Fickleness in Fear

by eclecticfangirl99

Scorose oneshot. Rose Weasley finds herself partnered with Scorpius Malfoy in what may be the most peculiar, hectic, yet spectacular DADA lesson of either of their Hogwarts careers.

Author's Note

Special thanks to Fangirl Defenestrator for sort of inspiring this fic and giving me tips along the way. This is a Scorose oneshot, not at all affiliated with Have You Any Wool, which is another Scorose (multi-chaptered) that I am helping write—you guys should totally check it out if you get the chance ;)

That being said, you're here to read this one, right? I had fun writing it (this is one of my many OTP's…) and I hope you love reading it just as much! I would really appreciate your reviews: compliments, criticism, spontaneous anecdotes… Anything! I'm not picky :). Above all else, thank you for reading and enjoy!

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"We don't have all day, Weasley!"

Rose regained her straight, confident posture, flicking her eyes in a loop towards the speaker. "Honestly, Malfoy, the last name thing, again?" She twirled her wand anxiously, distracting herself from its task. "You know that it just doesn't work with mine..." she continued, "I mean, Weasley? Not much of a ring to it, really."

Malfoy, on the other hand, worked pretty well in the last name-calling game, which proved quite frustrating. Just Rose's luck, she supposed. Back in the olden days, whenever last names had been decided, it must not have been a concern how the name SOUNDED when spoken from the mouth of a teenage boy.

Speaking of the persistent pain in her neck, Scorpius' face was covered in an infuriating smirk. "Don't try and change the subject," he said matter-of-factly.

"Oh, I was doing nothing of the sort… You know, I think that I might've left something in my locker, actually, and class is almost over so I'd really better—"

"Weasley," he interrupted, ignoring the onset murder in her eyes, "we have, oh, five minutes for you to 'riddikulus' the thing. It's a bloody cat."

"On the contrary, it's actually quite un-maimed."

Her lab partner muttered something Rose's supposed obliviousness to common slang, although he knew full well that she was only messing with him.

"Cowardice doesn't suit you," he said out loud. "You've somehow become even more annoying than usual. Remarkable achievement, by the way. I didn't know it was possible."

"What can I say? I'm no Gryffindor."

He rolled the spherical chunks of ice he called eyes. "Something tells me you could've been. I mean... A cat? Weasley, you could've feared any number of things... Death eaters, serial killers, rapists... That blasted Donald Macrongold." He mock-shuddered.

"It's Ronald McDonald. And cats are... Terrifying." Countless friends had ridiculed her in the past, but Rose couldn't get over it. Perhaps it stemmed from the time her mother's beloved Crooshanks had shredded her face when she was but a toddler. Her father had always joked, she remembered, that the cat had had it out for him since her mother adopted it back when they were kids and that Crooshanks attacked her because her likeness to him.

"Do tell me what you write down for 'What This Fear Means.'"

Part of this unorthodox lesson plan for the day required the students to jot down what they thought their fears meant. It seemed rather ludicrous to Rose, but, as a student, she was required to comply.

The witch hummed in thought. "How about: My fear of cats likely stems from scarring childhood trauma. The boggart signifies both lasting damage from aforementioned trauma and possible fear of losing control, due to the fact that I am allergic to cats and could not necessarily help myself when faced with a violent sneezing-episode."

Her partner snorted. "Total bull, right?"

"Well," Rose said defensively, "the FACTS are solid-ish, but the theories... Definitely."

Scorpius nodded. "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer… Sometimes fears are arbitrary, nothing more."

Rose was about to commend him for using such a big word as 'arbitrary,' for it came as a shock to her, when his eyebrows furrowed.

"What is it?"

He gestured forward carelessly. "You always said you were indecisive, right?"

Rose followed his line of sight to the boggart. Where she had seen a growling tabby cat a second before, now stood an astonishingly large pit bull.

Figuring it was best to document this first, Rose scrawled down, 'Sudden change in boggart implies indecision and lack of surety in my fears. The pairing of a dog and a cat also could mean that I have a lack of ease dealing with things so mundane, probably because of a very magical upbringing... Similarly, this could represent a fear of normalcy or of muggles themselves.'

She had just finished, feeling rather satisfied in her ability to know what teachers wanted to hear, when Malfoy let out a low whistle. "Now this one... this one makes a little more sense."

