Chapter 52: Boggart
Blaise ZabiniHogwarts, Great Britain
“Have I ever told you how much I despise herbology?” I grumbled as I shuffled out of my warm, expensive, coat. Instead, I donned a leather smock and work gloves. “Just walking here is a pain in the ass in the winter.”
“Blaise Zabini is cold; what a tragedy. Someone tell the Daily Prophet,” Padma said sarcastically. “Really, it’s just the first lesson of the term. I’m sure we won’t be doing anything too bad.”
“It’s the principle of the matter. Who wants to trek through eight inches of snow just to get to a greenhouse of all places?”
“Oh, come off it, Blaise. The greenhouse is heated and you know it.”
“Fine… Sit with me?”
“Sure, but you have to put in an honest effort.”
“I always do. Plants just hate me.”
A knowing cough interrupted us. Professor Sprout stood at the front of the class with a friendly smile. “You know, I never would have said my lovely plants could hate anyone, but you do make me wonder, young man.”
“In my defense, professor, I know all the theory. I just have a hell of a Black Thumb,” I said with a wry smile.
“Yes, I think we’ve all noticed. Fortunately for you, we’ll be working with stinging nettles today, a completely muggle plant.”
“Oh, thank Merlin. I might get to touch something besides dirt today. Great start to the semester, prof.”
Padma elbowed me in the side. “Sorry, professor. I swear he thinks he’s funnier than he is.”
“Don’t we all,” Sprout laughed goodnaturedly. She was great like that; she and Flitwick were just about the only two professors students could actually joke with on occasion. “Now, Mr. Zabini, since I have you in front of me, can you tell me what stinging nettles are used for?”
“I can, professor. Nettles are an ingredient in boil-cure and hair-dying potions. They can also be consumed normally as wine, tea, or as part of a soup,” I answered dutifully.
She nodded in satisfaction. The fact that I can and did give these responses was just about the only reason she didn’t hate my guts, especially given how often I almost blew up, fumed, or otherwise ruined her greenhouse.
She tossed me two points to Slytherin, one per each magical use of the plant, and continued with her lecture. “That’s right. They’re also sometimes called burn hazel, mostly by old-school druids or hedge witches.
“Despite being an entirely muggle plant, it is a highly versatile one, which is why I dedicate a portion of my greenhouse to it. On top of the uses Mr. Zabini gave us, nettle extract can also be applied topically onto the hair and scalp to give your hair a clean, glossy finish. I also happen to think it smells rather nice.
“Today, you will help me pick and dry the leaves. Nothing particularly exciting, just a bit of relaxing gardening to get us back into rhythm, hmm?”
The class was nice. For once, I wasn’t the one who caused a mess. Because the plants were not magically sensitive, they did not react to the passive mana I gave off.
Instead, Vincent forgot his gloves and decided he was too manly to care about the “stinging” half of the plant’s name. He grabbed the whole plant in a hamfisted grip, got stung, and tried to suck his fingers to make them feel better.
Yes, he stuck his hand… full of little, stinging hairs… into his mouth. The difference between ambition and intelligence had never been more thoroughly exemplified.
Needless to say, Slytherin lost the points I started us with. Not that I minded overmuch. It was nice not being the eye of the storm for a change.
“Study group?” Padma asked. “Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at the library after class. Today is Monday.”
I blinked at her owlishly. “You’re kidding. Pads, do you really think people will bother attending so early in the semester? We don’t even have any homework.”
“You study ahead. Sure, you’re you, but classes are only going to get tougher. There’s no harm in getting in the habit.”
“As first years? I’m impressed, Padma Patil.”
“When you are young, you make your habits. When you are old, your habits make you,” she said primly.
“That’s a quote, isn’t it?”
“Dad says it a lot. So what? It’s still true.”
“So it is. I don’t think I’ll visit today, but I promise I’ll drop by on Wednesday.”
“Hmm? What’s happening today? I didn’t think you’d have anything better to do.”
“The Weasley twins are still upset with me about something. They found a boggart in an abandoned classroom and are going to put it where I can find it.”
“Ah, I remember now. You did something to their pet?”
“I didn’t,” I said, technically truthfully. I just arranged a feathered assassin for their pet. For entirely justified reasons.
“Do they know that?”
“They’ll believe what they want.”
“You don’t even care to defend yourself, do you?”
“To them? Not particularly, no. Violet gave me a heads up before we left for winter break. The twins were looking for a boggart to mess with me.”
“And they finally found one. You should tell the professors.”
I smiled guilelessly. “Why Padma, they went through so much effort. How could I spoil the fun?”
“Of course,” she said, shaking her head with fond amusement.
