Lost. Harry Potter's sister

chapter five

The next two days passed without anything exciting, really. Harry, Ron and Hermione seemed to have gotten over me being friends with Draco, although they haven't really said much about it, and we're roughly talking again. Not ignoring each other completely, but making conversation here and there. I was sat with them at lunch, eating away at a large plate of lasagna. We were talking about Snape and his raised levels of vindictiveness, over the summer. Of course I wasn't there to see what he was like before hand, but the trio told me that.

"You know why Snape's in such a foul mood, don't you," Ron says.

"Yeah," I say. "Moody." I had learned via Harry, Ron and Hermione that Snape really wanted the Dark Arts job, and how he had failed to get it ever since he came here. They told me that Snape had shown great hatred towards their previous Dark Arts teachers, and hadn't been afraid to show it.

"I reckon Snape's a bit scared of him, you know." Harry says, taking a bite out of his toad in the hole.

"Can you imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad," Said Ron, his eyes misting over, "And bounced him all around his dungeon." I laughed.

All of the Gryffindor fourth-years were so over-excited about their first lesson with Moody that before the bell had even rung, we were all lined up outside his classroom, quickly after lunch. Hermione was missing for a while, and she turned up just after the bell rang, just in time for the lesson to begin.

"Been in the-" she starts, panting, but she was cut off.

"-Library" Harry says, finishing her sentence.

"C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats" I say, ushering them in. We hurry in and find two desks of two chairs right in front of the teachers desk. Yes. Front row seats! We take out our copies of 'The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection,' and we patiently waited in a rare silence.

About two minutes later we hear Moody's loud clinking footsteps and seconds later, he enters the room, looking as scary as ever. He looks around the room, suspiciously and grudgingly makes his way to his desk.

"You can put those away," He growls, "those books. You won't need them."

I turn to Harry, shrugging, Ron looking very excited as we all put our boos away into our bags. Moody took out a register, looked down at it, shook his long grey hair out of his scarred face and started calling out names. His normal eye was fixed upon the list, but his other eye, locking on each student as they answered. It was quite frightening really.

"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?" Moody says and there was a small murmur of agreement. I look down. I haven't learnt any of this. Although I have a basic idea of them, through books in the library, but I haven't fully had one-on-one contact with them. "So you're behind - very behind - on dealing with curses. So I am 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 look at Ron. It stared at Ron and Moody smiled. It was the first time I had seen him do so and it made his heavily scarred face look more twisted and deformed than ever.

"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 favour to Dumbledore... one year, and then back to my quiet retirement." He clapped his hands together and let out a chuckle.

"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 'til then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves, he reckons you 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." Moody says, his magical eye spinning towards Lavender, who jumped and blushed, and shoving something back into her bag. Apparently Moody's eye could see right through solid objects. Definitely not creepy at all.