The third-year Slytherin class didn't encounger a boggart in our first lesson with Professor Lupin. We covered the topic later in the year. Sometimes, thinking back to that day, I wonder if the Professor didn't fear the forms the boggart would take for us more than we ourselves did. Draco, true to form, concocted a story to get out of class, though it takes no great feat of imagination to guess what he would have seen.

Lacking the dumb courage of Gryffindor house—either facing one's fear or not having much to fear in the first place—our class flagged. Crabbe and Goyle both botched the incantation, the boggart took truly monstrous forms for a couple of students, and Pansy Parkinson broke into tears when it took for her the form of a mirror that subtly deformed her reflection into something grotesque and filled the air with contemptuous whispers.

The atrocities of men are born in the dreams of children.

I got the feeling that the Professor was depending, ruefully, on my concrete skill and practiced calm to see that the lesson wasn't a real cock-up, and called on me near the end of class. I wasn't sure, when I stepped forward, what form the boggart would take. A number of things had come to mind. Dementors, Finny dead in a hospital, being thrown out of the Wednesday afternoon group. But I wasn't really clear on what rules governed a boggart's shape.

When Professor Lupin called me forward, Crabbe's many-limbed horror (the eventually-produced polka dot bows didn't help much) vanished and became a familiar leather-bound notebook sitting upon a dark seat that looked rather like a throne. I raised my wand, trying to think of what would make this image safer. Some comedic aspect of the situation other than the pitch-black irony of it. Then I stopped.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Professor Lupin seemed rather surprised that I wanted to ask a question, not least because I rarely spoke in his class.

"Yes, Rookwood?"

"Is this all? I mean, sir, can it do anything to hurt me?"

From the corner of the room she had retreated to, Parkinson sobbed, "Kill it, kill it, kill it!"

Professor Lupin gave me a curious look. "All, Rookwood? It is a manifestation of your greatest fear."

"Yeah, and it's just sitting there," I said, waving at the very inanimate book and chair. "It's not hurting anyone."

"Sometimes, fear is the greatest form of harm that can be done," the Professor said, with his shallow affect of wisdom.

I considered arguing the point for a moment, maybe bringing up the notion that there are things worth fearing, or that letting fear harm you is mostly a matter of dealing with it badly, but I decided it wasn't worth it.

Instead, I pointed at the boggart's image. "That's not fear. It's not even a thing I fear. It's a magical creature pretending to be a thing I fear. And you know what? It's good to know. It can't hurt me and it's good to know."

"Rookwood, if we could proceed with the lesson-"

"What, kill it? Why? Aside from how useful it could be, it's not dangerous, just trying to be frightening. And do you really want to tell us to kill things just because we're afraid of them?"

You have to be careful what you damn someone for.

And in that same textbook that instructed us on what to do if we encountered a boggart there was a whole section on how to kill werewolves. That textbook, for third-year students, that Professor Lupin assigned, on how to kill anything you find threatening. How many people had to think that was a good idea? How many people had to think nothing of it?

Even knowing it was a part of what the boggart had shown me, I kept decoding my father's diary. Neither the book nor the spells it contained were going to do any harm on their own, and I wasn't going to go about using them just because they were there.

The school year drew once more to a close, with yet another climactic confrontation for you and nothing of the sort for me, aside from another brief spat with Professor Lupin about the ethics of boggart-killing, for which he docked me points on the final. If I said that I grieved over his resignation, near-involuntary though it was, I would be lying.

In my last meeting with Snape before departing, I finally dared to ask him about Professor Lupin.

"Why do you hate him so much?" I knew better than to say "fear."

Though he didn't lash out, Snape was immediately defensive. "It would be unseemly for me to regard a colleague, as Professor Lupin has been, with undue animosity."

"He earned it, then, because you aren't like that with other people."

"My suspicions regarding Professor Lupin's involvement with the fugitive Sirius Black have been deemed insubstantial."

I hesitated, reflecting on the situation and wondering if Snape's trust in me was strong enough to endure more questions. He was deferring to a higher, absent sense of authority- the proper form of conduct for a teacher- to avoid his own, personal reasons for fearing Lupin, and to avoid that fear itself. It was a thing he did often, and I knew that as long as I allowed him to end discussions in that way, he would.

"My father never said anything about Sirius Black. I'm not sure he was even a Death Eater. Does it even matter? Would you even care?"

It was a risk to say, but effectively disarming.

"He was an incredibly cruel young man, in school. All three of them were."

I'm not sure whether he was trying to answer my question or convince me that it was nothing personal. I don't think he even knew. And although he being completely honest with me, it wasn't really me he was talking to.

"I can't even tell you what they did. And the worst part is, they never even realized it."

He had, instinctively, wrapped an arm protectively around his chest. He looked so vulnerable at that moment, I felt compelled to reach out to him, to feel the solidness of his shoulder and convey by the pressure of my fingers all the wordless concern and compassion that I felt. But the moment was fleeting, and before I could make a move, he had squared his shoulders and become once more inaccessible.

"You are aware of the significance of the name 'Death Eaters'?" he asked, shifting the focus to a detail of what I had said earlier.

"You know my father's Augustus Rookwood," I reminded him.

"I do not think it should be necessary for me to mention the danger in emulating a great deal of his behavior."

"I know."

He stared critically into the middle distance, at a space slightly above and aside from my left elbow, his expression inscrutable.

"It would be impossible, of course, for one such as myself-"

Neither of us could have bared to hear what he had started to say, that he was both in no position to and incapable of replacing my father.

"I know." It came out harsher than I meant, so I said it again, softer. "I know." I paused on my way out the door, half-turning to say, "Goodbye, Professor."

Then began the dark days of summer.