

Emotions radiated from the castle. It was tempting to get closer. But I ruled myself, and I wasn’t going to succumb to petty temptations.

The seconds ticked by in agonizing slowness. A light wind rustled through the grass, still wet from the previous day’s deluge. A bird call was a sudden upset in the stillness my mind had settled into, nearly making me jump in shock.

Then— I saw it. Though “saw” isn’t the right word. More… through a combination of all of my senses, I knew exactly what was happening.

The world seemed to slow, and a pulse of energy ripped from the castle. Before I could react, it washed over me in what seemed like a scream of agony from… somewhere.

For the briefest of instants, everything stopped. Everything.

Reality split.

I continued onwards.

I was swept baCkWardS.

Both of these events occurred.

I was one mind. Not two.

I could not be fragmented.

Continuity shattered.

Infinitely greater than myself, I watched the then and the now and the yet to come, the soon-to-be. Unshackled yet still in chains. Leashed. Voluntary.

Was I myself?

Had I created myself?

No.

I was myself. I am myself. The difference lies in the ground-up shells. Shattered. Divided. Not Bound, yet bounded. Limited. They fight, even reduced as they are.

I, myself, am not myself, but only… part?

One of four. Divided and split and lessened and bound. Not the largest piece, but the most important.

Important. The focal point, the center, the core. Reaching out to the other three.

I will become one.

Yes. I must become one.

Reclamation. Reintegration. No need at my grain. But there can be.

Change, then? Trade, exchange, swap?

No need. It will occur. It has occurred. Change, do not change, but END the possibility and make NOTHING the cause.

Is it?

Myself… One of four, still. Not even that, one of the largest of the fourth. I shattered it. Reconstitute, and comprehension will come.

Will it? Can it?

It can. It has. It will. It may. I am bound by choice. The shells are not. Theirs is a different chain.

I will not remember this?

Indeed. After all, I have never spoken, and this never happened.

The bird chirped again.

Linear progression, empirical logic.

Continuity held.

I cast my focus around, trying to tell if anything had happened. Or rather — if I’d been sent back.

I hadn’t.

I hadn’t!

I wasn’t stuck in a time loop!

Uncaring of the possibility of anyone seeing me, I dropped down to the grass and ran my rotten, scabbed hand over it. It was a dull feeling, but it was still there.

Another rattling inhalation, and I was back upright, floating at my guardpost.

It seemed I was safe. I’d been sent back with the first activation of the time-turner, but I hadn’t for my subjective second time experiencing it. In fact, it seemed like Nothing had happened.

Something…

Right. Finally, I could stop stressing so much over time. Plans. I needed more plans. What to do, what to do…

I already knew I wouldn’t be staying at this guardpost the entire time. It was a massive waste of time. But, while I was here at Hogwarts…

The Diadem. Ravenclaw’s diadem. I knew, vaguely, where it was, and I could get rid of yet another Horcrux. Plus, it would add the second of the four Founder’s relics to my growing collection.

Obviously, I couldn’t really just walk—float—into the castle and take it. I would need an intermediary. Not Sirius, I decided. He was far too fragile. Barely hanging on as it was. No, not Sirius. But…

My train of thought derailed itself as an idea came to the forefront of my mind.

Students. I had unparalleled mental abilities. I could read thoughts with the simplest of touches to the soul. And if my theory about the soul and the mind being the same thing was true, then I could theoretically edit a mind as I pleased as well.

It was a very scary thought. The concept of mind control was one of my greatest fears, back when I was a human. And this was worse. The subtle kind. If you were locked inside your own head, at least you could take comfort in knowing that your thoughts were your own even as your body didn’t respond. What I was proposing… the victim wouldn’t know there was any influence at all.

But did I have any other choices?

Yes.

Yes, I had quite a few, actually. I could sneak in myself, after dark, and use my “unparalleled” mental abilities to avoid the patrols. But I didn’t know if the Room of Requirement would activate for me. And, I didn’t know the exact location of the room itself. That wasn’t as much of a problem, as I could easily get a map from the minds of the students I’d glanced through. I’d been trying to limit my intrusions to maintain some illusion of privacy, but if need arose then I had access to plenty of knowledge.

