Ginny and Jack walked into their defense against the Dark Arts to see that all of the desks had been pushed to the side. In the center of the room Professor Lupin stood next to a tall cabinet over eight feet tall that was slightly shaking even as Ginny watched. Curious, she extended her magic sense to try to look into the cabinet. But all she sensed was a big ball of magic inside. It didn’t look like a person. Some kind of enchanted object or magical creature maybe?
“Class!” Lupin called out once all the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs had arrived, “You can put your books and supplies to the side. We will only need our wands for today. We’ll be doing a practical exercise today. There was a boggart that had taken up residence in the staff room. Rather than banish it, I thought of using it as a good learning opportunity for you students. Now, what do we know about Boggarts and how to counter them? Mr. Anverts?”
“Boggarts are spiritual entities similar to ghosts or Dementors,” Jack said from next to Ginny where he had raised his hand, “Boggarts feed on the fear of the people that they attack, shapeshifting into the form most frightening for the target. They can’t be traditionally killed as they are not alive the same as we are. A banishing spell can disperse their energy enough that they lose cohesion and the controlling mind disappears. Without the guiding force holding it in place, the energy disperses and either dissipates or creates a new ghostly being with the remaining energy.”
“An excellent analysis of the Boggarts and how to permanently banish them, Mr. Anverts,” Lupin said, “Five points for Ravenclaw. Although the Dementors are a different case. They are partially spiritual, partly flesh. They are not well studied because well… any potential researchers can hardly get close without having to deal with their aura and tendency to suck out the souls out of their victims. Regardless, there are two more methods besides permanent banishment that can be used to deal with Boggarts. Any other ideas?”
A hufflepuff girl raised her hand and Lupin nodded to her, “Having a group? So that the Boggart wouldn’t know what fear to turn into?”
“Yes, that’s correct,” Lupin said, “Five points to hufflepuff. The larger the group approaching the Boggart, the easier it will become to handle. The Boggart will try to create a mixture of all of the fears, and by doing so will often turn into something that is more off putting than frightening to anyone involved. Now, there is one more method. Does anyone know what it is?”
There were several guesses. Ginny tried to think, but she was drawing a blank.
“Well, don’t worry about not knowing. It’s a spell. Riddikulus. While casting you will transfigure the boggarts form to alter it to a more amusing form. Boggarts feed on the fear of their victims, it is their purpose to cause it. If you laugh in its presence then it will become extremely frightened itself and flee into the nearest enclosed space to hide. The smaller the alteration to the Boggarts form, the better. This spell is on the upper end of difficulty of what a first year can learn. We’ll be practicing and learning the spell as a group today and whoever I feel is ready will have a crack at testing themselves against the Boggart over the course of this week. Your homework is to practice this spell until you can cast it instinctively. You must be able to do so even while you are confronted by your fear. I don’t expect many of you to be ready before Wednesday.”
Class progressed and all of them struggled with the difficult spell. But by the end of Tuesday’s class, Ginny thought she was getting a handle on it. She had an innate control over her own magic, but the spell casting was largely automated and pulled her magic on its own. To make sure that she wasn’t cheating and becoming reliant on the wand, she made sure to keep absolute control over her magic as it shifted in patterns within her wand. It was harder than it sounded, even the smallest mistake would be targeted by the automated spellcasting magic and start struggling to seize control of the spell again. Which often caused the spell to simply fail as Ginny struggled against the wand.
So even though she should be blazing past everyone in her spellcasting, she was only a little faster on average than Jack was in learning how to cast new spells through her wand. Luckily once she got the hang of a new spell she had an easier time doing it again as even a small mistake in her wand movement could be corrected by adjusting the flow of Ginny’s magic within the wand. So she almost never failed to cast the spell so long as her wand movements weren’t wildly off what the actual spell was supposed to be.
By the end of Wednesday, Professor Lupin declared the whole class good enough with the spell to make their first attempts against the Boggart tomorrow on Thursday.
Ginny and Jack fought together and eventually claimed a spot near the back of the line. Everyone had been stressing about facing the Boggart. The older years had been done after the first day, and been receiving lectures from Lupin about ghosts and the differences in dealing with other spiritual entities that weren’t Boggarts.
No one wanted to go first to have their fears go first to show the group. Near the back at least no one would be able to ridicule you after having all of their own fears exposed. Or at least that was the theory swirling around their class.
They were in a line and the first nervous hufflepuff boy walked forward to stand a little ways from the cabinet holding the Boggart.
“Everyone, make no sound and try not to move too much,” Professor Lupin said, “For this to work, the Boggart must focus fully on its single target. I’ve cast a spell to dull its senses, but if we’re too obvious then it may get distracted. Now, let us begin. Are you ready?”
The hufflepuff boy nodded and held his wand at the ready.
Lupin took a few steps back to stand by the edge of the room. He flicked his wand and the door on the cabinet unlocked with a soft click. There was some scuffling and then the sounds from withing the cabinet died down. The door creaked open and a sixth year Slytherin girl climbed out. Her green robes were scuffed and dusty. Her eyes were flashing with madness as her expression twisted into a comical mask of anger. It must have been someone that had been drugged with a love potion at Halloween.
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The Boggart pretending to be a girl raised its wand as if to cast a spell at the hufflepuff boy. The boy flinched, seemingly to have forgotten about his wand as he stood there frozen in fear.
“Riddikulus,” Professor Lupin said calmly. The Boggart shifted so the girl was now holding a bouquet of colorful flowers, angrily pointing them at the boy and waving them around like a wand. The room laughed at the comical sight as the Boggart’s face shifted from rage to confusion as it noticed that its fake wand had been replaced.
