You Get What You Deserve

Standing in the doorway, illuminated by the shivering flames in Lupin’s hand, was a cloaked figure that towered to the ceiling. Its face was completely hidden beneath its hood. My eyes darted downwards, and what I saw made my stomach contract. There was a hand protruding from the cloak and it was glistening, grey-ish, slimy-looking and scabbed, like something dead that had decayed in water...

It was visible only for a split second. As though the creature beneath the cloak sensed my gaze, the hand was suddenly withdrawn into the folds of the black material.

And then the thing beneath the hood, whatever it was, drew a long, slow, rattling breath, as though it was trying to suck something more than air from its surroundings. An intense cold swept over me. I felt my own breath catch in my chest. The cold went deeper than my skin. It was inside my chest, it was inside my very heart...

All of a sudden, Harry’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. He went sort of rigid and fell onto the floor, where he lay, twitching. I couldn’t keep up with what happened next, since Ginny sort of hid herself in my shoulder.

---

“Harry! Harry! Are you all right?”

I was slapping his face, trying to get him to wake up.

“W-what?”

Harry opened his eyes. Ron, Hermione and I were kneeling next to him. The sweat on Harry’s face reflected the lanterns above us. Neville and Lupin were standing watching us. Harry brought his hand up to push his glasses back on. Ron and I heaved him back on to his seat, with some help of Hermione.

“Are you OK?” I asked nervously.

“Yeah,” said Harry, looking quickly towards the door. “What happened? Where’s that – that thing? Who screamed?”

“No one screamed,” I said, more nervously still.

Harry looked around the bright compartment, where Ginny and Neville both looked very pale.
“But I heard screaming –“

A loud snap made us all jump. Professor Lupin was breaking an enormous slab of chocolate into pieces.

“Here,” he said to Harry, handing him a particularly large piece. “Eat it. It’ll help.”

Harry took the chocolate but didn’t eat it.

“What was that thing?” he asked Lupin.

“A Dementor,” said Lupin, who was now giving chocolate to everyone else. “One of the Dementors of Azkaban.”

We all stared at him. Professor Lupin crumpled up the empty chocolate wrapper and put it in his pocket.

“Eat,” he repeated. “It’ll help. I need to speak to the driver, excuse me...”

“Are you sure you’re OK, Harry?” said Hermione, watching Harry anxiously, once Lupin had
“I don’t get it... what happened?” said Harry, wiping more sweat off his face.

“Well – that thing – the Dementor – stood there and looked around (I mean, I think it did, I strolled out of the compartment.
couldn’t see its face) – and you – you –“

“I thought you were having a fit or something,” said Ron, who still looked scared. “You went sort of rigid and fell out of your seat and started twitching –“

“And Professor Lupin stepped over you, and walked towards the Dementor, and pulled out his wand,” I said. “And he said, “None of us is hiding Sirius Black under out cloaks. Go.” But the Dementor didn’t move, so Lupin muttered something, and a silvery thing shot out of his wand at it, and it turned round and sort of glided away...”

“It was horrible,” said Neville, in a higher voice than usual. “Did you feel how cold it went when it came in?”

“It was horrible,” I said, shifting my shoulders uncomfortably. “Like I’d never be cheerful again...”

Ginny, who was huddled in her corner looking nearly as bad as Harry, gave a small sob; I quickly went over and put my arms around her.

“But didn’t any of you – fall off your seats?” said Harry awkwardly.

“No,” said Ron. “Ginny was shaking like mad, though...”

Lupin had come back. He paused as he entered, looked around and said, with a small smile, “I haven’t poisoned that chocolate, you know...”

I had been the only one who had eaten my chocolate all at once, where as everyone else were just eating their pieces now.

“We’ll be at Hogwarts in ten minutes,” said Professor Lupin. “Are you all right, Harry?”

“Fine,” Harry muttered, and I could see that he was embarrassed to have the new teacher know his name, even before we stood foot in the castle.