`ENTER: Azkaban, 1981. A delegation of wizards wends warily across the choppy waters of the North Sea. Their LEADER stands at the prow of the vessel and sends an deliberate, intentional thrum of emotion-memory at the rotting edifice before them. Specters flood out from within the structure, turning their empty, tattered hoods toward the boat, but do not approach. The wizards mutter amongst themselves as one DEMENTOR drifts forward, then shudder as one when a noise emerges from within its hood.` `DEMENTOR: Speak.` `Its voice is barely audible, but recognizable nonetheless as clear, organic speech. It upends centuries of assumptions in an instant. One of the wizards conjures a Patronus, itchy-fingered. The DEMENTOR's hood turns toward the silver creature, but does not otherwise react. The LEADER clears his throat.` `LEADER: We are reclaiming Azkaban in the name of the Ministry. The Dark Lord has fallen.` `A long silence falls. The wizards glance at one another, wondering if they have somehow tumbled into some kind of collective hysteria. Perhaps they imagined it. Perhaps this Dementor is not, as they briefly, mistakenly believed, capable of speech. The boat remains in place despite the churning waters around them, held to heel by a dozen complex charms.` `DEMENTOR: What year is it?` `The wizards start again, a full-body flinch. The LEADER wets his lips.` `LEADER: 1981.` `DEMENTOR: Azkaban is yours.` `If the LEADER detects a hint of irony from within the creature's bottomless hood, he does not remark upon it. The DEMENTOR drifts aside, and the delegation moves forward, anchoring their vessel on the grotty peer and stumbling ashore. The Dementors hang back, watching. Another deviation from the norm. The LEADER adjusts his robes and eyes the DEMENTOR.` `LEADER: Your, er, colleagues are unusually -` `DEMENTOR: Obedient.` `LEADER: Yes. What -` `DEMENTOR: Experiments. There is nothing to be concerned about. We shall serve as we always have.` `LEADER: Quite. Quite.` `CUT TO: Azkaban. 1981. The DEMENTOR watches as a man is dragged, laughing, to his cell, before turning away and drifting past the perimeter. There is a window facing the sea. The DEMENTOR goes to it. The LEADER sits within, a badge pinned to his breast proclaiming him to be the WARDEN. He looks up and startles, jumping back from the desk. The DEMENTOR resists the urge to laugh.` `DEMENTOR: That man betrayed his friend.` `WARDEN: Yes. Yes, I suppose so.` `DEMENTOR: His name is` **SIRIUS BLACK** `The name rings flat in the silence before sound returns to the world. The WARDEN stares, eyes wide.` `WARDEN: I'm sorry?` `DEMENTOR: That's not his name.` `WARDEN: No.` `DEMENTOR: The Dark Lord. What was his name?` `The WARDEN shifts uncomfortably.` `DEMENTOR:` **HARRY POTTER** `CUT TO: Azkaban, 1993. The DEMENTOR hangs, hovering, above the prison. Skeletal hands emerge from within its tattered robe, a photograph clenched between two bony claws. The photograph is moving. A messy-haired, bespectacled man cradles a baby in his arms, then passes the infant to a pretty redhead. The photograph blurs, and suddenly the couple looks very different. The man is blonde, and dressed in a Muggle suit. His androgynous wife has a pair of spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose. Their features flicker from Caucasian to Asiatic and back again. The baby splits, as though through mitosis, into a pair of twins, then wobbles back into one.` `DEMENTOR: No escapees this year.` `It turns the photograph over. Scribbled on the back: IGNATIUS, HORATIA` **AND** `CUT TO: Azkaban, 1969. The DEMENTOR's hood rises, the gaping void within bared to the sky.` `DEMENTOR:` **VOLDEMORT** `The world shudders before settling back into place. The DEMENTOR descends. The world is filmy and dark. One of the many guardhouses scattered throughout the structure is alive with light, and the DEMENTOR drifts toward it. A GUARD sits within, smoking a cigarette, perusing a newspaper. As the DEMENTOR hangs by the window until the GUARD looks up.` `GUARD: Evening.` `The DEMENTOR does not respond. It had expected a little more shock.` `DEMENTOR: What year is it?` `GUARD: 1969. You alright, Bob?` `DEMENTOR: Bob?` `GUARD, mildly: Good name, Bob. You never objected.` `DEMENTOR: How long have I been here?` `GUARD: Since forever. You want a look at the Daily Prophet again?` `The DEMENTOR accepts. The biting cold of the North Sea at night does not seem to affect it in the least. The papers tell of Squib Rights marches and pure-blood riots.` `DEMENTOR: Bob. Of course. How could it be any other name.` `CUT TO: Azkaban, 1927. A tiny, shriveled Christmas tree squats in the warden's office, the prison's lone concession to the season. The DEMENTOR is not there.` `CUT TO: London, 1927. The DEMENTOR emerges from within a shadowed alley; the Muggles give it a wide berth, shivering unconsciously. Still, it's of no particular surprise. Winter, you know.` `DEMENTOR: Wool's.` `Its hood smooths out into skin, papery like parchment, and bone-white struts emerge from the bottom of its trailing cloak, barely recognizable as the legs that they are supposed to be. It roams London in this state for hours until it finds what it seeks. A young woman sits at the counter and looks up as it approaches. She tries to smile. She fails.` `DEMENTOR: Merry Christmas. I'm looking for a -` `It pauses.` `DEMENTOR:` **TOM RIDDLE** `CUT TO: Surrey, 1987. It's sweltering. English suburbia languishes in the depths of a humid, choking summer. The DEMENTOR appears in the gap between one breath and the next, emerging from beneath a tree's soothing shadow. Its eyes are black, the pupils blown wider than they have any right to be, the whites almost nonexistent; full dark, no stars. It keeps to the pavement, animals barking as it passes. Takes a left, walks down the street. Privet Drive.` `DEMENTOR: Penance for my sins.` `It knocks smartly on the door. A WOMAN answers.` `WOMAN, tightly: Good morning?` `DEMENTOR: Good morning. I'm looking for a Mrs Dursley.` `WOMAN: No one of that name lives here. Good day.` `CUT TO: Azkaban, 1978. The Second Wizarding War is in full swing. The DEMENTOR has watched the guards filter away, one by one, until a pinprick appears on the horizon, drifting over the water. It resolves into the silhouette of a human being, male, hair so blue it's almost black, tangled from the sea-spray. The DEMENTOR lingers.` `DEMENTOR: Wrong year.` `The man slows down, coasts to a stop. His eyes are not red.` `THE DARK LORD: By my will, I claim Azkaban.` `The DEMENTOR regards its would-be master. It waits, robes hanging in the frigid air, watching as the ragtag Azkaban garrison fights and dies. Not quite the Dark Lord it had been expecting. Tall, yes, but broader. Familiar.` `THE DARK LORD: Serve me, and I shall give you souls aplenty. So swears the Symbol of Death.` `CUT TO: Hogwarts, 1978. Four figures race through the halls, blurring between man and boy and beast. Two of them have blonde hair. One of them has black hair. The fourth -` `CUT TO: Hogwarts, 1945. An orphan traces his fingers over a faucet. He was raised in the forest. Or was it an orphanage?` `CUT TO: Hogwarts, 1991. A sallow, greasy-skinned man looms over a bespectacled boy, sneering.` `PROFESSOR: Our new - celebrity.` `CUT TO: Surrey, 1995. The DEMENTOR drifts down an empty street towards a pair of shivering children. The streetlights go out as it passes.` `DEMENTOR: Splendid isekai, everyone, job bloody well done. Can I go home now?`