PROPHECY CHILD

4

Ronald, Hermione and I hurried into three chairs right in front of the teacher's desk, took out their copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, of course I had read the book already and learned the theory and didn't exactly need this class but waited patiently the class was unusually quiet.

Soon I heard Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and he entered the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever.

I could just see his clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes, but I didn't linger my eyes there and looked up waiting for him to begin the class.

"You can put those away," he growled, stumping over to his desk and sitting down, "those books. You won't need them."

They returned the books to their bags, Ron looking excited and admitting even to myself was difficult but my curiosity was peaked as well.

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. 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 general murmur of assent.

"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 —"

"What, aren't you staying?" Ron blurted out. Hey that's nice, blurting and interrupting a teacher, a smart move, good move Ronald.

Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Ron; Ron looked extremely apprehensive oh he has sense, shocking, but after a moment Moody smiled — the first time I had seen him do so.

The effect was to make his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, 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."

Hm, something doesn't fit in. This is making me jittery, and I don't know why.

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?"

Duh, The Unforgivables.