I’ve been thinking about the Boggart lesson in the third Harry Potter book, and how a lot of fics when they get to that part of the narrative emphasise how invasive it is to put someone’s fears on display.
And I think that’s a really fun interpretation, it gives stories a lot of space to explore trauma etc. etc. I’ve loved it every time I’ve read it.
However, I’ve been thinking about it and I actually think it’s the right time and the right way to teach it. Obviously the timing is a bit opportunistic because they had to wait for a Boggart to turn up — but third year seems about right.
Because if we accept that every witch or wizard should know how to deal with a Boggart as they seem to show up with some level of frequency (could be Hogwarts and Grimmauld bias but they’re talked about like they’re inconvenient household pests), then it has to be taught.
The first thing we’re told is they are best tackled in groups so the group/public format makes sense. And they are dangerous enough that you shouldn’t be teaching them in 1st and 2nd year but ideally you want to teach it before kids start to get more complicated fears.
It’s easy to turn a spider into something funny, how the fuck do you turn crippling existential doubt into something funny? How does Molly turn her dead kids into something funny?
There’s of course ways that class could have been improved, a classroom session before hand where they go over the theory would give kids with a particular reason to believe that their fear is about to be traumatic space to approach the teacher. Generally, treating facing fear like a pop quiz and springing it on people feels like a bad call.
And some form of pastoral care afterwards, because there’s no way Snape in a dress didn’t traumatise everyone.
But yeah, my fear as a 13 year old was probably sharks, as opposed to my current biggest fear which is probably global societal collapse? My whole family dying? The looming outline in the dark that is late stage capitalism?
Try to put rollerskates on that.