The War of Shades

Chapter 18 - Dealing with Dementors

That evening, during the regular review of developments in the war, Mrs. Longbottom paid special attention in describing the entire attack at the McMillans and what happened to Iphigenia McMillan to those at dinner. Everyone needed to know how close to home this all could strike and the importance of a patronus. Harry was relieved to see that Ernie was not sitting through this as he had not yet returned. Harry himself was barely able to maintain his composure. Mrs. Longbottom had warned him that she was going to give this talk and invited him to slip away if he needed to. Harry said that he thought it best if he stay, but that he would prefer not to be asked to say anything about it in front of everyone. Mrs. Longbottom signified her understanding and agreement with a solemn nod.

The talk had the desired effect. The next day, everyone redoubled their efforts at training. In Patronus sessions Harry was as singularly focused as anyone had ever seen him. He was determined that everyone be able to counter a dementor. After very intense practice sessions, three more adult wizards and two more Hogwarts students had breakthroughs on their patronus; all five tested against the lethifold and they all passed.

Almost every moment he wasn't working with a patronus student, Harry would apparate to the dueling pitches and help people sharpen up their spells, their speed, their reflexes, and their movements. To Harry, a lost minute could mean a lost soul, and he could not abide that such a thing could happen because he had not been vigorous enough. He understood Cameron's words that the attacks were not his fault, though they were hard to take to heart, but Harry believed that if it was in his power to enable someone to defeat an attack, it was his fault if a trainee was unprepared.

The last patronus session before the dinner break was Tonks. Harry asked Remus to work with her while he watched. He watched her intently as Remus demonstrated the patronus again, listened to her pronunciation, and helped her choose a very happy thought. Harry watched as she tried again and again to produce a patronus, but made only a silvery cloud, which quickly dissipated. Harry stepped in a few times to tweak things she was doing, but he found himself getting very agitated about it, and Remus would calm him and ask him to sit again.

As Harry sat, Hermione, Ron and Neville came to watch. They sat behind him and gave him a pat on the back, but said nothing. They had seen Harry with this sort of concentration before. He had shown it many times when he was coaching, and they would not interfere at this moment. They were not afraid of his reaction; it was just that they knew that his mind was totally committed to his student at such times. Very often they found that students made leaps of progress at just such times.

Finally, Harry could abide it no more. He leapt from his bench and rushed at Tonks. He grabbed her nearest shoulder and turned her to face him. He grasped her by both upper arms and he peered deeply into her eyes as if he were looking directly into her mind. He started screaming at her.

"TONKS, WHAT IS THE MATTER!? WHY DO YOU PLAY AROUND AT THIS!? WE HAVE LESS THAN A MONTH LEFT HERE AND YOU HAVE TO LEARN THIS! YOU RUSH OUT TO FIGHT VOLDEMORT'S TEAMS, BUT YOU HAVE NOTHING YOU CAN DO AGAINST THE MOST DEADLY OF HIS FORCES. YOU CAN DISABLE A WIZARD, AND YOU'RE GOOD AT IT, BUT YOU CAN'T STOP A DEMENTOR WITHOUT A PATRONUS. I TRIED IT - SPELLS DON'T WORK ON THEM. I CAN'T KEEP SENDING YOU OUT TO FIGHT DEMENTORS WITHOUT A PATRONUS!"

Tonks was shaking with fear and her lip quivered as she said weakly, "Harry, you don't send me out. The Ministry does. I'm an auror."

Harry's eyes blazed in intensity, and he resumed his yelling, even louder, gripping her upper arms firmer and leaning in even closer "A PRETTY EFFING USELESS ONE, IF YOU CAN'T MAKE A PATRONUS. AND I MAY NOT GIVE YOU THE ORDERS, BUT I GIVE ALL THE INFORMATION TO THE AUROR'S LIAISON."

With that, Harry nodded toward Remus. When Remus moved to intervene, Harry stared him back, as Remus realized Harry was not going to physically harm her.

