"What in Merlin's name is that?"
I stared at what had to be the ugliest plants I had ever seen - and we planted mandrakes in second year. They looked remarkably like dung if dung could get acne and, even grosser, could move.
They were slimy and moving.
"Bubotobers," Professor Sprout told us. "They need squeezing. You will collect the puss-"
"The what?" Seamus was revolted, and frankly, I didn't blame him.
"Pus, Finnigan, pus," Professor Sprout repeated, "and it's extremely valuable, so don't waste it. Wear your dragon hide gloves; it can do funny things to the skin when undiluted."
In what had to be the most disgusting procedure we ever had to do, the bubotobers' pus was collected and put in little bottles.
I took off my gloves once we were finished, which greatly reminded me of Bill, and stepped away from the table.
"This'll keep Madam Pomfrey happy." Professor Sprout closed the last bottle. "An excellent remedy for the more stubborn forms of acne, bubotuber pus. Should stop students resorting to desperate measures to rid themselves of pimples."
Some people lit up, while others began to whisper. I couldn't help but feel sorry for whichever poor soul tried to magic their acne off and was suddenly the talk of the school.
Once the bell rang, we were off to Hagrid's class.
"Morning!" Hagrid said, grinning at Harry, Ron, and Hermione. "Today we'll be doing Blast Ended Skrewts!"
"Come again?" Ron questioned.
Hagrid pointed down into the crates and I nearly jumped back. They were unlike anything I had ever seen before - if lobsters didn't have shells and were stomped on for a little bit while also getting the blood drained from them, you'd probably get a Blast-Ended Skrewt.
And why was it slimy?
Why was everything we were working with slimy?
Ever so often, sparks would fly out its end and it would be propelled forward, which is... even better.
"Only just hatched," said Hagrid proudly, "so you'll be able to raise them yourselves! Thought we'd make a bit of a project of it!"
"That sounds lovely," I started in the gentlest voice I could muster. "But where on earth did you get these?"
"And why would we want to raise them?" said a cold voice that I'd recognize in a moment: Draco. "What's the point of them?"
"That's next lesson, Malfoy. You're just feeding them today. Now, you'll want to try them on a few different things — I've never had them before, not sure what they'll go for — I got ant eggs and frog livers and a bit o' grass snake — just try them out with a bit of each."
I watched Harry, Ron, and Hermione pick up a handful of frog livers and ultimately decided that there was no way I was touching it.
They were slimy too!
"Locomotor frog leg." A frog leg rose up and moved towards the crate, where I dropped it.
"Ouch!" Dean yelled out.
"Sorry!"
"No, not you!" He held his hand and Lisa rushed over, taking him by the wrist while Hagrid stood behind. A burn. "Aguamenti."
Dean sighed in relief. "That's better."
"Hagrid, what's that point thing on it?" Lavender squealed.
"Ah, some of them have got stings," Hagrid informed enthusiastically. "I reckon they're the males. The females've got sorta sucker things on their bellies. I think they might be to suck blood."
What, are their eyes to shoot lasers?
"Well, I can certainly see why we're trying to keep them alive," Draco exclaimed sarcastically. "Who wouldn't want pets that can burn, sting, and bite all at once?"
While I hated how he was going about it, he sort of had a point.
What on earth did these things even do?
I was sure that, like other creatures, they had something useful about them, but I would have rather learned it when we knew what that useful thing was.
As we left, I advised Dean to go see Madam Pomfrey, and carried on to the dining hall.
"I got burned, see?" Michael shoved his hand into my face and I lowered it. "Michael, your hand is supposed to be red there! I'd be more concerned if it wasn't."
"Still..." Sue started wearily. "Doesn't it sometimes seem like Hagrid doesn't know what he's doing? I mean, even he said himself that he wasn't sure what the Skrewts did. I hate to say it, but Malfoy might be right."
"Draco is never right about anything," I spat with a roll of my eyes.
Padma furrowed her brow. "Are you okay?"
"What do you mean?"
"Did something happen between you and Draco?" Morag asked with her brows furrowed.
"What- no, nothing happened between me and Draco." More like, something happened between Draco and a hippogriff, which is basically the same thing.
"Anyways, I've got Muggle Studies - see you!"
•••
The next few days went on normally (well, as normal as you can get at Hogwarts) and then the first class of Defence Against the Dark Arts with Moody came around.
"Scourgify." The frog guts under Neville's fingernails disappeared and I sighed. "That is the most disgusting detention I could possibly imagine."
"I heard a sixth year had to clean up hippogriff dung once," Seamus decided to add.
"Second most disgusting detention."
We entered the Defence Against the Dark Arts class and I took a seat beside Neville before pulling out my books.
"You can put this away, those books," Moody snarled as if he had a personal qualm with them. "You won't need them."
While I was quite flabbergasted at the thought of someone not needing books, I put my books back into my bag and leaned forward on the unusually empty desk in front of me.
"Right then," he said. "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?"
His large blue eye settled on me and I looked around, hoping someone would notice and ask about it.
"But you're behind - very behind - on dealing with curses. So I'm here to bring you up to scratch on what wizards can do to each other." His blue eye finally moved away. "Miss Brown, if you could pay attention."
Lavender blushed and slowly put away something she was hiding under the desk. Could he see through solid objects or something?
