Fire melting Ice.

Alastor Moody, The Champions and a secret meeting...

Author's note: Hi everyone. I'm going to be keeping their first lesson with moody and the choosing of the champions close to the books because I can't do the genius that is J.K. Rowling justice but I will be making it my own. I do not own Harry Potter or any of the wonderful characters the belong to the queen J.K. Rowling. Thank you for reading...

Love you guys Bialovelonso

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They had a new DADA teacher as was the Hogwarts tradition, Professor Alastor Moody, who was also an ex Auror and had captured many dark wizards. As such the Gryffindor fourth 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. I turned up just in time.

"Been in the -"

"Library." Harry finished her sentence for her. "C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats." They hurried into three chairs right in front of the teacher's desk, 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, Ron looking excited.

"Right then," he said "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.

 "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." "So - straight into it. Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, 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 till 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."

Lavender jumped and blushed. She had been showing Parvati her completed horoscope under the desk. Apparently Moody's magical eye could see through solid wood, as well as out of the back of his head.

"So...do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?" Several hands rose tentatively into the air, including Ron's. Moody pointed at Ron, though his magical eye was still fixed on Lavender. "Er," said Ron tentatively, "my dad told me about one called the Imperius Curse, or something?"

"Ah, yes," said Moody appreciatively. "Your father would know that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse."

Moody opened his desk drawer, and took out a glass jar. Three large black spiders were scuttling around inside it. He reached into the jar, caught one of the spiders, and held it in the palm of his hand so that they could all see it. He then pointed his wand at it and muttered, "Imperio!"