Harry started in on Tonks again, still yelling, but not quite as loud. "You saw Mrs. McMillan yesterday! She was little but a zombie. Tonks, I knew her. She was gracious, and kind, and even though she was not a very powerful witch, she brought beauty and charm to everything around her. It tore me up to see her that way! And you remind me so much of her - you add so much joy and exuberance and you spread cheer and charm to those around you. To me! I couldn't stand to see in your eyes the emptiness I saw yesterday in hers. I just couldn't take it. I love you too much. So YOU HAVE TO LEARN THIS! YOU JUST HAVE TO LEARN THIS! YOU JUST HAVE TO LEARN THIS!"

He broke down and began sobbing as he continued quietly, "You just ... have to ..."

Tonks looked up at him, and she was crying as well. Hermione, Ron and Neville came up to Harry and led him out of the patronus practice room, as Remus took Tonks under his arm and comforted her.

Out in the hall, Harry started to control his tears and rage. "I'm sorry. I just lost it."

"Don't be sorry, mate," said Ron quietly, "We all know how much you care for all of us."

"It's a wonder you don't break down entirely," said Hermione.

"It must be awful," said Neville, "to work so hard with someone you care so much about, when you're sure they ought to be able to do it, and get nowhere."

They all looked at him, and then he realized why, and said with a nervous chuckle, "Oh, yeah, I guess I could be talking about myself. No wonder Gran was so hard on me for so long."

Harry began to laugh, and they all joined him,

"How about a workout, Harry?" suggested Hermione, "You know how doing lifts helps you get the tension out."

They all headed down to the dorms for their gym clothes and then went to the gym which had been installed. It was over forty minutes of very robotic and brisk weight-lifting before Harry came out of the funk of his rage.

At the end of the workout, Neville came to Harry and asked if they could all talk privately. He also collected Ron and Hermione. They took quick showers and went out to the paddock near the kitchen door which they went by each morning for their run.

"It's like this," began Neville, "All this with Ernie's Mum and Harry's, erm, reaction with Tonks, has got me really worried about the dementors. You've worked with me for 2 years now. And I know I have made a lot of progress on other things, but I'm no closer to a corporeal patronus than I was last summer."

"Well, you're making a bigger mist," offered Harry.

"But it won't get the job done, will it?" asked Neville, and Harry sadly shook his head. "And what's more, if you three couldn't make a patronus, you could at least apparate away, if you kept your wits about you. I couldn't even do that. I need some other way to deal with dementors besides hiding behind others. Look what happened to Mrs. McMillan - that could have been me. What can I do?"

"I don't know of any other spells or charms that work," said Harry. "I tried several at the McMillans'".

"I haven't heard of any either," said Hermione, furrowing her brow. Ron nodded his agreement thoughtfully.

"You know," said Harry, "I was thinking earlier this summer how we needed a way to permanently incapacitate dementors. If we can't knock them out of action, we'll have to keep on dealing with them forever. A patronus doesn't destroy them - it just chases them away."

Neville nodded. "Too bad we can't petrify them, like happened to you, Hermione."

"Yeah," said Harry, "but I tried the petrification spell on the dementor at the McMillans and it didn't do a thing. Cheering charms don't work either."

"Cheering charms?" said Ron.

Harry shrugged. "I tried other things first. It seemed to be the thing most contrary to their character - can you imagine a happy dementor?"

"In a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops," added Ron.

"And a thong," said Hermione.

They all shuddered and laughed.

"Hermione!" said Ron, incredulously, "Where'd that come from?"

"Ron, I have a sense of humor, too, you know."

"Since when?"

"Well, I'd have to have one to be seeing you!"

"Is that so? Well, I like that!"

"Hold on," said Harry. "Time out, you two. Let's get back to what really might work with dementors."

They thought for several minutes before Hermione said, "You know, maybe petrification would work."

"But Hermione," said Harry, "I tried to petrify it - no go."

"And if Harry's spells won't do it, what hope have I?" added Neville.

"I wasn't thinking of a spell. They aren't as strong as some other types of magic. Have you ever tried to petrify a ghost?"

