Ella ○ Harry Potter

Thirty Two: Unforgivable

"Sev," Ella whined. "Can you let me do something interesting?"

The potion master raised his eyes from the book his hooked nose was buried in, and looked his student over. "I told you to write the essay."

"I don't know how to write an essay without Cedric!" she shrugged, smiling. "Can I go see him?"

"I can get him here, maybe you two will have detention together for the rest of the year. It's his birthday, is it not?"

"Err, no?" she offered, scratching her neck. "Okay, okay, I'll do it properly," she sighed. She went back to writing, and glanced at him when she knew he was busy with the book again.

The day after her first detention with Snape, that came along with every vague explanation about why she should do anything in her power to not be near Moody on her own, she got an inkling as of why she should stay away.

She clearly remembered walking to Dinner with grumpy Ron ("I just asked to see Uranus! What's so wrong about that?") and Harry, who had a horrible time at the second Divination class of the year, yawning, when she was rudely interrupted by Draco Malfoy.

Things escalated quickly (as ever, with Gryffindor and Slytherin both involved) from a simple discussion about the Daily Prophet to Malfoy getting his wand out to throw a curse at Harry's back, when Moody himself turned up and turned Malfoy into a ferret.

And then bounced said ferret up and down.

Futher reason to stay away was the way he behaved in their very first class of Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Ella fell very silent as she sat down with Malfoy at the last row.

The Gryffindors were all very excited for the lesson to begin, but the Slytherin all were still weary of Moody-- and more so since he literally abused a student. Moody quickly went through the subjects they already went through properly, and Ron questioned why he only had one year to teach them.

"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody said. "Your fathergot 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 (Ella shuddered), and then clapped his gnarled handstogether.

"So - straight into it. Curses. They come in many strengthsand forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposedto teach you countercurses and leave it at that. I'm not supposed toshow you what illegal Dark curses look like until you're in the sixthyear. 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 whatyou're up against, the better. How are you supposed to defendyourself against something you've never seen? A wizard who's aboutto put an illegal curse on you isn't going to tell you what he's aboutto do. He's not going to do it nice and polite to your face. You needto be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful. You need to putthat away, Miss Brown, when I'm talking."

Lavender jumped and blushed. She had been showing Parvatiher completed horoscope under the desk. Apparently Moody'smagical eye could see through solid wood, as well as out of the backof his head."So... do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"

Ella knew, of course.

She glanced at Draco, who looked down at the desk.

"The Killing Curse?" she asked him in a mere whisper, and he nodded.

"Mostly, your parents too?" she nodded.

"Er," said Ron tentatively, and the two turned forward, seeing that a few people raised their hands. "My dad told me about one... Is itcalled the Imperius Curse, or something?"