Chapter 4

That Which You Fear

When first period rolled around the next morning, I was sitting in my traditional place at the back of the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom trying in vain to recall the details of a very odd dream I'd had last night. All I could really remember was this image of a tall, statuesque woman with flowing black hair. There was probably something wrong with me.

Due to an oddly small number of students in my year, even our core classes contained students from other Houses; in this case, Gryffindor students. I was twirling my wand around in my fingers while Taylor snored away next to me; Professor Johnstone was late. This could either signify that he had a delightful disrespect for authority, or that he was a moron who had slept in on his first day on the job. Either way, I would reserve my judgement until he'd actually gotten around to teaching.

In front of me, Brock and Polina were sitting together, with her resting her head on his shoulder in a rather adorable way, and in front of them, Amanda and Jasmine were deep in conversation about something that was probably related to Quidditch. I noted that Carmilla was sitting alone in the other back corner of the room, although she didn't seem bothered by her isolation. I contemplated going to sit with her, seeing as Taylor wasn't providing much in the way of conversation, but decided against it. Maybe she just didn't want to be bothered.

Just as this train of thought reached the end of its tracks, Professor Johnstone walked in. His hair would have indicated that he'd just gotten out of bed, but I have an eye for the deliberately dishevelled...likely a result of spending far too much time with Gordon.

"Hey!" he greeted us cheerfully, setting a small stack of papers down on his desk, and collapsing into a spinning chair that wouldn't have looked out of place in a modern office building, but seemed rather strange in the old-fashioned classroom. "Sorry I'm late. Mr. Filch found a boggart in a broom closet, and he wanted me to send the little guy packing. Unfortunately, he wasn't all that eager to come out, so I told him I'd have to deal with that later." The entire anecdote was told in a loud announcer-like voice, the kind that makes even the most trivial of stories sound utterly fascinating. Scanning the classroom with sea-green eyes, he noticed the still-sleeping Taylor, and grinned. He pulled out his wand, and pointed it at Taylor, loudly saying "Depulso!" I ducked my head as the spell shot past me, hitting Taylor in the head, and knocking him backwards off his chair. Every head in the room turned to the back, but Taylor emerged barely a second later, righting his chair and sitting back down as though nothing had happened.

"Yes sir?" he inquired. Slapping his forehead, Professor Johnstone laughed uproariously, and the entire class soon joined in. Taylor even managed to take a small bow before Professor Johnstone managed to call the class to order again.

"Um...Taylor Lennon, right?" Professor Johnstone said, eyeing a seating plan on his desk. "Gryffindor?"

"Actually, my name is Earl," Taylor told him. Johnstone raised an eyebrow, but did not comment. "And yeah, I'm a Gryffindor."

"Brilliant!" Johnstone declared happily. "So am I! Anyways, since I noticed you were really paying attention a few minutes ago, I'm going to assume that you can tell me what a boggart is, right?"

"Um..." Taylor faltered. Johnstone sighed disappointedly, but Taylor piped up. "No, I know this! Um...oh! I know! He's this dead actor guy!" The class erupted in laughter for the second time, although those of us who had been raised in Muggle families were a little more sympathetic; those who had lived their entire lives with wizards would, of course, not know about Humphrey Bogart.

"Close enough," Johnstone conceded, chuckling. "I don't suppose anyone else –" Before he had a chance to finish, my hand shot up, along with Amanda's, Polina's and Kenneth's. Johnstone smiled. "Well, what else did I expect from a class full of Ravenclaws? Hm..." He narrowed his eyes, considering his options. "You, in the back. The one dislocating his arm." He eyed the seating plan again. "Sebastian Crane, what is a boggart?" Amanda turned around to glare in mock affront, while I lowered my arm with satisfaction.

"A boggart is a shape-shifter that takes the form of whatever a person fears the most," I said. Johnstone clapped his hands once loudly.

