Ravenclaw played Slytherin a week after the start of term. Slytherin won, though narrowly. According to Wood, this was good news for Gryffindor, who would take second place if they beat Ravenclaw too. He therefore increased the number of team practices to five a week. This meant that with Lupin’s anti-dementor classes, which in themselves were more draining than six Quidditch practices, Harry had just one night a week to do all his homework. Even so, he wasn’t showing the strain nearly as much as Hermione, whose immense workload finally seemed to be getting to her. Every night, without fail, Hermione was to be seen in a corner of the common room, several tables spread with books, Arithmancy charts, rune dictionaries, diagrams of Muggles lifting heavy objects, and file upon file of extensive notes; she barely spoke to anybody and snapped when she was interrupted.
“How’s she doing it?” Ron muttered to Harry one evening as Harry sat finishing a nasty essay on Undetectable Poisons for Snape. Harry looked up. Hermione was barely visible behind a tottering pile of books.
“Doing what?”
“Getting to all her classes!” Ron said. “I heard her talking to Professor Vector, that Arithmancy witch, this morning. They were going on about yesterday’s lesson, but Hermione can’t’ve been there, because she was with us in Care of Magical Creatures! And Ernie Macmillan told me she’s never missed a Muggle Studies class, but half of them are at the same time as Divination, and she’s never missed one of them either!”
Harry didn’t have time to fathom the mystery of Hermione’s impossible schedule at the moment; he really needed to get on with Snape’s essay. Two seconds later, however, he was interrupted again, this time by Wood.
“Bad news, Harry. I’ve just been to see Professor McGonagall about the Firebolt. She — er — got a bit shirty with me. Told me I’d got my priorities wrong. Seemed to think I cared more about winning the Cup than I do about you staying alive. Just because I told her I didn’t care if it threw you off, as long as you caught the Snitch first.” Wood shook his head in disbelief. “Honestly, the way she was yelling at me . . . you’d think I’d said something terrible. . . . Then I asked her how much longer she was going to keep it. . . .” He screwed up his face and imitated Professor McGonagall’s severe voice. “‘As long as necessary, Wood’ . . . I reckon it’s time you ordered a new broom, Harry. There’s an order form at the back of Which Broomstick . . . you could get a Nimbus Two Thousand and One, like Malfoy’s got.”
“I’m not buying anything Malfoy thinks is good,” said Harry flatly.
January faded imperceptibly into February, with no change in the bitterly cold weather. The match against Ravenclaw was drawing nearer and nearer, but Harry still hadn’t ordered a new broom. He was now asking Professor McGonagall for news of the Firebolt after every Transfiguration lesson, Ron standing hopefully at his shoulder, Hermione rushing past with her face averted.
“No, Potter, you can’t have it back yet,” Professor McGonagall told him the twelfth time this happened, before he’d even opened his mouth. “We’ve checked for most of the usual curses, but Professor Flitwick believes the broom might be carrying a Hurling Hex. I shall tell you once we’ve finished checking it. Now, please stop badgering me.”
To make matters even worse, Harry’s anti-dementor lessons were not going nearly as well as he had hoped. Several sessions on, he was able to produce an indistinct, silvery shadow every time the boggart-dementor approached him, but his Patronus was too feeble to drive the dementor away. All it did was hover, like a semi-transparent cloud, draining Harry of energy as he fought to keep it there. Harry felt angry with himself, guilty about his secret desire to hear his parents’ voices again.
“You’re expecting too much of yourself,” said Professor Lupin sternly in their fourth week of practice. “For a thirteen-year-old wizard, even an indistinct Patronus is a huge achievement. You aren’t passing out anymore, are you?”
“I thought a Patronus would — charge the dementors down or something,” said Harry dispiritedly. “Make them disappear —”
“The true Patronus does do that,” said Lupin. “But you’ve achieved a great deal in a very short space of time. If the dementors put in an appearance at your next Quidditch match, you will be able to keep them at bay long enough to get back to the ground.”
“You said it’s harder if there are loads of them,” said Harry.
“I have complete confidence in you,” said Lupin, smiling. “Here — you’ve earned a drink — something from the Three Broomsticks. You won’t have tried it before —”
He pulled two bottles out of his briefcase.
“Butterbeer!” said Harry, without thinking. “Yeah, I like that stuff!”
Lupin raised an eyebrow.
“Oh — Ron and Hermione brought me some back from Hogsmeade,” Harry lied quickly.
“I see,” said Lupin, though he still looked slightly suspicious. “Well — let’s drink to a Gryffindor victory against Ravenclaw! Not that I’m supposed to take sides, as a teacher . . . ,” he added hastily.
They drank the butterbeer in silence, until Harry voiced something he’d been wondering for a while.
“What’s under a dementor’s hood?”
Professor Lupin lowered his bottle thoughtfully.
“Hmmm . . . well, the only people who really know are in no condition to tell us. You see, the dementor lowers its hood only to use its last and worst weapon.”
“What’s that?”
“They call it the Dementor’s Kiss,” said Lupin, with a slightly twisted smile. “It’s what dementors do to those they wish to destroy utterly. I suppose there must be some kind of mouth under there, because they clamp their jaws upon the mouth of the victim and — and suck out his soul.”
Harry accidentally spat out a bit of butterbeer.
“What — they kill — ?”
“Oh no,” said Lupin. “Much worse than that. You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you’ll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no . . . anything. There’s no chance at all of recovery. You’ll just — exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever . . . lost.”
Lupin drank a little more butterbeer, then said, “It’s the fate that awaits Sirius Black. It was in the Daily Prophet this morning. The Ministry have given the dementors permission to perform it if they find him.”
Harry sat stunned for a moment at the idea of someone having their soul sucked out through their mouth. But then he thought of Black.
“He deserves it,” he said suddenly.