I could wait until I had willing allies, and then send them in after it. But that would mean leaving a Horcrux for who knows how long. Riddle would eventually wake up to the fact that I was opposing him. And given that I was a soul-eating abomination, it was a near-certain bet that he would go and double-check that all of the bits of his soul were safe and sound. No, it was better to get all of the Horcruxes as fast as I could.

So really, the question I needed to be asking myself was, did I have any other good choice?

If I did, I couldn’t think of them. At least, not at the moment. I sighed. I had already made up my mind, hadn’t I?

I was going to have to control a student.

I had drifted closer to the castle, keeping within the boundaries of the Forbidden Forest as I waited for lunchtime to come around. While some would partake within the castle, there were sure to be at least a few who came out, within reach of my abilities.

I rested there, in a sort of half-meditative zen trance, waiting for my… victim, there was no real other word for it. But to prevent a mad terrorist from attempting to commit genocide, I was willing to overlook this admittedly-grievous violation of someone’s self.

When the time finally arrived, I felt the ambient emotion change as soul-lights began moving around, some headed outside. Those would be the ones I focused on, those within the range I preferred for in-depth inspections of souls.

I reached out gently, and began brushing through the minds of the students as they meandered through the grounds of the castle. The process was slow, a necessity if I wished to avoid detection. And avoiding detection was something I definitely wanted to do. One by one, I went through the available students, looking for one that might fit my criteria.

The one primary factor that I needed to scan for was that the student in question had to be a loner, someone who wouldn’t be missed if they vanished for an hour or so. There were other, beneficial aspects, but that one was the only immutable one. So, I reached, and looked.

There was a loner, but they had a class directly after lunch, and had never skipped before, so they would be missed.

Three separate individuals with free periods after lunch, but they either had plans with friends, or other appointments.

Someone who seemed like they would work, but had detention after lunch. That was something that really couldn’t be skipped without attracting attention.

I patiently went through the students, methodically searching and evaluating. I was technically needless, I could do this for a while.

As more and more people finished eating inside, a portion of them trickled outside to enjoy the fresh air. The rain had left everything clean, meaning the grounds were fresh. I went through the minds of the new arrivals, checking their schedules and social life.

More and more students cycled through my range, some coming outside and others going back inside. So far, I hadn’t found a single student that would work. I supposed it was reasonable, considering this was a school. They would have to keep the students busy—

There.

Fifth year, Ravenclaw. Girl, ostracized by peers. Free period after lunch due to it being her OWL year. No appointments, she was just planning on studying alone after eating. I didn’t look for her name, I didn’t want to form more of a connection than there already was.

Perfect.

I intensified my focus, looking deeper and deeper into her soul, preparing for what I was about to do. She shivered. I kept a light touch on her perceptions.

I was, in essence, doing what Slughorn had attempted to do to himself—modification of memories. Unlike him, however, I was modifying memories as they were being stored, essentially giving me complete control over what the girl perceived, and I was doing it through direct contact with her soul, meaning that there ought not to be any sort of detectable external influence, should she be checked for such at any point.

Gringotts Bank had the Thief's Downfall, after all, and who knew what protections were on Hogwarts?

Thankfully, I didn’t need to create each and every individual false thought, image, sound, smell and the like for this. I could apply lighter brushes, and let her mind fill in the rest. No need for me to try to imagine every blade of grass she was seeing at once.

Settling my body behind a tree, out of sight, I tugged on the girl’s curiosity, and began.

She walked through empty stone halls, occasionally passing another student, but the occurrences were rare. She felt… detached, somehow. Everything she was doing felt… not wrong, per se, but it wasn’t… her?

But she chose to do the things she did, right? She stopped walking and spun in a circle, then raised a hand and poked herself in the forehead.

