WHO: Dedalus Diggle and Alicia Spinnet WHAT: Boggart hunting! WHEN: Today 25 January, afternoon WHERE: A derelict house somewhere WARNINGS: Death, disturbing boggart things
Boggart-hunting wasn’t the nicest way to spend an afternoon, but at least in knowing what you were looking for, you could prepare yourself for the inevitable unpleasant surprise. As Dedalus searched through the cupboards, he tried his best to keep their spirits up. “You know how they get confused when they’re trying to frighten more than one person?” he said cheerily. “I once saw one turn into a spiderplane. It was very, very weird. Legs everywhere! Airplanes shouldn’t have eyes! It wasn’t scary, it was just wrong.”
He opened up the last cupboard on the end, then turned to check how his fellow boggart-hunter was doing. “How are you doing over there? Any luck?” he asked.
“No spiderplanes here,” Alicia reported, angling a nervous grin in his direction. She knew exactly what she’d find if they did stumble upon a boggart, but even so, she couldn’t help but be a little apprehensive. The possibility of death to their friends and family hung over them all the time now. It wouldn’t make seeing it any easier. “Maybe we should try under the beds.”
Dedalus, likewise, knew what to expect, but he'd opted to remain stubbornly upbeat. There would likely be very few silly boggarts for anyone in the midst of a war like this. “Under the beds is a splendid idea!” He agreed. Wand at the ready, he made his way toward the stairs. “Do watch your step! These look quite questionable. Our dog is terrified of stairs, you know. I bet if dogs could have boggarts, this particular set would be his.”
“The only thing that’d make this worse is if it was a spiral staircase,” she said with a laugh as she began her careful ascent. The boards creaked under her feet, and she realized why Dedalus had warned her. The wood felt soft and pliant and like it could give out beneath them if their steps had been too heavy. She kept a tight grip on the banister and called over her shoulder, “Or maybe these actually are bad enough on their own.”
“They’re quite terrible,” Dedalus agreed, letting out a squeak of surprise as the stair he’d just put his foot on cracked under the pressure, though thankfully, it didn’t break all the way through. He picked up the pace, getting to the top of the staircase as quickly as he could. “It’s a pity, really! This house wouldn’t be so bad if—” He yelped at the horrifying sight that greeted him in the dark at the top.
Marjorie lay, cold and dead, in a pool of blood in the centre of the hallway.
Alicia swallowed back a gasp and resisted the urge to run back down the stairs when her eyes landed on the girl. But one glance at Dedalus and she realized what they’d stumbled upon. She stepped up beside him and put a hand on his arm.
Fortunately, Alicia’s hand on his arm jolted him back to reality, and he realised quickly that they'd stumbled upon exactly what they were looking for. He cleared his throat, looking slightly sheepish, before managing a deceptively cheery, “Riddikulus!” All his years of feigning enthusiasm had paid off—the boggart quickly transformed into a harmless, smiling toy rabbit, complete with his daughter's pink polka dotted hairbow perched atop its fluffy head.
“Oops! Sorry about that! I didn't expect to find one so soon!” Dedalus said, his good humouredness obviously strained. All the colour had drained from his face as he retrieved a box from his pocket and moved to force the creature inside.
“This is the worst game of Pokemon!” he joked.
Alicia’s laugh was hollow but it gave her a moment to compose herself. “It’s definitely the most disturbing version I’ve ever played,” she said with a wary glance down the hallway. “Probably the only game where I’m not actually that excited about finding one, honestly.”
“Well, it'll all work out in the end. We'll put them to good use!” Dedalus assured her, instinctively taking the lead in order to shield her from as much as he possibly could. He tried to keep their eyes on the silver lining as he pushed open the door to the first bedroom on the right. “Have you thought of any more ideas of what you'd like to do with them?” he asked.
“Well,” Alicia began, sticking close to him as they crept into the bedroom. “It’d be pretty satisfying to send one to Montague. He’d deserve it after what he did to me.”
