Chapter 176: The Chill of Platform 9 3
September 1st, King's Cross Station.
"Harry, Ron, watch your step! Don't let those gray-robes bump into you!"
Molly Weasley shouted shrilly, like a mother hen protecting her chicks, nervously gathering the children behind her.
The platform was crowded with Aurors in gray uniforms, their expressions cold and hard. Their scrutinizing gazes swept over every family like searchlights, freezing the cheerful atmosphere of farewell.
An Auror's gaze lingered on Harry for a few seconds too long; the inquiry and suspicion in that look made the hair on the back of Harry's neck stand up.
Sirius Black's escape from prison weighed on everyone's heart like a massive boulder.
"The way they look at you, it's as if you're the next You-Know-Who," Ron leaned in and muttered in a low voice, uneasily tugging at his faded old robes.
Harry gave an absent-minded response, his eyes scanning the crowd for that white-bearded figure. Dumbledore. The Principal hadn't come.
Ever since he had been forced to his knees by a single look from that man named Cassius at the Leaky Cauldron, the darkness in the depths of Harry's heart had been growing like weeds.
He had to obtain stronger power—a power sufficient to contend with Cassius, or even crush him.
Riddle's remnant soul whispered in his ear that the power was in Dumbledore's hands—the elder wand.
The Hogwarts Express gave a heavy wheeze and slowly pulled away from the platform.
The atmosphere inside the carriage was equally oppressive.
Students whispered, their topics never straying from Blackand that soul-freezing prison, Azkaban.
Harry and Ron sat in a window-side compartment.
Hermione's seat was empty. Ron had gone twice, only to see her surrounded by a pile of parchment covered in complex runes, head down and frantically calculating something, so he had to retreat dejectedly.
"What on earth is she up to?" Ron grumbled resentfully, tugging at the cuff of his robes. "It's been like this all summer. I had Hedwig send her three letters asking what she was doing, and guess what she replied?"
Harry finally withdrew his gaze from the window and glanced at him.
"Three words: 'Busy, don't disturb'." Ron mimicked Hermione's haughty tone, his face turning red with anger. "Busy! Busy being an assistant to that Slytherin bastard? She's lost her mind!"
Harry said nothing, merely looking indifferently at the fields flying past the window. He knew what Hermionewas doing.
That woman had already tasted the flavor of power and was sinking into it.
Foolish, yet... clearer than anyone. She chose the shortcut, while he would find the royal road to the peak.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the train, inside a luxurious Slytherin compartment.
Draco was using a piece of velvet to wipe his new wand over and over again, his movements meticulous, as if performing some sacred ritual.
This summer, Cassius had torn away all his pride and impetuousness in the most brutal way.
Those painful training sessions had made him understand the true meaning of power for the first time.
He looked at Cassius, who was resting with his eyes closed across from him. There was no expression on that handsome face, yet it made Draco feel a tremor from his very soul.
He didn't know what kind of monster resided beneath that calm skin.
Cassius leaned against the soft seat, his Dual-Soul Furnace operating at low power within him, like a precision radar, sensing the flow of magic throughout the entire train.
The train entered a field shrouded in dark clouds, and the light dimmed.
At that moment, Cassius's eyelids flickered almost imperceptibly.
A second later, the train jolted violently; a piercing screech of metal scraping against metal sliced through the air as the carriage ground to a halt.
The lights flickered a few times and then went out completely.
An indescribable chill seeped in from all directions—it wasn't just a drop in temperature, but a desperate sense of void, as if life force were being forcibly drained away.
Frost spread across the window panes at a visible speed, completely sealing out the sunlight from outside.
The air became thin and sharp; every breath felt like inhaling shards of glass.
"What's happening?"
"So cold... I... I'm thinking about when my cat died..."
"I'll never be happy again..."
Screams of panic and suppressed sobbing rose one after another.
Painful memories buried deep in their hearts were forcibly dug out by an invisible hand, turning into a flood that swallowed everyone.
In Harry's compartment, Ron's face had lost all color. He curled up in a corner, teeth chattering, mumbling incoherently about spiders.
He groped to pull out his wand but couldn't even manage such a simple action; his fingers were so stiff they wouldn't obey.
Harry felt himself falling, falling into a bone-chilling abyss.
That shrill female voice exploded in his mind once more, clearer than ever before.
"Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off—"
Then came a maniacal, cold laugh and a streak of green light that swallowed everything.
"Mom..." Harry murmured unconsciously, warm tears streaming down his cold cheeks, only to freeze into ice beads halfway.
However, unlike before.
Deeper within his consciousness, that remnant soulbelonging to Riddle did not feel fear; instead, it let out a satisfied and greedy sigh.
The voice was like a cold venomous snake, coiling around his soul.
'Ah... what wonderful negative emotions... what pure despair... more, give me more...'
Harry felt a sickening sense of pleasure coming from the depths of his soul; he loathed the feeling but couldn't stop it.
