"Ben is hesitant about most things except for his hugs. It's always a bit unclear whether he's aiming to offer comfort or to receive some himself when he opens his arms, but that gentle squeeze and ready kindness helps all the same when the world is frightening even to you."

She woke with the shrill laughter of her boggart ringing in her ears, a shriek rising in her throat, and a gentle hand shaking her insistently awake. She bolted upright from where she'd drifted face-first into her textbook, wild-eyed and breathing hard. A quick glance around the room confirmed that no one had noticed-how could they when most of her classmates were dozing, too?-but that did little to calm her thundering heartbeat. The laughter faded off into Binns' droning about some distant, dusty battle, but the panic coursing through her veins did not. Nor, thankfully, did the hand on her shoulder.

"Alright?" Ben asked softly, almost too softly to be heard over both Binns and the covert game of Exploding Snap that Jae and Diego were running in the back corner of the classroom. He gave her a rueful smile when she managed only a stiff nod in response. "No, you're not. I know a nightmare when I see one; I've had plenty of practice. What was that?"

"Boggarts," she whispered hoarsely back. "Voldemort boggarts."

Ben shuddered and went as pale as the paper dragons whizzing back and forth between Charlie's desk and Tonks'. Muggleborn though he was, it hadn't taken him long to pick up the wizarding world's fears along with his own. She didn't think it was quite fair given how many things he was already afraid of, but there wasn't much she could do about that particular crisis. No one escaped Voldemort. Or at least the fear of him. A chill ran up her spine at the memory of how the boggart spun and shifted into the pale face, the red eyes, the leering grin...Not even she could escape that fear. Even now, long after the boggarts from the Vault of Fear had been vanquished, the dreams came back to haunt her every few months. Especially at times like these, when she barely had time to think about anything outside of the next vault and when all the fears those boggarts really represented weighed on her almost too heavily to bear.

"Do you want a chocolate frog?" Ben broke through her scattered thoughts again, already nudging her arm with a familiar purple box. "They always help calm me down after facing something particularly terrifying."

"Maybe you should keep it, then. For the next mess we get into." She flashed the reassuring smile she usually reserved for both Ben and the first years in her charge as a prefect, but it came out too wobbly to be genuine. It was harder to maintain the facade when she was still frazzled from fear and half-asleep from a night spent hunched over the clues her brother had left behind.

Ben frowned and shoved the frog at her again, more firmly. She sighed. Ben might not have Rowan's outspokenness, but he could be just as stubborn in his own quiet way. It wasn't worth arguing. She reached out to accept it and found that her hand was trembling. And even though she yanked it back as soon as she realized, it was clear that Ben had noticed, too. He blinked at her with dawning panic of his own, then scooted down the shared bench to wrap his arms carefully around her shoulders before she even had a chance to protest.

"I'm...I'm not good at this sort of thing," he murmured. "And I don't know much about being brave. But I do know that even though you're the bravest person I know...you're allowed to be scared sometimes, too."

Ben jumped and instinctively held on tighter as an explosion from the game behind them rattled the desk, then went on with only a faint tremor in his voice. "Merlin knows I am."

She stifled a shaky chuckle and slumped against Ben's side. Fear wasn't a sensation she often had time for. There was always something to investigate, a friend to help, a battle to fight...and never any time to recover from any of it apart from times like these when it forced its way to the surface. It came in her dreams, whether she was safely tucked up in her dormitory or huddled in the back row of the History of Magic classroom and whether she was ready for it or not. Not that she ever was.

But at least she didn't have to be scared alone. Sometimes, that was enough.