Chapter 13: Mind Over Matter
As September wore on, the weather took its usual sharp turn for the worse, and with it the general mood inside the castle. The fourth years noticed a definite increase in the volume and complexity of their homework and teachers seemed to be scoring their assignments more harshly than usual, leading to steadily increasing resentment that came to a head one drizzly Wednesday afternoon as Professor McGonagall handed back their latest Transfiguration essay with a distinctly sour expression on her face.
"Come off it, Professor!" cried Blaise, shoving his parchment to the edge of the desk as if it had burned him. Professor McGonagall pursed her lips and passed the next essay to Theo, who shut his eyes for a moment before daring to look at it.
"Bloody christ," he muttered, and Draco, who was still reeling from the worst Potions mark he'd received in his life the previous morning, felt his stomach clench as Professor McGonagall picked up an essay that could only be his.
"Quite an astute assessment, Mr. Nott," she said crisply, passing the last essay to Draco. "Five points from Slytherin, and if I hear any like it again it shall be fifty." She made her way to the front of the room and surveyed them for a moment with utmost disapproval.
"I daresay your marks speak for themselves," she said finally, eyes glinting dangerously around at them. "You are now entering the most important phase of your magical education. Your Ordinary Wizarding Levels are drawing nearer-"
"We don't take O.W.L.s until fifth year!" Blaise interrupted, and immediately dropped his gaze as Professor McGonagall fixed him with a look Draco half expected to turn him to stone. With a deep breath which utterly failed to steady his shaking hands, he flipped over his essay and felt a sigh of relief escape him at once; somehow, he'd achieved full marks. He felt Theo's eyes boring holes into the side of his head, and flipped his essay facedown at once. At the head of the classroom, Professor McGonagall was not amused.
"Perhaps not, Zabini, but I hardly think anyone will disagree you need all the preparation you can get! If you were to sit your exams tomorrow, I assure you that no one in this class would receive passing marks!"
"But we're not sitting them tomorrow though, are we?" muttered Pansy, stuffing her own essay resentfully into her bag as though it had offended her. Professor McGonagall set them to work turning hedgehogs into pincushions, an interesting task which sent Daphne into her usual rant about the feelings of animals.
"Don't know why no one's put a stop to this," she said hotly, watching as her hedgehog slowly unfurled itself and lay flat in her palm. "What we should be doing is turning pincushions into hedgehogs." Theo frowned.
"That's not better."
"How d'you figure?" asked Pansy. She lightly prodded the tip of her hedgehog's nose; evidently it wasn't keen on this, for it curled up at once, spines sticking out on end.
"You'd end up with a load of really confused hedgehogs who didn't ask to be hedgehogs."
"No one asks to be a hedgehog," said Blaise darkly, jabbing the tip of his wand at his own, which resolutely refused to turn into a pincushion. "Stupid-looking animals."
"They're sweet!"
"They're ridiculous."
Draco, meanwhile, contemplated the pincushion on his desk. It hadn't been a difficult transfiguration; what were hedgehogs, after all, if not pincushions who moved around and objected to the removal of their pins? Perhaps, if he simply concentrated on putting them back…
He gave his wand a light flick, and nearly fell out of his chair. The hedgehog's spines protruded alarmingly from the pincushion, looking far scarier when not attached to their original owner. He repeated the steps McGonagall had given them at once, and to his enormous relief a pincushion sat inoffensively before him again.
"What're you doing?" Pansy asked, turning in her seat to frown suspiciously back at him.
"Nothing," he said hastily, and studied his pincushion for another few moments. The original spell required a simple, precise flick and a slight downward jab at the end, but perhaps he ought to reverse it. He took a moment to refocus his mind, and an involuntary grin spread across his face as his second attempt yielded a hedgehog, distinctly cross-looking but otherwise unharmed. It took him a moment to realize his friends had fallen abruptly silent in a way that could only mean one thing; sure enough, Professor McGonagall stood over him, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly.
"Mr. Malfoy, what have you done to your pincushion?" Draco studied her for a moment, searching her face for signs of trouble. Finding none, he shrugged.
"Sorry," he said lightly, and turned the hedgehog back into a pincushion. Professor McGonagall gave him what looked very much like a smile and returned to her desk. By the time the bell dismissed them for break, Draco had discovered that he could change the color of the hedgehog by adding a subtle sort of swishing motion in the middle of his spell.
"I think Theo's right," mused Pansy, who had given up and simply watched Draco switch from hedgehog to pincushion and back again for the past twenty minutes. "That hedgehog didn't seem very happy, did he?" Daphne waved this away.
"That'll change soon enough," she said lightly. Blaise and Theo frowned at one another, then at Daphne.