That thing was like a hungry beast, frantically devouring the immense pain generated by his memories and the panic permeating the surrounding carriages.
With every bit it consumed, its presence became more solid, and its erosion of Harry's soul grew deeper.
He was enduring double torture: on one side, the image of his mother's death, and on the other, the coldness of his soul being eaten away by a foreign entity.
He wanted to scream, but his throat felt frozen, unable to make any sound.
Just then, the handle of their compartment door was covered in a layer of grayish-white frost.
A figure draped in a tattered Black cloak floated silently outside the door, the void beneath the hood facing into the compartment.
Inside the compartment, a middle-aged man in worn robes, who had been dozing in the corner, suddenly jerked awake.
The new Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Remus Lupin.
The moment he woke up, a flicker of old fear that didn't belong to this scene flashed in his eyes, but that emotion vanished instantly, replaced by a battle-hardened gravity.
Almost out of instinct, his hand had already gripped his wand, his movements fluid and swift.
"Don't move! Nobody move!" he growled in a raspy voice, not loud, but carrying an unquestionable power of calm.
The frozen door was slowly pulled open by a decaying hand covered in gray scabs.
Chapter 177: The Frozen Compartment, The New Professor's Helplessness
The compartment door was pulled wide open by that rotting hand.
The bone-chilling cold was no longer a mere seepage; it poured in like a bursting dam, instantly draining the last trace of warmth from the air.
Dementor.
It hovered in the doorway, a void of darkness beneath its tattered cloak, where light was eerily warped and swallowed at its edges. It had no facial features, yet everyone felt as though they were being stared down by a bottomless abyss.
A damp, rattling breath sounded, like someone's final struggle before drowning underwater.
Neville Longbottom had long since fainted from fright, slumped on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Ron curled up in a corner, his teeth chattering uncontrollably with a clicking sound. He wanted to recite a defensive spell, but his lips trembled, unable to piece together a single complete syllable.
Only Harry stared blankly at the monster, the screams of his mother before her death whipping up a storm in his mind, waves of agony nearly tearing his sanity apart.
Professor Lupin shielded Harry with his body, his face paler than paper.
The hand holding his wand was shaking, and not just from the cold.
It was the beginning of the month, and the influence of the waning moon made the "other part" within him restless. The aura of despair brought by the Dementor acted like a key, nearly unlocking the seal in his bloodline.
"Get back!" he roared at the Dementor, his voice dry and raspy, carrying a tremor he himself didn't even notice.
The Dementor ignored him completely. It could smell the sweetest "fragrance" in this carriage—Harry Potter.
That boy's soul, wrapped in immense trauma and soaked in complex emotions, was to it a gluttonous feast more attractive than a thousand happy souls.
Silently, it glided past Lupin toward Harry.
Lupin forced himself to recall happy times, but his mind was filled with nothing but cold moonlight and uncontrolled howling.
He finally managed to grasp a thought—the smiling faces of his friends gathered around the fireplace.
"Expecto Patronum!"
A wisp of silver-white smoke spurted from the tip of his wand, as weak as a candle flickering in the wind.
The smoke struggled, attempting to take shape, but only managed to vaguely outline the silhouette of a wolf's head before it began to dissipate.
The silver mist struck the Dementor, which only faltered for a brief moment.
That was all.
That weak glow of the Patronus didn't even stir a ripple in the face of the Dementor's all-consuming despair before being completely assimilated and dissolved.
Real despair surfaced in Lupin's eyes. The wolf within him cheered while his humanity wailed; the conflict between the two forces made it difficult for him to even stand.
The Dementor passed through him easily; its target had been only one from the very beginning.
It leaned down, the black hole beneath its hood aimed at the completely paralyzed Harry.
The breath of death, carrying the sickly sweet scent of aged rotting corpses, wafted over him.
Harry felt his soul being stripped from his body bit by bit. He knew it was going to kiss him. It was going to suck away everything.
Just as that rotting palm, covered in gray scabs, was about to touch Harry's shoulder—
"Boom!!!"
The door of the adjacent compartment, made of heavy oak and brass, along with its frame, was kicked clean off the wall by an incomprehensible, pure physical force!
The door panel flew out like a cannonball with a sharp whistling sound, smashing a huge dent into the wall at the other end of the corridor, sending wood splinters and metal parts flying everywhere!
A figure stood in the hole violently broken open.
Cassius Malfoy.
He hadn't even drawn his wand.
He simply stood there, and the soul-freezing chill in the compartment, like snowflakes meeting a red-hot iron, made a "sizzling" sound and rapidly receded. The frost spreading on the glass melted and evaporated at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The air was no longer cold but became scorching and dry, filled with some primitive and scalding rhythm of life.
If the Dementor was the embodiment of "death."
Then at this moment, Cassius was "life" itself!
The two were natural enemies!
The Dementor in the compartment let out a silent shriek that was sharp to the point of distortion!
