Students flooded into the DADA classroom, their instructor watching them with both a real and fake eye. A wooden piece connected to his leg thunked as it made contact with the ground.
The sound of books hitting the desks filled the room, pages being flipped to get to the correct one. Astaron, Amaya, and Ron were all sitting together in the 2nd row, wands placed right next to their books.
Moody scowled at them all, his voice gruff as he spoke, "Put 'em away. The books. You won't need 'em." They put the books away, Ron looked slightly excited.
Roll call began, his normal eye scanning the list and his fake eye swiveling to each student. "Right then," he declared after, "You've covered a good portion of Dark creatures; Boggarts, Red Caps, kinkypunks, grindylows, Kappas, werewolves, correct?" The class murmured a confirmation. "But you are behind on dealing with curses. So I'm here to bring you up to scratch. I've got one year to teach you how to deal with Dark curses."
He grinned nastily and clapped his gnarled hands together. "So curses, they come in many strengths and forms. According to the Ministry of Magic now, I'm supposed to teach you counter curses and leave it at that. Supposedly, you not supposed to see what illegal dark curses look like until your in sixth year. You're apparently not old enough right now. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves and reckons you can cope well enough. I say, the sooner you know what you're up against, the better. How're you suppose to defen' yourself if you not seen it yet? A wizard who's 'bout to throw an illegal curse at you isn't gon' tell you he's 'bout too; he's not gon' be all polite and nice. You need to be prepared, alert watchful. , your desk is not a place for you to store your gum."
Seamus grumbled behind him about seeing through the back of his head.
"So.. do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding low?"
Several hands rose into the air, most students looking slightly hesitant. He pointed to a student, Clarissa Midge. "T-the, uh, the U-unforgivables, s-sir." Moody stood heavily on his mismatched feet, opened his jar and pulled out a glass. It contained three black spiders. Ron recoiled next to Astaron- he hated spiders.
"What are the names of the Unforgivables?" Hands once again rose in the air, only this time less hands rose.
Ron was selected this time. "Um.. The I-Imperious Curse. It er- it controls you- or um, whoever, whatever its aimed at..."
Moody reached inside the jar and took one out, holding it in his palm so they could all see. Pointing his wand at it, he muttered, "Imperio!" The spider leapt from his hand and began to dance, swing on it's thread, tap dance, and all sorts of other tricks. Everybody was laughing except Moody and Astaron. Even Amaya was giggling lightly.
He growled, "Think it's funny do you?" The spider zipped to a filled water bucket just teetering over the edge. "What shall I do next? Drown 'em?" The laughter died slightly. It went to a window. "Throw it out the window?" The rest of the laughter died away. "You'd like it, would you, if I did that to you? Stripped you of all the control you possess over your body? Make you a slave to my will and my will only?" He snarled, his misshapen face twisting even more.
"Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperious Curse." Some people in the classroom knew, instantly, that he was talking about when Voldemort had been all-powerful. "Tough job for the Ministry, tryina sort out which were bein' forced and who was doin' it of their own free will."
"The Imperious Curse can be fought, and I'll be teaching you how. Take real strength of character now, and not everybody's got that. Better to just avoid it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Everybody started and the shout. Moody threw the still somersaulting spider into the jar.
"Next Unforgivable?" Amaya put her hand up, but so did Neville's; he looked slightly surprised at hid own daring. Moody pointed at him.
"There's this one- The Cruciatus Curse." Neville's voice was small but heard.
Moody looked at him very intently. "Longbottom right?" His magical eye swooped to check the log. Neville nodded nervously but got no other inquire.
His back turned to the class as he scooped up another spider, placing it on the desktop. "Needs to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea..." his mumble slurred slightly as he pointed his wand at it. "Engorgio!" The spider swelled and was now bigger, just barely though, than a tarantula. Ron pushed his chair back, wanting to get as far away from the spider as possible.
Once more, Moody raised his wand and whispered, "Crucio." The spiders legs bent in on its body; it rolled and twitched horribly, rocking from side to side. No sound came from it, but everyone was sure that if it could, it would be screaming. Moody didn't move his wand, and the spider began to jerk and shudder violently.
"Stop it!" Amaya's voice was shrill with anger. Astaron looked over at her and saw her eyes weren't focused on Moody; following her eyes, his focused on Neville who was pale and eyes wide with horror.
Moody raised his wand.
The spider's legs relaxed but they continued to spasm. "Reducio." The spider shrank to its normal size.
Moody spoke softly. "Pain. You don't need knives to torture someone if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse... That one, too, was very popular once... Right, anyone know any others?" Astaron looked around and stared as, once more, his sister raised her hand. It was trembling slightly. "Yes?"
"Avada Kedavra," she whispered. Astaron stared at his sister, everybody else just glancing at her uneasily.
"Ah," Moody looked at her, another slightly smile twisting at his lopsided mouth. "Yes... that land and worst. Avada Kedavra; The Killing Curse." He put his hand in the jar, pulling out the final spider. It scuttled around, as though knowing exactly what was going to happen; The class was silent, dread filling the air around them. Moody raised his wand for the final time and Astaron felt a sudden thrill of the foreboding shoot up his spine. "Avada Kedavra!" He roared.