Rose glanced over to see that the beast was snarling, sharp teeth bared in what seemed to be unadulterated bloodlust. "Still," Scorpius went on, "you're a mildly competent witch. Getting away from a mutt wouldn't be much of a challenge, would it? Of all the fears to have, it's really not the most logical." He tapped a mocking finger to his chin in thought as he continued. "Especially considering all you have to do is point your wand and say, 'Riddikulus.'"

"Malfoy, if you're done being a git, perhaps you'd allow me to remind you the reason I have such short time to get rid of my boggart?"

He scowled, but stayed silent.

Rose felt no shame in gloating over her victory with a beam. Of course, Scorpius had so graciously offered to be the first of their partnership to take on the boggart earlier that class. The result had been a good half hour of him working up the courage—and forced amusement— to properly cast the thing away, with Rose, of course, being nothing short of helpful and reassuring the whole way through (more or less).

Now, the best course of action would be to vanquish her own boggart in a heartbeat, but Rose was struck by the worry of trying and failing, which, by all means was worse than taking a bit of time to prepare and succeeding on her first attempt. If only Malfoy hadn't taken quite so long, this wouldn't be as hard.

"Sometime before graduation, Weasley..."

Rose set her jaw. "Shut up, Malfoy."

He looked unreasonably pleased to see her under such duress. Rose took in a deep breath, shutting him out along with all of his idiotic remarks. She wasn't sure why his biased opinion of her mattered, or why his constant jabbering was so irritating. Whatever it was, she was ready to cease it along with the rhythmic snarling of the dog.

In the time she had taken her attention off of the animal, it had approached a few feet closer, now near enough to sniff her trembling leg. Rose refused to back away and instead pulled her wand into her grasp once again. She raised it in front of her face, like a sword braced for battle.

"Ridi—"

And she stopped, her wand clattering to the ground. For where there had stood a dog, was now a particularly amused-looking boy with tousled blonde hair.

"Malfoy."

The boy met her gaze with an irritating grin, but did not respond aloud.

"Malfoy, this isn't funny."

She heard the unmistakable rumble of a throat clearing. "Right behind you."

Rose's face fell. "Crap."

"I echo the sentiment. Care to explain why your boggart is a stunningly attractive young man?"

Rose winced and kneeled to grab her wand. She honestly had no idea what was going on. Trickery on Malfoy's part? But no, he was as surprised as she was (and she knew him well enough to know that his acting skills weren't developed enough for him to be faking).

"Er, maybe the boggart is malfunctioning? Like, it's... Confused?"

She received no answer and couldn't bring herself to look her partner in the face. She settled to swallow, clench her empty left fist at her side, and tighten her grasp on the wand in her other hand. "You there... Um, Mr. Boggart. Can you speak?"

The not-Scorpius looked her in the eye with the same calculating, appraising glance that she had felt from the real Scorpius so many times before. "My name," the boggart said in a voice practically dripping with agitation, "is Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy."

"Hyperion!" Rose snorted, as the real Scorpius turned red.

"Should that even be possible?" he inquired angrily. "The boggart takes the form of a fear it's plucked from YOUR head, and you don't know my middle name."

"Or do I?" Rose smiled mysteriously. At least, she hoped she looked mysterious. Facial expressions weren't exactly her best talent. In truth, she hadn't heard 'Hyperion' before, or, at least, she didn't recall hearing it. The exact interworkings of a boggart were a bit foggy to her, which, she had to admit, was the point of this lab.

Rose cleared her throat just as Scorpius asked something that she had been wondering herself: "So... Your worst fear is me?"

He looked extremely amused, though Rose could tell that underneath his flippant, 'go-with-the-flow' facade, he was a bit unnerved himself.

"I'm not quite sure," the witch replied slowly, as if nervous the wrong word would warrant rebuke or ridiculing. WAS she afraid of Malfoy?

"At least it isn't another small mammal," Scorpius noted. Before Rose could point out that he indeed displayed many of the traits of a monkey, he continued, "Granted, I'm a much more frightening opponent... Though any of the options could take YOU down, I presume."

To both of the students' surprise, the boggart chose that moment to laugh, and look admiringly at its model. "Good one."

"Oh, Merlin..." Rose rubbed her face in her palm. "You're both going to go and start a club together, aren't you?"

Boggart-Scorpius thought for a moment. "The Impeccable Wizards Club, yes. I see the appeal." He looked Rose up and down and then turned to actual-Scorpius, muttering, "I think we'd better not let her in the club..."

Malfoy nodded in agreement, his face the picture of diplomacy. "Yes, she's not nearly impeccable enough."