"Once, when Moaning Myrtle decided to make a habit of joining me in the shower," said Harry.

"It didn't work, did it," continued Hermione with a smirk.

"No, she laughed and said she almost felt it."

"But Nearly Headless Nick was petrified five years ago."

The boys stared at her for several seconds. Then Harry said, "But that was done by a basilisk. Three problems there: it's perhaps the deadliest creature ever made, it was about the size of an Underground train, and I killed it."

"Well, you need something very powerful to destroy a dementor," said Hermione, "and that one was 1000 years old - of course it was big. And if that one was hatched, another one can be."

"Hermione, I thought you were daft when you decided to make Polyjuice potion," said Ron.

"What!?" said Neville.

"Oh, uh, extra credit for Potions," said Harry.

"Oh," said Neville, clearly not entirely convinced, but knowing enough about his friends to not ask too many questions.

"Hermione, for a basilisk to kill or petrify, don't you have to look it in the eye?" said Neville.

"Yes, Neville, that's why we had no fatalities second year - no one looked at it directly except for Nick, who couldn't die again. Well, the bite is deadly poisonous, too, but somehow I doubt poisons would work on a dementor."

"Well, aren't dementors blind?" he continued.

Hermione frowned at that and thought.

"Not totally," said Ron.

"What?" said the others together.

"I know they have some way of telling light from dark - they prefer to stay in darkness. And if they didn't have some sort of vision, they probably would end up dressed like Dobby, rather than in the black robes they're always in."

"Like the Emperor's New Clothes!" said Hermione excitedly.

"Huh?" said Neville.

"It's a muggle fairy tale about an emperor who was tricked into paying a fantastic price for a set of clothes which he was told were made of a magical material that could only be seen if someone was wise. But the tailors were not actually making anything: they just acted like they were making a set of robes. They trusted that neither the emperor nor his courtiers would say they couldn't see it, for risk of being thought fools. But when the emperor paraded about the town in the new clothes, a little boy - who didn't care if he was thought wise - said that the emperor had no clothes. And when he said that, the whole crowd began to admit that they too couldn't see any clothes. And finally the emperor and his court admitted it as well."

"That's a cool story, Hermione," said Neville. "I'll bet it's a hoot when it's not told so quickly, but what does it have to do with dementors?"

"The emperor couldn't judge the clothes because he couldn't see them - but the dementors know that they have black robes and that the black robes blend into the dark that they inhabit. And they know that they are in the dark. Dementors may have very poor vision, but they can see!"

"Okay, one problem solved," said Harry, "but how big would a young basilisk be, and how would we carry it around?"

"Well," said Hermione, "they hatch from a cockerel egg, hatched under a toad of course..."

"Of course," said Ron, nodding to Neville, who grinned.

"Yes! So how big a baby would fit in an eggshell - no bigger than your little finger around, and less than a foot long. That wouldn't be too big to handle."

"But how fast do they grow?" asked Neville, "We wouldn't want to have to keep hatching replacements all the time."

"Well, if it only got to the size Harry describes ..."

"Only!!" said Harry, "I dare anyone else to face that thing and not wet themselves."

"I'm not minimizing it, Harry, but it had a thousand years or so to grow. It couldn't have grown more than 2-3 inches a year tops."

"Maybe faster at first," said Neville, "I know from my plants that the first few months or years of growth are the quickest."

"My parents keep little bonsai trees in their dental offices," said Hermione.

"Okay, I'll bite again - what's that and why do you bring it up?" asked Neville.

"Bonsais are regular forest-type trees that are planted in small pots on rocks. By feeding and watering them only a little, and cutting their roots regularly, they grow to maturity no bigger than a flobberworm."

"But they don't really look like a regular forest tree - more like the kind you see on rocky windswept cliffs," added Harry.

"That's cool - can we visit your parents' office sometime, Hermione?" asked Neville.

"Of course," said Hermione, "but there are other places to see bonsais. The point is that if you only feed a creature the bare minimum it needs to survive, then it will grow very little. It works best with cold-blooded living things that don't have a set adult size. You couldn't do it with birds or mammals, but I'll bet if you fed a snake very sparingly, it would grow only very slowly."

