There had been times where I fell under the effect of a Master power during my two and a half years of being a cape. Valefor, briefly. August Prince. Even myself, through capes under my power to direct my body when my failing nervous system couldn't.

  But never like this, never so trapped.

  My heart beat, my eyes blinked, and I breathed as usual, but that was about it. Everything else felt like pressing the buttons on a broken remote controller, no feedback. I tried to squeeze my fist and to throw a leg forward and it was like calling for someone who had earplugs on.

  The disorientation from my body not moving from my commands was adding to the feeling.

  A-ah. So this is what it feels like.

  I tried to flex the muscles in my arm, to do anything. It was like I was surrounded by a wall that pressed on me from all sides, in and out.

  Like the locker.

  Sweat dripped from my nose.

  What had I been thinking? I knew what creature it was, what spell it was weak to. Still, I did not have any practice with it, any assurence I could reliably cast it, or knowledge for how dangerous my boggart could be. Figuring out what it was as late as I did? I was feeling like I was a little complaint, in a subconscious way. I had been looking for trouble.

  Now I had found it.

  The only saving scare was the wand in my hand, and my connection to my passenger through the tool. The presence of the said creature was all on something behind me.

  My feet moved, and the movement suprised me, having not seen it coming at all. I got suprised a second time, when I didn't fell, because that's what you felt like when your body moved where you didn't intend it to.

  This is terrible.

  I was made to turn around, coming face to face with the boggart, which was...

  Myself. Or rather, myself from the past. She was tall, easily dwarfing my stature of a child. The clothes she had on were a mixture of my times from being Skitter and Weaver, bordering between black and white, something grey with patches of dirt and dark colors all over. Her right arm was missing, mirroring mine. Her hair was all messed up, coarse in some places and flattened with something wet in others. Her face was pale, but her eyes...

  Her eyes lacked the insanity I'd been waiting for. She took me in with curiosity, holding a guarded expression.

  She opened her mouth. "Aughh."

  She scowled, moving towards the teacher's desk. I followed. Her gait was was a harsh one, signaling injuries and problems across her body, but it wasn't uncoordinated.

  My passenger was... looking. That was the best description. It was looking like a child glued onto the glass to see the sharks in an aquarium or a teacher peering over a student in an exam who she suspected of cheating. All eyes on, full attention, when the most it had given anything before hadn't been more than a fleeting twitch of its body.

  The boggart climbed on to the teacher's desk, assuming a sitting position, one leg over the other, her eyes settling on me once again.

  I needed to act. Although I couldn't move it around, wand movement wasn't totally necessary for casting, was it? C'mon passenger, help me out...

  My arm bent, and I watched in horror I put the wand into my belt. My passenger disappeared from my mind's eye.

  My breathing picked up pace as my panic multiplied tenfold.

  "Aaugh... Agg... Auuuh," she... vocalized? Another scowl. "Aaaa. Aaa. A. A?gh. A?. I," she said.

  "Ugh," the word spilled out of my mouth. "I'll continue with you, it's easier."

  The voice was mine, but the words weren't.

  She put her chin on her palm, studying me with her eyes. "This is interesting," I spoke. Her mouth moved alongside mine, mimicking the movement. "Who are you?"

  I strained my jaw, trying to speak up. She leaned her head to the right. "Hmm? What's that?"

  The grip on my vocal cords weakened, just enough that I could get my voice out. "I-I'm, Taylor Hebert."

  "That could not be," she said. "I am Taylor Hebert." She looked around, with her eyes and mine. "A classroom? Old-fashioned..." She turned back to me. "A Stranger? Turn back to what you were."

  "I can't," I said. What was going to happen to me?

  She frowned. "You don't have a power," she told me. "I would know. A clone? For what purpose? Is this Teacher's work?"

  "It isn't," I got out. "What's the last thing you remember?"

  "Hmm," she hummed, "it's... Contessa. The click of her cocking the gun."

  The power had made it obvious she was from after Panacea fucked with my head, but the fact that she seemed fine in the head had confused me.

  I didn't know what do, what to think. This one seemed to be different from the boggarts I'd read about, so I decided to try out the only option I had left: Talking.

  Calling out the pretense of the boggart, with or without the spell, should have helped, no?

  "It's not me that's pretending," I told her, "it's you."

  She raised a brow. "Explain that to me."

  "I'm the actual Taylor," I responded. "Reincarnated. On a completely new earth, one we never saw."

  "And how does that make me the pretender?"

  "It's because there is another source for powers here. Magic."

  "Like Myrddin?"

  "Nothing like him. It was just a costume for his versatile powerset. He had a passenger just like all of us. Here, though? Magic's real. Only a few people have it, but it lets you do anything you put your mind into if you are insistent enough."

  "Seems like a tall tale."

  "I thought the same, but the patterns, none of them match. It's not the work of the passengers."

