"Storm!"

The third year of school, where he could specialise, would not come quick enough, Johann agreed with the voice in the back of his head. The rain tipped down outside the classroom windows with a shifting pale grey light, while a general magics teacher snapped at each of them in turn to approach a bureau in the middle of the classroom. The air was rippling with giggles and sniggers, young teenagers examining the results of each approach, complimenting themselves on their inventiveness and skill at casting. As an oberteil, he was expected to take all this in his stride, but in utter honesty, he would have preferred to have analysed the content of the bureau in three different languages in an afternoon in the library. He'd have been able to draw up a list of possible results and solutions before drawing his wand.

"What do you reckon it'll be, spiders? Or Dietrich?"

He could hear his classmates chattering in low voices around him, trying to predict what he could be scared of.  When he glanced their way, the Dregs shuffled their feet, and the Zufrieden adopted thoughtful, supportive faces, in the hope of winning his approval and support in elevating themselves within the student community. Little did they know how he'd have elevated the lot of them given half a chance, just so he wasn't upon a pedestal in spellworks. Any other subject that required his mind or his interest in foreign culture, he adored to be up there, to have the fleeting chance of being called a young prodigy or worthy of high praise. In spellworks, which he could learn theory of inside out, he rarely relished in waving his wand.

"Watch how it's done!" Behind him there was a scuffle and a push, two of his fellow oberteils shoving a dreg in the group behind, who swore at them in a sharp whisper, awaiting her turn, and once enough of the class were distracted by events, aimed a kick at their shins.

The bureau draw slammed open, rocking on its feet, and out poured an incomprehensible shape which began to take the form of a person with some indecision. His classmates fell quiet, curious, and craned their necks for a better look. Throwing open what each other found to be their deepest fear was like a game of truth or dare with veritaserum - with full technicolor.

The boggart settled on its shape in what felt like several minutes, but in reality was a matter of seconds. To his surprise, Johann came face to face with a boy in Durmstrang uniform, at the same height. His classmates sounded baffled around him, not quite understanding who it was. Around the feet of the figure quickly assembled library books, pages fluttering in a wind that didn't exist in the room - each of them entirely blank. The face of the boy with curly dark hair and pale eyes was now unmistakably a copy of Johann himself, right down to the narrow slits of his eyes amongst a face he'd not yet grown into. But the expression on the face was wider eyed, mouth ajar. He looked lost, like someone had told him Christmas was cancelled, and he'd failed his exams.

"He's scared of himself?"
"Or the library?"

The other teenagers scrabbled to guess what could be their classmate's deepest fear. He could be a right arrogant bugger in some of their lessons, and might hex a good pig snout in retaliation, but they'd never seen much to speak about in this lesson until now.

Meanwhile, stood almost face to face with the boggart, wand barely raised, Johann had quickly identified what the deepest fear was, and had frozen to the spot in alarm at discovering what his subconscious held.

"Storm!"

He had first met it when he had been at work with his father at the bank before coming to school. Wolfgang had insisted that Johann visiting the place, even as a child, would be beneficial. He could teach him about the world of finance - which he and Camille, Johann's mother, both thought he would easily take up as a profession, given they both had. He would spend the majority of his time tucked in a corner of the office, quiet as a mouse, with a book on mathematics or world history, which his father would test him on each evening when they got home, before his mother. He relished learning, adored the attention he received as an only child, from the languages they taught him to their almost untiring wish to answer his long list of questions about subjects.

"Parchment, and a quill, now, work out the compound interest at-." His feet had just about reached the floor when he sat in the visitor's chair opposite his father's desk, but it was still a bit of a reach to write upon the desk with one of the dark green quills that sat in the pot on the desk. He hadn't discovered the rate of interest his father wanted him to calculate the repayments at on their theoretical bank account. The door had burst open, revealing three figures. Dropping the quill in fright, Johann had shot round the furthest side of the desk.

A torrent of confused and rapid conversation had followed, until a fellow familiar to Johann from his days shadowing his father was bundled into the recently vacated visitor's chair. He looked winded, as if he had been knocked out by coming off a broom, but he didn't look physically hurt. The other adults were all employees of the bank, one wearing the rather imposing robes of the team of rather muscular wizards who dealt with customers who did not behave. He appeared to be doing the majority of the explanation.

"Just drew her wand and hit him full force. He was out cold until we brought him round."
"You idiot, that could have made it worse!"

He remembered the unfocused gaze of the man in the chair, the questions they fired at him, patting his hand, shaking his shoulders.
"What is your name? How old are you? What day is it? Who is our Minister?"

Before his eyes, a fifty year old wizard replied with his name, as a juvenile nickname, his age to be that of Johann's at the time - eight, and no clear indication of the day. The name of the Minister, Johann did identify with, from history books, but most certainly not the current leader of the country by a long shot. A while later when healers arrived to take the wizard away, they interrupted the father of three, far-eastern business expert explaining to Johann that he was off to school soon, and they'd probably be classmates. All matters of compound interest were forgotten.

"Storm!"

In present day, he was at a loss as to how to turn obliviation, or loss of memory in any form, into a humorous situation. The general magics teacher was furious with him, but could do nothing to demote him. His only saving grace was the dreg who had been scrapping with his fellow oberteils barrelled into him. She knocked him sideways out of the way, and landed prone on the classroom floor before the boggart, which rapidly began to change at the nearest corner, books melting away to take the form of her fear instead.

"Riddikulus!"

The attempt to turn Johann's boggart into something funny was lost before it took hold, the boggart trying to split itself in two as it became crowded. All he remembered was that Elixa got a week's worth of detentions for it, and he forged four of her homeworks while she attended them, in an attempt to apologise.