Fear and Bravery

   The book "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" is about a famous boy named Harry Potter whose parents were killed by the most evil wizard of all time, Voldemort. His dads best friend, Sirius, escapes from Azkaban, the wizard jail, to find Harry and tell him he was not involved in killing his parents, and kill the person who was. The dementors are set up around Hogwarts, Harrys school, to keep Sirius from getting in because they think he is guilty. Hogwarts is the only place Harry can call home. His house is not pleasant, and going to Hogwarts is an escape. Although there is a boy who teases him and bothers him relentlessly, and hurts the people around Harry: Malfoy. One of the themes was fear, and another bravery. Although they are opposites, many times in the book they intersected, and became two feelings at the same time, by the same and different people.
   For one thing, Hermione slaps Malfoy when he is rude to Hagrid. Malfoy is taken aback, and I think Hermione scared him. This shows that Malfoy thinks he has all this power, but thats not really the case. When Hermione slaps him in the face, it was really a slap in the face to who he is. It made him realize that he isn't all that he thinks he is. This also makes him angry, especially because he doesn't know what to do about it. He was very afraid. This is something Hermione would never do, so she was very mad, but brave. Malfoy had been faking that a hippogriff Hagrid showed him hurt his arm, and so now Buckbeak might be executed, which made Hermione mad, because she can't stand injustice. Also, Hagrid has been helping her through really hard times, so she probably knows how amazing of a person he is and basically signals Malfoy to back off. She was brave to do this because she is nice and kind, and her reputation is clean, and to risk it on slapping someone, it must mean a lot to her. She hates him enough to be brave enough to screw up her record.
   Adding on to fear and bravery, whenever dementors attack Harry, he sees his parents, but they make him very weak because it's his parents death. His parents died when he was really young, only a baby. It was a traumatic experience, and it will probably never go away. Dementors "help" him remember. These are fearful memories, ones that haunt Harrys sleep every day. He has to stand up to it, eve when its hard, because its real, and that memory can remind him that he has no parents to learn from, nowhere to turn when he needs help. Happy memories at Hogwarts is all that he has left because he was sent to an awful family, and he had no friends there, but Hogwarts was all good. It is the most horrible thing that ever happened and it doesn't make him happy. If the dementors sucked all of his soul out, that could be all he is left with, and he would be extremely depressed. Harry knows that he really needs his good memories back, even though everything amazing that happens at Hogwarts is still there his parents death is still in his head. He knows he needs to be brave, which is why he tries to learn to make a Patronus, which scares away dementors with happy thoughts. However, you need to overcome the fear they give to produce this Patronus, which Harry does.
   Finally, the boggart turns into Professor McGonagall telling Hermione she failed all her exams, and Hermione runs from it. It is very surprising that Hermione ran away, even though she cares so much about grades. It was a conflicting decision because she could be afraid and fail, or not fully pass, Defense Against the Dark Arts, or pass everything and have so much doubt about how much she is taking on. The boggart just showed her her biggest fear, which she knows isn't true but is coping with so much. She may be ran away because she cracked from stress. Since the boggart turns into peoples biggest fears, failing is clearly what Hermione is afraid of the most. Maybe because she doesn't have wizard parents to look up to, she reallly wants to live up to a full potential. She worked too hard in all of her classes, so she could know that and realize she pushed herself too far. Its possible she was pushing that thought away, but she knows its there, and it scares her. But she is also brave enough to know it wasn't true, even though it took her some time. She figured out that she KNOWS she passed all her exams, and she kept her head up, which shows bravery even more.