Mid-morning, Level 2


Fendrel had brought a Danielle Steel book with him. Lawrence could recognise the familiar cover style from his childhood, his mother, and then his sister, Cynthia had read. He presumed they had read, considering the books didn’t appear to contain pictures.

Here they sat, side by side, before the enchanted windows of Level 2. Lawrence’s hands and feet were chained, heeding any progress across the distance between the cell and their chosen spot, out of the way. It was a morning routine that punctuated an otherwise tedious weekday for Lawrence, confined to a box unless trotted out to answer questions.

On Monday he’d been full of life and as interested in the sun-drenched window as he had been the bustle of the floor behind him. The news of his move to Azkaban had followed, but the dementors had brought worse. Something had riled them on Wednesday, torn into his recent sanity. He could hear them, sense them, feel their excitement as they prowled.

“Calming draught. Drink it.” A patronus circled him as hands pressed potion to his lips in the cell. “You’re putting on quite the show to avoid Azkaban.”

He stared blankly at the rain running down the enchanted glass, knees brought up towards him, arms circled round. His remaining right hand gripped the end of the empty sleeve of the other arm. He could hear them now, somewhere out there, chasing and hunting. Would he be able to hear them when he was sent to Azkaban on Monday? Would they come to him there? Would they forget him? Lawrence’s short fingernails pulled at the edge of his grey sleeve, unravelling the threads of the prisoner robes in his distraction.

A nudge of his chair turned his head. Fendrel’s boot was pushed against his chair, the bald hitwizard’s brown eyes studying him over the top of the trashy novel. The former auror scowled and sighed. The brown eyes returned to the page, but the foot remained. Jailor and prisoner didn’t make conversation at the best of times, and he doubted anyone else on the floor would want to talk to him today. He was the one pretending to be hearing dementors to stay out of Azkaban. If they could send him there sooner they would.

The rain did not touch the offices on Level Two. The Aurors existed in a flurry of movement and efficiency, fueled by coffee and zeal as they sent memos and scrawled reports and barked questions from one cubicle to another. The rain only existed when they stepped out of the Ministry, and even then there were drying charms and rain-repelling charms, and their sturdy, black boots easily vanquished puddles on their way to vanquish dementors.

The rain might match their mood, if they had time to think of it, but there were stranger forces of nature nipping at their heels, fogs to be fought, murderous siblings to catch.

Fauna paused in the corridor of the holding cells, watching the criminal curled tight on the chair. His head was tilted toward the enchanted window, where droplets of rain fell and fell, neither pinging nor bouncing off a pretend windowsill, but simply slipping past without a sound. Silent rain.

He should enjoy the view while he could, but she doubted these last remaining days before Azkaban would feel pleasant. The panic had set in. That's what the Aurors had told her, on her way down to the cells. He was likely faking it, but she needed to verify, to make sure of his sanity, as her superiors faced much greater threats outside.

She regarded Lawrence Musgrave with wary curiosity, noticing the gray in his hair as she moved down the hall, her shiny black boots sidestepping the chains on the floor that connected him to his cell. She and the hitwizard exchanged nods, and Fauna blinked at the cover of his latest book. Most days, it would amuse her. This morning, shadows had settled under her eyes, and coffee tainted her breath. No one on Level Two had slept last night, and the look on Raine's face after seeing to Abigail Reid would stay with Fauna for a long time.

Fauna cleared her throat. The criminal hadn't noticed her when Fenny nudged his chair.

"Mr. Musgrave?"

She moved to the window, leaning a shoulder against the wall. Fauna slouched, trying to make herself look harmless. It was not difficult.

"I'm Fauna Blake. An Auror Trainee." For eleven more months.

He had the most haunted eyes. He was nearly fifty, but looked older. She kept her expression friendly and open as she ran through a list of offenses in her head. He'd betrayed his fellow Aurors and offered information to Voldemort's followers in the second wizarding war. An Auror was everything Fauna wanted to be. She could not understand throwing that away, especially for pureblood elitism.

