Crescent Moon (A HP fanfic and a student/teacher romance)

Chapter eight: Defense Against One Self

A/N: Enjoy!  Please vote, comment and fan. I'll upload more if I get some encourgement! asdg 

 Chapter eight: Defense Against One Self

“Good day children,” Lupin said as he entered the defense against the dark arts classroom on the third floor. “Well it might not be appropriate to call you children since you are fifteen years of age,” he spoke mostly to himself while he turned his back to us and rearranged some papers on his desk. He turned around quickly with a slight gloom to his face that was quickly covered with a smile.

            “I have been looking through what you did last year. I see you looked a little bit into the unforgivable curses, but for today I would like to talk about them a bit more. This is not a subject to be taken lightly so I would like you to be cautious,” everyone grew silent as Professor Lupin talked to us. He talked lightly but I could see this was something he was quite familiar with and probably in a bad way. “Who in here can tell me why they are unforgivable?”

            A few people raised their hands. I knew the answer but I did not want to speak out. I was a little afraid of speaking in public, even just among those 20 students.

            “Ms. Johnson?” A girl named Angelina stood up to speak.

            “They are unforgivable because they manipulate people’s lives. The Killing curse, obviously, kills people. The Cruciatus curse tortures people both mentally and physically. Then there’s the Imperius curse that is used to manipulate people into following someone’s orders without even having a say in it, and often they don’t even know they’re doing it,” Angelina spoke as if she was reading from a book, it sounded rather robotically and it was obvious she was trying not to show her feelings.

            “That’s exactly right Ms. Johnson. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Now, does anyone know how to cast one?” He said. I thought it was a bit weird he was telling us about this stuff, but on the other hand, I had learned it all last year. I knew he wasn’t teaching us to use them on other people. He was mostly warning us if people wanted to use them on us, or if we ever think about using them.

            I decided to raise my hand when I saw nobody was doing it. I held it there for about ten seconds until he noticed me and gave me a look that indicated I could speak. I stood up slowly and swallowed. I fixated on one spot on the chalk board behind the professor and began to talk.

            “To cast an unforgivable spell you need to first and foremost say the word right and use your wand right. But the other part is just as important as the first one. That is, you have to mean it in order for the curse to work. You have to want to cause pain or death to the one you are about to curse. And not just mean it, one has to contain pure hate for the victim and it works even better if you enjoy causing the pain,” my voice started shaking a bit when I remembered when Harold had my mother use the crucio curse on me once. He hasn’t done it again because it wasn’t effective enough for him. “You have to have great willpower too and skill.”

            “We have some real brains in our class today. I hope you know as much about other subjects as well, but this is right Ms…?” he didn’t know my name because this was my first class with him. I reluctantly told him my name and he smiled at me.

            “So, Ms. Blake, can I be so curious and ask where you learned all this?” the professor asked lively. I couldn’t help but notice how his hair seemed to have calmed down a bit since breakfast. It was styled into a casual mess; I liked it.

            “We covered the subject last year in my old school, sir,” I said after I had sat down. I felt a little weird talking about my old school in front of so many people.