Despite the strangeness surrounding the supposed change in opinion surrounding his existence, the first day of classes was largely uneventful and familiar. Transfiguration and History of Magic in the mornings with the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws respectively. Potions and Charms in the afternoon with the Gryffindors again and the Hufflepuffs. With no new classes or teachers, and with those four classes being taught by professors who didn’t care much for fanfare and simply began their lessons as if the students weren’t just returning from their summer break, Flynn felt himself almost forgetting that he’d ever left the castle in the first place.

  It was this mindset that had him gathering his things wordlessly once Flitwick dismissed them from their final class of the day, and immediately heading out to the Hogwarts school grounds towards a familiar hut.

  Flynn knocked on the door twice to give Hagrid the opportunity to reply, but he was surprised to hear a distinctly un-Hagridlike voice answering him in turn.

  “Who is it?” a familiar voice asked.

  “It’s us, Luna,” Lily shouted back, answering on Flynn’s behalf.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m familiar with any Usses,” Luna responded. “But I will admit that your surname is rather lovely, even though I'm afraid I may be biased.”

  Lily sighed and shook her head, before grabbing the door handle with both hands and pulling at it. She frowned when it didn’t budge.

  “It’s locked,” she said.

  Flynn ignored her and grabbed the door handle, pulling the heavy thing open without much effort.

  “I thought you said you got stronger over the summer?” Sally commented.

  “I did,” Lily said, a little hotly. “I just wanted Flynn to hold the door open for me like a gentleman.”

  “Aren’t you sneaky,” Sally said, with a laugh.

  Flynn glared at the both of them, and in response, he stepped inside Hagrid’s hut, letting the door close behind him with a heavy thud.

  Flynn let out a sigh of relief at the first hint of relative silence that he’d had since Potions class had ended. Though it wasn’t anywhere close to complete silence, since he could still hear muffled squawks of protest coming from behind the door, he would take what he could get.

  “Oh, Flynn, it’s you,” Luna said. “You’ve grown since I saw you last.”

  Flynn glanced at Luna, and was slightly surprised to see her sitting down at a desk, or rather, he supposed he was more surprised by the existence of the desk itself. The fancy looking piece of mahogany furniture looked completely out of place in Hagrid’s hut, especially since it was placed right beside Hagrid’s large bed, covered in a homemade patchwork quilt.

  Luna’s head barely peeked out from behind the desk, and he couldn’t be sure if she was sitting or standing on the equally large chair behind it, also mahogany.

  “Why is there a desk in Hagrid’s hut?” Flynn couldn't help but ask.

  “Why wouldn’t there be?” Luna asked. “This is a professor’s room. A desk is a requirement.”

  Flynn stared at her, wondering if she was being serious or not. In the end, he decided not to think about it and shrugged.

  “Where’s Hagrid?” he asked instead.

  “Oh, he left after he let me in,” Luna said. “He said he would be back soon, and not to let Fang eat anything off the floor and to save his fresh batch of rock cakes for you if you came by. I think I’ve succeeded in both tasks, though I can’t take complete credit for it. The rock cakes are mostly saving themselves.”

  It was only then that Flynn noticed the sound of frustrated huffing and grinding that was coming from underneath the mahogany desk. Narrowing his eyes, he ducked down slightly to see an upturned baking tray and a large bloodhound unsuccessfully trying to gnaw through one of the many rock cakes that had been scattered on the floor.

  “Fang!” Flynn roared, as he lunged for the dog.

  “Oh dear,” Luna said, as she tucked her legs closer to herself on the chair to avoid the carnage below the table as Fang scrambled up to his feet in shock and ran away from Flynn.

  Though Flynn considered the idea of chasing Fang down, he knew the dog was faster than he was and gave up on the idea quickly, choosing instead to gather the rest of the scattered rock cakes and put them back on the baking tray.

  He shot another glare towards the dog, who was cautiously staring at him from the other end of the room, with its rock cake still grasped tight in its jaws, before its ears perked up at the sound of the door to Hagrid’s hut scraping against the floor as it slowly opened. Still with its rock cake in its mouth, it walked over to the door and pressed up against it, using its body to help push it open.

  With the combined efforts of two small humans and a large dog, the door swung open wide enough for Lily and Sally to dart through the opening, both of them heaving with exertion as they slipped inside.

  Luna beamed open at the arrival of her two friends, and hopped off the tall chair she was sitting on, only for her smile to drop as she walked up to them.

  “Hello, Lily. Hello, Sally,” she said, with a sigh.

  “Hello, Luna,” Lily said, before frowning. “Is something wrong?”

  “No, not at all,” Luna said, with another sigh. “Though I may be about to commit a crime against society in a moment.”

  “And what do you mean by that?” Lily asked, crossing her arms and giving Luna an amused smile. “What sort of crime would you be capable of, little Luna?”

