The following two days passed without great incident (unless you counted Neville melting his sixth cauldron in Potions). Snape, who seemed to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, gave Neville detention. Neville returned from it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrel full of horned toads.
"You know why Snape's in such a foul mood, don't you?" said Ron to Arabella as they watched Hermione teaching Neville a Scouring Charm to remove the frog guts from under his fingernails.
"Mhm," replied Arabella. "Moody…"
It was common knowledge that Snape strongly desired the Dark Arts job, and he had now failed to get it for the fourth year running. Snape had disliked all of their previous Dark Arts teachers and shown it— but he seemed strangely wary of displaying overt animosity to Mad-Eye Moody. Indeed, whenever she saw the two of them together— at mealtimes, or when they passed in the corridors— she had the distinct impression that Snape was avoiding Moody's eye.
"I bet Snape's a bit scared of him, you know," Arabella said thoughtfully.
"Imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad," chuckled Ron, his eyes misting over, "and bounced him all around his dungeon..."
The Gryffindor fourth years were looking forward to Moody's first lesson so much that they arrived early on Friday and queued up outside his classroom before the bell had even rung. Lyla had had her first lesson with him the day before and refused to speak about it.
Ron, Arabella, and Hermione hurried into chairs right in front of the teacher's desk, took out their copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, and waited, unusually quiet. Soon they heard Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and he entered the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever. They could just see his clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes.
"You can put those away," he growled, stomping over to his desk and sitting down, "those books. You won't need them just yet."
They returned the books to their bags, Ron looking excited.
Moody took out a register, shook his long mane of grizzled gray hair out of his twisted and scarred face, and began to call out names, his normal eye moving steadily down the list while his magical eye swiveled around, fixing upon each student as he or she answered.
"Right then," he said when the last person had declared themselves present, "I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about this class. It seems you've had a thorough grounding in tackling Dark creatures— you've covered boggarts, Red Caps, Hinkypunks, Grindylows, Kappas, and Werewolves, right?"
There was a general murmur of assent.
"But you're behind— very behind— on dealing with curses," continued 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—"
"What, aren't you staying?" Ron blurted out.
Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Ron; Ron looked highly apprehensive, but after a moment, Moody smiled— the first time Arabella had seen him do so. The effect was to make his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, but it was nevertheless good to know that he ever did anything as friendly as smile. Ron looked deeply relieved.
"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody said. "Your father got me out of a very tight corner a few days ago. .. . Yeah, I'm staying just the one year. Special favor to Dumbledore. . . . One year, and then back to my quiet retirement."
He gave a harsh laugh and then clapped his gnarled hands together.
"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 you 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 supposed to defend yourself against something you've never seen? 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. You need to be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful. You need to put that away, Miss Brown, when I'm talking!"
Lavender jumped and blushed. She had been showing Parvati her completed horoscope under the desk. Apparently, Moody's magical eye could see through solid wood as well as out of the back of his head.
"So. . . do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"
Several hands, including Ron's and Hermione's, rose tentatively into the air. Moody pointed at Ron though his magical eye was still fixed on Lavender.
"Um," said Ron tentatively, "Dad told me about one... It's called the Imperius Curse, I think…"
"Ah, yes," said Moody appreciatively. "Your father would know that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse."
Moody got heavily to his mismatched feet, opened his desk drawer, and took out a glass jar. Three large black spiders were scuttling around inside it. Arabella felt Ron recoil slightly next to him— Ron hated spiders.
Moody reached into the jar, caught one of the spiders, and held it in the palm of his hand so that they could all see it. He then pointed his wand at it and muttered, "Imperio!"
The spider leaped from Moody's hand on a fine silk thread and began to swing backward and forward as though on a trapeze. It stretched out its legs rigidly, then did a backflip, breaking the thread and landing on the desk, where it began to cartwheel in circles. Moody jerked his wand, and the spider rose onto two of its hind legs and went into what was unmistakably a tap dance.
Everyone was laughing— everyone except Moody.
"Think it's funny, do you?" he growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it to you?"
The laughter died away almost instantly.
"Total control," said Moody quietly as the spider balled itself up and began to roll over and over. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats. . ."
Ron gave an involuntary shudder.
"Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse," said Moody, and Arabella knew 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. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he barked, and everyone jumped.
Moody picked up the somersaulting spider and threw it back into the jar. "Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?"
Hermione's hand flew into the air again, and so, to Arabella's slight surprise, did Neville's. The only class Neville usually volunteered information in was Herbology, which was easily his best subject. Neville looked surprised at his own daring.
"Yes?" said Moody, his magical eye rolling right over to fix on Neville.
"There's one—" he gasped in a small but distinct voice, "th-the Cruciatus Curse…."
Moody was looking very intently at Neville, this time with both eyes.
"Your name's Longbottom?" he said, his magical eye swooping down to check the register again.
Neville nodded nervously, but Moody made no further inquiries. Turning back to the class at large, he reached into the jar for the next spider and placed it upon the desktop, where it remained motionless, apparently too scared to move.
"The Cruciatus Curse," said Moody. "Needs to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea," he said, pointing his wand at the spider. "Engorgio!"
The spider swelled. It was now larger than a tarantula. Abandoning all pretense, Ron pushed his chair backward, as far away from Moody's desk as possible.
Moody raised his wand again, pointed it at the spider, and muttered, "Crucio!"
