Natsu Dragneel and the Goblet of Fire

The Unforgivable Curses

The next two days passed without great incident, unless you counted Wally melting his sixth cauldron in Potions.

Professor Redfox, who seemed to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, gave Wally detention, and Wally returned from it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrel full of horned toads.

"You know why Redfox's in such a foul mood, don't you?" said Gray to Natsu as they watched Lucy teaching Wally a Scouring Charm to remove the frog guts from under his fingernails.

"Yeah," said Natsu. "Bull."

It was common knowledge that Redfox really wanted the Dark Arts job, and he had now failed to get it for the fourth year running.

Redfox had disliked all of their previous Dark Arts teachers, and shown it - but he seemed strangely wary of displaying overt animosity to Mad-Eye Bull.

Indeed, whenever Natsu saw the two of them together - at mealtimes, or when they passed in the corridors - he had the distinct impression that Redfox was avoiding Bull's eye, whether magical or normal.

"I reckon Redfox's a bit scared of him, you know," Natsu said thoughtfully.

"Imagine if Bull turned Redfox into a horned toad," said Gray, his eyes misting over, "and bounced him all around his dungeon..."

The Gryffindor fourth years were looking forward to Bull's first lesson so much that they arrived early on Thursday lunchtime and queued up outside his classroom before the bell had even rung. The only person missing was Lucy, who turned up just in time for the lesson.

"Been in the -"

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

They 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, and waited, unusually quiet. Soon they heard Bull'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, Gray looking excited.

Bull 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 Cheney 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 Bull. "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?" Gray blurted out.

Bull's magical eye spun around to stare at Gray; Gray looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Bull smiled - the first time Natsu 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.

Gray looked deeply relieved.

"You'll be Ur Milkovich's son, eh?" Bull said. "Your mother got me out of a very tight corner a few days ago... Yeah, I'm staying just the one year. Special favor to Makarov... One year, and then back to my quiet retirement."