The beginning of term had a very weird start. Most of their classes were as normally weird, but Hagrid had taken their Care of Magical Creatures classes to another level. In their very first lesson of the year he had given them a project; Blast-Ended Skrewts. These had to be the strangest creatures Bella had ever seen. They looked like deformed, shell-less lobsters, extremely pale and slimy-looking, with legs sticking out in very odd places and no visible heads.

In a turn of events that no one saw coming, Hagrid insisted that one Gryffindor and one Slytherin would be in charge of an entire crate full of at least fifty of they disgusting creatures. The pair had to raise the crate of Blast-Ended Skrewts together and the pair who had the most still alive at the end of the term would win a two hundred and fifty house points each.

"You are joking?" Draco drawled with a dry laugh. "Why would we want to raise those hideos creatures? Especially with the god-awful Gryffindors."

"Excuse you." Bella scoffed.

"It's jus' a bit o' fun." Hagrid said, smiling brightly around the bored faces staring back at him.

"Why can't I work with Ron?" Harry asked.

"Because -" Hagrid said. "because there'll be more Skrewts lef' alive if you don' work with someone in your house."

"Who's going to work with who then?" Ron asked.

"Ron - you go with Crabbe."

"Ughh!" Ron groaned.

"Harry, with Zabini. Hermione, Parkinson." Hagrid continued, ignoring him.

"Bella, you go with Malfoy."

Bella turned to him and he had a wide smirk on his face.

"What?" Bella asked, stepping in front of the crate that lay at Draco's feet.

"If we don't win, I will hex you." he teased.

"I'm sure you will." Bella replied.

Bella picked up the nearest stick and poked it into the crate.

"Hey!" Draco cried, wrenching it from her hand. "That's our children in there!"

"Oh, shut up." Bella laughed.

They spent the rest of the lesson trying, and failing, to feed the Blast-Ended Skrewts. They tried everything from frog liver to just plain old grass but it was useless - the creatures didn't even seem to have mouths to eat from.


Mad-Eye Moody had become somewhat of a legend in the eyes of the students of Hogwarts Castle. It was Thursday before the Gryffindor fourth-years had their first Defence Against the Dark Arts class of the year and they were so looking forward to it that they arrived early after lunch and were queued up outside the classroom before the bell had even rung. The only person missing was Hermione, who turned up just in time for the lesson.

"Been in the -"

"- library." Harry finished her sentence for her. "C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats."

Harry, Ron and Hermione took the three seats in front of the teacher's desk and Bella, Freya and Emily took the three seats in the row behind them. They took out their copies of 'The Dark Forces; A Guide to Self-Protection', and waited, silent enough you could have heard a pin drop. Soon after, Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps echoed in the corridor, growing nearer. He entered the classroom, looking just as strange and frightening as the night he first arrived. The could just see the edge of his wooden leg sticking out the bottom of his robes.

"You can put those away." he growled, limping over to his desk and sitting down. "those books - you won't need them."

There was the sound of bags scraping along the ground as they all returned their textbooks to their bags. Moody took out a register and began to call out names, his ordinary eye moving steadily down the list while his magical eye swiveled around, fixating on each student as they announced their presence.

"Right then," he said when he had reached the end of the register. "I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about this class. Seems you've had a pretty thorough grounding in tackling Dark creatures - you've covered Boggarts, Red Caps, Hinkypunks, Grindylows, Kappas, and Werewolves, is that right?"

There was a general murmur of acknowledgement.

"But you're behind... very behind - on dealing with curses," Moody said. "So I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. I've got one year to teach you how to deal with Dark -"

"What, aren't you staying?" Ron blurted out.

Moody's magical eye landed right on Ron; Ron looked extremely uneasy, but after a moment Moody smiled, a strange sort of smile, the smile Bella imagined lit up the faces of Death Eaters before they took their victims lives.

"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody said. "And you'll be Arthur's daughter." Moody said turning to Bella who nodded her head at him. "Your father got me out of a very tight corner a few days ago. Yeah, I'm staying just the one year. Special favor to Dumbledore - one year, and then back to my quiet retirement."

He gave a harsh laugh, and then clapped his large, calloused hands together.

"So." he said, staring around at them all. "straight to it - curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, acording to the Ministry of Magic, I'm only supposed to teach you countercurses 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 and blushed. She had been showing Parvati her completed horoscope under the desk. Apparently Moody's magical eye could see through solid wood, as well as out of the back of his head. Bella chuckled under her breath as Lavender became flustered trying to put the horoscope back into her bag.

"So - do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"

Several hands rose tentatively into the air, including Ron's, Hermione's and Bella's. Moody pointed at Ron, though his magical eye was still fixed on Lavender.

"Er," Ron said awkwardly, "my dad told us about one. Is it called the Imperius Curse, or something?"

"Ah, yes," Moody said excitedly. "Your father would know that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse."