  “Most of them,” Luna answered easily, though her expression momentarily twisted into one of consideration before nodding to herself. “But I suppose this one is a bit more nuanced. It might require a bit of explanation. You see, back when societies first began to be formed thousands of years ago-”

  “We can skip ahead a few millennia,” Lily suggested.

  “It really does require a large amount of context, but I suppose I can skip ahead,” Luna said, nodding to herself. “I’ve been trapped in here for quite some time, and I might commit the social crime of being a terrible houseguest if I don’t get to an outhouse, a chamberpot, a toilet, or a particularly secluded bush in the next minute.”

  Lily stared at Luna for a few seconds, blinking in confusion.

  “I really need to pee,” Luna clarified.

  Lily’s eyes widened, and her eyes darted to Flynn. “Flynn! Door!”

  Not needing to be asked twice, Flynn quickly walked over and pushed the door open, eliciting a grateful sigh from Luna as she walked out and turned around to curtsey.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You may have just saved my dignity.”

  “Go!” Lily shouted, running out of the hut and pushing Luna in the direction of the outhouse.

  Flynn watched them go, before quickly realising that he shouldn’t and walked back into the hut, letting the door close behind him.

  “Oh, thank you, Fang,” he heard Sally say from inside the house. “Is this for me?”

  Flynn turned around to see Fang depositing a rock cake into Sally’s hands. Fang started to growl as he noticed Flynn staring at the rock cake, but Sally quickly ran a hand over his head.

  “Shush, shush, Fang,” she said. “Be nice. Just because he’s a resource guarder, doesn’t mean you should be too. Don’t learn bad habits from that mean old Flynn.”

  Fang’s lips were still vaguely curled up in the shape of a snarl, but the sound that emanated from his lips sounded too high pitched to be coming from a dog as big as he was.

  “I know, I know,” Sally cooed, as she scratched behind his ears until the snarl faded away completely into a dopey, drooly grin. “Oh, that’s better. Such a good girl.”

  “Girl?” Flynn asked, surprised enough to speak up despite not actually caring. “Fang’s a boy.”

  “She’s not,” Sally said, with a shrug. “She squats to pee. And she bleeds down there when she goes into heat.”

  From the confidence alone, Flynn was certain that Sally was either completely correct or delusional enough to believe in it. Still, despite the fact that he didn’t know enough to argue, he frowned and crossed his arms.

  “Why does Hagrid call him a boy, then?” he asked.

  Sally shrugged again.

  “He thought Norberta was a boy too, didn’t he?” she asked.

  Flynn thought about it for a moment before shrugging, not because he necessarily agreed that the one incident meant that Hagrid was wrong about Fang’s gender as well, but simply because he realised that he didn’t care enough about the topic to argue about it.

  Hagrid returned to the hut before Lily and Luna did, with blood splattered against the thick apron he wore and dripping from his beard. Neither Flynn nor Sally reacted to his appearance in any way, and it was only when Lily and Luna returned, and Lily complimented him on his fashion that he hurriedly explained that he’d been feeding Buckbeak back in the Forbidden Forest, though he quickly clasped a hand over his mouth in a panic, shouting that Buckbeak was a surprise and that he refused to answer any questions about him until their first class.

  It only took ten seconds of questioning from Lily for him to crack completely, and revealed that Buckbeak was a juvenile hippogriff that he planned to introduce to the class.

  Though Sally hadn’t been complicit in needling him, originally content to let the secret stay until the Hufflepuffs’ first class with him in two days, the new knowledge that they’d be studying a real life hippogriff seemed to be too much for her, and she immediately took over the conversation by bombarding Hagrid with questions.

  Though Flynn knew that if he dared to try and interrupt her, he would risk getting caught in the crossfire, but he hadn’t come here for conversation in the first place, so he didn’t mind. Even though Hagrid’s expression was slowly turning from bemusement, to confusion, to horror, as he seemed to realise with growing concern that Sally knew more about hippogriffs than he did, it seemed that he was doing well overall, and that was all that Flynn needed to see.

  Flynn didn’t know how long it took for Sally to pause and take a break, but when it eventually happened, Hagrid seemed more than eager to change the subject.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Hagrid said, discreetly tucking away the small notebook and quill he’d been using to take notes on Sally’s rant about hippogriff migration patterns. “Flynn, Dumbledore wanted me to give you something.”

  Though he eyed Sally warily, nervous about the idea that she might rant at him, now that Hagrid had reminded her of his existence, it seemed that she truly was out of breath. Sitting down on a beanbag chair, she gratefully accepted the cup of water that Luna fetched for her and downed it in one go, an especially impressive feat with it being a Hagrid-sized cup.

  “What is it?” Flynn asked, after confirming that it was safe to speak.

