6
Two months into school and both Gabrielle and Kelsey got to watch their first Quidditch Match even if it was both their own houses against each other. Both Troy and Chad were looking forward to joining the Gryffindor team when they became Second-Years. Halloween was also coming up, and the ghosts in Hogwarts were getting excited and noticed a lot more often. Pumpkins decorated much of the castle, many of the Gryffindor boys were pranking each other with practical jokes from Zonko's Joke Shop in town. Gabrielle was seeing just a bit less of Troy between classes, but she still had four out of six classes with him. They got to sit next to each other in Professor Lupin's Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but Troy was still leaning forward a lot and taking to Chad a bit more often in front of them.
"Okay, class…" Lupin dressed with his school robe over his tweed sweater, brown tie and brown pants. "Would anyone care to guess just what is inside here?" He glided over to a closed wardrobe closet, a large round armoire with mirrors on it and hooks for hanging clothes on. It rattled and shook from its hesitant tenant. The class was not sitting at their desks today; they had been pushed to the sides of the room except for the wardrobe closet up front. Kelsey stuck her hand up.
"It sounds like a poltergeist." She spoke up and looked around the room. "But in Western Europe, I believe they are called boggarts." She looked around nervously. "My uncle had one in Canada."
"Very good, Miss Nielsen…" Professor Lupin congratulated her with a light grin and looked among the others. "Now, can anyone tell me just what a boggart A-K-A poltergeist looks like?"
"Well, no one really knows…" Taylor was right by him at the front of the class. "Boggarts are shape-shifters… They tend to take the form of whatever object that person fears the most. That's what makes them so…"
"Terrifying…" Lupin spoke delightfully creepy and with a bit a glimmer in his eye in mood with the Halloween season. Several of the kids liked his sense of humor, but Sharpay, Lily and Tawni rolled their eyes as if they were bored. Lupin then turned professional again. "Luckily, a very simple spell exists to repel a boggart. Let's practice it now…" He noticed his class started pulling their wands out. "Without wands, please… Now, everyone, repeat after me, 'Ridikkulus!'"
"Ridikkulus." His class recited back at different levels of participation.
"Very good… Now, everyone get in a line…" Lupin guided everyone. Troy and Chad were grinning to see what would happen, but Kelsey looked nervously to Gabrielle and adjusted her glasses. Sharpay and her friends were pushing or shoving their ways into line. William was unsure what scared him. Sharpay and her friends loitered in the back of the class as Lupin continued. "I want each of you to step forward and confront the boggart, but the incantation is not enough to finish it off. What really finishes it off is the sound of laughter. You need to make it assume the form of something you find amusing, let me explain…" He tugged Troy out of line. "Mr. Boyden, what terrifies you the most?"
"I'm not sure…" Troy mumbled back a bit unprepared. "I don't think I'm really scared of anything…"
"If you're scared of anything, believe me, I assure you the boggart will discover it." Lupin advised him as the wardrobe shook with the restless boggart.
"My grandfather's house scared me a bit." Troy confessed.
"Ah…" Lupin backed to the wardrobe ready to unlatch the door. "Well, let's see what the boggart has to say…" He pulled the door open as a breeze poured out and the contents of the room waved round in the gush of air. From out of the opening poured a fine white mist, and Troy's eyes widened in fear as it loomed up seven feet tall over him. It took the form of a scary rotted ghost without any eyes, thin wispy hair and skeletal arms reaching up to grab him. It looked far less human and more cadaverous than any of the regular ghosts in Hogwarts. It did not talk… it just moaned its deathly cry and scared and stunned many of the other classmates. Troy froze trying to think to see this horrible apparition before him.
"Think, Mr. Boyden, think!!!" Lupin sparred him on.
"Ridikkulus!!!" Troy finally stammered, and the ghost blew up like a big silver balloon with a smiley face on it, much to the humor and amusement of his classmates.
"Very well done, Mr. Boyden!!" Lupin started playing some big band music to go with the lesson. "Mr. Danforth, up next…"
Chad stepped up to balloon unraveling into a whirlwind and getting larger until it stopped spinning. It took the form of a hideous clown with a white face, bright orange hair and white polka dots on a blue costume. One of the girls shrieked at its ugly face and its gloved fingers wiggling and squirming in anticipation of scaring him. Chad froze for a few seconds at that horrible face before recalling the spell.
"Ridikkulus!!!" He pointed at it, and the clown turned into a middle-aged man in clown face standing in his boxer shorts. Chad started cracking up and laughing as the clownish boggart looked down and noticed its clothes were gone. With Professor Lupin encouraging them on, Kelsey stepped up and the boggart turned into a large man-sized flying insect with huge wings, large round faceted eyes and mandibles the size of garden shears. She jumped back trying to run at the site of it, just barely saying the incantation.
"Ridikkulus!" She barely spoke and the giant hornet developed tiny wings and dropped into the floor with roller skates on its feet. The class as well as the teacher was laughing as Gabrielle stepped forward next. The giant insect dissipated into smoke as it twisted and shape-shifted into a person this time. Rising up from kneeling on the floor, it took the form of Gabrielle's vicious cousin, Alex Russo. Dressed in a long period witch's dress, she stared back at Gabrielle coldly and vehemently with cold animosity. The brunette ingénue was stunned to see the boggart appear as Alex. Too speechless to talk, Gabrielle stared down the boggart in her cousin's form and forced herself to day the word.
"Miss Russo…" Lupin tried to shake her surprise.
