(GoF) CHAPTER TWELVE: The Unforgivable Curses

Before he so much as said a word to her, Cedric kissed her.

Just as before, it wasn't an exceptionally long or inappropriate kiss. It did feel a bit deeper and hungrier than the last, though—like he'd been thinking about it all day—maybe even since the last time he'd done it.

"Sorry," he said with a sheepish grin when he pulled away from her. "S'pose I could have asked you how your day was first."

She couldn't help but laugh at that. "It was fine, thanks. How was yours?"

But he clearly didn't want to think about how his day had gone. "I'd like to take you out. I mean, it's Hogwarts—I know there isn't really anyplace we can go—but I'd like to give a date a try."

"A date," she repeated. She wasn't sure she'd ever been on a date, save for perhaps the one time that she and Dean Thomas had gotten lunch and then gone to practice using her shield. Given that she had been twelve at the time, it didn't seem to count.

"Yeah—you know, food, conversation, maybe a little kissing."

She bit her lip. Were his expectations still as patient and innocent as they had been the last time she talked to him, or was he starting to get impatient? "Cedric, I haven't had a chance to figure things out yet on my end. I'm still… getting settled in."

But he didn't seem to mind. "It's okay. I'm still not asking you to make any decisions—other than meeting me for said date."

He was nearly impossible to say no to, she marveled as she stared into those pretty, blue-gray eyes of his. "Okay—fine. This weekend?"

He nodded. "I'll meet you outside your portrait at eight on Saturday."


The next few days went by mostly uneventfully. Fred didn't ask Ellie for details about her meeting with Cedric, and Ellie didn't give them. Ginny and Hermione asked about him a few times, but, seeming to sense that Ellie wasn't ready to talk about it, dropped the subject quickly. To Ellie's surprise, it was George who asked the most questions of anyone.

It was Thursday, and Ellie was walking to Moody's class, which she had been quite excited about ever since Fred and George told her about what an experience it had been. George caught up with her and politely guided her away from Dean and Seamus, whom she'd been chatting with.

"Fred okay?" Ellie asked George, eyeing him a bit warily. She was accustomed to seeing Fred without George, but less so the other way around.

"S'pose that depends how you define 'okay,'" said George with a bit of a frown. "What's going on, Ellie? With you and him, I mean. Or you and Cedric."

She sighed. The last thing she wanted was to talk to George about this when she hadn't even figured it out for herself, but she loved him too much as a friend to write off his question entirely. "I don't know, George. I like Cedric a lot. In any other world, I'd be ecstatic to date him. Only…"

"Only it's this world," George finished for her, "and you're in love with Fred."

She tried not to grimace. "Well… yeah. Only it's not that simple, is it? It could have been that simple, last year, when I first fessed up to him. But he made it harder."

"But why does it have to be harder now? He's finally figured out how to not be a stupid git. Problem solved."

But she shook her head. "You saw what it was like for me, George. He hurt me worse than anyone else ever has. I can't just pretend that never happened. I've tried."

"Have you, though?" George pushed. "I know you kissed back at the Burrow—he told me. And I know you opened up to him about some things he won't tell me—y'know, whatever happened to you when you were with Sirius."

She appreciated Fred for not sharing that bit with George; it was embarrassing enough that he knew.

"But since then," George continued, "have you really let yourself try? You've barely been alone with him. And I've seen you go off with Cedric multiple times."

He was right, she supposed; on some level, Ellie had been avoiding being alone with Fred. She was trying to avoid the confusing slew of emotions she felt whenever they were alone together—the desire to kiss him, slap him, dive into his arms, and run away from him, all at the same time.

"All I'm saying," George said when he seemed to sense that Ellie wasn't quite prepared to answer him, "is that if you're going to give Cedric a real shot, then give Fred one, too. And then let your heart decide."

She allowed him a reluctant nod at that, but the truth was, she wasn't entirely sure she could trust her heart anymore.


Ellie hadn't expected anything to be able to get her mind off her conversation with George, but she learned only a few minutes later that she had been entirely wrong.

"You can put your books away," said Moody grumpily as he limped into the classroom. "You won't be needing them today."

She glanced curiously at Harry, who looked even more excited than she was about this class. He shrugged, putting his book back into his bag as she did the same.

"I have looked into your previous education in this subject," Moody told them. "Last year, you all underwent well-rounded and in-depth studies of Dark creatures. However, you have learned next to nothing about curses. Correct me if I am wrong."

