By the time Alan finished his duties and hurried to the Dueling Club's practice chamber, the place was already packed.
The air buzzed with anticipation, competition, and that particular kind of restless energy found only in adolescence. Torches crackled against the stone walls, their flickering light throwing restless shadows across the ancient floor.
Alan's gaze swept over the crowd and came to rest at the front of the room.
On a small makeshift platform stood Professor Filius Flitwick, his tiny frame brimming with energy that far exceeded his size.
But what truly froze the atmosphere of the room was the man standing beside him,
Severus Snape.
Clad in his signature black robes, as though woven from the very essence of darkness itself, Snape stood with his arms crossed, emanating that unmistakable, frigid aura that warned: do not approach.
He hadn't come to demonstrate any defensive spells, his black, obsidian eyes were scanning the students like a pair of perfectly tuned instruments, searching for the slightest trace of failure, the smallest excuse to deduct points.
The temperature of the room seemed to drop by several degrees.
"Excellent. Since our theoretical consultant has finally arrived,"
Flitwick's sharp yet cheerful voice cut through the tension, his tone immediately lifting the heavy mood.
"Before we begin our actual dueling practice," he said, "I think it's important that we first understand, what we each fear most."
Before anyone could respond, Snape moved.
Without warning, he drew his wand. His wrist flicked with clinical precision, each motion as sharp as a blade. A silent spell erupted,
and an ancient, scarred wardrobe appeared from thin air, landing on the floor with a thud. Its doors rattled, as though something inside was desperately trying to get out.
A Boggart.
The students stirred, whispers rippling through the crowd.
"Line up," Snape ordered coldly. The tone left no room for argument.
The students immediately fell silent and began forming a line, one by one stepping forward to face the creature that would assume the form of their deepest fear.
The first was Neville Longbottom. Trembling, he stepped up. The wardrobe creaked open,
and out stepped Professor Snape, dressed in his grandmother's green dress and a vulture-topped hat. The room exploded in laughter.
Next came Ron Weasley.
From the wardrobe scuttled a massive, hairy spider, its many eyes gleaming, its pincers clacking ominously.
Then came Alan's turn.
As he stepped calmly out from the line, the entire room fell silent, utterly still.
Every student held their breath.
They were all dying to know.
This boy who seemed capable of everything, who had solved problems with impossible logic and knowledge far beyond his years,
What could possibly frighten him?
Was it the Dark Lord himself?
Some unsolvable mathematical riddle beyond even his comprehension?
Or… Professor Snape?
Even Snape's eyes were locked on him, their dark depths glimmering with something between curiosity and scrutiny.
Under countless gazes, the wardrobe gave a long, drawn-out creak, and slowly opened.
A shapeless shadow oozed out, slipping into the air like a formless mist.
It didn't change immediately.
It hovered there, in front of Alan, as though sniffing its prey, seeking, probing, trying to pierce the layers of logic and mental wards that protected his mind, searching for the source of that one word, fear.
And then, it found it.
The shadow began to condense, solidify, transform.
But it didn't become any monstrous creature from nightmares, nor any human face.
It became,
a mirror.
A vast, flawless, obsidian-black mirror.
Its surface absorbed all light, turning the torchlit chamber into a void of pure darkness.
Inside the mirror,
nothing.
No seductive illusions like the Mirror of Erised, no twisted reflections.
Only Alan himself.
An eleven-year-old boy in Hogwarts robes, standing utterly alone in an endless black void.
Silence swept the room.
No one understood.
What did it mean? Was his greatest fear… a mirror? Or himself?
Only Alan knew.
The instant he saw it, something inside him froze.
He understood.
His deepest fear wasn't of anything external, nor any tangible threat.
He feared, the Unknown itself.
That vast, infinite, lawless void beyond logic, beyond information, beyond comprehension, pure nothingness.
The thing his mind, always chasing the First Formula, always seeking to define and understand all things, could never reach, never define, never control.
The end of understanding itself.
The tomb of thought.
Almost instinctively, he raised his wand.
"Riddikulus!"
The incantation rang out clear and firm.
But nothing happened.
The faint light from his wand tip touched the black mirror, and vanished, evaporating like a drop of water on molten iron.
The mirror didn't move. The spell had no effect.
Gasps filled the air.
A Boggart resisting a Riddikulus spell? Impossible.
Alan's heart sank, but almost immediately, his mind regained perfect calm.
He understood.
"The Unknown," he realized, "is not something you can make ridiculous."
It was the origin of all seriousness, the end point of all inquiry.
You cannot make nothingness wear a funny hat.
You cannot laugh at what does not exist.
Slowly, he lowered his wand.
No magic could touch this kind of fear.
Only logic could.
Before the bewildered crowd, Alan gazed steadily at the black mirror, at his own reflection within it.
His voice was quiet, yet it carried, every syllable dropping like a weight into the silence.
"According to Descartes: Cogito, ergo sum.
I think, therefore I am."
He continued:
"If I can conceive of the Unknown, then the Unknown is merely a definition,
a boundary of my thought,
not an entity of its own."
His words sliced through the air like a scalpel, dissecting the very essence of fear.
"Therefore, logically,
you do not exist."
The moment the final word left his lips, the black mirror began to shudder violently.
The paradox had reached it.
The very foundation of its existence, Alan's fear, was logically denied.
The mirror twisted, warped, spiraled in on itself,
as though the fabric of the universe was tearing apart within it.
Then, with a silent scream that could only be felt in the mind,
the mirror shattered,
collapsing into a wisp of warped smoke that dissolved into nothing.
The void vanished.
The Boggart was gone.
And for a long moment, no one in the room moved, or breathed.
Alan stood there quietly, wand lowered, surrounded by silence,
having conquered fear not through magic,
but through reason itself.
~~----------------------
Patreon Advance Chapters:
[email protected] / Dreamer20