Chapter Fourteen: The Hogwarts Express

"H-Hannah?" Milo asked, stunned. Gods, what have I done?

There was no response.

"Okay," Milo said, out loud. "I'll go find her, and she'll be fine. Just... fine. You'll see."

Milo stood up from his prone position, shaking off snow. He waded through the deep snow to where Locate Object told him Hannah lay.

He felt as if he was drowning in cold. The air, the snow, even his own clothing, felt like ice water.

"Hannah?" Milo called again, yet was again unanswered.

Abruptly, the snow stopped blocking Milo's vision, revealing an old tree that might have been a willow. Hannah lay against it, slouched into a half-sitting position. Her wand was held loosely in her right hand; her left was clutching the hilt of Milo's dagger. It was sticking out of her stomach. It was difficult to tell—her school uniform was black, after all—but there was a lot of blood. A scary amount of blood. Her head lolled to her the side, and she wasn't moving.

And it was all Milo's fault.

Hannah stirred feebly, and reached for her wand.

"E... e..." she said weakly.

"Hey, Hannah," Milo said gently. "You'll be okay, okay? I've... I've got a Healer's Kit and +1 from Wisdom, so I can do first-aid, okay? So just... don't move." Milo tried to reach for his kit, but found that his arms were locked into place, as if the ice water had frozen completely.

"Ex..."

"Tell me back at the castle, when you explain just what you were doing out here, 'kay?"

"Expecto Patronum!"

"Milo! Milo! Wake up, mate!"

There were lights hanging above him, and he could just barely make out a pink, round face.

"Neville?" Milo asked. The blizzard was gone, as was the tree, leaving only the feeling of ice—and the guilt. "What... what happened?"

"Still happening," said a familiar voice. Milo blinked, trying to clear away the blurriness. He felt slow, and weak. Neville's face slowly came into focus, and Milo saw that he looked the way Milo felt. Worse, even, if that were possible. The normally ever-present, slightly dopey smile was gone, replaced by a pale grimace.

"Ex... ex... expecto... 'specto..."

They were still on the Hogwarts Express, Milo realized. The last thing he remembered was drifting off on the train, confident in his safety. Now, he was lying on the floor of the compartment in a pool of his own sweat. He turned to face the door, and almost wished he hadn't.

Floating in the doorway was a... thing. The best Milo could describe it was a three-dimensional shadow that had taken the form of a tattered, black cloak. It vaguely resembled a Wraith, except that it was exposed to broad daylight through the train's windows and was still alive.

He couldn't make out the majority of its shape, as Hannah stood between him and the shade, wand out, shaking like a gelatinous cube in an earthquake. Or like she was shivering, out in the forest...

A hair-thin tendril of white-grey fog floated between her and the shade, which seemed reluctant to touch it, but it was fading fast.

Hannah was keeping it at bay, but it wouldn't last. She needed help.

Milo pulled himself to his feet and shook his hands out of his sleeves.

Fortunately for her, he was something of an old hat at fighting things that could best be described as 'eldritch.'

"Glitterdust!" he shouted.

Nothing happened. Milo frowned. He hadn't failed a Concentration check, like he had when chased by Death Eaters the other day, so what had happened? He wasn't in an Antimagic Field, or his Belt of Hidden Pouches would have exploded as the non-dimensional space inside each pouch became uncomfortably, well, dimensional.

Maybe he should just try another spell?

"Kelgore's Fire Bolt!" Again, nothing happened. It didn't feel like he'd tried and failed to cast the spell, though, it felt more like...

...like when he'd died. During his sojourn into the Outer Planes, he'd been similarly unable to perform magic.

But he couldn't be dead, could he? He was still in the Material Plane, implying, if he had died, he was more of undead persuasion.

He didn't feel undead, though. He still had a Constitution score, for starters, and his maximum Hit Point count hadn't increased, which was supposed to happen to undead...

Milo froze. His maximum Hit Point count hadn't increased.

It had decreased.

"...specto... patronum..."

