"Worth trying. Karen's interested in wandlore, maybe we can get her to do the work."

"Yeah. We're gonna revolutionise magic!" she singsongs.

"Maybe you do need to revolutionise magic before managing."

"That would be so unfair."

"It would. But I mean, it's probably going to happen anyway."

"It could take ages though, and yours is already working."

She shrugs. "I dunno. Maybe if there was a way to find a Dementor in a supervised, safe environment, you could try patronusing it."

"Unfortunately they let all the domestic Dementors bloody loose."

"Right. Yeah. They did." She shakes her head. "What in Merlin's name were they thinking..."

"Probably that if they couldn't throw them prisoners to feed off they'd have to have people casting Patronuses constantly to keep them penned in."

"Oh no. What a disaster. They would have to hire some people to keep casting a spell. Probably the same people who hung around them all day before. Terrible. So awful. Really, the best idea is to then let them loose so they can eat unsuspecting people. Muggles can't even see them."

"I don't think anybody actually did hang around all day before, except the prisoners. And you'd need a lot of Patronuses to cut off escape for that many Dementors. They might literally not have had the people to do it. But they should've got them."

"Yes, they should. I wonder if the fact that we don't hear fairly often about random Dementor attacks means that they're mostly preying on muggles."

"There are more of them."

"And they can't defend themselves," she sighs.

"Yeah."

She shakes her head. "Anyway, any new insights that could produce a Patronus?"

"I don't think so..." Wandwave. Mist. Wandwave. Defined mist. "Nope."

"What did you think there?"

"...Well, it's actually a little surprising that I can get even mist from thinking 'Dementors exist'. And the second one was 'Patronuses exist'."

"...wait, there must be some clue there. Dementors existing isn't a happy thought."

"I wasn't paying attention, I was just using it as a control, I don't know if I can do it again."

"Try?"