An: It's been a while, I know. The Boggart chapter was excruciating to work on. Quite honestly I was completely stumped for a very long time. Now here in the end though I'm satisfied with how it turned out. I hope you will be too.
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"DOOM! Doom I say!"
"That's nice Sybil," said Professor Flitwick absently, buttering his toast, and not at all paying attention to what his colleague was saying; all in all just your average breakfast at The High Table.
Down the table, and firmly away from what many had mentally labeled 'The Land of the Crazy,' a concerned Professor Sprout turned a questioning eye to her slumped colleague Professor Lupin who was currently lying with his face against the table, blocking out the noise coming from her colleagues with practiced ease.
"Ok there Remus?"
There came a muffled groaning from the crumpled figure. Pomona gave his back a sympathetic pat.
"Ah, Boggarts again was it dear?"
A long drawn out moan answered accompanied by sobbing.
"Gryffindor and Slytherin you say?"
He wanders what it is he fears.
Well that's not quite true; he knows lots of things he fears. Axel wanders what sights a Boggart will show him.
Objectively there's plenty. Fear is an emotion present within the psyche of most sentient beings after all.
This common phenomenon is reflected in the presence of the multitude of common phobias and negative feedback driven motivators found in sentient species.
Beings are made up of lots of little fears, the fear of failure, the fear of disappointment, the fear of hurting themselves. Fear of public speaking, of insects, of falling from great heights, of stubbing ones toe, the list of these little fears that plague the sentient mind is endless.
Something tells him though these everyday worries and reluctances aren't what feed a Boggart's imagination though.
It would be a little ridiculous if a Boggart responded to an intruder by turning itself into something, like say cheese, in the face of someone who was lactose intolerant.
He thinks though, this being a third year subject, the somewhat subjective 'greatest fear' that Boggart are purported to react to is probably not quite true.
Plenty of people's 'greatest fear' is probably not something with a physical one size fits all encapsulation. How would a Boggart react to someone who was terrified of falling from great heights, make itself into a cliff? Something tells him that wouldn't be all that effective given Boggarts can't actually make themselves very big so it would be more like a very small hill.
From what little he's heard and read on the subject the images a Boggart's imagination conjure up could range anywhere from the deceptively simple and true to reality, to the vast and lurid.
The examples listed in the passage on boggarts in their textbook seemed to indicate that it was a bit of a toss-up, with most being straightforward and simple and about half turning into surrealist nightmares.
No one really knew much about how to predict what a boggart's response was going to be. Some apparently stuck to one extreme or another, others strayed either way in response to fears that contained certain themes, some of the less picky ones picking and choosing at random.
Axel couldn't help but find it rather fascinating, most of the Nobodies and Heartless weren't half so varied in their habits.
Axel sits and he waits and he watches.
Neville Longbottom is the first to step up, ushered forward by a harried looking Professor Lupin –Moran Tant and Belsie Hops had been at it again the period before and managed to set fire to his desk, setting off a chain reaction and exploding the confiscated dungbombs inside, filling the room with noxious smelling smoke.
As a result the room was currently being defumed which –unbeknownst to either Axel or the rest of the Professor's current class was the reason this lesson was taking place in the staffroom of all places.
Most of the students seem to have no problem facing their fears with much coaching from the harried looking Defence Professor.
Longbottom's successor manages to get the spell down on the third try, but the boy that followed her seemed to have trouble getting the visualization part right, turning his Boggart first blue, then white, then green, before at last succeeding in getting the effect he'd being trying to achieve.
The lesson went on from there, students stepping forward as they made their way to the front of the line; the lesson going smoothly for once, much to the secret relief of the Defence Professor.
Axel for his part watched his classmate's attempts with interest. There was quite a spread of fears amongst his classmates, spiders, mummies, disembodied hands, even a banshee from Seamus Finnegan, all made debuts much to the nervous delight of the watching audience.
Some of the more surreal horrors are somewhat nauseating to look at, such as the bubbling abomination spawned by a girl who evidently had been reading Lovecraft.
All in all it was rather a well thought out class. With Halloween around the corner Axel thought professor Lupin had timed it rather well.
It was no Halloween Town but the Hogwarts' staff had done admirably in transforming the castle for the holiday; with a few of them like Lupin managing to slip an extra bit of holiday festivity into their lessons.
Hagrid in particular had outdone himself –Axel had never seen Pumpkin's quite so large; he thought all the resulting pumpkin related dishes might be a tad much though. Axel could almost believe the rumour of Frank Boyle's purported pumpkin Boggart.
Soon enough it's Hogwart's resident arsonist's turn. Lupin –dead on his feet and looking done with the world doesn't bother to stop him.
'Good,' a part of him thinks viciously, 'Maybe getting a glimpse of old Voldi will terrify them enough to stop leaving dungbombs in every conceivable space they can get their grubby mitts on the little cretins.'
A cornel of exasperation somewhere inside him informs him that a bucket of cold water is probably more likely than any dark lord; what did he ever do to be surrounded by so many pyromaniacs?
Sometimes it feels like he's suffering from a curse, one that doesn't have anything to do with full moons or wolf bites, no wonder every Defence professor ended up leaving or went insane if this is what they all had to deal with.
At least not-so-little Harry doesn't do it to his desk unlike some students he could name.
Unaware of their teacher's frayed state of mind the class watches as the latest student steps up.
The Boggart noticing him as he approaches shifts, abandoning the form of the strange furry creature with too many legs Mandy Perlock's attempt had left it in and sort of melting into the floor in a of shadowy ooze.
It seems this times if going to be one of the surrealist horror ones.
Axel's reasonably sure that should anything from the before manifest as part of whatever Escher like work the Boggart creates he'll be able to pass it off as something from an old dream that haunted him as a childhood.
Two hooded figures rise from the floor, straight up as if on an invisible platform capable of moving through the solid stone the Boggart's hairy form had oozed onto during the transition from one form to the next, giving them the eerie impression of twisting, sprouting saplings.
Axel would recognize those coats anywhere.
To most of the class the coats the figures wear are creepy looking, with oversized zippers and dangling silver ornaments; the creepy impression the coats and the figures who wear them give of course has 'nothing' –rather that is everything, to do with the faintly ever-present sense of hollowness they emit.
It's kind of like being around a dementor; if a dementor didn't suck in happiness and memory and kind of just sat there without changing the temperature at all.
Hoods firmly in place, fully lowered, hide the faces of the wearers. Only the choice in footwear set them apart and serves to distinguish one as female, but even that's more a guess than a certainty.
For a moment they just kind of stand there… existing. It's creepy, and unnerving, more than one student shuffles in place uncomfortably.
As one the hooded figures step forward, coats fluttering in the wind of their passage, an arm outstretched imploringly each, one leg extended in synchronicity for a second that lasts an eternity, stride smooth… and then they sag and collapse, bodies falling apart suddenly in a frothing tide of ocean water and sea shells to spill out across the floor.
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An: I went back and through the previous chapters and mostly corrected a few typos and made minor corrections and changes: ie –using names in place of pronouns ect. to refresh everything in my mind before I started writing this chapter.
A couple slightly more notable changes though:
About 300 words added to chapter 2 - about memories and Nobodies.
About 100 words added to chapter 3 - about Dan's impressions of Harry, specifically mentioning Axel's face tattoo/mark things.
