Tomorrow morning, the Ravenclaws went to Defense Against the Dark Arts for their second lesson, right before lunch. They hurried to the front tree chairs and took out copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection. They waited quietly, until they heard Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor. He entered the room, looking strange and frightening as ever. Hailey could see his strange clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes.
"You can put those away," he growled, limping over to his desk, "Those books. You won't need them."
Hailey returned her book to her bag while Moody took out a register. He shook his long mane of grizzled grey out of his face and began calling out names. His normal eye moved steadily down the list while his magical eye swiveled around, fixing upon each student when they answered.
"Right then," he said when the last person was called on, "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 murmured sound of agreement.
"But you're behind—very behind—on dealing with curses," said Moody. "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—"
"You're not staying?" Mandy interrupted, sounding genuinely curious.
Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Mandy. Mandy looked uncomfortable and embarrassed, but after a moment Moody smiled—it was the first time Hailey had ever seen him smile. It made his heavily scarred face look even more twisted and contorted.
"Yeah, I'm staying just the one year. Special favour to Dumbledore…One year, and then back to my quiet retirement," Moody explained and gave a harsh laugh. He clapped his gnarled hands together and continued explaining. "So—straight into it. Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you countercurses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed to show 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 suppose to defend yourself against something you've never see? 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." He had faced the chalkboard, "You need to be prepared. You need to put away that scarf you're knitting, Miss Turpin!" Hailey turned to see that Lisa's face was red.
"Oh, no way. That old fool can see through the back of his head," Lisa whispered to Su Li. Lisa was holding knitting needles and Professor Moody turned around.
Moody threw a piece of chalk at her, which sailed over her head, bounced off the desk behind her, and almost hit Stephen in the face. "And can hear across classrooms!" After that, he said, "So…do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"
Hands were raised in the air and Moody pointed at Terry Boot, who answered, "The Imperius Curse, sir."
"Ah, yes," said Moody appreciatively, "Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse." He opened his desk drawer and took out a glass jar, where three large black spiders scuttled around inside. He took out a spider and held it in the palm of his hand so that they all see it. He used the Engorgement Charm to make it bigger and muttered, "Imperio!"
The spider leapt from Moody's hand on a line of web and began to swing back and forth as if it was on a trapeze. It stretched out its legs and then did a back-flip. It landed on the desk, where it cart-wheeled in circles. Moody jerked his wand and the spider rose onto two of its hind legs and went into a tap dance routine.
People burst into laughter, causing Michael and Hailey to look at each other.
"Think it's funny, do you?" Moody growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it to you?" The laughter died instantly at that. "Total control," Moody continued, as the spider balled itself up and began to roll over and over again. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats…" Mandy shuddered. "Years back; there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse." Hailey knew that he was talking about the days in which Voldemort had been all-powerful. "Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will.
"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." He barked, "Constant vigilance!" causing everyone to jump. "Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?"
"The Cruciatus Curse," Anthony Goldstein said, without raising his hand.
Moody pointed his wand at the spider, "Crucio!"
The spider's legs bent in upon its body, it rolled over and began to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. Hailey was sure that if it had a voice, it would have been screaming. The spider started to shudder and jerk violently—
"Stop!" shouted Mandy, sounding horrified.
Moody raised his wand and the spider's legs relaxed, but the spider continued twitching. "Pain," he said 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?"
Hailey didn't want to know what would happen to the spider after Moody got his question answered. Michael's hand was the only one to rise in the air.
"Yes?" asked Moody, looking at him.
"The Killing Curse," Michael whispered.
"Ah," said Moody, another slight smile twisting his lopsided mouth. "Yes, the last and worst. Avada Kedavra…the Killing Curse." He looked at the spider and raised his wand. Hailey got a sickening feeling of foreboding. Moody roared, "Avada Kedavra!" There was a flash of green light, a rushing sound, and the light hit the spider. The spider rolled over onto its back; there were no markings on it but it was obviously dead. Moody swept the dead spider off his desk. "Not nice. Not pleasant. And there's no countercurse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and she's sitting right in front of me."
Hailey couldn't help but think that was how her parents died…exactly like that spider. She looked up at Professor Moody as he stood in front of her. His electric blue eye was stationary as it gazed at her. It only looked away when Professor Moody took out his flask and took a long draught from it, before he hobbled back to the blackboard.
Moody explained, "Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it—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." He roared, "Constant vigilance!" causing the whole class to jump again. "Now…those three curses—The Killing Curse, 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 one-way ticket to Azkaban. That's what you're up again. 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…"
For the rest of the lesson, they took notes on each of the Unforgivable Curses, not speaking until the bell rang.
Moody dismissed them and they left the classroom.
"He threw chalk at me," Lisa Turpin said, sounding a little like she was in love.
"That was because you were knitting," Michael pointed out.
"Details, details," Lisa replied, waving a hand.
Hailey wasn't entirely sure if she liked the lesson or not. It wasn't anything spectacular like the other students said it was.
Michael nudged Hailey with his elbow, "Are you all right?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Hailey responded, even though she wasn't. She was wondering if her parents were unmarked, from the green light and if all they heard was a rushing sound before they died.
