Remedial History

Chapter Eight: Curses and Boggarts

"Learning about the last war is all very well and good, but it's taking our attention away from more practical matters. It's time we actually practiced some of the Dark Arts," said Blaise as the next Pureblood Youth League meeting came to order.

Dionysius Moon and a couple of the other Ravenclaws nodded their agreement.

"Agreed," said Draco quickly, sounding anxious not to lose control of the meeting. "That was just what I had planned for this evening. We'll start by studying curses."

Theo bit his lower lip, remembering all the times Professor Moody had made them stay after class and practice putting curses on spiders, and later in the year, frogs and rabbits. He hadn't enjoyed those lessons.

"Everybody, find a partner," Draco ordered, a note of renewed confidence coming into his voice. "If you weren't in Moody's fourth-year class, find someone who was. We're going to try putting the Imperius curse on people."

The members of the P.Y.L. muttered under their breaths and stared at their leader in surprise. Theo thought Draco had gone much too far this time, but neither Blaise nor anybody else spoke up.

Draco waved his hand at the cup of blood that stood on one of the bookshelves, still red and unclotted. "As we all know, this is an Unforgivable curse, which means using it on another human being is punishable by life in Azkaban. But I hope most of us would rather kill a traitor than see one of our brothers or sisters go to Azkaban. For your own safety, if you have any thought of revealing what you see and hear tonight - leave. Now."

Nobody moved.

Theo chose Blaise as his partner. They stepped into the farthest corner of the room.

"Imperio!" shouted Blaise, his head held high, his cheeks flushed.

Theo felt lightheaded and euphoric as Blaise commanded him to stand on his head and wave his legs in the air. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice as gentle as a rippling stream murmured, Only through submission and obedience shall you gain your freedom ... only through submission and obedience... He understood at last. Giving himself over to another's will was sweet and proper ... it seemed like he had been born to obey.

Theo fell over sideways when Blaise lifted the curse. As he picked himself up from the floor, he had a vague sense that the pleasure he had felt had been hollow and empty, like a pleasant dream.

"Wow," he said weakly. "You're good."

"Thanks. Let's see you have a go."

"Imperio!" said Theo. The curse didn't seem to take, so he tried again, louder. "Imperio! Um, act like a chicken!"

Blaise laughed and shook his head. "You've got to mean an Unforgivable curse for it to have any effect on a human being. For Imperius, you have to think mastery."

Mastery, thought Theo, mastery, mastery. The more he concentrated on the word, the more it seemed a meaningless set of syllables. "Imperio!"

Still no good. "Let me show you how," said Blaise. "Imperio!"

This time, Theo made up his mind to resist the desire to obey that kept washing over him in sweet, warm waves. I won't, he thought once, as Blaise ordered him to jump up on the table and dance. Twice. The third time he drowned.

"You almost fought it," said Blaise as Theo got down from the table, to the cheers and laughter of the other Slytherins. Apparently it had been some dance.

"Let's have another go. Bet you I can fight it off it this time."

Blaise hesitated for just a moment, as if he were calculating something. "Nah, I've got it down. Your turn to try putting me under."

Theo tried again, and again, and again. It never worked.

"Don't worry about it," said Blaise. "I read a book about the Unforgivables once, and it said that you have to be a certain type of person to put someone under Imperius. Not everybody can be a master - and every master needs a good right-hand man."

Theo watched the other members of the P.Y.L. Draco and Pansy hadn't succeeded in putting the curse on each other, but had slightly better luck when they split up and partnered with Crabbe and Goyle, who were hopeless both at cursing and at resisting. Malcolm Baddock had only partially cursed Daphne, who hadn't been able to curse Malcolm at all. Tracey and Queenie had no luck with each other, nor did most of the other pairs of students. And Millicent Bulstrode refused to participate in the practice; she huddled in a corner, wand out, ready to cast a Stinging Hex at anybody who tried to approach her.

The full implications of what Blaise had just said began to dawn on him.

He looked back at his friend, who was smiling broadly. "Not much competition, is there, Theo? I think you'll be second-in-command in the Pureblood Youth League by Christmas."

Draco must have had the same thought, because he looked over at Theo and Blaise, scowled, and instructed everyone to switch partners. Theo and Tracey made a few halfhearted attempts to put the Imperius curse on each other, but they soon gave up and started watching Blaise's technique. He cast the curse on Queenie and Pansy, and then offered to practice with Draco as well, but the P.Y.L. leader declined. Blaise shrugged and paired up with his Ravenclaw friend, Dionysius Moon, instead. Moon appeared to be making an attempt to resist the curse, but he wasn't very successful.

