𝒮𝓉𝑜𝓇𝓂'𝓈 𝒜 𝐵𝓇𝑒𝓌𝒾𝓃'

October 11th, 1994

𝒞𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓉𝑒𝓇 𝐹𝑜𝓊𝓇𝓉𝑒𝑒𝓃

The immediate reaction was... happy. Unnaturally so. As if every worry, every bad thing in her life had been washed away. The first immediate reaction was so... comforting... but no...

It was quiet. As if every thought, every sound.... Every ounce of awareness left her. It was dark. Lonely. Empty. Everything was gone. Everything that was her was gone. Sure, the worries, but also the true parts of herself. It was an empty sense of comfort. A false one.

One that quickly grew suffocating. All control over her situation gone. Over her life gone.

A false comfort that was taking away all freedom and trying to convince her to do something as idiotic as turn around and say—

Iris gasped, eyes wide as she slipped to the ground onto her back and slipped out of the magical hold that had attempted to trap her.

Alastor Moody must have laughed; the only way you could describe the rumble of a sound that left him. Iris didn't seem to find it all that amusing, glaring up to the man with an intensity that would have most others running away... he wasn't as affected... the glare of a teenage girl, despite her name, was much less horrific than things he had surely experienced.

He growled to the classroom, his fake eye swiveling to two students in the back, "Looks easy, you say! You think you could break from an imperious curse as easily as a Blackwell, the mind reader on top of that!" Iris tried to stop herself from cringing, the man saying a bit too much for her liking, "Well, Flanagan, you are next then; let's watch you break from a curse better than wizards much greater than you have fallen to."

Spoiler alert, he didn't.

But Iris wasn't paying much attention, face sour as she lifted herself back to her feet. Cursing the school under her breath, "Unforgivable Curses in class. Fucking mad house."

Walking back to her seat, Iris was really just mad the whole way.

Deservedly. I mean, Moody was the one to teach them about these Unforgivable Curses. Curses that were very much illegal. And yet... a school and apparently the school's headmaster was just all fine with one of those illegal curses being used on students as a reality check... for children. Hogwarts was a very strange place and was in deep need of some sort of inspection.

Sitting down with an almost dramatic intensity... Iris didn't even get a moment to start complaining before Theodore whispered under his breath, "Can you stay in my head when it is my turn?"

Iris's glare dropped, blinking once and then twice to herself as she briefly looked to her friend... scanning him over, finally seeming to be forced to realize that Theodore Nott was deeply uncomfortable in this class.

He didn't look it in a quick glance or to people who would just notice his regular apathetic face and look no further... but, now that she was really looking, Iris saw it. His clenched jaw, his stiff back, his hands almost pushing down against his leg... stopping them from bouncing or giving away too much.

All odd behavior for Theodore Nott... so Iris hummed, "Of course."

And she did. As Theodore Nott was called, as he stiffly walked to teh front... Iris had that signature glaze wash over her eyes. Settling herself deeper into Theodore's mind.

Her ability had levels. On the surface, the words and pictures that crossed people's minds in their day-to-day life were thrown into the air as if spoken to Iris. Read off a menu or have your mind wander off to the pretty girl you saw at the store... and well, Iris is hearing and seeing it as well. No one could sense it; no one could stop it. After all, those thoughts at the forefront of your head are what people are shouting at the world, how they are experiencing the world in real time. It requires no intrusion.