"Well, that's it." The twins looked up with all the synchronization of a pair of showgirls.

"What is?"

"Oh, I've figured it out is all. You see, the boggart IS malfunctioning. Instead of showing me my worst fear, it's showing me the most irritating thing in the universe: you! And, I can assure you, I'm not afraid. In fact, I'm resisting the urge to hex the both of you."

Her Scorpius rolled his eyes. "Well, why don't you, then?"

Rose stroked an imaginary beard. "Experimental observation."

She shot her partner a chastising glance upon seeing his face, "Really, Malfoy, you're going to get dizzy if you keep rolling your eyes that way."

"As your lab partner," he stated, blatantly ignoring her genuinely heartfelt advice, "shouldn't I assist you in your 'observation'?"

Rose ruminated on this for a moment before granting him a cautious, "I guess so."

"Right! So, I think that we need to figure out where your source of fear is, exactly, in this fine young gentleman."

"You mean annoyance."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Weasley, I don't know how things work on whatever planet you're from—" she stifled a snort—"but here, boggarts are known to be pretty consistent in their motives and abilities. Look at it like this, my hypothesis differs from yours. And as your partner in this scholarly study, we have to test my hypothesis as well... Which would require, obviously, finding some source of fear in your boggart."

She hated it when Malfoy went all know-it-all on her. It was much easier when she worked with people who didn't question her... Perhaps that was why he was her boggart. Truly, she was as lost as he was in the nature of this strange new installment. Most people's boggarts took the form of some kind of aggressive arachnid, or the Voldemort they knew from their parent's stories, or an inferius. Up to this point, Rose had had a couple of (admittedly ferocious) domestic animals and now a totally harmless boy, one whom she actually knew? It made very little sense, so of course Rose had to assume the fault lied in the boggart. Perhaps their beautiful, yet brainless DADA teacher had bought some kind of knock-off. Whatever it was, she and the blonde next to her seemed for once to want the same thing—answers. "Fine," came her grumbled reply.

He gave her a toothy grin. "Excellent. Now," he turned to his doppelgänger, "Sir Malfoy of Supreme Handsomeness II, may I ask, what is your current goal? That is, what do you believe you are here to accomplish?"

Rose muttered, "Malfoy, he's still you. I'm not so sure he can form that coherent of a thought."

"You know," Scorpius retorted drily, "I would silencio you for the sake of this lab."

"And I would just love to watch you try to justify that to that Farley. Maybe I'd even defend you, if it weren't for your crime having removed my ability to talk..."

She was stalling, obviously. On the plus side, Boggart-Malfoy's narcissism was akin to regular Malfoy's; he hadn't spoken up much, for he didn't seem keen to interrupt himself. Indecision had consumed her, so this time was of utmost importance. She could easily send a spell at the thing and end the lab for the sake of avoiding the inevitable embarrassment that was to occur as she and Scorpius learned more about the boggart, but... Part of her wanted very badly to figure out why this anomaly had occurred. Who would win? Rose the face-saver or Rose the scientist?

"I think Malfoy asked you a question, boggart?" It would seem the latter.

The boggart smirked. "Now, where would be the fun in just telling you?"

Scorpius narrowed his eyes. "I think I need to call an impromptu Impeccable Wizard's meeting. Rose, if you'll excuse us..."

"Idiots," she shook her head and released an exasperated sigh. Despite her annoyance, she really did desire a chance to escape the weirdness that has become her DADA lab. But first she had a more pressing concern. "Wait. Before I walk away, you," she gestured towards the actual Scorpius, "need to take off your robes."

His eyes widened. "Of all the things you might have just been about to say, I can't say that was what I expected."

She glared at him with her now-red face. "Shut up. You know what I mean! I want to be able to easily tell you two apart. It's not like you're naked under there..."

"Don't be so sure... Do you really want to take the risk?"

Rose's glare intensified, and to her great relief, Scorpius pulled off his robes to reveal... A plain black t-shirt and khakis.

"Thank you," she said as patronizingly as she could. "Now, I'm going to go see how the other labs are going. You have, like, thirty seconds!" With that, she turned on her heel and walked off, curly hair bouncing behind her.

She very quickly realized that the room had erupted in chaos without her noticing. She wasn't one to normally appreciate such havoc as, for example, a screaming Gryffindor running away from a flight-bound giant squid, but this time she was extremely relieved. This meant that everyone was far too distracted to notice her rather humiliating, yet so far mildly tranquil boggart. It also provided that class would almost certainly be extended; the other teachers would let it go, for it wasn't all that uncommon with Farley as a teacher. It didn't take her long to reach her cousin's lab.