It abandoned the "delicacy" within its reach and snapped backward. Its body, composed of despair and nothingness, flickered and distorted unstably under Cassius's energy radiation, with its edges even decomposing and vaporizing!
Fear! An irresistible, instinctive fear originating from the very level of existence!
The Dementor turned frantically, fleeing the carriage with all its might; it only wanted to get away from this terrifying existence that could "erase" it conceptually.
Cassius swept a cold glance at the fleeing monster, then at Lupin, who had collapsed to his knees from exhaustion, and finally, his gaze fell upon the unconscious Harry.
He sneered.
"A farce."
His voice wasn't loud, yet it clearly reached the ears of the still-conscious Ron and Lupin.
"An irrational mad dog, a living sacrifice bound by the past, and..." He turned to Lupin, his deep blue pupils seeming to pierce through the secrets in the depths of his soul, "a... half-breed werewolf who can't even fully control himself on the night of a full moon?"
The color drained completely from Lupin's face as he stared in horror at Cassius. It wasn't a question, but a statement. This youth had, with just one look, stripped away the shell he had used as a disguise his entire life.
Cassius paid no more attention to the reactions of these "experimental samples." He stepped into the compartment, ignoring the people on the floor, his eyes—shining with a morbidly fanatical light like a scientist discovering a new species—locking onto the Dementor attempting to escape.
"Don't be in such a hurry to leave."
His voice was calm and cold, yet it acted like an invisible shackle, pinning the Dementor in place.
"My research project is currently lacking a living sample of a 'negative existential entity'."
Cassius slowly raised his right hand, spreading his fingers.
"Come, let me perform a 'dissection' on you."
No terrifying sphere of light appeared between his spread fingers.
Centered on that Dementor, space seemed to be gripped by an invisible giant hand, compressing and folding inward.
Deep blue electric arcs didn't emanate from Cassius's hand but were born from the void, instantly entangling the Dementor's body like a spiderweb, binding it tightly.
"Screech—!"
That silent shriek turned into a substantial mental shock, sweeping frantically through the entire carriage.
But these shockwaves, capable of plunging Wizards into despair, were incinerated directly by the scorching life force field radiating from Cassius as if they had struck a red-hot iron mountain.
Lupin watched this scene in horror. This wasn't any kind of magic he knew.
No incantation, no pointing of a wand... it was more like... a proclamation of physical laws!
Voldemort's magic was dark and tyrannical; Dumbledore's magic was light and exquisite.
But this Malfoy... his power was order, was definition!
He was defining that space, where "life" was the sole law, and a "death" bug like a Dementor had to be purged and analyzed!
Simultaneously, the unconscious Harry's body twitched violently.
Deep within his soul, that remnant soul of Riddle, which had been jubilant because of the despair, was now letting out pained screeches. To it, Cassius's overbearing life force field wasn't sunlight, but nuclear radiation.
It was being scorched and purified; that tiny bit of substantiality it had managed to condense through Harry's pain was rapidly disintegrating.
"Sample collection," Cassius uttered the cold words.
The deep blue energy web suddenly contracted, forcibly compressing the constantly decomposing and reorganizing Dementor into a fist-sized, distorted orb of light flickering with gray and blue electricity.
The orb was imprisoned by an invisible force field, hovering above his palm, struggling and vibrating violently.
Cassius looked down, examining the "trophy" in his palm with interest, completely ignoring the presence of the other two living people in the compartment.
Chapter 178: Dead Shadow in a Bottle
"Hand it over, Malfoy."
Lupin stood up by leaning against the carriage wall, his wand still gripped in his hand, though the silver-white mist at its tip had long since dissipated. His robes were soaked with frost, his shoulders trembling uncontrollably, yet his voice maintained the weight expected of a Professor.
Cassius didn't look at him.
The Dementor, compressed to the size of a fist, hovered in his palm. Within the grey-blue cluster of light, tattered cloaks swirled, rotting palms struggled, and faces squeezed out of despair pressed against the edges, trying to push their way out.
It was escaping.
But it couldn't get out.
Cassius raised his left hand. A piece of shattered brass doorframe on the floor was dismantled by invisible magic, elongated, thinned, and mixed with shards of broken crystal from the window edge. Metal and crystal merged in mid-air, transforming into a narrow-necked bottle within a few breaths.
Lupin's pupils contracted.
That wasn't ordinary Transfiguration.
Ordinary Transfiguration emphasizes form conversion, stability, and compromise between the inherent natures of materials. Cassius's technique had no compromise; he forced brass and crystal into the same result, like grabbing two rowdy students by the scruff of their necks and stuffing them into the same desk.
The mouth of the bottle opened.
The grey-blue cluster of light was stuffed inside.
The Dementor tumbled inside the bottle, Black frost forming on the inner walls. Just as the chill was about to leak out, Cassius tapped the bottle with his finger. Eerie blue patterns crawled in a circle along the bottle wall, like chains, or a fine-meshed net.
The crying was cut off.
The chill in the carriage receded significantly.
