There is a hunger, which once woken, can never be sufficiently fed. The first principle each young w

There is a hunger, which once woken, can never be sufficiently fed. The first principle each young wizard and witch learns, is to never waken this hunger at all, because from this hunger proceeds every source of evil in this world. Most heed this lesson, though some might turn to other smaller but no less addictive hungers. The infliction of pain. Suffering. Cruelty. The human soul? It is a dangerous thing to play with and a hunger for it, once woken, can never be sated. There are those who have failed to heed this warning. Voldemort was one. In the end, it proved to be his downfall. A hunger for a soul that will not be destroyed – a mortal body that can be made immortal by twisting the soul and wringing it out of shape; the hunger for more never ends and this greed, this proved to be his weakest point. Otto Von Ludeka was another. He left behind Schloss Grimmshel and its many varied horrors: a castle that screamed day and night, the remains of the souls of muggles struggling to find a voice to protest the horrors wreaked upon them in the name of The Greater Good. There are those too, whom most of the wizarding world would call good men, honourable men, even, and yet, and yet - they too had woken that hunger. Nicholas Flamel was one such man, with his philosopher’s stone. The formula is secret and rare, but Flamel of course knew its cost. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A life for a life – and for eternal life, youth in its most fragile state. A young soul, as yet untouched by the ugliness of this world; though if we were to talk, not in metaphysics, but in pure science, we might call it the power of regenerative cells, mixed with magic, to imbue its user with eternal life. It is a different kind of hunger, but a hunger nonetheless, which comes back to torment even the most fastidious of alchemists – what if, what if, what if I added one more to the mix, what then, what then? The hunger for a human soul is a dangerous, dangerous thing. But there are other monsters that the wizarding world knows of, that hunger and thirst for souls; indeed they live off souls. Most would count Dementors and Lethifolds the worst amongst these monsters. The first feed off happiness, the latter simply kill and devour swiftly. Some have suggested that Lethifolds are merely another kind of Dementor, twisted out of shape by some dark, foul magic that has turned them from merely slowly feeding off the happiness, off the essence of a person, into devouring them completely. This does not, however, tell us where they come from. (Like calls unto like. Deep unto deep. One hunger awakens and births another.) In 1467, an obscure and little known sorcerer named Ekrizdis died, leaving behind his home and an obscure little island in the North Sea. Who knows what he had done there? Schloss Grimmshel screamed with the tortured and mangled souls of muggle left behind, but there at least historians could guess and lawmakers could question Von Ludeka again and again to determine the tortures that took place within its walls. And its walls, in the end, though they lived, they lived in pain. But Ekrizdis’ Azkaban hungered. One man’s hunger for souls; he mangles them and experiments upon them and twists them out of shape. How many? A pity, indeed, that Ekrizdis did not live to boast of his acts, else we might know how many sailors and how many ships he lured to their deaths, to feed the flames of his unholy hunger. Sometimes the hunger for human souls is birthed out of a desire for something else; immortality, the Greater Good, the Philosopher’s Secret; but Ekrizdis’ hunger seemed to have been birthed from nothing more than sheer perversity. He tortured for pleasure, not for a purpose. He marred souls and ripped them from the bodies of muggles for nothing more than the sheer joy of it. Such magic, woven into the heart of a place, brings it to life.And so Azkaban’s walls were called to life by Ekrizdis’ enchantments and then later, his magic and his glee mingling together in a foul and potent mixture. And the muggle souls, cruelly ripped from their bodies? They hungered too. They hungered, but not just for souls but for lives they once had that were now forever lost to them. Some entered the walls and fuelled Azkaban’s own hunger for more, more, more. Some sank down to the pits of Azkaban, to its deepest dungeons and there in a swirling, writhing mass, they began to birth these horrors. Dementors. They are non-beings. They come from nowhere. They are dead, so they cannot die. Where misery is found, there they thrive the most, for misery is what brought them into this world. Once birthed, they multiply. From one, to a few and then suddenly, a nest. Misery is their seed and Azkaban, Azkaban with its muggle souls tortured for sport and pleasure provided just such a seed. (And the hunger – the hunger never goes away.) When they found the castle, there were those who wanted it destroyed. But others advised caution. Azkaban’s walls were not ordinary, they said, they lived and a castle that lived – that was brought to life through dark magic of the worst kind – such a castle would wreak revenge on those who would destroy it. Abandon it, leave it forever, they said and so the wizarding world did just that, hoping that Azkaban would weary on its own and then one day, die. But if a castle could defend itself against attack, could it not conceivably find a way to feed its insatiable hunger? To feed and strengthen its walls against destruction? Some say it was Damocles Rowles’ hatred of muggles - his desire to inflict the worst punishment possible on all those who associated with them - that led him to turn Azkaban into a prison. But the truth? Ah, who knows the truth, except Azkaban itself? (The Philosopher’s Stone requiring a baby/foetus as one of its ingredients is a headcanon of essayofthoughts as is the idea for the origins of the Dementors.) -- source link

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