> I still can not figure out why the first two elements are inconsistent
from the rest of the dictionary, and why they appear in the first place.

Hi Tobias,

This is a bug tracker for reporting bugs in Python, not a help desk to ask for explanations. The behaviour you see is correct. Except for the last line, which is a copy-and-paste error on your part: the actual last line is

>>> dictionary
{0: None, None: None, 2: 2, 4: 4, 6: 6, 8: 8}

So there is no error here, everything is working as expected.

If you need help understanding why the code is correct, please take the discussion to the Python Discuss forum where you will be sure to get answers.