𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐊 | f. weasley

fifty-three

THE GRYFFINDOR 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.

Cassie stood deep in conversation with Dean and Neville about how much she hated Blaise's presence — this rant being prompted by his random appearance at the Gryffindor table, him taking a seat right next to Cassie just when Fred was about to sit there, stealing Cassie's pudding and walking off without a word as soon as Malfoy summoned him. 

As soon as the doors opened, they hurried into three chairs a row behind the teacher's desk and took out their copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self Protection. The golden trio followed in a moment later after Granger's arrival and took a seat ahead of them.

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, stumping over to his desk and sitting down, "Those books. You won't need them."

They returned the books to their bags, Ron looking excited. 

Moody took out a register, shook his long mane of grizzled grey 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 they answered. Cassie was a bit surprised when he had no reaction whatsoever when he called out her name, but simply assumed he 'forgot' his previously formed relationship with her to maintain equity amongst the students. 

"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 —"

"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 effect made his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, but it was nevertheless good to know that he did anything as friendly as smile. 

"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 favour 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."