The wispy tendril between Hannah and the shade disappeared, and Hannah collapsed to the floor. Pushing aside the problem of his reduced Hit Point total for later, he focused on the problem at hand.

"Summon Skeletal Troll," Milo tried—and failed—to cast, unsure of what else to do.

The shade rounded on him, reaching out what Milo took to be an arm towards him.

Giving up on magic, Milo reached into his bag of tricks, producing a thin glass flask of water with a brass sun stamped on it.

Milo flung the flask at the shade in a hefty overhand throw. "Eat holy water, freak!" he said in a manner he'd intended to be defiant, but it came out a little closer to 'feeble.'

The flask shattered harmlessly against the revenant's torso, accomplishing nothing but making it a little damp.

Milo backed into the corner, almost tripping over Neville, who lay on the floor with his eyes rolled up into the back of his head.

Driven once again to the absolute last resort of any primary spellcaster, Milo reached into his Belt of Hidden Pouches and drew the quarterstaff he'd acquired from his bolt hole's weapon stores.

Milo gripped the staff at one end with both hands and swung it around him with all the strength he could bring to bear (which, bearing in mind that he was a Wizard, was next to none) and swung directly at where the shade's head would be, had it had one.

As he swung, however, he felt his grip slacken and his arms weaken. He heard a clatter ring through the compartment, and belatedly realized that he'd dropped the staff, and the only thing keeping him standing was the wall he was leaning against.

"What are you?" he choked, sliding to the ground.

The shade reached towards him, and its cloak slipped, revealing a pale, rotten hand that gently gripped Milo by the chin. He hadn't felt this helpless since Riddle had drained his soul in the Chamber of Secrets.

"Expecto Patronum!" shouted out an unknown male voice.

A silver-white dog burst into the room, slamming bodily against the shade, pinning it against the wall above Milo. Where the dog's paws and teeth gripped the tattered cloth, steam appeared as if the mere contact of this spectre burned.

"Sirius?" Milo murmured, feeling half-delusional, but as he examined the animal more closely, he realized it was a wolf, not a dog.

The shade managed to slip free of the animal's grasp, and fled through window, scattering shards of glass across the room.

"What was that you said?" asked a man in the hallway. His eyes widened, presumably as he noticed the full extent of the carnage that had occurred in the compartment for the first time. "Never mind that. How are you all feeling?"

"Mrggnnnnnnn..." Hannah groaned, pulling herself up into a sitting position.

The man, who looked more worse for wear than anyone Milo had seen alive, bent over to examine her more closely, careful of the shards of window and holy water flask on the ground. Milo realized belatedly, as he followed the creature's progress out the window, that at some point the train had stopped moving. "I'm sorry, what did you say?" the stranger asked, leaning closer to Hannah.

"I said, 'like my bloody brain got mauled by a bloody bobcat,'" Hannah muttered, holding her hand against her forehead. "Ow."

"What she said," Neville agreed, sitting up. "What happened? Was that a... a..."

"A Dementor," the stranger said solemnly. "Though why someone decided to let one loose on a train full of children escapes me. Eat this," he said, breaking off a piece of chocolate to hand to each of them.

"That's a Dementor?" Milo asked. "What..." he swallowed. "What did it do to me?"

"Nothing that a little chocolate and some time in the sun won't fix," Lupin said. "Best not to dwell on it. Which one of you produced the Patronus?"

"The mist thingy?" Neville asked. "That was Hannah."

"That was a very advanced spell," the man said. "Fifteen points for... uhm..."

"Gryffindor," Hannah said, taking a bite out of the chocolate bar.

"Fifteen points for Gryffindor, then. I'd best be off," he said, "there's still many more students to check on."

"Wait," Hannah said as he turned to leave. "Who are you?"

"Ah, of course," the man said. "I'm Remus Lupin, the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. I'll be seeing you all in class tomorrow, I expect." With that, he hurried off, his worn grey robes trailing behind him.

"How did you know how to cast the expecto-whatsit?" Neville asked Hannah curiously, munching away on chocolate.

