The Ambitions Of Rebekah Potter

Chapter Fifty Five

"Right then," Moody started after 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?"

Everyone murmured with agreement, none of them wanting to fully speak. Rebekah stayed quiet, carefully glaring at the Wizard with hidden disdain. Her group was huddled to the front in one of the corners, with Blaise to her right and Daphne behind her with Pansy. Draco sat diagonally from Rebekah's desk, to his right was Theo with Tracey in front of them but in the desk next to Blaise.

"But you're behind, very behind on dealing with curses," Moody growled. "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 from the other corner of the room.

"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody smiled, it contorted his scarred face. "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."

"Thank Merlin," Rebekah mouthed to her group, they all grinned lightly before hiding it.

"Se, 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 Brown blushed and shoved her horoscope back into her bag, nudging Parvati who snickered at her.

Moody paused. "So . . . do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"

Of course, Rebekah already knew. They were the Unforgivables.

The Imperius Curse, the least destructive out of the three, could make anyone do anything. It was more or less mind control and it was strenuous to actually break the hold that the spell had.

The Cruciatus Curse was second, it tortured the person with extreme amounts of pain and could leave the victim with permanent mental damage if used for too long.

The Killing curse was the worst. It did just as its name stated, it killed the victim instantly and there was no dodging the spell unless you got out of the way. No one could survive it.

"Er, my dad told me about one. . . . Is it called the Imperius Curse, or something?" Ron said when Moody picked on him again.

"Ah, yes. Your father would know that one." He paused. "Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse.

"Total control," Moody summoned one of the jars that held a spider, using the Curse to control the spider as it balled upon itself. "I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats . . ."

Rebekah gave an involuntary shudder. She hated spiders.

"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.