  Instead of asking, Hagrid rifled through his pockets until he found a small canvas sack and placed it gently on his desk, pushing it about halfway to Flynn before sitting back. Flynn glanced between the sack and Hagrid, his eyes narrowing into a glare as he felt a strangely familiar wave of annoyance rush over him.

  Gingerly prying the sack open, as soon as he saw the shiny glint of coin, he quickly drew the drawstring shut and glared at Hagrid.

  “It’s not from me,” Hagrid said, raising his hands in surrender. “It’s from Dumbledore. Now that you’re thirteen, yer legally employable, he has te pay you else he’ll get the aurors knocking on his door.”

  It was the same excuse that Jones had given him, and while he couldn’t picture Dumbledore boxing him to submission like Jones had, Flynn didn’t doubt that the old man was still more than capable of turning him inside out with a single spell, if Blaise’s claims that he was the most powerful old man in the world were to be believed.

  “I don’t know how long I’ve been thirteen, but it can’t have been that long,” Flynn said, glowering at the sack. Though he hadn’t seen the entirety of the contents of the bag, what he had seen had glimmered in gold, and while the sack wasn’t bulging, it wasn’t anywhere close to empty, either. “And I wasn’t able to work with you for a good part of last year. So what the fuck is he giving me money for?”

  “A bonus. For playing an integral part in keeping Hogwarts running,” Hagrid said, seeming to recite something out of memory, rather than using his own words. For some reason, he paused before continuing, his face turning to a light shade of red as his voice fell almost into a whisper. “And fer supporting and providing assistance to one of the most valued members of the Hogwarts staff for all these years. Dumbledore’s words, not mine.”

  Flynn glared at Hagrid for a moment, before quickly deciding that even if he didn’t have any particular reason to trust Dumbledore, there wasn’t much of a point to figuring out the old headmaster's thoughts through Hagrid as a proxy. Snatching the coinpurse off the table, he stowed it into his inner pockets, where it joined the money that he’d gotten from Jones.

  “I don’t take charity,” Flynn said, glaring at Hagrid. “You better make me work for it, or I’m quitting.”

  Flynn frowned and sighed, dropping his glare when he realised that the man probably wouldn’t even notice. He still seemed flustered at the recollection of Dumbledore’s praise.

  “You don’t know how long you’ve been thirteen?” Sally asked quietly.

  “Shush,” Lily said, sitting down beside her and shaking her head.

  Sally didn’t seem to understand, but she stayed silent regardless. At least, she did for a few seconds before she raised her hand.

  “I need to use the washroom,” she said.

  Though Hagrid seemed immediately pleased by the comment, blushing and thanking Sally for treating him like a professor already, he insisted that she didn’t need to ask for permission for silly things like that outside of class.

  When Lily told Hagrid that they couldn’t leave easily because of the new door, Hagrid seemed confused by the comment, saying that it was just a regular door, he’d just had to replace it because he’d accidentally burnt it down because of reasons that he wouldn’t reveal for about a year, if things went well.

  Even when Lily tried to demonstrate, using her entire body to try and push it open, and only barely budging it, Hagrid didn’t seem convinced, easily pushing the door open with one hand and letting Sally out. Though Lily said that Hagrid could only open it so easily because he was a lot bigger, Hagrid didn’t seem convinced but eventually conceded and said that he would look into making the door easier to open later.

  When Sally came back from her washroom break, knocking on the door, it took the combined efforts of Sally, Lily, Luna, and Fang to open the door, while Hagrid shot a confused look at Flynn, to which he simply answered with a shrug.

  - - - - -

  Being at Hogwarts for the third year in a row meant that Flynn had developed a sense of what to expect from his education there.

  Flynn’s only education before Hogwarts had taken place in the single public school that could be found in Fredericton, so in his first year, he had been legitimately surprised how different learning could feel when he had teachers that acted like teachers instead of wardens for a prison.

  Unlike the teachers in Fredericton, it seemed like the Hogwarts staff was paid well enough to at least try to impart some of their wisdom to their students. That being said, it wasn’t like every teacher at Hogwarts was equally competent, they each taught with a palpable passion for their respective subjects, even if they did show it in different ways.

  The only exceptions to this rule were Binns, whose lectures could easily be replaced by reading through the respective sections of the textbook, and the Defense Against the Dark Arts professors, who had both been con men.

  Flynn went to his first Defense class of his third year with the same expectation that the trend would be continued once more. While he supposed that it was an unfair assumption to make, since Lupin had been the one to supposedly dispel the dementors on the train, Flynn wasn’t eager to raise his hopes for no reason.

  It was a Wednesday morning, the first class of the day, and half of the students in the shared Slytherin and Ravenclaw class were still rubbing their eyes lethargically from having just woken up, and the other half rubbing their stomachs from overstuffing themselves during breakfast.