When they got to the Great Hall, Ron and Hermione walked up to them.
"What's wrong with you?" Ron asked, looking at Hailey.
"We just had Defense Against the Dark Arts," Mandy said.
"Was it that bad?" Hermione asked, sounding anxious.
"I thought it went well, but…" Mandy said, shrugging. "But Professor Moody threw chalk at Lisa." That succeeded in making Hailey and Michael laugh. Hailey felt a little bit better after that.
Hermione looked disapproving at that.
On Thursday, after dinner, Ron said that he figured that he, Mandy, and Hailey should start on their homework for Divination, and took them to the Gryffindor common room to get started on it.
The two girls sat at a table while Ron went up to the boys' dormitory to get his Divination stuff. Hailey looked around, noticing that Fred and George were whispering to each other.
Ron came down with his stuff a few minutes later and they opened their copies of Unfogging the Future and set to work on their predictions for the coming month. An hour later, they had made little progress, despite their table being littered with bits and parchment bearing sums and symbols.
"I haven't got a clue what this lot's supposed to mean," Hailey said, staring down at a long list of calculations.
"You know," said Ron. "I think its back to the old Divination standby." His hair was on end because of all the times he had run his fingers through it in frustration.
"What—make it up?" Hailey asked.
"Yeah," said Ron. He swept the jumble of scrawled notes off the table, dipped his pen into some ink and started writing. "Next Monday, I am likely to develop a cough, owing to the unlucky conjunction of Mars and Jupiter." He looked up at Hailey and Mandy. "You know her—just put in loads of misery, she'll lap it up."
"Oh, right," Mandy said. "Okay, I'll be in danger of broken bones, because of Venus and Neptune."
Hailey crumbled up her first parchment and stuck it in her bag. "On Monday, I will be in danger of—er—burns."
"Yeah, you will be. We're seeing the skrewts again on Monday. Okay, Tuesday, I'll…erm…"
Hailey looked through her book for ideas. "Lose a treasured possession."
"Good one," said Ron, copying it down. "Because of…erm…Mercury. Why don't either of you get stabbed in the back by someone you thought was a friend?"
"Yeah…cool…" said Hailey writing it down, "because…Venus is in the twelfth house."
"On Wednesday, I will get seriously ill due to food, because of Jupiter's alignment is with Saturn," Mandy said. She scoffed and shrugged.
"Aah, I was going to have a fight. Okay, I'll lose a bet," Ron said.
"Yeah, you'll be betting I'll win my fight…" Hailey replied.
"I will almost lose a friend due to a really stupid argument because of Pluto," Mandy said, writing it down.
They continued with making up predictions, which was slowly growing more tragic, but they had to leave before they could get in trouble for being out late.
When they got inside the Ravenclaw common room, Hailey noticed that Michael, Terry, and Anthony were sitting together. The two others looked over and then hurried away. There was a few more other students sitting at the table, but a few were heading to the dormitories. Mandy walked over to Michael, "What was that about?"
"Homework," Michael replied a little too quickly.
It looked like what Mandy was going to say something, but there was a tap, tap, tap on the window. Hailey looked around, noticing the common room was empty and she looked at the window, to see a snowy owl perched on the windowsill.
Hailey relaxed instantly, "Hedwig!" she ran across the common room and opened the window, "About time."
"Look! She's got an answer!" said Mandy, pointing at the grubby piece of parchment tied to Hedwig's leg.
Hailey untied it and sat down on the nearest chair to read, while Hedwig fluttered down to her knee, hooting softly. It looked like it was written in a great hurry, which was probably why it was short.
"What does the letter say?" Michael asked.
Hailey—
I'm flying north immediately. This news about your scar is the latest in a series of strange rumours that have reached me here. If it hurts again, go straight to Dumbledore—they're saying he's got Made-Eye out of retirement, which means he's reading the signs, even if no one else it.
I'll be in touch soon. My best to Ron, Hermione, Mandy, and Michael. Keep your eyes open, Hailey.
Sirius
Hailey looked at Mandy and Michael.
"He's coming back?" Michael asked eyes wide.
"What signs is Dumbledore reading?" Mandy asked, confused. She looked at Hailey, who just hit herself in the head with her fist. It jolted Hedwig out of her lap.
"I shouldn't've told him!" Hailey said, angrily. Now Sirius was coming back and it will be her fault if he got caught.
"What are you talking about?" asked Michael, surprised.
"It's made him think that he's got to come back," said Hailey. "Coming back, because he thinks I'm in trouble! And there's nothing wrong with me!" Hedwig was clicking her beak expectantly, and Hailey snapped at her owl, "And I haven't got anything for you!"
Michael took a Pumpkin Pasty from his robes, unwrapped it, and pulled some crust from it, to give to Hedwig. "Hailey," he started.
"I'm going to bed," said Hailey shortly.
Upstairs in the dormitory, she pulled on her pajamas and got into bed, despite not feeling tired.
It would be her fault if she got caught. She felt like an idiot for not keeping her mouth shut. All it was a few seconds of pain and she had to go blab about it.
After maybe an hour or less, Mandy came up into the dormitory and got ready for bed. Mandy didn't try to speak to her to see if she was awake or not.