At once, the spider's legs bent in upon its body; it rolled over and began to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. No sound came from it, but Arabella was sure that it would have been screaming if it could have given a voice. Moody did not remove his wand, and the spider started to shudder and jerk more violently—
"Stop it!" Hermione said shrilly.
Arabella looked around at her. She was looking, not at the spider, but at Neville, and Arabella, following her gaze, saw that Neville's hands were clenched upon the desk in front of him, his knuckles white, his eyes wide and horrified.
Moody raised his wand. The spider's legs relaxed, but it continued to twitch.
"Reducio," Moody muttered, and the spider shrank back to its proper size. He put it back into the jar.
"Pain," said Moody 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?"
Arabella, now feeling her stomach sink, looked around. From the looks on everyone's faces, she guessed they were all wondering what would happen to the last spider. Hermione's hand shook slightly as she raised it for the third time into the air.
"Yes?" said Moody, looking at her.
"Avada Kedavra," Hermione whispered.
Several people looked uneasily around at her.
"Ah," said Moody, another slight smile twisting his lopsided mouth. "Yes, the last and worst. Avada Kedavra... the Killing Curse."
He put his hand into the glass jar, and almost as though it knew what was coming, the third spider scuttled frantically around the bottom of the jar, trying to evade Moody's fingers, but he trapped it and placed it upon the desktop. It started to scuttle frantically across the wooden surface.
Moody raised his wand, and Arabella felt a sudden thrill of foreboding.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" Moody roared.
There was a flash of blinding green light and a rushing sound, as though a vast, invisible something was soaring through the air— instantaneously, the spider rolled over onto its back, unmarked but unmistakably dead. Several of the students stifled cries; Arabella herself felt very faint.
"Not nice," said Moody calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no countercurse. There's no blocking it. Only two individuals have been known to survive, and one of them is sitting right in front of me."
Arabella felt her face redden as Moody's eyes (both of them) looked into her own. She could feel everyone else looking around at her too. Arabella stared at the blank blackboard as though fascinated by it but not really seeing it at all… So that was how his Lily and James Potter had died. . . exactly like that spider. Had they been unblemished and unmarked too? Had they seen the flash of green light and heard the rush of speeding death before life was wiped from their bodies?
Arabella had been picturing their deaths over and over again for three years now, ever since she'd found out they had been murdered, ever since he'd found out what had happened that night: Wormtail had betrayed his parents' whereabouts to Voldemort, who had come to find them at their cottage. How Voldemort had killed her father first. How James Potter had tried to hold him off while he shouted at his wife to take the children and run. . . Voldemort had advanced on Lily Potter, told her to move aside so that he could kill them.. . how she had begged him to kill her instead, refused to stop shielding her son.. . and so Voldemort had murdered her too, before turning his wand on Lyla and Arabella.
Moody was speaking again, from a great distance, it seemed. With a massive effort, Arabella pulled herself back to the present and listened to what Moody was saying.
"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. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he roared, and the whole class jumped again.
"Now. . . those three curses— Avada Kedavra, Imperius, and Cruciatus— are known as the Unforgivable Curses. Using any of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. That's what you're up against. That's what I've got to teach you to fight. You need to prepare. You need arming. But most of all, you need to practice constant, never-ceasing vigilance. Get out your quills. . . copy this down. . . ."
They spent the rest of the lesson taking notes on each of the Unforgivable Curses. No one spoke until the bell rang— but when Moody had dismissed them, and they had left the classroom, a torrent of talk burst forth. Most people were discussing the curses in awed voices—
"Did you see it twitch?"
"— And when he killed it—"
"… just like that…"
They were talking about the lesson, Arabella thought, as though it had been some spectacular show, but she hadn't found it very entertaining— nor had Hermione.
"Hurry up," Arabella said tersely.
"Why are you in such a hurry?" said Ron.
"I'm not," said Arabella curtly, pointing up a side passage. "Neville…"
Neville was standing alone, halfway up the passage, staring at the stone wall opposite him with the same horrified, wide-eyed look he had worn when Moody had demonstrated the Cruciatus Curse.
"Neville?" Arabella said gently. Neville looked around.
"Oh, hello," he said, his voice much higher than usual. "Interesting lesson, wasn't it? I wonder what's for dinner, I'm— I'm starving, aren't you?"
"Neville, are you all right?" said Hermione.
"Oh yes, I'm fine," Neville gabbled in the same unnaturally high voice. "Very interesting dinner— I mean lesson—- what's for eating?"
Ron gave Arabella a startled look.
"Neville, what— ?"
But an odd clunking noise sounded behind them, and they turned to see Moody limping toward them. All five of them fell silent, watching him apprehensively, but when he spoke, it was in a much lower and gentler growl than they had yet heard.
"It's alright, sonny," he said to Neville. "Why don't you come up to my office? Come on. . . we can have a cup of tea. . . ."
Neville looked even more frightened at the prospect of tea with Moody. He neither moved nor spoke. Moody turned his magical eye upon Arabella.
"You alright, Potter?"
"Uh, yes," replied Arabella flatly.
Moody's blue eye quivered slightly in its socket as it surveyed her.
"You've got to know," he said. "It seems harsh, maybe, but you've got to know. No point pretending. . . well.. . come on, Longbottom, I've got some books that might interest you."
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