"How's it going?" Rose inquired cautiously, though she had suspicions about the answer.

Per expectation, James glared. "Bloody terribly. My boggart got into a fight with Jennifer Longbottom's... And now we can't find either one!"

So she wasn't the only one having issues. Curiously, the teacher was nowhere to be seen… It had been Professor Farley's idea, after all, to charm the boggarts so that they maintained the form of the feared object until a properly executed 'riddikulus' morphed them into the amusing state of the caster's liking. At that point, the boggart would be able to shape-shift when facing the other partner in the project, and after their portion of the lab, it would be contained in the small cabinet that it had been given to the students in originally. It was a nice plan in theory, she supposed, since it allowed students to truly face down their fears without it switching around and erased the idea of it being just a boggart... But now the best mode of defense of wizards (confusing it with multiple people) was gone, allowing for such a problem as lost boggarts, and she had an inkling it wasn't very humane to the creatures either. Merlin knew how Farley even got his hands on the bunch of them.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden yelp from a few feet away: "James, I think I found one! Was it blue earlier, though? And I think maybe the fangs have grown."

The boy ran to investigate. Rose, seeing this as the perfect opportunity, surveyed the room one last time before making her way back to the Scorpiuses (Scorpii?). For the moment, James and his partner were distracted, and she didn't want to risk being asked how her project was going... She was a horrid liar.

Upon her return, she saw the two Malfoys standing next to each other in an uncharacteristically awkward silence. The one in the t-shirt also wore a sufficiently agitated expression.

"Trouble in paradise?" she asked, unable to hide a smile. Her expression was not mirrored.

"He's incredibly uncooperative!"

"You mean YOU are." Really, she had been saying this all along. Maybe this boggart would help Malfoy somehow, allow him to see his faults and turn over a new leaf.

"Shut it, Weasley."

Or maybe not. She raised her eyebrows, but let it go.

"Well, what's your trouble?" She turned towards the boggart. "Whatever the reason I'm," she glanced at Scorpius, "ALLEGEDLY afraid of you, it isn't of you just standing here looking amused, now, is it?"

"Just that has been known to make many a-woman scream, Weasley."

She felt her jaw drop a few astonished centimeters. Was that... Innuendo? Even worse, FLIRTATIOUS innuendo? Real-Scorpius looked a bit wide-eyed at the prospect as well.

"Rose," she corrected, deciding ignoring the weird statement was the best course of action. "My name is Rose. Now... Answer our question!" She cursed herself for sounding frantic, but she simply wanted this all to end… although not without results.

"Why should I?"

Rose produced her wand. "Because I've got an extremely menacing 'riddikulus' with YOUR name on it. And after I use it, we'll stuff you in that cabinet and you'll be gone for good."

"Will I? What do you honestly think the probability of you never meeting a boggart again is?" He was goading her on, trying to distract her from her goal and her questions; she knew it, but she still felt obliged to answer. "In case you didn't notice, because I'm not sure how that works for boggarts, you were two other shapes before this one. Who's to say you'll be you again? You could say, your life is in our hands."

Boggart-Scorpius rolled his cold eyes. "You're right about one thing, Weasley—"

"—Don't call her that," muttered Scorpius. Rose's eyes widened. She hadn't expected that, especially since she had opened her mouth to say something similar.

The boggart, apparently unperturbed, smirked and continued, "—You DON'T know anything about boggarts. What I lead isn't a LIFE, at least not in the way you make out yours to be, and my being certainly isn't divided into multiple ones based on the shapes I take on. So, all bargaining is off, I'm afraid."

Rose glared at the thing; she was really starting to hate it. Weren't boggarts supposed to be stupid? Why did they have to get stuck with some kind of outlier? "Listen, Malfoy, I'm not sure we're really getting anywhere with—"

And then chaos found them.

A white blur, much like how Rose tended to imagine an enveloping cloud, rushed by her face. She heard Scorpius curse and gasped herself.

"What in the name of Merlin—!"

"It's the bloody squid!" Rose was rather taken aback, though maybe she shouldn't've been. One trip around the room had been enough to tell her Farley's boggart lesson plan had gone awry. She wondered what do with the thing, but was saved from having to decide when a pair of students rushed past, yelling in words she didn't understand. At that moment, Rose allowed herself to take in the rest of the large classroom. Running amok, terrorizing students, were, from what she could gather, glittering scorpions, screeching ghouls and... Possibly Professor McGonagall on a motorcycle? She found the creativity in some of her peers' worst fears very, very intriguing. She also wondered how many student's fears changed based on what they saw in this horrid room today.

