New Romantics | Hermione Granger Book IV

|37| Chapter Thirty-Seven

T H I R T Y  S E V E N

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"Not nice, not pleasant. And there's no countercurse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me."

Saffron wanted to throw up and for the first time in a long time, she wanted to go to the Grey. But it wouldn't come. The events of last year were making it harder for her to enter, which for the most part was a very good thing, as she had supposedly taken a lot of the Grey out with her now. Eventually, she was going to be able to enter of her own free will but if she understood what she was told, that would only happen when she finally mastered what it was the Grey was giving her to carry in the real world.

Her head was still flaring intensely and she was tempted to reach into her bag to take some doleo, which she and her siblings kept on their body at all time should the Grey act up and give them migraines. But she didn't as she wasn't even sure her body would be able to reach down and grab it. Everything felt numb and still, akin to how the spider looked on the desk in front of them when Saffron finally looked up from her arms.

Moody had both of his eyes fixed on Harry whilst Harry stared at the blackboard trying his best to ignore him. That was wrong on so many levels. Everyone was aware of Harry's past and for Moody to throw it in his face like that wasn't morally right. Showing them the killing curse never mind using it, weren't morally justified acts to do in the first place. It showed Saffron that she wasn't the only one who was used to the Grey as Moody was too. His grey, however, was a very different one from the spiritual ancestral curse that Saffron endured, Moody was morally grey. He wasn't good. He wasn't bad. He was probably right in the middle by the looks of it and to Saffron, that was grey.

"Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it - you could all get your wands out now and point them at me and say the words, and I doubt I'd get so much as a nosebleed. But that doesn't matter. I'm not here to teach you how to do it.

"Now, if there's no countercurse, why am I showing you? Because you've got to know. You've got to appreciate what the worst is. You don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're facing it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" 

Saffron didn't jump this time as her mind was far too engrossed in the burning sensation hurting her forehead and she had already gotten used to Moody roaring things every now and then.

"Now...those three curses - Avada Kedavra, Imperius, and Cruciatus - are known as the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any one of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. That's what you're up against. That's what I've got to teach you to fight. You need preparing. You need arming. But most of all, you need to practice constant, never-ceasing vigilance. Get out your quills...copy this down...."

Glad that she had kept her quill on her desk, Saffron began to scribble down what Moody wrote on the board on a piece of parchment, but her writing went in diagonal lines, messy and unorganised, as she didn't think she'd be able to do anything well again for a while. Not until she had her doleo but she wasn't going to take it out in front of the whole class, especially in front of someone like Moody, who gave her the impression that he was waiting for some dark wizard to burst through the room. He was paranoid and would probably examine the doleo with his magical eye if Saffron was to touch it.

When the bell finally rung out, Saffron watched everyone rush out of the class, some in awe of what they had seen whilst others looking traumatised. Hermione only asked her if she was okay once before speeding out, probably after Neville who had made it to the door first. Evidently, the girl hadn't noticed that Saffron was feeling as terrible as she was. But it didn't weigh on Saffron's mind too heavily as her pain was the only weight she had to worry about. 

Saffron didn't even notice that she was the last one to get to the classroom door, her eyes firmly set on soothing the pain but before she could step out she realised that Professor Moody had addressed.

"Peculiar, I had your older sister for class yesterday and the exact same thing happened to her,"

Saffron turned away from the door to see that the man's normal eye was fixed on her whilst his fake electric blue one was looking around the door as if to ensure nobody else was around them for the conversation he was starting.

"Pardon?" Saffron asked him almost inaudibly. 

"Your sister, Maya,"  Moody informed her gruffly. "I had the same lesson for my sixth years and she too got an awful headache. What are the odds of that?"

Saffron's mouth hung ajar. Was Professor Moody implying what she thought he was implying? Surely not, how on earth would he know about the Grey? There was no way. Sage or Sirius or Amanda would have told them if someone else knew about it and none of them had mentioned that Moody knew. That said, none of them had mentioned Moody at all.

Trying to salvage the confirmation she had accidentally given Moody by looking so shocked, Saffron shrugged her shoulders in an attempt to shrug it off:

"We're sisters, it's probably just a genetic thing," She said calmly before pausing. "But we're also people, and nobody should have to see what we just saw. And quite honestly, I'm the last person you should have to worry about,"

"Is that so?" Moody questioned somewhat pointedly.

Saffron crinkled her nose. She felt almost possessed and turned into someone other than herself when she responded to him. It was a combination of the toll witnessing the curses had taken on her and wanting to distract the man's mind from anything to do with her and Maya.

"If you were constantly vigilant, Professor, maybe you would have noticed the two people in this classroom that took what you just showed us worse than me,"

The man was not expecting that and his lip twitched ever so slightly. He combatted this by taking a swing out of his private flask, that he had so desperately needed during one of his third-year classes the other day. 

With that, the man walked past Saffron and set off down the stairs, presumably to find the two people who Saffron had just alluded to and Saffron followed him swiftly, hoping she hadn't gotten herself on his bad side by merely pointing out the facts and trying to get him off her case by thinking she and Maya having similar reactions was peculiar.

As what was peculiar to her was Moody himself. He was an enigma alright. An enigma that Saffron wanted to understand as she couldn't understand how his praises had been sung as a formidable Auror when he acted like this in class. She figured there must be something that she wasn't seeing and she so desperately wanted to see it.