  When Lupin entered the room, he did so with a smile. The conversation barely faded as he walked in, most of the class not even noticing his presence with how silently he entered the room, though a majority of the class finally managed to notice him when he walked to the front and gently placed his tattered suitcase on his desk.

  “Good morning, class,” he said, stepping out from behind his desk, and leaving his suitcase behind. “Please put away your books and quills, and follow me. Today we’ll be having a practical lesson, so make sure to bring your wands.”

  The promise of a practical Defense class, the first in their entire time at Hogwarts, was surprising enough to cause even Malfoy’s signature sneer to be replaced with a look of curiosity, as Lupin walked back to the door and waited there with an amused grin.

  It took a moment for the class to realise that he was waiting for them, either too stunned by the suggestion, or too lethargic to react to it quickly, and stood up to join him. Though Flynn had realised it quicker than the rest of his class had, he stayed seated until the last moment, trailing behind at the edge of the small crowd.

  “Ah, mornings,” Lupin said. “The true evil that plagues the young.”

  There were a few polite chuckles at the joke, but Lupin didn't pay them any mind, turning around and leading them down the hallway without another word.

  At first the class walked in silence, but when a few of the braver students started whispering to each other and weren’t immediately scolded for it, more of the class seemed to become emboldened enough to whisper to each other as they debated on what their upcoming class would be like. The whispers died down, however, when they came across Peeves, floating in the hallway with a bucket of paint in his hand and a paintbrush in the other.

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  Peeves seemed to be scanning the hallways for a spot to enact whatever mischief he had planned, when he spotted Lupin. Immediately, Flynn noticed the class tensing up and backing away from the potential splash of paint that would be hurled at them in a moment, but Lupin simply smiled and casually drew his wand from his robes.

  “Hello, Peeves,” he said. “Up to trouble as usual?”

  Peeves giggled and twirled around. “Always always, loony loopy poopin Lupin,” he sang.

  “Might I ask what you were planning on doing with that paint?” Lupin asked, still with his wand held casually by his side.

  “Just some decorating, my dear Moony Moopin,” Peeves answered, twirling around and splashing a bit of paint unintentionally on a nearby wall. “Just a little message to give the icky babies a bit of nostalgia.”

  “Didn’t Headmaster Dumbledore explicitly say that you were forbidden from doing that, Peeves?” Lupin asked, crossing his arms and frowning. “People got hurt, Peeves. It’s not funny.”

  “Oh phooey, when did you start caring about that?” Peeves said with a snarl, throwing the bucket without any warning.

  Though a large part of the class screamed out in surprise, Lupin quickly flicked his wrist, stopping the bucket in the air, and gathering the red paint that spilled out of it into a floating ball of liquid.

  Peeves let out a disappointed huff, before rolling his eyes and flying away.

  “Ah, he hasn’t changed a bit,” Lupin said with a sigh, before waving his wand and gently depositing the paint into the bucket. With another wave of his wand, the bucket floated towards him until he could snatch it out of the air. “Shall we proceed?”

  It didn’t take much longer to arrive at their destination after that, an abandoned classroom not far into the winding corridors of the castle. Ushering the class inside, Flynn scanned the room and his eyes immediately landed on the wardrobe that stood in the center of the room.

  When Lupin walked over to stand next to it, the wardrobe rattled violently, to which the class jumped, but Lupin barely reacted.

  “Nothing to worry about, class,” he said. “There’s just a boggart in there.”

  Lupin’s immediate explanation of what a boggart was and how to defeat it was a simple one. A creature that turned into your greatest fear, only to be defeated with laughter, was something that sounded like something straight out of a children’s story, but he supposed that Hogwarts would be the place to find something like that.

  Lupin’s lecture wasn’t very long, taking up only about a minute before he called on a timid Ravenclaw girl who he coached through her fear of clowns, crafting a brief battle strategy before opening the door for her.

  Though she froze up for a moment, when a very familiar looking clown burst from the closet, quite possibly from a movie that Flynn had seen an advertisement for some time in his life, snarling at her with its razor sharp teeth, before the girl rose her wand shakily.

  “Riddikulus!”

  A bolt of light shot from her wand and hit the clown square in the chest, and the clown’s ruffled collar detached itself from its neck and flew up to wipe its face aggressively, wiping away the clown’s makeup and revealing a very annoyed looking middle-aged man behind it.

  The girl giggled as the boggart paused in confusion, and Lupin called for another student to take her place.

  From spiders, to vampires, to a diving board of all things, the boggart cycled through a variety of fears as Lupin cycled through the class. As Flynn watched his classmates dispel their fears with laughter, he frowned as a pit of anxiety started to grow in his stomach as it slowly approached his turn.