"You're getting really serious about this, Hermione," said Harry.

"Neville's right, Harry, he needs a means of defense until he can master the patronus. And you're right that we need a way to take them out of the picture entirely."

Harry squinched up one side of his face and said, "Alright then, Granger, how does he carry this thing around?"

"Hmm, we need it to be constricted so that it can't wriggle around and bite anyone - well anyone we don't want it to," said Hermione, "so what we need is a tube."

"Aah, got you Hermione," said Harry, "if the tube is open, then the basilisk can crawl away and wreak havoc, but if it's closed, then it can't look out!"

"Close the tail end with a cap, and put glass or crystal over the head end so that it can look out!" said Neville excitedly.

"And have a cap you can put over the end like a muggle ball point pen!" added Hermione.

Ron began to summarize. "Okay, where are we now - we plan on Neville walking around with a basilisk in a covered tube..."

Neville interrupted, "We can make it look like a wand so no one knows I have it."

"Well, it might cause a panic if it were known what you had, so okay, a fake wand it is," agreed Harry, "and it has a crystal end that the basilisk can peer through to petrify things, and I guess a tiny slot at the side that we can poke food through. The first problem is probably the easiest - how to get one."

"That's easy?" asked Hermione.

"Of course," said Harry, "who do we know that would happily help us hatch something insanely dangerous if we told him it was to be a pet?"

"Hagrid!!" said the others together.

"Now we'll have to have the equipment ready for him to be able to hatch it. He'll need a toad, a nest box that will force the baby to crawl into the tube, erm - wand, and of course, the wand. Hermione, he'll need a way to know that the basilisk is hatching so that he can remove the toad and put a lid over the egg to keep the basilisk confined. It should follow the only light, which will be that coming through the length of the wand."

"I can charm the nest to do that," said Hermione, "and if the baby doesn't go for the light on its own, you can talk it down the tube."

"Oh, yeah, parseltongue. You know, I hardly ever think about my parseltongue skills. I think the real reason it's rare is that it's a really stupid power to have. I mean, snakes really haven't got all that much to say, you know."

"That leaves two problems, basically related to what to do if there's a cock-up," said Hermione, "we'll need a way to kill it and we'll need depetrification potion."

"Okay, you kill them with a rooster's crowing, so we'll just keep a rooster in our pockets," said Ron.

"Aren't you the cocky one?" said Hermione. She laughed and said, "I knew I would be able to work that one into this conversation."

Ron scrunched his face at her pun. "Don't worry Hermione - you'll get the hang of this humor stuff after a while."

In response, Hermione stuck her tongue out at him, and then winked and smiled.

"Maybe something a little more discrete: we're sorcerers, after all," said Neville. "We ought to be able to charm something to turn into a rooster when needed."

"Great idea, Neville," said Harry, "and I know a couple of brothers who love to make fake wands. I'll bet Fred and George could make a hollow fake wand that would turn into a rooster when it ceased to have something in it."

"Well, they're already making them turn into doves and other birds," said Hermione. "I can't see why a rooster would be a problem."

"How about the depetrification potion? We should have some on hand - just in case," said Harry.

"Most of the ingredients I can get at the apothecary's at Diagon Alley," said Hermione, "but we have to have fresh mandrake."

"Which we just happen to have in all stages of development in the Longbottom greenhouses. We're supplying the uncommon ingredients for potions that Gran says the resistance needs."

"Erm, what do you know about that?" asked Harry.

"I know Gran's been doing some things Dumbledore asks her, and I know it has to do with fighting Voldemort. It's got to be something outside the Ministry or we'd see Ministry people involved. That's all. Why - do you know something?"

"No, nothing," said Harry, Ron and Hermione quickly.

"Can you get some of the mandrakes?" asked Hermione.

"Sure, the greenhouses have been my responsibility all summer. I'm good for something, you know," said Neville.

"A lot more than just that, you sod," said Harry.