"Brilliant! But perhaps not unexpected. Five points to Ravenclaw!" The amount was surprising, given that I'd only said something we should've known from third year, but no one was going to argue with House points. "And who can tell me a boggart's greatest weakness?" The same hands shot up, and Johnstone chuckled slightly. "In the front this time. Um..." he paused, scanning the seating plan. "Amanda Watson, what do you think?"

"Laughter," she said. "A boggart can be destroyed by laughter."

"Exactly! Five more points," Johnstone said. "Yes, when confronted with a boggart, one must find it within themselves to bring out the humour of the situation, and laugh...which can be tricky when your greatest fear is staring down at you. Thankfully, we wizards have a spell that makes the task a little easier. Does anyone know it?" Same hands, but this time Kenneth was chosen.

"Riddikulus," he said.

"Correct! Another five points to Ravenclaw!"

"Um...actually, I'm a Gryffindor," Kenneth corrected him. Johnstone winced slightly at his mistake.

"Five to Gryffindor then. And as for the extra...Phillip Keates! You...um...your hair is messy, five points from Ravenclaw!" I can assure you that the Gryffindors found this much more amusing than we did.

"It most certainly is not!" Phil protested. "And you could've just asked another question!"

"I could have," Johnstone laughed. "Anyways, it's good that you guys remembered that much; shows that us teachers aren't wasting our lives." His eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment, and his voice took on a dreamlike quality. "I remember my boggart lesson in third year...probably the most fun I've ever had in this class." Judging by the confused expressions my fellow students showed to one another, I was not the only one who found this statement puzzling.

"Fun, sir?" I asked. He gave me a confused look of his own.

"You didn't find the boggart lesson fun? I mean, granted it can be difficult to confront your own fears like that, but..." The answer seemed to suddenly dawn on him. "Sweet yutzes! You guys didn't actually fight a boggart?"

"No Professor," I told him, "we just did a section on them from the textbook." Johnstone looked as though he were about to start tearing at his hair...although that would have been rather futile, as the majority of it had been gelled into haphazard spikes.

"That...that is a travesty," he said, eyes wide. "Okay, you know what? Grab your wands and come with me. Leave your stuff. We're going to go fight a boggart, right now." Within seconds, every student in the room was out of their chairs and wide awake. Only a few minutes into the class, and we were having a practical lesson? Up to this point, most of our DADA work had been purely theoretical. There were two schools of thought on teaching magic: some believed that a safe, theoretical approach was the best way to go, while other advocated actual experience with as much magic as possible. The two factions had naturally chosen Hogwarts as their battleground, leading to us swinging back and forth in terms of teaching styles over the years.

We followed the professor out of the room and down the hall like a trail of black-robed ducks after their mother (although I had never seen a mother duck wearing an argyle sweater under its robes). Soon, we reached the boggart-inhabited broom closet, which Filch (the bane of almost every student at Hogwarts) was guarding with a sour expression...but then, I had never seen the man without a sour expression.

"You might want to clear out," Johnstone told him. "This could get messy." Filch cringed at the word, as any mess in the school was his responsibility, but he reluctantly stalked off, with his equally sour cat Mrs. Norris trailing behind him. "Now," Johnstone said, "at the moment, the boggart is hiding inside this closet where no one can see it. No one knows what a boggart looks like in its natural state. Now, I like to start my classes with a Question of the Day, because it lets everyone get to know each other a little better. Normally, I'd have you answer publicly, but just to keep this lesson interesting..." He was interrupted by a loud rattling as the closet door shook violently. Several of the students flinched, but Johnstone simply turned around and spoke to the door. "You can come out in a minute!" He then turned back to us. "Like I was saying, to keep this lesson interesting, I want you to keep your answer to yourself. The Question of the Day is: what is your greatest fear, and how can you turn it into something comical?" Well, that was going to be a problem. I'd been arachnophobic since childhood, but how the hell was I supposed to make spiders funny? Looking around at the other students lining the hallway, I saw that they all seemed to be engrossed in similar dilemmas. Kenneth was actually muttering to himself...I caught something that sounded a bit like "fish"...and I got the distinct impression that Amanda was going through a list of all the things that even remotely scared her. All the while, Johnstone was walking around eyeing us, watching for something unseen.