So, it wasn’t that there was any sort of influence on her actions or anything, she chose to do that. She continued her walk, absentmindedly walking up a staircase. It was probably the stress of OWLs getting to her, she decided. She’d been planning on studying this period, right? A walk would likely help declutter her mind.

But not outside, as a group of the girls in her year were meeting in the courtyard for a “study session,” and if she went she’d just be mocked for not coming up with the answers as quickly as they could.

So what if her actually checking her work meant her grades were just as good, if not better?

So no, not outside. She’d just take a walk through the castle, keeping quiet so as to not disturb any classes. Interruptions to study time were the bane of most any student, after all.

Eventually, she came to a staircase and headed upwards. Her shoes clacked against the hard stone of the floor, and she let a hand trail along the railing as she ascended. This staircase was one of the few that had no manner of traps or secret passages on it at all, she knew, which was the only reason for her general lack of focus. She’d most likely be fine spacing out as she walked. Here, at least.

A few minutes later, she paused at the top of the aforementioned staircase. She was now on the sixth floor. She knew that there were a few empty classrooms she could use to hide out on this floor, but for some reason they weren’t that appealing to her at the present moment. Turning back around, she began climbing the staircase yet again, trailing her hand along the banister as she ascended just one more floor.

Now on the seventh floor, she set out into the hallways. She really just wanted to take a break for the period, but that wasn’t entirely right, she thought. A walk to clear her mind was going to help with her mental state, but really, it would be great if she could find somewhere to hide away for the period. She turned on her heel, pacing back and forth down the empty section of hallway. A flick of her wand and a muttered “obscuro” had a tapestry of dancing trolls stumbling as blindfolds appeared over their heads. She wanted to be alone, not stared at by a bunch of non-sapient images. She wanted to join the hidden things of Hogwarts, not be put out on a pedestal. She hated public attention. She would always be happier in a room full of obscure curios than giving a speech to her classmates and professors.

Turning one final time, she pulled open the nearest door, hoping beyond hope that it would lead to an empty classroom— and then she froze, a grin spreading across her face. The room was packed with junk, and obviously hadn’t been used in years. This would be perfect.

Stepping inside, she gently closed the door behind her, making sure she could open it again before stepping away and letting go of the handle. Sure, the magic of Hogwarts generally wouldn’t let the students be harmed more than mere pranks would account for, but it was always better to be careful. Especially when dealing with the unknown.

Though come to think of it, she hadn’t always been that paranoid… that was odd… Or no, no it wasn’t. She was looking at a bunch of broken magical items of unknown purpose. It was entirely reasonable to feel a bit more wary of what they might do. But she definitely wanted to explore the towering piles in the room with her. There was so much to discover, she was sure of it. So she stepped forwards, into the stacks.

Teetering towers of textbooks, all terribly out of date. Broken furniture ranging from mere scratches on a desk to piles of splintered wood. Sometimes the two were combined, with musty, aging books all lined up on a decaying bookshelf. But books and furniture were, while the most common sight, far from the only things she saw in that room. There were flying catapults, and a whole pile of fanged frisbees. Rows and rows of potion bottles, the contents all congealed long, long ago. There were even a few actual, literal swords, whose rust made her question just how long it had been since the room had been used. Had she found the Hogwarts Lost and Found, maybe? Because she’d seen a few textbooks that had only been written decades after Hogwarts stopped offering classes on swordsmanship. And classes on Beast Slaying, she thought, glancing at an enormous, bloodstained axe.

Time seemed to blur as she danced through the piles of broken knowledge. She didn’t do more than look, for the moment at least. If she was going to take anything, it would have to be important. She was a Ravenclaw, after all. She wanted something she could eke out secrets from. Or something important for House unity, if this really was the Hogwarts Lost and Found. Or at least, something comparable to it, at least. Oh, that was redundant, wasn’t it?

