We Will Shine {Book 6 in the Star of Gryffindor Series}

Chapter 45 - Fred Weasley's Girlfriend

~Astra~

Colette convinced Mr. Potter to keep the boggart around for a few days after class. Between classes and Quidditch practice, the two of us would go visit his classroom and pull the trunk to the middle of his room. Then I would sit to the side, working on homework, while Colette stared down our old headmaster. Sometimes it spoke, saying variations of the same thing it had said during class. Sometimes it walked around the room. Sometimes it reached out for her. It never actually touched her, but she still flinched every time.

It always ended the same. Colette would swear in French and say it wasn't working, and I would hop up and force the boggart, now a dementor back into the chest. Sometimes it took five minutes to reach that point. Sometimes, it was closer to an hour. Those longer times got a little bit weird, to be honest. The boggart would get a lot more realistic, saying things that sounded eerily like Welling, using mannerisms and phrases that I hardly remembered him using until I saw the boggart doing it. When it got to that, I would try to step in on my own, but Colette would snap at me to leave her alone, that she almost had it.

She never did.

I knew what she was trying to do, of course. She had been the only person in our class who hadn't been able to trick the boggart, and obviously she wasn't happy about it. I was just worried that she going way too far with this. She'd psyched herself out so much that I wasn't sure she could even cast riddikulus anymore, if she'd tried.

"Colette, are you sure this is working?" I asked on our third day of trying. I had to go soon, because James had managed to squeeze in one more Quidditch practice before the match the next day. I had just forced the boggart back into the chest, and was now sitting on it, hoping she wouldn't try to go again.

Colette glared at me. "What would you know about it?"

"Nothing," I said, shrugging, though that was more to appease her than to be truthful. I felt like I knew quite a bit about boggarts. At least as much as she did. "Just wondering, is all. I'm not sure this is entirely healthy."

Instead of snapping at me, Colette looked down. "It's probably not."

"Then maybe we should stop?" I suggested.

"No!" She rolled her eyes. "I have to do this."

"Why?"

"Because everyone else could." She shook her head. "You wouldn't understand."

"Then explain," I said, frowning. "It sounds like you're just upset that you can't do it."

"So what if I am?"

"It's not the end of the world, Colette." I studied her for a moment. Was the problem that she couldn't do something most people in our year could? Did she think she had something to prove? Just about everyone knew she was incredibly smart, easily the most skilled with the technicalities of magic that no one else understood. "What exactly are you trying to prove with this?"

Colette shrugged. She seemed like she was avoiding my eyes. "Why do you think I'm trying to prove something?"

"Why else would you be doing this?" She didn't answer, and I sighed. "Everyone knows you're really skilled, you know. But everyone struggles with something. No one's perfect at everything, and no one expects you to be."

"That's not what this is," she snapped.

"Then what is it?"

I expected a quick, short-tempered answer, but it didn't come. Instead, she hesitated. Pursed her lips. Stared at the chest underneath me. "I don't know."