"What d'you mean?" asked Blaise, but Draco was suddenly sure he knew exactly what she meant.
"Daphne," he said slowly, "What've you got in your bag?" Daphne squared her shoulders and stared determinedly ahead, leading the way toward the grand staircase.
"Books," she said loftily. "Among other things." Draco smirked.
"Has the other thing got a name yet?" Daphne slowed her pace enough to turn and glare at him for a few moments.
"As a matter of fact, he hasn't," she snapped. "I'm not giving him one until I know what he's like, and I know you're all going to make fun of me, and I don't care."
This spurred a variety of highly colorful naming suggestions, which Daphne soundly ignored but which nonetheless lasted through break and only stopped as they filed into their Defense Against the Dark Arts lesson, where Moody announced he would be putting the Imperius Curse on them to demonstrate its power and see whether they could resist its effects.
"But you said it's illegal, Professor!" cried Pansy at once, looking scandalized. "You told us that using it against another person was-"
"Dumbledore wants you taught what it feels like," growled Moody, sweeping away the desks with a flick of his wand and clearing the center of the room. "But if you'd rather learn the hard way...when someone's putting it on you to control you completely...fine by me. Anyone that's got a problem with the lesson...off you go." He pointed toward the door and glowered around at them for a minute; no one moved.
"Every day I miss Lockhart more," sighed Blaise, as Moody snarled at them to get into a line.
"C'mon," Draco replied, snatching his sleeve and dragging him toward the back of the class. He'd felt vaguely ill in this room since their eventful first lesson, and didn't like the look on Moody's face as he began calling students forward to place the curse on them. Whether Dumbledore wanted it or not, Draco was quite certain this lesson shouldn't bring such a hungry, almost gleeful light into their teacher's eyes. He grit his teeth as, at the head of the room, Vince started hopping around on one foot, singing the national anthem. When Greg began a series of astonishing gymnastics he certainly shouldn't have been capable of, he turned away. When Moody called up Millicent Bulstrode and placed the curse on her, a tide of muttering ran through the crowd that told him something unusual was happening, but he couldn't seem to raise his head and look.
"The fuck's going on?" hissed Blaise from somewhere behind.
"She's fighting it." Draco hadn't heard Theo join them, and jumped slightly. He took a deep breath and risked a glance up at the center of the room, and saw at once that Theo was right. From the direction of Moody's wand and the slightly strained look on his face, Draco guessed that Moody wanted Millicent to jump up onto the desk in front of her. Her knees were bent at a deeply awkward angle as if preparing to spring, but she appeared to be frozen in indecision and there was something distinctly off about the look in her eyes, as if they weren't focused properly. Moody raised an eyebrow and gave his wand another gentle flick, and Millicent jumped neatly up onto the desk as if that had been her plan all along.
"That's it," roared Moody, ushering her back into the crowd and beckoning the next person forward. "That's it-now, pay attention, you lot! Watch the eyes, that's where you can see it-Imperio!"
And so it went. No one threw off the curse completely; some, like Millicent Bulstrode, showed a glimmer of resistance before they succumbed. Others stood on their hands, imitated squirrels, or otherwise humiliated themselves while Moody looked on with increasingly ill-disguised glee. Draco wanted desperately to look away again, but he no longer seemed able. Blaise and Theo were muttering to one another, and although they were scarcely a foot away, he couldn't tell what they were saying. Instead, his mother's voice rang through his mind, clearly as if she were standing next to him.
The moment in which you find yourself, your surroundings, make up objective reality. He frowned. His mother had been talking about Occlumency.
By breaking into your mind, I attempt to remove you from objective reality.
Yes, she had been talking about Occlumency, but how different could the Imperius Curse be?
At the front of the room, Pansy was writing swear words she'd never have uttered if her life depended on it on the blackboard with inhuman speed as Moody leaned casually back against his desk.
Strength of mind is not something that can be achieved quickly or imitated by employing tactics or tricks.
Blaise and Theo had fallen silent, as had the rest of the class. Blaise was glancing every so often at the floor, brows knitted together but eyes wide and full of worry, his usual ghost of a smirk wholly absent from his face. Theo, on the other hand, was staring directly at Moody. He didn't look scared; rather, his eyes were narrowed slightly and his jaw was set in what Draco recognized with a jolt as cold fury.
No amount of cleverness will help you here.
"Mr. Malfoy," hissed Moody. "You next." Well, it couldn't possibly hurt to try. In front of him, the chalkboard had been cleared of everything except the date. What had his mother asked next? The windows. There was a break in the rain this morning, and the sky had lightened from dull, bruised grey to nearly pure white. Five desks were clustered together in the right-hand corner of the room, six in the left. Unlike any of its previous occupants, Moody kept the classroom walls utterly bare.
