The Provisional Laws of Acquired Behavior or Learning

Authors Note: Yes, Moody has two Goddaughters, Susan and Parvati have never before met though.

Disclaimer: I don't at this time own any published work of Sega or JK Rowling, if I did I'd gut the current Sonic fandom and only allow literate people to contribute cutting the fandom back by 90% and improving the quality by the same percentage.

Wednesday

October 30th Halloween 1991

Alastor Moody was right Maurice decided as Parvati walked alongside Susan and himself no worse for ware. Upon returning to Hogwarts that Halloween day Parvati had strode through the Great Hall bold as brass ignoring the stares at her gleaming silver and purple prosthetic limbs and sat next to Maurice and Susan at the Ravenclaw table with a proclamation of "Pass the bacon, Sugar-whiz"
Maurice was very very thankful that she then shortened that nickname to Sugar in return Maurice had used Moody's analogy and nicknamed her Bunnie which led her to ask if he'd ever met a man called Alastor Moody. Which led to an interesting conversation "When ah was born ma mum came down with depression, my dad made Moody babysit me a lot when mum was in one of her moods so ah spent a lot of time with ma godfather when he was touring M.A.C.U.S.A teaching their Aurors. Ah only emigrated ta here recently"
It neatly explained why an Indian looking girl sounded like an American southern belle, thought Maurice, especially if she'd been traveling America her whole life.
"Are you alright?" asked Susan referring to her prosthetics Parvati now nicknamed Bunnie shrugged off the worry "Sure, ahm alright, stronger too, ah can lift this entire bench and everyone on it if ah wanted, just don't ask me to go near anything with more than eight legs, K?"
Maurice poked at the treacle pumpkin tart with a spoon before cautiously taking a bite and freezing.
"Not to your liking, sugar?" queried Bunnie. Maurice grimaced showing the bowl into her hands "More like remove the temptation please, before I eat it all and turn into Dudley"
"Who's Dudley" asked Susan taking a spoonful out of the treacle and abruptly grimacing at the sugary sweet taste.
"An extremely fat cousin I wish I wasn't related to" Maurice grumped.
Maurice didn't talk about his family often with his friends and had a tendency to ignore that they existed. "And you're scared of becoming a roly-poly?" asked Susan changing the subject slightly and reaching for some water to get rid of the taste, Maurice shuddered "Yes"
"In that case ah'll take that, ah need the energy to work these limbs" Bunnie helped herself, masterfully ignoring Maurice's woeful gaze.
Maurice crossed his arms and pouted grumpily before his attention was caught by one of the enchanted flying bats eyes narrowing in thought "…Hey, I have an idea"
"About what?" mumbled Susan into her drink.
"Well its Halloween right? Creepiest night of the year and we're in a giant medieval castle decked out for the season, let's go explore." Maurice nodded to himself, it would also remove him from the vicinity of sugary temptation.
Susan looked skeptical "You sure? The wizarding world is primarily atheist, I think the feast is the only thing to make Halloween, Halloween that the staff did"
Looking around at the hall Maurice took in the sight of many students on sugar rushes and stuffing their faces "And yet we have a Halloween themed feast with enough chocolate to make anyone sick at a glance" Maurice glanced to the staff table and leaned closer "..and I overheard one of the teachers say that they were disappointed that they didn't get to turn back any tricks and they said that the Halloween feast is pure laziness"
"Who said tha Sugar?"
"Flitwick and Kettleburn, I heard that they were going to enchant some of the old corridors for anyone out of bounds before curfew, just for giggles" Susan gave the candy covered table another once over "Fine let's go, I know when my eyes are bigger than my stomach"

