>>5773901>>5773904>>5773914>>5773928>>5773998>>5774029>>5774031It had been on the rooftop of one of the highest towers in Hogwarts, so no one would be watching if you failed. The sun was high in the sky, the greatest source of warmth in the world. Three different patronuses were shining between you and <span class="mu-i">it</span>, the ministry-sent aurors standing by at the ready.
And yet you were still shivering.
“Fear,” Potter had said, probably for the hundredth time that day. “A dementor is a wound in the world through which our happiness leakes. Attacking a wound only makes it bigger. It is undying, no spells work on it. No spell, other than the patronus. This is why it is important to know its fear. So you can recognize it before it sucks your ability to aparate away. And let no one ever tell you there is any shame in running from a Dementor. If you can’t cast this spell, it is the right thing to do. It is the <span class="mu-i">only</span> thing to do.”
“Do not think about what it is forcing you to think. Do not think of the patronus as a shield. You are <span class="mu-i">brandishing</span> your wand like a sword against the fear, making your happiness into solid light, turning it into steel and fire to banish away the darkness.”
“Are you ready, Elliot?”
You were shaking. You were not ready, but you couldn’t back away now. You needed to <span class="mu-i">try</span>. You needed to prove to yourself that even though it hadn’t worked for you before, that… that you were happy enough. Some people could go from nothing to a full patronus when faced with a dementor, no one knew why, so you would face the creature.
You walked past the cat and the mouse of the two aurors and stared into the iron cage of the dementor, only Potter’s stag between you and the horror beyond description.
Potter waved his hand.
The stag vanished.
The sun dimmed in the sky.
The world ended.
And you fell into darkness.
Your fingers moved into the right position by themselves.
Your hand moved the correct way.
You uttered the words as they were meant to be uttered, but even as they came out of your lips, they felt <span class="mu-i">wrong</span>.
“<span class="mu-i">Expecto Patronum</span>!”
There hadn’t been even a flicker.
And you had been in a place of death and despair and darkness and loss.
Potter cast his stag once more and light rushed back into you like air into a drowning man’s lung. He barely had time to give you chocolate before you ran away to hide somewhere and cry.
There was something unbearably awful about being told you weren’t happy enough.
[Cont.]