X
Truthfully, I had no plan for facing the boggart. I’d read up on the spell of course, but practicing it to mastery was hardly a priority. Instead, I saw this as a bit of assisted self-reflection. I really had no idea what my boggart would be and found myself curious.
Maybe it was unwise, “exposing my weakness” to people, but it was such a low-stakes prank that I couldn’t bring myself to care. If anything, I was grateful to the twins for this. What better way to learn about myself than by having an objective mirror held to my deepest insecurities?
Boggarts were “non-beings,” creatures that the International Confederation of Wizards classified as “Non-Human Spiritous Apparitions.” They shared this classification alongside poltergeists and dementors, but were distinct from ghosts in that they were never considered alive.
As magical spirits, they formed in places of high magical concentration and typically embodied an emotion: Poltergeists like Peeves represented mischief and pranked people. Dementors represented despair by literally sucking up the joy in an area. Boggarts represented fear, usually by locking onto the nearest person and turning into their phobia.
That raised some questions for me. After all, not all fears were tangible. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that most people feared intangible things rather than spiders, snakes, or even Voldemort. What form could a boggart take to represent stage fright, heights, or simply the idea of the unknown and unknowable? A karaoke machine, broken parachute, or a yawning void didn’t quite capture the sensation of those phobias.
In canon, Remus stood before a boggart and it turned into the moon, because the moon was the physical representation of the curse of lycanthropy in his mind. So there was obviously some wiggle room, but boggarts weren’t all-powerful. They were confined to the room they occupied and were limited to a singular transformation at a time.
More excited than nervous, I walked right into their trap. The twins had placed a boggart at the entrance to the dungeons after the last potions class of the day, ensuring that only Slytherins were likely to pass by. They hid it in a suit of armor and ducked inside a nearby supply closet to watch the chaos.
Only, I wasn’t the first one here. They were annoyed with me specifically, but they saw nothing wrong with pranking the entire house. As it happened, the other first years passed by this corridor before me.
There stood Lyra, front and center. Before her was Lucius, but the love in his eyes I saw at the winter gala was gone. He was Lord Malfoy now, as frigid and cruel to his daughter as he was to everyone else. He looked down at her with a disapproving frown.
“You foolish child,” he hissed. “You are a disgrace to the name of Malfoy. What have you done?”
“I-I-You’re not father,” she stammered. Her face flushed as she realized we were watching. “Stay back. I can handle one, lousy boggart.”
I let out a quiet sigh as she froze in place. Somehow, I felt I should have seen this coming. Of course her greatest fear was her father’s disapproval. She was a fourteen year old girl who grew up being told all her life that her family was the greatest, that her father was the greatest.
Some time in the future, when Voldemort comes back, she would learn the truth. She’d learn just how horrible and oppressive the Death Eaters were, even to other purebloods. Her greatest fear would likely shift then to Voldemort, as I imagined it did for Draco as well. But for now, she looked so young like this, a naive girl living in a small, sheltered world.
“Nothing but a disgrace. Unworthy. You should have been born a boy. At least then, your children could carry the name,” not-Lucius spat.
We watched her struggle with the boggart. As deeply as the words cut her, I noticed that it could not discern any specific details about Lyra’s life. The fear was easy enough to identify, but it could only speak in broad strokes. It fed off her fear, but wasn’t a legilimens. After a while, its words started to sound rather repetitive.
Just as I was starting to wonder if Lyra actually knew the spell, someone else cast it in her stead. Turning, I found Cheryl Dupree, the fastest wand in her year and the girl who’d promised me dueling lessons.
Her wand flashed almost faster than I could track. Suddenly, Lucius Malfoy was wearing a ballerina’s tutu. His voice pitched into a high falsetto as he danced and sang. I was pretty sure it was from Swan Lake. Cheryl was into ballet, unexpected.
“Really? A boggart?” she frowned. “The Weasley twins, no doubt. Are you alright, Malfoy?”
Lyra took a second to collect herself and scowled. “I’m fine. I didn’t need your help.”
“Of course not.”
“I didn’t!”
“I didn’t disagree.”
“W-Whatever,” she scoffed. Whirling, she stomped towards the dungeons with what dignity she had left.
More’s the pity. Personally, I thought she would have saved her pride if she’d at least thanked Cheryl. No one expected a first year to know third year material. It was her lack of grace that made people judge her.
Seeing the drama was over, I walked up next to Cheryl and tapped her elbow. “Say, mind if I take a shot at the boggart?”
“Zabini? You… want to face a boggart?”
“Yes, why not? I’m curious, aren’t you?”
“I mean, sure, why not? I’ll stick around and bail you out. As thanks for the wand polish.”
“Much obliged.”
I stepped forward. The boggart exploded out of the armor again in a plume of smoke that quickly coalesced. The smoke cleared and a sense of deep foreboding and the smell of piss and shit filled the air.
