Some people think boggarts have it easy. Slink around all day from one dark corner to another, taking up residence in forgotten wardrobes until someone happens to find you, then you scare him or her half silly with his or her greatest fear. What better way to be left alone? That's all well and good for those of us who live in some empty house with only a lone house elf roaming the halls. But there are much worse places to be. Much, much worse.

I used to live at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. With hundreds of people, mostly children, it seemed the natural place to be. There was even another boggart living there, living in a wardrobe in the staff room. He said the youngest ones were the best targets. The oldest ones, especially the Gryffindors, were the hardest because as they got older their fears turned more abstract. Much harder to anticipate and transform into something abstract.

Everything was great until one night in early September. He came looking for me in my broom closet, shaky and incoherent. He came in, starting to tell some story about how he was disturbed in the staff room that day. But he took one look at me and dove back into the hallway. It took me a moment to realize I'd transformed into one of the students. I didn't know who it was but he couldn't have been very old. A third year maybe, a mouse-eared boy, and a Gryffindor from the look of the robes.

My friend had fallen into the shadow of the statue next to the door. I coaxed him next to the crack to finish his story. A large group of students had attacked him earlier that day. One of them, apparently the one I had turned into, had attacked him twice, then laughed at him. He'd exploded, sending tiny wisps of himself scattering across the room.

"It was horrible," he said. "I stayed as disconnected wisps along the ceiling for the rest of the day, until I was sure no one was in the hallway."

He dropped his voice to a whisper. "I'm leaving tonight. I wanted to tell you. Get out while you still can. Get somewhere safe. I wanted to tell you."

I left the next night. I didn't want to get caught in the same situation. It would be too humiliating, too lonely.

I found a nice empty place in London. The house elf is old and grouchy and the portrait of his mistress is a bit cantankerous, but at least they won't ever come looking for me.