  Flynn wasn’t arrogant enough to think that he didn’t have any fears. He was intimate enough with the emotion to know that it was present in every facet of his life, but that also meant that he knew how to deal with it. He had simply pushed through.

  While he doubted that a boggart could give him any trouble, knowing that he could simply ignore anything that was presented to him, he was worried that his usual methods would clash too much with what Lupin wanted from him. The goal that the professor had set out was to dispel the creature through comedy, and he wasn’t quite sure if he was capable of such a thing.

  Thankfully, Blaise was called on to face the creature before he was.

  “Mr. Zabini!” Lupin shouted, as Millicent finished turning a large bulldog into a chihuahua.

  Blaise walked forward, quickly and confidently, and with a crack, the small dog shifted into a form that was vaguely familiar to Flynn. Though Flynn couldn’t immediately identify her, Blaise seemed to have no such trouble, looking up at her with an expression of familiarity on his face and dropping his wand to his side.

  The class stayed silent for a moment as a palpable air of confusion hung over both the students and the boggart itself.

  Grinning, Blaise shook his head and sighed.

  “Of course it would be you,” he said, chuckling quietly before turning to Lupin. “Professor, I’m afraid I can’t think of anything that would make this woman more of a joke than she already is.”

  It was then that Flynn finally recognized her as the woman he had seen once before, during his shopping trip to Diagon Alley during his first year. Daedra Primrose, previously Daedra Zabini. Blaise’s mother.

  The class laughed in reaction to Blaise’s obvious barb, but without knowing who the woman was, they ended up sounding more confused than amused.

  “Very well,” Lupin said. “Mr. Malfoy, you’re next.”

  Though he was a little slow to react, Draco quickly stepped up to the boggart once he realised he was being called upon, only to have the boggart shift from the shape of Blaise’s mother to that of a tall bipedal creature with the body of a man, and the head of an angry black rottweiler. Flynn noticed Draco tense up at the sight of the creature, and Flynn couldn’t help but wonder what the creature even was, though his immediate theory was that it was possibly Draco’s interpretation of what a werewolf might look like.

  Draco raised his wand shakily in the air, but before he could cast a spell, Lupin surprisingly let out a loud snort of amusement. Though he quickly covered up his face and coughed, as if he were trying to pretend like he hadn’t laughed out loud at Draco’s boggart, the immediate look of confusion on the dogman’s face caused the rest of the class to roar with laughter.

  “My apologies, Mr. Malfoy,” Lupin said, coughing into his hand again. “Mr. Fredericton. May you come up to the boggart? I think we’re just about finished here.”

  Though Draco seemed confused for a moment, his face quickly flushed with embarrassment as he stomped back to the crowd behind him.

  With a newfound confidence now that he knew that he didn’t necessarily need to think of something comedic for the boggart to be overcome, Flynn walked up to the boggart with his wand in hand.

  The reactions to each students’ boggart had been quite varied throughout the class. Though Draco’s boggart had been met with amusement, that hadn’t been the typical response to the transformations, and for good reason. Though there were some odd transformations that had been met with confusion rather than fear, with some of the muggle students having fears that the pureblooded students hadn’t recognized, Flynn was confident that his boggart took on a form that everyone in the room was confused by.

  Even with Blaise’s boggart, there had been at least one person who hadn’t reacted to Daedra Primrose with any amount of surprise, and that had been Blaise himself.

  With Flynn not even sure of what he was looking at, or why he would ever be afraid of it, he looked around the room in confusion, just in case the boggart happened to focus on another person, despite him being closest to it.

  When nobody else in the room seemed to understand what was going on, he turned back to the boggart with his wand raised, to try and understand what it was trying to show him.

  For a moment, he couldn’t help but wonder if the boggart had just given up on trying to figure out his greatest fear, and had been struck with indecision when it was faced with so many options. At first, it looked like a bundle of rags, and though the idea that he might be afraid of doing laundry was almost enough to draw a snort out of him, he kept his brow furrowed when it started to move.

  Keeping his wand trained on it, in case it made any sudden movements, Flynn watched as the bundle of rags slowly uncurled, shifting around to reveal a set of thin, almost skeletal limbs that had been hidden under the loose fitting rags that he only now vaguely recognized as being clothes.

  The figure’s limbs were long enough that Flynn might’ve expected it to be quite tall if it weren’t curled in on itself, curled up into a ball as it hugged its legs close against it. It had its head down, tucked in between its knees, but though Flynn had initially thought it was looking down at the floor, his eyes narrowed when he noticed a pair of eyes peeking at him through the curtain of dirt-smeared hair that draped down over its face.

  The creature let out a short, high-pitched cry of shock as it met Flynn’s eyes. It sounded more like a kicked dog than a human voice, but as it tried to scuttle backwards away from Flynn, its limbs flailing wildly as it failed to find any purchase against the ground, the curtain of hair parted almost unnaturally, to reveal a very human, and a very familiar face.