"Has everyone got something?" he said after a minute, and most of us muttered affirmatives. "Brilliant! Um...let's see... You with the hair! Keates! How would you like to go first?"

"Professor, first off, there is nothing wrong with my hair, and second, you are hardly one to speak on the subject." Johnstone laughed sharply as we "Oh!"-ed in unison.

"Okay, now you're definitely going first!" he said. "Wand at the ready." Phil raised his wand and cautiously pointed it at the closet door, which gave another rattle as if to acknowledge his presence. All of us formed a semicircle around him, with some of us jumping slightly every time the closet door shook. "So, what are you afraid of, Phillip Keates?"

"I'd have to say failure," he said conversationally. "But I'm not sure how a boggart would turn into an abstract concept."

"That just means this will be even more interesting for you," Johnstone told him, "since you won't know exactly what you'll be facing. That will also make it trickier, though, since it'll be harder to turn whatever it is into something funny if you don't know it's coming." He paused in thought for a moment. "Actually...yeah, this could be interesting. I'm going to go in and get it to come out now. Be ready for it, and remember: any situation, no matter how grim, can be made humorous...if you've got the talent." And with that, he quickly disappeared into the closet. I strained to hear any noise coming from within, and was caught completely off guard when the door swung open...and Johnstone walked back out. Instinctively, Phil swung his wand, but before he could utter the spell, Johnstone's expression turned to one of frustration that seemed alien to his face.

"No you idiot, don't point that thing at me! Sweet Moses, can you do anything right? This is third year stuff! I'd think by now you'd be able to tell a boggart apart from your bloody professor!" Normally, this would have been very amusing to watch, but the searing expression of revulsion and hatred on Professor Johnstone's face was just so out of place...I didn't want to look at it, that's how bad it was, but I couldn't bring myself to look away. "Have you got any talent at all? You're a complete failure as a wizard! I expected a lot more from you, Keates!" Phil's face wore a bewildered and lost expression...but then, suddenly, the answer came to him, and the change in his expression was the prompting my own brain needed to realize the obvious.

"So that's the trick..." I muttered. Phil flicked his wand at Johnstone mid-tirade, and yelled out the charm.

"Riddikulus!" There was a loud crack, and Johnstone stumbled backwards, suddenly clad in scuba gear. He tried to take a menacing step forwards, but tripped over his flippers, and fell on his face, provoking a chorus of laughter. But of course, this was not Professor Johnstone. The real Professor Johnstone chose that moment to step out of the broom closet. To anyone who hadn't realized, it became rather apparent at that point that the Johnstone in scuba gear was, in fact, the boggart.

"That worked even better than I'd expected," Johnstone said happily. "I was hoping it would turn into me. But I must ask," he said, chuckling at his floundering doppelganger, "why scuba gear?"

"It's a long story," Phil said, grinning. Behind him, the boggart was slowly getting back on its feet.

"All right, line up!" Johnstone instructed. "Everyone will have a turn. Remember, you have to make the situation funny. Carmilla, you're up first!" I would have spent more time wondering how he remembered her name instantly while he needed to consult a seating plan to learn all of ours, but the spectacle before me was quite distracting.

The boggart transformed as soon as Carmilla came within a few feet of it. She recoiled slightly as a bloodstained corpse shuffled towards her, sightless eyes fixed on her. It reached out with one arm, as if to drag Carmilla back to the afterlife with it. Carmilla hesitated for a brief moment, and then swung her wand.

"Riddikulus!" The corpse spontaneously began to do the iconic dance from the Thriller music video, much to the delight of my classmates and me. But really, what else were you going to do with a zombie? However, Carmilla was not laughing with the rest of us, and seemed only mildly amused.

