Chapter IV

Spirit Quest

"You're behind – very behind – on dealing with curses," said Professor Moody. His good eye was glaring at them with such ferocity that the rest of his scarred face didn't seem as bad. "I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other. I've only got one year to pull it off, so we better get started, eh?" His grin was more like a grizzled lion showing his teeth. "Now, how many of you can cast a curse?" Timidly, students began raising their hands. They were caught between the desire to do as Moody asked and the fear of retribution from the notorious dark wizard catcher. After a few moments, most of the class put their hands up. "Some of you are lying," said Moody in a creepy, sing-song voice. "How many of you are familiar with the spell incanted, 'petrificus totalus', hmm?" Now the entire class had their hands up. "Its proper name is the Body-Bind Curse. Curse, yes. All of you know it. All of you can cast a curse. First years are taught curses. They come in all shapes and sizes. Now, the Ministry of Magic says I'm only to teach you countercurses. I'm not supposed to show you what illegal Dark curses look like. Not until sixth year. But how are you going to defend yourself against that which you know nothing of?"

Moody stalked forward into the sea of desks, clunking with each step. "If I were to start cursing you, what could you do to me?" He leaned over Crabbe and Goyle's desk. "Think you could get those meaty hands to your wands in time, hmm?" He swiveled around and leered at Zabini. "And if you did, what do you think you could do? I know curses that could boil your bones in an instant." Moody licked his lips intently and hobbled over to the desk Draco and Hermione shared. "You, Malfoy. Your father is… a renowned wizard. Surely he has taught his son something of his ways? Say I took a shot at the great son of Malfoy?"

"I'd stop you," said Hermione.

Moody's magical eye rotated to look at her, but his natural one stayed on Draco. "Hide behind the girlie, hmm? That's what a Malfoy would do, hmm?" Now he turned towards Hermione. "Tell me, girlie, how would you stop me?"

"I'd break your nose," she said.

He rasped out a grating laugh. "Already been broken, girlie. Try again."

"Cut off your legs," she gritted her teeth.

"Again, done before," he grinned his lopsided grin. "Tell me more."

"Does it matter? I'd stop you."

"Girlie is confident. But confidence can lead to overconfidence. What you need is CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Moody screamed the last two words, making everyone jump in their seats.

"I'm not overconfident," said Hermione. "I've done it before. You know that, Professor."

"Do I, hmm?" said Moody. "Tell me, girlie, do you know which curses are most heavily punished by law?"

"The Unforgivables," she answered.

Moody nodded and turned away to slump back to his desk. "Name one."

Hermione chose the most commonly noted curse from the history books. Incidentally the one with which she had the most experience using. "The Imperius Curse."

"Learn that one from Malfoy?"

Her heart skipped a beat. How could he know?

"Of course, we all know how Malfoy Senior got off scot-free after the war," grumbled Moody. Draco turned a shade of pink. "Claimed he was under the sway of the Imperius Curse. He knew it couldn't be proven, see. Couldn't be disproven, either." He selected a glass jar from his desk and opened it with a pop. Sticking his hand inside, he came out with a small spider. He pointed his wand at it and murmured, "Imperio."

The spider leapt from his hand and scurried across the floor. Chair legs ground against the stone floor as students flinched away from it. The spider climbed on desk and began jumping from desk to desk.

"Total control," said Moody. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats…

"Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse. Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will." Moody made the spider leap onto Hermione's desk and bounce in front of Draco. "The next Unforgivable Curse? Hmm, girlie?" Hermione looked up to see he was staring at her.

"There's the Cruciatus Curse," she said.

"Engorgio!" Moody said, and the spider grew to the size of a tarantula. Draco and Hermione scooted away from their desk. "Crucio!"

The spider suddenly balled up, twitching violently. It rolled from side to side in a horrible dance of pain. Hermione watched on, hypnotized by the sight. Moody lifted the curse after a few moments. "You don't need fists and knives to cause pain. Not if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse.

"And the last?"

Hermione was transfixed by the spider, now moving its legs slowly, trying to move itself but only treading air.

"The Killing Curse," Draco said beside her.

"Avada Kedavra!" bellowed Moody.

Hermione felt a tingle go down her spine at the words.

The room was filled with a blinding green light. The air rippled like something had exploded, and then Hermione's vision returned.

The spider's legs no longer swayed. It was dead.

"Not very pleasant. No countercurse, see. It can't be blocked. How does one survive it?" He waited for an answer that would never come. "Don't get hit is the optimal option. Else you can march up to Gryffindor Tower and ask Potter how he did it."

Draco took his textbook and set it on its side deliberately, then swept the desk clear of the corpse.

