Hogwarts: Through the Veil of Time

Having looked around and made sure that the guys around were paying attention only to the next form of the boggart and what Lupin's victim would turn it into, I raised my left hand palm up, took the wand in my right, and began to use it to draw the familiar contours of the constructs, relying on intuition and combining them with the mastered base of transfiguration. These contours are among the simplest and do not manifest themselves in the visible spectrum, so I was not afraid of attracting attention.

Slowly collecting the air around and compacting it to such a state that the light began to refract, distorting, I chose the resulting sphere as an object of transfiguration, set the formula, visualized the object, and decided to fool around a little, adding constructs specialized for life energy.

"Here you go," I said with a slight smile, handing Daphne, who was secretly watching the manipulations, a real, icy, crystal clear rose.

Daphne took the gift for granted, which couldn't help but amuse me.

"And what is this?"

"Beautiful, but cold, capable of pricking you until you bleed with any awkward movement," I answered with a slight smile. "But if you know how to warm it up…"

I ran my finger along the petals of the transparent ice rose, and where I touched them, they turned blood red, as they should be. As soon as I removed my hand, the rose turned ice again.

"It will blossom with bright colors."

"Subtle," Daphne remarked with an incredibly poisonous, but not at all nasty, as it sometimes happens, grin. "I approve."

"It is, you could say, alive. If you plant it in the ground, it will freeze and sprout. If you plant it in ice, it will sprout and break, transforming into a bush."

"An interesting cascade transfiguration with the addition of charms," Daphne stated her vision of the creation process.

"Granger," I heard Lupin's voice and turned towards him.

Hermione took a step forward, but the professor, noticing this, put out his hand in a stopping gesture.

"Mr. Granger, I wanted to say."

"Yes, professor?"

"To the barrier," he pointed with his hand to the place where the other students were standing, casting a spell on the boggart.

Some students, as my memory, in which the experiments on taming this creature that I observed had settled in the background, came out very quickly and the boggart did not have time to hide in the closet. But it also happened that it did, and the student approached the closed closet in which this magical creature was hiding. It was among such that I should have found myself, but...

"I refuse."

Lupin looked at me with an expression on his face as if I had literally shit in his shoes. Such an insult.

"Excuse me, Mr. Granger," Lupin quickly pulled himself together and smiled kindly. "But as a professor, I ask you to come out here and demonstrate your skills in fighting a Boggart."

"I refuse," I repeated.

A light nudge in the side from Anthony forced him to pay attention to the guy.

"Hey, what's wrong? Come out and do some magic, and if anything happens, we'll cover you," he said quietly.

Despite the noise of general disapproval towards me, his words, strangely enough, were heard perfectly by Lupin.

"Your classmate is right, Mr. Granger. There is nothing terrible in facing your greatest fear. Moreover, it will be in a much weakened form. And with the support of the other guys, you can easily cope, I am sure.

"I refuse," I answered in the same way, not at all embarrassed by the general condemnation. "Let them split me in half."

"You chickened out?" Malfoy asked sarcastically, approaching from somewhere on the side.

"Oh, Mr. Malfoy," I smiled happily at the blond, who had returned his hair to the color intended by nature." It's high time for you to show Slytherin courage and bravery, throw yourself chest-first into the embrasure, demonstrating your fear to all ill-wishers. Demonstrating your most vulnerable spot, where you can be hit so hard that only a name and bad memories will remain of you. Why are you turning so pale, Mr. Malfoy, forward! Glory does not wait...

"Mr. Granger!" Lupin said, much more seriously. "If you do not come out here, I shall be forced, to my regret, to deduct penalty points from your house."

"Don't waste your points, Hector," Anthony poked me in the side.

"Well... Professor, I refuse to display my fear without the possibility of receiving a reward for such a thing.

"A reward? That's not exactly what I expected to hear from a Hufflepuff student."

Despite his words, Lupin smiled again, which meant he had a solution.

"Since you, Mr. Granger, are so afraid of your fear that you hesitate in the gallery, I offer you ten points if you successfully defeat the Boggart on your first attempt."

For some reason I expected something like this.

"How do you like that?"

I hesitated for the sake of appearances, catching Daphne's venomous grin out of the corner of my eye. Secretly winking at her, I nodded to the professor and walked forward to the approving cries of the other students. Standing in front of the wardrobe and holding my wand in my hands, I concentrated. Although I hadn't been watching what was happening very closely, I had made some conclusions about the boggart.

"Ready?" Lupin asked.

"Of course, professor.

He waved his hand, and the cabinet door opened. A shapeless clot began to quickly emerge from the darkness, turning into something as it went. Did I wait? Of course not! Having concentrated neutral magic and passed it through my consciousness, in which I formed the outline of a banal, but no less destructive fireball, I literally formed this ball on the tip of my wand in a split second and threw it at the cabinet, from which the boggart had not yet completely emerged. In a moment, the immaterial entity instantly caught fire, as did the cabinet, and then an explosion was heard, the directed wave of which literally swept away the cabinet and dispersed the boggart, throwing smoking fragments onto the wall.

There was a deathly silence in the teachers' room.

"It seems," I looked at Lupin with a frightened look, "I defeated the boggart."

"You destroyed it, Mr. Granger," the professor looked with slight shock at the remains of the cabinet, which continued to smoke near the wall.

"Well, we didn't discuss how exactly I should defeat him and with what consequences. The main thing is the result.

"Well, ten points to Hufflepuff for a crushing victory over the boggart. But still... Why exactly like that?

In the not particularly joyful hubbub of the students, one could also hear rare notes of approval, literally oozing with contentment" it's not every time that something "booms" so loudly.

"I'm a Hufflepuff," I shrugged. "I was so scared that I actually hit him in shock. You know, they say there are two types of reactions to a threat."

"Fight or flight," the professor nodded with a grin.

"Exactly, professor. It seems I'm not a good runner.

At this point the lesson came to an end due to the fact that the boggart "appeared suddenly and unnecessarily". And where do all these phrases come from in my head? I can't reach them consciously.

The rest of the day passed without any incidents. At lunch, everyone had already learned about the events in the Defense against the Dark Arts lesson. The alternatively gifted sincerely laughed at the fact that I was supposedly scared. The smarter ones laughed at how cleverly I had fooled Lupin. A small part of the fair half of Slytherin looked at me somehow dangerously" in these looks one could read a simple message: "Where are you going, Mudblood?!" What can I say? You scared a hedgehog with a bare buttock" your prejudices do not compare with the elven discrimination based on predisposition to magic!

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