Ron slumped in the corner, his eyes following the bottle. His lips were still purple, and his teeth wouldn't stop chattering, but he managed to squeeze out a sentence: "Merlin... did he just put a Dementor in a bottle?"
No one answered.
Neville hadn't woken up yet. Harry lay by the seat, dark red blood seeping from his scar, his fingers clutching his collar as if something was biting him from the inside.
Lupin took a step forward.
"Cassius, Dementors are under the Ministry of Magic's supervision. They are dangerous, extremely dangerous. Private imprisonment will cause big trouble; you cannot treat it as student experimental material."
Cassius finally looked up.
"Supervision?"
He held the bottle up to his eyes. The Dementor inside struggled against the inner wall, the Black frost pressed back by the eerie blue patterns. The thing had no eyes, yet it gave an illusion of being flayed and scrutinized.
"The Ministry of Magic can't even leash their own watchdogs, and they talk about supervision?"
Lupin's throat tightened.
That statement was too accurate.
So accurate that he couldn't use his status as a Professorto suppress it.
It was a fact that a Dementor had broken into a student compartment and nearly kissed Harry. It was a fact that Lupin had been on the scene and his Patronus Charm had failed. It was still a fact that the Dementor only failed to get its way because Cassius intervened.
Ron forced himself to crawl toward Harry, frantically patting his face.
"Harry? Harry! Wake up!"
Harry didn't respond.
The dark red blood from the scar crawled down his temple like tiny insect lines. Cassius looked down, the eerie blue in his eyes overpowering the remaining darkness in the carriage.
"Tsk."
Ron looked up as if grabbing a life-saving straw.
"You see it? What's wrong with him? Save him!"
Cassius sealed the bottle stopper tight.
"A chunk has been eaten away."
The color drained completely from Ron's face.
"What do you mean, eaten away?"
"The Dementor sucks emotions; that filth inside Pottersteals the scraps." Cassius stepped around the broken wood on the floor. "One sucking from the outside, one gnawing from the inside. This body of his is quite the lively place."
Lupin's hand tightened.
He understood.
There was a problem inside Harry, and Cassius had seen through it long ago.
Ron didn't understand, or refused to. He lunged in front of Cassius, his voice cracking.
"Then save him! Aren't you supposed to be powerful? You just caught that monster with a wave of your hand!"
Cassius looked down at him.
Ron's shoulders flinched, but he didn't back down.
"Potter took the initiative to open the door and let the thing inside gnaw. He should pay the price himself."
"He didn't!"
"You've watched with your own eyes what he's become over the past six months, and you're still saying he didn't?" Cassius's voice didn't rise, but it was harsher than a shout. "Weasley, loyalty isn't throwing your brain into the fireplace."
Ron's face burned.
He wanted to argue, but the blood sacrifice in the Forbidden Forest, the Dark Arts in Dueling Class, Lunabeing attacked in the corridor—these events piled up one by one, stopping his tongue.
Lupin said softly, "He's still a child."
"Child is not an Exemption Charm."
Cassius tucked the crystal bottle into his sleeve, the bottle wall brushing against the cuff as the eerie blue light patterns were swallowed by his robes.
Hurried footsteps came from next door.
Draco rushed into the compartment with the broken door. Just as he was about to speak, his gaze met Lupin, Ron, the unconscious Harry, and the faint grey-blue cold light still lingering at Cassius's cuff.
"You caught it?"
His voice couldn't hide his excitement.
Lupin looked at Draco, his heart turning cold.
A normal student would break down, scream, or beg a Professor for protection upon seeing a Dementor. Draco Malfoy's first reaction to seeing a dead shadow in a bottle was actually excitement.
Cassius tossed the bottle to him.
Draco caught it clumsily. The moment the bottle touched his palm, his entire face went white. Black frost seeped into his palm through the seal, and the images he feared most in the past were dragged out like hooks. The Chessboard Room. The stone sword swinging down. A broken rib piercing a lung. Blood welling up in his throat.
He almost let go.
Cassius watched him.
Draco gritted his teeth, his hands gripping the bottle tightly, forcing himself to stare at the grey shadow inside.
One second.
Two seconds.
Five seconds.
His knuckles turned blue, yet he didn't let go.
Cassius looked away.
"At least you didn't embarrass yourself."
Draco's chest heaved violently, but hearing those words, his back straightened. He handed the bottle back, his voice hoarse: "Its magic flow is very strange. It doesn't rely on a body or blood; it's like a cluster of rotting emotions twisted together."
If Hermione were here, she would go crazy.
This thought popped into Lupin's head.
A second-year student using a Dementor to test his courage and even analyzing its magic flow. The Malfoybrothers had turned Hogwarts' Defense Against the Dark Arts into a class on Breeding and Dismantling Dark Arts.
A dragging sound came from outside the carriage.
It wasn't just one.
The frost that had just melted on the glass began to spread again, and cries came from distant compartments. A chill seeped in from the carriage connections, bringing more rotting sounds of inhalation.
