Quote:
Originally Posted by
sweetpinkpixie 
Attention fully on the boy now, Airey did what his mother used to do to him when he had had nightmares as a small boy - he rubbed the young man's shoulder up and down slowly. He avoided looking the boy directly in the face because, well, the man was horrible with tears and tended to panic and become short of breath. Wouldn't do either of them any good if both were having panic attacks. So, eyes on the ceiling it was for now.
"It's back in its box now, Mr. Odessa," he explained, still rubbing the boy's shoulders up and down. Hopefully he wouldn't think of himself as less of a man or anything since he was receiving comfort for this sort of thing. He remembered what it was like to be a teenager and how much he despised people seeing him as weak. "No, you couldn't," he said in a sort of dazed deadpan tone followed by a long pause. "But Miss Gracae attempted to help you before I stepped in. Sometimes you don't have to do these things on your own."
West rubbed at his eyes with the backs of his hands almost fiercely, trying to get rid of the dampness still there and feeling angry about it, and about not being able to deal with the boggart. He wasn't SCARED of boggarts it wasn't that, and he knew about the spell and could cast it and all of that, it was just that he hadn't been prepared for what that was.
Flammy being there and stuff was a relief though and the sheer anguish of the encounter was gone now, much of the tension seeping out of him with each comforting shoulder rub.
He wasn't saying much but he was listening and processing and West looked up at the professor at mention of Blue. She had? He had heard her, now that he thought on it. But also, now that he thought on it, it meant she'd seen him completely lose his nerve. That was embarrassing. Would she think less of him?
"It was for h-homework though." He said.
"We kinda d-did have to." And he'd failed. And now he'd have to write about why he failed, and that sort of made it even worse.
"P-people might laugh." West added quietly, still tripping over his words in miniature, more subdued sobs.