“I definitely think you should. He’d deserve it,” Dedalus said, not one to shy away from revenge when someone had earned it. Montague was a Death Eater, so he deserved a boggart for what he’d done, and then some. He strode across the room and brushed aside some curtains, hoping to allow a bit more light into the room while they swept its darkest corners. “Regardless of whether we find any more or not, this one’s yours.”
“Thanks, Dedalus.” She tossed a grin over her shoulder as she moved to check under the bed. When she found nothing, she straightened up and turned her sights on the closet. “Maybe we should send some to the Ministry too. Maybe to the—”
As she opened the closet door, Alicia’s thought was cut off by a scream she strangled in her throat. She scrambled out of the way as her mother and father’s lifeless bodies fell out of the closet toward her. Her hands were trembling by the time they hit the floor, their limbs strewn inhumanly over each other. She’d expected this, but it still hadn’t prepared her for the empty look in their eyes.
Dedalus startled, stifling a yelp of his own at the sight of them, though he rushed over to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, you’re okay. You’ve got this,” he assured her quietly.
Alicia took a deep breath and cast a grateful glance over her shoulder at the more experienced wizard. Despite his reassurance, her hand still trembled as she held her wand up at the boggart. “Riddikulus!”
The image of her dead parents melted away as the boggart took on the form of two puppies wrestling over a plush dog bone. Alicia breathed out a weak laugh and looked at Dedalus again. “That’s better.”
“Excellent work!” Dedalus said brightly, retrieving another boggart-box from his pocket and offering it to his cohort. “Much better. Very cute.” Finding boggarts was never a pleasant situation, but at least it could only get easier from here.
Alicia took the box and knelt down to coax the puppies into it. She gave them one more look before she sealed the lid, trying to rewrite the sight of her parents’ bodies in her memory the way her spell had just done in front of them. When she stood up again, she gave her partner a tight grin. “Guess we know why this place is so abandoned.”
Dedalus returned her smile with one of his own. “It wouldn’t be my first choice for a birthday party location, no,” he said, trying to keep on the bright side of things. “But thankfully, you and I are adept at facing our fears. It’ll take more than some silly old boggarts to bring us down.”
He strode toward the old wardrobe in the corner of the room, fingers tensing around his wand as he tried to prepare himself for what was possibly inside. Something within the wardrobe stirred, and he paused in front of it, turning toward Alicia with a conspiratorial grin. “What do you think? Shall we try to confuse it?”
Alicia moved closer and the grin on her face felt a little more natural. “Let’s do it,” she said, sad only that it wouldn’t be a spider airplane lurking inside. She reached for the handle on one of the doors. “On three?”
He nodded and reached for the other handle. “One… two… three!”
The doors swung open.
Inside, a confused boggart slumped against the corner of the wardrobe — a young girls’ head atop a grown man’s body, a smear of blood across her cheek and a smattering across his shirt.
Alicia raised her eyebrows at Dedalus and gave him a half-shrug, “It tried.”
Dedalus’ half-shrug mirrored her own. “That’s not even scary. That’s just weird,” he said, unable to suppress a genuine chuckle. It was hard to be too terribly upset by something that was so obviously removed from reality.
“Shall we, then?” he asked. “On the count of three?”
Alicia nodded and held her wand at the ready. “One...two...three!”
“Riddikulus!”
And the boggart transformed before their eyes, giving Alicia’s father a tutu, a pair of pastel pink tights, and a pair of ballet slippers. The changes to Marjorie’s head were even more ridiculous — she grew a beard as her hairline receded and a fat cigar appeared, drooping from the corner of her broad grin.
Alicia covered her mouth with her hand. From behind it, she said, “Definitely think we confused it.”
Dedalus laughed out loud, feeling a bit lighter already at the sight of how ridiculous this was. “Confused it? I think we may have broken it. Oh well, into the box it goes.” He pulled out another.
“Serves it right,” she said and moved to help him convince the manchild to get into the box. This boggart-hunting trip had been a definitive success.