A brilliant green light exploded and there was this rushing sound, as though something great, vast, and invisisble was soaring through the air. The spider rolled onto its back, unmarked, but unmistakably dead.
Several students had managed to stifle their cries, some just went remarkably still, others had just shrieked. Astaron and Amaya simply stared, their faces blank.
Moody swept the spider onto the floor. "Not nice," he said calmly, as though he hadn't just used an Unforgivable. "Not pleasant. And there's no counter curse; no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sittin' right in front of me." Astaron felt himself tense as both of Moody's eyes looked into his own; he forced some of his magic into his eyes, knowing that they would glow slightly. He could feel everyone else looking at him too. Moody's eyebrow twitched slightly when he cocked his head to the side just a bit; he turned away from Astaron.
Astaron stared at the blackboard as though it was the most fascinating thing. But really he just blocked out the noise and delved into his mind. The flashing green light from the previous year had been the killing curse... but surely his mother would've died when it hit her? He knew well his father had become a wraith, that could not have been faked. Or at least he thought so.
Then where did James Potter come in? Every lie always contained the slightest bit of truth, so let's say that with that lie, James Potter was actually there when everything happened. Then Snape must've been there too... God dammit. Things were unnecessarily complicated! Why did it have to happen to him. He wondered vaguely if the green light was just a distraction... he pushed that thought away. If it was, then that odd rush, the speeding of death, wouldn't be in the memory, would it? So yeah, the Killing Curse had been used, he decided.
Moody was speaking again, only from a great distance it felt to Harry. With massive effort, he pulled himself back to the present and listened to what was being said. "The Killing Curse is a curse that needs a pow'rful bit of magic behind it – you lot could all point your at me now and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed." Amaya internally challenged Moody, and Astaron simply wondered if he could do it now to prove him wrong.
"But that don' matter. I'm not here to teach ya how to do it. Now if there's no counter, why'm I showin' ya? 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 facin' it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" The entirety of the class jumped. "Now... those three curses – Avada Kedavra, Imperious, Cruciatus – are known as the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any one of 'em on a human being is enough to earn ya a life sentence is Azkaban. That's what you're up against. That's what I've got to teach you to fight. You need to be prepared. You need to be armed. But most of all, you need to practice constant, never-ceasing vigilance. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" This time only a few jumped. Moody gave a scraping chuckle.
"Got out ya quills... copy this down..."
The class was silent for the rest of the time.
-Line Break-
Amber eyes darted around Diagon Alley, sandy blonde hair brushing over heavily scarred skin. The noise caused a pounding for the werewolf, but he continued his journey. Anger was stirring inside of him, his wolf simply wanting to rip apart every person who had done wrong toward him and those in his pack. But he contained them, no matter how hard it was; the full moon less than only 3 days away.
He stalked into Gringotts, going to the only available teller. Bowing his head shortly, he looked at the Goblin. "A letter was sent to me. From Chief Ragnok." The Goblin gave him a disbelieving look to which he unfurled the letter and showed it.
"Silverhook. Follow me." He walked behind the Goblin, following him through Gringotts. He kept clenching his hands, trying to stop the way they were shaking; an unknown fear entered him, before being pushed away. Wolves were prideful creatures and hated weakness.
They stopped at two large wooden doors to which Silverhook knocked. The doors swung open and there was a regal looking Goblin sitting behind a large desk. "Silverhook you may go." The goblin left without a word and the werewolf sat down across from the Goblin.
"Mr. Lupin, I believe we have much to discuss. Especially about one Sirius Lupin-Black."
Remus couldn't agree more.
-Line Break-
Narcissa Malfoy was destroying everything she sent her eyes upon. There was a special room in the Malfoy Manor, something Lucius had built for her a little after they were wed. A shriek left her mouth as she shattered two mirrors. She flung two glass cups across the room, taking little pleasure in watching them break.
Grey wings, the most perfect shade there was, erupted from her back as fire exploded from her hands. Anger burned inside of her as she turned everything to dust, soot, ashes, and just- broken, she just broken it and made sure it could never be repaired by anything but raw will and magic.
Memories clogged her head as she rampaged, wiping out her wand and shouting the darkest curses she knew. It didn't even matter that it wasn't landing on a human. Acid spluttered from her wand, decaying the wall it landed on.
-hatefuryshock-
Another desk was turned into splintery pieces. The spells were replaced by screams of the most profane curses to ever grace the Earth. People morphed into her sight, causing more spells to shoot from her wand as she cursed their names, their birth, every-fucking-thing about them.
She didn't bother acknowledging the soothing hand that touched her, in favor of shooting fire from her wand and watching a chair burn. There was someone sitting on it but she couldn't even bring herself to remember the name.
"Narcissa." She wiped around, her normally immaculate hair in disarray, her blue eyes wild and burning, the air around her thick with furious magic. "Calm my love. I understand you are feeling much, but please do not create irreversible damage to this room." A laugh made its way from her throat.
"Alright my dear." The strong arms of her husband wrapped around her, and she relaxed, even if only marginally.
She could always destroy some more later.