Moody got to his mismatched feet, opened his desk drawer, and took out a glass jar. Three large black spiders were scut- tling around inside it. Bella watched Ron cringe away from the spiders and she shuddered. If Bella didn't like spiders, Ron despised the very ground they walked on.

Moody reached into the jar, caught one of the spiders, and held it in the palm of his hand so that they could all see it. He then pointed his wand at it and muttered, 'Imperio!'

The spider leapt from Moody's hand on a fine thread of silk and began to swing backward and forward. It stretched out its legs rigidly, then did a back flip, breaking the thread and landing on the desk, where it began to cartwheel in circles. Moody jerked his wand, and the spider rose onto two of its hind legs and went into what was unmistakably a tap dance.
Everyone was laughing — everyone except Moody.

"Think it's funny, do you?" he growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it to you?"

The laughter died away almost instantly.

"Total control," Moody said quietly as the spider balled itself up and began to roll over and over. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats -"

Ron gave an involuntary shudder.

"Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse," Moody said. Bella knew all about the years he was talking about - the days in which You-Know-Who had been at the height of his power. Their mother hated talking about those times but their father would fill them in on their stories from years gone by. "Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will."

He continued on; "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!" he barked, and everyone jumped.

Moody picked up the somersaulting spider and threw it back into the jar.

"Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?"

Hermione's hand flew into the air again and so, to everyone's slight surprise, did Neville's. The only class in which Neville usually volunteered information was Herbology, which was easily his best subject. Neville looked surprised at his own daring.

"Yes?" Moody said, his magical eye rolling right over to fix on Neville.

"There's one - the Cruciatus Curse," Neville said in a small but distinct voice.

Moody was looking very intently at Neville, this time with both his ordinary and his magical eye.

"Your name's Longbottom?" he said, his magical eye swooping down to check the register again.

Neville nodded nervously, but Moody made no further inquiries. Turning back to the class at large, he reached into the jar for the next spider and placed it upon the desktop, where it remained motionless, apparently too scared to move. Bella felt quite sorry for the small creature lying atop the table.

"The Cruciatus Curse," Moody said enthusiastically. "Needs to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea," he said, pointing his wand at the spider. 'Engorgio!'

The spider swelled. It was now larger than a tarantula. Abandoning all pretense, Ron pushed his chair backward, as far away from Moody's desk as possible. It slammed against the front of Bella's desk and she jumped in fright.

Moody raised his wand again, pointed it at the spider, and muttered, 'Crucio!' At once, the spider's legs bent in upon its body; it rolled over and began to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. No sound came from it, but Bella was certain that if it could have, it would have been screaming. Moody did not remove his wand, and the spider started to shudder and jerk more violently -

"Stop it!" Hermione said shrilly.

Bella looked to where Hermione sat in front of her and found that she was looking, not at the spider but at Neville, who looked horrified; he was gripping the table so hardhis knuckles had gone white. Moody raised his wand. The spider's legs relaxed, but it continued to twitch.

'Reducio.' Moody muttered, and the spider shrank back to its proper size. He put it back into the jar.

"Pain," said Moody softly. "You don't need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse. That one was very popular once too. Right - anyone know any others?"

Bella knew the very curse he was hinting at but she outright refused to put her hand up. A quick glance around the room told her that very little people knew what was going to happen to the last spider. Hermione's hand shook slightly as, for the third time, she raised it into the air.

"Yes?" Moody said, looking at her.

"Avada Kedavra," Hermione whispered

Several people looked uneasily around at her, including Bella.

"Ah," Moody said, another slight smile twisting his lopsided mouth. "Yes, the last and worst. Avada Kedavra - the Killing Curse."
He put his hand into the glass jar, and almost as though it knew what was coming, the third spider scuttled frantically around the bottom of the jar, trying to evade Moody's fingers, but he trapped it, and placed it upon the desktop. It started to scuttle frantically across the wooden surface. Moody raised his wand, and Bella shrank away until her face was hidden behind Ron's back.

"Avada Kedavra!" Moody roared.

There was a flash of blinding green light and a rushing sound, as though a vast, invisible something was soaring through the air. Bella raised her head from where she hid behind Ron and looked helplessly at the poor spider as it lay on it's back, unmarked but unmistakeably dead. Moody swept the dead spider off the desk onto the floor.

"Not nice," he said calmly. "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."

Every eye in the room turned to look at Harry as his face went red from embarrassment. Bella knew Harry hadn't the first clue as to how his parents had actually died and she couldn't imagine how he must feel finding that imformation out from none other than Mad-Eye Moody.

"Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it." Moody continued on. "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. 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 roared, and the whole class jumped again.

"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. Get out your quills - copy this down."

They spent the rest of the lesson taking notes on each of the Unforgivable Curses. No one spoke until the bell rang. As soon as it sounded, there was a rush as everyone attempted to pack away their things and leave the classroom as quick as they could.

"Well -" Bella said as they walked down the corridor. "- isn't he just delightful?"