The next few days for Aurora consisted of lessons and making new friends. The Black twin and Blanca had taken to walking to and from classes with Cedric Diggory and Adam Fulton. The normally guarded girl had begun to open up to them, and the two boys almost felt a sense of achievement about that.
On Friday, the four were walking to their first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson with Professor Moody. They were very much looking forward to it, as they were aware of his reputation as an Auror.
"Draco told me he showed his year the Unforgivable Curses." Aurora stated as they strode past a portrait of Sir Cadogan.
"That's ridiculous! Showing fourteen year olds those kind of things. And how do you know Malfoy?" Cedric questioned the girl. He was still a little suspicious of her, though he had come to realise they she wasn't a sadistic maniac... most of the time.
"He's my cousin." she replied shortly.
"How many cousins do you have?" Adam spoke up. He was an exchange student from Ilvermorny. He had come to England with his step-sister, Mackenzie Goldstein, who the twins had yet to meet.
"Too many to count." Aurora grumbled. "All of the pure blood families are related in some way shape of form through the House of Black. It's disgusting." she wrinkled her nose in distaste. Cedric thought it was rather cute, but quickly shook his head, ridding the thought from his mind.
"So you're related to the Potters and the Weasleys?" Adam asked inquisitively.
"Very distantly."
"Hai ragione. È disgustoso." (You're right. It is disgusting.) Blanca sniggered. Aurora shoved her lightly, but the girl went tumbling into a portrait of a witch dressed in very fine robes.
"Watch where you're going you silly girl!" the portrait shrieked harshly. Blanca scowled at her and turned back to her friends, who were clutching their sides laughing. "Shut up." she hissed, which just made them laugh harder. The rest of the walk to class was filled with teasing comments from Aurora and Adam and the loud laughter of Cedric Diggory.
♛
Aurora, Cedric, Adam and Blanca sat in that order at the front of the classroom. On their desks were four copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self Protection. The whole class, which was a mixture of Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors plus the Beauxbatons girls, waited unusually quietly. Even the Weasley twins at the back were silent. Soon, the distinctive dull thud of Moody's wooden leg could be heard approaching. He entered the room, looking as frightening as ever.
"You can put those away." he growled in a raspy voice. "Those books. You won't need them."
The class put their books back in their backs. Aurora grinned at Cedric excitedly.
"I received a letter from Professor Lupin, who informed me that last year you studied: Ghouls, Pixies, Snakes and a number of hexes and jinxes. Is that correct?" The Hogwarts students all nodded.
"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 Curses, and then all of you will be doing your N.E.W.Ts. Well. Most of you." his electric blue eye swivelled round to stare at the two Beauxbatons students on the front row. Blanca looked away hastily, whereas Aurora maintained eye contact. She grinned triumphantly when Moody looked away first. The girl turned to look at Cedric staring at her. 'What?' she mouthed, scowling at the boy.
"So- straight into it. Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, seen as though you are in your sixth year, I have been permitted to teach you what illegal Dark curses look like, but in my opinion, the younger you start the better. So the fourth years have begun learning about them as well. Tell me, how are you supposed to defend 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."
The whole class was listening intently. Most of them were shocked that fourteen year olds were being taught about Dark Curses, but at the moment, they had bigger things to worry about.
"So... do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"
Several hands rose tentatively in the air, Aurora's and Blanca's among them. Moody pointed at Blanca. "You." he said. "Your name?"
"Blanca De Luca." she replied in a clear, confident voice. "My Papa told me about one. The Imperius Curse."
"Ah yes." the man nodded his head. "De Luca did you say? Well your father would know about that. Gave him and Sebastian Bianco quite a lot of trouble in the Italian Ministry a few years back. You remember Miss Black?" he asked Aurora who was nodding her head along with what Moody was saying.
"Yes sir. My Uncle Sebastian and Auntie Chiara told me and my brother about it. They were working every day to put an end to it." Moody grunted in acknowledgement before getting to his feet. He opened his desk drawer and took out a glass jar. Three huge black spiders were scuttling around inside it. Aurora saw Blanca visibly grimace. She hated spiders.
Moody reached into the jar and pulled out one of the spiders, before placing it in his palm for everyone to see.
He then pointed his wand at it, and muttered 'Imperio!'
The spider leapt from Moody's hand and straight onto Adam's desk in the front row. The boy stared at it, unfazed- so the Professor made it jump onto his head. He let out a loud yelp before trying to knock it off. Everyone burst into laughter. The spider then jumped off Adam's head and onto Blanca's desk. She screamed very loudly and tried to hit it with her bag.
A Gryffindor with dreadlocks in the second row was laughing so hard he fell straight off his chair. Moody noticed this and made the spider jump off Blanca's desk... and straight onto the boy's face. He let out a panicked yell and tried to claw the spider off his face. He scrambled off the floor and began to run around like a headless chicken- blinded by the large arachnid obscuring his vision.
