It had been on the list since the second week, which meant he had been anticipating it for about eleven weeks, which meant, by Cael’s own reckoning, that he was late.
Not late because of lack of preparedness – that wasn’t the issue at all – but late because the procedure made him uneasy.
He had decided to wait until the reversed Protego was operational before he tried it, and that day had come.
Cael told Hermione he was planning to test it on a Friday afternoon, so she could get her Runes essay done before classes on Saturday.
Hermione looked at him for a very long time across the library table, and, *Cael, I know you want me there, but even if you choose to proceed without my presence, you will have a witness other than the bush.* Cael had agreed.
He approached Neville, and the response was immediate, as it always had become lately.
Neville had developed a sense that being part of the project was a good thing.
The procedure took place in an abandoned classroom on the fourth floor.
Neville stayed outside and Hermione sent him to watch the corridor, holding the coin-charm around his neck — the one silver disc on a leather thong that attuned to Hermione’s coin Pomfrey had received two weeks earlier, *for emergencies only, please, Madam Pomfrey, just in case*.
The nurse had accepted it without comment and deposited it in the side pocket of her hospital wing apron.
Cael did not know whether Pomfrey carried that apron at all times.
He suspected she did.
He suspected, also, that Pomfrey had always been – long before Cael started school at Hogwarts – the type of woman who was happy to do something without asking questions, and who was quietly privy to more information than anyone imagined.
The classroom was empty.
He had brought the chair, and the notebook, and he had brought parchment for writing in real time during the procedure.
He sat.
For a split second, he thought about using the memory.
According to the textbooks, the Patronus procedure required a happy memory.
The happiest memory possible.
It was key to the process: in order to cast a Patronus, you had to *keep hold* of the memory while casting, keep the memory so alive in your heart that the magic would have something to work with.
This is the part of Patronus theory that is emphasized the most strongly in the books.
The Patronus could not be produced cold.
However, Cael did not have at thirteen and a half years of age the memories of a happy past prior to his arrival at Hogwarts.
He had the sensations.
There was also the feeling of *having memories*, which was something else, almost like the feeling of a phantom limb, and then there was also the experience of having been loved, of having been nourished and tucked in and corrected gently.
Cael did not have the memory.
He had the feeling of it.
And the feeling was going to have to do.
The feeling settled in his chest.
The wand rose.
“*Expecto Patronum,*” .
Whatever emerged from the tip of the wand did not belong in a textbook.
It was not a light.
It was the absence of light.
It was dark, compacted into something tangible, not the warm dark of his Lumos charm, but an *actively* dark substance, moving through the wand into the room.
Three or four different shapes emerged.
Each of the shapes had an outline.
They vaguely resembled animals, but the outlines themselves were unfinished.
They were the *shapes of incomplete events*, the shapes of a thing experienced in a dream and then woken from.
The temperature in the room dropped sharply.
Cael could see his breath.
The atmosphere changed.
The textbook referred to the sensation as ‘thin’, the quality that characterizes the Dementors’ presence.
From what Cael had learned in *The Normal Book of Spells, Grade 3* — the section that dealt with Dementors and that the third-year students had not yet covered in class due to Lupin’s careful curricular scheduling – the temperature drop happens even before the appearance of the creature.
The textbook said precisely *the Dementor’s effect is felt before the Dementor itself appears*.
The shapes hovered in mid-air.
They floated, slowly.
They did not approach Cael.
He was not afraid.
He knew what he was doing going into it, and the shapes – in a dispassionate and objective way he realized things – were not only *his*.
They were not attacking him, but somehow, they also originated from him.
And they also did the thing he asked of them.
What the shapes were doing was scaring something else.
Cael sensed it.
They emitted the aura of fear into the room.
The realization hit him gradually – the shapes were the *opposite* of Patronuses.
A Patronus protects from fear.
These shapes *radiated* fear.
The shapes were fear-sources, and they transmitted their fear aura into the room, seeking something that would respond, but finding none, floating freely, like a broadcast signal picked up by no one.
He kept the cast active for four seconds.
The room cooled even further.
Then he released the cast.
The shapes coalesced back into the wand tip.
The temperature warmed again.
The room returned to normal — afternoon daylight pouring through the windows, floating dust particles, the smell of chalk.
Cael sat in the chair with his hand still extended and the wand still in his grip, and he breathed.
There was a sound of opening doors in the corridor.