Lupin looked up, his face tightening.
"More Dementors are approaching."
Ron held Harry, his teeth chattering.
"Aren't they searching for Black? Why are they targeting this place?"
Cassius walked to the broken door and reached out to brush wood chips off his shoulder.
"When a companion is caught, the pack will naturally howl."
Draco gripped his wand, his Adam's apple bobbing.
"Cassius, should we notify the Professors?"
Lupin almost laughed out of frustration.
He was right here.
But the statement wasn't wrong either.
In this carriage, he, the Defense Against the Dark ArtsProfessor, had less presence than a wooden board blocking the wind.
Cassius looked toward the end of the corridor.
Frost spread along the floor, and three tall, thin Blackshadows drifted past the carriage windows, their cloaks trailing grey mist. Screams came from the forward compartments section by section, as if someone were dragging the entire train into a graveyard.
An eerie blue ignited in Cassius's eyes.
"More specimens delivering themselves to the door?"
Draco's hand holding the bottle was still shaking, but he followed a step forward.
Lupin raised his wand, his instinct to shield the students not lost.
Cassius turned his head.
"Step aside, Professor."
Lupin didn't retreat.
"These students still need protection."
Cassius looked at him as if he had heard a bad joke.
"Then don't get in the way of the person who can actually protect them."
Chapter 179: The Train Hunting Ground
"Malfoy! You can't run wild on a train full of students!"
Lupin chased out of the compartment, his voice hitting the frost on the corridor and being half-swallowed by crying and screaming.
Cassius had already stepped into the center of the cold wave.
Pale faces squeezed through the gaps in the compartment doors on both sides. Lower-year students lay collapsed under seats; some held their knees crying for their parents, while others' eyes rolled back, muttering unintelligible sleep talk. A first-year boy's lips were turning blue, the rise and fall of his chest pitifully shallow.
A Dementor's chill does not kill.
It drags away the living part of a person first.
Lupin saw the boy, his wand gripped tight, guilt and anxiety surging simultaneously. He forced himself to grasp a happy memory, and a burst of silver-white mist erupted from the tip of his wand.
"Expecto Patronum!"
The silver mist rushed toward a Dementor outside the train window.
The thing retreated half a foot, the edges of its cloak trembling, but then it pressed back in. The silver light was dimmed bit by bit by the black mist, like a rush wick being buried by snow.
Cassius stopped walking.
"Using a rush wick to block an avalanche—you certainly have ideas."
Lupin's face tightened.
"At least I'm using the correct method!"
"Correct does not equal useful."
Cassius raised his hand, palm facing down.
The corridor floor let out an unbearable groan. The air thickened, and three Dementors were forced down simultaneously, their cloaks pressed against the windows and ceiling as if dragged by invisible iron hooks.
One of them passed through the wall, bypassing the fading light of Lupin's Patronus, and lunged toward the unconscious freshman.
A hand reached out from behind.
It didn't grab the cloak.
Cassius gripped its very existence through the air.
Half of the Dementor's body had already entered the compartment, while the other half was stuck in the corridor. It had no bones, no muscle, yet it was forcibly dragged back by that invisible palm, a damp scraping sound coming from beneath its cloak.
Hermione rushed over from another carriage.
She wore her school robes and held a brass box in her arms, its lid covered in tiny runes. She saw the tragic scene in the corridor and paused for a moment before snapping the brass box open.
"I have a High-Intensity Light Ignition Core; it can release a heatwave!"
"Put it away."
Cassius did not look back.
Hermione froze.
"They fear the cold, which means heat can interfere with their outer structure."
"Heat can only drive a portion away." Cassius closed his fingers, and the first Dementor was crushed into a grayish-blue ball of light. "What truly counters them isn't fire; it's being alive."
Hermione was stunned for a moment, then her eyes lit up with frightening intensity.
She stuffed the brass box into her arms, pulled out a quill and parchment, and knelt in the freezing corridor to take notes.
"Life-force field reverse burning, non-Patronus path, suppressing negative emotion aggregates with robust vitality... No, cannot call them aggregates, too crude; change to emotional sediments..."
Lupin was nearly driven to anger by her.
"Miss Granger! Now is not the time for taking notes!"
Hermione didn't even look up.
"Professor, once they leave, I won't have an experimental site anymore."
Draco arrived from behind, and hearing this, his expression became complicated.
"Granger, you're becoming more Slytherin-crazy by the day."
"Shut up, Malfoy. I'm recording how your brother is deconstructing Defense class into Alchemy class."
Cassius dragged the second Dementor into the corridor.
The thing let out a silent shriek.
A mental shockwave passed through the carriage. Ronshook while holding Harry, Neville twitched in his unconscious state, and several students covered their ears, crying out. The quill in Hermione's hand nearly fell, and her face turned a shade paler, yet she gritted her teeth and wrote:'Shriek can damage the psyche.'
Cassius stood at the center of the impact, his eyelids not even twitching.
