Parvati Patil had produced a corporeal Patronus in the form of a tiger, larger than Dumbledore's phoenix, though not nearly as bright. There had been a great burst of applause from all the watchers, though not the same shock as when Anthony had done it.
And then it was Harry's turn.
The Headmaster called the name of Harry Potter, and Harry was afraid.
Harry knew, he knew that he was going to fail, and he knew that it was going to hurt.
But he still had to try; because sometimes, in the presence of a Dementor, a wizard went from not a flicker of light to a full corporeal Patronus, and no one understood why.
And because if Harry
Harry had expected the Headmaster to give him a worried look, or a hopeful look, or deeply wise advice; but instead Albus Dumbledore only watched him with quiet calm.
The cage came closer. It was already tarnished, but not rusted away to nothing, not yet.
The cloak came closer. It was unraveling and shot through with unpatched holes; it had been new that morning, Auror Goryanof had said.
"Headmaster?" Harry said. "What do you see?"
The Headmaster's voice was also calm. "The Dementors are creatures of fear, and as your fear of the Dementor diminishes, so does the fearsomeness of its form. I see a tall, thin, naked man. He is not decaying. He is only slightly painful to look upon. That is all. What do you see, Harry?"
...Harry couldn't see under the cloak.
Or that wasn't right, it was that his mind was
No, his mind was trying to see the
Harry looked under the cloak and saw...
An open question. Harry wouldn't let his mind see something false, and so he didn't see anything, like the part of his visual cortex getting that signal was just ceasing to exist. There was a blind spot under the cloak. Harry couldn't know what was under there.
Just that it was far worse than any decaying mummy.
The unseeable horror beneath the cloak was very close, now, but the blazing bird of moonlight, the white phoenix, yet lay between them.
Harry wanted to run away like some of the other students had. Half the ones who'd had no luck with their Patronus Charms just hadn't shown up today in the first place. Of those remaining, half had fled before the Headmaster had even dispelled his own Patronus, and no one had said a word. There'd been a little laughter when Terry had turned and walked back before his own try; and Susan and Hannah, who'd gone before, had yelled at everyone to shut up.
But Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived, and he would lose much respect if he was seen to give up without even trying...
Pride and roles seemed to diminish and fall away, in the presence of whatever lay beneath the cloak.
It wasn't the shame of others thinking him cowardly, that kept Harry's feet in place.
It wasn't the hope of repairing his reputation that brought up his wand.
It wasn't the desire to master the Patronus Charm as magic, that moved his fingers into the initial position.
It was something else, something that
Harry had planned to try one final time to think of his book-shopping spree with his father, but instead, at the last minute, facing the Dementor, a different memory occurred to him, something he hadn't tried before; a thought that wasn't warm and happy in the ordinary way, but felt righter, somehow.
And Harry remembered the stars, remembered them burning terribly bright and unwavering in the Silent Night; he let that image fill him, fill all of him like an Occlumency barrier across his entire mind, became once again the bodiless awareness of the void.
The bright silver shining phoenix vanished.
And the Dementor smashed into his mind like the fist of God.
FEAR / COLD / DARKNESS
There was an instant when the two forces clashed head-on, when the peaceful starlit memory held its own against the fear, even as Harry's fingers began the wand motions, practiced until they had become automatic. They weren't warm and happy, those blazing points of light in perfect blackness; but it was an image the Dementor could not easily pierce. For the silent burning stars were vast and unafraid, and to shine in the cold and darkness was