A Hogwarts Legend: Chaos Begins [4] (SLOW UPDATES)

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen - "You're a fucking idiot."

The next two days pass without great incident, unless you count Neville melting his sixth cauldron in Potions. Professor Snape, who seems to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, gives Neville a detention, and Neville returns from it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrelful of horned toads.

"You know why Snape's in such a foul mood, don't you?" says Ron to Harry and I, as we watch Hermione teaching Neville a Scouring Charm to remove the toad guts from under his fingernails.

"Yeah," I say. "Moody."

It's common knowledge that Snape really wants the Dark Arts job, and he's now failed to get it for the fourth year running. Snape has disliked all of our previous Dark Arts teachers, and shown it - but he seems strangely wary of displaying overt animosity to Mad-Eye Moody. Indeed, whenever I see the two of them together - at mealtimes, or when they pass in the corridors - I have the distinct impression that Snape is avoiding Moody's eye, whether magical or normal.

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

"Imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad," says Ron, his eyes misting over, "and bounced him all around his dungeon ..."

The Gryffindor fourth-years are looking forward to Moody's first lesson so much that we arrive early after lunch on Thursday and queue up outside his classroom before the bell has even rung.

The only person missing is Hermione, who turns up just in time for the lesson.

"Been in the -"

"- library," Elinor finishes her sentence for her. "C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats.

We hurry into six chairs right in front of the teacher's desk, take out our copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, and wait, unusually quiet. Soon we hear Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and he enters the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever. We can just see his clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes.

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

We return the books to our bags, Ron looking excited.

He hates reading so much....

Moody takes out a register, shakes his long mane of grizzled grey hair out of his twisted and scarred face and begins to call out names, his normal eye moving steadily down the list while his magical eye swivels around, fixing upon each student as he or she answers.

"Right then," he says, when the last person has 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's a general murmur of assent.

"But you're behind - very behind - on dealing with curses," says 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 blurts out.

Moody's magical eye spins around to stare at Ron; Ron looks extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiles - the first time I've seen him do so. The effect is to make his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, but it's nevertheless a relief to know that he ever does anything as friendly as smile. Ron looks deeply relieved.