Harry leant against the cold stone wall, watching Ron with exaggerated fascination examine a crack in the ceiling — anything to avoid looking at Kieran. The sight of his scowling, red-eared friend trying so hard to appear indifferent made Harry smile despite himself. Ron’s jealousy was comically transparent, and Harry found it oddly amusing. At least it added some variety to their otherwise predictable school routine.
Around them Hufflepuffs milled about, waiting for Defence Against the Dark Arts to begin. Ernie Macmillan was holding forth loudly about how the curriculum this year ought to be properly rigorous, while Hannah Abbott fidgeted nervously with her plait.
'News!' Hermione burst out of the crowd, breathless, clutching a stack of books to her chest. Her eyes shone with that particular fire that appeared whenever she knew something before anyone else. 'The delegations from the other schools are arriving this evening! They’ll be met before the welcome feast.'
'Tonight?' Harry repeated. 'Already?'
'Yes!' Hermione nodded vigorously. 'I overheard Professor Flitwick telling Hagrid. They’re preparing a paddock for the winged horses, and…'
'Will the Japanese be coming?' Harry interrupted, turning to Kieran, who stood a little apart, shoulder against a tapestry.
Morgan shook his head once.
'No,' he said curtly. 'Mahoutokoro keeps to itself. European tournaments don’t interest them much.'
'And what a pity!' Hermione immediately chimed in, clearly delighted at the chance to display her knowledge. 'Though of course the main participants will be Beauxbatons and Durmstrang. Beauxbatons is somewhere in the Pyrenees, can you imagine? They say it’s a stunning palace surrounded by magically created gardens. And Durmstrang… well, no one knows exactly where it is, but judging by their fur-lined cloaks, somewhere far north. Their reputation is… controversial.'
'Controversial is putting it mildly,' Ron muttered, finally tearing his gaze from the ceiling.
At that moment the heavy oak classroom door swung open and the hum of voices died instantly. Students filed in, taking seats and pulling out textbooks. Harry, Ron and Hermione claimed their usual places in the front row. Kieran sat beside Dean Thomas, across the aisle. But the moment Harry looked up at the teacher’s desk, all thoughts of the Tournament and delegations vanished from his mind.
There, leaning against the lectern, stood a man it would be generous to call simply 'a teacher'. He looked as though he had been hewn from old, weathered oak by someone with only the vaguest notion of human form. Every inch of his skin was a map of brutal battles: deep scars furrowed his face; part of his nose was missing, as though bitten clean off. But the most horrifying feature was his eyes. One was small, dark and bright as a beetle’s. The other — large, electric blue and magical — rotated ceaselessly in its socket, never blinking, living its own deranged life.
Instead of one leg he had a wooden prosthesis ending in a clawed foot. When he took a step towards the class, it made a dull, ominous thud-thud.
The room froze. Even Lavender Brown, who usually giggled at everything, pressed a hand to her mouth. No one dared make a sound. Shocked stares were fixed on the new teacher’s ravaged face. The man swept his gaze over them — the normal eye scanning the class while the magical one rolled inwards, presumably inspecting the contents of his own skull.
'Sit,' he barked.
His voice matched his appearance: hoarse, rasping, grating, as though he had spent years issuing orders into howling gales rather than speaking. With a jerky motion he pushed off the lectern, limped to the centre of the room and stopped. The magical eye whirred horribly and fixed on Harry, while the normal one bored into the back rows.
'Put those away,' he growled, nodding at the textbooks some pupils had already opened. 'You won’t need those books.'
He reached inside his robes; several people, including Kieran, tensed, but the teacher merely drew out a hip flask and took a long swig. A sharp, unfamiliar smell drifted across the room.
'My name is Alastor Moody,' he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 'And I’m here at Dumbledore’s request. No one else’s.'
A menacing silence fell, during which Moody’s magical eye seemed to scan each pupil in turn, the black pupil darting rapidly from one to the next.
'Right then,' Moody swept his normal eye across the class while the magical one spun wildly, perhaps staring at the back of his own head. 'The Ministry of Magic thinks you’re too young to see what these curses do in practice. I disagree. You need to know what you might face. You need to be prepared. And you need to be vigilant!'
The last word came out as such a sudden roar that Lavender Brown jumped and dropped her quill.
'Unforgivable Curses,' Moody continued, pulling a glass jar from his desk drawer. Inside, three large black spiders scuttled about. Ron recoiled violently from the desk at the sight. 'There are three. Who can name the first?'
Hermione’s hand shot up first, as always.
'Yes?' Moody pointed a gnarled finger at her.
'Imperius, sir,' she answered. 'The Imperius Curse. The Imperius Curse grants total control.'
'Correct,' Moody nodded. 'Caused the Ministry no end of trouble years ago. Hundreds of wizards claimed they only served You-Know-Who because they were under Imperius. And good luck sorting out who was lying and who wasn’t…'
He plucked one spider from the jar, enlarged it and raised his wand.
'Imperio!'
The spider, which had been trying to escape, froze. Then it began to perform strange pirouettes, walking on its hind legs and even tapping out a little dance. The class laughed.
'Funny, is it?' Moody snarled, and the laughter died instantly. 'What if I did it to you? Made you dance to my tune, or eat dirt, or… strangle your best friend in his sleep?'
The room fell deathly silent.
'Total control,' he rasped, dropping the spider back into the jar. 'But it can be fought. Hard, but possible. I managed it. So can you, if you’ve got backbone. Next one?'