A bloated corpse in a beggar's rags greeted me. He hung from a manifested gallows, head blue with coagulated blood. His tongue was a vivid purple and thrice as thick as it should be, so that it emerged unbidden from his gurgling mouth. The rope, made of thick hemp, chafed visibly, digging deep into his broken neck.
Excrement dribbled down his pants legs, staining them dark. His arms and legs twitched independently, grasping at the life that quickly fled from him. All the while, his eyes locked onto me, accusing me, as if I was responsible for his sentence.
The curious whispers of my fellow first years fell silent. The students who’d been headed the same way froze. Some retched at the sudden smell. This was admittedly far more vivid than I expected.
To be fair, I had no true expectations, but facing a boggart was a lot more involved than the movies or books made it out to be. More than vision alone, it truly captured all the senses to emulate one’s greatest fear. I could understand now why Molly Weasley collapsed into a sobbing wreck after seeing her children’s corpses.
I steeled my occlumency and laughed. My housemates looked at me like I was an idiot but I couldn’t help it. There was some fear, but it was the natural aversion the living had for decay and other rancid things. Rather than outright terror, I found myself morbidly fascinated.
“A man hanging from the gallows?” I mused aloud, trying to put the pieces together. I reached out, almost close enough to touch his hand. “I’m sorry, but I don’t fear corpses. Or is it death itself that you believe I fear?”
Clearly, there was more to this than just the body. I’d already died once. I’d killed my dear Aunt Carmen. I did have nightmares about that night sometimes. And yet, it clearly wasn’t my greatest fear. If I feared bodies or gore, the boggart would have shown me her mangled face, with the skull I’d caved in with my own, two hands.
No, that was not a phobia of mine. Nor was I obsessed with the fear of death as Voldemort was. I feared death as much as anyone else, possibly a bit less. If anything, I preferred to think of myself as akin to Ignotus Peverell. Death was something of a known quantity, an acquaintance.
So what did it represent besides the obvious?
I smiled. When I considered it from that angle, the answer was as clear as day. Here was, quite literally, the Hanged Man, twelfth of the major arcana of tarots.
Well, not quite. The Hanged Man was, in virtually every tarot deck, a man tied upside down by one ankle from a tree or post. It didn’t usually depict a literal execution except in the Tarocco Siciliano, the version used to play the Sicilian tarocchi.
I wondered if the boggart was confused. I was Sicilian, but I didn’t have any special fondness for that particular tarot. Or maybe the spirit sensed something regarding death and did its best to mix the two? It wasn’t as if it was obligated to precisely follow the tarot; its sole purpose was to convey a sense of fear.
In that sense, I supposed this was the best it could do. It saw in me a cocktail of fears, none of which it could easily embody, none that could be teased out independent of the others. So, it presented what it could, in a format I would clearly understand.
The Hanged Man was the tarot of uncertainty, sacrifice, and prophecy. Upright, it advised patience and caution. It warned that all things had a price, that perhaps, I should consider walking a different path. Laid out like this, I began to understand myself a little better.
I feared these things. I feared failure. I feared making things worse. Simultaneously, I feared being too passive, the uncertainty that could be as ruinous as haste. I feared the weight of prophecy that was mine alone. And yes, I feared the death that might follow as a course of my actions.
All these things were tied to my divination, my future knowledge. Was it any surprise then that the boggart chose the tarot to express itself? It wasn’t an evil spirit, simply a mirror to reflect upon. Seeing the boggart take this form was an enlightening experience.
Knowing these things did not make me a more powerful wizard, but I couldn’t help feeling appreciative. This was altogether more introspection than I expected to do on the first day of class.
“Thank you for your guidance,” I said. With a grateful smile, I bowed at the waist. Turning, I found that I’d drawn a bit of a crowd. “Hmm? Oh, sorry, did anyone else want to meet their fears?”
“I… Do you need some help, Zabini?” Cheryl asked. She seemed unsure, probably because I appeared so calm yet hadn’t bothered with the banishing charm.
“No, that’s alright. The scene just left me feeling a little contemplative, that’s all. That thing doesn’t quite have the same impact as my actual fears.”
“Do you know the boggart-banishing charm?”
“Riddikulus, yes. I’d like to cast it a few times if you don’t mind. I saw your wand motions, seemed simple enough.”
“It is. Get rid of it already; it’s stinking up the corridor.”
“Ah, sorry.” I waved my wand to trace the shape of a shallow bowl. “Riddikulus.”
Nothing happened. I tried a few more times to the same effect. Apparently, my idea of comedy just wasn’t good enough for the charm to take hold.
“You need to think of something funny.”