"Brilliant, brilliant!" Johnstone complimented her. "I love that idea! Next up, Miss Ra...Miss Ranja...Susan, you're next!" Susan stepped up to the boggart, and as it saw her, it stopped dancing, and began to change form. It now had the appearance of a brown-skinned woman with a stormy and severe face, wearing a bright orange sari, and glaring at Susan. In fact, I noticed as I leaned in for a closer look that she bore a certain resemblance to Susan. Her mother? But why on earth would her own mother be her greatest fear? Then again, perhaps the intimidating look on the boggart's face as it advanced towards Susan answered that question...

"Riddikulus!" The boggart suddenly pulled off the mask of Susan's mother, revealing itself to be Neil Patrick Harris...still wearing a bright orange sari. Now that was funny. Boggart-NPH took a few steps backwards as we loudly laughed at it, a confused expression on its face.

"Don't let up!" Johnstone instructed. "Hannah Wilson, go for it!" Now, I will never understand why Hannah's greatest fear was squirrels, but I can tell you that a squirrel singing Journey songs is really something to see. Then, after Victoria Seo had dealt with a rather large and probably rabid cat, it was Polina's turn. As she stepped up, the boggart transformed into...a car? What was menacing about a car? In fact, even Polina seemed confused as she took a step closer. Suddenly, the car turned on, flashed its headlights, and revved its engine. Polina flinched slightly out of surprise, but seemed just as bewildered by the boggart's form...but then, realization flashed across her face.

"Everyone, get out of the way!" she screamed, diving to the side. I might have stayed confused for a second...but only a second, because as soon as the words had left her lips, the car shot forward...right towards us! We scattered faster than I would have believed we could move. The car stopped just short of the wall (thankfully, the hallway was a particularly wide one), made a full turn, and raced back towards us. We were soon running all over the hallway in an effort to avoid the rampaging boggart-car...and try as we might, we were unable to keep it from banging into the walls, taking chunks with it. We even lost a portrait, although its inhabitants (a trio of Victorian ladies) managed to flee into the adjacent picture (which was occupied by a rather cross-looking elephant). But the boggart's real target was Polina, and it came very close to running her over; more than once, she had to dive for cover while Professor Johnstone cast shield charms around her. It was the best we could do; the car moved too fast for any of us to fire off an Impediment Jinx.

Eventually, I realized that there was only one way to solve this.

"Polina, get behind me!" I called out. She looked at me quizzically, but complied. The car followed her like a homicidal puppy, and as it approached, I didn't move out of the way. Instead, I stepped towards it.

"What are you doing?" Hannah shrieked. "Get out of the way!" But I stood my ground, knowing that, logically, my tactic should work. Of course, if it didn't, I was probably going to end up as a large stain on the hallway floor. So I was really hoping that this would work.

The boggart-car drew closer and closer until it was nearly on top of me...and it stopped. I breathed a very loud sigh of relief. The boggart seemed to eye me with its headlights, and after a moment, transformed. See, this was the part I hadn't thought through very well. I'd suspected that the boggart would cease to be a car if it were faced with a new target, but unfortunately, this meant that I was now going to have to face...

Several of the people near me shrieked and recoiled...although none recoiled as much as I did. The boggart had transformed into a massive, ghostly-white, red-faced, and utterly horrifying spider. It stared at me for a moment, and I couldn't help but stare back despite the cold terror flooding my body. Then, it moved forward towards me faster than I would have thought possible for something so big.

I would like to say that I stood my ground like I had with the car, found the strength within me to overcome my fear, and defeated the boggart. But in reality, as soon as the boggart-spider starting coming towards me, I fell on my ass rather ungracefully, and crawled away as quickly as I could while the spider swung its legs at me. I still couldn't think of anything that could make this situation funny...well, funny for me anyways. I suspect that many of my classmates would have found the spectacle a lot more amusing if...well, if there wasn't a giant spider charging at them. I racked my brains, but no solution came to me.

