The next few days passed without great incident, unless you counted Neville melting his sixth cauldron in Potions. Professor Snape, who seemed to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, gave Neville detention.
"Why's Snape in such a mood lately?" Harper says walking next to us after another terrible potions class.
"Probably Moody." Lucille responds. He gives a confused look.
"Snapes been after the Defense against the dark arts job for years. But Dumbledore again chose someone else." I explain turning the corner. 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 overt animosity to Mad-Eye Moody. Indeed, whenever I 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 Snapes a bit afraid of him." Astoria says, "He seems to be avoiding him." I shrugged. Maybe he was or he just disliked him that much. I didn't know. We finally arrived at the classroom. I was just about to sit down when Draco waved me over to him. I rolled my my eyes and took a seat next to him. Lucille Astoria and Harper preceded to sit together.
"Afraid to be alone with Moody?" I ask mockingly as I sit next to Draco. He gives me a look.
"No, I just didn't want to sit next to Pansy." He says glancing nervously behind him. I give a glance over my shoulder to see Pansy staring lovingly at Draco and blowing him kisses. Once Draco looked away she glared daggers at me. I gulp and turn back to the front. I begin taking out my copy 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." We returned the books to their bags. Moody took out a register, shook his long mane of grizzled grey 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?" Ron blurted out. Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Ron; Ron looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled – the first time I 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 a relief to know that he ever did anything as friendly as smile. Ron 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." He gave a harsh laugh, and then clapped his gnarled hands together.
"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 counter-curses 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. You're not supposed to be old enough to deal with it 'til 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."