"Noisy."
He pressed his palm inward.
Deep Blue Magic transformed into rings of confinement, encircling the Dementor and tightening from the outside in. The cloak was squeezed into a ball of light, its decayed palms folded, and the black hole beneath the hood was compressed into a single point.
A second crystal bottle formed in mid-air.
Thud.
The light ball entered the bottle.
The cork sealed it shut.
Several students in the corridor saw this scene, their cries catching in their throats as if someone had pressed pause.
Pansy poked her head out from a distant compartment. Seeing Cassius raise his hand to collect the Dementor, her legs went weak, and she was supported by Zabini.
Zabini said nothing.
He simply etched this scene into his mind.
In the second year, he thought Cassius's terror came from firepower. Now he understood that firepower was just the shell. This person could even treat the breath of death as a classroom specimen.
The third Dementor realized something was wrong and turned to flee.
Cassius raised two fingers.
The roof of the carriage made a sound of metal stretching. That Dementor was pinned near the ceiling, its cloak spread out like a pinned moth.
Draco stared at it, gritting his teeth.
He raised his hand.
A drop of high-pressure water condensed at his fingertip—deep blue, solid, and as thin as a needle point.
Cassius did not stop him.
Draco flicked his finger.
The water line sliced through the air, hitting the Dementor's black robe. It passed straight through, piercing the wooden board on the other side of the carriage, leaving a tiny hole in the wall.
The Dementor was completely unharmed.
Draco's face went stiff.
He had practiced his Water Cut for an entire summer; it could slice brass, cut stone walls, and establish his authority in front of Goyle. But facing this sort of non-physical entity, it didn't even cause a ripple.
Cassius spoke.
"Remember this feeling of powerlessness."
Draco's throat felt dry.
"It has no body."
"Enemies won't grow according to your strengths," Cassiussaid, pressing the third Dementor into a bottle. "If you can only cut physical objects, you're just a fool bringing a table knife to a battlefield when facing things like souls and emotions."
Draco lowered his head.
"I will make up for it."
Hermione stopped writing and glanced at Draco.
It was the first time she had seen this expression on Draco.
It wasn't the irritation of being humiliated, but rather swallowing the humiliation and using it as material for the next round of training.
Lupin looked at the three students—one catching Dementors, one using a Dementor to train his courage, and one writing experimental notes on the spot—a sense of absurdity rising in his chest.
He taught Defense Against the Dark Arts.
But what he taught was how to protect students.
Cassius was teaching them how to dismantle monsters into materials.
The chill outside the carriage did not recede.
On the contrary, a heavy coldness drifted from deeper within, overpowering the rot-like smell of the ordinary Dementors. The frost on the glass was no longer white, but grayish-white stains, as if the luster had been drained from the metal.
Lupin froze.
"Don't move."
Cassius looked toward the end of the train.
A taller dark shadow passed through the connection between carriages, the darkness beneath its cloak much denser than the previous ones. Wherever it passed, gray spots emerged on the iron carriage walls, wooden doors lost their color, and the students' cries were suppressed into whimpers.
Lupin's voice was hoarse.
"Such individuals are only found in the depths of Azkaban. It has fed on too much of the prisoners' despair; it's no ordinary Dementor."
Hermione's hand stopped writing.
Draco took half a step back, then gritted his teeth and stood his ground.
Cassius looked at the taller Dementor, the deep blue in his eyes lighting up.
"A leader specimen."
Lupin was about to intervene.
Ron's startled cry came from the compartment.
"Harry! What are you doing?"
Chapter 180: The Dementor leader
"Let go of me, Ron."
Harry's voice squeezed out from the compartment, rasping and dry, sounding so strange that it made Ron's arms go cold.
Ron hugged his waist, his shoe soles carving two streaks into the floor. As he dragged him back, he braced his knee against the edge of the seat, the threads of his old sweater's cuffs fraying. He usually hated how this sweater pricked his skin, but at this moment, he gripped the cuffs even tighter, as if that bit of roughness could pull him back to the normal world.
Harry was awake.
His eyes were tinged with a dark red, and the scar on his forehead had split open slightly, with black-red mist seeping out against his skin. It wasn't blood from a wound; it was more like something hidden beneath the flesh was sucking in the despair from the train carriage.
"Are you crazy? It's full of those things out there!"
Ron's face flushed red as he pulled back with all his might.
Harry's hand pressed against the doorframe, his nails digging into the wood, causing wood chips to fall onto his sleeve. He didn't look back, staring only at the mass of grayish-black chill at the end of the corridor.
"They can give me strength."
Ron froze, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second.
Lupin heard these words, and the color drained from his face. He subconsciously reached toward the inside of his old robes, where a patch was sewn—one he had mended himself before coming to Hogwarts. He had a habit of pressing it when nervous, reminding himself that he was a Professor now, not a monster hiding under the moonlight.
But those words reminded him of Azkaban.