"Imperio!"
The sensation was as different from Occlumency as he could imagine. When his parents practiced with him, he'd felt as if his mind was under siege, everything had hurt, he'd feared his skull would crack from the inside. This was light, vaguely warm, highly comforting; he knew he'd been worrying about something seconds ago, but he couldn't remember what it was, and could see quite clearly now that it didn't matter. His thoughts flowed in a neat, orderly sequence that relaxed every muscle in his body. There was only one thing to worry about, after all.
Slap yourself across the face. Moody's voice. He felt his hand begin to rise through the air, but stopped cold. Moody's lips weren't moving, but his voice echoed clearer than ever inside his skull.
Go on, now. It won't hurt.
But Draco's hand was frozen, for another voice had flitted unbidden into the back of his mind.
What can you see to the left of the fireplace? asked his mother, but there wasn't a fireplace. There was a chalkboard, and to the left…
Slap yourself. Now.
The pleasant feeling shifted slightly, as if Moody's voice were driving thumbscrews into the side of his head. Little by little, unease replaced comfort, and then he felt ill.
Do it now. Go on, you deserve it, don't you?
To the left of the fireplace was the largest Sneakoscope he'd ever seen, and next to that-
Do it! NOW!
The next thing he knew, a sharp sting ripped through the side of his face, replaced seconds later by a horrible burning, throbbing sensation in his cheek. A downward glance told him the palm of his left hand was crimson.
"Stop it!"
This wasn't Moody's voice. The light, warm sensation of the curse dissolved entirely, doubling the pain in his cheek and the sick feeling in his stomach.
"Stop it, you sick, sadistic-stop it!" Theo had broken from the crowd and stepped into the center of the room. Without taking his eyes off Moody's, he gently guided Draco to the edge of the classroom.
"Are you all right?" came Daphne's voice from behind. He managed a nod, and in the center of the room, Moody simply gave a mild sort of shrug and placed the Imperius Curse on Theo.
"Oh, no," breathed Pansy.
"Ouch," snapped Blaise, and Draco suspected Pansy had his arm in a death grip. In the center of the room, Theo hadn't moved. Ten seconds passed, then twenty, thirty; Moody's jaw twitched ever so slightly, his brows knit together, face contorted into something that looked very much like effort. A few tentative murmurs surfaced from among the class, growing louder and bolder as the seconds ticked by.
"He's fighting it off," said Blaise incredulously. "Look at him, he's fought it off completely."
But Draco didn't think that was right, not exactly. Watch the eyes, Moody had said. That's where you can see it. When Millicent Bulstrode fought the curse, her eyes had appeared to lose focus, fixed on something only she could see; Theo's remained normal as he cooly met Moody's gaze, the rest of his face impassive, almost bored. If he was fighting the curse, he wasn't fighting particularly hard. Two minutes had passed before Moody lowered his wand.
"Class dismissed." This came in a low sort of hiss, somehow far more dangerous and commanding than his usual growl. No one moved. "CLASS DISMISSED!" Moody roared, and at once, everyone leapt up as thought burned and began to shove one another out the door, desperate to avoid being the last in the classroom. Blaise charged forward and seized Theo violently by the elbow, then ushered the rest of them out of the room and down the corridor at breakneck speed.
"How the hell did you do that?" he demanded the moment they reached the courtyard, releasing Theo so forcefully that the latter stumbled slightly and scarcely avoided falling in the grass.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," snapped Pansy, giving Blaise a very dark look. As she turned to Theo, her expression softened considerably. "Are you all right?" Theo looked utterly confused.
"I'm fine," he said shortly, frowning at each of them in turn. "You should call him Bramble," he added to Daphne. "Your hedgehog," he said impatiently, when she simply stared. Draco jumped slightly; he'd forgotten about the hedgehog, and judging by the confused look that passed between Blaise and Pansy, he wasn't alone. Daphne studied Theo for a few moments as though she'd never seen him properly before, then reached into her pocket and held the hedgehog delicately in her palm.
"That's sweet," she said finally, with a hint of a grin. "How'd you think of it?" Theo shrugged.
"They've got thorns. Obviously." Blaise made an impatient sound in his throat.
"How did you do it?" he repeated. Theo blinked.
"Not a clue," he said lightly, as the bell rang overhead. "C'mon, I'm starv-hungry," he amended, with a wink at Daphne. He turned and set off toward the Great Hall without a backward glance; Blaise turned to Pansy, looking furious, but the latter simply shrugged and followed Theo out of the courtyard. Muttering darkly under his breath, Blaise followed suit. Daphne started after Blaise, but paused to frown over her shoulder at Draco.
