FIC: "No Soul for a Kiss" 1/1 (D/D) G

[lobelia321]

Title: No Soul for a Kiss
Author: lobelia321; lobelia40@yahoo.com
Website: http://www.geocities.com/lobelia321/
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Dementor / Dementor
Rating: G
Length: 680 words
Summary: A Dementor must Kiss somebody.
Feedback: Yes, please, I would love feedback! Anything, even if it's only one line, one word!
Archive Rights: My niche. Anyone else, please ask.
Disclaimers: This is a work of amateur fiction. I am not making money. I did not invent Dementors; J.K. Rowling did.
Author's Notes: childeproof wondered about experiments and rareness, and cathexys wondered why I hadn't posted anything for so long. So I felt spurred! This fic is for them, with thanks.


-----

No Soul for a Kiss
by Lobelia

Icicles float on the wind, pinpricks of glass. Each star is crisp and still. No sound interrupts the Polar night, only the ethereal wind and the screams of the prisoner beyond.

The night is cold but the Dementor is colder. Freezing point means nothing to him. His breath crackles the air. His breath is so cold that oxygen molecules snap like crystals. And the screams? The screams are unbearable.

The screams fill the Dementor with hunger.

The Dementor has no words for the void inside him. He has no feelings, he has no speech, he has only this boundless hole at the back of his throat, and with every scream, the emptiness spreads further until the Dementor is filled with something that a human might call pain.

The Dementor gasps and rasps. He is not good at thinking or even hoping. This is why he can wait, here in the snowy wastes. This is why he has been waiting here for... how long? Time means nothing to a Dementor. Time is something you float through on your way to somewhere else.

The Dementor does not know longing or yearning. He knows only the drive and the deep dark hunger. He has been put here to guard the tower of stone with its turrets, its moats and its walls three by three. He has been put here to guard the tower of stone with its lone prisoner who is even now howling for release. The Dementor opens his mouth wide, sucks dry motes into his parched throat -- not enough. Not enough to fill the inner maw.

But he can't move, of course. Dementors have no free will. They do as they are told. If they are put, they stay put. If they are made to guard, they guard without moving or flinching or groaning, without tiring, without ever sitting down.

Ten feet to the left of the Dementor is another guard. He, too, stands stockstill in the brutal moonlight. His shadow lies crushed in the snow. He is a fellow Dementor. He is kindred.

The Dementor turns his hooded face to his left.

The other Dementor turns his other hooded face to his right.

The Dementors do not see each other so much as they sniff each other out. Cold ripples waver across the perimeter. This is how they know their mates.

Dementors cannot wonder but if they could, perhaps, perhaps -- perhaps they would wonder if the other suffered, too. If each dementorian gullet ached with a hunger of dread. If each mouth needed to gawp, needed to gulp, needed to clamp itself...

"Do not go near the prisoner! Do not touch the prisoner! Do not Kiss the prisoner!"

That had been the injunction. That had been the spell.

But a Dementor needs to Kiss. He cannot exist forever without it. There will come a point, a turning, a slight crick in the earth's revolution about its axis.

They move towards each other, scabrous hands extended. Two breath clouds collide. The atmosphere fractures into daggers.

A Dementor must Kiss somebody.

A strange thing happens that night in the Polar desert. Underground caves open out, and the northern lights play their organ music in the sky. The screams from the tower of stone stop. A tiny figure squeezes out through an embrasure, drops to the ground with a crunch of snow and darts off over the horizon.

All the Dementors stand locked in a tight two-by-two, mouth-to-mouth ring. There is no sound as they suck at each other. They cannot stop. They are never filled. They suck and suck but there is not a soul to feed on. They crave and crave but they can never be fulfilled.

At the dawn of spring, the first soft flakes fall.
-----

The End
6 November 2004

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Wow. That was gorgeous. I love They suck and suck but there is not a soul to feed on. They crave and crave but they can never be fulfilled.
.

Now, of course, I'm trying hard not to thibnk of my sonwho asks santa for 30 lego dementors for xmas :D

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you! My first fb from you! Whee!! *feels happy*

Lego dementors, omg. What do they look like? Do they have mouths? The last HP lego we had in this house was Hagrid's house and after that I weaned t'sons off t'HP because I regarded it as inferior literature. Little did I know the thing was going to come back and haunt me...

