Chronicles Of Arth: Prince Of Shadows

The incident with Malfoy had spread like a wildfire, causing the entire Gryffindor fourth year to expectantly await the day they had him for class.

In fact, 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.

The only person missing was Hermione, who turned up just in time for the lesson.

"Been in the Library."

"C'mon, quick, or we won't get decent seats."

They hurried into the chairs right in front of the teacher's desk, when Arth realized there were only four left. Arth glanced around until he saw Theodore and Scarlett waving towards him. In between them was an open seat.

Arth shrugged and waved bye at Ron And Harry before making his way down to Scarlett and Theodore. He sat down and opened his book.

"Not with the original golden trio I see," said Theodore with a smirk. "How blessed we are to be graced by your presence."

Arth rolled his eyes.

"Do you want me to find another place to sit?"

"No," hissed Scarlett sending Theodore a nasty glare before kicking him in the shin.

Right as Theodore was about to spew out some nasty curses, they heard Moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor.

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.

Moody took out a register, shook his long mane of grizzled gray hair out of his twisted and scarred face, and began to call out names, his normal eye moving steadily down the list while his magical eye swiveled around, fixing upon each student as he or she answered.

"Right then," he said, when the last person had declared themselves present, "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.

Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at Ron; Ron looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled. The effect was to make his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, but it was nevertheless good to know that he ever did anything as friendly as smile. Ron looked deeply relieved.

"You'll be Arthur Weasley's son, eh?" Moody said. "Your father is a very good man. . . . Helped me out a few times long 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, and then clapped his gnarled hands together.

"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 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.

Arth sighed.