"Those three spells 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. Can anyone tell me why?"

Pansy raised her hand. "Because they are unforgivable."

Moody barked out a laugh. "That goes without saying. But why?"

"They cannot be undone?" Milicent asked.

"In a way," said Moody. "Dead is dead, but pain fades away."

"Professor," Hermione said, "Why are they illegal?"

"I'm the one asking that question, girlie."

"No, sir, you're asking us for reasons people are put in prison for murder. I want to know why they are illegal to use."

Moody narrowed his natural eye. "Why they are illegal? Did you not pay attention just a minute ago?"

"Sir, I know that murder is illegal. But there are legal killings, Professor. The Killing Curse is instant death. Is that not humane?"

"I do not follow."

"If there was a criminal who was fighting to the death, would it not be more unforgivable to curse off his arm or leg and let him bleed out? There are many spells that you can use to kill. Why is the only one that is made to kill quickly and without pain unforgivable?

"And for that matter, can't the Imperius Curse be used to keep prisoners from escaping? To move them without worry?"

"Next you'll be telling me that the Cruciatus Curse should be used as corporal punishment for naughty students," Moody growled.

"Of course not," said Hermione, prickly. "But aren't there crimes so terrible that, sometimes, you want to cause those who commit them grievous pain? If they hurt someone else so badly, isn't it kind of justice?"

"We've got a real vigilante here," Moody laughed.

"I'm just saying that labeling these curses as 'unforgivable' is a bit black and white. There are much more heinous crimes than killing someone painlessly."

"Oh, but it isn't about the pain," grinned Moody. "For death or for torture. No, you are right. There are other ways to kill. Other ways to maim. But, tell me this, girlie: how does the Killing Curse kill? How does the torture curse torture, hmm?"

"Does it stop the heart?" she guessed. "Over-stimulate the nerves?"

A low rumble came from Moody's chest. "This is magic, Granger. You are thinking too much like a Muggle."

I-I. ⌡. Γ┐

Madam Pince did not want to let Hermione into the restricted section but Professor McGonagall's note did not specify an expiration date. And when Hermione told her that she was under orders from Dumbledore, the vulture backed off. Hermione had asked for the pass on a whim, some little bit of revenge for having to put up with a group of younger students asking her questions once a week, but she was beginning to really appreciate her subconscious genius. Leading the tutoring section was peanuts compared to the wealth of knowledge fenced off from the rest of the library, to which she now had unrestricted access.

It didn't take her long to find the meaning of 'pensieve'. It was a specialized device that could store and, for lack of a better word, replay memories. From there, it was easy enough to find a book on the thing, and perhaps simpler even to understand how it worked. Once memories were extracted (Hermione was a bit uncomfortable with that choice of word), they could be kept in the Pensieve, a bowl carved with special runes and imbued with powerful magic, or stored in jars or vials. Memories took the form of something between silver mist and a liquid. If they were deposited into the Pensieve, one could watch them on the surface of the contents, in a misty, three-dimensional representation brought about at the prodding of a wand, or in complete immersion by touching the memories. It did not go into much detail about what "complete immersion" meant.

Hermione could find no mention of a special spell used in the process. It seemed an entirely mechanically operation, leaving the magic to the Pensieve. That suited her just fine.

But that left her with an hour until dinner with no homework left to do.

Her mind drifted swiftly onto the Tri-Wizard Tournament. She made her way to the history section and began browsing. It took her a while to find anything substantial. Most of the more modern academic texts wrote the tournament off as some sort of uncivilized brawl of wizards and monsters. The somewhat… more lighthearted renditions of the tournament painted it as a spectacle on the same level as the World Cup. Great fun and greater glory. The further back she went, though, the harder it was to recognize when it was actually the tournament being written about, and not some sort of arena match or village tradition. There was nothing called the "Tri-wizard Tournament" before the thirteenth century. There were tournaments, obviously, but it was difficult to really nail down the timeline. What was interesting was that it tracked fairly well with the progression of the medieval "tournament". The modern interpretation of a tourney, the jousting tilt, was not central to early tournaments. The main event prior to the High Middle Ages was the melee, which equated to a brawl of knights who had nothing better to do than bash each other to pulp. The Tri-Wizard Tournament seemed to gain in popularity around the same time. But records of the precursor event to the Tournament were much harder to find.

