The Christmas holiday was officially over. Lessons started again. The last thing anyone felt like doing was spending two hours in the grounds on a raw January morning, but Hagrid had provided a bonfire full of salamanders for their enjoyment, and they spent an unusually good lesson collecting dry wood and leaves to keep the fire blazing, while the flame-loving lizards scampered up and down the crumbling, white-hot logs. The first Divination lesson of the new term was much less fun; Professor Trelawney was now teaching them palmistry, and she lost no time in informing Harry that he had the shortest life-lines she had ever seen. Defense Against the Dark Arts was normal as it once was. At eight o'clock on Thursday evening, I left the dungeons for the History of Magic classroom. I walked in and saw Harry and Lupin already there. Harry gave me look.
"Don't give me that look! You try walking from the dungeons to here. It's a workout." I say before Harry could start telling me off for my lateness. Professor Lupin heaved a large suitcase onto Professors Binns desk.
"What's that?" asked Harry.
"Another Boggart,"said Lupin, stripping off his cloak. "I've been combing the castle ever since Tuesday, and very luckily, I found this one lurking inside Mr Filch's filing cabinet. It's the nearest we'll get to a real Dementor. The Boggart will turn into a Dementor when he sees you, so we'll be able to practise on him. I can store him in my office when we're not using him; there's a cupboard under my desk he'll like."
"OK,"said Harry, trying to sound as though he wasn't apprehensive at all and merely glad that Lupin had found such a good substitute for a real Dementor. I was also very grateful.
"So ..." Professor Lupin had taken out his own wand, and indicated that we should do the same. "The spell I am going to try and teach you is highly advanced magic, – well beyond Ordinary Wizarding Level. It is called the Patronus Charm."
"How does it work?" said Harry nervously.
"Well, when it works correctly, it conjures up a Patronus," said Lupin, "which is a kind of Anti-Dementor – a guardian which acts as a shield between you and the Dementor." Professor Lupin continued, "The Patronus is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the Dementor feeds upon – hope, happiness, the desire to survive – but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the Dementors can't hurt it. But I must warn you two, that the Charm might be too advanced for you. Many qualified wizards have difficulty with it."
"What does a Patronus look like?" I asked curiously.
"Each one is unique to the wizard who conjures it." Lupin responds.
"And how do you conjure it?" Harry asked.
"With an incantation, which will work only if you are concentrating, with all your might, on a single, very happy memory." Lupin says. Great I thought. A happy memory. Which was one thing I most likely did not have.
"The incantation is this –" Lupin cleared his throat, "expecto patronum!"
"Expecto patronum," Harry repeated under his breath, "expecto patronum."
"Concentrating hard on your happy memory?" "Oh – yeah –" I said, quickly forcing my thoughts back to when I was accepted to the Quidditch team.
"Expecto patrono – no, patronum – sorry – expecto patronum, expecto patronum –" Harry kept muttering. Something whooshed suddenly out of the end of his wand; it looked like a wisp of silvery gas.
"Did you see that?" said Harry excitedly. "Something happened!"
"Very good,"said Lupin, smiling. "Right then – ready to try it on a Dementor?" Dementor? How did Potter get it that quickly. Lupin looked at me.
