The next two days passed without great incident, unless youcounted Longbottom 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 is said to have returnedfrom it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrel full of horned toads. 

"You know why Snape's in such a foul mood, don't you?" said Zoe to me as we watched the giant squid while doing homework

"Yeah,"I said. "Moody."

 It was common knowledge that Snape really wanted the DarkArts job, and he had now failed to get it for the fourth year running. Snape had disliked all of their previous Dark Arts teachers,and shown it — but he seemed strangely wary of displaying overtanimosity to Mad-Eye Moody. Indeed, whenever I saw thetwo of them together — at mealtimes, or when they passed in the corridors — I had the distinct impression that Snape was avoiding Moody's eye, whether magical or normal. 

"I reckon Snape's a bit scared of him, you know," I saidthoughtfully. 

"Imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad," said Zoe,her eyes misting over, "and bounced him all around his dungeon. . . ." 

The Slytherin fourth years were looking forward to Moody'sfirst lesson so much that they arrived early on Thursday lunchtimeand queued up outside his classroom before the bell had even rung. Except for Draco of course, he was scowling as I dragged him there on Thursday.

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

We hurried into four chairs right in front of the teacher'sdesk, took out our copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, and waited, unusually quiet. Soon we heard Moody'sdistinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and heentered the room, looking as strange and frightening as ever. We could just see his clawed, wooden foot protruding from underneath his robes.

 "You can put those away," he growled, stumping over to his deskand sitting down, "those books. You won't need them." 

We returned the books to our bags, Zoe looking excited.Moody took out a register, shook his long mane of grizzled grayhair out of his twisted and scarred face, and began to call outnames, his normal eye moving steadily down the list while his magical eye swiveled around, fixing upon each student as he or sheanswered.

"Right then," he said, when the last person had declared themselves present, "I've had a letter from Professor Lupin about thisclass. Seems you've had a pretty thorough grounding in tacklingDark 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 dealwith Dark —"

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

Moody's magical eye spun around to stare at her; Zoe lookedextremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled — thefirst time I had seen him do so. The effect was to make hisheavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, butit was nevertheless good to know that he ever did anything asfriendly as smile. Zoe looked deeply relieved

.". 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 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."

"So . . . do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"

 Several hands rose tentatively into the air, including Draco's, Nicholas's and mine. Moody pointed at Draco, though his magical seemed to recall him. 

"Er," said Draco tentatively, "my dad told me about one. . . . Is itcalled the Imperius Curse, or something?"

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

Moody got heavily to his mismatched feet, opened his deskdrawer, and took out a glass jar. Three large black spiders were scuttling around inside it. Moody reached into the jar, caught one of the spiders, and heldit in the palm of his hand so that they could all see it. He thenpointed his wand at it and muttered, "Imperio!" 

The spider leapt from Moody's hand on a fine thread of silk and began to swing backward and forward as though on a trapeze. Itstretched out its legs rigidly, then did a back flip, breaking thethread and landing on the desk, where it began to cartwheel in circles. Moody jerked his wand, and the spider rose onto two of itshind legs and went into what was unmistakably a tap dance.Everyone was laughing — everyone except Moody.

 "Think it's funny, do you?" he growled. "You'd like it, wouldyou, if I did it to you?"The laughter died away almost instantly.

 "Total control," said Moody quietly as the spider balled itself upand began to roll over and over. "I could make it jump out of thewindow, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats . . ." Zoe gave an involuntary shudder."Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse," said Moody, and I knew hewas talking about the days in which Voldemort had been all-powerful. "Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was beingforced to act, and who was acting of their own free will. 

"The Imperius Curse can be fought, and I'll be teaching youhow, but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone'sgot it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANTVIGILANCE!" 

he barked, and everyone jumped.

 Moody picked up the somersaulting spider and threw it backinto the jar."Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse? Nicholas's hand flew into the air again and so did mine. 

"Yes?" said Moody, his magical eye rolling right over to fix on Nicholas. 

"There's one — the Cruciatus Curse," said Nicholas in a small butdistinct voice.Moody was looking very intently at Nicholas, this time with botheyes. 

