Harry pushed through his classes on Thursday – his fullest day of the week, with a class in every period of the day – until his final class, a double session of Defence Against the Dark Arts with Professor Moody. Harry didn't really mind lessons with Moody, as the grizzled old Auror seemed far more interested in needling his classmates with suspected Death Eater parents than devoting any time to rumours about Harry, but for the last lesson of the day it was a bit meatier than Harry would have liked.
It didn't help that the Hufflepuffs stayed strictly to one half of the room – on purpose, as Ernie had told Harry, since Moody spent rather a lot of time with his electric blue eye locked onto various Slytherins and nobody wanted to be in his eyeline longer than necessary – and Harry usually sat smack in the middle of the classroom with Blaise.
Ever since that first lesson when the Viper group Slytherins had been on time, but later than the Hufflepuffs, everyone in Viper group made an effort to get from Charms with Flitwick as quickly as possible. Harry thought it was still a bit unfair that the Hufflepuffs had a free period just before and usually arrived ten minutes early, but Moody seemed satisfied enough that the Slytherins were never late moving forward, so the effort wasn't totally wasted.
"We didn't have homework for today, did we?" said Millicent just as the doorway to the classroom came into sight.
"You asked that earlier," pointed out Theodore, his tone snippier than usual, "and the answer was no then as well."
"Well, I bloody forgot, didn't I?" snapped Millicent. "I hate Thursdays. It's just lesson after lesson after lesson, no time to sit and think. And they're all shit lessons as well! Transfiguration, Potions, Defence..."
"We did have a nice lunch today, though," said Tracey, "and that really handsome boy from Beauxbatons sat next to us as well," although that didn't appear to mollify Millicent at all. The tall, bulky Scottish witch glared at Tracey. "Well, I thought that was nice..." Tracey said.
Daphne groaned.
"Theodore, just say sorry for being rude—we all know you didn't mean it but it's still not fair," said Daphne.
Theodore paused. "Sorry, Millie; Moody always gets under my skin. I didn't mean to be rude."
Millicent sighed.
"Yeah. Yeah, I know. Let's just forget about it, alright? Come on, we don't want to be late," said Millicent before she rushed forwards to be first into the Defence classroom. Harry and the rest of his friends followed after her, and then took their customary seats in the half of the class left empty by the Hufflepuffs.
As usual, Moody was present and waiting for them to arrive, and as soon as the last Slytherin walked in – Draco, who'd been trailing behind on his own without even Pansy hanging on – slammed the door shut with a jab of his wand.
Moody rushed through the register and then launched into his lecture immediately after he'd finished.
"Today I'll be showing you the Unforgivable Curses," said Moody. "Don't bother complaining—I've got the right authorisation to use them and show you, so you'll watch it and learn whether you like it or not. Now, I ain't going to be casting Killing Curses on you, as except for maybe Potter there, you'd drop dead. Nor are we going to try out the Cruciatus, since even though it would be the learning experience of a lifetime, it's far too dangerous to be cast on students. Lingering spell damage, see, and with you lot so young even a few seconds might be too much... But I will be casting the Imperius Curse on each and every one of you, so you know what to watch for and how it feels. 'Course, some of you might have some idea what it's like already, eh Malfoy? That dad of yours ever explain how it feels?"
Draco said nothing, but his face contorted into a nasty scowl. That seemed to be enough of a reaction from Moody, who barked his horrible little laugh.
"Again, no complaints, since even Dumbledore's agreed to my little display, bleeding heart that he is. But before we start, tell me: why are these curses called Unforgivable?"
Susan Bones put up her hand to answer after a few moments of nobody else offering anything. Harry didn't doubt that at least some of his fellow Slytherins knew the answer. He didn't blame them for not offering it, though, as Moody seemed particularly abrasive that afternoon.
"Because they can't be blocked, sir," she said once Moody had gestured towards her.
"That ain't, strictly speaking, true," said Moody. "The Killing Curse can be blocked by a physical barrier—or by whatever nonsense Potter was up to—and the Imperius Curse can be resisted by a strong enough will, which is why that one's father spent so long under it, I'd wager," said Moody with a little jab of his finger at Draco.
