Future Nostalgia / Harry Potter Fanfic

Moody's First Class, S.P.E.W., and Sirius's Letter

The next two days passed without great incident unless you counted Neville melting his sixth cauldron in Potions. Professor Snape, who seemed to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, gave Neville detention, and Neville returned from it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrel full of horned toads.

The Gryffindor fourth-years were looking forward to Moody's first lesson so much that they arrived early on Thursday and queued up outside his classroom before the bell had even rung.

They hurried into four 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 clucking footsteps coming down the corridor, and he entered the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever.

"You can put those away," he growled, stomping 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 when the last person declared themselves present, "I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about this class. Seems you've had a pretty thorough tackling Dark creatures; you've covered boggarts, red caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, kappas, and werewolves, is that right?"

There was a general murmur of agreement.

"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 to deal with Dark-"

"What, aren't you staying?" Ron blurted out.

Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Ron; Ron looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment, Moody smiled.

"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. One year, and then back to my quiet retirement."

"So-straight into it. Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, according to the Ministry of Magic, I'm supposed to teach you countercurses and leave it at that. 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 until then. But Professor Dumbledore's got a higher opinion of your nerves, he reckons you can come, 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. You need to be alert and watchful. You need to put that away, Miss Brown, when I'm talking."

Lavender jumped and blushed. She'd 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, Hermione's, and Estella's. Moody pointed at Ron though his magical eye was still fixed on Lavender.

"Er," said Ron tentatively, "my dad told me about this one. Is it called the Imperius Curse or something?"

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

Moody 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!"