AN:All thanks given to Katherine my beta.
I own nothing
Thursday came and all the forth years were anxious to get through their first class and lunch. When they were finished eating, Mia and Gabe hurried to DADA to get good seats and pull out their books and notes. When Professor Moody entered he told them all to put away their books and started going over some of the things they had learned in years past, informing them how behind they all were on curses.
"Curses," Moody started. "They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you counter curses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed to show you what illegal dark curses look like until you're in the sixth year. You're not supposed to be old enough to deal with it till then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves, he reckons you can cope, and I say, the sooner you know what you're up against, the better. How are you supposed to defend yourself against something you've never seen? A wizard who's about to put an illegal curse on you isn't going to tell you what he's about to do. He's not going to do it nice and polite to your face. You need to be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful. You need to put that away, Miss Brown, when I'm talking."
Lavender jumped in her seat and started cramming a piece of parchment back into her bag that she had been showing to Parvati under the table. Moody hadn't been looking her way, but as he turned, the big blue bulbous eye was fixed on Lavender as though it had seen her out the side of his head.
"So, do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"
Several people raised their hands, but Moody called on Ron "Er, my dad told me about one. Is it called the Imperius Curse, or something?"
"Ah, yes, your father would know that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse." Moody walked to his desk and pulled out a jar with three large spiders in it. He reached inside and caught a spider and held it in his palm. He pointed his wand at the spider and muttered a curse Imperio!
He made the spider put out a long web and swing dramatically before it landed on the desk. It cartwheeled on the desk and started tap dancing. People laughed along, but something about the gleam in Moody's real eye made Mia feel uncomfortable.
"Think it's funny, do you?" Moody growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it to you?"
Everyone stopped laughing, and Mia got a bad feeling things would get worse.
"Total control," Moody whispered. The spider balled itself up and began rolling around. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats. Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse. Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will. The Imperius Curse can be fought, and I'll be teaching you how, but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone's got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"
The class jumped. Moody picked up the spider and threw it back in the jar and asked for another curse anyone knew of. This time the person to be called on was Neville. Mia was surprised. He usually didn't raise his hand outside of herbology.
His voice was soft as he spoke. "There's one, the Cruciatus Curse."
Moody examined Neville closely with both eyes. "Your name's Longbottom?" he asked. When Neville nodded Moody pulled out a second spider. He enlarged it till it was bigger than a tarantula. Ron pushed his chair back till it was against the desk behind him, and seemed to lean back in his chair. Mia muffled a snort and nudged Gabe to see Ron's clear fear of the spider. When Moody spoke the next curse Crucio, she stopped smiling.
The spider rolled up, its legs bending in as it twitched and spasmed. It didn't make any noise, but the pain was clear. Moody didn't stop. He kept pointing his wand at the creature as it writhed and rocked. Mia saw Neville, a few seats away gripping his table, his knuckles were white, clear horror on his face. Hermione yelled for Moody to stop, and the teacher did.
"Pain," the teacher said. "You don't need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse. That one was very popular once too."
Neville was breathing hard in his seat, and Mia wondered what had him so worked up.
Moody asked who knew any other curses, and Hermione raised her hand slowly. Mia had a bad feeling for the last spider. "Avada Kedavra," Hermione whispered. The words struck something in Mia. She knew this one, but couldn't quite remember where.
Moody grabbed out the last spider and it sat in his hand. Moody pointed his wand and yelled the curse Avada Kedavra. A blast of green light flew out of the wand and blew the spider back a few inches and it lay there unmoving.
Dead.
Something deep down in Mia's chest broke. She remembered now.
She'd heard that curse when the dementors attacked, when the memories of her aunt killing her mom surfaced in her memory. The green light was seared into her memory. Hadn't she just told Luna she didn't know who she'd seen die so she could see Thestrals? It had been her mother.
Gabe's hand rested on her arm and she looked over. 'I'm fine' she mouthed and wiped away the tear on her cheek. She didn't want to draw any attention to herself.
"Not nice," Moody said. "Not pleasant. And there's no countercurse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me." Mia turned and looked at Harry, along with the rest of the class. She felt bad for him, if he was feeling anything like she was he would hate having everyone looking at him.
"Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it, you could all get your wands out now and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed. But that doesn't matter. I'm not here to teach you how to do it."