“Cael?” “I’m fine, Neville.” “It got cold.” “You could feel that?” “Just a second, from the corridor.
You sure you’re — ” “I am.
Come in.” Neville entered the room.
He was ready to activate the coin-charm at a moment’s notice.
However, Cael saw that he did not put the charm away.
He did not say a word, waiting for Cael’s instructions.
“Put the coin away,” “We don’t need Pomfrey.” “Right.” Neville sat down at the edge of a desk.
He looked at the chair, and then at Cael.
Then he waited.
“It worked,” “What did it do?” “The reverse of Patronus.
Instead of protection from fear, my spell produces fear sources.
The shapes were fear-sources, broadcasting fear to something else.
I became, for a brief moment, the object of someone else’s fear.” “Cael.” “Yes.” “That’s —” “Sure.” “Can I sit down?” “You’re sitting down.” “I’ll stand and sit in the other chair then.” Neville moved from the desk and into the chair Cael was not occupying.
“This can be used to our advantage,” “How.” “Dementors.” Neville looked at him intently.
“Dementors *feed* on fear,” Cael continued.
“The canonical interpretation says they do it.
The Patronus procedure creates a magical guardian that shields the person from being devoured by fear.
The Patronus technique presupposes fear is directed unilaterally – a Dementor attacks, the victim is attacked.
However, it never occurred to anyone what would happen if fear were broadcast in the direction of the Dementor.” “Cael.” “I think Dementors can be scared,” Cael said.
“They consume fear, but maybe they do not protect from fear.
No one ever tested this, because no one was able to *scare* them.
I can.
I did that just now.
The shapes were in the proper range, and possessed the necessary characteristics of the Dementor scare object.
I think a Dementor entering this room would turn around and run.” Neville was silent for a long time.
“Cael.” “Do you understand what you just found?” “I see,” “I mean, *do you understand*?
There are people who can’t produce Patronuses.
There are people who have had Dementor exposure and are living in constant fear, because Dementors are *out there*, and there is no way to protect against them.
And you’ve just — ” “I haven’t tested this on a Dementor yet.” “But you’re going to,” “I will.” “Cael.” “Yes.” “May I tell Lupin?” Cael thought it over carefully.
He thought hard about the rules he had established – Snape on the AK, Hermione for the framework, the circle of people who had access to which bits of knowledge at what time.
The reversed Patronus procedure was not an AK.
The reversed Patronus, in a sense, was milder.
He told Snape about the AK, and Snape, in his gentle, precise manner, advised him not to disclose the discovery to others.
However, the reversed Patronus was a Defence Against the Dark Arts innovation.
Lupin was the professor of DADA.
Lupin had told him a couple of weeks earlier that *your magic is going to be important*, and Cael suspected that Lupin would not suppress the discovery the way some other teachers might.
“In part.” “Tell Lupin.
Not now though.
Wait till the weekend.
Let me write it up in my notebook, and prepare the proper documentation.
He will probably ask to see the documentation.” Neville picked up his things.
When he approached the door, he turned to Cael.
“Cael.” “Yes.” “Are you scared?” Cael thought it over.
“A little,” “Not of the magic.
The magic does what it does.
I’m a little scared of being the only one in the world who can do this, and of being thirteen at the same time.
People usually don’t get to experience those two things at once.” Neville nodded slowly.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “you have us.” “I know that.” “And we’ve all noticed you don’t do this alone.” “I know that, too.” Neville left the room.
Cael, alone in the empty classroom, opened his notebook and began to write.
Slowly.
He wrote *Reversed Expecto Patronum* at the top of the page and underneath, in his neat handwriting: *Fear-sources.
Several.
Animal-outline, incomplete.
Range: room scale.
Effect: ambient cooling, atmospheric thinning, compatible with Dementor aura.
Hypothesis: asymmetrical fear-exploit.
Tested on Dementor when possible.* He looked at the record.
He did not underline anything for once.
After Lupin’s class, Cael decided that not everything deserved underlining.
He turned the page in his notebook and wrote: *Inform Snape on Monday.* He underlined *Snape*.
That one deserved underlining.
Snape had been very specific about who was to be informed, and what was to be disclosed.
He would take no chances with the reversed Patronus, because it was closely related to the AK, even if technically different.
He closed his notebook and got up.
His legs stiffened more than expected.
The classroom was still a bit cold from the procedure.
Cael went looking for dinner.
He ate two helpings.
He was ravenous.
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