Chapter 4- DADA

Defense Against The Dark Arts. He was late, really late. First, he had woken up late because he couldn't go to sleep the night before, nightmares were haunting him again. You know, same old, same old. Blood. Death. Destruction. Everything was his fault, and everyone blamed him, all of his friends had turned against him. Pretty hard to sleep after that, so after he was able to swallow the bile caught in his throat he stayed awake for hours just staring at the ceiling. Though he obviously fell asleep at some point, or else he wouldn't be late for class. Hell of a lot of good that hour of sleep did.

Almost there. He's running through the halls, luckily enough no teacher has caught him yet. He can see the classroom in the distance and smiles when he realizes class hasn't started yet. Only a few more feet... Oof. He knocks into the trio and the four of them go crashing to the ground.

They all rose. Hermione glared at him as she collected her things. He winced. "Sorry."

Harry butted in before Hermione could start lecturing him. "Come on, quick, or we won't get decent seats."

The four of them hurried into four seats right in front of Moody's desk. His classmates started taking out their copies of The Dark Forces: A guide to self-protection, and waited for the professor, but not him. He had a feeling he wouldn't be needing it today, but that was just a hunch.

Soon enough Moody entered the classroom and told his classmates to put their books away, and smirked when he realized he was right, they wouldn't be doing any reading today. But after that he was tuning everyone out, that was until Moody started talking about the unforgivables.

He watched as the class rose their hands to tell the professor which unforgivables they'd heard about. He shook his head in disbelief, they may have heard about them but they didn't know what they did, not really. To fully understand you had to either be under one of them, witness it happening, or be hit with the aftermath which he doubted had happen to any of these children. They didn't know anything.

He looked on in horror as he saw what Moody was about to do to the poor spiders. Performing the unforgivables. He couldn't believe it. He clenched his jaw. He couldn't speak out, couldn't draw any extra attention to himself. His gaze hardened, his lips formed into a thin line as he watched the professor perform the three curses on the spiders. He looked straight on when he saw him perform the killing curse, he didn't even blink. He wouldn't. What kind of coward would he be if he couldn't even see the poor soul get slaughtered. Unfortunately, by not giving any response at all to the killing curse performed on the spider, he drew extra attention to himself, he gave a reason for Moody to be interested in him.

After that they took notes for the rest of class. This was only a review for him, he already knew everything here. It was boring, a bother, having to copy things down he already knows. But he continued on, he couldn't afford any extra attention. He couldn't let Moody know that he already knew the material, couldn't let Moody know how advanced he truly was.

He was still sitting down in his seat by the time everyone else had left, he had been lost in his thoughts again. He looked down at his parchment and sighed in relief when he realized he had at least finished writing down all the notes.

He looked p and quickly rose to his feet, luckily for him the professor was gone from his room, had probably not even realized he was still in here, that happened sometimes. When he seemed to just fade into the background, not that he was complaining, that had become handy many times before.

Tucking his notes away he rushed out of the classroom and off to the library so he could finish his Divination homework.

He entered the library to find it pretty much empty, save the librarian. He sat himself down at a table and started in on his predictions. He thought it was a bunch of crap, relying on this book to make predictions about the future, especially your future. Relying on planets to tell you why this is going to happen to you. So, it looked like he was going to have to bluff his way through this.

Lets see. He looked at his paper full of heroic deeds he was going to do in the future. Along with a couple of fiery deaths by drowning, fiery death, and explosion. Nice touch, that one. He nodded his head in approval, and to think all of this was on count of Pluto.

Gathering up his belongings he went off to the common room where he found the trio, and Harry's owl, Hedwig. "Hey, guys, what's up?"

They all jumped, but relaxed when they realized it was him. Hermione properly scolded him for sneaking up on them like that, but got over it and Harry read his letter to them.

Harry-

I'm flying north immediately. This news about your scar is

the latest in a series of strange rumors that have reached me

here. If it hurts again, go strait to Dumbledore-they're

saying he's got Mad-Eye out of retirement, which means he's

reading the signs, even if no one else is.

I'll be in touch soon. My best to Ron and Hermione. Keep

your eyes open, Harry.

Sirius

He looked at the three of them, but mostly Harry, gauging their reactions, seeing what they were going to do. He didn't flinch when Harry slammed his hand down but knew at the moment this wasn't the place to be, so he grabbed his stuff and went up to the dorm, waiting for Harry to arrive.

