Malfoy, whose pale eyes were still watering with pain and humiliation, looked malevolently up at Moody and muttered something in which the words "my father" were distinguishable.
"Oh yeah?" said Moody quietly, limping forward a few steps, the dull clunk of his wooden leg echoing around the hall, Kirra had stepped in front of Draco protectively, much to her brother and her brother's friends dismay.
"Well, I know your father of old, boy. . . . You tell him Moody's keeping a close eye on his son . . . you tell him that from me. . . . Now, your Head of House'll be Snape, will it?"
"Yes," said Malfoy resentfully, surprised that Kirra had stepped in front of him protectively even though he had just been an ass to her the whole time that they had seen each other this year.
"Another old friend," growled Moody. "I've been looking forward to a chat with old Snape. . . . Come on, you. . . ." And he pushed past Kirra and then seized Malfoy's upper arm and marched him off toward the dungeons.
Professor McGonagall stared anxiously after them for a few moments, then waved her wand at her fallen books, causing them to soar up into the air and back into her arms.
"That was unbelievable, I cant believe Moody just did that, I mean he was always quick to jinx someone, but the moody that I remember wouldn't have put a student through pain like that," Kirra said quietly to Jasper as they sat down at the Slytherin table a few minutes later, surrounded by excited and interested talk on all sides about what had just happened.
"You knew Moody in one of your past lives?" said Jasper in surprise.
"Yeah, I didn't know him that well though, he wasn't a friend or anything, though he did help me a lot, he told me he thought I should become an aura," said Kirra, her eyes closed and an uplifted expression on her face at the memory.
"It was kinda funny though don't you think? Draco Malfoy, the amazing bouncing ferret . . ." Jasper and a few surrounding Slytherins laughed, and Jasper began doling beef casserole onto both of their plates, hoping she would eat it.
"He could have really hurt Malfoy, though," she said. "It was good, really, that Professor McGonagall stopped it —"
"Potter!" said Jasper with a small moan of frustration, his eyes snapping open again, "the has done nothing but be a complete dick to you for the entire year so far, he totally had it coming for him, lets just hope that it is Mattheo next!"
Kirra had gone silent as she looked down at the beef casserole that was on her plate before she poured herself a glass of water and drank it, not bothering to spare the food another glance.
"C'mon Potter, please just eat something, I am starting to really worry about you," said Jasper, watching her.
"I have been eating, I'm just not hungry at the moment okay, you have nothing to worry about," said Kirra thickly. "I'm completely fine."
"Dont tell me that you are fine, I know that youre not fine!" Jasper scolded her softly, his voice full of concern as he looked at her, she was clearly losing a lot of weight, all of the features in her face were standing out prominently and her clothes had gotten more baggy.
Jasper was really worried about her and at this point, he was convinced that he needed to talk to one of the teachers, but then what if Kirra found out that he told someone and she got mad at him...
Kirra stood up from her seat and flashed Jasper a fake smile, "I'm actually really tired J, I'm just going to head down to the dorms and go to bed, I'll see you tomorrow okay," she said. Jasper opened his mouth to stop her and apologise but she had already left, leaving him sitting there with his jaw dropped wide open.
he dropped his cutlery and went to stand up and run after her to make sure that she was okay but stopped when he saw the red haired twins run out after her. He sat back down, he knew that she would be in better hands when she was with them rather than him...
Kirra was walking down the halls when suddenly two people walked either side of her; Fred Weasley stood on her left. "Moody!" he said. "How cool is he?"
"Beyond cool," said George, standing on the right hand side of the Hufflepuff. "Supercool,"
"We had him this afternoon," Fred told Kirra.
"What was it like?" said kirra eagerly.
Fred, and George exchanged looks full of meaning. "Never had a lesson like it," said Fred.
"He knows, badger" said George.
"Knows what?" said Kirra, continuing to walk forward.
"Knows what it's like to be out there doing it," said George impressively.
"Fighting the Dark Arts," said Fred.
"He's seen it all," said George."
"I haven't got him till Thursday!" Kirra said in a disappointed voice as they made it to the entrance to the Hufflepuff common room, "I'll see you guys tomorrow"
Fred and George exchanged confused looks, wondering why she was going to be so early. "A-alright then, see you, tomorrow love," Fred told her with a small smile as he pulled her in for a hug, noticing that she had lost a considerate amount of weight.
He gave George a look, but neither of them said anything. Fred let go of her and George hugged her, also noticing the difference as he wrapped his arms around her, "see you tomorrow stripes."
Kirra froze at the nickname, she hadn't been called that by anyone beside the marauders. She felt her heart drop and she gave the twins one last goodbye before rushing to her dorms where she spent the night crying silently to herself.
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The next two days passed without great incident, unless you counted Neville melting his sixth cauldron in Potions. Professor Snape, who seemed to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, gave Neville detention, and Neville returned from it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrel full of horned toads.
"You know why Snape's in such a foul mood, don't you?" said Jasper to Kirra as Kirra was standing next to Neville and helping him with a Scouring Charm to remove the frog guts from under his fingernails.
"Yeah," said Kirra, not looking away from Neville as she helped him. "Moody."
It was common knowledge that Snape really wanted the Dark Arts job, and he had now failed to get it for the fourth year running. Snape had disliked all of their previous Dark Arts teachers, and shown it — but he seemed strangely wary of displaying overt animosity to Mad-Eye Moody.
Indeed, whenever kirra saw the two of them together — at mealtimes, or when they passed in the corridors — she had the distinct impression that Snape was avoiding Moody's eye, whether magical or normal.