:-) :-) :-)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

this is probably the best pic...

and yes, they're scary little lego critters :-)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*laughs*

Whoa, the mouth. Who's the green-suited mite wielding a map or somesuch?

[blithesea.livejournal.com]

Hm, I think that might be Lupin...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

1111

[blithesea.livejournal.com]

How lovely. I never thought of Dementors that way. Who was the little critter that got away, I wonder?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Lucius Malfoy.

Thanks so much for your kind fb. You used the word 'lovely' and the word 'Dementors' on the same line: this makes me very happy. :-)

[blithesea.livejournal.com]

Eeeee, Lucius! Now I would love the little ficlet even more, if I wasn't completely transfixed by the image of snogging Dementors. XD

Write more HP, please, you. I want to see Dudley in a starring role again! Though the chapter with the tiles you posted some time ago depressed me a lot; I'm too simply-knit to enjoy and appreciate even good non-con.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I made a mistake posting that chapter out of context. I was thinking about Dudley a lot and by what plausible means I could get him into a position where he'd hang out with wizards and what's more, be gay -- and then I remembered his horrible boarding school and bethought me of all the films and books and memoirs I'd read about horrible boarding schools. Taken out of context it's just a brutal scene but within the fic (I hope) it explains who Dudley is. Sorry I spooked you, though. :-(

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

There you go, just out of the blue, sending chills up and down my spine and making me afraid to go to bed!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

*wiggles scary fingers at you*

Nothing like escaping into a world of fantasised evil. But the Kiss was crying out for it!! Slashy or what?

Thanks so much for reading and commenting.

memphis belle??

[brightest-blue.livejournal.com]

Well, only you would think of Dementor slash. But I suppose those poor fellows need to get some action, too!

Memphis Belle? Working on it. I seem to have constructed the chapter from hell, and it doesn't even have sex! Grrrr.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

only you would think of Dementor slash.

Hah! Not true!

(Although almost true...)

Chapter without sex? Difficult? God, been there!!!! *wishes you well with it and looking forward to reading*

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

That was lovely! And sad *cries*. And creepy *shivers*.

I hope you found that feedback insightful and profound.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Incredibly insightful and phenomenally profound, thank you! Really, you're kind to read and comment. It's funny how this fic seems to make people see Dementors as 'lovely': an unforeseen effect. Also I didn't know I could do creepy so that is interesting, too.

Your turn now! Write us some creepy!

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think it's the Dementors who are lovely (because obviously there's not much particularly lovely about a Dementor whichever way you look at it) but the rather deceptively delicate way you've written them. Your last line, for instance, puts me rather in mind of Japanese woodcuts.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Your last line, for instance, puts me rather in mind of Japanese woodcuts.

I'd say 'marry me' if it weren't for the fact that I've probably said this to you before already and that, at any rate, it's such a 2002 thing to say.

*hugs self with happy feedback*

Gads, I'd forgotten what posting is like. I've got barely a handful of fb but still: the buzz!!

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

Dementor slash to beguile my Monday morning! And my with my 'umble name on it! How fabulously orally-fixated this is, and now interesting the notion that the dementors exist only to kiss (bit like most slash characters, I suppose one could say). I'm now a lot happier with the notion that the various lapses in Azkaban security thst have allowed various prisoners to escape were all caused by dementor group orgies.

And the writing is lovely. I now feel very orally-fixated indeed.

I hope it won't besmirch this lovely fic if I say that I've more than once wondered about dementor blow jobs...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I think it's one of the things I love about writing fanfic (the interstices and all that): the way you can suddenly happen upon a slashy canon plot hook! I mean: the Kiss!!! It's so obvious! Or seems so in retrospect. And they're rare and evil, something I'm drawn towards at times.

Dementor blow jobs do not besmirch the fic at all, au contraire. I'm just wondering, though: do Dementors have dicks to blow??

Thank you so much for the kind fb. I was just saying to sheldrake that I'd forgotten what posting is like: the fb IV!

And may I just say that your icon is so deliciously dirty. *g* You opened my eyes to that other opening!