"But that was a good try, lass," continued Moody. "It got us near enough to where we want to go, but I'll go a bit further. It's a combination of their difficulty to evade, the requirements for casting them, and of course what they do once you get them out of your wand. That's why people fear them, anyway, but it ain't actually why the Ministry calls them 'Unforgivable'. They're Unforgivable because they carry a mandatory life sentence in Azkaban if you use them on other person and have done since the 1700s. Little bit of politicking from the ICW got us there, though not every country follows the law, more's the pity."
Moody paused and reached back onto his desk to grab a glass jar counting a spider. He held it in his hands but otherwise didn't draw attention to it.
"Casting an Unforgivable isn't easy. The spells themselves—piece of piss, yeah? Any first year could do it, if they could get into the right mind set. But they ain't a Cheering Charm. You've got a feel a real nasty bit of emotion to get them off. Can't cast the Cruciatus Curse without wanting to cause pain, real pain, to the poor bugger at the end of the wand. You've got to enjoy it, and that's not easy for most people. Likewise, with the Killing Curse, you've to really want that poor sod dead. You've got to mean it, can't go into it with half a mind, none of that bollocks. You cast the Killing Curse and you meant to. Simple as that. But most people, well, they don't want to kill usually, do they? Some say you've got to really hate to pull off a Killing Curse, but I can say that ain't true. You just have to want the other wizard dead enough. The Imperius is a bit easier, mind. For that, all you need is the will to dominate, to enforce your wants and needs over those of your victim. Now, that one is easy for quite a lot of people, let me tell you. It's the most commonly used Unforgivable these days, and it's the easiest one to get away with, too. Anyone know why?"
Harry knew the answer, but he didn't really want to draw attention to himself by offering it. He knew at least a couple of his friends could have answered too but were silent for the same reason. In the end, Daphne put up her hand.
"Go on then, Greengrass. Tell us why."
"The Imperius Curse is the only one of the three Unforgivable Curses not to leave a mark or any signs on the victim, Professor. Assessing whether someone has been victim to the Imperius Curse relies on their own testimony, so sometimes people claim to have been under its effects when they haven't been," said Daphne, with only a very brief glance towards Draco, "either as a defence against an accusation or to get someone else in trouble."
"Have five points for Slytherin, there's a good lass," said Moody. "I can't tell you how many times I've had someone use the Imperius defence on me—I literally can't tell you, some of them are classified—but it happens more than you'd think. You get people saying they'd never kill their husband, so it must have been their next-door neighbour with an Imperius Curse who'd ordered them to do it. All the standard stuff like that—petty little rivalries played out in the courts, accusations that lead nowhere, the works. But that's just the day-to-day. Back during the War, we had far more serious accusations. Malfoy's father claimed to have been under the Imperius Curse for the duration of the War. Got him out of a right nasty set of consequences. He was seen by credible witnesses committing crimes—murder, in fact. Twice. He paid bribes to key officials at the Ministry, was caught at several battles over the course of the War. List goes on. All in all, that's the rap sheet of a nasty fucker. Got off scot free—because he said he was under the Imperius. Couldn't—"
Harry sneaked a look at Draco, his face ashen pale. He gripped the edges of his desk so hard his knuckles had gone white.
"That's dangerously close to libel," snarled Draco.
Moody snorted.
"You mean slander, lad," he said. "And no it ain't—it's a matter of historical record. As I was saying, couldn't prove either way if it was or wasn't Imperius. Now, whether you believe the story or not, unless you've got proper evidence—a wand with the spell, an unmodified memory, witness testimony—can't prove a damned thing. So men like Lucius Malfoy walk free, and he's either a sack of shit child-killer or an abused and traumatised victim of the so-called Dark Lord. So even though some people think it's the least bad of the three, in my line of work we hate this one the most 'cause it can make good men do bad things, and let bad men hide away."
Moody shrugged.
"That's enough talking for now. Got something to show you."
He unscrewed the lid from the jar containing the spider, then scooped it out with his free hand. He placed the jar back onto the desk, then pointed his wand at the spider.
