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It started with a word. Then, a paradigm shift. The room had been lit only by a 13 inch Toshiba CRT color television. Its colorful rerun of the evening news was not what caught the attention of The Thing that fed off of the despair of an unemployed art school graduate.
It was a commercial featuring a skeleton in a red suit. The Thing liked skeletons. They involved horror and suffering. Such elements of humans were aromas of a main course. So why was the skeleton singing? Dancing? Yule.
The Thing made a rasping sound. From its dry throat, it struggled to form the guttural syllables.
“YU-lle.” It was the most alien sound it had ever made. Just like the dancing skeleton.
The word vibrated in its throat, leaving a foreign curiosity behind. For the first time, The Thing noticed the particular ways the room around it was decorated. It noticed that there was something that compelled humans to drape the world in bauble and garland. It craved understanding, and left its supper behind.
The art student suddenly jerked up. He could have sworn he heard someone speak. He felt… Lighter? His mind was suddenly clearer than it had been for weeks since the job rejection. Things weren’t so bad. Didn’t his friend say that there was a party happening tonight?
The Dementor had moved on. Fixated by an unexplained, alien, curiosity.
“YU-lle,” it practiced. Just saying the word invoked its mind to behave with exotic machinations. Its own body felt foreign. It conjured memories of humans experiencing joy. Very much the joy they felt before they were drained. But wasn’t this the time of Winter’s lasting darkness?
What was it about this year that made harvesting ripe, but difficult? The Dementor looked at a mother and child. Festering flesh-bags that were shining brightly from their excitement. Even as the dementor shifted close to them, the mother and child did not fall into sadness. Their very skin glowed through the bitter winter air like the rays of polar lights.
“Mutthhheerrr. Child.” it rasped. The new words were becoming easier, even as they rubbed its throat raw. It needed answers. Preferably from someone who would be able to see it. There was a wizard nearby. It would be easy to creep into their temporary lodging.
The dementor shifted through holly and garland. Its dry-rotted cloak shifted over the chairs and tables of the lobby. The receptionist sighed, thinking of her recent break up. There wasn’t any time for that.
The dementor turned its corpse-like hand, unlocking the room’s door. With the silence and chill of Death, it drifted towards the bed of the sleeping wizard. Its hood darkened its visage as it loomed over the sleeping wizard.
“LIT-tle booooyyy,” The dementor rasped forcibly exhaling its rancid corpse breath from its lungs.
The high-pitched, urine soaked, squeal of Neville Longbottom echoed in the room.
A teacup and saucer clanked in Neville’s shaking hands. In clean pajamas and a fluffy robe, Neville sat on his modest bed as the dementor hovered ominously in a dark corner of the tiny room.
“A-a-and you believe that you can understand humans? And Yule?” Nevile stammered. His breath came out in frosted puffs.
“YehSss. LIT-tle boooooyyy,” croaked the dementor.
“I’m 19. And I’m almost two meters tall,” Neville said humbly. He sipped his cocoa nib tea. The dementor observed the change in the wizard’s brightness as the drink warmed him.
“Llll-Arge. Boy,” replied the dementor. It was not certain why the specifics mattered to the wizard. But if this sort of thing was important, then so be it.
“Maybe we'll try a name? I’m Neville Longbottom. Does…your kind…do the whole naming business? What do the other dementors call you?” asked Neville. The dementor thought for a moment. It wasn’t that dementors didn’t have names. They certainly did. But the names came in the images they would communicate to each other. It was similar to how images were communicated to the television sets humans watched. The dementor knew the words within the image. Its image was that of the mouth of a long dead corpse slowly decomposing in a bog. Forgotten for centuries. Acids preserving and corroding around the teeth to turn everything into the color of pitch. Humans loved their words.
“Bog-Rrrrot-in-GuuUUMMmmmmSsssss,” rasped the Dementor. Neville turned pale and appetizing again. But the Dementor did not partake. There were more pressing matters to consume.
“A bit long, innit it?” Neville half-heartedly joked.
“GuuUUMmSss,” the dementor then parted its lips in a grin that was smooth, slow, and slippery. Its green, yellow, and black teeth flashed at Neville. Who did not seem to understand the dementor’s attempt to mimic a human’s delivery of friendly banter.
“LunngeBUT-tooonnn,” Gums said. The wizard blinked for a moment, and then realized that the dementor was attempting his name.
“Oh! Well- It’s- Nevermind.” Neville sipped his tea. “What do you want to know first?”
Gums had many things it wanted to know. Why did humans bring trees inside? Why was the flesh of a goose eaten only once a year? Why wrap the item of monetary value within paper only to destroy it gleefully? But perhaps many of these things were best answered with a direct, to-the-point, question.
“Why?” Gums rasped. Speaking was starting to feel less alien to it. To him. It felt less alien to him.
“You mean, why do we celebrate Yule?” Neville clarified. The dementor nodded. He pressed his fingertips together in a human-like manner.
“Well, um, everyone has their reason. I do it because it helps me remember my mum and dad. It makes my grandmother happy.” Gums saw the brightness fade from the wizard. The edges of the mortal glow became desaturated. Gums felt his mouth water.
“Do…You have a happy memory? Hopefully not gruesome?” Neville shuddered. Humans never enjoyed the frost touched air of dementors. Gums struggled with this exercise. He rarely had a purpose for memories before, except for following instructions or remembering which humans were in misery. But something came. Gums wasn’t sure how to explain it.