"Give it a top hat!" Phil yelled. I turned and stared at him in bewilderment.

"What? Why?"

"Have you got a better idea?" Well, he had a point there. The boggart-spider loomed over me, fangs weeping venom. I raised my wand, desperately tried to envision the creature in a top hat, and forced the incantation out my paralyzed mouth.

"Riddikulus!" And amazingly, it worked. The spider withdrew, now wearing a nice silk top hat, which was not even that amusing to be honest. "What was that supposed to accomplish?" I shouted at Phil.

"Well, are you still scared?" Phil inquired.

"Yes! It's still a spider!"

"Seb, if you're scared of a spider in a top hat, then I'm rather concerned about the torment you've endured at the hands of the upper class," Phil said. Needless to say, this made no sense to me whatsoever.

"Oh, just get out of the way," Amanda said, stepping in between me and the high-class boggart-spider, giving me the opportunity to get back on my feet and move aside with what little dignity I had left. The boggart transformed again, this time into a demented-looking man with bloodstained clothes swinging an enormous and bloody meat cleaver. Amanda raised her wand, and was about to shout out the spell when the boggart (serial killer?) swung the cleaver at her arm, forcing her to step aside and lose her focus. Again she raised her wand, but the boggart swung again too, and this time she had to dive out of the way to avoid losing her head. "Oh for the love of...Riddikulus!" The boggart came in for another swing, but as it stepped towards her, it slipped on a banana peel and fell on its ass rather gracelessly...although hopefully with less grace than I'd fallen. Otherwise I would have looked completely ridiculous...

"Your turn Brockoli!" Kenneth declared, shoving Brock towards the boggart. Instead of getting back up, the boggart simply looked up at him as it transformed. When it was done changing shape, a look of shock and horror came over Brock's face. The boggart was Polina.

But not simply Polina. The boggart-Polina looked up at us with lifeless, vacant eyes. Its skin was pale and marbled, and it lay like a puppet with all the strings cut. In short, it was dead.

The oddity of what we were seeing was plainly visible on the faces of all my classmates, and probably on mine as well. Some, like Jasmine and Susan, were visibly horrified. Others, like Kenneth and Taylor, seemed unsure whether or not they should look away. Amanda was biting her lip, visibly uncomfortable, but unwilling or unable to take her eyes off the thing, and Phil simply observed with mild interest. Polina herself, however, seemed completely transfixed and unable to look away. Her eyes were locked on the boggart, and the look on her face was neither one of fear or fascination, but something intense that lay between the two.

Brock stared at the corpse of his girlfriend for a few moments, doubtlessly drawing a complete blank. But then, who could blame him? How on earth were you supposed to turn the death of your girlfriend into something funny? Eventually, however, Brock found the solution.

"Riddikulus!" Suddenly, the corpse sat up, but not in the way a living person would. It moved slowly and zombie-like. It reached up to its face with almost robotic motions, and...pulled off the mask of Polina, revealing itself to be Neil Patrick Harris.

The uproar of laughter that followed this proved to be too much for the boggart. It flipped over onto its stomach, tried and failed to crawl away, and then exploded into a thousand wisps of smoke.

"Brilliant! Brilliant!" Professor Johnstone declared, applauding us. Then, looking around at the damage done to the walls by Polina's car, he commented: "But I don't think Mr. Filch is going to be very pleased about this." This was, of course, perfectly fine with all of us. "But in any case, each one of you that fought the boggart has earned your House five points! Oh...and we're just about out of time I think. Your homework..." We all groaned. "Actually...never mind. No homework tonight." His announcement provoked a chorus of cheers from the entire class.

"I think I'm going to like him," I commented to Amanda as we walked to our next class.