[lazulus]

I find this strangely -- but also rather poignantly -- romantic. I love the way that you link the Dementor's Kiss to this other kiss in such an evocative and -- ultimately -- moving way. We are used to seeing the Kiss being administered to people in fic as an act of violence, to have it here as an act of [almost] affection is stunning in its simplicity.

I do like this a lot.

Also, you used the word scabrous, which is a great favourite of mine.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Fb from you means a lot!

'Scabrous', strangely, is the one word I took straight from JKR's description of Dementors.

I was intrigued that you read the Kiss as an [almost] sign of affection. To me, it was a Kiss of need -- but it's nice the way it can be taken as something else. I'd forgotten how nice it is to get fb and be made to look at your own fic from a different angle.

:-)

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

what especially struck me about this -- and what makes it Lobelian -- is the sheer joy you evidence in language: the 'gasps and rasps', the breath-clouds colliding, the alliterative exuberance of it all. Dementorian! Cold-snapped molecules! Brutal moonlight!

Also, the way the Kiss distracts from what (in canon anyway) is the 'real' event, the escape.

In benefit of hindsight, I can cross-ref to your other post and agree, yes, that wordplay and thesaurus-delving and the like is what makes it all such fun. Plot all very well, but sometimes Style should be favoured over Substance (though either way, too much ain't healthy). ... That last sentence came out implying that this fic has no substance! (NB not the same thing at all as calling it 'insubstantial' -- which would be, literally, fine, given Dementor-nature.) And that is not what I meant!

Pah. Words. You think you're in control and then ... *splat*.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this lovely, thoughtful (and Glorian) feedback! Also interesting, the way you identify the escape as the 'real' (in canon) event. Because, of course, this never happens in canon. Or perhaps you extrapolated something from canon that I never put in there. Which I love -- how fics, even ficlets, go out and lead a life of their own, independent of their author.

I think with the style / substance point, we probably agree entirely. Of course, I would also never say 'substance does not matter' but I know what you mean by the attention to style. Cross-referencing it to your other comment, indeed. :-)

[viva-gloria.livejournal.com]

seeing the other comments, now (which I didn't bother to read in case I was just repeating same old!) I realise that the 'real' event is not the (half-remembered and very fuzzy, it's been a while) escape of Sirius Black, but a whole other ballgame. All fic exists, perhaps, in as many versions as there are readers (perhaps as many versions as there are potential readers? nooooo, head hurts!) so there might be multiple interpretations, multiple readings of even the slightest fic; even different interpretations from the same reader.

This is what writing dense prose does: mangles and jumbles the brain. Back to plot!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This is again interesting (and I find it funny, too). Because I didn't think of Sirius Black at all. Sirius Black holds no interest whatsoever for me, neither does Remus Lupin (in fact, I can barely tell them apart, not having them seen them on the silver screen and not caring for them in the slightest). *grins* To me, the figure escaping was Lucius Malfoy and the whole fic was set in the future, after Voldemort's downfall, and the escape of Malfoy, V's right-hand man would now endanger all wizard-dom again, what with the carelessness of the guards -- which just proves that it's Bad to enslave creatures, no matter how dark they are, and deprive them of their essential needs.

Er. I'm not even sure I thought all that while writing. I'm not sure I gave the escapee an identity at all, in fact, so who knows, he may well be Sirius Black! And what this goes to show is that not only are there as many interpretations as there are readers (I fully believe that, hurty-head or no!) but that I-as-reader am also not quite the same person as I was when I was I-as-writer. Indeed, perhaps there are as many interpretations as there are readings, so that every reader's interpretation is changed and new each time they read the same text. (Roland Barthes thinks this, as far as I can tell from my interpretation of him. Heh, I taught his 'Death of the Author' only last week. Okay, I was going to start launching into a Barthes-fangirly ramble but I will curb myself and go to bed instead! I badly need sleep.)

Thanks for these interesting observations!!

[mystisblom.livejournal.com]

wow I never thought about dementors in that way. they are truely sad creatures. I love your story its beautiful and sad and yeah beautiful! :)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Hey, mystis, thanks so much for your kind feedback! I'm so happy that I was able to make someone think in a beautiful way about Dementors, of all creatures. :-)