Stairway to the dungeons
"I dunno if this was the best idea Sugar."
Maurice snorted "Where's your sense of adventure, Buns? Lumos"
"A giant spider ate it" she spoke with enough snark to make Maurice and Susan wince.
"I'd hardly call our first flying lesson an adventure" Susan lit her wand following Maurice down the stairway Parvati trailing behind.
The light spell cast unusual shadows on the walls causing them to look as if writhing lively around the walls "Sue I think we're here, this is the place they were talking about"
"Creepy enough"
"Buns where are you?" Maurice turned back and froze "SPIDER!" shrieked Bunnie disappearing back the way they'd come, before Maurice could even think of anything the spider set its eyes on Susan and to their surprise began to shift form, Susan froze in place as the now two monsters in human guise turned to her, gashed skin showing white bone in places and reeking of decay.
Maurice lost his cool, this was going too far, he blocked the creature's view of Susan purposely ignored the creature as its gaze latched onto Maurice and began to shift, sweeping the blank-eyed Susan off her feet Maurice ran.
Coming to a stop a few corridors down in a hallway lined with statues and a bit lost Maurice set Susan down "Well, It was scary…"
Maurice scowled "Susan, I'm sorry my whole idea was just rotten from start to finish"
"What a way to end the day" Susan sighed.
Maurice shrugged helplessly "I'm sorry?"
Susan waved Maurice's apology off "No, its okay, We just had some bad luck is all, Boggart's like that one usually hide in small closets or things like that, the enchanted darkness must have been acceptable for it."
Susan sat on the plinth of a statue rubbing her eyes tiredly.
Maurice spoke before he thought "Who were those people it transformed into?"
"My parents, they died in the last wizarding war a month before the war ended, my Aunts the only blood relative I have left, The dark lord went after a lot of children that year"
Maurice wrapped an arm around Susan's shoulder as a show of support.
"What about you Maurice? It looked like it transformed into a crowd of people back there when it saw you"
Susan felt Maurice flinch "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to"
Maurice met her gaze evenly green eyes sad "No, you told me yours so it's only fair"
Maurice paused sitting next to Susan on the plinth drawing his knees up to his chin "When I first discovered my ability to run at super speed I explored the country a lot and through it I met a lot of people, I just keep wondering if I'd have been able to save them if I'd been in Diagon Alley in the day of the attack" the last part came out in a rush.
"Maurice…"
"I keep thinking that I should have done something when I heard about it, I can run at super speed so maybe I could have done something. Then I saw Parvati getting hurt by those Acro- Aclo- those spiders and now I know I really could have made a difference, I keep seeing the people in that alley calling me a coward"
Susan scowled and pulled the surprised eleven year old into a hug "Maurice, you are eleven years old, ten at the time you shouldn't have done anything and even if you could, you shouldn't feel obligated to help people Maurice, You should only help people if you can give it your all because you want to, at least that's what my Aunt said."
Maurice wiped his moist eyes "Where'd she come up with that"
"Dumbledore the previous headmaster in Britain held three of the highest positions in government until recently but he quit two of them to work with the ICW full time, He said he wanted to be able to help people with a clearer conscience and be able to do it without feeling it was a duty"
"We're not very good at being first years are we?" The question was only partway rhetorical.
Susan huffed "Yes, I see your point"
"Most kids our age are pranking people or stuffing our faces with chocolate or just being idiots. Us?" Maurice scoffed leaning into Susan's embrace… and lost promptly his balance toppling both of them backwards through the apparently fake statue with exclamations of shock as they began to slide down a chute.
Landing abruptly with a thump Maurice lit his wand and stated the obvious "Uh? Susan, I think we found a secret passage"
The room the two found themselves in was like a tunnel in a mine, with support beams all around the wall wood paneling lined the tunnel extended outwards in branches with various rooms off the sides. A dusty rudimentary kitchen in one, several bedrooms, a conference room and more were unexplored. Maurice found something interesting in one of the classrooms, specifically how the door exited out into a hidden antechamber near Hogwarts underground boat dock from behind a concealed rock.
Susan cast a cleaning charm at one of the chairs and she and Maurice goggled when it changed colour from ebony brown to honey gold, making it evident just how dirty the thing had been before. "No one's been here for a very long time, I think this place has been forgotten about." Susan theorized.
"You know this could make a good clubhouse," thought Maurice aloud "Give it a twice over with some serious cleaning charms and we can have a proper place to study and play around in"
Susan grimaced as a thought hit her "We should probably check Bunnies okay first and come back tomorrow"
Maurice looked around at the dusty room and snorted wincing as he inhaled some dust "Yeah you're probably right"

Hogwarts 7th Floor
Lee Jordan looked carefully at the small transcript he'd copied from an old book in the Library doubtfully again then looked at the absurd portrait on the wall, of a man teaching trolls to dance, Turning to the opposite blank wall Lee began to pace 'I need to find the place my ancestors hid, I need to find the place my ancestors hid, I need to find the place my ancestors hid' on the third pace a metal door materialized, Lee took a deep breath and gathering his courage, opened the door.