"Engorgio," he said, and the spider grew larger and larger until it was about the size of a small dog. Its legs wriggled about as Moody clutched it, and although it made Harry feel a little bit anxious, he couldn't stop watching it. Moody immobilised the spider and placed it onto the ground in front of his desk. "That's better—easier to see what we're doing."
Moody levelled his wand at the dog-sized spider and cast the first of his three Unforgivable Curses.
"Imperio."
At first, Harry couldn't be sure anything had even happened, but after Moody lifted his Impediment Jinx, the spider stayed in place for a few more moments until it started to climb to the top of Moody's desk. Moody stretched out one of his arms and let the spider climb up it, and when it reached his hand at the end, it dropped back down to the floor with a big thick strand of silk.
Moody had the spider repeat the little routine again, and then again.
"You get the point," Moody said. "Humans are a bit harder to direct, but not by all that much—as I've said, it takes a strong will to get out of an Imperius, and most people can't manage it. It's easier to make someone do something they already want to do, or failing that, could do if given a little push. So obviously it's harder if you want to get a really good person to do a really bad thing, but it ain't impossible. Like I said, most people are weak willed enough they'll do it eventually."
The spider waited patiently at Moody's feet for whatever would come next. The Cruciatus, Harry assumed, given that it was presumably impossible to torture a dead spider.
"Crucio," said Moody next, his wand pointed right at the spider. There were no fancy wand motions, no complicated cadence for the incantation, nothing like that. Just a basic knowledge of spellwork and malevolent intent. That it was apparently so easy gave Harry a moment's pause while he watched.
The spider rolled over immediately, its legs moving wildly. It rolled around on the floor, and Harry saw a few of his classmates look away.
"If spiders could scream, this one would," said Moody, his tone conversational, as if they were sat at a table over a spot of tea. "The Cruciatus Curse produces pain in every part of the body that can feel pain. It leaves traces that even a piss-poor Healer can track. Prolonged exposure can destroy a person's mind. Ain't no cure for that. The Cruciatus is the most difficult of the Unforgivables to cast because you need to enjoy causing pain. You can't just want to punish, you can't want to avenge, you can't want any of that. You have to want to, and enjoy, causing pain for its own sake. Those other things, they can get the curse off for a bit, but it won't last. Fizzles out, see."
Moody's explanation made Harry consider the fact that the grizzled old Auror was holding the Cruciatus Curse then and there, as he talked to the class, as if it was nothing. So what if it was just on a spider? He still had to want to torture the thing, and that made Harry's skin crawl.
Moody lifted the spell and the spider stopped its violent jerking. Instead, it twitched intermittently, still rolled up on the floor.
Poor thing was probably close to dead already, no need for the Killing Curse. Harry wasn't the biggest fan of spiders to begin with, but that particular spider had really been through the gauntlet...
"The Killing Curse is easy to cast—you've just got to want the thing in front of you dead. It's also the spell most often cast in passion—you've just found out your husband is cheating on you? Well, many a witch has wanted the philandering sod dead after that, and it does happen from time to time. I remember there was a case back about, oh, six years ago where—" Moody paused. "Actually, never mind. It ain't appropriate. But know that that sort of thing does happen, yeah? 'Course, the spell saw a lot of use back in the War—it was a favourite of You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters—as well as the poor unfortunates they had under the 'Imperius Curse'. And as we all know, Potter there is the only person in recorded history to have survived a run in with the Killing Curse. Got any tips for the class, Potter?" asked Moody.
Harry shrugged.
"Can't say that I have," Harry said. "Best advice is always don't get hit in the first place, isn't it?"
Moody laughed.
"Aye, though it ain't always that easy," Moody said, tapping his electric blue eye and tapping his wooden foot against the ground. "Right, here we are then."
Moody pointed his wand at the spider.
"Avada kedavra." A jet a green light shot from the end of Moody's wand and hit the still-twitching spider. It immediately stopped moving, although as far as Harry could see the spell didn't leave any lasting effect on the spider other than instant death.
In an instant, the spider was dead, and from everything Moody said, Harry knew it worked just like that on humans, too. On the dozens of people Voldemort had killed. On the hundreds killed by Death Eaters. On his parents – but not on him.