Hermione’s hand rose again, but this time Moody ignored her. His magical eye froze, staring somewhere into the middle of the class.
'Morgan,' he snapped.
Kieran shot to his feet, standing ramrod straight, hands at his sides, chin up. No trace of the lazy ease the other pupils showed.
'The second curse,' Moody stated, not asking. 'The interrogator’s favourite. I expect they taught you all about it at your fancy Japanese school. Perhaps even demonstrated it? On pupils? To toughen the spirit, eh?' The professor gave a hoarse chuckle, winking with his normal eye.
A frightened murmur rippled through the class. Harry saw Hermione’s knuckles whiten as she gripped the edge of the desk. Kieran stared straight ahead, unblinking.
'Yes, s—sir,' he caught himself after a fraction of a second. 'Yes, sir. They did.'
He said it so matter-of-factly, as though confirming the breakfast menu had included porridge.
'Name?' Moody seemed satisfied with the answer.
'The Cruciatus Curse, sir.'
'Sit,' Moody grunted.
Kieran sat down as abruptly as he had risen, once more becoming a motionless statue. Harry caught Hermione’s eye — genuine alarm swam in hers. She stared at the back of Kieran’s head as though she wanted to rush over and check he was all right, but the lesson continued. Moody drew out the second spider.
'Crucio!'
The spider curled in on itself; its legs spasmed and jerked; it writhed and thrashed against the desk top. There was no sound, yet Harry felt as though he could hear a silent, piercing scream of agony. It was horrible. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut, cover his ears, make it stop.
'Pain,' Moody said quietly, wand still raised. 'No need for hot irons or knives. Just a wand and the will to cause hurt.'
He lifted the curse. The spider slumped, trembling faintly.
'One left,' Moody’s voice dropped to a near-whisper, yet in the dead silence it rang like thunder. Both eyes — normal and magical — now fixed on the same point. On Harry.
'Avada Kedavra,' Moody whispered.
A flash of green light seared across the room, stinging Harry’s eyes. There was a rushing, whistling sound like an invisible torrent, and the spider that had just tried to scuttle across the smooth desktop flipped onto its back. No marks. No damage. It had simply ceased to live.
Harry felt everything inside him contract. He knew that light. He had seen it in his nightmares, heard it in his mother’s screams…
'Death,' Moody said, and his voice in the ringing silence sounded like a verdict. 'Instantaneous. Painless. Irreversible. No counter-curse. No defence.'
Moody limped heavily to Harry’s desk. The magical eye locked onto the scar on his forehead.
'Only one person ever survived that curse,' he rasped. 'And he’s sitting right in front of you.'
As one, the entire class turned to look. Harry felt heat flood his face. He hated these moments. He wanted to sink through the floor, vanish, anything to escape the weight of dozens of stares and that mad, drilling magical eye.
'Now,' Moody finally turned away, hobbling back to the front, 'write down your homework. Two rolls of parchment. Topic: "Why the Unforgivable Curses carry a life sentence in Azkaban, and the ethical considerations of their use". Due Thursday. Dismissed.'
The moment the bell rang Hermione slammed her book shut so hard Ron jumped. She stuffed parchments into her bag with sharp, jerky movements; her lips were pressed into a thin white line; her breathing came in audible huffs. She was furious — that cold, righteous fury Harry rarely saw in her.
They stepped into the corridor, already filling with the noise of break, but the chill from that green flash still clung.
'That man’s mad,' Ron exhaled as soon as the classroom door closed behind them. His voice shook slightly. 'Did you see? He enjoyed it! Showing us that on the very first lesson…'
'Yeah,' Harry agreed dully. 'It made me feel sick.'
He glanced back, looking for Hermione, but she had fallen behind. Harry spotted her by a window a few paces away. She stood directly in Kieran’s path, pale and visibly upset, speaking rapidly and earnestly, searching his eyes. Harry couldn’t hear the words, but he saw her touch Kieran’s forearm as though checking he was real. Kieran murmured something in reply, inclining his head slightly, and even managed a faint smile — the sort one gives a distressed child — though he had just been made to recall torture.
'Oi, Harry!' Ron’s voice cut in insistently, pulling him back.
Weasley had noticed the scene by the window too, and his face immediately took on that stubborn look. He turned deliberately away from Hermione and Kieran, tugging Harry’s sleeve.
'Forget them. Listen, the delegations arrive tonight! They say six o’clock. We need good spots in the courtyard.'
'There’s ages till evening,' Harry shrugged, feeling the need for a change of scene. Moody’s lesson had left a foul aftertaste. 'Fancy going to see Hagrid? We haven’t been round his place in ages. And he’s bound to know something about the delegations.'
Ron’s eyes lit up.
'Brilliant! Hagrid!' he nodded enthusiastically, then added in a lower voice, casting another sideways glance back: 'Let’s go right now. Just us. Before… well, before anyone holds us up.'
Harry looked at Ron, then back at Hermione, who was still earnestly talking to Morgan. He understood perfectly what his friend meant.
'All right,' he nodded, deciding Hermione was in no mood for a walk to the gamekeeper’s hut just now, and Morgan even less so. 'Let’s go.'
'Excellent!' Ron brightened instantly. 'Bet Hagrid’s hatched some new horrible creature he thinks is adorable?'
They quickened their pace towards the castle exit, leaving behind Moody’s grim presence, Hermione’s worry, and all the strangeness of the morning.