What Do You Fear? pv Lucia Fox CLOSED

It was the first Defence Against The Dark Arts lesson of the year, a fact which Lucia had conflicted feelings about. On the one hand, it would be nice to have some normality - most of her other classes so far had been options that she'd only started this year. Lucia hadn't been able to choose her own options. Instead, her mother Ebony had just ticked everything available except flying, which meant that Lucia now had eleven classes to keep up with. She doubted that her year would be particularly fun. Still, though, there were, like, years until the OWLs. It'd be fine.

What wouldn't be fine was the topic of today's DADA lesson. Lucia had heard rumours that it would focus on Boggarts, but had remained optimistic up until the moment the professor proved her wrong. Boggarts. Why?! Why did you need to experience a Boggart, a physical representation of your worst fear, at the age of thirteen?! What was wrong with the Ministry if they thought this was needed?! As the class filed into a line, Lucia found herself jostled about in the rush of people trying not to be first in the queue. She lost track of Alexa, Lindsey, anybody who could count as a friend, and when she looked up and the dust has settled... @Rose Moon. Seriously? Not only did Lucia have to confront her worst fear, but now she had to do it with Rose flipping Moon watching her.

Lucia Fox and Rose Moon... well, they certainly did not get along. Ever since Lucia had beaten Rose in their very first duel almost a year ago and Rose had accused her of cheating, Lucia had refused to act nicely towards her until she apologised. And Rose had refused to apologise. And so, in the manner of two stubborn, hormonal teenagers, Rose and Lucia had come to a stalemate.

The Hufflepuff didn't have the time to mull over her relationship with Rose Moon right now, though. Her time would be much better spent trying to work out what her Boggart would be. Lucia had never thought about it before and was saddened by the sheer amount of choices the Boggart had. Spiders? Heights? Zombies? Losing her beauty? The revelation of her Veela ancestry? The final two would certainly be the worst for Lucia, so all she could hope for was something else. But this was a Boggart. It would turn into the worst option available. Oh Merlin...

The line was quickly moving forward now. Every so often there was a smattering of laughter, but Lucia didn't join in. Two people, then it was her. Maybe she could fake needing the toilet to escape? But no, she couldn't appear weak, especially not in front of Rose Moon, who would certainly recognise the tactic seeing as how she'd used it before to get out of talking to the Gryffindor. Laughter, then the only person in front of Lucia was Rose herself. Lucia couldn't help it - she leaned over Rose's shoulder, looking into a... mirror? Rose Moon's worst fear was... herself? What? Before Lucia could recognise the colour of Boggart-Rose's scarf, the real Rose set the mirror spinning around and walked off.

Lucia stumbled forward.

The Boggart swirled in the air for a moment before settling on the floor. A little stone tablet took shape... no, a grave. Lucia tried to force her gasp back inside, but it had already escaped now. Because it wasn't just a grave. It was a crumbling, moss-covered grave with some sort of can spilling out its contents onto the stone. It was a weathered grave with most of the words scratched off. It was a little grave with two names on it. Briar and Willow Fox. Lucia squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see it any more. Here, then, was her worst fear. The death of her sisters. And not just that, but the death of her sisters with nobody left behind to care. The Hufflepuff forced her eyes open. "Riddikulus." Nothing happened, in spite of her perfect pronunciation and wand movement. Oh... Lucia had to think of something funny. How could you make this funny? How could a grave be funny? "R- riddikulus-" The grave crumbled completely into a little pile of rocks before drawing itself up. It reformed into a rocky cat, which promptly jumped onto a table and started batting at someone's water bottle. Lucia forced out a laugh and stepped aside. When she looked around, she was once again beside Rose, who was... looking at her. Was she? Maybe she wasn't. Maybe it was just Lucia's nerves looking for someone to lash out on. Either way... "What?" Lucia snapped, trying to hide how vulnerable she felt right now.

Rose watched Lucia carefully, trying to soak in as much information as possible. The spinning mirror started to change, moving to Lucia's boggart. The girl seemed to be a little nervous, which was understandable. Who wouldn't be nervous when told that they were about to face their darkest fear? Who could prepare for coming face-to-face with what you feared the most in the world?