"Ridikkulus!" Gabrielle cried out as Alex's hair turned blonde to Gabrielle's amusement. As she laughed, the class started wondering who the person was that had appeared to her except Sharpay who reacted intrigued and beamed knowingly. Lupin meanwhile applauded Gabrielle for being creative, and William Samms came up ahead of Taylor. Coming face to face with the blonde doppelganger of Alex Russo, they looked eye-to-eye very briefly, and Alex exploded in size with barely an effort or a moment notice, striking her head on the rafters in the ceiling and looking down with as a giantess with Gabrielle's own face and appearance. The entire class screamed at his nightmares coming to life, and Lupin rushed to take charge once again. Stunned and confused, Gabrielle rushed to Troy to protect her from her giant counterpart.
"Mr. Samms!!" Professor Lupine pulled forth his wand as his students raced around the room to get out of the way. He watched William being jerked up off his feet in the twenty-foot tall Gabrielle's fingers and then taken higher up to be dangled over her open lips about to be swallowed. "Mr. Samms!!" He dodged around at the boggart's feet trying to get a clear shot with his wand to save his student as the class rushed to the walls and a few fled the room. Across the room, Gabrielle noticed something what their teacher was not catching in the distraction. Unnoticed, Sharpay, Lily and Tawni were rifling through the reserved spell and potion books of Professor Lupin's private collection. They took one book and slid it into Lily's purse as the professor was trying to save William. The back of Sharpay's black cloak was covered in a thin layer of dust. Having secreted the book into their possession, they next whirled round pretending to be innocent.
"Imprisono Arrestus!!!" Professor Lupin caught the boggart with a spell right to the middle of Gabrielle's face it was wearing and drove it back into the wardrobe, but William immediately dropped and hit the floor hard with a nasty crunch. By now, Miss McGonagal's class and Professor Caernavon's classes poured from their rooms next door to watch the fracas. The room settled down, and everyone calmed and caught their breath. Gabrielle looked at William at the floor speechless. Why was he afraid of her?
"That's the end of the lesson… Everyone calm down. Class dismissed for now." Lupin helped William up to his feet. The blue-eyed youth with the mop-top of thick black hair was clutching his broken ribs and bleeding from the nose. His broken arm was hanging at a weird angle. Professor McGonagal was the head of Gryffindor House; she came from her room to help him and take him off to see Madame Pomfrey in the medical ward on campus once again.
"What happened here?" She inquired.
"A mere boggart surprised us." Lupine looked around with a silly grin. "Everthing is under control now."
"Dude…" Chad came over grinning a bit. "You're scared of Gabrielle?" He started laughing as other students pointed and whispered secretly.
"That will be enough of that Mister Danforth." Professor McGonagal chided him.
"I get nervous around girls!" William confessed with a painful raspy voice. "I have seventeen older sisters, and I have bad dreams, okay!" He shot back as Lupin escorted him away to be treated for his injuries. Wondering about William then confused about what Sharpay had taken, Gabrielle looked around as the class parted to leave the classroom. Sharpay in particular with Tawni and Lily seemed to be in a hurry.
"Sharpay…" Gabrielle rushed to confront her. "Shouldn't you be returning the book you took from Professor Lupin's shelf?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about." She poked Gabrielle out of her way with a smile, a toss of her hair and continued off to Slitherin Hall. Distracted for the moment, Gabrielle looked to Troy and Chad for answers and tried to figure out what to do. Sharpay could sneak that book back before she could tell Professor Lupin, and she was right. After she hurried to tell him, they rushed back to see if a book was missing from his potions collection and there wasn't. Whatever the blonde one wanted from the book, she had it, and it was probably not good for anyone. While everyone else was laughing and poking fun at William's expense, Gabrielle's mind worked to solve the mystery.
"So, Mr. Samms is scared of our lovely young Gabrielle…" In the courtyard arch, Hagrid heard the story of the incident from Troy.
"Not really…" Gabrielle chided Troy for telling stories. "I talked to him in the Medical Wing afterwards. He just gets a little shy, and he has bad dreams as a result of being teased. It could have been anyone the boggart turned into from Kelsey, Taylor or even Sharpay…" She paused a moment as Hagrid walked with her, Chad and Troy. "I wonder why Sharpay was covered in all that dust. The only place she could have got it is the third floor corridor."
"And why would she want to go there…" Chad walked along. "What with that big three-headed dog there?"
"Who told you three about Muffin?" Hagrid overheard.
"Wait!" Troy stopped in disbelief. "That thing has a name?"
"Of course, he's got a name!" Hagrid stopped in the archway to the north courtyard. "He's mine. I got him from a Greek fellow at the pub, and I lent him to Dumbledore to guard the…" He caught himself too late. "I shouldn't have told you that. No more questions!" He changed his mood.
"But Hagrid…" Gabrielle implored him. "Whatever Muffin's hiding, Sharpay could be trying to steal it!!"
"Codswollop!!" Hagrid refused to believe it. "There's no way a student, even Miss Evans, can get past Muffin." He stopped at the arch into the castle. "You three are meddling in things that ought not to be meddled with. Whatever that dog is guarding is strictly between Professor Dumbledore and Professor Danvers!"
"Professor Danvers?" Troy reacted confused and looked to Gabrielle then back to Chad. There was no teacher at Hogwarts with that name! Hagrid made a face that showed how upset he was with himself.
"I shouldn't have said that." He mumbled under breath. "I shouldn't have said that…. I shouldn't have said that." He uttered it again and again as he continued on about his way.