Dark

Chapter 6

Eleanor
I was disappointed on Wednesday morning when Malfoy hadn’t seemed to have used the jinxed shampoo. But the wait was worth it when he showed up in the Great Hall on Thursday morning.
I had just been giving Hermione her textbook back when he stormed through the double doors of the Great Hall. I immediately stifled a laugh as his head turned from side to side frantically, displaying his now vibrant red hair. When his eyes locked onto mine he stalked over. I was still standing near the Gryffindor table, frozen to the spot with laughter that threatened to burst forth at any moment.
“What the hell did you do, Potter?!” Malfoy yelled in my face.
“I don’t know what you mean.” I said in a muffled way with my hand still over my mouth. “Is there something wrong?”
With that I couldn’t hold it in any longer, I doubled over with boisterous laughter at the sight of Malfoy and his Gryffindor Red hair. Before long the majority of the Great Hall was staring in our direction and laughing as well.
“This isn’t funny! Put it back!” Malfoy shouted at me.
“Actually, I think it’s perfectly hilarious, Malfoy. And certainly well deserved.” I finally managed to reign in my laughter and turned a serious face toward Malfoy as I stood up straight again. “Maybe that will teach you not to steal other people’s belongings.”
Malfoy’s hands clenched at his sides and for a moment I thought he was going to pull his arm back and hit me. To my relief he instead took a step closer, his face nearly touching mine as he leaned down closer. “My father is going to hear about this, we’ll see whose laughing then.”
With that he turned on his heel and stormed back out of the Great Hall.
“No way, that was you?!” Fred asked as he and George pulled up to the Gryffindor table and took seats near Harry, Ron, and Hermione.
I gave them a simple nod before leaving for the Slytherin table. As I took a seat among the other Slytherins, they again moved as far away from me as possible. Though I still found this behavior to be annoying, I was riding the high of seeing Malfoy’s red hair accompanied by his furious expression. Nothing could bring me down in this moment. So I left my homework in my bag and fully enjoyed a meal for once.