"Yes, he certainly does seem...interesting," she replied, sounding very much unlike herself. There was something very odd in her voice. But, I brushed it off, and turned my head around to see my fellow Ravenclaws. Polina seemed rather pleased with the idea that Brock's greatest fear was her death (the two had been walking hand in hand, gazing into each other's eyes until Brock had to leave with the other Gryffindors...and miraculously, they hadn't walked into anything), and she was discussing this fact rather loudly with Susan and Amanda. Wait, Amanda?

I turned back to where Amanda had been a second ago, and found no one there. As I'm sure you can imagine, this was very unsettling. Had I just been talking to myself? I shook my head trying to clear my thoughts, and kept walking. There was enough pressure on me this year, especially with O.W.L.s coming up. The last thing I needed was for everyone to think I was going crazy.

Compared to our action-packed first class, the rest of the school day was comparatively uneventful, although we were treated to a very warm welcome from our History of Magic teacher, Professor McLaughlin.

"I was honestly hoping that some of you weren't going to be back," she said sardonically, "but it looks like I'm stuck with you lot for another year." Being best described as the psychological offspring of Oscar Wilde and Margaret Thatcher, Professor McLaughlin required a little getting used to, but almost inevitably became a favourite among many of her students for her fearlessly intellectual style of teaching and her razor-sharp wit. "Oh God, Sebastian Crane," she sighed, recognizing me. "You again. I don't suppose you've gotten any friends yet, have you?"

"I had friends before I even arrived here," I reminded her, smiling. And she returned the smile, if only slightly, to indicate that she was indeed happy to see us again.

"Right, so how much do you all remember about the Goblin Rebellion of 1812?"

Instead of rehashing the entire day, I think I will skip ahead to that evening, as this is where things start to go horribly wrong for everyone. After supper, myself, Gordon, Amanda, and Olivia decided to take advantage of our general lack of homework, and went down to Hagrid's hut for a visit. On the way, I entertained them with my theory that our universe was actually a fanfiction of reality, written by a socially-awkward teenager with no life, which served to explain why life could be so clichéd and ridiculous. While Olivia seemed somewhat interested, and Gordon found the idea quite amusing, Amanda was a bit more sceptical.

"I'm just saying, if life was fanfiction, I'd have a really hot and mysterious boyfriend," she insisted. "That's just how it would go."

"Hey, I actually know how you can solve that problem," Gordon told her. She stared at him suspiciously with one eyebrow raised. It took Gordon a second to clue in. "No, not me! It's a spell, something Professor Spanier told me about once."

"Really?" She was clearly unconvinced.

"Yeah, here's what you do. First, you need to draw a circle on a wall. Any wall will do, but it works better if it's made out of stone."

"Okay..."

"Next, you have to place your hands on either side of the circle. Look into the circle, and picture that mysterious boyfriend you want. Envision his face inside the circle."

"But wouldn't I..."

"Once you've got the image, smash your face into the wall until you're unconscious."

"What? Why?"

"Then tomorrow you'll wake up with a headache, because you're a moron." Olivia and I laughed explosively, but Amanda did not seem very amused.

It was dark by this time, but the bright light of the full moon allowed us to see easily. However, when we approached Hagrid's hut, we discovered that he was not alone. He was speaking with a group of about seven teachers, plus two men I couldn't see clearly.

"Hagrid, what's going on?" I asked as we got closer. Hagrid's face wore a deeply troubled expression, and just as he was about to speak, one of the unknown men indicated that he should not. Instead, the man stepped out of the crowd towards us. I heard Amanda gasp beside me, and my jaw may have dropped open at the sight. There was no mistaking the dark-haired, bespectacled man that stood before us.

"One of the students is missing," Harry Potter said, moonlight glinting off his glasses. "Teddy Lupin. He's run off into the Forbidden Forest."

A/N: Because any problem in the world can be solved with the correct application of Neil Patrick Harris! And I must confess that I was listening to "Not Afraid" while writing the boggart-fighting scene. Woot for irony! Reviews please, and chapter 5 will be ready as soon as possible.