Black Blood

012 - Ridiculous Riddikulus

'What a strange week this has been,' she idly thought, awaiting her turn with drawling disinterest. 'And what strange teachers have taught me so.'

"Next, Ron," Professor Lupin lightheartedly said, turning on a fun, inappropriate tune for the lesson at hand.

She shivered as a giant spider took form in front of the boy, and she almost took a step back in horror as it approached the redhead and, by extension, the rest of the class who were in line behind him, which included her.

The boy moaned in distress, and past the few heads that were before her, she could see him tremble in terror.

"Riddikulus!" he squeaked more than shouted, conjuring a skate for each of the horrific beast's eight legs, which caused it great imbalance upon its unsteady, wheel-laden feet.

The class laughed in tandem at the, admittedly, ridiculous sight of a giant spider attempting to skate about.

"Marvelous!" Professor Lupin cheered through his own loud chortling, motioning with a swish of his hand for the lesson to continue.

Weasley departed the front with a proud grin upon his face, leaving a Patil twin to take his place, and the previously absurd sight of a giant, skating spider was instantly replaced by a terrifyingly, equally-giant snake.

Whilst she hadn't been expecting the monstrous images of a giant spider followed by a giant snake, Cassiopeia could certainly understand why such things had been Weasley's and Patil's greatest fears, and it made her wonder if the boggart would show her a very similar giant beast borne from the depths of her darkest nightmares.

"Riddikulus!" Patil shouted, warping the giant, hissing snake into a giant, teetering, clown-faced jack-in-the-box, and whilst most of her classmates laughed and applauded the Gryffindor, Cassiopeia personally felt that the creepy visage Patil had imagined into reality was possibly even more disturbing to look upon than the snake it had previously held form.

Thomas went next, and his boggart took the form of a disembodied hand that made Cassiopeia ill inside, but, fortunately, he dispatched it rather quickly by placing the severed limb into a strange, trap-like contraption, which, unfortunately, caused the stub to spew forth blood, which, in turn, nearly forced Cassiopeia to faint on her feet.

Finnegan, who was, to Cassiopeia's knowledge, best friends with Thomas, bumped shoulders with the boy as the latter passed him on his trek towards the end of the assembled line. As for Finnegan's boggart, Cassiopeia immediately had to place each of her immaculately pedicured hands over each of her delicate ears, as a screaming banshee came into being.

"Riddikulus!" Finnegan roared, his voice barely overpowering the rogue banshee's own, and to Cassiopeia's relief, complete silence therein followed.

"G...good, Seamus," Professor Lupin croaked, uncovering his own ears with a look of pain upon his gaunt features. "Next."

Davis took her turn after Finnegan, and she faced down a grotesque, heavily-decayed inferius, altering its disturbingly ugly head into that of a grinning pumpkin, which was a sore sight better than what had previously been.

Greengrass, the halfblood Davis' close friend, a girl who nearly matched Cassiopeia's blossoming beauty, very nearly, went shortly thereafter, confronting a pale man with elongated, sharp canines, only for the relatively tame image to change into that of a buck-toothed rabbit, reminding Cassiopeia of a certain muggleborn who she held no interest in thinking about.

"Bombastic, Daphne!" Professor Lupin cheered, chortling good-naturedly as he eyed the image of the rodent and its overtly large front teeth. "Next!"

With an indifferent sniff, Cassiopeia stepped forward, giving Greengrass a polite smile as she passed, and the girl found herself wondering, rather curiously, what image the boggart would now form for her.

'Perhaps my greatest fear is that of a raging dragon,' she idly mused, her thoughts filled with mirth at the ridiculous implication.

The amortal creature billowed and swished, warping from rabbit into black smoke, and then taking form once more, this time into something the pureblooded girl could have never foreseen.

'No...' she thought in horror, unable to believe that the image before her happened to be her greatest fear.

Her heart beat fast, a cold sweat broke onto her pale skin, and she could hear the whispers begin. She wasn't as much scared of what was before her as she was embarrassed by it.

'This cannot be happening...' she bemusedly thought, vaguely aware of a sudden clatter below her vision. 'This cannot...be...happening...'

"Black?!" a voice behind her asked, one she knew all too well, and one she hated with all her heart in that awful moment.

'I'll never live this down...not ever,' the girl thought in horror and rage, gritting her teeth so terribly tight together that her jaw ached in mild pain. 'Not! Ever!'

She stormed away from the boggart, bypassing countless faces without a single glance in their direction, knowing they were all grinning at her, teasing and taunting her for the image she'd left in her place.

"Black?!" that awful voice called again, and Cassiopeia nearly lost all restraint, and she likely would've, too, had her wand still been within reach. "Why?!"

'That's what I want to know, you muggleborn cur!' the girl silently screamed, screwing her fine face up in ugly disgust, an image, much akin to the one the boggart had shown her, that should've never seen light, nor darkest of night.

"C...Cass!" Draco weakly called, but she ignored his pity-laden cry, knowing she would never be redeemed within his eyes, and knowing her embarrassment would never be outlived nor banished to bliss-filled unhappening.

'Forevermore!' she silently raged, blinking through hot, miserable tears brought on by her complete humiliation. 'This shall haunt my days forevermore!'

And it truly would, too, as no pureblood, not in the entire history of magickind, had ever been shown such a humiliating thing as a mere muggleborn when a boggart came to call.