Draco
I had taken three showers by the time I finally gave up. Whatever that Potter had put into my hair wasn’t going to come out. I’d have to either find the spell to undo it or ask her to put it straight. I nearly gagged at the thought of having to ask her to fix my hair.
I had already missed History of Magic and Lunch through my attempts to get rid of the ghastly red color stuck to my head. I only begrudgingly made my way to Defense Against the Dark Arts out of pure curiosity for the new Professor. Mad-Eye Moody. He had been in the papers for years, there were all sorts of stories of him attacking innocent people – and inanimate objects alike – thanks to his paranoia.
When I reached the room I took a seat and pulled out my textbook. Within minutes the room had filled, but it wasn’t until just before the bell rang that Eleanor entered the room. I could feel the heat rising to my face as rage began to take over again. To my immense surprise, she took the empty seat next to me and I felt a strong urge to shove her right off of the chair.
Those thoughts were put out though when Moody himself entered the room. He strode toward the front of the class and with a wave of his wand the door at the back of the room slammed closed. Silence immediately fell.
With a gnarled hand he pulled a jar out of his pocket. He set it on the teachers’ desk and it became obvious that the jar contained a spider.
“You can put those away,” Moody growled, “those books. You don’t need them.”
We all put our books back into our bags, and it was obvious that the interest of the class had been piqued.
“Right then,” he began again, “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?”
Several people muttered in 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?” Weasley blurted out.
In the moment before Moody spoke again his strange magical eye whirled around to stare at Weasley.
“You’ll be Arthur Weasley’s son, eh? Your father got me out of a very tight corner a few days ago…Yeah, I’m staying just the one year. Special favor to Dumbledore…One year, and then back to my quiet retirement. 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.”
At the mention of Dark curses I could see Eleanor, out of the corner of my eye, sitting up a little bit straighter and leaning forward a little more. That seemed strange.
“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.”
Most of the class turned around to stare at the girl Moody was talking to. He had been facing the other direction when he noticed her and so it confirmed for us all that his magical eye could in fact see out the back of his head. The strangest thing about the scene though was that Eleanor was staring intently at Moody, she hadn’t turned to look at the other girl at all and she seemed to be in deep thought as she scowled slightly towards Mad-Eye Moody.
“So…do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by Wizarding law?”
Several hands rose, and I was again surprised by Eleanor when her own hand reached into the air beside me. She couldn’t possibly know.
Moody turned toward the Gryffindors and stopped in front of Weasley’s desk.
“Er,” Weasley muttered quietly, “my dad told me about one…Is it called the Imperius Curse, or something?”
Leave it to Weasley to give such a mediocre answer the one time he’s finally right.
“Ah, yes,” Moody said appreciatively. “Your father would know that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius curse.” Moody stumped back over to his desk and opened the jar from earlier. He levitated the spider out of it and landed it on top of a desk in the front row of students. He then pointed his wand at the spider again and said “Imperio!”
The spider leapt up from the desk and began to summersault through the air. At one point he even landed the spider on a desk again and had it tap dance its way across the surface. The class was laughing, and I couldn’t help but be just as amused. The only person who didn’t seem to have cracked a smile was Eleanor.
“Think it’s funny, do you?” he growled. “You’d like it, would you, if I did it to you?”
The laughter immediately died away.
“Total control. I could make it jump out the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats…Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse,” Moody continued and I shifted anxiously in my seat. “Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will.
“The Imperius Curse can be fought, and I’ll be teaching you how,” again Eleanor sat even straighter and seemed almost excited at the prospect of fighting off an Unforgivable Curse as Moody continued to explain, “but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone’s got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” he barked. Nearly everyone jumped, except Eleanor.
“Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?”
Eleanor’s hand shot into the air again and I saw the other Potter glance back at her, confused.
Moody didn’t call on her though, he made his way to another Gryffindor.
“Yes?” he said as he approached Longbottom.
“There’s one – the Cruciatus Curse,” he answered timidly.
So much for Gryffindors and their courage.
“Your name’s Longbottom?” Moody asked.
Neville nodded in return but he didn’t look up at Moody, he seemed like a frightened child expecting to get yelled at. I chuckled at the idea.
“The Cruciatus Curse.” Moody looked back at the spider, “Needs to be a bit bigger for you to get the idea.” He pointed his wand at the spider and said, “Engorgio!”
The spider tripled in size and a number of the students around it pushed their seats further back.
“Crucio!” Moody called out.
At once the spider’s legs bent in upon its body and it rolled over. As it twitched and rocked from side to side I noticed Neville looking at the spider in a terrified sort of way, his entire body shaking where he sat. I hadn’t noticed Eleanor move until I heard her hands slam down against her desk. When I looked back at her again she was standing, her glare still focused on Moody.
“That’s enough!” she said loudly.
The entire class was either looking at her or at Moody. She didn’t seemed bothered by it at all. She stood there staring down Moody as he slowly made his way closer to her desk, bringing the now limp spider with him. When he reached her he placed the spider on her desk and muttered, “Reducio.” The spider shrank back to its original size.
“Pain. You don’t need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse…That one was very popular once too. Now Miss Potter, can you tell me another?” Moody was glaring just as fiercely at Eleanor as she was at him.
“Of course I can.” She said confidently. “The Killing Curse.”
“And the incantation?” Moody asked her.
“Avada Kedavra.” Eleanor said stiffly.
Moody pointed his wand at the spider and repeated the incantation. There was a green flash and the spider fell to the surface of the desk, lifeless. Just like everyone else in the room, my eyes had been drawn to the spider when Moody killed it. But then I looked back up to see Eleanor and Moody still glaring at each other. She hadn’t so much as flinched when Moody cast the spell.
“Not nice,” Moody said finally before he moved away from Eleanor’s desk. “Not pleasant.”
Eleanor slowly sat back in her seat, her eyes still following Moody closely.
“And there’s no countercurse. Only one person has ever survived it, and he’s sitting right in front of me.” Moody said as he stopped in front of Potter’s desk.
The room was tense. Potter didn’t seem able to meet Moody’s eye and soon the Professor had moved back to the center of the front of the room and continued his lecture, without further demonstrations. No one spoke for the rest of the period and the only movement I caught was when Eleanor reached her hand over her desk and swept the spider off it to the floor. Was it indifference or loathing that brought her to do that? I couldn’t be sure. But for the first time since the Welcome Feast, I thought I could see why she had been placed in Slytherin.

Harry
She had stood there, with no emotion, as Moody murdered that spider right in front of her. He had used the very curse that killed my parents. Our parents. How could she really be my sister if she could so coldly stand there, completely indifferent to it.
When the bell signaled the end of the class I jumped out of my seat to follow Eleanor out of the classroom. She hadn’t been the first out of the room though, and I wasn’t the only one following somebody. Eleanor quickly approached Neville who had stopped ahead of her and was leaning against the wall. She stepped in front of him, turning to face him and I could see her face as she talked to him.
“Neville, right?” I heard her ask.
Neville nodded timidly at her.
“Look, don’t let what he did in there get to you. Don’t let any of it get to you. But most importantly, when it inevitably does get to you, just stand up straight and tall,” she placed her hands on Neville’s shoulders and forced him to stand up straight before placing a finger under his chin and lifting his head up, “and keep your head held high. Don’t let them know they’ve gotten to you.”
“Th-thank you…but, how did you…” Neville began to ask before Eleanor cut him off.
“How do you think I deal with the Slytherins? I have to just keep my head up high and remind myself not be bothered by them and their awfulness.” Eleanor gave Neville a smile at this and I realized it was the first time I had really seen her smile.
It didn’t last long though. Her smile quickly faded from her lips as Malfoy walked by calling out toward her, “Got yourself a crush there, Potter?”
With that Eleanor stalked off.
I felt completely baffled to be honest. She had seemed so indifferent about the killing curse, but then again she had not only demanded that Moody stop the Crutiatus curse when Neville had been so bothered by it, but she also comforted Neville afterwards. Was she just as bothered by it all as the rest of us? Was what she was telling Neville what she had done in that classroom? Not allowed for anyone to know that she had been bothered?
“All right there, Longbottom?” Moody asked as he pushed past Ron, Hermione, and me. “I’ve got something you might like, let’s have a cup of tea now.”