"Anyway, we always grow about twice what we need, because there are always some that fail to thrive. I can cull some and get what we need."

"How soon could you make the potion, Hermione?" asked Harry.

"Aren't you even going to ask me IF I can make it?"

"No," said all three boys together emphatically.

Hermione sighed. "It takes two days once I have the ingredients. Once bottled it will keep at least a year. We could make more next summer if need be."

"You know," said Neville, "we still really don't know if the basilisk would work on a dementor."

"We'll test it," said Harry.

"We don't have dementors in the greenhouses, Harry," said Neville. "Trust me, I'd know."

"No, but we have a lethiform in the attic. That's how we test patronuses. Lethiforms and dementors are related. But we have to assemble everything else first - the wand, the nesting box, the egg, the toad, the potion. How about this - Ron and I will take care of talking to Hagrid about the hatching and the twins about the wand. Hermione, you take care of the nesting box and make a list of ingredients you'll need from Diagon Alley. When one of the twins goes back to the shop this week for Lee's day off, he can pick up what we need. Neville, work with Hermione on which mandrakes to use."

Ron looked very umcomfortable.

"I know that look," said Hermione. "Ron, don't you even trust Neville and me to go to the greenhouses together."

"Well, erm, it's just ..." said Ron.

"Oh, get over it, Ron. Just because you finally discovered I'm a girl doesn't mean I'm going to be that way with everyone. Or do you not trust Neville - do you think he's going to force himself on me? He's not like that."

Neville winced. "Somehow that comes off as insulting, Hermione, like I'm not man enough to have an interest."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Oh, you men with your insecurities. You're plenty manly, Neville. And your trimmed down, muscled-up physique looks great. But you're also a very decent man, and a decent man doesn't overpower a girl."

"Well, alright, I guess," said Neville

"Besides," continued Hermione, "as strong as you are and as good at dueling as you've gotten, you know I can and would kick your heinie from here to Hogwarts if you tried anything on me."

"Oh, great, Hermione," said Ron, "first you build him up, and then you threaten him. How do you think that makes him feel!?"

You're right, Ron," she said. "Neville, I trust you regardless of who can fight better. By the way, when we have the nesting box ready, we'll have to borrow Trevor."

"Trevor?" asked Neville, "I can't give him up. I'm very fond of him. Why not some other toad?"

"It can't be a common toad," said Hermione, "it has to be a wizard's toad - they're magical. Otherwise a cockerel's egg would never hatch, much less produce a basilisk."

"But why Trevor?"

"Do you know anyone else with a pet toad, Neville?" asked Harry.

"No."

"Well, there you go. Hermione's right. We'll need Trevor. Before we go anywhere, though, I want you all with me as I run this by Dumbledore."

Harry pulled out his mirror and called Professor Dumbledore. They took turns explaining part of the plan.

Dumbledore shook his head sadly, sending a ripple down his long beard. "Under other circumstances, I would put a stop to this. I am all for students trying new things, even quite dangerous things if they are prepared. But a basilisk goes beyond all sensible bounds. However, you have analyzed the situation accurately and there are no four students I know of whom I would rather have pursuing such a project. Go ahead." Then he added as he faded away, "And Harry, try to keep your temper."

"Yes Professor. Wait - how did he know? Oh, well, Remus must have already reported. Ron, let's be off to talk to Fred and George; then we'll apparate to Hagrid's cabin to talk to him about our new pet."

"We'll go into the outbuilding to find a box we can modify," said Hermione. "Harry?"

"Yes, Hermione."

"I thought Voldemort knew everything you consciously thought about."

"Yes, and vice versa," agreed Harry.

"So he knows now what we're planning."

"Yes."

"Isn't he going to do something to stop us?

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Because he's sure we're going to screw up and petrify or kill half of his opposition. He's laughing his head off right now."

"Oh, that's comforting," said Hermione.

Harry laughed. "We've proved him wrong before. Let's do it again. I sure don't want to hear 'I told you so' echoing in my head from him."

"Right, Coach!" they all agreed.