Chapter Seven

It's late November by now. My messed-up family hasn't been brought back up since the night in the Great Hall, which I am perfectly fine with.

I'm sitting in the back of Professor Lupin's class, re-reading a section on boggarts. Professor Lupin promised us that if everyone finishes the section (which is only 5 pages) and answers his review question in fifteen minutes, we'd get to actually practice on boggarts today instead of next week.

I finish quickly and end up sitting for the next ten minutes, staring around the classroom. I've never really thought of what scares me before. There's never been a time in my life where I've needed to be afraid. Mum always made sure of that. Nothing really scares me. I've just always floated through life, passing fear by.

"Time's up!" Professor Lupin says, coming around to collect our papers. "It looks like everyone finished. Good!"

"Now, today we'll start off slow. You'll get to see your fears, and I'll show you how to defeat it. Over the next few lessons, we'll work on mastering the spell. Come on now, line up."

We shuffle into line quickly. I end up last, Amber and the other girls more towards the front. Professor Lupin opens a cabinet and out steps a giant ghost. Isabel shrieks a bit; it's her boggart. "Riddikulus!" Lupin exclaims, transforming the ghost into a human with shaggy black hair and a smile.

Taylor and Ambers' boggarts are a snake, which Lupin quickly turns into a stuffed toy. The Slytherins, their mascot being a snake, begin laughing at them, making hissing sounds to imitate the snake. Lupin takes ten points from them. All that achieves is grumbling from the Slytherins instead.

Lauren is the last Hufflepuff before me. Hers turns out to be the saddest of all of ours. When it sees her, the boggart transforms into a dead body of a little girl, who I assume is Lauren's youngest sister. Even the Slytherins stop making fun of Amber and Taylor for a second as Lupin transforms the boggart. They resume as the line begins to move again.

"Alright, class, that's enough for today." Lupin says as the Slytherin in front of me goes back to his desk. Of course it's just my luck that out time runs out just before it was my turn.

Lupin spends the next ten minutes going over our homework assignment in full detail. We're supposed to make a list of 15 different things we could turn our boggarts into. Unfortunately, I don't know what my boggart is.

"Professor?" I ask after the bell rings and everyone leaves.

"Yes?" Lupin says.

"I had a question on the homework." I say. "How do I complete the homework if I don't know know my boggart?"

"Ah, about that." Lupin says. "I stopped before you after how Slytherin reacted to Amber's boggart. Would you like to find out yours?"

I nod, and Lupin releases the boggart once more. This time, instead of a ghost, the boggart comes out as my friends. "Why did we ever like you?" They hiss. "Who would want to be your friend?"

Lupin quickly locks up the boggart again. "You're afraid of rejection." He says.

"Yeah." I say quietly. "I guess I am. Thanks."