That knowledge, that understanding, was awful. Not something Harry had really been able to prepare for. Not something he'd understood he needed to.
But the strangest thing for Harry was the green light. He recognised it from his dreams. Memories, he supposed, suppressed and faded over the years, but memories all the same. Harry swallowed several times to try to clear the lump in his throat as he realised he could remember Voldemort cast the Killing Curse on him. Some part of him could, anyway. Fragments of a memory. An impression. The green light...
In the aftermath of Moody's spell Harry could practically feel everyone's eyes on him rather than on the spider. Harry, who had survived a Killing Curse. For reasons nobody understood, Harry was the only person in the world who could say such a thing, a fact which apparently needed to be brought up as often as possible. As if anyone – least of all Harry – was allowed to forget it. The Boy-Who-Lived, notable only because everyone else died. The Boy-Who-Remembered.
"See how easy that was?" said Moody after a few moments of silence. "Now, yeah, alright, it's just a spider. It's easy to want a spider dead, and it ain't nothing strange either. But let me tell you—it's a damned lot more common to want a person dead than you'd think it is. Right, then—Tonks! Get in here."
Within seconds Harry spotted another figure at the back of the room, just past Moody's desk – Miss Tonks. She sported a shock of mauve hair that day, which clashed horribly with her orange robes and combat boots. She stepped forwards to join Moody at the front of the class.
"Wotcher!" she said cheerfully.
"So, Tonks is here to watch this next part—can't go about using an Unforgivable, 'specially this one, on students without proper oversight. As an Auror—and adjunct staff member at Hogwarts—she's qualified to sit in on this and make sure it's all above board. Like every other part of my lessons this year this has been approved by the Ministry, the Board of Governors, and even Dumbledore himself. So don't get your knickers in a twist, it is what it is."
Moody paused for a few moments to let his words sink in.
Harry couldn't say he was particularly looking forward to getting put under the Imperius Curse by Moody. Cleared with the Ministry, Board, and Dumbledore as it may be, it still didn't sound like something anyone sane would want to sign up to. Just the knowledge that Moody could have Harry doing anything he wanted – within reason, given that Miss Tonks was in the room – sent Harry's skin crawling. It seemed like the sort of thing that ought to be saved for NEWTs. Or not done at all.
"We'll do this the easy way—alphabetically. Come on, Abbot, you're up," said Moody.
Moody didn't wait around. Once Hannah Abbot had got to the front of the class, Moody glanced at Tonks and then immediately cast the Imperius Curse. He didn't have Abbot do anything particularly difficult or embarrassing. He had her jump up and down, then sing a few bars of some old-fashioned pop song, and then sent her back to sit down.
Even so, it was a display Harry didn't much look forward to making himself.
Moody went rapidly through the class then, making each student in turn jump up and down, sing silly songs, or jump off chairs. He kept each of them under the Imperius for just long enough to get his point across, and then lifted it right away, which Harry grudgingly supposed was a reasonable way of going about the whole affair. Moody had Tracey spin around like a ballerina, which to her credit she executed really well – although Harry remembered she'd auditioned for WADA, so she did have experience. He had Ernie singing Celestina Warbeck's most popular song in a shaky falsetto, all the more embarrassing because Ernie knew all the words. Harry couldn't help but snigger at some of the things he'd seen, although at the back of his mind he couldn't quite shake the feeling that no matter how funny it was seeing his friends do something weird like that, it was wrong on every level.
If it had been someone other than a trusted, respectable teacher – and former Auror – at the other end of the wand, things could go very differently indeed. Harry supposed that was the entire point of the lesson, but it still felt off to him.
When it got to Draco's turn under the spell, Harry thought he was going to refuse. In the end, Draco got up after being asked a second time, although from the look on his face, very reluctantly. Harry didn't blame him.
"Imperio," said Moody, just as he'd done every other time. Then, just like with all the others, Moody remained silent as he directed Draco to do whatever it was he wanted him to do.
But Draco just stood there.
After a about half a minute, Draco took one step forward, and then another, shaking, but didn't follow it up again. Harry could tell that hadn't been what Moody had wanted at all, as the battle-scarred ex-Auror wore a lopsided frown. Draco moved, jerky and halting, in little fits and starts across the classroom – punctuated with long pauses.