"After Milo di..." she swallowed slightly. "After Milo disappeared last year, and the Basilisk attacked Hermione, Harry, and Ron in the halls, I sort of thought I should study up on some more advanced defensive magic. That's the first time I'd actually managed to make the spell work, though," she admitted. "And barely, at that."

"It probably saved us," Milo said. "Boccob knows I was completely useless," he added ruefully. "Prestidigitation," he muttered, intending to clean up the glass on the floor, but again, nothing happened. It was almost as if... "Wait," Milo said. "Didn't Siri..." he glanced at Neville, "our furry friend say something about the Azkaban guards draining happy memories?"

Hannah nodded. "Dementors are said to take away your happy thoughts," she confirmed, "including your memories. The only thing that can stop them is a Patronus."

"Let me guess—they also make you relive your worst ones?" Milo asked.

"Sometimes," Hannah said. She gave him a curious look, but didn't press the issue when he changed the subject.

"I think it took my spells," he said. Every morning, he had to memorize the spells he was intending to cast that day, and if the incantation for Glitterdust didn't count as a happy memory, then surely nothing did. Though how it had pulled it off while Milo wore his Amulet of Protection was beyond him—he was supposed to be immune to all forms of mental attack. "...and my Experience."

Hannah's eyes widened. "How can you be certain?"

Milo shuddered. "I'm weaker, now. Much weaker." He took a bite out of the chocolate, and it was like (and Milo was embarrassed to even think this, accurate as it was) taking a bite out of sunshine itself. He swallowed, and felt warmth spread from his stomach outwards. It didn't return his spells or Experience Points, however. He estimated that he'd lost at least two thousand XP, dropping him back down a level—taking his ability to Teleport with it. "Thank you," he said to Hannah, and he really meant it. "If you hadn't intervened, that could have been worse. Much worse."

"Will you... be okay?" Hannah asked.

Milo nodded. "I'll be right as rain as soon as I pound a few monsters' faces in," he said. "Though I doubt I'll roll maximum HP again when I level up." he narrowed his eyes. "Actually, if we can trap a Dementor in a controlled environment, I can use it to repeatedly de-level and level up again in order to get the highest number of HP each time with minimal XP cost. I'll get two free new spells each time, too." Despite the warmth from the chocolate, he shivered slightly at the thought of willingly subjecting himself to the Dementor's attack again. Some memories were best left in the past. "Though I don't expect I'll actually do that. You say the only way to fight them is with this spell?"

Hannah nodded. "Nothing else—not even the Killing Curse—has any effect on them."

"Damn," Milo said meaningfully.

He knew he'd been pushing things pretty far lately, but he hadn't realized that he'd apparently crossed the line enough to make the DM resort to this. Dementors seemed purpose-built to completely destroy him in particular. They could steal his most potent abilities, they could permanently take away his hard-won experience points, and, worst of all, if Hannah was right, he was completely helpless against them.

Milo leaned back against his seat, trying to devise some sort of strategy to deal with these Dementors, if and when he encountered them next. Perhaps a spell like Heroism could counter the happiness-sucking-ness of their attack, but Milo was unable to cast any spell from the Enchantment school—which ruled out any spell that had any sort of mind-affecting or morale-based effects. The real surprise was that they could somehow work around the protection granted from his amulet. That ruled out possession and mental control as things the Dementor could have done to him, which really made him wonder what it had done. How was forcing someone to relive their worst memories while you stole their best ones not mental control? Did chocolate really counter the Dementor's attack because of a property unique to chocolate—a property that could be exploited—or was it simply because most people liked chocolate, and that comfort was the counter? Would a favourite musical composition, perfume, or painting have a similar effect? Or was it that chocolate, specifically, had some sort of anti-Dementor property, in a similar way that garlic did for vampires?

"Hey..." Neville said, breaking Milo out of his reverie. He wasn't sure how long he'd been musing on the issue for.

"Yeah?" Milo asked.

"How come we haven't started moving, yet?"

