Another Prisoner, Another Professor

"So - when the boggart turned into the tiny Lupin - " Harry said the next day, "what - why - "

"The way to defeat a boggart is to make it turn itself into something funny," said Black, and drained the rest of his butterbeer. "The strategy with a dementor is somewhat similar, actually. You have to think of your happiest memory and use it to generate a protector against the dementor, the force of misery." He smiled at Harry. "So start thinking."

"What counts as happy enough?" Harry asked. "I mean, is there a - minimum level of happiness you need?"

Black looked at him curiously. "You don't think you have a happy enough memory?"

"Well, it's not like I don't have any," Harry said at once. "I'm not saying I don't, it's just - I don't know if they're good enough. They probably are," he added. More than anything else, he didn't want Black to think that he was trying to make him feel sorry for him.

"I think the important thing," said Black, "is that it's a memory of a time where you were so overwhelmingly happy that you couldn't feel anything else. Do you have one of those?"

Harry remembered the day back during his first year when he had ridden a broomstick for the first time. It was one of his happiest memories, but he couldn't say that he'd been so happy that he didn't feel anything else - he'd been afraid that Madam Hooch was going to return and see him disobeying the rules, and worried that Malfoy was going to break Neville's Remembrall before he could get to it. Next he thought of last year when he'd defeated Riddle and all the Petrified people had returned to normal, but in a way that hadn't been just happiness, it had been relief - relief that it was over at last, that Hermione was back, that no now one would think he had been the one responsible. What about the end of his first year, when Gryffindor had won the House Cup...?

"Yeah," he said, "I think I do."

"Good." Black set down the empty bottle on his desk. "Are you done with your butterbeer? All right, this is what you do. The boggart comes out of the box, it sees you, it turns into a dementor. It's going to be difficult, but what you have to do is concentrate as hard as you can on that memory. Then you hold out your wand, point it at the dementor, and say Expecto patronum, all right?"

"All right," said Harry.

"Don't worry if you don't get it right the first time. I wouldn't expect anyone to get it right the first time, much less a thirteen-year-old. I know I didn't get it right when I first learned it."

"When did you first learn it?" Harry asked. He was trying to figure out when people usually learned how to fight dementors. Was it something they taught in seventh year?

Black glanced downward. "About twelve years ago," he said. "Are you ready?"

"There's just one thing," Harry said. "This protector thing - "

"Yes," said Black. "It's called a Patronus."

"What does a Patronus look like? How do we know when I've got it right?"

"They usually look like different animals," Black said. "If we're lucky, you'll get a little bit of silver fog on the first try - they're always silver."

"Why are they animals? Why silver animals?"

Black's mouth twitched; a second later, he started laughing. "You know, I don't know," he said. "No one ever explained that to me. Probably for the same reason that Veela are always blonde and spells are usually in some mangled form of Latin."

Harry wanted to ask what Veela were, but more than that he wanted to have a go at the boggart-dementor. "I think I'm ready," he said.

Black pulled open one of the drawers in his desk and took out the box. "Concentrate hard on that memory," he said. "Don't stop thinking about it."

Harry thought about Gryffindor winning the House Cup - the look of joyous shock on Neville's face, the decorations in the Great Hall changing from green to red, the cheers and the smiles and the incredulous looks from the Slytherin table. Black opened the box and the ghoulish hand emerged.

Suddenly Harry heard the terrified voice he had heard in his dream, the dream that no one needed to tell him had been real. "Not Harry, not Harry, please not - " He tried as hard as he could to think about the House Cup but the Great Hall was overwhelmed by the crib in the bedroom, the red of the decorations was replaced by the red of his mother's hair -

The next thing he knew he was looking not at red hair but at black; he was laying on the floor and Black was leaning over him, slapping him across the face.

"Sorry," Black said. "You opened your eyes somewhere in mid-slap."

"That's okay," Harry replied, his voice weak. His shoulders were resting on Black's arm. "Did I manage to do anything before I - " He didn't want to say he had fainted. "Before I passed out?"

"No," said Black. "Just looked at the dementor and fell straight back. Don't worry, you didn't hit your head, I caught you in time."

Harry sat up, rubbing his forehead. "I hate this."

"We can quit," Black said hastily. "Like I said before, I don't think that you're going to run into the dementors again - "

"No," said Harry. "Not this, I mean. Just - this whole thing." He felt limp, as drained and exhausted as he had ever felt in his life. He didn't even have the energy to care if Black felt sorry for him or not.

"I know it can't be easy," Black said. "You have - things in your past that - "

"Yeah," Harry muttered. "Just once I'd like to see Malfoy or Snape have to pass out in front of the whole school - "

"Snape did pass out in front of the whole school once," said Black. "We were in the same year. One day as everyone was coming back from a Quidditch match, he was walking ahead of everyone else - he was never very big on Quidditch matches, probably just wanted to get away as soon as he could - and came across a dead rabbit lying on the ground with its stomach ripped open. He had one look, vomited, and then his eyes rolled back in his head and there he was, out cold on the ground."