He busied himself for a few minutes by brushing his teeth, but after a few minutes that got old so he got into his pajamas and climbed into bed.

Harry finally came inside and clambered into bed. He was staring at Harry, trying to study him, but he gave up when he realized it would do no good. Harry was already pissed he doesn't need anyone staring at him. Besides he was exhausted, he hadn't had any decent sleep lately, he should be getting as much as he could. And with that, he rolled over and fell asleep.

He didn't get a lot of sleep. He kept shifting in between different nightmares, never staying in the same one for long. Though it was long enough, long enough to feel sick to his stomach and never want to shut his eyes again. Sighing he stepped out of bed and quickly got dressed when he realized there wasn't any chance he was going to fall back asleep.

He left the dorm and walked down the stairs to find Harry seated in the common room and writing on a piece of parchment. He was probably writing back to Sirius, he didn't have the chance to write back last night. Harry looked up from the parchment, noticing him for the first time. "Hey."

"Hi."

Harry scrunched his eyebrows together. "What are you doing up?"

Alec shrugged his shoulders. "I couldn't sleep. What about you?"

Harry nodded. "The same."

Alec smiled as he took a seat next to Harry. "So, you telling him the scar thing was just your imagination, and that he should stay where he is."

Harry gaped. "How did you know that?"

Alec just smiled back at him. "It's what I would have done."

Harry smiled back at him, as if seeing him in a new light for the very first time. He then turned his attention back to his parchment, and finished the letter. Alec sat back and relaxed, maybe him and Harry had more in common than he thought.

After that was over and done with and Harry went down to the owlery he went off to roam the school for a couple of hours before breakfast, to find all the secret passageways hidden in this school. And to his surprise Ash decided to join him. It was a happy surprise, he hadn't seen Ash for awhile, he had been so busy.

After roaming the halls for awhile and chatting with several portraits he decided to head to the Great Hall before he was late for breakfast.

He arrived in time to slide in next to the golden trio and summoned his famous cup of coffee. He ignored Hermione scolding Harry and relished in his hot black coffee. Black this time, it was stronger this way, and he needed stronger if he was going to make it through his classes.

Today in DADA Moody was practicing the imperius curse on us, the students. It was unbelievable, these children had no mind control whatsoever. It was pathetic, they couldn't even fight back, they were all hopeless against a mental invasion. "Your next, Bennett."

I looked up in shock. He had skipped over me when he cast the imperius on Harry, why was he coming back to me. "What?" The whole class started laughing, and I rolled my eyes at their foolishness.

He pointed his wand at me. Here it goes. "Imperio!" I felt a gust of wind and closed my eyes. He had cast it, and he was trying to force me to his will, but I wouldn't let him, I couldn't. It was a dangerous move. Harry had tried to fight back, but he hadn't absolutely succeeded, and he was the boy who lived for god's sake. And who was I? Some kid that had just caught his interest. Damn it. I opened my eyes to find Moody looking at him with shock and then cooled his expression. Now, he was smiling.

"Very good. That's more like it. You see that, he never once faulted, he didn't let me control his mind. With practice you should all be able to do that. All it takes is will. You have to want to be in control."

He jumped out of his seat as soon as the bell rang, the golden trio following behind him. Unfortunately, before he could leave Moody called him back, and asked to talk to him.

He waved his friends forward and told them he'd meet them at Tranfiguration.

"That was impressive."

"Thank you."

"You're very advanced for your age. Being able to fight back like that at such a young age."

He shrugged. "The curriculum was different at my old school, we learned things quicker there."

"Old school?"

"Yeah, in America."

Moody nodded, pretending to be uninterested. "Alright, you better head off to class."

I nodded. "Yes, Sir." After that I hurried out of his classroom, ran down the halls, and made it into Transfiguration just in time.

There was complaining all around, though I didn't see what was the big fuss. Apparently McGonagall was assigning a lot of homework, though in my opinion it didn't seem so bad.

After that was Divination where Harry, Ron, and I all got top marks on our homework which was a laugh in itself. To think, the kids that made up their homework got the highest marks. Of course it didn't surprise me that I got top marks for the assignment because even when I did lie to teachers or forge homework they couldn't tell the difference, but I digress.

Everything was same old, same old nothing interesting had happened. But, when he found the sign for the Triwizard Tournament and found out that the two other schools would be here next week, he found that he actually had something to look forward to. He couldn't wait to see who would be the Hogwarts Champion.