Even worse, after serving time in Azkaban, Musgrave had turned again to crime. He'd participated in those horrifying werewolf games, preying on innocent muggles. Fauna glanced at his missing left hand, relieved to find she did not feel sorry for him.

She only needed to pretend to feel sorry for him.

"I'd like to ask you a few questions about what you experienced yesterday."

Fenny Stump let out a snort. Fauna ignored it, and smiled with a hint of apology at Musgrave.

"Er, are you more comfortable here or in the cell?" She asked kindly, ignoring the guard's raised eyebrows.

“Mr Musgrave?” The young woman slouched against the wall, her pale face shadowed beneath a fringe. “I’m Fauna Blake, an Auror Trainee.” Slight, fit, booted, big eyes. Lawrence’s eyes darted up and down her. He caught sight of Fenny glancing back down to the page of his book and sensed no issue.

“Hello,” Lawrence greeted, a drop of curiosity in his tone.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions about what you experienced yesterday… more comfortable here or in the cell?”

Lawrence glanced to the rainy scene beyond the enchanted window.
“I’ll be off my leash in there.” he told Fauna, and gestured gently with the chain around his remaining wrist. “But I’m well behaved.” He looked back to the hitwizard. “You mind?” Any time the hitwizard had to his book lately was a win, as far as Lawrence could tell. The bald wizard shrugged. “Give us a moment,” Lawrence spoke to Blake, as if this were as ordinary as going to make a cup of tea in the next room.

A minute or two later, unchained, Fenny let Auror Blake into the cell, though his hand was outstretched to temporarily confiscate her wand. Even a trained auror didn’t enter with a wand, unless in an emergency. Stump didn’t trust Lawrence not to be able to disarm someone and arm himself. Lawrence took it as a compliment, even if he had no intentions of doing something like that.

“Don’t call yourself a trainee,” he told Blake, perched on one end of the low cell bed, ankles crossed. There were a couple of books beneath his feet, and there was a low stool the other side of the cell, but otherwise the place was sparse. The papers, newspapers and other materials allowed in previous weeks had gone with Harper, ready for when she had to defend him against the Wizengamot. “You’re just an auror.” They didn’t send anyone wet behind the ears to see him unless it was just to deliver some food.

“Come to check if I made it up?” He asked, head tilted.

Fauna stood back, watching the whole process of moving Musgrave to his cell with a degree of curiosity and embarrassment. She felt impolite, as if Musgrave were an invalid, but no, he was a prisoner, and for good reason. This was just another Thursday for the hitwizard and the criminal.

Handing Fenny her wand, she moved into the cell where Musgrave was already seated on his bed, listening for the moment the door closed behind her. An Auror had warned her of that - don't flinch when the door closes. Listen for it.

They knew her well. Fauna straightened her shoulders, standing like an Auror even if she didn't call herself one yet. She nodded at his instruction, having no intention of following it. The day she could say she was an Auror, a real Auror, her mum would be the first to know, everyone at the Radford House would need to invest in earplugs, and the clubs she dragged her friends to might never recover. She might never recover!

      “Come to check if I made it up?” He asked, head tilted.

Crossing the room to pick up the stool, she glanced at him quickly, the corner of her mouth quirking up.
 
She set the stool down a few feet across from him and perched on it, considering him with a head tilt of her own. He acted more curious than nervous, even showing a sense of humor, though that could be due to the calming draught he'd just been given. He was in possession of his wits. He knew why she was here.

"We received a report that you were in some," she paused. "Distress, yesterday. You spoke of dementors. You seemed affected by them, as if they were close by."[1]

Chills, headaches, and fear, the report said. Other reports, and other Aurors, told her that Musgrave claimed to be haunted and tormented by the Dementors he'd once attempted to control. What worried Level Two was the timing. The timing of his anxiety attack coincided with the dementors chasing the fog, and Abby Reid's arrival at the Ministry. Perhaps he'd had forewarning, or rumors had filtered down to the cells. Or perhaps he still had a connection to the dark creatures.