He remembered that when Dementors surrounded prisoners, the prisoners would speak in that exact tone.
Hermione turned and rushed into the compartment.
She saw Harry reaching out toward the corridor, the black-red mist coiling around the back of his hand, about to cross the threshold. She didn't scream; she simply stuffed her parchment into her sleeve and drew her wand. Her quill was still clamped between her fingers, and ink stained the webbing of her thumb, but she didn't bother to wipe it off.
"Harry, stop."
Harry turned to look at her.
Hermione's stomach sank.
She had seen Harry stubborn, she had seen Harry angry, and she had seen Harry charging forward recklessly on the Quidditch Pitch. But now, as he looked toward the Dementor leader, he was filled with hunger, with grievance, and with a longing that made her spine go cold.
That wasn't the Harry she knew.
At least, not entirely.
The Dementor leader also sensed him.
It did not attack immediately.
The darkness beneath the cloak turned toward the compartment, the edge of the hood lifting. The remnant soul within Harry's scar attracted it. Decay, fear, despair, and undying soul fragments linked together in the same stretch of air.
Dark red and grayish-black trickles intertwined at the doorway.
Harry's shoulders trembled.
Riddle's remnant soul whispered in his mind—cloying, urgent, burrowing into his pain.
Go closer to it.
Swallow its despair.
You need this power.
You can't fall down every time.
You can't be stepped on by Malfoy forever.
Harry's breathing grew heavy.
He gave a violent struggle.
Cold dark magic expanded from him. Ron was knocked over, his back slamming into a seat, his chest constricted, leaving him momentarily speechless from the pain. His hand still reached forward, and after grasping at air, he clawed into the carpet.
"Harry!"
Hermione raised her wand.
The tip of the wand pointed at Harry's chest.
She didn't cast a spell.
Her hand was shaking. Not because she was afraid Harrywould hit her. She was afraid that if she cast this spell, the friend she went to class with, escaped death with, and lost points with would truly become an enemy.
An absurd thought even flashed through her mind: If Professor McGonagall were here, would she use Expelliarmus first, or Petrificus Totalus?
In the next moment, the answer was wiped away by Cassius.
Gravity dropped.
Harry was slammed flat onto the ground, his knees and palms hitting the floor simultaneously. The wooden boards cracked, and splinters dug into his palms. The dark red mist outside the scar was pressed back into his skin, as if sealed into his bones by steel pincers.
"Ah!"
Harry struggled, the veins in his neck bulging.
"Malfoy! You're always taking away my opportunities!"
Cassius stood outside the door, looking down at him.
"Only trash mistakes poison for power."
The red light in Harry's eyes flickered.
"You don't understand at all!" His forehead was pressed against the floor, his voice coming out in broken gasps. "You were born with everything. Family, wealth, talent—everyone fears you. Wherever you go, people make way for you."
He couldn't lift his head, but he still glared at the tips of Cassius's boots.
"And me? They call me the The Savior, but no one asks if I want to be one. They just want me to live, they want me to win, they want me not to embarrass them."
Ron clutched his back, his expression stiff.
He wanted to call Harry a bastard, but he couldn't bring himself to say it. Because Harry wasn't entirely wrong. But he wanted even more to rush over and tear that red mist out of Harry's head.
Hermione held her wand, her wrist dipping half an inch.
Pain was suppressed by logic.
She forced herself to count in her mind: remnant soulinduction, negative emotions amplified, Dementorresonance, host actively approaching a source of danger.
The more she counted, the colder she felt.
Lupin stood in the middle of the corridor, his wand gripped tightly. The chill of the Dementor leader pressed against his chest, making his old wounds ache in waves. He wanted to step forward, but he knew clearly that his Patronus might not be enough for this thing.
Worse still, Harry wasn't being attacked.
Harry was responding to it.
Cassius took a step forward.
"You have Dumbledore, you have the The Savior title, you have the glory of the whole school covering for you."
He stopped in front of Harry.
"Others hand you a ladder, and you turn around and complain it's not high enough. You squander everything given to you, and then treat filth as a throne."
Harry bit his lip until it bled.
"Shut up!"
The remnant soul in the scar was driven to desperation; dark red mist squeezed out from the gap in his forehead, forcibly connecting to the Dementor leader.
The Dementor leader moved.
It swept past the remnants of Lupin's Patronus mist, its hood opening. There was no face inside, only a collapsing black hole that pulled at the red mist from Harry's forehead and the deep-seated fears of everyone in the corridor.
The Dementor's Kiss.
Lupin roared, "Get back!"
Cassius did not retreat.
He raised his hand and pressed it onto the hood of the Dementor leader.
Everyone witnessed this scene.
A Wizard touching a Dementor was the last thing that should happen in a classroom. They had no flesh, only coldness, despair, and rotting emotions. Touching them was equivalent to reaching into a soul-swallowing well.
But when Cassius's hand pressed down, the Dementor leader began to collapse.
It wasn't being burned by fire.