  Though Flynn didn’t make it a habit to look in the mirror, he was confident that he was looking at an emaciated version of himself, though he didn’t understand why. The first thing he could think of was that his doppelganger was some sort of representation of his fear of going hungry, and though he could recognise that it was a legitimate fear of his, it wasn’t like it had been at the forefront of his mind for a while now.

  Semi-consciously, he shoved his free hand into his pockets, groping around for the wrapped chicken sandwiches that he had taken from the breakfast table that morning. He squeezed it slightly, and felt some of the sauce oozing out onto his hand because of it, and he quickly wiped it on his robes before pulling his hand back out.

  The boggart let out another squeak of panic as it looked around wildly, though its eyes kept darting to the wand in Flynn’s hands.

  “Is that Fredericton?” somebody murmured from the crowd behind him.

  It was a stupid pointless question, that anybody with eyes could confirm for themselves, but for some reason, it made Flynn twitch with annoyance.

  “He’s afraid of himself?” someone asked, and again, the answer was obvious if they cared to look.

  “Not likely,” Draco said, surprisingly in his defense. “Fredericton’s barely flinching at all. If anything, I’d say the boggart’s more afraid of him.”

  “That’s true. What’s going on, Professor Lupin?”

  “I’m not certain,” Lupin admitted. “I’ll admit, I’ve never seen such a thing myself. Mr. Fredericton, would you like me to take over? We may want to err on the side of caution in the face of such unpredictability. Consider that a lesson for facing any creature of dark magicks, not just boggarts.”

  Flynn frowned. Though Lupin was absolutely correct, he resisted the urge to lower his wand and let the professor take over.

  “No,” he growled. “I got this.”

  While he wasn’t stupid enough that he would’ve stubbornly insisted on doing it himself, if he was facing down a more dangerous creature, the fact was that Lupin had already let a majority of his class face the boggart alone. If he backed down here for no reason, what sort of message did that send? It didn’t help the fact that his boggart looked so fucking pathetic. He refused to admit defeat to such a weak-looking thing.

  As Flynn thought about what he could do to make his emaciated self more amusing, he considered forcing it to stuff itself with imaginary chicken sandwiches, before someone spoke up.

  “Did he just piss himself?”

  It was spoken in a hushed tone, but in the silence of the room, it might as well have been a yell. Fredericton glared at the dark spot that was quickly forming near the crotch of his boggart. He assumed it was more of a visual effect rather than any real moisture that was forming there, but the effect did make it look like the boggart was pissing itself in fear. As if to strengthen the effect, the boggart made out a low moan that rose in pitch until it became a whining cry.

  That alone was enough to cause a ripple of laughter in the class, but rather than amusement, Flynn couldn’t help but feel a wave of simmering anger coursing through him at the sound. He glared back at his class, shutting up a small handful that managed to notice his glare, but a majority of the class, aside from Blaise, Draco, and Lupin were openly laughing at the boggart as it writhed in pain.

  Flynn didn’t see what was so goddamn funny about seeing a clone of him pissing itself in fear, but apparently the rest of the class thought it was fucking hilarious.

  Flynn turned around, ready to tell the class to shut the fuck up, but the boggart let out another moan of pain, causing another ripple of laughter.

  It didn’t make sense. Had the boggart had enough? Was it trying to kill itself?

  Flynn narrowed his eyes in suspicion. He glared at the boggart as he tried to figure out what it was doing. He vaguely remembered that he was supposed to be trying to kill it by making it funnier, but the chatter in the room was rising, until he heard something that made him twitch.

  “Oh poor thing.”

  Flynn growled, twitching as he held himself back from turning around and yelling at the class to shut up, since he didn’t know exactly why he wanted them to shut up in the first place.

  “Mr. Fredericton, would you mind stepping away from the boggart, please?” Lupin asked.

  “Fuck off,” Flynn snapped. A small part of him understood that cursing out a professor wasn’t a very smart thing to do, but he couldn’t help himself, for some reason. All he could do was to grit his teeth and focus his attention on the boggart to stop himself from lashing out. “I don’t need your help. I can kill this fucking piece of shit on my own.”

  Before Lupin could say anything else, Flynn pointed his wand at the creature and shouted.

  “Riddikulus!”

  There was a loud snapping sound, and a burst of light erupted from his wand, but even as it hit the boggart square in the chest, it didn’t do anything but make it cry out even harder. Flynn growled at the failed spell, but realised he hadn’t even been thinking of anything when he’d casted it.

  Flynn raised his wand again, trying and failing to think of a way that he could make the boggart funny, but before he could try again, the boggart let out a screech and scrambled towards the wardrobe, diving into it and shutting the door behind it.