She hoped not.

"How are you now? Do you still feel like they are," she gestured, "Around? With you, somehow?"

1.	To count the sounds of mirth

Lawrence drew his feet up onto the bed proper, sitting crossed-legged, and examined Blake at closer range. One of those sweet faces, reminded him of how Berkeley looked too delicate to be chasing after the likes of him. It was an advantage the ladies could play well, and fair enough to them. He might have done the young, innocent trainee auror play himself at the same age. He’d have mentored the likes of Blake. He wondered if Trevelyan or the others ever told the young ones that he’d once been their senior, their mentor[1] when they were training? He doubted it, you’d not want to be associated.

“They’ve never left,” he told the young auror, waving away her comment, “just gone onto other things in the meantime. Until yesterday, someone, or something, got them excited. They started hunting, on mass.” He was staring at her now, looking for tells, confirmation. They wouldn’t have sent her to talk to him if nothing had happened. Had someone else begun to do something like him? Had they found a way to control them or entrap them?

“Not right close to London, further away,” he added, still watching her carefully. “I hear them like a wireless in the next room. They share a consciousness, we,” he corrected, “share a consciousness, maybe.” The exact reasons for it were still untested, but the protection of the Ministry and its wards had provided enough of a buffer as time went on and the dementors flocked away from London to cooler parts of the country. The bulk of them were up North, he had seen the updates in The Prophet. Seen that the numbers were at a low at the start of the month, days ago, unless that was positive propaganda from the Ministry.

“The healers orders are to fill me up on calming draught, chocolate, knock me out if it comes to it,” he uttered, hunching his shoulders and frowning. It was a stop gap, enough to drug him and stop him reacting, but nothing to drown out his head. Only if someone took mercy on him like Andromeda Gamp had[2] in the first few days, and cast a patronus, would they ease. “But you’ll not have to worry about that when I’m in the North Sea next week.” He shot her a filthy look which seemed jarring against the attempts at humour before. He closed his eyes, swallowed and refocused on her as if nothing had happened.

“Whatever, wherever it was,” Lawrence continued, “it caught the attention of those around it, and the message was passed on, and on, like whispers - only yesterday, it was more like gleeful shouts.” It was how he’d managed to draw them, attract one or two and then word got round, and for whatever reason, the longer he did that, the more they reciprocated[3] as if he was one of them. “And it was more food than they’d seen in months, since I got here.” When he’d had enough of being a dementor tour guide of the souls of Britain.

“What happened yesterday afternoon?” He asked her, “Something’s happened, Fenny won’t let me see the newspaper.”

1.	23rd March, 2010 Red Right Hand
2.	7th April, 2011 It's Pale Watch Keeping
3.	6th March, 2011 Overplay Your Hand

She went still, fingers curling into her palms, gaze searching his face as he described someone stirring the dementors into a frenzy. Someone, or someones, certainly had yesterday. Her eyebrows drew together at the thought of being able to hear them, always, a dark murmuring hum.

Fauna glanced slowly around his cell, trying to imagine what that felt like in a place that was already a prison. She didn't want to imagine it. She drew back slightly at his dark look, understanding why he wouldn't want to go back to Azkaban, which was so much worse. No one would.

Then again, if he hadn't expected to be sent back to Azkaban, why did he turn himself in? To escape other criminals? To escape his guilt?

Trapped here, maybe he'd had second thoughts about his surrender?

Was his dread and desperation overwhelming enough to make him invent stories about dementors, or did he believe he heard them?

Either way, the details he offered could have been gathered from rumors, or even a stray comment from a hitwizard, despite their best efforts to keep the latest Prophet articles out of his reach.

"Dementors," she answered simply. "Dementing." Fauna gave him a rueful smile, a trace of dark humor flashing in her eyes.