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "That stick you were holding onto with dear life would be your wand? The things my bugs are passing through corridors away are what, poltergeists then?"

  I ignored the question about my wand. "Some are. Some would be ghosts."

  "There's a difference?"

  "There is, at least in this world."

  "And what? Magic summoned me?"

  I shook my head. "No. You aren't real."

  "I'm not?"

  "Ghosts aren't the only magical monster here."

  "I'm listening."

  "You are a boggart."

  "Not a very flattering name."

  "It isn't," I said. "Many names are like that here. Cheesy, goofy even. But it's what you are. Boggarts prey on the fears of their victims, formless when alone, they transform into the thing the person is scared off the most when they come too close."

  "Why?"

  The question caught me off-guard. I had to admit I had spent no time pondering that.

  "I don't know. A quirk of magic? From what I read, in the worst cases, a boggart may kill people. Most people get away or subdue it before that, though."

  "So I'm supposed to want to scare you," she said, and she was speaking with her own voice now. The speed at she adapted made me tremble, an involuntary reaction. "And the thing you are afraid of the most?"

  "That's right," I answered. "So no, you aren't Taylor Hebert, just a weak imitation." So hurry up and release me.

  She flexed her hand, staring at it. "The thing I'm most afraid of is... myself?"

  She neither spoke nor allowed me, for a small time that felt like eternity to me.

  "It's a cool story," she finally said. "But I have a better idea."

  I gulped.

  "You are a reincarnee, you'd said?"

  She let me nod.

  "I came to this weird place after I thought I died. Then a copy of my younger years comes over to tell me I'm not real and she is the original?" She bent down. "I'm not buying it. I don't feel like a fake, and I don't feel like scaring you pissless. Wanna hear what I think?"

  I closed my eyes, sweating like a waterfall.

  "I think... you are the imitation."

  My heart skipped a beat.

  "An unremarkable girl, who inherited these memories of mine out of pure luck. That's you. Confused, not sure who you really are."

  Oh this was a boggart all right. She was digging up the sole fear I had carried on me around as I'd grown up and recollected my memories, which had taken root inside my heart after my experience with the hat.

  "What was it like, cruising through life, believing yourself to be me, thinking you deserve my achievements, deluding yourself to have committed my sacrifice?"

  Tears welled up in my eyes.

  "But it all changed when you came here, didn't it? When you felt the first hints of a challenge? After winning, succeeding at everything for so long only because you have a piece of mine?"

  I tried to shake my head, but she wouldn't let me.

  "But the reality is... you're nothing like me," she stated as bugs buzzed around her. She walked up to me, squatting to pet my head with a sickeningly sweet smile on her lips. "And it's fine. You don't have to force yourself to be me. You can be your own person. You can be the kid you were meant to be."

  Had that been out of the mouth of anyone else, I could have at least decided inside my own head that they had good intentions.

  Here, though, I knew how malicious its words were. I knew she was a boggart, logically, but I'd read up about boggarts who impersonated people and this one was... uncannily accurate, and it seemed convinced it was the original.

  A tear slid down my cheek. The common sense thing do focus on was the enemy before me, but her words had invaded my brain. Whether it was a boggart or not, her words were things that have been on my mind for a long while.

  Am I really...

  It had won.

  Suddenly, a hiss interrupted us. Her head turned towards the entrance and mine followed. Mrs. Norris was there, tight like a spring and her head down, hissing. And behind her, was Dumbledore.

  He strode in with a relaxed demeanor. I tried to speak, to tell him to stay away, warn him of the danger, but I was unable.

  As the headmaster advanced, I waited for the moment he'd fall under the control of the boggart.

  He came in close, as close as me.

  Nothing happened.

  The doppelganger had retreated due to his approach. She addressed me, her tone questioning, "One of the magical people?" She turned to him. "I can't control you."

  The old man's eyes twinkled behind his glasses. "It appears so."

  "How?" There was pure confusion in her eyes.

  Dumbledore chose to look at me instead as he answered. "Yours is terrifying magic, no doubt. Not in mere scope and reach, but the depth in how it assaults a person like they aren't a fellow human being... But it's magic at the end of the day. My domain, if you will." He threw his head back, smiling warmly. "Still, I have to thank you. I'm grateful to have witnessed it. Only a creature, a boggart like you could give birth to such magic."

  She laughed, a humorless sound. "You think that, too? I'm human."

  "We'll see if it is so, right... now."

  He stepped even further, going past me. If a wizard was unable to deal with a boggart, another would take the job. The boggart would transform into the fear of the other wizard when he came closer than the previous one, freeing the victim. That's what he was doing. I felt relief at the rescue I was receiving.

  She shook, more like she was about to vomit than anything else, and black liquid dripped from her finger tips.

  But she didn't change.

  "Ah," Dumbledore said. "Now that's curious."