Chapter 26 - Defence with Mad-Eye Moody
Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Potter universe… JKR owns all!
AN: AH, well here is another chapter! Once again we thank Turnlach for his wonderful BETA work, and remember any mistakes are mine and not his!
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The trio was sitting down at the Gryffindor table; Hermione was once again practically sitting on Harry's lap, a fact that once again brought her more glares from her classmates.
"Seems like a good day." Ron said after stuffing his mouth full of eggs and bacon.
"Ron! Don't eat with your mouth full, honestly it's disgusting." Hermione said in her bossy voice. Ron looked at Harry as if asking for some backup.
"Er… sorry Ron but I have to agree with Hermione on this one, it is rather a disgusting sight." Harry said weakly. Ron just mock glared at him.
Ron finished his mouth full this time, "As I was saying before being rudely interrupted," Ron said looking at Hermione, who in return just rolled her eyes, "It seems like a good day today, outside all morning."
"Yep, then you have double Divination." Harry pointed out to which Ron groaned softly, "Die a couple of times for me will you." Harry said laughing softly.
After finishing their breakfast they all headed out to the Herbology greenhouses.
"All right class gather around." called Professor Sprout, "OK, today we have Bubotubers that need squeezing. You will be collecting their pus."
"Pus!" Lavender said in a very disgusted voice.
"Yes, pus Miss Brown, it is extremely valuable so I don't want to see anyone wasting it. You will need to wear your dragon-hide gloves as the pus does some nasty things to the skin when it is undiluted." Professor Sprout then went on demonstrating how to milk the thing of its pus. It was quite disgusting as it looked like popping a boil.
After the lesson they headed across the grounds and down beside Hagrid's hut where he held the Care of Magical Creatures class. Harry couldn't help but having an uneasy feeling in his stomach, knowing what they would be working with today.
"Morning, Harry, Hermione, Ron." Hagrid said happily, the three of the waved.
"Alright, got a treat for yeh ter'day! Blast-Ended Skrewts!" Hagrid said happily. Harry shuddered a little while Ron and Hermione looked at the creatures in the cage. Harry noticed that many other people had disgusted looks on their faces also.
"Jus' hatched! So yeh will be raising 'em as yer firs' project!" Hagrid said proudly.
"What do they do?" Malfoy asked in a disgusted voice, "What point do they have?"
Hagrid seemed to be thinking a little, "Tha's for the next lesson Malfoy. Ter'day yeh will be feedin' 'em. Now I don' know wha' 'ey will go for, so I a bit of everthin'."
The class then were each given their own Blast-Ended Skrewt and were currently trying to find out what they liked. By the end of the class, Neville had been burnt when one blasted off and Malfoy had just avoided being stung.
The whole class then left heading for the next lesson; all of them dreading their next Care of Magical Creatures class.
After lunch all of them started walking to the east side of the castle, Hermione and Harry now had Ancient Runes while Ron had Divination. Harry had done what he should have done last time and dropped the useless class.
"Oi! Weasel!" Came the voice of Draco Malfoy behind them, his voice had a glee to it, telling them that whatever he wanted was not good for them.
"What do you want Malfoy?" Harry asked in a bored voice.
Malfoy didn't seem to notice as he was looking at Ron, a large smirk on his face, "Your Dad made the paper Weasley." Malfoy said holding up the newspaper.
"Apparently he's a disgrace to the Ministry, and look there is also a picture of them at your house… if you could call it a house." Draco said distastefully.
This time Harry didn't bother holding Ron back like he had done before, Ron lunged at Malfoy catching him totally by surprise as Ron's first connected with Malfoy's face one after the other. After the tenth time Ron hit him, Harry finally pulled him off and dragged him off to class, leaving Malfoy to the aid of his two gorilla friends.
"You shouldn't have stopped me." Ron said fuming that he hadn't been able to inflict more damage upon Malfoy's face.
"I decided it was probably best to pull you off before a teacher came." Harry said. Hermione had a disapproving look on her face.
"You shouldn't have reacted, he won since you did." Hermione said, both Harry and Ron looked at her like she was crazy.
"First Hermione, that git deserves to be hit again and again, and second how can you say Malfoy won?" Ron asked. Hermione was about to argue her case but Harry cut in.
"Malfoy expected us to walk off doing nothing to him, so if you did that he would have won, thinking he could tease and bully without consequence, so if we had not reacted he would have won." Harry said looking Hermione in the eye, "Plus he deserves a lot worse than a couple of punches."
Hermione noticed the look in Harry's eye, and the last bit told her that Malfoy had done something seriously wrong. She sighed and nodded in agreement, "Fine… but I don't have to like it." she said smiling a little.
They then parted ways with Ron and headed to their Ancient Runes class. Hermione looked around to see if anyone else happed to be around.
"What did Malfoy do Harry?" she asked softly, Harry knew she was talking about the future.
"Raped Ginny." Harry said softly, "Not this time though, I will kill him before he even has the chance." Harry voice was ice cold telling Hermione that he was serious.
Hermione was rendered speechless by what Malfoy had done, she now definitely agreed that he deserved a lot more than a couple of punches. She hugged Harry, a soft sob escaping her lips.
"Shh… it's ok Hermione… like I said, it won't happen this time." Harry whispered softly in her ear. Hermione nodded and wiped her eyes before taking his hand and walking to class.
