Brighter Than the Sun

Chapter Forty-Six

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 viciousness and jerkishness 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.

Hermione and I were his chief consolers. I spent the following half hour muttering about Snape under my breath, consulting Ron whenever I needed to use a curse word. Hermione taught Neville a Scouring Charm to remove the frog guts from under his fingernails. I also went to grab Trevor, Neville's toad, per request of Neville, who probably wanted reassurance that Trevor was okay.

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

"Yeah," said Harry. "Moody."

"Still, it's no excuse," I fumed after Hermione had sent Neville up to his dorm to unwind. "Snape knows Neville loves his toad, and he keeps using that to torment Neville! Remember how he tried to poison Trevor last year?"

"Oh, that's right," Hermione said. "I'd forgotten."

"He also used my dyslexia to make fun of me in DADA too. Remember that?"

"Yes."

"He's such a... an... um..." I frowned and turned to Ron, who luckily had a suitable word ready.

"Arse," he said helpfully.

"Yeah," I agreed. "And Moody's not much better."

"I reckon Snape's a bit scared of him, you know," Harry said thoughtfully.

"Imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad," said Ron, his eyes misting over, "and bounced him all around his dungeon..."

"That would still be wrong," I said. "But I wouldn't mind it as much."

My fellow Gryffindor fourth-years were looking forward to Moody's first lesson so much that everyone 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.

"Been in the -"

"Library." Harry and I finished her sentence for her.

"C'mon, quick," Harry said, "or we won't get decent seats."

We hurried into four chairs right in front of the teacher's desk, took out our copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, and waited, unusually quiet. Soon we heard Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and he entered the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever. I could just see his clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes.

"You can put those away," he growled, stumping over to his desk and sitting down, "those books. You won't need them. "

We returned the books to their bags, Ron 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 swiveled around, fixing upon each student as they answered. I tried not to feel too creeped out by it.

"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 -"