Chapter 220. The Dementors Who Left
At last, the Azkaban guard came back to himself, his Adam's apple working as he swallowed.
He knew he had to say something.
"I'm only following orders," he rasped. "Every corner must be checked carefully. The criminal could be in any corner."
"Fudge told you to do this?" Adrian Wesson asked.
The guard stayed silent.
"Then I'll take that as acquiescence," Wesson said with a brief smile, before turning stern. "But let me be clear: Dementors are not to come near any student. That is Dumbledore's order. If a student collapses, I won't shoulder that responsibility."
Wesson had spoken firmly, but the guard before him was plainly more obstinate.
He shook his head. "There's nothing for it, Professor Wesson. Black could be hiding in one of the compartments. This is for the students' safety."
"You needn't worry about that. I can guarantee Black isn't on the train, and…" Wesson regarded him with a half-smile. "I'll emphasise this again: keep the Dementors under control—this is not a negotiation; it's a notice."
With that, Wesson casually tossed the Dementor in his hand onto the floor at the guard's feet and turned to leave.
There was no point saying more.
Whether they listened or not—let them decide.
He didn't mind using a little force.
The Dementor lay on its side like a dead dog, and only after confirming Wesson had gone some distance did it, trembling, drift up again.
Watching this ludicrous scene, the guard's face darkened.
It was the most disgraceful Dementor he had ever seen.
Just then, another guard hurried over from down the corridor.
Clearly, he had also heard what Wesson had said.
"What do we do?" he asked uneasily. "Do we still check the compartments?"
"Continue," the first guard said coldly. "He's only a professor. We don't have to listen to him."
Wesson hadn't gone far before he saw the two of them start yanking at compartment doors again.
Anger pricked at him.
So they wouldn't accept a polite warning—fine.
Wesson closed his fingers around his wand, his gaze sharpening.
It seemed he would have to take measures.
He turned back, his dark green robes billowing along the passage.
The two guards were wrenching open a compartment door, making the younger students inside shriek.
"Last warning," Wesson said suddenly from behind them, making them whip round.
Even so, the lead guard merely said, "We are only performing our duties…"
"No. You're terrorising students." Unhurriedly, Wesson drew his wand.
The guards fell back on instinct; one already had a hand on his own wand.
"Oh, don't be nervous," Wesson told him with a smile. "It isn't aimed at you."
Then—
"Expecto Patronum!"
In an instant, dazzling silver light burst from the tip of Wesson's wand.
It wasn't the usual animal form, but a vast, rolling mass of silvery mist.
The silver mist surged through the corridor.
In a heartbeat, it filled the entire passage.
The Dementors let out ear-piercing shrieks and, as if scalded by boiling water, fled in panic. Their rotting cloaks smoked black within the silvery haze as they scrambled to squeeze out through the nearest gaps in the windows.
"What did you do?"
One guard spoke, grave now.
This was clearly not a standard Patronus Charm.
Ordinarily, the Patronus Charm only drove Dementors back; it did not harm them. From the looks of it, Wesson's Patronus was affecting the Dementors directly.
And what he had summoned wasn't a fully formed Patronus at all, but a mass of silver mist.
Stranger still, there was simply too much of it—it had nearly covered the entire train.
"All right, the matter's settled," Wesson said to them with a smile. "If you have complaints, take them to Dumbledore. I only did what I ought to do."
The two guards looked at each other, at a loss.
With the Dementors gone, they could no longer continue their task.
They had better think about how to retrieve those Dementors that had flown off.
Leaving them to wander outside would not do.
After soothing the two younger students, Wesson returned to the compartment. Hearing the commotion, Remus Lupin looked up. "Have the Dementors finished checking?"
"No," Wesson waved a hand. "I drove them away."
"Oh, that's fine then…" Lupin froze, then frowned in disbelief. "Wait—what do you mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like," Wesson said, spreading his hands. "Those brainless Dementors came into the compartments and upset my lovely students. I couldn't just watch their happiness get sucked away, so I used the Patronus Charm to chase them off."
"Incredible." Lupin looked genuinely shocked.
It seemed Wesson's Patronus Charm was far stronger than he had imagined.
Meanwhile, in the trio's compartment—
After eating some chocolate bought from the Trolley Witch, Harry felt a little better.
"I never thought they would send Dementors," Hermione said, frowning at Harry. "The Ministry of Magic has gone too far. Dementors aren't something we should be exposed to—that's punishment for criminals. Harry, once we get to Hogwarts, you'd better go to the hospital wing."
Harry managed a wan smile.
All three of them had just been in close contact with the Dementors, but he seemed to have been affected the most.
He could barely stand.
Ron and Hermione, by contrast, didn't seem too badly off—at least nothing obvious.
Oh, and there was Scabbers. Scabbers looked badly affected as well, circling and circling on the table. Ron was trying to soothe him, but it didn't seem to help much.
That puzzled Harry.
Were animals affected by Dementors too?
"Is there any way to deal with Dementors?" Harry asked Hermione.
As a rule, when you didn't know something, asking Hermione was never wrong.
"The Patronus Charm," Hermione said with a nod. "Last year, when I learned from Hagrid that Dementors existed, I looked up some information. Dementors can be repelled by the Patronus Charm. But it's very difficult. At least when I tried… I didn't manage it even once."
The Patronus Charm, then.
Harry fixed the name of the spell in his mind.
When he had time, he would definitely learn it.
That plunging-into-ice feeling, that devouring despair—he didn't want to experience it a second time.
"Oh, Scabbers," Ron groaned. "Poor Scabbers—when will you ever be normal again?"
"I've got a bit of sedative," Harry said, handing Ron a small vial. "But I'm not sure sedatives work on rats."
"Better than nothing."
Ron took the vial and firmly poured the draught into Scabbers's mouth.
Scabbers's eyes cleared at once.
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