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"UP!! GET UP TRACEY!!" I screamed as I brushed my hair.
"mm- not so early", Tracey mumbled from the next bed.
"No no no! You're not sleeping now! Wake up! Get dressed we have a class!" I said walking towards her.
"Flitwick is a sweety...we can go late" she said languidly.
"Oh yeah? Tell that to PROFFESSOR MOODY! it's Thursday Trace! Gerrup!! He might curse you! Looks like it."
"Moody? Oh we'll be dead! He was an auror!!" She shot up from the bed and rushed toward the bathroom.
"That's right! Don't be too late or I'll leave without you!"
After breakfast,me, Tracey and Jax hurried into three chairs in a far corner from the teachers 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.
"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 our bags.Jax looked 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 he or she answered.
"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 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."