"I reckon Snape's a bit scared of him, you know," Jasper said thoughtfully. "Imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad," said Jasper, his eyes misting over, "and bounced him all around his dungeon. . . ."
"Well that would be a sight to behold," Kirra said, showing her hatred of Snape.
The fourth years were looking forward to Moody'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 Hermione, who turned up just in time for the lesson.
"Hey, I just wanted to apologise for the other night —" Jasper started but Kirra gave him a small smile and shook her head
"Don't worry about it." Kirra told him and placed her hand on his arm for a few seconds to tell him that it was fine. "C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats." They hurried into two chairs in the middle of the classroom since the front few were already taken, took out their copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self Protection, and waited, unusually quiet.
Kirra looked around while they waited and she made eye contact with Mattheo who was staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face. He looked at her and opened his mouth as if he were about to say something to her but he closed it soon after, forcing himself to look away from her.
Kirra let out a small sigh before playing with the hair tye on her wrist and looking at the front of the classroom to wait for the teacher. Mattheo looked down at his book, lost in thought.
Jasper was right, she had lost a lot of weight and he knew that he was the reason to blame. He had wanted to tell her why he had gone cold suddenly and why they couldn't be together, he wanted to stop the suffering that she was going through, but he had to force himself to remember that this was for the best.
His father was back and he had to keep her safe from him, no matter what the cost. Mattheo noticed his sleeve had been pulled up slightly from when he had been taking his books out of his bag. His wrist was on display, and there on his wrist, was a yellow hair tye that he had always kept on him incase Kirra didn't have one and she needed one to fiddle with.
His hand went down to the hair tye and he ran his finger over the smooth material of the hair tye, sighing softly before pulling his sleeve back down and looking towards the front of the class, I don't know how much longer I can take this.
Soon they heard 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." They returned the books to their bags, Jasper looking excited.
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 swivelled 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, hinky punks,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 —"
"What, aren't you staying?" Ron blurted out. Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Ron; Ron looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled — the first time Kirra had seen him do so this year.
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. Ron looked deeply relieved.
"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 favor to Dumbledore. . . . One year, and then back to my quiet retirement."
He gave a harsh laugh, and then clapped 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 countercurses 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 till 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." Lavender jumped and blushed. She had been showing Parvati her completed horoscope under the desk.
Apparently, Moody's magical eye could see through solid wood, as well as out of the back of his head. "So . . . do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"
Several hands rose tentatively into the air, including Kirra's and Jasper's. Moody pointed at Jasper, though his magical eye was still fixed on Lavender.
"Er," said Jasper tentatively, "my father told me about one. . . . it's called the Imperius Curse"
"Ah, yes," said Moody appreciatively. "Does your father work in the ministry? Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse." Moody got heavily to his mismatched feet, opened his desk drawer, and took out a glass jar.
Three large black spiders were scuttling around inside it. Moody reached into the jar, caught one of the spiders, and held it in the palm of his hand so that they could all see it. He then pointed his wand at it and muttered, "Imperio!"
The spider leapt from Moody's hand on a fine thread of silk and began to swing backward and forward as though on a trapeze. It stretched out its legs rigidly, then did a back flip, breaking the thread and landing on the desk, where it began to cartwheel in circles.
Moody jerked his wand, and the spider rose onto two of its hind legs and went into what was unmistakably a tap dance. Everyone was laughing — everyone except Moody and Kirra who was recoiling back into her chair, disgusted in the use of the curse, traumatized from the war.
"Think it's funny, do you?" he growled. "You'd like it, would you, if I did it to you?" The laughter died away almost instantly. "Total control," said Moody quietly as the spider balled itself up and began to roll over and over.
"I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats . . ." Ron gave an involuntary shudder. "Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse," said Moody, and Kirra knew he was talking about the days in which Voldemort had been all-powerful.
"Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will. The Imperius Curse can be fought, and I'll be teaching you how, but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone's got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he barked, and everyone jumped.
Moody picked up the somersaulting spider and threw it back into the jar. "Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?" Hermione's hand flew into the air again and so, to Kirra's slight surprise, did Neville's.
The only class in which Neville usually volunteered information was Herbology, which was easily his best subject. Neville looked surprised at his own daring. "Yes?" said Moody, his magical eye rolling right over to fix on Neville."There's one — the Cruciatus Curse," said Neville in a small but distinct voice.
Kirra felt her heart drop in her chest, she had heard what had happened to Frank and Alice. EMily had been good friends with Alice when they went to high school together, Emily was very fond of the sweet girl that often hung around Marlene and Lily.
Moody was looking very intently at Neville, this time with both eyes. "Your name's Longbottom?" he said, his magical eye swooping down to check the register again. Neville nodded nervously, but Moody made no further inquiries.
Turning back to the class at large, he reached into the jar for the next spider and placed it upon the desktop, where it remained motionless, apparently too scared to move, Kirra wanted to rush to the front of the class and let the spiders out of the jars.
"The Cruciatus Curse," said Moody. "Needs to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea," he said, pointing his wand at the spider. "Engorgio!"The spider swelled. It was now larger than a tarantula.
Abandoning all pretence, Ron pushed his chair backward, as far away from Moody's desk as possible though Jasper had seemed to lean forward, wanting to get a better look.
Moody raised his wand again, pointed it at the spider, and muttered, "Crucio!" At once, the spider's legs bent in upon its body; it rolled over and began to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. Kirra felt sick as she pushed her chair backwards and grabbed her books, storming out of the classroom, memories flooding into her head.