"You came a lot closer," said Tracey. "I watched you when you were practicing with Blaise. And, well, Blaise is good."

Theo agreed. "I'm almost sure I would have been able to fight it off the next time around." He wondered if Blaise would be up for another practice session in the common room after the others went to bed.

Tracey fidgeted with her bracelets for a moment and said suddenly, "Would you like to, you know, do something with me sometime?"

"Like practicing the Imperius curse?" Theo asked absent-mindedly.

She laughed as if he'd said one of the wittiest things she'd ever heard. "No, silly, like going somewhere in Hogsmeade the weekend after next."

"Oh. Sure," said Theo, feeling idiotic but happy.

As he walked back to the dorm after the meeting, he thought it had been quite a good evening, although a very unusual one. He wasn't used to girls asking him out, and he definitely wasn't used to being one of the few students who could do something. The only time anything like this had ever happened before was during that one disastrous Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson at the beginning of his third year, and that had been entirely an accident...

* * *

The start-of-term feast had been agony that year. He hadn't been able to eat much; his mind was too full of the dementors stationed around the school and the equally terrifying prospect of having to take Care of Magical Creatures with Mr. Hagrid. Crabbe and Goyle, who seemed to have an animal-like ability to scent fear and go in for the kill, caught him alone in the corridor after the feast while Draco distracted Blaise. "What's the matter, rat-boy? Did you catch the fainting sickness from Potter?"

Goyle grabbed his robes from behind, pulled him to the floor, and choked him as Crabbe took his shoes off and stomped on his feet. Theo made a feeble attempt to kick him, but he was too small to do Crabbe much damage, and he couldn't even see where he was kicking because Goyle was sitting on his head.

"Let him go. Now," ordered a quiet, hoarse voice.

"What are you going to do about it?" said Goyle. "You look like we could break you in two."

"I don't think you want to try," said the voice pleasantly, and its possessor muttered some sort of spell that sent Crabbe and Goyle flying in opposite directions. Theo had a vague impression of patched robes, hollow cheeks, and a surprisingly firm grip as the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor helped him to his feet. "No fighting in the corridors - and I never want to see two of you piling on one again. Ten points from - "

Theo shuddered. If Slytherin lost the first House points of the year because of him, he'd pay for it as soon as he went up to the dorm that night. He gave the new professor a pleading look. His eyes were blue-grey, and kind...

"Never mind," he said abruptly. "Detention for both of you. What are your names?"

He was addressing the others rather than Theo, who didn't stick around to see what would happen to them. He caught the words ungentlemanly and dishonorable as he fled to the Slytherin common room. He was grateful to the new professor for chasing Crabbe and Goyle away, but he couldn't help thinking the man had to be off his head to blame them for not being gentlemanly or honorable. It was like blaming them for not being hedgehogs or rabbits.

* * *

On the following night, Crabbe slouched into the common room and announced, "Weirdest. Professor. Ever."

"What'd he make you do?" asked Daphne.

"Well, first he tried to make me sit down and have tea with him."

Blaise, who was stretched out in front of the fire, laughed derisively. "You mean he actually made an attempt to civilize you? That must have been a fate worse than scrubbing out bedpans."

"Shut up," said Crabbe. "And then he asked me about my reason for beating up Nott, and when I said I didn't have one, he started going on about how every action has a reason and how reason is what separates humans from beasts - and he got this funny shivery look when he said that." He strode across the room to the armchair where Theo was trying his best to look invisible, and added in an undertone, "And he made me write this." Crabbe scowled and dropped a parchment in Theo's lap.

Dear Theodore,

I am writing to apolagise for beating up on you in the coridorr the other night. I didn't really have a good reason for it and it was not a nice thing to do, and I am very, very truly sorry. I promise I won't do it again. Please except my very sinsere apolagy.

Sinserely yours,

Vincent Crabbe

When Goyle returned from detention an hour later, he handed Theo a virtually identical note, only with a completely different set of spelling errors.

Theo didn't know whether to be more astonished that the new professor had accomplished this at all, or that he thought it was worth the trouble. He approached his first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson with a feeling of trepidation. It was obvious that Professor R. J. Lupin was both extraordinarily determined and completely barmy.

* * *

The wardrobe in the staff room rocked and rattled. Theo tried to flatten himself against the wall. This was much worse than anything he could have anticipated.

"First off," said Professor Lupin cheerfully, "who can tell me what a boggart is?"

Blaise raised his hand. "A boggart is a shape-shifting being that frequents dark, enclosed places. It is formless in isolation, but when confronted with humans, it assumes the shape of the worst fear of the individual who faces it. The charm to repel a boggart consists of the recitation of the incantation Riddikulus and the concentration of one's mental faculties on a form that one finds comical."

