Chapter 40: Detention with Potter

"Come in!" Shouted a voice from inside the classroom, on the door of which Harry had just knocked. The boy pulled a face at how hearing only Potter's voice, but not seeing the man, reminded him of the beginning of last year, when the Auror had been orchestrating Twix's doomed attempt to break the curse on the DADA position. He shook his head and entered, he was just here for detention. Waste some time, write some lines.

"Good afternoon, Professor Potter." He said dutifully as he walked up to the desk that the older man was sitting at, apparently grading papers.

The professor took off his golden-rimmed glasses, put them on the table in front of him and leaned back, massaging his temples. "I'm still getting used to being called that," the man muttered, and glanced behind Harry. Something rattled elsewhere in the room causing the second-year to turn around and grimace when he saw that the closet with the boggart was still there in the corner. The darkly lit room didn't make facing the thing any more appealing. He looked back to the professor, only to suddenly get a stack of parchment stuck into his face. He took it and let his eyes run down the first paragraph. It was an essay about the spark-creation spell and what situations it should be used in to call for help, he flipped through the rest of the stack and saw that all the essays were on the same topic. He looked up at the professor, who was framed at his desk between a stuffed grindylow on his left and a death-eater robe hung up on the wall to his right.

"Professor?" He looked doubtfully at the sheaves of parchment he'd just been given.

"Why did you punch Mr. Kent after Harley's sorting?"

Harry tilted his head and considered his answer, "Because I let my anger get the best of me."

"Are you going to do it again?"

Harry shook his head, "No."

"You're sure? Let's say someone behaves similarly inappropriately in front of you in the future, you're not going to retaliate?" the man asked, digging deeper.

Harry frowned. He'd realised the stupidity of his actions by now, quite frankly. He could have probably protected Harley differently. Punching had simply been his first childish instinct. "I'm not going to retaliate physically," he corrected.

"You know, the professors say that detention helps students reflect on their wrong-doings. It gives them the time to connect the boredom or the unpleasantness of the detention to the misbehaviour." James rambled and tousled his hair and pinched his brows. "It never really worked on me, but considering it's my god-daughter you protected… Well, anyway, just grade the papers. Then we can face the boggart."

Harry's blood froze and his face probably took on a displeased expression, because James laughed. "I didn't forget, no."

"Why didn't you force me to do it in class then?" Harry asked.

It was James' turn to grimace. "Well, I assumed that kids who avoid the boggart usually have a good reason. Maybe their fear is something they don't want others to see. I don't want Voldemort in my classroom, myself, which is why I let them get away with it. However, since you're here for detention anyway, we should make up for lost time. You can trust me to be more discreet than your class-mates, and more brave."

Harry blinked, "You say his name?"

"The taboo might have made it inadvisable to do so during the war, but refusing to do it when there is no good reason doesn't seem right to me."

"Fear is the mind-killer," Harry said with a nod.

"You'll get to face yours soon enough."

"Can I convince you to leave the room while I do so?" Harry asked, not wanting the man to be privy to whatever information his biggest fear would reveal about him.

James shook his head, "I need to be there for your safety, a boggart can still hurt you if you don't know how to deal with one, which is why we teach it."

Harry tilted his head and locked eyes with the man, "It's probably going to have something to do with rape," he said blasely, fishing for a reaction. He assumed that the man didn't want to see anything related to that, especially in the context of Lily Evans, who Harry assumed had still been his school crush.

The Auror paled a bit at Harry's words but remained resolute. He nodded at the papers in Harry's hands and got to work himself.

The redhead couldn't do anything but sigh and sit down, going through the mind-numbing process of reading through what eleven-year-olds probably thought was a utilisation of the English language, but was honestly more of a gibberish smeared on a bathroom stall wall situation. He worked on the essays, grading as fairly as he could, while the closet in the corner of the room rattled every now and again. He noticed that after his last comment to the professor, Harry wasn't the only one flinching.

It didn't take him long to correct the essays, maybe half an hour. They were short and to the point, regurgitating the same information. However, once he finished and set down his quill, he didn't immediately stand up to proclaim his work being done. He slumped bonelessly in the chair and allowed himself the moment of weakness. He spent plenty of time being strong, ever since he'd gotten reborn, but now, he was just afraid. Afraid because he didn't know what he was afraid of.

