The Last Day of A Soul Eater

|**The Last Day of A Soul Eater**|

It was cold, not just physically but mentally, in the woods. The trees nearly hid the shining moon in the skies, leaving huge shadows and darkness in the enclosed woods. This, and the fact that many dangerous creatures lived in this forest, was enough of a reason to keep intruders away from this place of mysteries.

But, obvious as it may seem, there were always the creatures that were deadly themselves and didn't really care about all the signs reading 'caution: dark creatures' that appeared here and there. Mainly because they couldn't really read.

One of these creatures was going through the woods and would have smiled if it knew what a smile was. Like any good Dementor, the only affection he knew how to show was the Kiss, and this Dementor was on the way to do its job... Kissing a wizard not too far away from where it was.

It, as even if a Dementor could think, the thoughts of this creature would never be called... could never claim the name of... feelings. They were the creatures with no feelings, except of hunger. They didn't hate, because any kind of hatred implied love, they didn't feel sadness because it would imply happiness. All they knew was the hunger for souls, a hunger that never ceased. This only... feeling, if one could call 'hunger' an emotion, was what had led all the Dementors to ally themselves with Voldemort. An alliance, obviously, didn't necessarily mean loyalty, but neither Voldemort or the Dementors cared about that. The Dementors would have felt sorry for themselves and their lives, if they just knew what pity was.

So, this 'it' was walking through the woods alone, which was a rare thing for Dementors, as they usually stayed together in small groups to go hunting. But, after a thousand years of wandering in a never-ending hunt, the Dementor had learned - because, yes, Dementors were able to learn almost anything that could help them when hunting for souls - that just because something wasn't common, it didn't mean it wouldn't lead them to food.

Their lack of emotions made them unable to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, safe and dangerous, and their world had just two different classifications for things: food and non-food. The first was rare, and what kept them alive - if they could ever be classified as 'alive', because the only thing that made them different from the rocks and the ground was that they could move, and their hunger.

This said, one can understand why the Dementor suddenly stopped in the middle of its nearly float-walking and looked to the side. A small noise had come from the bushes on the right. But it wasn't the wind or the little animals that had made it, or else the Dementor would just have kept on walking to hunt for bigger food - human souls. No, it knew that kind of sound... there was a human in the bushes...

It turned to the bushes and started to walk towards them, even if the noise had already stopped. A Dementor, after it starts to hunt, never stops to consider if its prey is too far away. It never is.

"Big boo?" It was definitely the voice of a human. A small and naive one that poked its head out from the bushes and looked curiously at the Dementor.

The Dementor stopped, waiting for its prey to fall to the ground and start to scream in fear. It was what always happened when the prey couldn't conjure an 'Expecto Patronum', and the Dementor knew that this little girl was too young for that.

"Cute!" The human voice was... different. The prey wasn't retreating in fear, as expected, but instead took a step towards the Dementor, which didn't move at all.

The Dementor knew something was wrong... in a thousand years, this had never happened. Or maybe it had and it had just forgotten about it, because a Dementor's memory rarely ever stored anything for longer than a year. They all knew that they were at least a thousand years old, but none could remember anything from their past.

So, the Dementor decided to wait a little longer... children's souls were the best, the best taste a Dementor could search for, so it just watched as the little girl took another step forward, towards the Dementor, giggling in her ponytails and pink dress. Now that she was closer, her naive face was even more visible, making the Dementor writhe in hunger.

But there was something wrong. The Dementor knew it, even if it didn't know exactly how it had come to this conclusion. Dementors, much like a snobbish family, never admit that there may be something wrong because, well, there never is. There's food, eat it. There's no food, keep hunting. That's all.

But... the girl's soul was food, right? Tasty, delicious food. So, the Dementor had to wait a little longer, as the girl would soon be right in front of it. Her flaming hair, however, didn't lose any of its colour, nor did her face go pale, as expected. It had to Kiss her now to satisfy its hunger, but something was still stopping it, like some alarm saying in its head that the girl was in the middle of the road - neither food, nor non-food.

She stopped a foot away from the Dementor and raised her chin to look at its face - or the place where its face should have been, as the only thing that she could see was darkness surrounded by a large gray hood - and - the Dementor would have gasped at this if it had been a human being - giggled. A genuine smile, and the child was giggling and playing by its feet. The purest image of a naive soul. The purest image of innocence. While usually these things were the best sauces for a soul, now they were making the Dementor want to throw up, and it probably would have done, if it wasn't for the fact that it didn't have a stomach.

It had to retreat, as she wasn't proper food. Somehow, the Dementor couldn't manage to perform the Kiss. Something inside it was telling it to go back and just walk away to search for its original prey. But it couldn't. The girl was food. And food was everything to a Dementor... it was like finding true love to humans, it was like finding the chance to never have to transform in the full moon to a werewolf. It couldn't just go and leave the only thing that mattered to it behind.

There was something inside the Dementor that it couldn't understand... it wasn't hunger. What could it possibly be? And then, it happened... the Dementor started to tremble. Cold. For the first time - at least, for the first time that it could remember - the Dementor felt the cold. Not in its body, as it couldn't physically feel any warm or cool. But inside, coming from all parts of it and leaving no part of it untouched by the feeling.

Before the Dementor could name the feeling, the girl giggled once more and took another step, leaving no space between the Dementor and her. It knew it was time to perform the Kiss, but it was now trembling and couldn't manage it. Not caring about this, the girl just smiled once more and hugged the Dementor.

Fear... but a Dementor should be unable to feel fear, shouldn't it? But the Dementor never knew the answer to this, as it vanished in thin air and left no signs of its existence. The girl stared blankly for a moment at the place where it had been, and blinked a few times. She turned around, but the Dementor was no more. It was gone in the wind, and now the woods were a little warmer than before, but not much since the night was very cold in and of itself. However, the cold was now just physical, and the minds of the woods and its inhabitants were once more warm.

As she discovered that the Dementor was truly gone, the girl smiled widely for an instant. For now, the Dementor had learned not to go where it wasn't wanted. There would be more Dementors, but she and her friends would now know how to handle them.

Then, she turned back into a boggart and bounced into the woods to search for the others of her kind.

As the biggest terror comes to destroy the ones that never knew the true meaning of smaller fears.