Such Sweet Sorrow

Thirty-Seven

Eloise Waldorf

When you're young, the things you're scared of revolve mostly around phobias and the monsters we saw in scary movies. 

Clowns. Spiders. Ghouls. Snakes. 

Or, if you're Hermione Granger; not being prepared for an exam. 

Trivial things that usually don't have a backing. Fears that are programmed into us, and we really aren't able to pin point a time in which we started being scared of that particular thing. 

As one gets older, more mature, braver...those fears usually morph into something more complex. 

But what happens when that time between childhood and adulthood was taken away? What happens to those whose childhoods were cut short by the brutalities of reality? The ones that were forced into roles that stole any bit of child like innocence away from them before they were ready? 

What happens to those that, at the young ages of sixteen and seventeen, were forced to fight for their lives? The ones that were supposed to be dealing with things like typical school drama and O.W.Ls, but instead were watching as those they loved were killed right in front of their eyes. 

Our fears aren't childish anymore. They aren't outrageous circumstances that we may or may not ever face in our lives. 

What we feared now were things we had already seen first hand. Things we had nightmares about. Things we wished to never see again as long as we lived. 

I turned around to see an image I had seen before. Something that sat heavy in my memory. 

Walking towards us was an image of Hagrid, battered and chained, holding in his arms the limp body of the boy that was currently standing next to me. 

And again, just like that day, all I heard were the screams of Ginny Weasley. 

And then another image appeared within seconds. One that made my heart feel as if it had been torn out of my chest all over again. 

It was Fred. 

His lifeless body being thrown to the ground, his eyes distant and and blood pouring from his nose. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ron covering his mouth with his hand as the wound from that day was ripped open all over again. 

We all stood there, too stunned to move. Fear and trauma paralyzed us equally; clutching each one of us in its grips, forcing us to watch as our worst fears materialized in front of us. 

It was like a nightmare I couldn't shake myself awake from. 

A few feet before Hermione, a woman seemed to appear from thin air, and it only took me a few moments to realize just who that person was. 

Bellatrix LeStrange. Dagger in hand, eyes trained on Hermione. Cackle echoing off the stone walls. 

Before Harry stood an image of the man himself. Like he had never died. Never disintegrated that day into ash. Never met his match at the hands of the boy that he couldn't kill. His eyes were alive 

My heart pounded loudly in my ears, and my breathing began to reach a level that my body was almost not strong enough to keep up with. I felt panic start to settle in my limbs, as I knew what was bound to appear before me. 

My Boggart. My own worst fear. 

Still paralyzed with fear and my back to the cabinet, I felt hot tears pour onto my cheeks as the final boggart found me, and began to form an image.