“I…will…show you..Lunge-button…” Gums extended a decaying hand towards Neville. The sight of black and broken veins sapped all light and brightness from the wizard, draining all color from the room around him. Gums felt his stomach rumble.
To Gum’s surprise, Lungebutton accepted his festering and cold hand.
Wizard and Dementor were whisked away in a whirlwind of time and snow. To a place made of everything and nothing. Pinpoint clarity with blurred edges. A workhouse, dark and cold. The memory of Gum’s creation. Neville gasped, putting a hand over his mouth.
It was the dark rooms of a Victorian poor house. There was a woman sobbing over the body of a motionless newborn. She was barely dressed in rags in the frigid room where other women were too fearful to console her. Worn down by an inhumane system designed to ruin.
“My creation…I was the first and last breath of an infant..Its mothers sorrow,” Gums whispered. Neville was motionless.
“This does not feel like a memory for Yule,” Gums continued. “I do not believe I will be able to.”
Gums lip scowled. He was losing his appetite and that was unusual for this memory.
“Maybe we could try observing a modern one instead?” Neville offered. His eyes were turning red from trying to fight tears back.
Gums waved a hand. Now they stood in a cemetery. Snowflakes landed on the dementor, but they did not melt.
“A cemetery? You experience Yule amongst the graves?” asked Neville.
Gums was quiet for a moment.
“We find sorrow. That is how we experience Yule. This was a fool’s errand. I was born from suffering. Sorrow is my flesh-eating. I am made of the death shroud. I will never understand what makes that brightness we drain so readily.”
There was a family standing around a grave. Red-haired, except for two. Mourning the loss of a son and twin-brother. No light or color around them. Not just desaturated, but leaking darkness fine and succulent like caviar.
“I shall devour you briefly, and then leave you. I will feed on them next,”
“Wait! How can you say that you do not understand?” Nevilled shouted.
“Can the blind know light? Can you breathe underwater? To know how gills feel?” replied Gums calmly.
“But you’re not blind. You also aren’t a fish. How can you understand sorrow without being able to know what its opposite is?” asked Neville. The dementor felt its skin tighten. Something in his muscles shifted.
“That mother. The one who was crying. She was in grief because she loved. I feel sadness every Yule, but what’s worse is to not feel it at all. Because how else would I understand how beautiful it is to even have moments of joy?” Neville pressed on.
The graves were silent. Neville’s question rang like a funeral bell over the stones. The dementor’s veins felt like embers and coal.
A voice carried to the Wizard and Dementor.
Arthur Weasley began to softly sing. Through his tears and a trembling lip, the words to an old song of longing and hope echoed. Then Molly joined. Ginny. The most of the brothers and Harry. Finally Hermione and George.
Their choir lifted through the air. Their tears were the color of blue silver. The inky blackness vanished and was replaced with golden crowns of light around their heads. Hand in hand. Arms around shoulders. Nestled into embraces.
Something emptied the dementor’s mind and filled it with an intangible mystery. He felt hypnotized and moved towards the image.
The halos. As the dementor’s sight adjusted to the golden light he could see within the gold filaments and the shards of color that enveloped their heads. The Dementor saw the shapes within the glass.
Every joyful tear.
Every longing hope.
Every dance awkwardly invited.
Every enthusiastic yes.
It was the laughter in a sunny field.
It was the rest in the winter.
Days that were immortal.
Months that vanished in a breath.
Storms that became rays of sunlight.
The stillness of humid nights.
Every choice given to the truth.
Every resignation to secrets.
The dementor shielded itself with fear and awe but dared not to look away. He had to step forward. Stepped. Stepped.
The wizard drew out a wand and shouted for the Dementor to stop. But the silver smoke from the spell wisped over the Dementor’s dry rags.
Gums realized he wasn’t floating. He was…heavy? Something had tied his being to a stone and dropped it. His skin felt cold. A snowflake floated to a fingertip and melted.
Something…New.
Gums wasn’t a dementor…He was something entirely different. He had feet. Did he always have feet? The snowflakes kept melting on his grey skin.
“Cor Blimey…You have…a face,” gasped Neville. “Well, sort of.”
Gums felt his skull. It was…changed. There was a nose. A first. It stung in the winter air. There were muscles that defined eyebrows. Though it was a bit wet and slimy. Its eyesockets were still hollow and empty. Yet the dementor could see a strange pin-point reflection of light in its palms.
“What…are you?” asked Neville.
“It would appear, Lungebutton, that I am not entirely what I was before.” Gums gave an oil-slick black, grin. This was…exciting. His appetite at the thought of devouring the wizards was already a dream from a sleeping life. It floated and drifted further and further away.
The scene of the cemetery vanished. Wizard and the Not-Dementor stood again in Neville’s temporary lodging. Gums pressed the ground with skeletal feet. His foul grin was still spread on his face.
“I need a drink,” groaned Neville.
“I have heard this phrase often.” Gums gave a thumping, throaty sound.
“What was that?” Nevilled asked.
“The sound you make when you manifest mirth,” Gums replied.
“No one is going to believe this is how I spent my Yule,” Neville ran a hand through his hair and exhaled.
“Someone will,” said Gums dryly.
“So now what are you going to do?” asked Neville. Gums thought for a moment. Walking and observing seemed appropriate.
“There is much to see. I will learn. I don’t hunger as I once did. That will be useful. But I understand the chill of winter. That might prove to be a hindrance.”
“Maybe get a sweater? I think I have one.” said Neville.
Sweatered, and hopeful, Gums the Former-Dementor walked out into the winter night to begin a long journey of the new world he was now in.