Moody kept at it for about a minute more, the frown on his face growing larger by the second, until Tonks nudged him and he gave up. Despite Draco generally being a prat, Harry couldn't help but be a little impressed at the performance. Draco hadn't quite managed to resist the curse, but he'd come a lot closer than anyone else had managed.
And if Draco had managed that much, well... Harry thought his own chances were pretty good.
"Ah, well, you're obviously not as weak-willed as that father of yours," said Moody after he'd released the spell on Draco. "Have five points to Slytherin. I said earlier not many wizards can resist the Imperius, so. Good on you for getting close, I suppose." Despite Moody's words, he seemed less than pleased. "Go on then, sit back down."
Harry watched as Draco went back to his seat, and for the briefest of moments Harry saw a glint of something in the other boy's eyes. It was gone by the time Draco sat back down, and by then Moody had called Theodore up for his go under the spell.
Theodore didn't appear to resist the spell at all, as Moody had him skip around at the front of the classroom while singing wizarding nursery rhymes, and nor did Pansy who was up after him. But after Pansy, it was Harry's turn.
"You're up next, Potter," said Moody.
Harry got up from his desk and slowly made his way to the front of the class. He'd seen near enough everyone else in the class handle the spell, so now it was his turn. He didn't expect Moody to have him do anything too egregiously stupid, but Harry didn't want to give in to the old Auror's commands. If he could at least match Draco's display, he would be happy. Well, satisfied, anyway.
Harry looked Moody right in the eyes and the braced for the spell. Well, eye – the blue one was whizzing about doing something else.
"Imperio."
Immediately Harry felt calm and cosy. Serene, almost like he could just float away into the sky. Like anything he'd ever worried about was just ... gone. Although he could still see, he didn't seem to be taking anything in. His surroundings were just what they were, the details unimportant. That he was stood at the front of his Defence Against the Dark Arts class in preparation to get mind-controlled hardly seemed to matter at all. Harry wondered why that idea had ever bothered him, even.
Then a voice, silky-smooth and easy, worked its way into his thoughts.
Sing Celestina Warbeck's song, Fill My Cauldron, the voice said. It wasn't even a command. It was something was, something akin to mere suggestion. The implication that he might like to do it, perhaps, that it was something he was already planning to do anyway.
Harry had heard the song many times before. It was the sort of song that played over and over again on the Wireless, so he knew enough of the words to give it a go. Some of the notes were a bit high but his voice hadn't quite broken yet, so he could try. Harry took a breath and then—
Harry didn't sing a word. Singing in front of his classmates was somewhere near the bottom of the list of things he wanted to do, no matter what Moody wanted from him. Maybe back in the Common Room, or with only a couple of his closest friends around, but certainly not in front of the whole Defence Against the Dark Arts class. Moody was out of his mind if he thought he could get Harry to do that.
Even though he did know all of the Slytherins very well, and the Hufflepuffs were all generally quite nice, so it wouldn't be embarrassing at all, really...
Harry almost started to sing, but then thought the better of it. He didn't want to sing, so he wouldn't, and that was that. Nothing Moody could do – Unforgivable Curse or not – could ever get Harry to do that, he was quite sure.
Jump up and down.
But Harry knew he didn't want to jump up and down. He certainly could do it, and it wouldn't be the worst thing he'd ever done, and really it wasn't actually that difficult a request to comply with even though he didn't want to do it, so perhaps he would just go ahead and...
No! thought Harry firmly. He didn't want to jump, so he wouldn't. Jumping was what Moody wanted him to do, after all, and not what Harry wanted to do.
Or was it? Maybe Harry did want to jump up and down... After all, he wouldn't be thinking so hard about it if it was what Moody wanted him to do, would he?
Jump up and down, said the voice again, this time a bit more insistent.
Harry started to wonder why he didn't want to jump. It wasn't hard. It wasn't even embarrassing – it was just jumping. And he knew that he could jump, the voice seemed quite interested in getting him to do it, so Harry started to jump.
Fuck off! Harry thought.
He didn't jump.
Walk across the room, suggested the voice. Just a few steps.