"The Cruciatus Curse," said Moody. "Needs to be a bit biggerfor you to get the idea," he said, pointing his wand at the spider."Engorgio!"The spider swelled. It was now larger than a tarantula.

 Abandoning all pretense, Zoe pushed her chair backward, as far awayfrom Moody's desk as possible.Moody raised his wand again, pointed it at the spider, and muttered, "Crucio!" 

At once, the spider's legs bent in upon its body; it rolled over andbegan to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. No sound camefrom it, but I was sure that if it could have given voice, itwould have been screaming. Moody did not remove his wand, andthe spider started to shudder and jerk more violently — 

Moody raised his wand. The spider's legs relaxed, but it continued to twitch."Reducio," Moody muttered, and the spider shrank back to itsproper size. He put it back into the jar.

 "Pain," said Moody softly. "You don't need thumbscrews orknives to torture someone if you can perform the CruciatusCurse. . . . That one was very popular once too.

 "Right . . . anyone know any others?"  

I raised my hand for the third time, this one--this I was about to do myself last year.

"Yes?" said Moody, looking at me 

"Avada Kedavra," I whispered.

 Several people looked uneasily around at me, including Draco.

 "Ah," said Moody, another slight smile twisting his lopsidedmouth. "Yes, the last and worst. Avada Kedavra . . . the KillingCurse."He put his hand into the glass jar, and almost as though it knewwhat was coming, the third spider scuttled frantically around thebottom of the jar, trying to evade Moody's fingers, but he trappedit, and placed it upon the desktop. 

It started to scuttle franticallyacross the wooden surface.Moody raised his wand, and I felt a sudden thrill offoreboding. 

"Avada Kedavra!" Moody roared. 

There was a flash of blinding green light and a rushing sound, asthough a vast, invisible something was soaring through the air —instantaneously the spider rolled over onto its back, unmarked, butunmistakably dead. Several of the students stifled cries.Moody swept the dead spider off the desk onto the floor. 

"Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's nocountercurse. There's no blocking it. Only two known people have ever survived it, and one of them is sitting right in front of me." 

I felt my face redden as Moody's eyes (both of them) lookedinto my own. I could feel everyone else looking around at me too. I stared at the blank blackboard as though fascinated byit, but not really seeing it at all. . . . 

So that was how our parents had died . . . exactly like that spider.Had they been unblemished and unmarked too? Had they simplyseen the flash of green light and heard the rush of speeding death,before life was wiped from their bodies? 

I had been picturing my parents' deaths over and overagain for three years now, ever since I'd found out they hadbeen murdered, ever since I'd found out what had happenedthat night: Wormtail had betrayed our parents' whereabouts toVoldemort, who had come to find them at their cottage.

 HowVoldemort had killed my father first. How James Potter hadtried to hold him off, while he shouted at his wife to take Harry and me and run . . . Voldemort had advanced on Lily Potter, told her tomove aside so that he could kill Harry and me . . . how she had beggedhim to kill her instead, refused to stop shielding her children . . . and so Voldemort had murdered her too, before turning his wand onHarry and me. . . . 

I knew these details because I had heard my parents'voices when I had fought the dementors last year — for that wasthe terrible power of the dementors: to force their victims to relivethe worst memories of their lives, and drown, powerless, in theirown despair. . . . 

Moody was speaking again, from a great distance, it seemed to me. With a massive effort, I pulled myself back to the presentand listened to what Moody was saying. 

"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 atme 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? Becauseyou've got to know. You've got to appreciate what the worst is. Youdon't want to find yourself in a situation where you're facingit. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he roared, and the whole classjumped again.

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

We spent the rest of the lesson taking notes on each of the Unforgivable Curses. No one spoke until the bell rang — but when Moody had dismissed us and we had left the classroom, a torrent of talk burst forth.

We made way to transfiguration But an odd clunking noise sounded behind us, and we turned to see Professor Moody limping toward us. All four of us fell silent, watching him apprehensively, but when he spoke,it was in a much lower and gentler growl than we had yet heard.

"You all right, are you, Ms Potter?"

 "Yes,"I said, almost defiantly.Moody's blue eye quivered slightly in its socket as it surveyed me. Then he said, "You've got to know. It seems harsh, maybe,but you've got to know. No point pretending . . . well. . .off you go."