Part XXVII
Harry and Hermione's excitement for their first Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson with Professor Lupin was dampened within moments of it beginning.
Boggarts. They were going to be learning how to combat boggarts.
Harry felt slightly ill as Professor Lupin explained how the creatures worked, then briefly lectured about where they might come across them. By the time he'd explained what they should do if they were ever confronted by one, Hermione had noticed how pale Harry was. His fingers were trembling when she took his hand comfortingly.
Neither of them wanted to think about what their boggarts might turn into.
Their practical lesson would take place in a nearby abandoned staffroom, where Mr. Filch had apparently cornered a boggart on the premises shortly before the start of term. One at a time, they'd step into a charmed and warded salt circle that would allow them the option of being seen during their turns. For safety and instructional purposes, Professor Lupin would always be able to see any student within the wards, even if he himself was not within it. He could only hear what they heard if he was in the salt circle with them, though he assured the class that he'd be staying outside the wards unless they required a little extra instruction or confidence — for their privacy's sake.
"You're meant to learn from this lesson, not be humiliated. Besides, you're third years," he told them warmly. "I'm confident that everyone will master this spell if not today, then next week. Now, repeat after me…"
Most of the class found the warded circle comforting, but Harry and Hermione were still anxious. Hermione worried for Harry's sake, knowing his fears were far more complex, or at least more personal, than many of their classmates'.
They stood side by side in a tense silence once the class had migrated to the abandoned staff room. Professor Lupin didn't call on either of them first, thankfully, but they both felt for Neville as he shuffled to the front of the room. Having spent some time with Professor Snape during the summer, Neville's boggart and Riddikulus didn't have quite the same effect on Harry and Hermione as it had on the rest of the Gryffindors present. The Slytherins could appreciate the humor in it all, but he was still their head of house. Mocking him in front of their primary rivals was the last thing they planned to do.
Gryffindor bravado demanded most of their housemates allow their fears to be seen, as did Slytherin pride. Ron still suffered from arachnophobia. Padma was afraid of cobras. Seamus was afraid of banshees. Blaise had issues with birds. Tracey was terrified of being attacked by anything that could outnumber her and her boggart eventually morphed into a pack of rabid dogs. Pansy feared aging. Draco kept his fears to himself.
Harry didn't feel any better about facing his boggart even after seeing several of his classmates'. Professor Lupin could read the anxiety in his expression.
"Wards up?" he asked kindly, offering Harry an understanding smile.
"Yeah," he murmured. He swallowed hard as he stepped into the salt circle.
A wave of Professor Lupin's wand opened the boggart's wardrobe as Harry's heart beat loudly in his ears.
Sirius stepped out of it wearing a scowl usually reserved for conversations about the Dursleys, causing Harry's grip on his wand to slacken in cold shock even as the nails of his other hand dug into his palm.
He wasn't afraid of Sirius. He'd never felt less afraid of an adult in his life!
But then his godfather spoke and a painful lump lodged itself in Harry's throat.
"Well?" he said, his voice dark and venomous. "Don't dawdle. Go get your things. Petunia won't wait forever and Merlin knows you're not staying with me."
Ice crawled over Harry's forearms and he tried to shake the panic from his mind.
Sirius promised he'd never go back. He'd promised.
It wasn't real. It wasn't real. It wasn't real.
"Harry," Professor Lupin said gently, not unlike he'd called for several of Harry's classmates earlier in the lesson. "It's just a boggart, Harry. Breathe and cast."
He clenched his jaw and took several shaky breaths, trying to steady himself and think of something funny. The boggart started to spit out more aggressive orders as Harry lifted his wand and shouted Riddikulus as firmly as he could.
He was shaking with relief when a party-hat clad Snuffles replaced the unwelcome vision before him. He could hear Remus quietly chuckling nearby as well. The hint of a smile started tugging at his lips. He needed to make sure Snuffles ended up in a party hat at his future birthdays as well. Watching his godfather trot around the house as Padfoot with a pointed hat atop his head had been a highlight of Harry's most recent birthday.
Harry glanced at Professor Lupin, received a proud and encouraging nod, and left the salt circle as Hermione's name was called.
"You alright?" she asked as they passed one another.
"Will be," he told her. The image of Sirius sending him away was still burned in his mind, but he was doing his best not to think about it too hard. He wondered if he should tell Sirius about it…but shook the thought away. He wasn't a baby. It was just a boggart.
Several of her less-kind classmates were disappointed when Hermione also opted for privacy, but she wasn't sure what she feared the most, and would rather not find out with an audience. She'd dwelled on it for most of the class period, deciding to keep her fears to herself just in case they revolved around some of her time-sensitive secrets.
She brandished her wand and gave Professor Lupin a curt nod. He released the boggart from it's wardrobe once more.
It took several moments for the boggart to form. It struggled, shifting between multiple partially formed scenes before it finally decided on a shape — first, a barely recognizable vision of her parents' still bodies on the floor, then a blurry Professor McGonagall snapping her wand in two, then a battered and bruised Harry trapped with his muggle relatives. She thought it would stop when it briefly shifted into Professors Dumbledore and Snape, the former beside a pile of her things, the latter standing guard over the steps leading to the Slytherin common room with her friends — her rejection from both houses plain to see. Any of those scenarios would've been awful and unpleasant for her to face.
The boggarts final shape shocked the breath from her lungs and nearly caused her to drop her wand from the sheer volume disbelief coursing through her.
His eyes were unnervingly steady, almost lifeless. His posture was controlled, free of the occasional relaxed gesture or fidget. He held himself deliberately. There was a dangerous set to his shoulders that was haughty, mocking. His expression was falsely calm with his head tilted ever so slightly to one side as his cold stare swept over her.