She couldn't tell him yet. Not if she wanted some semblance of the truth.

"When you talk about hearing them from a distance, like on a wireless," she started in a slow, thoughtful tone. "What does that sound like? What did they say, yesterday? Do they say anything comprehensible, or it it just whispers and shouting?"

Fauna's brow furrowed a bit. "And how is it different from, say, a flashback of the dementors coming after you? If you can't see them," she glanced around his cell. "How do you know that their voices are, um, real?"

She fully expected another filthy look, but was curious as to how he'd react to such a question.

Blake, like most of them, did not believe him. Lawrence understood their reasons. They wanted him gone, and his symptoms had reoccurred after his marching orders were issued. A Level Two cell was rather cushy in comparison to Azkaban, especially when it kept at least one hitward off active duty, reading terrible fiction. He was just a madman, at best, or a ridiculous and desperate criminal who had used more of their time and resources than justified, and made a mockery of them. If Blake was here at all, she was just a box-ticking exercise for Solomon Carstairs. He could have been staring at the enchanted window, watching the rain instead of talking to her.

“Dementors can’t see,” Lawrence explained, as if Blake needed to be schooled on the most basic of the amortal beings, “they hunt with sound and perception of human emotions.” He averted his sharp gaze from her and stared past her to the door instead. “I hear them, as they hear me, and not only hear them, feel their frustration, their hunger, their glee. I have felt their presence ever since I joined with them, even in his cell behind your wards. It’s no flashback.” He gave a slow blink and looked to Blake again, with her oversized eyes like a child’s doll. “If we were out there, I’d bring one right to you, just by calling you dinner.”

And what a power that had been. To shout over the muddle of hungry voices, slice through that untenable feeling of misery that prevailed when he was outside. To put them on the leash and send them after that man on Hampstead Heath[1], the Three Broomsticks[2], the ex-Azzies group outside The Old Ocean[3]… “… just ask Gamp and Pinn how it felt. Ask your Head Healer how it sounds, she’s been in and heard it.[4]” He tapped his temple with his rough fingertips.

It was the darkness of the dementors in his head that turned him to snarl. As they had subsided in the hundred days he’d been there, he had come back to himself. The small corner of him who had reached for the telephone box a greater half. But now he was subsiding again, as he had accepted would have to happen to survive. If he ever wanted to bargain his use instead of a lifetime in Azkaban or his soul consumed and his shell of a body confined there instead. He was not meant to bargain with a trainee auror. But she asked questions. Nobody else was bothering.

“They have a necessary vocabulary. Hunger, feasting.” Lawrence gestured away with his remaining hand, a sulky expression on his face. “I hear their victims. Snippets of the sounds around them. Passing trains, traffic, their futile attempts to cast patroni.” He fixed his gaze on Blake again, “I heard one Muggle jump in front of a train to escape what it couldn’t see, only feel. Heard the body splinter, felt the dementor’s anguish.”

His eyelids dropped, and he sighed, turning his mind back to the previous day, beating on the cell door. “Yesterday,” he told Blake, not caring if she would take him seriously, “the hooves of bolting horses, wind in woods, a woman, screaming the name Abby. Broken glass, destruction. Another, younger, crying the name Calix.” He frowned, “Something was different. The dementors felt… excited. They weren’t chasing people, but-”


Inside Lawrence’s head they spoke in unison. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked.

1.	22nd February, 2011 Hell on the Heath
2.	15th January, 2011 A Denser Darkness
3.	16th January, 2011 Old Hands
4.	24th January,  2011 Give Me Your Guiding Hand

Fauna gave a slight shake of her head. It didn't surprise her that Musgrave would summon the dementors to feast on her, if only he could. Hearing him talk about her and the other Aurors as mere appetizers on a menu made it difficult to listen to him, to see past the enclosed cell to the greater world out there, to see past the man sat across from her as more than a prisoner.