Everyone was in fits of laughter by this point. Everyone except Aurora who merely smirked in slight amusement. Moody- aiming to startle her- made the spider jump so quickly it was a blur straight onto the Beauxbatons girl's arm. Instead of jumping out of her skin like everyone else had done, she simply stared down at it in mild surprise. The girl giggled as the it crawled up her arm, tickling slightly. Everyone in the room was looking at her in amazement. She didn't seem fazed by the spider at all. Eventually, the laughter died down as Moody made the arachnid return to his desk.
"Total control." he said quietly. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats..."
Blanca shuddered.
"Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse. 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 spider and threw it roughly into the jar. "Right." he said, looking expectantly around the room. "Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?"
Cedric and Adam's hands shot up.
"Yes?" said Moody, his electric blue eyes swivelling round to Adam.
"The Cruciatus Curse." he said in a distinct voice.
"The Cruciatus Curse." repeated Moody. "Needs to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea," he said, pointing his crooked wand at the spider 'Engorgio!'.
The spider swelled dramatically. It was now the size of a tarantula. Blanca whimpered from her seat at the front.
Moody raised his wand again and pointed it at the enlarged spider. 'Crucio!'.
The spider rolled over onto its back and began to twitch horribly. A sort of strangled scream came from the poor create as it writhed around on the desk. A Hufflepuff girl could be heard whimpering softly as she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block out the awful noise. Even Aurora's neutral expression was faltering. But Moody kept his wand trained on the spider.
The Hufflepuff girl had finally had enough. "Stop it!" she cried shrilly. "I can't take it anymore, stop it!" Moody seemed to remember where he was and released the spider from the curse. It lay on the desk, shuddering as the Hufflepuff girl broke down into sobs and her friend tried to comfort her. Eventually, Professor Moody gave the two girls permission to leave the room.
Once they were out of the door, Moody muttered 'Reducio!' and the spider returned back to its regular size. He put it back into the jar.
"Pain." he said. "You don't need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse. That one was very popular once too.
Right... does anyone know the last one?"
No one dared raise a hand, dreading to think what would happen to the last spider.
"Avada Kedavra" a soft whisper was heard. Everyone turned to look at Aurora Black, who was staring at Moody with an unreadable expression.
"Ah." said Moody, a twisted smile appearing on his face. "Yes, the last and worst. Avada Kedavra... the killing curse."
He reached back into the glass jar and pulled out the last spider. It was trying frantically to escape Moody's grasp, as though it knew the fate that was about to befall it.
Moody walked over to Aurora's desk, and placed the spider on it. Instead of holding his gaze like she had before, she looked away and bit her lip nervously.
"Avada Kedavra!" Moody roared.
Aurora was transfixed by the blinding green light that engulfed the spider. It fell unmarked, unmoving and unmistakably dead onto the girl's desk She stared in horror at the still body. She had seen that flash of green light before. It was the same curse that had hit her mother. She could remember watching the woman's body go limp as it crumbled to the floor. She could remember how she screamed at the sight of her Mama's vacant eyes staring blankly up at her. She could remember the boy with jet black hair standing up in his crib with tears brimming in his green eyes... But she shouldn't. How could she remember something she had not witnessed?
The sound of a chair scraping against wood was heard as Aurora stood up abruptly from her seat. Her friends stared at her in shock as she turned to look at them briefly. The horror was etched across her face and Cedric- being the closest- was sure he could see tears in her eyes. Aurora stumbled back, shaking her head as she stared at Moody before she turned and sprinted out of the room. The whole class watched her leave, wide eyed with shock. Aurora never showed her emotions, or so it seemed. They knew that something terrible must have happened for her to react that way.
Cedric was the first of Aurora's friends to react. He stood up and left the room almost as quickly as she had. When he got out into the corridor, he immediately spotted the two Hufflepuff girl. Anna Wells and Riana Talbott. They were whispering in hushed tones. When they saw Cedric standing there, Anna spoke up. "She went that way." she said, pointing down the corridor that lead out of North Tower. He thanked the girls hastily before running in the direction they had pointed. He didn't have to go far. He heard her before he saw her. As Cedric rounded the corner, he spotted Aurora sat on the floor in a crumpled heap. She was sobbing.
"Aurora." he called softly. As soon as she heard his voice, the girl stood up quickly, wiping her eyes. Cedric sighed as he stood less than a metre away from her. It hurt that she would not show vulnerability in front of him.
"It's okay to cry, you know." he whispered, afraid that if he spoke too loudly, she would turn in the opposite direction and run. Cedric half expected Aurora to make a joke out of the situation, or to deny she had even been crying in the first place. What he didn't expect was what came next. He was taken aback as she flung herself into his arms and began sobbing into his shoulder. Quickly getting over the initial shock, me melted into the embrace and began rubbing circles into the small of her back. This seemed to comfort her as Aurora's breathing evened out. They did not speak. Only held each other. It was only when they pulled away that they noticed how cold it seemed without the other's embrace.