Milo narrowed his eyes. The Dementor was long gone, and the lack of screams and impacts of fainting students hitting the ground meant that there weren't any more aboard the train.

"Dementors work for the Ministry, right?"

"More or less," Hannah said. "Although they're more like... extremely dangerous work animals than actual employees."

"Meaning they wouldn't send them out alone without a handler," Milo reasoned.

"Probably not," Hannah agreed.

"Can Dementors communicate with humans?" Milo asked. "Such as to—"

The compartment door slammed open, and a wizard and pair of witches entered, wands held out threateningly. Such as to report that they found a wanted person, he was going to say.

"Milo Amastacia-Liadon," the one in the front said in an authoritative tone, "You're coming with us."

"Uhm," Milo said. "Why? Other than the fact that you have wands out and I don't, of course."

"For your own protection," the man said. "I'm Kingsley Shacklebolt, with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and we have reason to believe that you're being targeted by dangerous felon, Sirius Black."

"That doesn't make any sense," Hannah cut in. "If Sir—if Black is after him, then surely the safest place for Milo is at Hogwarts?"

"This is not a request," Shacklebolt said. "I've been authorized to use force if needed."

Milo held his hands up. He had no spells, hardly any magic items, and no real hope of escape. He considered bolting out the window, but it was all open fields—he wouldn't get thirty feet before they took him out with a Stunner. One look at Shacklebolt and the others dispelled any notion of fighting his way out with physical force. They looked almost as tough as the Muggle police he'd seen.

"I'm coming," he said. Milo stopped, a sudden thought occurring to him. "Hey... none of you happen to be wearing one of my amulets, do you?"

"What are you talking about?" Shacklebolt asked. "No, and I'd suggest against any further delays. Get your things and let's get going."

"Yeah, I don't actually own anything, per se," Milo said. All of his possessions were in his Belt of Hidden Pouches—and scattered throughout bolt holes across the country, but he had no intention of tipping the Ministry off to their existence, if they didn't already know. "So that won't be a problem."

Shacklebolt gave him a weird look. "Fine. Let's go." He placed his hand on Milo's shoulder, and Milo was greeted with a distinctly unpleasant sensation not unlike being pulled through a Portable Hole backwards as they Disapparated.

o—o—o—o

Lucius Malfoy adjusted his robes in front of the mirror. Appearance would be critical, today. His pawns in the Ministry should be bringing in the freak momentarily, and he needed to be present. As a member of the Board of Governors, it was his duty, nay, his privilege to protect his students, and Milo was no exception. Why, he couldn't imagine a better way to do that than to suggest the boy be sent to a safehouse in, say, Egypt, or Nepal. Somewhere far, far away from the 'ruthless criminal,' Sirius Black.

He was interrupted from his thoughts by a knock on his manor door. Dobbie was out getting some last-minute school supplies for Draco, so Lucius went to answer the door himself.

"Hello?" he asked curiously, opening the door, but whoever had been there had already left. At his feet, however, was a large manila envelope addressed to him stamped with what had to be an unnecessarily large, red 'URGENT'.

Lucius picked it up curiously and examined it, searching for any indication as to who it was from.

"Who the bloody hell is Inland Revenue?"

o—o—o—o

Fiona smiled to herself as she hung up the payphone. Some problems, the government was content to sit on, moving at the barely perceptible speed of, well, government, taking little to no action. Other problems were simply conveniently forgotten about, or shuffled back and forth between departments and bureaus for so long that they may as well have been. But there was one very specific kind of problem that launched the government into action at speeds that would make Einstein sit up and take notice. This, she was quite certain, was one of those cases.

Lucius Malfoy, she thought, is in for a bad day. She wondered what the interest was on unpaid property taxes dating to before the Magna Carta, and whether it came with a prison sentence or not. The important thing, of course, was simply to get him 'on the books,' so to speak, like the Abbots had been. Running shady conspiracies is much harder when you're in the public eye.

Fiona flipped through the phone book and fished another couple of coins from her satchel. She still had a few more phone calls to make—this time, to the first red top tabloid listed in the phonebook.