Defence Against the Dark Arts.
The class stood in a loose semicircle facing an old wardrobe that was shaking with something's efforts to get out. The latch rattled in a way that suggested whatever was inside had a lot of enthusiasm.
"Any guesses?" Professor Lupin asked.
"A Boggart, Professor," someone offered.
"Correct. A Boggart is a shapeshifting dark creature — it takes the form of whatever the person facing it fears most." Lupin moved in front of the class with easy confidence. "The good news is that Boggarts are fundamentally ridiculous. They feed on fear. Take the fear away and they fall apart."
He taught them the counter — Riddikulus — having them say it aloud several times, drilling it until it came fast and clean. The theory was simple: picture your fear doing something absurd. The spell locked in the absurdity and the Boggart couldn't hold the form.
"Right. Line up. Neville — you're first."
Neville approached the wardrobe. The latch sprang. Out swept Snape — or the Boggart's version of him — peering around the room with cold calculation before locking onto Neville.
"Come on!" Lupin called. "Picture him in your grandmother's clothes — every stitch of it —"
"Riddikulus!"
Snape spun. When he stopped, he was wearing a long floral dress, a towering feathered hat, and a handbag. He took one affronted step and the class erupted.
Kevin had his camera out in two seconds. The shutter clicked.
Hermione elbowed him. "If Snape ever finds that photograph —"
"Then I'll have had years of enjoyment before he does." Kevin tucked the camera away. "Worth it."
Ron went next. Giant spider. He managed Riddikulus on a shaking wand — the spider appeared on roller skates, spinning wildly in confused circles.
Several more students cycled through. Then Harry stepped up.
The Boggart rolled through a transformation — the clown from the previous student dissolved into something else. A roaring wall of black fire. A dark figure in the centre of it, two shapes collapsed at its feet.
The hood fell back.
Sirius Black. Grinning. The fire behind him framing him in orange-black like a portrait of triumph.
Harry's breath went sharp. His hands found his wand.
The grief on his face was real — not just fear, but fury. The Boggart had found the one thing that was both nightmare and target for him, and it knew it.
Lupin started forward.
"Riddikulus," Harry said. His voice was low and even.
The Boggart spun. The dark figure blurred — and resolved into a small black dog with Sirius Black's face. It sat. It blinked. It looked faintly confused about its own existence.
Lupin stopped mid-step and laughed. Actually laughed — surprised out of him, the way real laughter usually is. He pointed at the bewildered dog-faced dog.
"When you and Sirius eventually sort things out," Kevin said, already raising the camera, "I'm showing him this photograph."
He got the shot.
Harry watched the creature trot in a small, undignified circle, and found himself smiling despite everything.
Hermione's turn.
The dog-faced Sirius blurred. The shape that emerged was Kevin — his height, his build, standing with his arms crossed. The Boggart-Kevin looked at Hermione with detached, clinical disappointment and dropped a stack of examination papers on the floor between them. Every mark was a zero. His signature on the top sheet, sharp and dismissive.
I don't associate with people who perform like this.
Hermione went still for half a second.
Then her face did something that made the real Kevin, standing two feet to her right, take a quiet step sideways.
She turned and pinched his side. Hard.
"That is not me," he said, with great feeling.
She ignored him. Raised her wand. The controlled fury in her expression was, objectively, a little frightening.
"Riddikulus."
The Boggart spun and landed as a small figure in Kevin's clothes, sized down to roughly the proportions of a ten-year-old, wearing a bow on its head.
The class lost it. Draco laughed loudest.
Kevin stared at the miniature version of himself shuffling around in his oversized robes.
The real Kevin stepped up. The Boggart clocked him and transformed.
A syringe. Enormous. The needle about a foot long, gleaming under the classroom lights.
Kevin's hand tightened on his wand involuntarily.
Old reflex. He'd hated needles since childhood — this one, his previous one, probably all of them.
"Riddikulus."
The syringe swelled at the plunger end, the needle shrank, and the whole thing became a giant-headed duck that immediately began quacking at deafening volume in a rhythm that sounded — to Kevin specifically, and no one else in the room — exactly like a comedy clip from a life he no longer lived.
The class didn't know what they were hearing, but something about the rhythm was inherently funny. The laughter rolled through the room in waves.
Lupin ended the class in good spirits, the Boggart exhausted and retreating.
"Kevin," Harry said afterward, "have you signed your Hogsmeade permission slip?"
"No."
"You just... didn't?"
"It's a signature. If you want to go, I'll get you there."
Kevin shrugged. Hermione offered to have her parents sign his, or to ask Dumbledore.
"Only babies need permission slips," Kevin said, striking his victory pose — hands on hips, chin up.
Hermione pinched his waist.
"Ow —" He grabbed her hand. Why had pinching become her preferred method of communication?
"But Kevin —" Harry was still frowning "— what if we're caught?"
"Invisibility Cloak," Ron said.
Harry's face lit up.
Saturday. McGonagall assembled the third-years in the back garden and led them down toward the village. Kevin and Harry watched the procession from a window, then strolled out after, going in the same direction with zero pretence of subtlety.
McGonagall spotted them. She looked at the two of them — both orphans, both without signed slips, both walking with the self-possession of people who'd decided the rule applied to everyone else. She felt the familiar war between sympathy and duty, exhaled through her nose, and turned to lead her students.
When she was gone, Kevin clapped Harry on the shoulder.
"Right. Come on."
No Disillusionment Charm. Harry's Cloak, a Silencing Charm over both of them, and they jogged after the carriage-group without being heard.
Hogsmeade was pretty. Quiet today — off-season chill, frost on the thatched rooftops, smoke from pub chimneys. Nothing dramatic. Kevin found it pleasant but limited. A dozen specialist shops, a few pubs, the sweets establishment that seemed to be the primary point of the whole outing for most students.
He and Harry shed the Cloak once the teacher supervision dispersed, found Hermione and Ron waiting at the crossroads.
"How'd you beat us?" Ron asked, genuinely confused. They'd just arrived.
"Your carriage was slow," Kevin said, hands on hips.
Hermione jabbed him somewhere that made him wince and stop posturing.
They explored together — sweets first. Kevin spent twenty minutes hunting through Honeydukes for the poop-flavoured Kinder eggs, found four, and pocketed them with the satisfaction of a man completing a mission. He made a mental note to save some for Dumbledore.
Snape did not receive consideration. The mental image of Snape eating novelty candy was so inherently wrong that Kevin dismissed it immediately.