9) Abandoned
Selected Listening: Bridge Over Troubled Water- Simon and Garfunkel
Once the students had all arrived in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Professor Lupin said they would be having class in the teacher's lounge. They left their things and went to the dungeon room where a large table was set for meetings. Lupin waved his wand and the table disappeared, leaving the only other piece of furniture in the room, a locked cabinet of dark oak.
"In here," he said, wrapping his knuckles on the side of the cabinet, "is a boggart."
The students were suddenly engaged and terrified. The terror of going up against your worst fear was only tripled by twenty peers watching. Anastasia wasn't worried though. She had already faced a boggart in Newt's suitcase. She knew her worst fear—the fear of not being known for who she truly was—she could do this easily.
The students pushed themselves quickly into a line. Anastasia ended up third. Neville turned Snape into his grandmother; Lavender defeated her fear of the dark by turning it into a rainbow curtain; and Anastasia was up.
She stepped towards the boggart, feet apart, wand extended. She noticed Lupin leaned forward slightly in worry, and her classmates had fallen silent. What scares the daughter of the most powerful wizard known? What scares an obscurus host?
The boggart twisted and warped and curled in on itself, but it did not become a small headstone on the floor. Instead, it multiplied into four beings: Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Draco. Dark shadow lines extended from their feet, all converging at a central point.
Everyone in the room gaped. Anastasia hesitated, looking back to her friends to see if they were still there, and then back at the boggart. They paced towards her at odd, uneven gates.
"Come on, Anastasia, take it down before it strikes." Professor Lupin encouraged, voice wavering. He hadn't expected this either.
Ron spoke first.
"You think you're better than us?" he asked. "You think you can prance around Hogwarts, playing us for fools, because you're the headmaster's daughter? Well, I see through you, and I know you're a monster."
Anastasia regained her breath and tried to speak.
"Ri-ridikkul—" but Hermione interrupted.
"And you think it's funny? To pretend to be muggleborn? It's not. You make a mockery of our struggles."
"Riddikulus!" she shouted, a puff of air shot out of her wand, but nothing changed. Harry stepped forward.
"You think we're the same, but we're not. You're not the girl who lived, you're the girl who lied."
Professor Lupin took a step forward to intervene, but the Draco boggart stepped behind Anastasia's profile, blocking Lupin's spell line. Anastasia froze, arm still extended, as the boggart whispered into her ear.
"We were never friends. The only thing worse than being daughter of that buffoon is being blood traitor filth. You don't belong anywhere, and you never will."
Anastasia swallowed her pain. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, aimed her wand, and yelled.
"Riddikulus!" Sparks flew out of her wand and hit each of the shadow friends until they had been reduced to mere purple knitted sock puppets with googly-eyes, speaking nonsense at each other, and hitting each other with mallets.
Lupin sniggered before turning to Anastasia.
"Well done." He said genuinely, clapping her on the shoulder. "That was looking bleak, but you turned it around. Do you need a break?" Anastasia nodded, cheeks burning with embarrassment. "Alright, if you ever need to talk, you know where to find me…and forty-five points to Gryffindor!"
Anastasia wiped away a few tears and walked away. She avoided meeting anyone's gaze, staring down at the stone tiles as she left the room.
Remus examined each of the children's expressions of those who had been copied. Ron-guilt. Hermione-concern. Harry-confusion. And Draco, a bit of everything.
"Right then, you're up, Hannah," said Professor Lupin, and the class continued.
That evening, Draco cornered Hannah in the corridor as she was walking from dinner to Hufflepuff house.
"Abbot!" he called, grabbing her by the shoulder. No one was around.
"What do you want, Malfoy?" the Hufflepuff girl asked suspiciously and turned to him. She knew exactly what he wanted, but she wouldn't tell. She wouldn't betray a student who had been perfectly kind to her, no matter what the others said.
"What-what did the boggart that looked like me say to Anastasia?" he asked. Hannah glared.
"Why do you want to know? That's her private business. The professor should have known better than to let that stuff out on display." Hannah said with some scorn. She had to face a rabid dog. Draco scoffed.
"I don't care-I'm just curious," he said, shrugging it off.
"Oh, I see," Hannah said, now smiling. "Why don't you man up and ask her? Instead of hiding behind that stupid arm sling."
Draco glared now.
"That beast brutally attacked me."
"Sure, Malfoy," she said and began to walk away but turned back decidedly. "If you tried being nice to her, maybe even for one day, she wouldn't be afraid of that. Keep acting like an arse and she'll never know the truth."
"And what's that?" he asked.
"That you care about her," she said gently and walked away for good, while Draco stood fuming.
Anastasia avoided her friends for most of the day and didn't attend Ancient Runes. She didn't want to hear their questions or comments about what they had seen. To escape, she grabbed a dinner of rolls and butter from the kitchen and ran up to the astronomy tower so she could look at the stars. She named each of the constellations, one by one, all of them shining in magnificent darkness. If she didn't know what lay below her, she would assume she could fall into the abyss.
"Hi there!" Fred exclaimed as he appeared on her right side. Anastasia jumped a foot in the air.
"Fred, what are you doing?"
"Comforting you of course!" George sat down next to her.
"You're both ridiculous."
"You mean ridikkulus?" Fred asked with one eyebrow raised. She rolled her eyes.
"Please—I'm not in the mood. I came here to be alone."
"Well," George said, bent down, stole one of her rolls, and took a bite. "We can be alone together then." They scooted close to her on either side, and she couldn't help but smile.
"You two are the best," she said and grinned. They sat there in silence for a moment. Enjoying the newborn chill of fall over the grounds.
"So, what's this about you being afraid of our brother?"
"He's not worth it, you know, just full of hot air, that one."
"It's…it's not Ron. It's all of them. Everyone thinks I'm a liar and cursed monster on top of being a spoiled bastard child—" she said glumly.
"No one thinks that." They said in unison
"That's not what it seemed like last night…" she said. They couldn't answer.
"What about that git, Malfoy? Why do you care what he thinks?" George asked. Anastasia shook her head.
"I guess you guys don't know."
"Know what?" Fred asked.
"Last year, when I was paralyzed, he stayed by me the whole time. He read to me, and talked to me, even though I was just lying there."
Fred and George shared a glance.
"We did know," George admitted.
"Caught him one day last year," said Fred.
"We tried to blackmail him into helping us catch the heir of Slytherin's monster, but I don't think he did anything to help," George said.
"Blackmail him?" Anastasia asked.
"We told him that if he didn't help us, we'd tell his school prefects that he needed you to save him from the big scary Slytherin creature," Fred teased.
Anastasia's face turned hot again.
"Well, that's all well and good, but I know one more thing that you definitely don't."
"What?" They asked.
"If it wasn't for him…I wouldn't have survived the second obscurus. It came for me while I was petrified. He saved me. That's how I was cured."
A silence fell over the twins until one finally said something.
"So, do you like him?" George asked outright.
Anastasia froze again, not sure how to reply. She shook her head.
"No. He changed so much over the summer. I don't know what happened. It's like he's being cruel on purpose."
"Well yeah-he's a right foul git if you ask me." Fred said with malice. Both George and Anastasia looked to him, slightly worried.
"You okay, mate?" George asked.
"It's not right for him to treat you that way. Pretend to care, and then run away like some slippery weasel," Fred fumbled.
"Maybe not…" she started, "…but I miss him," she said simply. The twins' looked at each other, raising their eyebrows in disbelief.
Unbeknownst to them, Draco lay in hiding at the top of the stairs, listening to everything they said. Maybe he was acting like a right foul git; maybe he should take Hannah's advice; and maybe he should give up the fake sling.