As everyone watched Moody in eager silence, Ellie's mind wandered back to Aleks. Had she been right to ask to learn magic from him, after all? He obviously had turned out to be a bad seed, but if a Hogwarts teacher was now offering to teach them about curses…

"The Ministry of Magic would rather we keep quiet about all this, of course," Moody was saying. "Forbidden us from teaching you—particularly about the Unforgivables. But Dumbledore and I believe it is of the utmost importance that we not only teach you how to counter them, but also… about them."

Everyone in the room seemed to sit up a little straighter at that.

Ellie watched in fascination as Moody demonstrated each of the three Unforgivable Curses—Imperio, Crucio, and Avada Kedavra—on a spider. The Cruciatius Curse, she noticed, seemed to make Neville writhe with discomfort, while the Killing Curse made Harry's face white as a sheet. She understood the latter; Harry's parents had been killed by Avada Kedavra, and he quite nearly had been, himself. She wasn't sure what about Imperio made Neville quite so upset, but made a mental note to check on him after class.

"I will do my best to teach you how to resist the manipulation of the mind and to shield against the torture of the Cruciatus Curse," Moody told them. "As for the Killing Curse, though, there is no known way of stopping it." His glass eye fluttered over to both Harry and Ellie at that—the former of whom had survived it as a baby, and the latter of whom had survived it in her first year thanks to her Perelli charm—but he made no mention of either circumstance. "Constant vigilance, my friends—that is the surest way to protect yourself against your foes."

And with that, he dismissed the class.

"Neville!" Ellie called out as soon as everyone started packing up their books. He didn't look at her; his cheeks were pink, and his eyes were watery. "Hey," she said again, more gently, once she reached him. "Are you okay?"

He nodded, wiping an eye with the back of his hand. "Just really brutal, is all—the things he did to the spider. The way it…" But he didn't seem able to finish.

Her heart went out to him, though she still wasn't quite sure why. She got the sense that whatever he was feeling was about more than the brutality of Moody having a spider. "You know," she said gently, "for all the times you've helped me—musical and otherwise—you've never let me return the favour. Perhaps now's the time?"

He looked hesitant to take her up on it. He glanced nervously around the room, but no one seemed to be paying them any attention. Finally, he gave a reluctant nod and said, "Okay. But I'd like to go someplace quiet, if that's alright."

"It was shortly after the fall of the Dark Lord, or so they tell me," Neville told Ellie about fifteen minutes later, once they had settled into a quiet corner of the Charms courtyard. "There were four of them—Barty Crouch, Jr. and three Lestranges—Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan."

"Hang on. Barty Crouch, Jr.? As in, the son of the Department of International Magical Cooperation bloke?"

Neville nodded gravely. "Sentenced to a life in Azkaban by his own father—but not until after he and his friends tortured my mum and dad so bad, they wound up in St. Mungo's."

Ellie stared at Neville in horror. "Wh… why?" she stammered.

"Don't know all the details—Grams won't tell me much of anything. I didn't even know all that until I came to Hogwarts and started reading up where I could. There's this book I found my way to in the restricted section called Hogwarts: A Darker—"

"—History," Ellie finished for him in amazement. "I'm familiar with it, actually. Did some research on my own parents last year."

He might have smiled if telling the story wasn't quite so hard for him. "From what I can tell, they thought my parents would lead them to wherever You Know Who went when Harry brought him down. They were powerful Aurors, my parents—some of the best there were."

Ellie did smile at that, though her heart broke for Neville without yet knowing the full extent of what had happened to them. "You said they wound up in St. Mungo's. They took me there this summer after the Cup. It's a magic hospital?"

Neville nodded. "Yeah, but not everyone is lucky enough to leave it. It wasn't physical damage my parents had; it was mental. They're… quite different now, you see. Don't exactly… even recognize me as their son."

Elie could hardly believe her ears. They didn't recognize him? He could go to see them, and they would treat him like a total stranger?

"Neville," she whispered, shaking her head. "That's horrible."

"It's okay, really," said Neville with the saddest smile Ellie had ever seen. "I mean, they're alive, y'know, which is more than Harry can say. And the whole magical community knows they're heroes, which makes me quite proud. It was just… seeing what he did to that spider, y'know? Imagining them going through that."

She was fighting back tears at this point. How had she gone to school with Neville for over three years and not known any of this? How had Neville managed to smile, keep his head held high, and even… live, with the weight of all this?

"I suppose it seems a bit small and worthless of a gesture," she said softly, "but I'd very much like to give you a hug, if you're up for one."

His sad smile turned just the slightest bit brighter at that, and he said, "Yeah—I think I'd like that."


I never liked how long poor Neville had to go without telling a single soul about what happened to his parents. Even Harry only found out from Dumbledore. There's not much Ellie can do for him, but having a friend always helps. Stay tuned to see how the Cedric date goes, among other things, and don't forget to review and follow!