1 : IMPERIO

CHAPTER 6: UNDERSTANDING OF THE DARK

Word Count: 5808

Two days passed quickly. It was her very first DADA class with Moody, and it was going to be interesting; she knew.

Entering the class five minutes early, Charlotte pulled her copy of 'The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection'. She was at some point sure that Moody would teach something out of text. At least she hoped he would. The book was truly pathetic.

Hermione entered and settled beside. Moody slumped on the chair, trying to adjust his leg.

"You can put those away," he growled "those books. You won't need them."

Everyone did as they were asked. Moody took out a register, and began to call out names. It wasn't anything weird for Charlotte to witness his two eyes working at two different paces. Others seemed a little out of it.

"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?"

A few nodded and said 'yes' silently.

"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 -"

Ron said something, which made Moody question him, but Charlotte's eyes were fixed on their teacher.

"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 counter-curses 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." He said, as Charlotte tried to remember when she had read about Dark Curses first time. It was around the age of six.

"But Professor Dumbledore's," Moody continued "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."

Pulling herself out of her thoughts, Charlotte stared at her professor. This didn't seem right. This was the Moody who had put up a fight with Dumbledore to teach a kid, even when he owed Dumbledore. The Moody, who had said no the first time she had asked him to put her under Imperius for mind training. And had hated every minute of it. The Moody who despised the dark, and wanted her to stay as away from it as possible. That Moody was talking about teaching a whole class of fourteen-year-olds about Dark Curses. Yeah, she wasn't buying it.

And yes, Dumbledore was a complete crack-head, but he knew what safety meant. He knew very well that dark spells were fun and addicting, and that was one of the reasons he didn't want Charlotte anywhere near them. There was no way in hell he had said yes to this lesson, especially when his precious Harry Potter was in the class.

She wasn't buying any of it. Including whatever came out of Moody's mouth.

"How are you supposed to defend yourself against something you've never seen?" continued Moody "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 Brown of Gryffindor jumped in her seat, and hurriedly placed whatever she was doing aside.

"So . . . do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?" Several hands went up. It wasn't the hardest answer when you were raised in a wizarding family, but Charlotte was going to take the role of a passive observer.