Within moments, Carlton's new body was complete.
It was almost identical to her old one—save for the hair.
Her gray hair had turned a pristine, snowy white.
Miguel helped his sister into her new robes.
"Her hair..." Miguel wondered why Cohen had chosen to alter only the hair color.
"I added a little splash of color-changing magic, so you'd know this body is brand new," Cohen said with a straight face.
But compared to the miracle of saving Carlton's life, the color of her hair was utterly unimportant.
"Next, I'll move your soul into the new body," Cohen continued, stepping closer to Carlton in her wheelchair.
"With what spell?" Miguel asked, a hint of worry in his voice.
"A spell can't do this. I'll be using a Dementor's Kiss," Cohen announced.
"What?!"
Miguel's eyes went wide.
A Dementor's Kiss, to most wizards, was a fate worse than death. Coming from Cohen, it sounded as though he was a Dementor ready to claim Miguel's soul for his disloyalty.
But Cohen had already transformed into the ghastly shape of a Dementor, and the room suddenly felt smaller, the Dementor's black robes billowing as if to separate the two siblings.
"Don't hurt her—" Miguel yelled in a panic.
"Don't get your wand in a knot! If I wanted to harm you, I wouldn't have gone to all this trouble. Just stay put and be quiet," Cohen said in a low, chilling voice.
Behind him, Miguel fell silent.
In front of him, Carlton showed a flash of fear.
She stared intently at the Dementor's faceless "face" beneath the hood and the black, hollow cavity that seemed to be veiled in a curtain of gray mist.
Her soul began to feel weightless, forcibly yanked from her body by some powerful magic.
Then, as her soul completely detached, Carlton was plunged into darkness.
When her soul once again inhabited a physical form and she opened her eyes, the previously soft light felt a little harsh—but the sensation quickly faded.
The first thing she saw when she opened her eyes was Cohen, who had returned to his human shape.
He was looking rather smug, telling Miguel, "See? I told you I don't make mistakes."
"Carl, how are you feeling? Are you alright? Can you move your legs?" Miguel rushed out from behind Cohen and grasped his sister's hand.
"I... I can," Carlton said, just coming out of her daze. She tried to move her new legs—and they moved.
The confusion on her face was replaced with pure joy, and she looked at Cohen with a fiercely grateful expression.
"Right then, time to pay up," Cohen said, turning to Miguel. "Tell me everything you know about the Silver Keys. Then, you and your sister should lay low at home for a while. The Silver Keys members you know will all be dead soon enough."
"Alright, alright—" Miguel agreed repeatedly, grateful and utterly unconcerned about betraying his former organization.
The two of them left the room, leaving Carlton to get used to her new body.
The old body slumped lifelessly in the wheelchair, limp and unmoving.
---
The Silver Keys members Miguel knew were more than Cohen had bargained for.
It turned out Miguel had already crossed paths with the cult's leader, who was himself named 'Silver Key.'
"And he... well, he bent the knee, so to speak," Cohen said thoughtfully.
"Did you have to put it that way?" Miguel asked, looking a bit ashamed.
"So he's a homossexual," Cohen deduced. "A bit of a pain, you know. They don't even put these kinds of people in horror movies, because when they run into a big, strong killer, their first instinct isn't to run away, it's to... well, let's just say they're an acquired taste."
The threat might not be huge, but it was certainly a nuisance.
Mainly, a nuisance.
"They always tell us about their meetings ahead of time, and the location always changes," Miguel explained. "The next meeting I'm allowed to attend is in February, in Clovelly, a fishing village in northern Devon."
"February..."
Cohen considered this. By then, the Ministry of Magic should have been conquered by Edward... Cohen would definitely have already urged Voldemort to steal the prophecies, and he would have had a great showdown with Voldemort himself, "conveniently" blowing up the Ministry of Magic to attract everyone's attention and use the opportunity to push Edward into the role of Minister...
"Do you remember where the past meetings were?" Cohen suddenly asked.
"I do. Why do you ask?" Miguel was puzzled.
"It's to make it easier for a whole team of people to track them down. You know how it is—to catch an illegal organization, you need to follow the trail," Cohen said.
After extracting the past meeting times and locations from Miguel from the last year, Cohen bid them farewell.
The stone tablet was left with Carlton, and her old body was not destroyed either—Miguel didn't understand why Cohen asked this of him but promised to do as he was told.
"If anyone from the Silver Keys comes, just show them the old Carlton and tell them that's your sister," Cohen instructed. "Don't let them know I was ever here or that I helped you."
"Ah... thank you," Cohen's words sent a jolt through Miguel as he suddenly understood, a look of realization on his face.
Cohen left. Carlton waved goodbye from the second-story window, and Cohen politely waved back.
He had done everything he could; nothing should go wrong now.
"You have to see this," the Count, who had been flying around the village, found Cohen after he was finished. He tossed him a new newspaper.
"Since when do you buy newspapers?" Cohen raised an eyebrow.
"I got it from another owl. One of them had an extra copy," the Count said with a sense of urgency. "Just look at the front page."
"Is it about the Minister election?" Cohen unfolded the paper.
The headline on the front page was explosive.
'Ministry of Magic Negligence for Fourteen Years? An Evil Dark Arts Experiment is Attending Hogwarts!'
Cohen didn't even need to read the article to know who it was about.
"I can't believe they actually went ahead and published that," the Count said. "You should have seen the look on the old man's face when I saw him reading this just now."
"Is this Crouch's doing?" Cohen frowned. "Politics really does make people arrogant."
"Aren't you worried that everyone will find out you're a Dementor and shun you?" the Count perched on a stone wall, tilting his head. "Or that parents will write letters demanding you be expelled—after all, no one wants their child to attend a school with a Dementor..."
"The students don't matter at all," Cohen replied. "Crouch is clearly being reckless. Revealing my half-Dementor identity now won't force me to help the Ministry solve the Dementor prison break..."