He told them to get out their quills as he started to explain more on the curse. "Now, if there's no countercurse, why am I showing you? Because you've got to know. You've got to appreciate what the worst is. You don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're facing it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he yelled, and Mia jumped in her seat.
"Now, those three curses, Avada Kedavra, Imperius, and Cruciatus, are known as the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any one of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. That's what you're up against. That's what I've got to teach you to fight. You need preparing. You need arming. But most of all, you need to practice constant, never-ceasing vigilance."
After class Mia and Gabe headed off for a quick dinner, then went to the library to work on homework before Mia had her tea time with Professor McGonagall. She wanted to ask the Professor something important, something Gabe might not approve of, but now with the gloom of her last class hanging over her, Mia wanted to put it off.
She was in the middle of her Ancient Runes homework when Hermione dropped a box on her desk. Inside was a number of small buttons.
"Spew?" Gabe asked, peering into the box.
"No," Hermione looked offended. "It's S-P-E-W. Stands for the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare. The heading of our manifesto is Stop the Outrageous Abuse of Our Fellow Magical Creatures and Campaign for a Change in Their Legal Status." She pulled out a piece of parchment and set it in front of them with the society name and motto followed by a charter. "I've been researching. Elf enslavement goes back centuries. I can't believe no one's done anything about it before now. Our short-term aims are to secure house-elves fair wages and working conditions. Our long-term aims include changing the law about non-wand use, and trying to get an elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, because they're shockingly underrepresented. It's two Sickles to join, that buys a badge, and the proceeds can fund our leaflet campaign, once Harry and Ron join up, there will be five of us." Hermione's speech ended and she looked at Mia and Gabe.
Mia looked at Gabe, and he looked back at her, his eyebrows raised as if unsure Hermione was Serious. "Hermione, is this what you've been working on all week?" Mia asked.
"Yes, it's important we get started immediately recruiting new members."
Gabe reached into his robes and pulled out two Sickles. "I'll join if I can be a silent member." Mia looked at him in shock, but Gabe was grinning as he reached into the box, depositing his Sickles and pulled out a badge. He looked at it fondly and muttered "Spew" with a smile before he attached it to his robes.
Hermione looked satisfied. "Mia?"
Mia sighed. "Hermione, I get it. Slavery is bad, and I'm sure there are house elves out there whose lives could be better, but what do you really think you will accomplish here? Hogwarts is probably the best home a house elf could hope for, and you aren't going to be able to impact real change unless you graduate and take over the ministry."
"So that's a no then? You won't join because you think students are powerless?"
"If I join I won't be a silent member. I will be loud and annoying and tell you why I think you are wrong," Mia warned her.
"That is acceptable." Hermione pulled out a badge and set it in front of Mia.
Mia signed. "My money is in my trunk, I'll get it to you tonight."
Hermione nodded and picked up her box and left the library, probably to go harass Ron and Harry into joining. Gabe picked up Mia's badge, a big smile still on his face and pinned it to her robes.
"Why are you so on board with this?" Mia asked Gabe. "I didn't know you were such a supporter of Elfish welfare."
Gabe gave Mia a look like she was dim. "I'm wearing a badge on my robes that says spew. It's hilarious! I joined just for the badge. Just wait, everyone will want one by the end of the week."
"It's ridiculous!"
"Exactly!"
Mia shook her head and packed up her bag to head to McGonagall's office for tea.
AN: What do you guys think? I thought first just completely dismantling SPEW would be the way to go as that theme in the book always really annoyed me, like the Buckbeak plot in book 3, which we lost because Draco was late to his first day of care of magical creatures, and didn't need because Sirius was proven innocent. As we go though this year, let me know what you think of the changes to SPEW. I hope you enjoy them.
I Just got the final cover for my book I'm publishing later this year! And I LOVE the cover art! I will share the first preview to people who sign up for my newsletter on my website. If you sign up and also mention you came from this fan fic (and are in the US), when I get my bookmarks I will send you a free bookmark! you can sign up at hmwrites dot com and mark the 'I came from an untold beginning' check box to sign up to get a book mark in a few months. I will also be doing an international bookmark giveaway on my instagram in a few months as well. You can follow me on instagram (heathermichely) to know when that happens.