As the room laughed, the girl’s form melted into a whitish mist that shot at a high speed back into the cabinet and shut the door shut. Lupin locked the door again behind the Boggart.
“There’s no shame in it. There’s always next time,” Lupin said comfortingly to the boy who had just faced the Boggart, “Think of what you could change about your fear to make it amusing. It should be much easier now that you know what it is most likely to be.”
The line continued as people faced their fears one at a time. A surprising amount of them were drugged students who had attacked them during the Halloween feast. Two students even had Dumbledore with glowing eyes and wind swirling around him emerge from the cabinet. Lupin had quickly shut those two down quickly. It seems that even messing with a boggart form of Dumbledore wouldn’t be permitted. The rest of the students who went usually had some form of monster or magical creature they had always feared growing up.
Wizarding children had plenty of options of dark magical creatures to be afraid of, so it was a surprisingly varied selection. Ginny realized as the line grew shorter that perhaps she and Jack had made the wrong choice of when they should go. She had seen the others' fears, and she felt the suspense build. What would her fear be? What was the one thing that the Boggart would turn into? Pettigrew attacking her? Fawkes being killed? All the horrible options ran through her head over and over as she and Jack slowly inched forward.
Jack went forward. His fear was a massive acromantula. He used the Riddikulus spell to shift the spider so it was wearing an odd tailored suit with a tucked in tie on its underside. A giant handlebar mustache sprouted from just above its clicking mandibles. No one else including Ginny understood, but Jack giggled and laughed as he saw it and so the Boggart fled again.
Then it was Ginny’s turn. She raised her own wand and glanced behind her. There were only three people left behind her.
“Are you ready, Ms. Weasley?” Lupin asked.
Ginny shifted her sweaty grip on her wand and focused on the cabinet, blasting her magic senses to the maximum.
“I’m ready,” She replied without looking away.
Out of the corner of her vision, Ginny saw Lupin waving his wand and the cabinet unlocked.
Ginny waited tense as nothing happened for a moment. The door crashed open and the limp form of a girl came tumbling out in a pile of limbs. She was in red Gryffindor robes and her skin was pale. Ginny felt her blood run cold as what was clearly a dead body kept rolling with its moment until it was facing her, its open and empty eyes staring blanky directly into her own. She started trembling. “No… No…” She said, her wand forgotten as a strand of red hair fell across the face of the pale face. Her face. Ginny’s face. The Ginny who had died down in the Chamber of Secrets and had Harry’s soul take over her old body. Her soul taking over the body.
There were gasps and mutters behind Ginny from the other students. The professor looked frozen, staring at the dead Ginny’s body in shock and seemingly unable to respond as he glanced between the living Ginny and the corpse.
Just when Ginny had started controlling her fear and prepared to cast the Ridikulus charm, she noticed something gold shimmering around the corpse. Her eyes widened as the golden chains of fate sprouted out of nothing in a ball of flailing tendrils even as they simultaneously speared into the dead Ginny’s limbs.
The corpse twitched as the Chains of Fate twisted and bent where they attached to the old Ginny’s corpse. It stood to its feet unnaturally, carried by the golden strings even as its body was completely limp.
Ginny could only watch in terror as the golden strings forced the body’s face into a wide smile and forced the corpse to blink. Ginny could see the golden strings pushing and lifting the eyelids of the red haired girl, slightly out of sync. The eyes were still dead and lifeless as the limp corpse’s gaze somehow still was piercing as its head faced her.
The web of golden strings flexed and kept wrapping tighter and tighter around the corpse. It was still smiling, blinking out of sync. All guided by the chains of Fate. The corpse bowed to the real Ginny, keeping its head facing her the whole time with a forced grin on its face. It straightened up and after striking a pose, began to dance.
It wasn’t a natural dance that remained on the floor and obeyed the laws of gravity. It was like a puppet show, the corpse’s body jerking up and down off the ground unnaturally as the golden strings tugged and moved it wildly. The limbs and head were thrown around wildly as the corpse’s body was twirled around over and over. It spun and twirled, leaping around on the end of Fate’s strings, its head and empty eyes always still facing Ginny.
It landed on the ground and stopped moving. Ginny could see its face. Its eyes suddenly had the faintest hint of life in them. The other Ginny’s eyes began to well up, and tears ran down her cheeks and dripped off of her chin to the floor. The golden strings were still making her smile. The other Ginny started dancing again, sending drops of her tears flying in every direction as her head snapped violently from side to side and her hair flew every which way as the puppet strings pulled on her, uncaring for how hurt the puppet was getting with its jerky motions.
Suddenly, Ginny’s view of the Boggart was blocked as someone stepped in front of her. Ginny blinked and felt her rapidly beating heart and rapid breathing for the first time. The rest of the world had faded away to nothing as her fear overwhelmed her as she had watched the Boggart before. Now it came rushing back, with the muttering of the students behind her.
The person who had stood in front of her stepped forward towards the dancing corpse of Ginny and it twisted and popped as it turned into a giant image of a full moon with some wispy clouds around slightly shrouding it. Lupin pointed towards the image of the moon.
“Ridikulus,” He said firmly and the moon shifted into a bright red balloon that was letting air out of one end the balloon flew over the room until Lupin cast another spell and launched the flying Bogart with a strong blow like it had been struck by a massive hand. The boggart in red balloon form was blasted back into the cabinet with a heavy thunk. Lupin quickly shut the cabinet doors and locked them with two spells.
Ginny looked behind her and saw that the whole class was looking at her. Some horrified, some pitying. Some curious, nothing but cold interest in their eyes as their gazes went between the rattling cabinet and Ginny.
She looked at Jack and saw that he was in the pitying camp. Ginny looked away. How would she be able to explain this to anyone?