  “Hey!” Flynn shouted, walking up to the wardrobe and grabbing the door handle. “I’m not fucking done with you, yet!”

  At this point, nobody was laughing anymore. Flynn could hear the whispers bouncing off his back as they talked about him in hushed tones.

  “I wonder why Flynn’s boggart turned into a messed up version of him?”

  “Did you see how he pissed himself?”

  “Why is that Fredericton’s greatest fear?”

  “I kind of feel sorry for him.”

  “Which one?”

  A surge of heat washed over him, pounding in his head as he raised his wand to the door.

  “Retraho!” he roared.

  There was an explosion of sound and wooden splinters as the wardrobe shot backwards and hit the far wall. Chaos ensued as several students screamed in surprise and shock, but Flynn ignored them as he ran forwards and dug around the rubble, grabbing his emaciated self by the collar and lifting him up into the air.

  He was light, shockingly so, though it shouldn’t have come as a shock seeing how thin he was. He held him up with one hand, as he lifted his wand, digging its point into his chest.

  “Expelliarmus!”

  There was a flash of red behind him, but it didn’t stand out much in the red mist that had already clouded his vision. Flynn felt his arms twitch and spasm violently as his hands opened, sending his emaciated self crashing gracelessly to the ground, and his wand flying in the air. He paid it no mind as he lunged for himself, catching him before he could scramble away.

  Even without a fucking wand, he was killing this fucking thing.

  There was a sickening crunch, as Flynn sunk his fist into his face. It didn’t sound or feel quite right, like he was punching and shattering a plastic shell rather than bone, but Flynn paid it no mind, raising his fist and pounding down again.

  There was a scream. He ignored it. He punched again. He punched, and he punched, caving in his face deep enough that he was punching the stone floor beneath it. It didn’t make sense, not in the slightest, human bones were stronger than this, but Flynn didn’t care.

  He punched, and he punched, until he felt a pair of arms grabbing him, lifting him from the armpits and pulling him away from his own twitching body.

  Flynn might’ve fought back against his assailant if it weren’t for the confusion he felt when he saw the faceless boy on the ground twitch. Its eyes, somehow still intact despite the gaping hole that Flynn had left in its head, darted between Flynn and the person grabbing him, before it shifted its shape to turn into a silvery orb, floating in the air.

  “Riddikulus!” Lupin shouted, pointing his wand awkwardly at the orb, with his arms still grappling onto Flynn’s.

  Immediately, the orb turned into a balloon, deflating and flying around the room. Lupin pointed his wand at a small storage cabinet at the side of the room, and it jerked open, and with another wave of his wand, an invisible force seemed to take over the boggart balloon and force it to fly into the open cabinet, before it slammed violently shut.

  The sound of the door slamming echoed loudly in the otherwise silent room.

  “Mr. Fredericton,” Lupin said. “Can I trust you to remain calm if I let you go?”

  The question made Flynn realise that he’d been hanging limply from Lupin’s grip for a while now. Finding his footing, he tugged himself away from Lupin’s grasp, and being almost the same height as him while being much more muscular than the ragged man, he pulled himself away easily.

  “Don’t fucking touch me,” he growled, stomping away towards the door to the hallway. On his way out, he couldn’t ignore the crowd of wild stares pointed in his direction, though most of the class looked to the floor when he shot a glare at them.

  “If you look down on me ever again,” Flynn promised. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

  “Mr. Fredericton!” Lupin shouted.

  Flynn ignored him and grabbed the door, yanking it open and slamming it with enough force that it sent an explosive echo down the hallway.

  Flynn had no idea how much time he spent after that, simply wandering the halls of Hogwarts in a blind, quiet rage. He had no idea what he was doing, or what he had done, only coming to when a voice snapped him back into focus.

  “Uh oooh, someone’s angry.”

  Flynn glared up at the source of the voice, floating high above his head, to see Peeves flying with another bucket, though he no longer had a paintbrush in his hands.

  “Fuck off,” Flynn growled.

  “Oh so angy, so angy,” Peeves cackled. “What’s wrong, my precious little monster. Did someone take your binky away?”

  “Fuck off!” Flynn shouted.

  “Oh, you know just what to say to make my little heart flutter,” Peeves said, feigning a sigh before cackling. “Oh you charmer, you. Promise you won’t grow up to be an adult, like stinky old, Loopy.”

  Flynn snarled, not caring to entertain anyone, at the moment, regardless of how annoying they were being. He reached inside his pocket for his wand, and a flash of panic travelled through him when the only thing he grabbed was a variety of different sandwiches.

  Grabbing one and squishing it in his hands, he threw it at Peeves. The poltergeist dodged under the wild throw easily, and turned around to admire the way it splattered against the wall.

