Harry-Dementor

11- Revelations

Harry had been with the other dementors at Azkaban for about five days, and the morning of Christmas Eve was dawning. It had been a highly productive five days overall. From what Harry could tell, the dementors were excellent at running a prison, but terrible at contract negotiations. The consensus seemed to be that it would be best to either stick it out with the ministry or take Voldemort up on his offer, just so they wouldn't have to move. When Harry explained very patiently that neither of those options were in their best interests, the common vote was to just pick an offer off the top of the pile and accept that one.

The pile turned out to be a literal pile. Apparently, the creatures were highly in demand across the world to run magical prisons. Every offer they had received over the years had been tossed into an empty cell in the minimum-security wing, and the pile was overtaking almost half the cell. Harry, Jean, and Mina ended up sorting through the entire pile and narrowing it down to just one neat stack of acceptable offers. Any repeat letters were tossed, those for prisons in very cold climates, those that didn't have a maximum-security wing, and ones where the air was too dry to create mist. Once the letter for the prison located on its own Caribbean island was explained to the group, all around 150 or so dementors voted unanimously to accept the offer.

Harry then found himself learning how to write rejection, resignation, and acceptance letters. He figured he was gaining some very practical business experience at least. He tore up five letters before he had an acceptable one to send to Voldemort respectfully rejecting his offer. Since it was coming from the dementors as a whole and not Harry Potter, he figured he needed to represent them as they would want to be represented, and they were a very neutral party in the war. Really, if it didn't impact their ability to hang out around evil people and feed from their souls, they didn't really care what was going on. Considering neither side of the war cared for them (really both sides hated them), Harry could understand where they were coming from.

The ministry was also sent a letter of resignation, though no one believed they would actually read it. The dementors didn't want to leave their post without someone realizing they were gone, so Harry came up with the idea of sending a letter to the newspaper. He hadn't quite figured out how to ensure they printed it, so it was currently sitting on his makeshift desk in the cell he had been given for his own personal use.

One of the dementors, Ronnie if he had to guess, had even put a piece of what looked like aluminum foil up by the tiny, barred window to catch the sunlight and cast shiny stars throughout the cell. To a dementor, the prison already felt pretty homey, but the other dementors seemed to be really trying to make Harry feel welcome and like he was a valued member of the group, especially as he had helped them so much already.

The acceptance letter was much easier to write, but then he had to deal with the back and forth of the negotiations. After the initial letter of acceptance was sent by owl, the ministry located in the Turks and Caicos sent a self-updating parchment where they could communicate instantly with each other just by writing on the paper. They used this to mockup a draft contract that Harry insisted needed to be looked over by a solicitor before it was finalized. The dementors and the Caribbean Ministry ended up agreeing to just 20 years in the initial contract with the opportunity to extend for another 50 years at that point if both parties found the arrangement acceptable. This was much better than the dementors' original contract with the British Ministry for 100 years without acceptable communication of terms. They also made it very clear that a house elf would be required to be at every in-person negotiation for translation purposes.

Harry couldn't believe they had gotten through all of that in only five days, but it did help that none of the dementors had to sleep. It was the most useful he had felt in a very long time, maybe ever. He felt bad for leaving Jamie and hoped someone was taking care of him, but he actually felt needed at the prison and not like he was in the way or one wrong move from getting the rest of his friends and family killed through a mistake he made. The dementors' excitement over the move was infectious as well. Harry happily sat through a lecture led by Mina and King on what to expect on an island with more sun and warmer weather since they seemed to be the best travelled of the group. Everyone oohed and aahed when Mina explained how the sun would glint off the water and shine like diamonds. Harry was glad to know he wasn't the only dementor fascinated by shiny things.