A small, cruel part of Rose was prepared to make fun of whatever Lucia was scared of, more to make herself feel superior than to actually hurt Lucia. To be fair, a lot of people could point at Rose's own fear and laugh, saying it was crazy. The sorting hat always knew where to put people, it didn't just say they didn't belong anywhere. She wasn't that special. To be fair, what Rose thought Lucia was most scared of was more along the lines of mummies or snakes or spiders. She wasn't prepared for what appeared in front of Lucia.

A grave. Not very fancy, with a worn etching. Lucia seemed to freeze, the same way Rose had.

Everybody talked about "fight or flight," but not many people talked about "freeze." When confronted with fear, the only thing Rose did naturally was freeze, like a deer in headlights. She hated it, because it meant that she didn't react anywhere near as well as she felt like she should to lots of things. But as she saw Lucia freeze, a pang of guilt shoved its way into her stomach.

She couldn't read the grave or anything that it said, but it was clear that this wasn't any graveyard. It was a grave of someone she knew. Maybe it was Lucia. Maybe what Lucia feared most was her own death.

Rose knew she wasn't going to find any way to make fun of this that wouldn't chafe on her morals and her conscience for as long as she remembered it. This was awful.

After a couple of tries, Lucia was able to turn the gravestone into a cat before the line moved forward, another falling victim to their worst fear. Rose's eyes stayed on the stone cat, watching it prance around the front of the room, causing minor amounts of chaos and batting at someone's water before it shifted into the next person's fear.

Lucia came to stand near Rose. "Good job," Rose murmured, realizing only after the fact that she probably wasn't loud enough for Lucia to hear her in the loud room. The redhead glanced over, trying to read the Hufflepuff's expression. Lucia snapped at her, and Rose started a little bit, not expecting Lucia to initiate any interaction, though she wasn't surprised it was negative. Rose would have been happy to pretend Lucia wasn't there, but now the Hufflepuff was forcing her on the defensive. "Merlin's beard, calm down. There's no need to be so on edge," she said.

Did Lucia just feel threatened by Rose's presence? The Hufflepuff had been able to see Rose's boggart, and the redhead wasn't snapping at her to fend off any potential comments. The redhead suppressed an eye roll. There was no need to be dramatic about all this.

Different people had different reactions to fear. It was one of the few areas where Ravenclaws, as a general rule, didn't lead, because fear tended to throw all sense of logic out of the window. Of course, Gryffindors tended to pick the aggressive option in fight-or-flight, and the Slytherins would pick whatever was the easiest for them, but Lucia didn't know how a Hufflepuff was supposed to react to fear. Certainly, her reaction to fear went against most of Hufflepuff's be nice to everyone ideologies: Lucia froze and found her nerves all riled up, ready to snap out at whoever was closest. And @Rose Moon was closest.

Lucia was calm! Lucia was so calm! She was calmer than everyone else in this room, she was so much calmer than Rose herself, she was calm! Although there was definitely a reason to be on edge. Any moment now, Lucia expected some kind of comment from Rose about her boggart, but she just couldn't bear it. "There's definitely a need to be on edge." Wait, had Lucia said that out loud? Merlin damn it. Maybe it was the adrenaline that had been fuelled by seeing her worst fear, maybe it was the sense of unease Lucia always got when she was around Rose Moon, maybe Lucia wasn't calm after all. "This is a stupid lesson," she muttered, trying not to look at the spider the boggart had just turned into. Facing your worst fear wasn't something any thirteen-year-old should be subjected to, Lucia felt quite strongly on that.

"There's definitely a need to be on edge."

Rose's brow furrowed. Yes, the boggart had shaken her up, but it was fake, and all for their learning experience. "It's just a Boggart. It's not like it's real," she said defensively.

Though Lucia felt strongly against this lesson, as was apparent by her demeanor and her words saying so, Rose had to say she disagreed. If anybody was to be met with a Boggart in real life, outside of the classroom, and didn't know that it was all fake, they would be confronted with their worst fears and have no way to defend themselves. The lesson taught them how to fight Boggarts and even recognize what their Boggarts turned into.

However, that was Rose's logic speaking. If anybody invited her to face her worst fear in a form that wouldn't hurt her, Rose would laugh and walk away. Who would willingly face their own greatest fear if given the choice not to? If this was an optional class, Rose wasn't sure if she would have come.

What a Gryffindor that made her.