He wasn't afraid of death, he'd toyed with the idea of killing himself those first few years. He wasn't afraid of Voldemort. He was just a man, a broken wretch of a man at that. He wasn't afraid of werewolves and while he feared being discovered for being a reincarnation, it was just something he would have to deal with if it ever occurred. He'd practised Occlumency for this exact reason.

He toyed with the idea of using his skills in the mind arts to fake out the boggart somehow, not let it get to the point where he had to cast riddikulus. Mentally partition his fears away into small little boxes, until the only thing left was the distaste he held for clowns. But unfortunately, he couldn't risk anyone discovering that he had any sort of affinity for the Mind Arts. The skill was only as useful as it was hidden for the moment.

Harry stood up from the table, the chair that he'd risen from falling to the ground behind him. He walked to the teacher's desk and slapped the corrected essays on it with a scowl, as James looked up at him. He walked over to the corner that the closet was in and braced his feet in its direction as if he were about to duel the boggart.

"Let's get this over with," he said.

Professor Potter rose from his chair and walked over to Harry, stood a bit behind him and raised his wand at the closet. The hinges of the door opened with a continuous creaking, but even when the darkness of the closet was completely visible the creaking didn't stop. It just transformed into a grating squeaking noise. An old woman in a wheelchair emerged from the closet and slowly approached Harry. It was a banged-up piece of rusted metal that a pair of heavily arthritic hands were barely managing to push forward under immense strain. A pair of milky blue eyes looked up at Harry, framed by wispy white hair growing in uneven patches. A splatter of some unrecognisable soup marred the woman's unwashed hospital gown. She was obviously not cared for, but when she saw Harry she smiled so brightly that the heavy wrinkles around her mouth disappeared. Harry regretted having opened his mental defences and raised his wand, noticing belatedly that the hand holding it was trembling.

"I never stopped waiting for you, day after day after day. I never allowed myself to forget, even for a second and now you're back!" The woman crowed happily while Harry mustered the strength to do what he had to do.

"Riddikkulus!" he cast forcefully, imagining the change that he wanted and forcing it onto the amorphous creature that dared wear her eyes and her skin, no matter how distorted. The old woman disappeared in a swirl and in its place was a small dog, a wiener to be more specific, it was standing on its hind legs and balancing a beach ball on its snout. Harry forced out a hollow laugh before his view was blotted out by the professor's back.

The boggart changed shapes with a bang and Harry stepped side-ways, just in time to catch a horribly mauled corpse of a blonde kid creating a puddle of blood on the floor before the creature was banished back into the closet with an otherworldly shriek and the doors were slammed shut behind it.

"I'm sorry," Professor Potter said while he turned around to look at Harry. He gave the boy a pitying look and made to say something, before interrupting himself.

"There's no way to kill a boggart, right?" Harry asked. "They're like dementors."

James nodded. "Yes, there is no way to really get rid of them forever."

Harry manoeuvred around the man so that he was standing closer to the door of the classroom.

"Isn't Fiendfyre supposed to be able to kill just about everything?" Harry asked with a frown, gaining a sharp look from the professor.

"No, Boggarts are conceptual creatures. Cursed flames may be able to eat through magic and flesh alike, but they need something to latch on to. The nature of a boggart is that it refuses to be defined closely enough to be destroyed," he said.

"I'll be taking my leave then, professor," Harry said, a hand already at the door.

James sighed. "I'm sorry, about the boggart. I couldn't let any student leave Hogwarts without having faced it, the rest who avoided the confrontation will also get the remedial lesson. I just combined yours with the detention to save time. For what it's worth, good job. It's always the boggarts that aren't just random scary creatures which are the most difficult to deal with."

Harry didn't bother standing around and promptly left. Seeing that there was no one around he applied the combination of invisibility and noise-muffling and made his way towards the Room of Requirement at a sedated pace. Once there he summoned the dueling dummy and was only seen again the morning after. Not at breakfast, but at the first class of the day.