Theo recognized the bored, faintly ironic tone in his friend's voice. It meant he was quoting word for word from the textbook again.

Professor Lupin looked slightly taken aback. Most teachers did when they encountered Blaise's favorite parlor trick for the first time, although Professor Lockhart had merely nodded approvingly and said he couldn't have put it better himself. "That's correct," he said, although he was frowning a little.

After the class practiced the incantation, Lupin asked, "Right then, Draco, what would you say is the thing that frightens you most?"

"Hippogriffs," said Draco cockily, waving the arm Buckbeak had slashed open in Care of Magical Creatures a few days earlier.

Everyone laughed except Blaise and Professor Lupin, who said, "All right. How might you change a hippogriff to make it look amusing instead of scary?"

"Put a party hat on it?" suggested Draco, who still didn't appear to be taking the lesson seriously.

"Excellent. Now, I want you to concentrate very hard on that image of a hippogriff in a party hat, Draco ... and the rest of you, picture the thing that scares you most and imagine how you might make it look ridiculous ..."

Theo thought furiously. Hagrid ... Professor Hagrid ... was already sort of ridiculous, but he intimidated Theo anyway ... it was the same way with Peeves and most of the ghosts ... He was even more scared of Professor McGonagall, but he couldn't imagine her looking funny at all...

He missed whatever the professor said after that, and snapped back to reality as Draco was actually facing the boggart. It didn't look anything like a hippogriff. It bore a definite resemblance to Lucius Malfoy, and Draco had lost all his swagger and gone chalk white.

"Shame to me and to your ancestors," said Lucius in a chill, steely voice hardly louder than a whisper, "... disgrace to the house of Malfoy..."

"Go on," Professor Lupin urged him. "You can still do this - just imagine it in a party hat, like you planned..."

But Draco stood frozen to the floor of the staff room. Lupin stepped forward himself, and - crack! - the boggart turned into a silvery orb, which acquired a walrus mustache and horn-rimmed glasses when he shouted "Riddikulus!"

"Like that. Gregory! Forward!"

Crack! Draco's father had been icily calm, but Goyle's was clearly in a violent rage. Goyle clutched his wand, unable to make a sound...

"Millicent! Step forward, quickly!"

Crack! Mr. Bulstrode was ... Mr. Bulstrode had ... Theo averted his eyes. Professor Lupin knelt down in front of Millicent as if trying to shield her, as the boggart assumed the shape of Pansy Parkinson's mother.

"Riddikulus," said Pansy flatly. This had no particular effect on the boggart. She ducked behind Theo and shoved him forward.

Crack! The boggart turned into Hagrid and Professor McGonagall and Nearly Headless Nick, more or less all at once, as Theo gripped his wand and managed to stammer out "Riddikulus!" The staff room filled with nervous laughter as the other students caught sight of Hagrid in Professor McGonagall's best tartan dress robes and Nearly Headless Nick's ruff and hose.

"Excellent, Theo!" Professor Lupin said. "Twenty points to Slytherin!"

Theo stared at him. He almost never earned house points. But - but...

Now Blaise was facing the boggart, which had taken a strange form: a large brick house with closed doors and an ornate outdoor stairway leading to a second-floor balcony. Blaise - a smaller and younger Blaise - was huddled on the stairway and a few flakes of snow were falling in his hair.

"Riddikulus!" shouted Blaise confidently. Theo caught a quick glimpse of the house going up in a burst of flames. The boggart exploded and disappeared for good.

"Well done, Blaise. Let's see, that's ten points to Blaise for finishing the boggart off ... and five each to Draco, Gregory, Millicent, and Pansy for facing it. Plus Theo's twenty, so that makes fifty points for Slytherin. For homework, please read and summarize the chapter on boggarts in your textbook. And one last thing - " Professor Lupin paused as if he were choosing his words carefully. "Boggarts bring out certain vulnerabilities which are common to us all. Treat others as you would wish to be treated, and anything you have learned about your classmates today - stays in this room. Understood?"

His voice had gone hoarse again and he looked tired. Theo felt sorry for him.

Blaise hung back to speak to the professor, so Theo left the staff room alone. Two things troubled him. First of all, there was the matter of those twenty points. Theo didn't understand why he should have earned more points than Blaise, who had not only exploded the boggart, but answered Lupin's question at the beginning of class. He didn't feel as if he deserved them.

The second thing that bothered him was that he was almost sure that the boggart had a mole over one eyebrow. But Theo wasn't afraid of Medea. Was he?