Bad Omens | F. W

Six - Tricks and Treats

Sarah Jane was crazy, that's what she had been told at least. Word had spread quickly about Professor Lupin's famous lesson on boggart with how amazing it was, but word also spread that one of the Potters, Sarah Jane, was scared of dogs.

    Dogs for Merlin's sake.

    She was supposedly so scared of a little dog that she had a panic attack, thus she was dragged to Madam Pomfrey to just be calmed down and become sane. Pansy Parkinson had personally enjoyed telling everyone that it was a "little black muggle chihuahua that scared Potter," not a massive wolf with bloody teeth. The Slytherin's seemed to take the girl's story rather than the truth from anyone else.

    Sarah Jane was not scared of dogs, but she couldn't give an exact reason to why her boggart was a dog and not anything else.

    As the days went by, Sarah Jane found herself to be the sole target of bullying -- somehow Harry wasn't even touched -- Draco Malfoy even jumping in to torment her. Waking down the hallways became a game of guessing, Sarah Jane just hoping she wouldn't turn the corner and be met with anything ridiculous. One of the days when she was flipping through one of her books she forgot to check and she immediately turned down a corridor and shrieked at sudden barking. After she fell to the floor and looked up, she saw Pansy Parkinson with a sixth year friend of hers both laughing hysterically as they had transfigured some object into a tiny little york-terrier dog.

    Sarah Jane left with a red face and tears in her eyes.

    On another day she sat in the library and once again shrieked as Malfoy and his goons that time had snuck up on her, dressed as dementors by holding their hoods up unusually high above their heads.

    Malfoy barked with laughter, "ooh, run Potter, the dementors are coming!"

    "So are the little dogs!" Crabbe added loudly, ignoring the obvious shushes from the library's keeper.

    "Piss off!" Sarah Jane spat, shoving her chair back into Malfoy's crotch and escaping -- she listened to his painful cry with a smile as she left.

    Harry had abandoned her, leaving her to fend for herself entirely. Well, that's how she felt at least. Harry was pulled away by Oliver Wood almost all the time, some days Sarah Jane never even saw her brother as he was too busy with quidditch the second October began. But then again once it started Cedric began to drag her away as well as they too wanted the quidditch cup.

    Cedric had Sarah Jane help him run practices in an attempt to get the Grim off of her mind, but it was useless most of the time. She'd sit on her broom, staring off into the patch with her fingers tapping against the broom's handle quickly or harshly, or she'd be tapping her food in the air to keep herself distracted; coming to terms with death was hard.

    To her team it was like watching a child who was scared of needles. The kid would run and try to get away from the needle or stall time to calm down and or avoid it, but in the end it was just painful to watch since escaping was never an option. In Sarah Jane's case, this meant meeting the Grim to the face.

    She barely looked up from her spacing out, even when the quaffle was thrown past her head, or the bludger barely passed the tip of her nose, she stayed still. It was terrifying, honestly, how could you not flinch from a metal flying ball coming straight for your head? The few times she did manage to snap out of her trance was only to move or raise her bat just for the bludge to skim past it and graze the side of her head or arm -- luckily not harming her.

    She felt like death was mocking her.

    Even with quidditch barely helping, the weeks continued no matter what. DADA was all anyone ever talked about, be it the famous boggart lesson or the newer ones, but even Sarah Jane was able to become a little excited for each new lesson with Professor Lupin -- it was better than sitting at a desk and doing nothing. As DADA went uphill, Care of Magical Creatures only went down from there.