It was a vigorous vitality pressing into the essence of death, forcibly dispelling the layers of accumulated cold.
Gray smoke rose from the edge of the hood, the cloak convulsed, and a scream that pierced the mind erupted from the black hole.
The glass of the entire train shattered at once.
Shards shot into the corridor but were melted into transparent droplets by high heat within three feet of Cassius, rolling into small beads upon hitting the floor.
Hermione's quill fell to the floor.
She glanced down, then bent to pick it up; though her fingers were red with cold, she still stuffed the pen back into her palm. Fear could be dealt with later; the recording could not be interrupted. She was afraid that if she stopped, her mind would collapse along with it.
Draco clenched his fists, his nails leaving marks in his palms. He had almost stepped in just now.
Water Cut was useless against Dementors.
He had just been humiliated.
But he didn't act foolishly again. He stared at Cassius's hand, forcing himself to memorize every step of the deconstruction. He didn't want to always stand behind his brother asking "why."
Lupin stared at the Dementor leader pinned by the palm; all his experience in Defense Against the Dark Artscrumbled in a corner at this moment.
Cassius spoke.
"You have an outer layer, a deposit, and a core."
His fingers plunged into the darkness beneath the hood.
The Dementor leader struggled frantically. The ceiling of the carriage was corroded with gray marks by the chill, and the floor frosted over, only to be steamed dry by the heat flowing through Cassius. Gray mist rolled in all directions, and students in distant compartments covered their ears, their cries suppressed into short gasps.
"Don't touch its core!"
Lupin instinctively shouted this.
It wasn't an order; it was more like a plea for him to stop.
Cassius ignored him.
He tore apart the darkness of the Dementor leader. The outer cloak was held down by the Sealing rings, the middle layer of gray mist was separated by the heat of life, and at the deepest point, a small grayish-black crystal was revealed. Whispers coiled around the crystal—wails, curses, and suicidal thoughts mixed within, battering the mind.
Hermione immediately pressed her quill to the parchment.
"Core source. Not a physical heart, but a center of emotional deposition. Can be extracted."
"Granger!"
Lupin was nearly driven mad by her.
Hermione didn't look up.
"Professor, if we survive, this is content not found in textbooks."
She wrote very quickly, her handwriting much messier than usual. She disliked messy writing, but she couldn't care about it now. She needed to turn fear into entries and the monster into a comprehensible structure. Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to stop herself from looking at Harry's face.
Harry lay on the ground, his scar throbbing violently.
Riddle's remnant soul let out a greedy hiss. It wanted that crystal, yet it feared the life heat in Cassius's palm. Longing and fear tore at Harry's face, making him hit his forehead against the ground in pain.
"Give it to me..."
Low, raspy words rolled from Harry's throat.
Ron braced himself against a seat to climb up, stumbling a step, but still blocking the compartment door.
"No." His chest hurt so much his voice trembled. "You almost knocked me to death just now, you bastard."
Harry didn't answer.
Or rather, the one answering was no longer a complete Harry.
Cassius grabbed the grayish-black crystal.
One yank.
The Dementor leader's body collapsed by half. Its cloak lost support, the gray mist was drained, the black hole shriveled, and the scream turned into a broken whine.
The crystal fell into Cassius's palm.
It had no heartbeat, yet it carried the wails, curses, and suicidal thoughts of Azkaban prisoners. Even with the stopper not yet on, the people in the corridor could hear fine impacts, as if countless hands were scratching against the inner walls.
Cassius looked down to examine it.
"So you have hearts too."
The Dementor leader, having lost its core, lay slumped on the corridor floor, its cloak wrinkled like a rag. It was still alive, but only a residual shell remained writhing, no longer possessing the chill that had just suppressed the entire train.
Lupin's wand lowered.
He looked at the residual shell on the ground, feeling for the first time that the Defense Against the Dark Arts Classhe had prepared was laughable. Textbooks taught students to chant the Patronus Charm and to drive away fear. Cassius, however, directly dissected the fear, removed the core, and put it in a bottle.
Ron looked at Harry, then at the grayish-black crystal in Cassius's palm.
He finally understood that what Harry had wanted to approach wasn't a life-saving straw.
It was a piece of rotten meat that would drag a person into even deeper depths.
Draco asked in a low voice, "What can that thing do?"
He bit his tongue as soon as he finished asking.
He hated the urgency in his tone. But he hated knowing nothing even more.
Cassius stuffed the crystal into a new crystal bottle.
As soon as the bottle was sealed, cries battered against the inside. Gray spots surfaced on the crystal's exterior, only to be pressed back by faint blue magic. The stopper was locked tight, and the Sealing rings fastened one by one.
"First, make a cage."
Hermione looked up.
"A cage?"
Cassius looked at Harry, who was pinned to the ground.
"A cage specifically for trapping remnant souls."
Harry's scar throbbed violently.
Riddle's remnant soul shrank into the depths of the soul, and for the first time, it did not let out a mocking laugh.