He must feel quite powerless, to talk that way.

"I'm here to hear it from you," she reminded him, the corner of her mouth twitching downward.

Though he'd controlled the dementors to some extent when he'd been free, he could still be suffering from flashbacks now. His explanation didn't rule that out. Trapped in this cell, there was likely a time when it became hard to differentiate his own thoughts from his former misdeeds and the threat of dementors. It was likely. It was possible. He could be perfectly sane. There were too many possibilities.

As he described the muggle jumping in front of the train, she took a deep breath, emotion darkening her gaze. Of course, she never expected him to care about a muggle, but his sulky expression made her think it was all about his own pain. Perhaps it had to be, if he'd been haunted for so long. People were the same to him - disposable, expendable. Food for the demons in his head.

She opened her mouth to ask how, exactly, he commanded the dementors, but then he mentioned yesterday.

The woods. The hooves. A woman screaming.

A line appeared between Fauna's brows.

Abby. Calix.

Fauna's eyes widened.

She broke eye contact, glancing slightly from side to side as she processed all the details he'd just given her. No one on Level Two would have let that information slip. He could be making it up, or he could have some outside source more mundane than dementors. But he didn't sound like he was trying to convince her. He wasn't showing the usual signs of lying.

She leaned forward an inch, drawing her feet in underneath the stool.

"Pentrals," she repeated softly, hoping she was pronouncing it correctly. Fauna paused for a moment, deciding how to phrase her next questions.

"How would you say that the pentrals are different from people? Do they look different, act differently? Do they draw the Dementors in a different way?"

She leaned forward another inch, belying her mildly interested tone.

The former auror’s hazel eyes examined the young auror’s non-verbal response. She disliked him, that was clear enough, suggesting you’d feed them as dinner to a dementor tended to get in someone’s good books. Was there an inkling there that she might believe him? It would very much depend on how detailed the newspaper had been that morning, if she thought he had overheard or been informed. He thought her eyes couldn’t get bigger, but they just had. If he felt more endeared to her, he’d have made a joke. Maybe each of them was the joke for the other, though.

“How would you say that the pentrals are different from people?” Fauna asked, “Do they look different-”
Lawrence’s lips curled into a sarcastic smile, and he shook his head at her, though didn’t interrupt.
“-act differently? Do they draw the dementors in a different way?”

“They don’t see them, Blake,” he repeated, as if he were her mentor and she was the forgetful trainee. Gods he’d had so many of those when he was in red robes. “Just been through that.”

He gave her a disparaging look and frowned to himself, considering her question. The hairs on the back of his neck were still on end, and there were goose pimples down his arms beneath his prisoner garb. Despite all the calming draught keeping his thoughts at a steady walking pace, he could feel them creeping in, taking an interest.

Go on then, he thought loudly in his head to the murmur of amortal chorus, what are they? They wouldn’t answer, but maybe he’d glean something from them as the draught wore off and he kept his nerve, ready for them this time.

“Pentrals aren’t people.” Lawrence maintained, “they must be something to do with memories, or the soul. That’s what dementors seek. Something to feed upon, unless its the magic of us.” When dementors had guarded Azkaban, they had taken the magic from those there the longest. Lawrence was thinking aloud, and gestured between the two of them with his remaining hand.

“They move quickly, the dementors have to chase - I feel their thrill. People are slow, they are too affected by the dementors. These pentrals gathered them and scattered them just as quick.” Her eyes were doing that sceptical thing again, “My symptoms presented quickly, and the worst was over within an hour, but the dementors moved hundreds of miles, they communicated often as they hunted.” The acute distress, the cacophony, the cold, and the sheer exhaustion as if he’d been hurtling through the sky with them.

“How to articulate the sound…” His eyes darted from Blake to the door and along the floor, and snapped his fingers. “You listen to the wireless?” He asked the trainee.

