Dawn Rivera

The Unforgiveable Curses

The next two days pass without incident, unless you count Neville melting his sixth cauldron in Potions. Professor Snape, who seems to have attained new levels of nastiness over the summer, gives Neville detention, and Neville returns from it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrelful of horned toads.

Hermione and me teach Neville a Scouring Charm to remove the toad guts from under his fingernails.

It is common knowledge that Snape really wants the Dark Arts job, and he now has failed to get it for the fourth year running. Snape disliked all our previous Dark Arts teachers, and shown it - but he seems strangely wary of displaying overt animosity to Mad-Eye Moody. Indeed, whenever I see the two of them together - at mealtimes, or when they pass in the corridors - I have the distinct impression that Snape is avoiding Moody's eye, whether magical or normal.

******************************************

The only people missing in the class are me and Hermione, we turn up just in time for lesson.

"Been in the -" I begin.

"- library," Harry finishes my sentence for me. "C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats."

We hurry to three chairs right in front of the teachers' desk, take out our copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, and wait, unusually quiet. Soon we hear Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and he enters the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever. We can just see his clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes.

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

We return our books to our bags, Ron looking excited.

Moody takes out a register, shakes his long mane of grizzled grey hair out of his twisted and scarred face and begins to call out names, his normal eye moving steadily down the list while his magical eye swivels around, fixing upon each student as he or she answers. His eye tests particularly long on me and Danny.

"Right then," he says, 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 is a general murmur of assent.

"But you're behind - very behind - on dealing with curses," says 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 blurts out.

Moody's magical eye spins around to stare at Ron; Ron looks extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiles - the first time I've seen him do so. The effect is to make his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, but it is nevertheless a relief to know that he ever does anything as friendly as smile. Ron looks deeply relieved.

"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody says. "Your father got me out of a very tight corner a few days ago...yeah, I'm staying just the one year. Special favour to Dumbledore...one year, and then back to my quiet retirement."

He gives a harsh laugh, and then claps 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 counter-curses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed to show you what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in sixth year. You're not supposed to be old enough to deal with it 'til 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."