  “A bit amateurish if I do say so myself,” he said, with a sigh. “I’m glad you’re branching out, but might I suggest that you stick with what you know? Your mastery at destruction is enough to make me have some horrible thoughts about you at night, but your food based vandalism? Doesn’t spark much joy.”

  Flynn glanced around himself, finally gathering his wits enough to recognize that he was in an abandoned classroom. Grabbing a nearby chair, he hurled it at Peeves, making the poltergeist yelp in shock and zoom out of the way.

  “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Peeves said excitedly. “I was going to decorate this room myself, but if you insist on taking the job, I suppose I’ll go somewhere else. Unless you want to collaborate?”

  Flynn glared up at Peeves as he fluttered his eyelashes.

  “Fuck off!” Flynn shouted, grabbing another chair and throwing it.

  “I can see you’re not in the mood,” Peeves said, with a cackle, before he flew out of the room with a loud whoop.

  Flynn grabbed another chair and flung it towards the spot on the wall that Peeves had disappeared through, causing it to shatter immediately on impact. Grabbing another chair, he flung it against the opposite wall in a blind rage, until the sound of a desperate cry of frustration caught his attention for a moment.

  He tried to ignore the sound, but it wouldn’t stop until he furrowed his brow in concentration and snapped his teeth shut, cutting off the next cry of rage before it had a chance to echo back at him in the empty room. A growl still escaped his throat, but in the relative silence he suddenly found himself in, free of cackling poltergeists, shattering chairs, or screaming, the quiet sound still bounced loudly around the room.

  He hated the sound. It sounded pathetic and weak, like a dog that was trying to sound threatening despite being tired and injured enough to defend itself in any way other than by barking.

  Flynn wanted to convince himself that he had more than just his bark to defend himself. His knuckles aching from the memory of the violence committed against his emaciated self and the floor beneath it, and the remnants of the destroyed classroom that surrounded him were proof of that, but as his fists shook violently in something other than just rage, Flynn had to wonder if that was enough.

  Flynn wasn’t arrogant enough to think of himself as being a smart person, but he had survived for too long on his own to ever think that he was stupid. He knew that just like the other creatures that the boggart had turned into, the emaciated version of himself was something that wasn’t real. Just like Lupin had explained, the boggart was a creature that fed on subconscious fears to turn into something that would frighten its victim the most, a nightmare of the victim’s worst imaginations.

  Except that wasn’t entirely true, was it? There had been little imagination involved in Flynn’s own fears.

  The boggart had been a violent reminder that at any moment in time, the world could come crashing down on him as it tended to do. He remembered a life before Hogwarts, before Jones, where he’d fought to survive on a daily basis, and even though he lived a life of luxury now.

  He had every meal catered to him and had grown comfortable enough sleeping in a room with five other boys that every so often, he would fall into a deep enough sleep that he could dream. For fuck’s sake, he had a fucking job, and a fistful of cash to his own name.

  But he knew that all of that could be taken away, just as easily as it had been given to him.

  Everything was temporary, even himself. At any given moment, he could be kicked out of Hogwarts, robbed in his sleep, or simply stabbed in the back. Though he hadn’t forgotten these facts, he was surprised to realise that at some point in the past three years, this fear had receded to the dark corners of his mind rather than taking up space firmly at the forefront where it had once made its home.

  He couldn’t help but remember the main reason why he’d been so eager to learn magic in the first place. Not for whimsy or convenience, but for power. He had once thought that with enough power, he could make himself untouchable, but now that he stared down at his empty hands, he couldn’t help but grimace as he realised that that too could be taken away.

  What had he even been doing for the last three years?

  The same thing he’d been doing for his entire life, he supposed.

  He was surviving, nothing less, nothing more.

  Flynn’s stomach gurgled, and suddenly, he became aware of how hungry he was, and wondered how long he had been roaming the castle for. It had been so long since his stomach had gurgled that he couldn’t even guess how long he had gone without eating.

  While the dull pangs of hunger he felt now were nothing compared to gut-wrenching starvation, he couldn’t help but clutch at his stomach at the nostalgic pain. Slinking to a far corner of a classroom, he squatted down with his back against the wall and pulled out a sandwich from his pocket, devouring it almost instantly. He had another sandwich in his hands, hesitating before he put it back into his pockets.

  When he left the room, he made sure to pick up the squished remains of the sandwich he had thrown at Peeves from the floor, just in case he would need it later.

  He wandered the halls of Hogwarts, lit only by the candles hanging from the walls and the moonlight that streamed in through the windows. He had missed Herbology, History, and Arithmancy, but he couldn’t find himself caring.

  Wandering the hallways, he walked around until he stumbled across a small storage room that held a variety of old cleaning supplies, ironically covered in a layer of dust from disuse.

  Making a small space in the corner for himself, he sat with his knees against his chest, and his back against the wall and stared at the door until he fell asleep.