"Really?" Harry asked, amazed. "Snape's got all sorts of disgusting things in jars in his office, I wouldn't think a dead rabbit would make him faint."

"Yes," said Black, "but none of them are bleeding. He could deal with dead animals, he could deal with blood in a vial, but bleeding animals were a different story. Never took Care of Magical Creatures. If he ever gives you detention and makes you skin something, that's why. He's probably a lot better about it now, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still a struggle for him."

"Wouldn't have liked your old job," Harry said, "killing and skinning boomslangs." Black smiled.

"Oh, I'm supposed to give you chocolate," he said. He got a bar from his desk and handed it to Harry. Harry peeled off the wrapper, broke off a piece and took a bite; the moment he did so, warmth flooded back into his body.

"Do you want any, sir?" he asked Black after he had finished half the bar.

"No thanks," Black said. "I'm allergic."

"Really?"

"Really. I get rashes all over. Sometimes, when I was a boy and I'd done something that made Kreacher angry, he used to slip a little bit of chocolate into my food at dinner."

"Didn't your mother ever stop him?"

"Not usually, she and I didn't get along for a long time before we were estranged. Besides, he used to claim that he'd meant that plate for my brother."

"I didn't know you had a brother," Harry said.

"Yes. His name is Regulus."

"Is he older or younger?"

"Younger by a year."

"What does he do for a job?"

Something in Black's face changed. "I don't know," he said. "I don't have any idea where he is. Maybe he's dead. When I was twenty-one he disappeared."

Harry regretted that he'd started asking questions. "Oh," he said. "I'm sorry." Having a brother and not knowing if he was dead or alive - Harry thought of how the Weasley brothers had been when Ginny was taken into the Chamber of Secrets. It must be worse not to know if your brother was alive than to know for sure that he was dead.

"Thank you." Black got to his feet. "By this point I think he probably has died, even if he didn't die shortly after he disappeared. We never got along well, not since we were children, but - for all I know, if he hadn't disappeared, we would now. Of course, maybe we'd hate each other just as much or even more, but..."

He looked so sad that Harry felt as though he were intruding on something he had no right to witness. "Sir," he said hesitantly, "do you want me to go?"

"I certainly do not," Black said. "I won't have my problems interfering with your education. I do think you've had enough of that boggart for one night, though...do you want to practice the spell just on its own?"

"All right," Harry said. He stood up and held his wand out in front of him. "What was it again? Expecto...something..."

"Expecto patronum."

"Expecto patronum." He closed his eyes and thought again of the night that Gryffindor had won the House Cup. The wonderful smell of the food, Percy bragging about Ron, the knowledge that he'd earned back all the points he'd lost the house and now everything was all right - "Expecto patronum!"

He opened his eyes to see a small wisp of fog emerge from his wand; Black looked delighted. "Harry!" he exclaimed. "That's excellent, very good! I don't think most third-years could do half as well after months of practice - this is a complicated spell, most wizards don't even learn it in school. I think one of the only places where it's part of a curriculum is in Auror training - training to become a dark wizard catcher," he added, seeing Harry's blank look. "That's what my cousin Andromeda's daughter is in. Nymphadora - that's her picture of the wall." Harry looked over where Black was pointing; it was the picture of the little girl that Harry had first thought to be Black's daughter. She smiled at him and yawned.

"Is she related to Malfoy as well, sir?" Harry asked.

"She's his first cousin. They've never met, though, Andromeda and I are very much on the outs with the rest of the family. We both committed the horrible sin of thinking pureblood snobbery was just that, snobbery, and dangerous snobbery as well. Andromeda's husband - Nymphadora's father - is Muggle-born. You should have heard the weeping when she eloped with him, you would have thought someone had died. My mother and her mother wouldn't even mention Nymphadora when she was born."

"How old is she now?" Harry asked. "Nymphadora."

"Twenty. She was a seventh-year here when you were in your first year; did you ever see a girl in the corridors with pink or purple hair? No? Well, if you had, that would have been Nymphadora. Enough about that, back to the charm, it's getting late."

They spent another half hour on the Patronus Charm; by the end of the lesson, the wisp of fog had gotten larger, but it still looked nothing like an animal. "Don't be disappointed," Black said. "As I said, it's very advanced magic. Same time tomorrow?"

"All right. Will it work if we meet at the same time each night until I start Quidditch practice again?"

"That's fine. Although some nights I may have to ask you to leave earlier, I've assigned essays in other classes that are due over the next week or so and I have to correct them."

Harry was just about to close the door behind him when he thought of something. "Professor?"

"Yes?"

"Your Patronus - what does it turn into?"

"A dragon," Black said. "When I was a child I had an imaginary dragon friend who threw rocks at Kreacher. Good night, Harry."