Fauna gave him her own sulky look, feeling exactly like the trainee she still was when he scolded her. She didn't mean that dementors could literally see the pentrals, but that Musgrave might get an impression of what they looked like from the other senses the Dementors had.

She listened to his description, watching him concentrate. She wondered if it related at all to the strange fog. If the pentrals weren't people, but a soul or memory of one, they might be able to travel quickly over distances, even hundreds of miles. That was another detail that coincided with truth. The dementors had come from as far north as Cumbria, which Musgrave shouldn't have known or been able to guess.

      “How to articulate the sound…” His eyes darted from Blake to the door and along the floor, and snapped his fingers. “You listen to the wireless?”

"Doesn't everyone?" A slight smile flickered on her face, despite her feelings about him and this dementor business. At least Musgrave was talking to her so far, without prodding or persuasion on her part. It could be bullshit, but it was a relief.

"So people sound like," a hint of a blush rose to her cheeks. "Um, people. With the wind and the woods and trains and all of that in the background. Pentrals sound like voices on the wireless? Without all the background noise," she looked at him questioningly, confused for a moment. "Didn't you say dementors sounded- oh right, you meant as if from a distance. Like tuning into a channel with static."

She was thinking of a TV set, not the wireless, though she supposed it could apply to both.

Doll-eyes attempted a smile. Did they only select cutesy-looking female aurors these days, he wondered, thinking of Berkeley with her pretty face and blonde locks, and now Blake and her ridiculously large eyes. Then he remembered Gamp, and reconsidered.

Still, doll-features did pick up on the wireless reference before he had a chance to expand on the illustration. He wondered if she’d been able to read any of the healers’ reports since he’d been in, and if Sandy was elaborating on things like the dreams. She’d cottoned on with alarming speed, and it was Lawrence’s turn to be suspicious of who was reading ahead.

“Near enough…” he allowed her, narrowing his eyes, “people are as real as I am to you if you shut your eyes, and you’d hear my movements, only you’d feel the desperation as if it were your own. Pentrals are the presenters, voices with deadened background, no interaction, no atmosphere. No concept of environment. Dementors are the wireless set, and on a good day it’s switched on two rooms away, but at that moment yesterday I had my ear pressed against it and six other transmissions.” He brought his hand up towards his right ear in gesture.

“Right now the potions put them in the next room, out with Fenny. They’re still searching. The different voices, the ones that might be the pentrals, are not as numerous as the dementors. Either they’ve been consumed, or they’ve dispersed and hidden - gone quiet.” He inclined forwards towards the trainee. “Anyone I should be listening out for?” He asked in a low voice, “This Abby, or Calix?” He fixed her with an intense stare, lips twisting into an ironic smirk. “What do they look like?”

Fauna had indeed skimmed as many reports as she could before Bailey had shooed her to the cells to make sense of things. She hated feeling unprepared, especially when most of the people she had to question or interview were twice her age and had the wisdom (and arrogance) to show for it.

This criminal, this Lawrence Musgrave, with his instructive manner and keenly intelligent eyes, reminded her uncomfortably of the Aurors and a few professors she knew.

She tilted her head, mulling over the word hiding. The fog had retreated from the darkness of the night and latched onto muggles and wixes. If pentrals and the fog were the same thing, that would explain why they'd have no concept of their environment, and why there were less of them than the dementors. It was a big if, however.

Abby and Calix, again. She wanted to tell him not to say their names, especially not with a smirk.

"Like people," she held his stare and returned his smile, but it was tinged with sadness, thinking of that squib boy discovered dead. "Like you or I. With their own desperation and dreams."

She glanced down for a moment, embarrassed by her choice of words in her attempt not to say too much.

"That woman you mentioned, yelling Abby's name. Do you hear anything from her?"

Fauna raised her eyebrows, asking casually, not really expecting him to be able to provide that level of detail or give it to her without more information in return. She thought the woman might be Lori Lilly, one of the siblings who had caused more destruction after Abby had escaped.

