𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐢𝐫𝐥 𝐰𝐡𝗼 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐤𝐧𝗼𝐰; Harry Potter

thirty nine

"I'd pay to see that." Rose sighed.

The Gryffindors were looking forward to Moody's first lesson so much that they arrived early on Thursday lunchtime and queued up outside his classroom before the bell had even rung. Harry and Ron had dragged Rose with them, as she wasn't looking too excited for Moody's lesson. She had been suspicious of him the second his eyes had landed on her. She didn't know how to describe it, but it was like he wasn't in his right mind.

The only person who wasn't early with them, was Hermione, who turned up just in time for the lesson.

"Been in the—"

"Library." Harry finished her sentence for her. "C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats."

They hurried into four chairs right in front of the teacher's desk, and Rose was not too happy about that. They 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, stumping over to his desk and sitting down, "those books. You won't need them."

They returned the books to their bags, Rose slumping in her seat and crossing her arms, and 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, she or they answered.

When he called, "Rose Black." and Rose replied with "Here." his magical eye seemed to stick onto her a little longer. She couldn't lie if someone asked if it made her a little uncomfortable.

"Right then," he said, when the last person has 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.

Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Ron; Ron looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled—the first time Rose 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 teach 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 until then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of what 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 they're about to do. They aren't 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."