Hidden Within The Stars | Enemies to Lovers | Fred Weasley x Fem Reader

Chapter Twenty-Five

The next two days passed oddly calmly, unless you counted Phoebe melting her sixth cauldron in Potions. Professor Snape, who seemed to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, gave Phoebe detention, and she returned from it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrel full of horned toads.

"You know why Snape's in such a foul mood, don't you?" said Hazel to Angelina as they watched Y/n teaching Phoebe a Scouring Charm to remove the frog guts from under her fingernails.

"Yeah," said Angelina. "Moody."

It was common knowledge that Snape really wanted the Dark Arts job, and he had now failed to get it for the fourth year running. Snape had disliked all of their previous Dark Arts teachers, and shown it — but he seemed strangely wary of displaying over animosity to Mad-Eye Moody. Indeed, whenever Harry saw the two of them together — at mealtimes, or when they passed in the corridors — he had the distinct impression that Snape was avoiding Moody's eye, whether magical or normal.

"I reckon Snape's a bit scared of him, you know," Hazel said thoughtfully.

"Imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad," said Y/n, her eyes misting over, "and bounced him all around his dungeon. . . ."

The Gryffindor sixth years were looking forward to Moody's first lesson so much that they arrived early on Thursday lunchtime and queued up outside his classroom before the bell had even rung. The only person missing was Fred and George, who turned up just in time for the lesson, after running up the corridor.

"Been in the —"

"Library, pranking people." Y/n finished their sentence for her. "C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats."

They hurried into six chairs right in front of the teacher's desk, Phoebe and Hazel sat together, so did George and Angelina, and Y/n and Fred. They all took out their copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self- Protection, and waited, unusually quiet.

Soon they heard Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and he entered the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever. They could just see his clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes.

"You can put those away," he growled, stumping over to his desk and sitting down, "those books. You won't need them."

They returned the books to their bags, Fred looking 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 —"

"What, aren't you staying?" Fred blurted out.
Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Fred; he looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled — the first time Y/n had seen him do so. The effect was to make his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, but it was nevertheless good to know that he ever did anything as friendly as smile. Fred looked deeply relieved.

"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody said. "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."