He was the most threatening that she'd ever seen him, clad only in his school uniform. Something about the lack of his outer robe and it's ever-gleaming prefect pin made him even more so.
"I thought you were supposed to be the cleverest witch of your age," he said. "Yet you're daft enough to honestly believe you're something of worth to me?"
She swallowed hard and held her wand more tightly, trying to remind herself that the specter before her wasn't real. But before she could try her hand at the spell Professor Lupin had been teaching them all morning, Tom snorted. His eyebrow rose just slightly in a sneer so subtle it would put Draco to shame.
"You're nothing. A puppet maybe." His lips twitched into a razor sharp smirk. "A little pet bird that I've taught a few clever tricks…"
Her eyes started to burn as she tried to focus on just breathing normally. She just needed to focus and breathe.
"Did you honestly think we were friends?" he asked, his dark eyes were taunting. The laughter in them was ringing in her ears. "Did you think that I would tuck you underwing without due cause? That I'd bother exerting energy on a second year on a whim?"
He chuckled to himself. "Why would I put effort into you, Dove, if it weren't solely for my own benefit? Cleverest witch, my arse. Just because you can regurgitate every word you've ever read doesn't mean you've a brilliant mind, little bird.
"It amuses me how easily you fell into the little hole I dug for you. Were you truly that desperate to have someone, anyone, acknowledge you as anything other than a walking, talking encyclopedia that you never stopped to think? You were. It was written all over your face. You made it so easy for me to get what I wanted."
Tom sighed as Hermione trembled. She could just barely hear Professor Lupin answering a question of sorts about their lesson. It was just enough to make her wand hand twitch, to bring her closer to reality, albeit barely.
"I suppose your shortcomings were to be expected," Tom continued, his voice taking on a mock-mourning tone as he took several menacing steps closer. His sneer returned, only it was disgusted instead of taunting."Silly me for setting expectations for a filthy—"
Her heart sank down to her toes.
"—useless—"
Burning tracks raced down her cheeks.
"—know-it-all—"
She'd never really wondered why someone as brilliant as Tom would take a shine to her. But now…
"—little mudblood brat in the first place."
Now she supposed her relationship with Tom made more sense. He was an opportunist, nothing more.
The Tom across from her scoffed. "What a waste of time you've been. Can't even cast a charm your idiot classmates have already mastered."
Hermione blinked once, twice, then sniffed. Her cheeks itched from her tears as her wand arm rose. She stared at the boy she considered her closest friend, tied with Harry. He was her friend. He was dear to her.
"Riddikulus."
The cruel boy before her vanished. Tom's diary clattered as it landed on the floor where he'd previously stood.
She considered him her friend, but that didn't mean she was his.
She offered Professor Lupin a shaky smile when he praised her for successfully banishing the boggart and let her feet carry her back to Harry's side.
Somehow Hermione kept her wits together until after lunch, gathered them again for Divination, and kept them until after dinner.
She didn't break down every time the journal hummed with magic throughout the day and she didn't read whatever notes Tom had penned her. She didn't so much as touch the journal in her bag —not intentionally. She took notes in class, silently studied with an equally pensive Harry during their free period, and didn't even consider interacting with Tom.
Not until she started walking up to the seventh floor that evening out of habit. His diary might as well have started burning a hole in her satchel upon realizing where her feet were taking her.
She didn't want to see him.
She didn't want to speak to him.
She didn't want to be made to feel worse than she already did about their entire…friendship.
The word left a bitter taste on the back of her tongue.
But he was probably up there studying, waiting for her — because the idea of her not coming up to the Room of Requirement on a night where their evenings lined up for her was impossible to fathom. And she had no idea if the room could make her a space of her own while he was in it.
As it was, she didn't have the energy to find out. She sat on the floor, leaning against the wall opposite where the door to the Room of Requirement would be if she'd summoned it, and started looking through her things for assignments to start.
Unfortunately, looking through her bag meant she had to maneuver around the journal she'd been ignoring all day, a journal that slid out with two of her textbooks almost immediately — it's hum seemingly louder in the empty corridor.
She hadn't planned on opening it.
Buggering hell, today is going by slowly. I usually enjoy my Thursday afternoons more than this.
Dove? Are your classes actually keeping your attention for once?
You're quiet today. Shouldn't you be at lunch about now? Where've you been all day?
Dove, where are you? You're never this quiet. You have a free period between lunch and Divination today, don't you? Why haven't you written?
Certainly you haven't caught ill this early in the year - and if you had, you'd tell me.
Assuming you aren't in the Hospital Wing - since I don't believe you are - I still expect you to at least show face tonight. You've a lot to learn still. We need to get back into your supplementary education, especially after how much progress we made last term.
She read the word 'expect' several times over, the boggart's words echoing in her head. Silly me for setting expectations for a filthy, useless, know-it-all, little mudblood brat in the first place.
Nausea twisted in her gut and she was about to throw the journal away from her person when more words appeared on the page in Tom's dark green ink.
I'm bringing my dessert up. Grabbed you few biscuits if you want them.
She couldn't help but feel like the gentle bribe was more of a trap, but she hadn't eaten much at dinner and she was starting to become very aware of that fact.
How cross would he be when she showed up? Maybe she could make up an excuse for her radio —journal?— silence all day, stay for an hour or so, and slink off back to the familiarity and comfort of her dorm.
It was a fool's plan, she knew, but her bag was repacked before she could talk herself out of her decision. She even tried to muster up some Gryffindor courage as she passed the wall three times.
Most of it evaporated when the door appeared and she shakily reached out to turn the handle.
Thank you guys for the support and well wishes and all the lovely reviews last chapter.
I meant to ask last time but, do you guys have a preference for what day of the week I update? I'm partial to Saturdays personally, but I'm open to suggestions if there's a mass consensus of an ideal day of the week for some reason.