Okay, so maybe there was a little bit of a basis on her Boggart. Rose never expected to be put in Gryffindor, with those who were courageous. She had never felt courageous. Rose found herself scared much more often. She had been expecting to be put in Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw, but the Sorting Hat obviously thought she didn't belong there either. Maybe it was true, after all. Maybe she truly didn't belong in any house or with any people.

Rose pushed away the thought. At least she was a little bit more of a Gryffindor than Lucia. Lucia was blinded by fear, by pride. She couldn't push down the fact that she was vulnerable in front of the rest of the class. She was definitely overreacting at this point. Rose bit her lip. Telling Lucia to calm down hadn't helped at all, and Rose almost just kept her mouth shut, letting Lucia be scared and angry and whatever she wanted to be.

Rose shook her head. "I think you'll survive a Boggart lesson." Her voice implied that Lucia was being incredibly dramatic. Which she was! Well- maybe not incredibly, but she was at least being a little dramatic. She wasn't going to die from seeing a grave on the ground and a spider or two.

@Rose Moon

Lucia couldn't shake the feeling that Rose Moon was inwardly laughing at her. It's not like it's real. That was the kind of thing you'd say to a little kid, scared of a drawing of a skeleton in a picture book. "I know that," she mumbled, looking away from the spider which the boggart had just transformed into. But then she realised that her tone wasn't that of an equal, which she was - if anything, Lucia was better than Rose since at least she didn't accuse other people of things they didn't do - but that of someone intimidated by another. And Rose Moon did not intimidate Lucia Fox. So she raised her voice and forced her spine to straighten. "I mean, the- the fear's still there. From the illusion." Oh, that was even worse! Now Lucia was pointing out her own insecurities to Rose Moon! "Most people have the sense to be afraid of things that could hurt them," she tried. "Not like you Gryffindors." Stupid Gryffindors, always rushing headlong into things that could kill them because they didn't have the healthy idea of self-preservation which came with fear. Although... Lucia liked the idea of not being afraid of anything. It would be nice to be able to stroke Rascal, Alexa's pet rat. It would be nice to go up to the Astronomy tower and stand fearlessly at the edge. It would be nice to look your worst fear in the eye and not have it affect you at all. Like Rose Moon had. Not that Lucia was jealous of Rose. She couldn't be jealous. She wasn't. Was she?

Lucia replied, seeming to say that she did know, deep down, that the boggart wasn't real and that there wasn't really anything to be afraid of. Rose guessed she could understand that- the irrational terror that gripped you when you saw your worst fear, even if it didn't really happen. It was completely normal to be shaken up by this, but Rose was struggling to understand where Lucia's sudden tense attitude was coming from, incredibly defensive.

Rose guessed she had been the one to start it all those months ago, snapping at Lucia just because she was insecure about her Duel. Man, that had been stupid. It had caused this whole meaningless feud between her and Lucia that, honestly, had never even needed to happen, if she hadn't been so petty. But, to be fair to herself, Lucia could have just written it off as her having a bad day and left her alone, instead of fueling her on. And now, Rose was being completely docile and Lucia was the one snapping and being petty.

So maybe the existence of the feud wasn't really her fault any more.

Lucia seemed to quickly change her mind about her opinion of the boggart, defending her viewpoint. Rose shook her head. "Whatever you wanna believe," she murmured, wanting to leave the conversation alone. This was what Lucia should have done that one day in potions class. Given her some grace. Just stepped away. Just left it alone.

Then, Lucia decided it was a nice idea to insult Rose's house. Rose's eyebrows raised, and her voice was low and cold as she shot back, "So all Gryffindors don't have the sense to be afraid of things that can hurt them? All Gryffindors are reckless and senseless?" Yes, she was probably putting some words into Lucia's mouth, but that was exactly what the raven-haired girl had implied.

"I suppose if that's true, all Hufflepuffs are angel-hearted and kind and patient to every person they meet, all the time?" She narrowed her eyes slightly at Lucia. "If I didn't know that wasn't true, you would have disproved that for me fairly quickly. I don't think you're completely aware of the concepts of bravery or of houses. I'll have you know that not all Gryffindors are reckless, and many of us have completely rational fears towards dangerous things. What makes Gryffindors brave is that they act in spite of fear." That was one of Rose's favorite quotes about fear and bravery.

Rose shook her head. Lucia was even more of an idiot than she had thought.