Victor walked back to the group. Every student in the room was looking at him with the same expression — somewhere between unnerved and genuinely confused.
They had shared classes with him for two years.
He never reacted to anything. Same face in every situation, every lesson, every moment. They had all assumed somewhere underneath it there was something normal — spiders maybe, or the dark, or failure. Something recognizable.
But what they had just seen wasn't any of that. Strange shapes, collapsing galaxies, everything consumed by darkness, and at the end the Boggart itself had decided it wanted no part of whatever this was and gone back into the wardrobe on its own.
Was he as unsettling on the inside as he appeared on the outside?
"What?" Victor said, looking at the stares. "Is it shocking that I fear something?"
Nobody said it out loud. But the answer was more or less yes, and also that wasn't the part they were stuck on.
"Victor you have to understand, they're looking at you because you're comp—" Draco started.
Victor reached over and covered his mouth.
"Do you think I'm blind?" he said. "I can see them looking."
Draco removed his hand from his face with some dignity.
Lupin looked at Victor with the expression of a man quietly revising his expectations for this class.
"So," he said. "Who would like to go next?"
Victor turned and pushed Draco forward.
"He will," he said. "I want to know what he's scared of."
Draco shuffled forward but didn't move with any particular confidence. He stood in front of the wardrobe, jaw set.
"Remember the spell," Lupin said. "And think clearly about what you want it to become."
The wardrobe burst open.
A teenager stepped out. A hundred and fifty centimeters, ash blonde hair, grey eyes, Slytherin robes. The class went very still as they worked out what they were looking at.
Draco's worst fear was his brother.
The Boggart wearing Victor's face turned slowly toward Draco Malfoy, its expression settling into something far worse than anger—quiet, absolute disappointment.
"Draco," it said, voice calm and cutting, "you are a disappointment."
Lupin pressed his lips together. What kind of family produced two students like this?
Then he remembered.
Malfoys.
Ah. No wonder.
Ron looked at the Boggart Victor. Then at the real Victor standing three feet away with the exact same expression on his face.
"Okay," Ron said. "One of you was already enough. There's two of you now and I don't like it."
The real Victor looked at Draco.
"Riddikulus, Draco," Lupin said, recovering. "Whenever you're ready."
Draco raised his wand.
"Riddikulus."
The Boggart Victor bloated outward, skin stretching, arms ballooning until he was round and wobbling, robes straining at the seams.
Then he popped. Air shrieked out of him in a long, flat wheeze as he spun wildly around the corridor, ricocheting off the walls before smacking face first into the wardrobe door and sliding down it.
The class burst out laughing.
Draco smiled. Not a smirk — an actual smile. The kind that came from somewhere genuine. If he couldn't say it to Victor's face, at least he'd managed it here.
"Excellent," Lupin said, and he was smiling too. "Well done Draco."
Draco turned around, satisfaction still on his face.
Victor was looking at him.
Same expression as always. Same grey eyes. The exact face the Boggart had just been wearing before Draco had inflated and popped it.
The urge to raise his wand again was immediate and strong.
He didn't. He wasn't stupid. Whatever satisfaction he'd get from casting it would last approximately two seconds before Victor did something about it, and Draco had a reasonable sense of how that ended.
He pocketed his wand instead and looked away.
Small victories.
"Now, someone from Gryffindor," Lupin said, gesturing toward the group.
Hermione stepped forward.
The wardrobe flew open.
Professor McGonagall strode out, robes sharp, expression sharper, a scroll of parchment in her hand. She looked directly at Hermione over the top of it.
"Miss Granger," she said, her voice carrying the particular disappointment that cut deeper than shouting. "You have failed. All of your subjects."
Hermione went rigid.
Lupin stood to the side and observed.
This class was something else entirely. A boy whose fear had sent the creature back into the wardrobe screaming. Another boy whose greatest fear was his own brother's expression. And now a girl who feared academic failure above everything else.
Strange lot.
"Whenever you're ready, Hermione," Lupin said.
Hermione raised her wand, squared her shoulders, and said clearly — "Riddikulus."
McGonagall's severe expression collapsed into something baffled as a graduation hat three times too large dropped onto her head and tipped sideways over her eyes. She reached up, batting at it, spinning in a slow circle trying to see, robes swishing.
The class laughed.
"Excellent," Lupin said. "Well done."
He turned to face the rest of the class, something settled and encouraging in his expression.
"You see — there is nothing to fear. Focus, think clearly, and you can defeat it. The Boggart has no power beyond what you give it." He looked along the corridor. "That is the lesson. Not the spell — the spell is simple. It is the mind behind it that matters."
The mood in the room had shifted entirely from when they had first arrived. The wardrobe no longer seemed particularly threatening.
The rest of the class formed a line without being asked.
One by one they stepped up — spiders, failing grades, a hand shooting out of a dark lake, a parent's disappointed face — each fear becoming something ridiculous, each Riddikulus drawing laughter from the corridor until the Boggart was spinning frantically between forms, barely keeping up.
Then Harry stepped forward.
*****
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