Doll-features had a sense of humour, but she was definitely human (despite the glass eyes). She couldn’t entirely hide her interest, or her disgust, not that she had to. She had called Lawrence a person, inadvertently though. Morals, the human-doll had them. Harper always insisted he had to remember he was a human, a person with rights, even if he felt inhuman for what he’d done, and how society viewed him (and justly so). He knew, he’d been that side of the conversation, where Blake was.

“That woman you mentioned, yelling Abby’s name. Do you hear anything from her?”

“Yes.” Lawrence replied, maintaining eye contact, “She’s asking for another name now. Let me focus.” He pressed his hand to his forehead, playing it straight, and squinted. He made out he was putting genuine effort into this. “Anyone...” he began, as if pausing to listen to the voices in his head and repeat it back. “Anyone here lost someone who’s name begins with the letter F?” He opened his eyes and gave a sly smile, “Fauna?” He suggested, looking at her expression, “Maybe F-off? That is what you’re about to say!” He lifted his hand from his forehead and gestured towards her, ducking back away from her instinctively, even if she’d given him no indication of a physical response.

“No, auror,” Lawrence replied in a sober tone, his mannerisms changing as he relented, “I don’t hear her. She was bright and right here near the start but since then I don’t recall her. Nor, before you are tempted to ask, the one calling the funny name. Is she Scottish?”


He ran his tongue over his lips, focusing on a point between him and the door as he heard the wireless in his head catch a signal. A dog was barking angrily, whimpering in accompaniment to the pleading. This woman had some importance to Auror Blake, otherwise she’d not have singled her out, he had to focus.

“I don’t think the dementors got them, though,” he offered quietly, as the dementor closed in on its dinner somewhere outside, “Too much spunk, too much anger in their voices. The ones they feast on are scared. They... plead.” He swallowed, still staring away, listening. “Some fellow’s with them now,” he told wide-eyes, staring in the same spot, “he’s walking his dog. I can hear them both crying.” He closed his eyes tightly. “Though I’m probably lying, so he’s fine.”

Fauna peered at him, a skeptical look on her face as he began communing with the dementors in a strangely familiar tone. Let me focus, she's asking for another name, he said. She felt as though she could be sitting in another room, with floor pillows and incense and a detached, whispered voice.

Oh.

A blush settled on her face like a tea stain as he teased her. She drew back from him in turn, mouth pressed together. The corners of her mouth twitched, but upward this time.

He shifted to a serious tone, and Fauna watched him stare off into space, gaze distant and vague. Her expression turned carefully neutral, determined not to let him poke fun at her again. He would run out of steam, and when he did, she had more questions.

Yet his words were quiet, offered in concentration, and they were odd and specific enough to get her attention. He didn't hear her, the dementors didn't get them, too much anger in their voices. Fauna didn't understand, but she filed the information away for later.

Her feet pressed against the stone floor, ready to apparate away and drive off the dementor, wherever it was. Fauna ignored the instinct with some effort.

She let her expression soften, mentally reminding herself that yes, he could be lying.

"If you tell them to stop feasting, do they ever listen?" Auror asked quietly.

“If there’s something else to feed them,” Lawrence replied grimly, his attention still split between what he could hear and what Blake was asking. “They follow whatever feeds them most. The Ministry used to allow them to feed on people like me.” He narrowed his eyes and blinked, “you were probably just a child then.” It had made courtrooms a barrel of laughs, Lawrence remembered, those shuddering breaths and the frost all over the floor.


“If I was there, I could,” he added, dragging his eyes from the point on the floor to Blake, “But I’m in here, drugged up to the eyeballs, having ‘flashbacks'.” He added the quotes with two fingers of his remaining hand. “This is a person, not a pentral, and how bad will you feel if St Mungo’s reports some dog walker wizard found as an empty shell?”


“Heh,” Lawrence shrugged, “we’re not much different after all.”