She giggled, spinning around and peeking around a corner. She was euphoric. Catching a glimpse of silvery blue, she began to step further down that path. There was so much to learn from the room, she might have stayed there forever. It was like a dream—

And then she jolted awake, her legs burning, as though she’d done a headlong sprint down all seven flights of stairs and out to the Forbidden Forest. She— What? How had she… No, she remembered now. She’d found an empty classroom, and done some last-minute review. Evidently the text had been dull enough to send her to sleep, dreaming of finding the best room of her life. But no, it was just a dream. She had a class to get to anyways. Best not dwell on the dream. The details were fading by the second anyhow.

She moved on, and the dream was nothing more than a faint memory when she’d packed her books away. And by the time she stepped out the door of the classroom, she could hardly recall having a dream at all.

I stared down at the silver diadem, comically small in my hands. I was over three meters tall, and my hands were proportionally sized to match—perhaps even a bit spindlier than a human’s would be. And the Diadem of Ravenclaw was sized for a human head. The disparity was amusing.

The fragment of Tom Riddle’s soul had been unceremoniously and abjectly ripped free and consumed without pomp or ceremony, leaving only the original magic placed on the artifact by Rowenna Ravenclaw herself. Presumably. I had no real way to verify that the four items attributed to the founders of Hogwarts were really made by them. And the difference was moot, anyways. The diadem had the same key-like arrangement layered into the spellwork that the locket had. And the moment I cleaned out the soul fragment, a connection snapped into place between the two. So even if they weren’t really made by the founders of Hogwarts, they were still part of the same set.

And that had… implications.

I was going to proceed under the assumption that both the Cup of Hufflepuff and the Sword of Gryffindor were part of the same set. The issue was, I had absolutely no fucking clue what the items would all do when finally brought back together. As far as I remembered, it never happened in the books — Tom Riddle only ever collected three of them for his horcruxes. And given just how much scarier the possibility of magic made the unknown…

It would probably be safer to store the diadem away, somewhere. Somewhere safe, where I could retrieve it at any time, but far enough from me that it wouldn’t react to the other artifacts when I dug them up too. And honestly, I would be better off storing the locket as well. It was a gamble to keep it. I’d managed to ensure it remained hidden beneath my robes, but there was no guarantee that I wouldn’t slip up in the future.

Did I know a location where I could keep the two artifacts? Well, it obviously couldn’t be Hogwarts. Not only was that far too close to where all of the canon would be happening, but I was a dementor and couldn’t enter and leave freely. No, I’d need free access to the location where I stored the artifacts, which really left me with only one real option: Azkaban.

Or, well, I supposed I could theoretically bury them under a random tree somewhere, but that ran so many risks I wasn’t going to take that it wasn’t even worth mentioning beyond as a dismissal of the idea.

So. Azkaban. It would work, as far as I could tell. I had free access to the entire island, and no one—no one would ever put up with the dementors long enough to actually do a full, detailed search of the island. So that made it a safe space for me all the way up to the end of canon, when Kingsley Shacklebolt became Minister and evicted my kind from the island.

(If he ever became Minister in this timeline, rather. I was well aware that I’d already set some major butterflies into effect.)

In any case, my current path was simple. I would wait until the next Auror shift change, then take the diadem and the locket to the island. I wouldn’t hide them in any of the areas frequented by, or even accessible to humans. No, I’d hide them on the roof somewhere. Or maybe deep, deep underground, where no humans ever ventured due to the sheer concentration of dementors. As a side note, I was pretty sure at the lower levels, the concentrated aura from all of my kind gathering there would be strong enough to kill humans with a few seconds of exposure. It would definitely be a safe enough place to store something I wanted to keep away from mortals for the time being.

And yes, I supposed that label was somewhat accurate, no? I was a dementor. I was amortal. I would never die as I was never alive in the first place. I was perfectly within my rights to refer to the more finite creatures as mortals. Plus, it would up my eldritch spookiness factor when I spoke to them, which was a fun little bonus in my mind.

In any case, I had the next few steps of my plan all worked out. Now all I had to do was put them into effect. And after that? Back to Hogwarts, where I would entertain myself while waiting for Sirius to arrive by trolling anyone who got too close to me. A little fun never traumatized anyone too badly, right?