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The cupboard was dark. It liked it that way. Dark and small and hidden, forgotten in a corner of an undisturbed room.
Waiting. Patient and quiet.
Fears are like that. Forgotten but ever-present. Lurking in a corner and just out of the corner of your eye.
What is your greatest fear? Go on, think for a second. Can you identify it? Can you pinpoint it to one thing? Do you really know yourself enough to work it out? Do you trust yourself enough to admit it?
What would it turn into, if it were you?
Maybe it turn into a thousand things. A thousand intangible worries and anxieties. So many little fears, too nondescript to describe. Do you understand yourself well enough to pick out just one?
What would you prefer, if you could choose? A thousand tiny worries, or that one big fear that you cannot bring yourself to think about?
If you could choose your Boggart, what would it be?
But it’s not your place to choose, is it? You have no power over a Boggart. You have no power over fear. You are just a person, just a tiny insignificant human, one of millions. Your choice makes no difference to it. Your choice is meaningless.
But you knew that.
Which is scarier; the Boggart itself, or the few seconds right before it picks its’ shape?
In those few seconds, you are at the Boggarts mercy. Your thoughts, your mind are all its plaything to root though. It reads you like a book, searching your mind and soul for the things even you cannot bring yourself to think about. It sees your anxieties, the little things that make your heart race when you worry about them. It sees your fears, the things that keep you awake at night, that keep you from turning out the light. It sees your worries and all the possibilities you create inside your head and every little plan and preparation you have built to save yourself from succumbing to the fear.
It sees them and it laughs.
A Boggart does not care for trivial fears. It feeds off terror. It needs to hold you, to freeze you and keep you in place while it feasts on the panic. It feeds off the force of your racing heart, the sound of your shallow breaths, the tears that slip down your cheeks. It feeds off the screams caught in your throat and the tensing of your muscles. A Boggart doesn’t feed off fear . It feeds off you and everything fear does to you. And the longer it keeps you frozen in shock the longer it has to feast on the panic.
So a Boggart will search. It will dig deep inside your soul, to the places in your memories that you do not dare to tread. No occlumency or legilimency can expel it. Fears don’t just live in your mind, they live in your heart, in your soul. You hide them in the darkest parts of yourself, unwilling to touch them. Bury them, deep deep down so you don’t have to face them. You build your personality around them, trying to hide your fears from those around you. People may not judge you if you are afraid, but they will judge what you are afraid of.
You can tell a lot about a person by what they most fear.
So I ask again, what are you more afraid of; the Boggart itself, or the few seconds right before it picks its shape?
Because until the Boggart shows you, do you really know what your deepest fear is? Do you know with certainty what it will be? Or are you convincing yourself that you know. Willing it to be a snake or a spider or a haunting omen of death. Something nice and corporeal. Something you could fight and kill and banish with a wave of a wand.
The Boggart will know.
And it won’t pick something easy. It will go for the throat. You may be able to hide the dark parts of your soul from the world, from your friends. You might be able to convince them you who you are but you cannot fool a Boggart. It will pluck out that which you most fear without a care for who you are. It just wants to feed, and it will destroy you to do it.
Unless you can destroy it first.
But how do you fight fear?
People say that love is the strongest emotion, those people are fools. Fear is what makes a person strong. It is what makes a person swift, determined, desperate. On a battlefield it is not love keeping you from the blades edge, it is the fear of death. The fear that the small scraps of meaning you have dragged into this life could be extinguished. It is not your love for others that drives you to save them. It is the fear of losing them.
Can you laugh in the face of fear? Can you laugh at the one thing keeping you alive? If you are no longer afraid, then what do you have to lose?
And how could you laugh at it? How could you laugh at something you refuse to let yourself even think about? What makes you think you could best a Boggart? A Boggart who has been inside your head, who has seen into your heart and soul, who has skimmed over your wants and wishes, your hope and dreams and plucked from inside you the one thing it knows will bring you to your knees.
A Boggart, who has no fangs, no claws or teeth. A creature without form or force. Something that will not attack you, it won’t swipe at you nor draw a sword yet can stop even the bravest man in his tracks, by showing him an idea . By simply taking the form of a mere thought.
Could you laugh at a Boggart, knowing what it can do? Would you dare?
So tell me, do you know your greatest fear? Because the Boggart is waiting. In a cupboard or under a bed, or just out of the corner of your eye.
Patient, ever present. Just how fears are.