Harry took a deep breath and decided not to walk across the room. He wanted to, of course, because why wouldn't he want to stretch his legs and take a nice little walk to the other side of the classroom? He'd spent most of the day sitting around in chairs doing nothing at all, and that got old fast. Really, a nice little walk was the best thing for him. In fact...
Harry shook the feeling away. The desire to do whatever the voice said – even if its suggestions were all perfectly reasonable and in general things he already wanted to do anyway – was perfectly normal and he should just give in to it. So he decided to—
I said fuck off! Harry thought again. He didn't want to do what Moody said, and the old Auror's suggestions weren't perfectly reasonable. Harry was under the effects of a curse. He just needed to... just needed to...
Sit back down in your chair, suggested the voice after a while.
That was more like it, Harry felt, so he started to turn until he realised that the voice had come from the spell rather than Moody's mouth. So Harry stayed right where he was. Although he did really want to sit back down – and he was quite sure it was really his own desire – Harry would wait until the Professor verbally asked him to do so.
After lifting the Imperius Curse.
Go on, sit down. You're done here.
By then Harry had grown accustomed to the light, airy feeling throughout his body and mind, so he ignored the voice. All of its suggestions sounded like things Harry already wanted to do, even when at the back of his mind he knew otherwise. But if Harry really concentrated, he knew he didn't have to listen. Spell or no spell, Harry was in control of his own actions.
The voice whispered a few more commands into Harry's mind, but they all felt rather less important. Instead, he felt much more present in the room again, could actually see what he was looking at instead of just glancing over it, and the airy feeling had more or less gone away.
"Alright, Potter, you've proved your point," Moody said. "Ten points to Slytherin for completely resisting my curse. You can sit down now."
Relieved to be done, Harry returned to his seat. He hadn't made a fool of himself at all. To the contrary he'd been one of only two students not to succumb to the curse. Moody finished up with the rest of the class – the final student to go under the wand being Blaise, as usual – and then when everyone had settled down again, finished his lecture.
"So you've all been under the Imperius now," Moody said. "One of you nearly resisted it—and I think Potter even threw it off completely near the end, which is a neat little trick—but for the rest of you... well, better hope there's never a next time. I'm your teacher, not a Dark wizard, so I had you jumping, singing, just silly things. Death Eaters would have you killing. Worse, even. Use what you've learned today if it ever happens again, but pray it never does. At least you know what it feels like, now. I'm going to let you go early, but you've got homework—I want you to think about what you saw and felt today. Don't just run off—really think about the lesson. Might do you a bit of good. Now go on—shove off, I'm done for the day."
Harry put his things back in his back and then left the classroom with his friends, everyone quite a lot more subdued than when they'd come in.
"That was awful," said Daphne in a near whisper once they'd got well clear of the Defence classroom.
"I didn't realise the Killing Curse would be so... pretty," said Millicent, her voice flat. "That bright green..."
"When he said about how the spider would be screaming," said Theodore. "Just the way he..."
"How did you throw off the Curse?" demanded Blaise of Harry. "I just couldn't—everything he said, it was like I wanted..."
Harry nearly stopped walking as he thought about what to say. He didn't want to dismiss his friends' difficulty in resisting the curse, but he didn't really know how he'd done it. He just hadn't wanted to do it, so he hadn't. It felt like it was, and should always be, that simple, but it obviously wasn't.
"Er, I don't really know," Harry said. "I nearly did a few of the things he said about—he wanted me to jump up and down, walk across the room—but I just... I knew I didn't really want to do them. So I didn't. Once I realised that I didn't have to do anything Moody said, it was a lot easier and then I think that's when I threw off the curse."
Harry's explanation didn't seem to satisfy Blaise, although he didn't ask for more.
"I'm never going to look at Professor Moody the same again," declared Tracey, much quieter than usual. "He cast all three Unforgivables like it was nothing—he cast the Imperius like twenty times!"
"Well, at least it's done now," Harry offered, although his friends didn't seem to take the same view on it as he did.
The Viper group Slytherins – except Draco, who'd gone off somewhere else – made their way back to the dungeons in silence, each of them stuck in their own heads.