She didn't glance at Scorpius or her boggart before grabbing her wand and venturing into the mess of students to help.

"Riddikulus!"

"Riddikulus!"

"Riddikulus!"

The spell echoed through the room, and Rose was glad to be a part of the mob performing it. There was a strange musicality to the screams intertwining with the spells and flashes of light. The toughest part of the whole ordeal, she thought, was maintaining enough amusement to perform the spell properly. As cruel as it seemed, however, glancing about the room and taking in the screaming students and their ridiculous fears was enough to push through it. She also tried to remember the tips that her parents had related to her, based on lessons from the ever-venerated Remus Lupin. She supposed that just as they had come with an advantage, Farley's boggarts possessed a monumental disadvantage: other people's worst fears were much easier to face than her own.

Pondering this in between a couple of spells made Rose remember her own boggart. Though he couldn't possess all of Scorpius's spell-casting ability, she worried about the damage he could inflict with whatever little power he might have, plus his words, especially since no one would think to cast a spell at an ordinary kid.

Her eyes sought through the mob of students whose panic seemed to have receded by leaps and bounds. Keeping this in mind, Rose allowed herself to rush away, promising she would return to helping her peers in a few moments. She found the boggart in the back corner of the room, leaning against the wall, flicking his robes and looking sufficiently bored.

Rose raised her already withdrawn wand and looked at the doppelgänger with a stern eye.

She had opened her mouth to use the spell when the thing raised a hand.

"Wait."

Rose frowned. "Why?"

"Because I bet you're still curious about whatever it is that caused you to be afraid of him, right? What my existence is made up of?"

She lowered her wand. "Marginally."

"I would be cruel to leave you hanging." He gave a sly smile. "Quite simply, it's your feelings for him."

Rose made a face. "You mean the intensity with which I despise him?"

The pale boy only widened his grin in response. "No, that's not what I mean."

"No way. Liar."

"Well, I wouldn't say it if I couldn't back it up, would I? If kissing me doesn't scare you, do it right now."

Rose wrinkled her nose, but some part of her, some deep, strange part of her mind was thinking that… Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea.

Experimental observation, after all. What WOULD kissing Scorpius be like? Curiosity kills the cat, the saying goes, but Rose was smarter than some stupid cat. Rose recalled how she had taken the risk to not cast the boggart away immediately, earlier that class. Would it be such a bad thing to do it again? It was a safe experiment. No one would see; they were all beyond preoccupied. This boggart wasn't Scorpius, but the events of the day had proven he was more like the real person than she had ever thought was possible. This was… For science.

And that is why Rose Weasley, thought-to-be levelheaded role-model of her year, allowed herself to take a step towards the boggart in front of her. She bit her lip anxiously, having no idea what she was doing, but not caring. After all, this was fail safe. She looked him up and down one last time, thinking that 'boggart' was far too ugly a name for the boy standing there.

"I know that you expect me to laugh at you, or to, I don't know, get scared or vomit on you or something like that. But you should know that I am no coward. And I take dares very seriously."

Rose didn't wait to see his reaction. As she was about to do the deed she realized that Scorpius was evidently taller than she had previously thought, so she placed her hands on his shoulders for balance and stood on her tiptoes. She squeezed her eyes shut, thinking maybe that would make it easier, hoping desperately that she didn't miss his mouth (because how embarrassing would THAT be), and tilted her head until finally her lips found his.

She gasped upon the splendid, rushed contact, silently chastising herself for receiving such pleasure from a shape-shifter, but not hesitating at all to lean closer into him or to let him run his hands through her tangled hair (or to enjoy it). Her own hands ventured to the back of his neck and instead of strangling him, as she might have expected to do if she knew that she would ever find herself in such a position, she pulled his face closer to hers.

Rose remembered that this was supposed to be a scientific experiment and that scientific experiments called for quantitative observations as well as qualitative (which she had enough of, really, like his smell and his taste and the breathless sound of his surprise; she hypothesized that that was because he had thought she wouldn't do it, and Rose didn't blame him there, for she was astonished herself), so she ran her tongue across his mouth to count his teeth, and she realized that that was actually somewhat extremely enjoyable—and judging by the way her companion reacted, she wasn't the only one. Her mind was rushing, a traffic jam of thought and confusion and wonder and feeling, and even though she didn't want the kiss to stop, she pulled away, because she knew it had to, because, what?