Ancient Runes passed rather quickly as it was an interesting lesson. They were starting to learn about runes used in making strong wards. Of course Harry knew some about it, but there were a couple of small things that Hermione had forgotten to teach him.
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The days passed fairly quickly, word had gotten around about how good Defence Against the Dark Arts was and now everyone couldn't wait to see it for themselves.
Harry, Hermione and Ron were now walking towards the Defence classroom. When they entered Harry looked around, the room was once again covered with all different kinds of Dark detectors. The three of them took their seat at the front and everyone took out their text books, except for Harry.
"Put those books away, you won't need them." came the gruff voice of Professor Moody.
"Ok then, I have gone over the stuff Professor Lupin had you working on last year and you seemed to have covered Dark Creatures quite well… you are however very far behind on Curses." Professor Moody looked at the students, his magical eye spinning around his head.
"Now Professor Dumbledore has asked me to teach you this year to bring you up to speed… Ok right onto curses then, there are a lot and I mean a lot of nasty ones out there. Now the ministry says that you are not supposed to see what any of these look like until your sixth year, though myself and Dumbledore think that you will be able to handle it." Moody said, most of the class looked excited at this.
"Ok, now there are a number of illegal spells, but there are a certain three that are classified as unforgivable, meaning if you use one on another human then expect to spend the rest of your life locked in Azkaban. Now can someone give me one?" Moody asked.
Slowly Hermione raised her arm, "Yes Miss… Granger" Moody said.
"Umm… the Imperius Curse." Hermione said softly.
"Ah yes, the Imperius Curse, this curse give you complete control over the person or animal that you cast the spell on." Moody then walked over to the jar on his desk and tipped out one of the spiders that was inside.
"Imperio!" Moody muttered, and thin silver light hit the spider which then stood up on it two of its legs and started to dance, the spider then stopped dancing and started to do a number of back flips and cart wheels.
Everyone in the room was laughing at what the spider was doing, well everyone except Professor Moody and Harry.
"You think this is funny, complete control, if I had used it on one of you I could make you do anything, do you think it's funny?" By now no one was laughing.
"The curse can be broken, but it's extremely difficult and not many people are able to do it. I will be trying to teach you how to break the connection but its best to avoid being hit by it, CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Moody barked, everyone in the room jumped except Harry who was ready, he now had a slight smirk on his face.
"Ok, who else knows another?" Moody asked.
Harry watched as Neville raised his arm, Hermione of course also had her hand in the air.
"You." Moody said pointing to Neville.
"T-the Cruciatus Curse, sir." Neville said softly.
"You Longbottom?" Moody asked, Neville nodded, Professor Moody, nodded once but didn't say anything else on it.
"Yes… the Cruciatus, another nasty. This curse is used to torture, it was used to interrogate people during the first world war, but after the ministry noticed the damage it inflicted they labelled it as an Unforgivable… the ironic thing about it was that it was the ministry that created the spell." Moody once again took a spider from the jar.
"To see the effects properly I will need to enlarge the spider… Engorgio!" Moody said, the spider then tripled in side, "Crucio!" the dirty yellow beam hit the spider which then started thrashing on the ground, its legs curling up as the pain intensified. Harry watched stone eyed as the spider was tortured; he had been hit enough times to know about the pain the spider would be in at the moment.
"STOP IT!" Hermione yelled out, Harry turned around it see that Neville had gone ghostly pale. Moody also noticed Neville's expression and ended the curse.
"Yes… nasty curse that one… now who knows the last one?" Moody asked.
Harry looked around and noticed that no one had their arms up, Hermione was too busy worrying about Neville and was not listening. Harry sighed and raised his arm.
"Ah yes, Mr Potter should know about this one." Moody said.
"The killing Curse, the Avada Kedavra." Harry said in a monotone voice.
Moody nodded, "Yes the Avada Kedavra, most commonly known as the killing curse." Moody said as he picked out another spider.
"Avada Kedavra!" Moody yelled, the green blast left his wand and hit the spider which fell dead.
"There's no way to block it, in fact the only one to have survived being hit by it is sitting right in front of me…" Moody said, Harry felt the eyes of everyone on him, "It requires a fair bit of power, all of you could point at me and try and cast it and all I would receive would be a nose bleed."
Harry snorted softly at this, he knew that he could properly cast the curse… he had tried a couple of times while in duels with Voldemort.
"These are the three Unforgivable…" Moody started but Harry raised his hand, "Yes Potter?"
"What about the Dolens Mortalitas?" Harry asked softly. Moody's eyes widened at this.
"Very good Mr Potter! Five points to Gryffindor. You are correct, the Dolens Mortalitas is a lot like the Cruciatus curse, the only difference is that it will kill the victim. This is a very, very old spell that was classified as unforgivable before the Killing, Cruciatus and Imperius were even invented." Moody said seriously, "I personally cannot perform this spell, so I'm unable to show you it."
The rest of the class went on with Mad-Eye explaining the history of the curses and even some of what he knew about the Dolens curse, they spent the rest of the time taking down notes.
When the chime rang though the castle, signalling the class over, everyone broke out talking in awed voices about the curses. Harry had walked over to Neville asking if he was alright.
Neville had said he was fine, though a little too quickly then entered the classroom again when Moody asked to speak with him.
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AN: WOW! There it all is… well I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did :P, please leave a review as it only takes a couple seconds, and as I may not reply to all of them I do read all of them.
Luke