²𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 ─ 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗿𝘆 𝗽𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲

𝟺 || 𝚞𝚗𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚒𝚟𝚊𝚋𝚕𝚎 𝚌𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚜

As usual, Matilda made her way to the front of the classroom and took a seat. She had sat in the middle of the front row so that she would be in direct eyesight of the professor. Tilly immediately began unpacking the materials needed for the class from her bag and neatly laying them on the desk before her. When she finished setting out her things the class had filled a little more. Chatter had started as friends made their way inside the room. The houses began grouping together, as they did in almost every other class. She was still the only person who dared to sit in the front row. Most other students admitted to being too scared because of the scene that happened in the Great Hall the other day.

Harry, Hermione, and Ron had walked into the classroom together. Ron excitedly rushed to the front of the room and took a seat beside Matilda in the first row. He had never been this enthusiastic to be seated in the front of the classroom before. In fact, he would complain about sitting near the front. But today he wore a wide grin and he happily unpacked The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, the book needed for the class.

Harry sat on the other side of Matilda and Hermione took a seat beside him. Being seated in-between herself and Hermione, Matilda thought Harry would be an absolute fool to not pass this class with a perfect score. Though, Tilly wasn't all that ecstatic to be in the middle of Harry and Ron. She predicted many headaches in the future.

"Since when do the two of you choose to sit front and center?" Matilda asked, turning to look at Ron then Harry.

Hermione was expected to sit close to the front. But never in her life would she have guessed that Ron and Harry would willingly sit in the front row of a classroom.

Harry shrugged in response, as did Ron, but his face gave it away. Since the moment Moody had turned Malfoy into the ferret in front of the entire Great Hall, he'd been looking forward to having this class. And the fact that Matilda would be there to argue with Moody made him all the more excited.

The class sat unusually quiet, all of them a little afraid of what Moody has planned. Soon they heard Professor Moody'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, stomping over to his desk and sitting down, "those books. You won't need them."

Matilda furrowed her eyebrows as she followed the rest of the class in returning their books back into their bags. She was already annoyed. A required book that she had to buy and suddenly they aren't using them. Tilly didn't like it.

Ron, on the other hand, couldn't be happier as it seemed from the look on his face. His eyes lit up with excitement and he watched with an eager grin as Moody made his way toward the front of the classroom.

Moody 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 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 was a general murmur of assent.

"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 —"