“I was thinking of a clown.”
“Something you find funny that's related to the boggart's expression of your fear. Otherwise, the magic won’t take.”
“Fair enough. Hmm… The stink reminds me of Nurgle. Maybe a Great Unclean One? Nah, that’s not very funny. Or Ku’gath when he was Nurgling?”
“Whatever. Cast or I’ll do it for you.”
“An execution as the theme, hmm…?” Then, it came to me. “Oh! I know! Riddikulus!”
The change was immediate. The gallows withdrew. From below rose a chopping block. The thick rope that bound the neck became twin halberds, each as tall as a grown man. They crossed before him with the sound of scraping steel.
The cadaver morphed into a towering giant. His hands fell in front, shackled in thick chains. His shirt gained a noticeable plume of frills. Over his back formed a massive, crimson overcoat with golden epaulets that emphasized the man’s broad shoulders. All to form the body of a man who defined an era.
The nondescript face became more rugged, handsome yet weathered. A long, black mustache curled beneath his nose as his lips spread into a wide, sharklike grin. Gone were the eyes of the dead. They were piercing now, full of pride and gazing upon a horizon only he could see.
He raised his head to look us all in the eyes. The corridor fell silent. Everyone who was considering moving past me froze as the man’s sheer presence filled the hall.
He threw his head back and roared, the last words of a man that ushered in the Romance Dawn. “Bwahahaha!!! My treasure? If you want it, you can have it! Find it! I left everything this world has to offer there!”
The halberds, wielded by faceless shadows, rose into the air. They fell with the sickening squelch of steel parting flesh. The head followed, the dull thump of it meeting the ground sounded like a gong in the silence.
I laughed. I threw my head back and cackled like a loon as one of the most iconic scenes in all of fiction was recreated right before my eyes.
In that moment, though I knew exactly what I’d done, I fell in love with magic all over again. This was a perfect recreation, straight out of memory. No, better than perfect, for no studio could capture the sheer gravitas of the man before me: Gol D. Roger, the Pirate King.
“Hehehe. Thanks a bunch, Dupree. It was a ton of fun,” I giggled and stepped back with a flourishing bow. “Anyone else wanna go? This has been enlightening.”
“What in Merlin’s beard was that, Zabini?” she demanded.
“Hmm? You said the riddikulus charm only works when I imagine something funny. One execution reminded me of another.”
“That was a comedy? What part of that was a comedy?”
“One Piece is a fantastic action-comedy, thank you very much.”
“Of course you’d find beheadings funny. Bloody seers,” she muttered.
“Not all beheadings,” I said defensively. “Just this one in particular. It’s epic. And iconic. And genre-defining.”
“What do you have against giants?” another student asked. “You know, besides being dumb, subhuman, and unworthy of magic.”
“Nothing. That’s not a giant. That’s Roger.”
“That’s a giant. Or at least, a half-giant. Got something against the groundskeeper?”
“No? I like him just fine.”
“Sure you do,” Theo said as he put an arm around my shoulder. The little shit was grinning ear-to-ear. “You know, I had my doubts about you, Zabini, what with you slumming it with mudbloods and getting cozy with Potter. I'm glad to be proven wrong, though.”
My mouth opened and closed but no sound came out. I'd clearly miscalculated. Of course they would think Roger was a half-giant. That was the only frame of reference they had for Oda's freakishly tall humans.
The worst part about this was that desecrating the epic scene with fantasy racism probably earned me street cred among my housemates. I let out a deep sigh. Hopefully, I'd figure out the vivarium situation before word got to Hagrid.
Author’s Note
Yes, Blaise’s boggart is the Hanged Man, as best as the boggart can interpret. Being a seer and an occlumens does silly things to things that are meant to be spiritual reflections of you.
Suddenly One Piece! No, I have no idea why, either. Sometimes, I get strange ideas. That’s just how it goes. One Piece came out in 1997 in Japan as a manga and 2002 in the US as an anime.
Animal Fact: Puffins are a type of seabird. They mate for life and their chicks are called "pufflings." The mated pair alternates between hunting and watching the pufflings. Sometimes they fly as far as thirty miles out to sea just to reach a good fishing spot.
They’re some of the better fishers among birds because they have shorter wingspans. This makes them much more maneuverable in the water, but less so in the air. Some birds, especially skuas, take advantage of this by harassing the puffins as they return to shore, forcing them to drop their catch.
Also, they’re apparently quite tasty. Sixty percent of all puffins nest in Iceland and they have a history of hunting them. However, because puffins are considered vulnerable species, there has been a fair bit of pushback from conservationists demanding restaurants take them off menus.
I don’t live in Iceland so I have no idea how big the issue is there. Maybe one of y’all can fill me in.