She finally stumbled across a footnote in one book that labeled something called 'Merlin's Path' as the predecessor to the Tri-Wizard Tournament. From there she had a starting point and quickly found a text entitled On the Traditions of the Isles. Two names were etched into the cover. One simply read Mermot. The other was Pate of Bath. Each page was comprised by two different fonts of writing. The first was large and clearly printed, but between these lines were much smaller scrawls, though they, too, were fairly easy to read. It acted somewhat like a dialogue, or more probably, a narrative with running commentary. It was possibly some sort of transcription with the writer giving his opinion, as the little scribbles at times derided the larger words for ignorance or conjecture.

Merlin's Path

The winter solstice is a sacred time for wizarding folk, and no celebrations display our veneration for this time of year than the holiday of Yule and the revel of Merlin's Path. (Of course, this is just a cheap segue for Mermot. The Path did not occur solely on the solstice, nor did it in fact have any overt connection to it other than the time of year each fell in) Merlin's Path, the annual exhibition of wizarding talent and dedication to magic, is perhaps the most important event of the year in some parts of Britain. It would be too simple to say it is a celebration of Merlin himself. Originally devised as a spiritual journey by the great wizard himself, the Path has since been diluted by centuries of Saxon, Norman, and, most importantly, Christian invasions – for Merlin lived in the age of the Briton. The wizards of the Isles were revered by the common people for their power, wisdom and guile. Even when the Romans came onto our shores, the wizard had his place in the world, as did his faith. Much has been lost from that time. (Mermot fancies himself of direct lineage to Merlin and the wizards of classical antiquity. 'Mermot' itself is most probably a pseudonym, with his given name lost to history)

Though Merlin's Path has not seen more than ten entrants in living memory, or even seven, the Path is originally thought to have included no less than twelve champions. These champions would gather together and dip a goblet into a basin of flame, of sin and evil, to be drunk and contemplated. (Here, Mermot betrays his 'Celtic act' by subjecting his description to Christian language of 'sin and evil'. His assertion of drinking flames is most probably hyperbole or metaphor) From this goblet, all twelve would be bound to their mission lest they fall prey to the evil thus ingested. Merlin would lead them on a journey of self-reflection, discovery and spiritual awakening none have experienced in centuries.

The current evolution of Merlin's Path has been bastardized, but it has its purpose. The knights of the common people hold their tourneys, bash their heads together as a show of strength and courage. Our brave wizards have taken to doing the same. Merlin's Path has become a way to express our wizarding culture and celebrate our ancestors, though Merlin's original meaning to the event has been lost by most of us. (Here I hold little opposition. There is no doubt that the original form of the Path was vastly different from the Path of Mermot's day and more so now. That is not to say, however, that Mermot has been completely honest with us. You may have noticed that I have refrained from calling it 'Merlin's' Path. That is intentional. Mermot has clearly placed himself as a descendant of Merlin, so an unbiased approach to history regarding Merlin should not be expected. While I do believe Merlin took part in the Path, and quite possibly led proceedings for some time, there is no evidence that he began the practice. Merlin's Path it may be called, but there is reason to believe that the event predates him by centuries.

Merlin himself lived in the sixth century. Half a millennia before he was born, the Roman scribe Gracchus journeyed throughout the Isles and spoke to the Britons, recording his findings. One entry from what is now the area of Wales states, "Having followed this expedition of twelve men to the sea, they disappeared from sight into the rocks and I was not allowed entry into their sacred domain". Another instance was found in the highlands of Scotland. "Upon that hill I see the beacon of bonfire, around which can gather no more and no less than twelve men, leaders of tribes and fierce warriors all. From that fire they will journey into the hinterlands, sometimes for a fortnight or more. The villagers tell me they will return changed". There are several other instances of gatherings of twelve men, enough that Gracchus acknowledges it. "Whether beyond the wall [of Hadrian] or not, these Britons hold the gathering of twelve as sacred... Journeys of the spirit are much more common in these isles than anywhere within Rome. One must question the health of the Roman soul when one meets a Briton")

The manuscript went on for a good few more pages, but the emptiness in Hermione's stomach told her that it was time for dinner. She carefully replaced Traditions of the Isles on the correct shelf and took off for the Great Hall.

She arrived slightly late, there was already food on the tables. Hermione found her way to the table where the Slytherin forth years had situated themselves and slipped in beside Draco. She had almost dropped a forkful of chicken onto her platter before noticing that there was a letter laying on it. Hermione Granger was written on the envelope in immaculate cursive. She ripped open the envelope with a finger and pulled out the letter. She smelled a hint of lilac seep out.

The letter within only had one line of words.

I shall expect you in my office tomorrow evening, promptly at nine o'clock. – A.D.

"That was there when we got here," Draco said, putting an arm around her waist. "Who's it from?"

Hermione shrugged and stuffed the note into her robe pocket. "Nothing. Snape reminding me about my tutoring."