"Coming?" she asked uncertainly. Draco tried to move, but his body wouldn't cooperate; besides, he couldn't imagine ever feeling hungry again. He shook his head slightly, then averted his eyes at once; Daphne's were full of a cautious sort of worry that wasn't helping the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"Er-I-" she broke off, then shook her head slightly and bit her lip. "Right then. See you in Potions."
And then she was gone, leaving Draco alone in the courtyard.
"Did he hurt you?" Draco jumped slightly; it was hours later, the common room was deserted, and now he thought about it, Draco couldn't have said how long he'd been staring blankly at the dying fire. Theo had shoved aside his Potions homework and was studying him intently.
"Did who-what?" He ought to know exactly what Theo was asking; instead, the previous contents of his brain appeared to be replaced by the last few flames in the fireplace. Theo frowned.
"Moody." He paused. "You just, er. You've been quiet." He wasn't wrong, Draco supposed; having no good ideas for an alternative, he'd gone to his Potions lesson after lunch and been thoroughly unhelpful as Hermione struggled her way through an extremely difficult antidote to common poisons. History of Magic had afforded him the opportunity to feign sleep without arousing suspicion, and at dinner he'd told his friends he wasn't hungry and slipped down into the common room for a few minutes' peace. He knew they were worried about him, and he knew he certainly wasn't helping matters, but somewhere between the courtyard at lunch and their History of Magic lesson, he'd worked out why he felt so sick. Moody had made his classmates do a series of truly ridiculous things this morning, from imitating wild animals to performing humiliating song and dance routines. Humiliating, yes, without debate. But he hadn't made anyone else hurt themselves.
Which sounded a bit dramatic, Draco knew. He wasn't hurt, wasn't even bruised, and who knew? Perhaps, in Moody's opinion, smacking yourself across the face fell into the same category as singing the national anthem. And yet…
Draco had suspected, ever since the first lesson, that Moody might know something he didn't about his family. This made sense, he supposed, if Moody was an ex-Auror. And wasn't he used to the scrutiny of adults, particularly adults familiar with his father? It made sense.
But the way Moody had looked at him in their first lesson was beyond scrutiny, and today, Draco had seen that look again as its owner forced him to smack himself across the face. Moody wasn't suspicious of him; he hated him, and Draco had the horrible feeling it wouldn't be long before he found out exactly why. So, yes. He'd been quiet this afternoon.
"How'd you do it?" he asked now. He could scarcely manage more than a whisper, but Theo didn't comment. Instead, he glanced up at the ceiling for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts.
"He wanted me to throw your books out the window," he said slowly, at length. "Only he never said to go pick them up first, so…" Theo shrugged slightly. "I couldn't exactly throw something I didn't have in my hands." He paused. "I thought he'd work out what the problem was and I'd have to do it, but...he didn't." Draco frowned. This seemed a very thin explanation-the Imperius Curse wouldn't be one-tenth as powerful as Moody had told them, would it, if a simple loophole in its caster's instructions was enough to resist it entirely-but he could tell at a glance that Theo wasn't withholding anything from him. As far as he was concerned, this was the whole explanation. It just...couldn't be.
"What did it feel like?" he asked, after a moment. Theo shrugged.
"Sort of nice, actually. I suppose that's the point." He studied Draco for another moment. "You didn't answer my question," he added, in an entirely different tone. "Are you okay?" Draco sighed, returning his gaze to the fireplace.
"I'm okay." What other choice was there, really? Theo was quiet for a bit.
"What did Snape say today about unicorn horns?" he asked, returning to his homework. "Do they have to be picked up at the full moon, or-"
"You can't harvest them at the full moon," Draco interjected, slightly amused and very grateful. "Or they're poisonous." He snatched Theo's homework and read for a moment. "And aconite and monkshood are the same plant." Theo frowned.
"So?"
"So," Draco told him, unable to resist rolling his eyes, "for the six thousandth time, you can't heat monkshood and nettles together, they'll cancel out one another's effects. And in this case," he went on, raising a hand slightly as Theo opened his mouth to interject, "that means this...thing you've got here...won't do anything at all." Theo groaned and snatched back his parchment.
"I thought you were annoying from the moment I met you," he said darkly. Draco grinned.
"And now?" Theo blinked.
"I had no idea how annoying."
"It's not my fault," Draco countered. "I didn't invent monkshood." Theo waved this away and returned to his Potions book, and Draco watched him for a moment, utterly fascinated.
Strength of mind, his mother had said, is not something that can be achieved quickly or imitated by employing tactics or tricks. No amount of cleverness will help you here.
At the time, he'd brushed this off as the flowery, meaningless language to which his parents were prone when they wanted to impress something on him; now, drawn as usual to the firelight reflected in Theo's eyes, he thought he understood what she meant. She'd just neglected to mention that you could simply have it.