She gasped when she opened her eyes, wondering if she had breathed that whole time. Her first reaction, for which she felt quite proud, since practicality was a tough state of mind to be in after whatever that was, was to swerve around to check to see if anyone was watching. To her relief, everyone was focused on entrapping the last of the boggarts.

The last of the boggarts, she supposed, with the exception of the one standing before her.

Rose took a very deep breath and said, "Thank you for your cooperation in an experiment which has produced very… enlightening results. Um…" Rose did her best to channel the hysterical laughter that was bubbling dangerously in her throat as she screamed, "Riddikulus!"

Nothing happened. Rose frowned. Did hysterical laughter not count as amusement?

She repeated the spell with a little more urgency, "RIDDIKULUS!"

And the boy stared back at her, looking rather dazed. Had she somehow made him immune to the spell? It was possible, she guessed, since probably no one had ever tried to kiss a boggart before, but…

"Wait. Wait a second." Rose narrowed her eyes, looking the figure up and down. "When did you dirty your cloak, 'boggart?' It's almost as if, I think, you tossed it on the ground and retrieved it just a little while ago, wouldn't you say?" She didn't wait for an answer, rearing her fist back and punching a very surprised, very not-boggart-ish Scorpius Malfoy in the arm.

"You— Bloody— IDIOTIC— INSUFFERABLE— PRAT!" With every word, she hit him again and again. "I absolutely despise you! From the bottom of my very soul—"

"—Really? I dunno, Weasley, just now? That isn't usually how I treat people I despise."

"I'll save your poor brain any future confusion, then, because it will never happen again, I promise you. Now where's the real boggart?"

"Locked away in a cabinet, never to be seen again. I riddikuled the thing right after you ran off. Thanks for that, by the way."

"My pleasure." Rose was blushing, possibly her face more made of red than her actual skin tone. "If you tell anyone about what happened just now, Malfoy, I think I'll hex you into the next century."

"But of course. The same to you, Weasley."

She nodded earnestly. "That's that, then. I still despise you."

"I'd expect nothing else." Scorpius paused for a moment, looking strangely uncomfortable. "Now… Can I ask, am I really that much of a…"

"Complete and utter idiotic jerkface? Let's see. Aside from what you just pulled," she glared at him again for good measure, "No, not really."

"So why DO you think that was your boggart?"

Rose's frown deepened. "I can't say. I think, like you said earlier, some fears are just arbitrary, right? So maybe that's all it was. An arbitrary… Fluke."

Scorpius laughed. "Neither of us believes that, you know that, right? So it's kind of pointless to even suggest it…"

"Scorpius—!"

He held up a hand, eyes sparkling with amusement, and spoke with the speed of someone who was saying something that they knew they shouldn't. "Now, now, don't get all worried. I'm not gonna press you on your totally existent adoration, I just wanted to make sure I don't actually, I don't know, scare you or something."

Rose elbowed him. "You're a first class idiot. And who do you think I am? Rose Weasley laughs in the face of danger—and you're a source of anything but. Probably, the boggart was so confused, because it couldn't find anything I was really, truly afraid of…"

"Riiight. Is that what you're gonna write on your reflection, then?"

Rose glanced around, realizing she had completely forgotten about the paper that went with the lab. Malfoy pulled the folded-up sheet out of a pocket in his robes, however, shaking his head. "What would you do without me?"

She pulled it from his pale fingers. "You know, I really think it might be better not to even mention that whole incident."

Scorpius's eyes widened. "Rose Weasley LYING on an assignment? What is the world coming too?"

She huffed. "Some things are just better left unsaid, I think. This has been one of the… strangest days I've had at Hogwarts." She glanced over at the jumble of students who seemed to be calming down. "In fact, we should probably get back to the class."

The two students began walking towards the mob on the other end of the room. "Shame, that. I can't imagine where the good old Professor has gotten himself, can you?"

Rose rolled her eyes. "He'll probably turn up… Right after we capture the last boggart. Hey, I've just thought of something. What was it like shoving yourself into a cabinet?"

"Extremely… Symbolic."

"Oh?"

"C'mon, Weasley. By the way, if you're still curious later, we could find a bigger cabinet and you could see firsthand what it's like to shove me inside it."

Their yells of indignation (Rose) and then pain (Scorpius) were heard through the entire classroom.