Call it what you want {Theodore Nott}

chapter seventy-eight

"Is anyone else nervous?" Blaise asked as they all sat down at their desks for their first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson.

"Relax Blaise, he'll be fine with us." Theo told him.

"Guess what I found out." Iris said to Amy, "Slughorn is taking students with an E in potions."

"Really?" Amy asked, which she nodded to. She had accepted the fact that she wasn't going to be able to take potions but it seemed now that she had a second chance.

The conversation didn't get to go any further as Snape had entered the classroom. He got to the front and his black eyes scanned the room.

"You have had five teachers in this subject, so far, I believe."

The class slowly nodded.

"The Dark Arts," said Snape, "are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible."

Amy and Iris looked to each other with the same confused expression. Everyone knew that Snape wanted the role of Dark Arts teacher for years but no one knew that he was that passionate about the subject.

"Your defences," he said, a little louder, "must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the Arts you seek to undo. These pictures," he indicated to paintings on the walls that showed people to be in pain, sporting grisly injuries or strangely contorted body parts. Amy looked away as she got the idea. "give a fair representation of what happens to those who suffer, for instance, the Cruciatus Curse," Amy gave an involuntarily shiver as he waved a hand towards a witch who was clearly shrieking in agony, the memories of her own experience with the curse came flooding back. "feel the Dementor's kiss," he then moved to a painting of a wizard lying huddled and blank-eyed slumped against a wall. "Or provoke the aggression of the Inferius." Which depicted a bloody mass upon the ground.

"Has an Inferius been seen, then?" said Parvati Paril in a high-pitched voice. "Is it definite, is he using them?"

"Yes" Amy answered in her head

"The Dark Lord has used Inferi in the past," said Snape, "which means you would be well-advised to assume he might use them again. Now..."

He set off again around the other side of the classroom as everyone watched him as his dark robes billowed behind him. "You are, I believe, complete novices in the use of the non-verbal spells. What is the advantage of a non-verbal spell?"

Snape took his time looking around at everybody and said curtly, "Miss Granger?"

"Your adversary has no warning about what kind of magic you're about to perform," said Hermione., "which gives you a split-second advantage."

"An answer copied almost word for word from The Standard  Book of spells grade 6," said Snape dismissively.

Amy heard a laugh from behind her and didn't even have to look to know that it was Draco.

"but correct in essentials. Yes, those who progress to using magic without shouting incantations gain an element of surprise in their spell-casting. Not all wizards can do this, of course; it is a question of concentration and mind power which some lack."

Amy tuned out as she couldn't help but think about Draco's words on the train the other night. What was the point in her getting her education? Her life had already been thrown away and was now dedicated to serving Voldemort.