The Darkening of Your Soul

Chapter 53

Moody seemed ready to rip into Harry when Draco, still with his eyes squeezed shut, nodded vehemently in agreement. "Wait until my father hears about this. You'll be shipped off straight to Azkaban to receive the kiss."

"Your father?" Moody growled as he clunked closer to Draco, wand aimed at Draco's face. "Let me tell you about your father, boy! He may have bought his way out of a prison sentence, but we all know he is a Death Eater. And do you know what sort of mayhem Death Eaters got up to while they threw themselves at Voldemort's feet?"

"Expelliarmus!" Harry held his hand up and caught Moody's wand as it sailed through the air towards him.

Moody looked as though Harry had just ripped a baby apart with his bare hands right in front of him. "How dare you?"

"I dare because I won't stand for you torturing a student," Harry said as he rose from his seat. "This has nothing to do with teaching us Defence. This is a power trip from a has-been Auror who got sacked from his old job for attempted kidnapping of a child."

Moody released an animalistic roar and ran towards Harry as quickly as his prosthetic leg allowed him.

"Petrificus Totalus!" Surprisingly, this wasn't cast by Harry, but by a very pale-looking Neville, who held his wand in an unsteady hand. Moody dropped face-first to the floor, stiff as a board. Neville looked from his own wand to Harry with wide eyes. "Oh no, I just hexed a professor! I'm going to get expelled! Gran is going to kill me." Neville's bottom lip started trembling while his eyes became suspiciously bright.

"Nah, you defended your fellow students," Harry was quick to point out, so very proud of his young friend. It seemed that this time around Neville was coming into his own a bit faster than he had during Harry's first life.

Draco still stood whimpering, apparently unable to open his swollen eyes. "Millie," Harry said, realizing that someone needed to take charge of the situation. "Take Draco to the hospital wing." Millicent and Parkinson hurried towards Draco and gently grabbed his arms to lead him away.

"What should we do?" Daphne asked as she and Tracey got up to join Harry at his desk. Other students got up as well now that the immediate danger had passed.

Theo cleared his throat when Harry didn't answer immediately. "Students can hire a private tutor for any subject in case of a hostile relationship with a professor. It's in the rulebook."

"Huh." Harry gave Theo a bright smile. That was the answer to their current problems, obviously. "So that's what we'll do, as long as Moody remains as our Defence professor. Everybody should also write to their parents about what happened here today. And to the Board of Governors, to complain about Dumbledore's hiring practices."

"Looks like we got a free afternoon after all," Blaise said with a careless shrug and a highly amused grin. He slung his bag over his shoulder and made his way to the classroom door.

"We can't just leave," Hermione insisted, gesturing wildly at the still petrified Moody. "We can't just leave a Professor here like this."

"Sure we can," Harry said, barely glancing at her. He was pleased to see that Hermione was the only student protesting. Ron, Seamus and Dean were already on their way out of the classroom as well, as was everyone else. Harry placed Moody's wand on his desk, grabbed his own bag, waved Neville over to join them, and then left the classroom behind.

"I've got detention with Snape tonight," Harry said to his friends as they walked towards the library without even thinking about it. "I'll tell him exactly what happened and lodge a formal complaint."

Once they were all seated around their usual table in the library, Harry turned towards Theo. "How exactly does it work to hire a private tutor?" It had been months since Harry had read Hogwarts' book of rules and regulations and at the time he'd focused most of his attention on how to start student groups.