He finally turned his entire head towards me, not bothering to hide the fact that he was staring. "You're Caelum's kid, aren't you?"
"Yeah?"
"Professor Lupin told me about you - very bright, he said. Take after your father, hm?"
"I dunno."
"Oh, you do. I could see it from the moment you walked in. The brightest witch of his age, Caelum was. Youngest to ever become head of a department at the ministry." Moody leaned forward. "Nineteen years old, to be exact."
"Well, he's gotta pass down the torch," I said, jerking my thumb in Hermione's direction. "She's the brightest one now."
Her face turned pink and she looked down, but Moody, his eyes didn't look away from me for a long while.
Suddenly, he let out a harsh laugh and continued with the lesson.
"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. But I say otherwise!"
His blue eye scanned the room.
"So, do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"
Several hands rose and Moody called on Ron.
"My dad told me about one... Is it called the Imperius Curse or something?"
"Ah, yes, your father would know about that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse."
Moody reached into one of the glass jars that held all sorts of insects and pulled out a spider. "Engorgio." It grew so it was easier to see. "Imperio!"
The spider leaped from Moody's hand and began to swing back and forth by a thread of silk. It stretched out its legs, did a backflip, did cartwheels - things a spider was certainly not supposed to do.
"Think it's funny, do you?" Moody questioned as he made the spider land in my hand. "You'd like it if I did it to you, would you? Made you do something you couldn't do - wouldn't do."
He lifted his control off of the spider on my desk and it crawled up to my shoulder, hiding behind strands of my hair.
"Scores of witches and wizards gave claimed that they only did You-Know-Who's bidding under the influence of the Imperius Curse, but here's the rub: how do we sort out the liars?"
To my surprise, Neville's hand went up. Actually, even he seemed surprised by his daring.
"Yes?" Moody called him on.
The spider crawled out from its hiding spot and onto my desk.
"There's one... the Cruciatus Curse," Neville almost whispered.
Moody nodded and aimed his wand at the spider again. "Crucio!"
The spider began to twitch horrible, rocking from the side to side as if it were going mad.
Many watched it occur in terror, but no one in the room could ever match up to the horror that Neville held in his eyes. He held such a tight fist his knuckles went white, his eyes large and terrified.
"Stop it!" I shouted, my eyes no longer on the spider. "Can't you see it's bothering him, stop!"
Moody raised his wand and the spider relaxed.
My hand went over Neville's and he relaxed, turning to me as if I was his snap back to reality. "You okay?" I mouthed, to which he nodded.
"Right..." Moody said quietly. "Anyone know any others?"
The last one echoed in my ear as I recalled seeing it in action at the World Cup, and I squeezed the fabric of my robes.
No one wanted to answer, so Hermione ripped off the band aid and raised her hand. "Avada Kedavra," she whispered, earning uneasy looks from her fellow classmates.
"Ah... yes, the last and worst. The Killing Curse."
He took the spider in his hand and my eyes went wide as he aimed his wand.
"NO!"
"Avada Kedavra!"
And the spider went still.
He insensitively swept the dead spider off the desk and onto the floor. "Not nice, not pleasant. And there's no countercurse, no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me."
Moody stared at Harry and everyone else followed suite.
"Now, if there's no countercurse, why am I showing you? Because you've got to know. You've got to appreciate what the worst is. You don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're facing it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he shouted, and the whole class jumped.
•••
Once class was over, I knelt down next to the dead spider and waved my wand, transfiguring it into a flower.
I placed it in my bag and stood up, seeing Neville awkwardly standing as he waited for me. I smiled at him, although the smile he returned was a bit crooked, and I followed him out into the hallway.
"Are you alright?" I asked.
"Y-yeah..."
No, you aren't.
He walked up a side passage and suddenly stopped, standing and staring absentmindedly at the opposite wall.
"Do you need some alone time?"
"No!" He grabbed my hand desperately. "Don't leave."
I nodded and stood beside him, my gaze following every crack I could find in the wall.
"Neville?" Hermione's voice said gently.
He snapped out of his trance and looked at them. "Oh, hello," he greeted in an unusually high voice. "Interesting lesson, wasn't it? I wonder what's for dinner, I'm- I'm starving, aren't you?"
I placed my hand over his and he relaxed again.
Then, the unrhythmic clunking sound came from behind us and we all turned to see Moody walking towards Neville.
"It's alright, sonny," he assured in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. "Why don't you come up to my office? We can have a cup of tea."
Neville squeezed my hand and looked to each of us desperately, pleading with his eyes.
I smiled at him. "I can come with if you like."
"Yes please," he answered quickly.
I followed him and Moody back into the classroom and sat down on the opposite side of the class.
"Not sitting down for tea, Griffin?" Moody asked as if he'd known me forever.
"No, I'm not." I slouched in my chair. "I'll just be over here."
They spoke over some tea, with Neville's face contorting into all different kinds of worry, up until Moody gave him a book on Herbology - that's when his face lit up.
Before we left, Moody stopped me by calling my name - my first name.
"Yes?" I tilted my head curiously, wondering why he had such an interest in me.
"Be careful," he warned. "Lupin told me that you like to investigate things - don't go poking your nose into the wrong places."
I didn't even get time to answer when Neville took my hand and pulled me out of the classroom.