Post by Albus Dumbledore on Sept 14, 2004 22:49:22 GMT -5
Dementors
Azkaban came around before the dementors. No one is exactly sure when it was established, since the site has moved several times, but the common opinion is that it was established somewhere around 200 BC. In a pyramid, I believe…
Well, anyhow, Azkaban worked pretty well for a little while with just ordinary witch and wizard guards, but some time around 250 AD, people started figuring out, hey, we can just zap those stupid guards and we're home free! So that stopped working. Azkaban needed a new kind of guard.
This is about the point in history when this really evil wizard, Emeric the Evil, showed up. So, this Emeric wants to conquer the world, for who knows what reason… I don't think any of these evil villains really want world domination… if they succeeded, they'd be bored stiff without a hero or two to fight… But anyway, that's irrelevant.
So Emeric the Evil came around, and he got together this huge group of followers that he called dementors, and it's a good thing he picked a unique name, or we'd be stuck with prison guards named Lawyers, or something else really scary. But anyway, Emeric's followers were called dementors.
Emeric and his dementors got together and established a huge reign of terror. They used more subtle tactics than Voldemort, whose basic theory was, you annoy me, you die. With Emeric, you were never quite sure if it was him, or just a really big coincidence. He very rarely killed people. No, that's not a good thing. There are worse things than death. For example, the Dementor's Kiss. Actually, the term "Dementor's Kiss" also came from Emeric's reign.
Very few people know that the original group of dementors (Emeric's first ten followers) were all vampires. Mostly because they've fallen asleep by this part of the lesson. Yes, I see those kids in the back. Someone smack 'em. Thanks. Anyhow, people called it the "Dementor's Kiss" when one of the original ten dementors bit someone, and the term just kinda carried over.
Well, after a really long time - nearly 40 years, much longer than Voldemort's reign - Emeric died, and a bright young witch named Leigh Shelly got rid of the original dementors by distracting them with garlic and lemons and chopping their heads off. (That's the original way of dealing with vampires, I believe. Add garlic and lemon generously, remove the head, and serve - shaken, not stirred.)
But, anyway, after Emeric and his vampire buddies were gone, there was still the problem of all those people who'd been following him just because. So, to punish them for disrupting the peace, Leigh and a bunch of other witches and wizards got together and cursed the rest of Emeric's followers so that they would be forced to guard the wizard prison forevermore. To prevent the dementors from trying to escape, all ability to feel emotion was taken from them. But, in doing this, Leigh gave them the ability to steal all emotion from others, making them into dementors.
No spell like this had ever been attempted before, and when Leigh and her colleagues realized exactly what they'd done, they were horrified. They destroyed all records of the spell, and bound each other magically so they could never tell how it had been done. And the dementors still guard Azkaban today.
Azkaban came around before the dementors. No one is exactly sure when it was established, since the site has moved several times, but the common opinion is that it was established somewhere around 200 BC. In a pyramid, I believe…
Well, anyhow, Azkaban worked pretty well for a little while with just ordinary witch and wizard guards, but some time around 250 AD, people started figuring out, hey, we can just zap those stupid guards and we're home free! So that stopped working. Azkaban needed a new kind of guard.
This is about the point in history when this really evil wizard, Emeric the Evil, showed up. So, this Emeric wants to conquer the world, for who knows what reason… I don't think any of these evil villains really want world domination… if they succeeded, they'd be bored stiff without a hero or two to fight… But anyway, that's irrelevant.
So Emeric the Evil came around, and he got together this huge group of followers that he called dementors, and it's a good thing he picked a unique name, or we'd be stuck with prison guards named Lawyers, or something else really scary. But anyway, Emeric's followers were called dementors.
Emeric and his dementors got together and established a huge reign of terror. They used more subtle tactics than Voldemort, whose basic theory was, you annoy me, you die. With Emeric, you were never quite sure if it was him, or just a really big coincidence. He very rarely killed people. No, that's not a good thing. There are worse things than death. For example, the Dementor's Kiss. Actually, the term "Dementor's Kiss" also came from Emeric's reign.
Very few people know that the original group of dementors (Emeric's first ten followers) were all vampires. Mostly because they've fallen asleep by this part of the lesson. Yes, I see those kids in the back. Someone smack 'em. Thanks. Anyhow, people called it the "Dementor's Kiss" when one of the original ten dementors bit someone, and the term just kinda carried over.
Well, after a really long time - nearly 40 years, much longer than Voldemort's reign - Emeric died, and a bright young witch named Leigh Shelly got rid of the original dementors by distracting them with garlic and lemons and chopping their heads off. (That's the original way of dealing with vampires, I believe. Add garlic and lemon generously, remove the head, and serve - shaken, not stirred.)
But, anyway, after Emeric and his vampire buddies were gone, there was still the problem of all those people who'd been following him just because. So, to punish them for disrupting the peace, Leigh and a bunch of other witches and wizards got together and cursed the rest of Emeric's followers so that they would be forced to guard the wizard prison forevermore. To prevent the dementors from trying to escape, all ability to feel emotion was taken from them. But, in doing this, Leigh gave them the ability to steal all emotion from others, making them into dementors.
No spell like this had ever been attempted before, and when Leigh and her colleagues realized exactly what they'd done, they were horrified. They destroyed all records of the spell, and bound each other magically so they could never tell how it had been done. And the dementors still guard Azkaban today.