Chapter 163 — What an Enemy Can Do

My own parchment had a different purpose. On Friday evening I had arranged preparation, practical work and reading around the new timetable, then filled the remaining gaps with more practical work. Hermione examined the result on Saturday and found a flaw almost immediately.

‘This is a way to exhaust yourself in several different rooms,’ she said, tapping a crowded margin. ‘You’ve allowed time to prepare the paper, but none to examine what went wrong. And when do you eat?’

‘Rapidly,’ I suggested. She looked at me until I took the page back and found somewhere to put meals which did not require running between them.

At the campsite tiredness had made my hands less steady when I needed them most. Practising the same problem deliberately was hardly an improvement. I crossed out an evening session, put review time beside the work it belonged to and handed the plan back.

Hermione read it more carefully this time. She called it better, and I resisted the urge to fill the newly empty space while she was still watching. I kept the ambition; it would have to survive the inconvenience of feeding me.

Friday’s lessons had already given me something worth making that time for. McGonagall had placed a pincushion on the desk and reminded us that a living result required more than an acceptable outline. Her demonstration became a hedgehog which sniffed at the edge and immediately attempted to leave.

‘Including its disposition to move,’ she added, intercepting it with a practised hand. The hedgehog examined her fingers as though considering another route.

Learning another body had taught me that a row of spines was not enough. It had not taught me how to turn stuffing into anything which could use them. After we worked through the spell’s structure, McGonagall supervised my preparation of three small charged pieces, each intended for a separate attempt at the same transformation.

I threw the first and spoke the incantation from the board. The pincushion bristled, acquiring an impressive covering of spines without losing its essential commitment to being a pincushion.

‘You have given it the feature you were thinking about most,’ McGonagall said over my shoulder. ‘Consider what supports it.’

She restored the object before I threw the second piece and repeated the incantation. This one produced feet which moved anxiously beneath a body still divided by a seam. McGonagall reversed it promptly, and I set the last piece down to think.

My lion’s paws were not ornaments fastened beneath a picture. A body had weight, and that weight needed somewhere to go when it moved. I closed my eyes briefly, trying to bring the whole small creature into my attention rather than the feature which would make everybody recognise it.

The third paper left my hand. I spoke, and the pincushion folded into a hedgehog which remained still for one dreadful second. Then its nose moved, followed by four determined steps towards my ink.

‘Oh, no you don’t.’ I put an empty tray in its path. It sniffed the edge and began investigating another direction while McGonagall watched closely.

‘Much better, Mr Mercer,’ she said. ‘Record the difference between this attempt and the first.’

I was already reaching for my quill. She awarded points, checked the hedgehog again and returned it to a pincushion herself. I had a result worth studying, though regrettably no pet to carry into the next lesson.

Hermione succeeded later in the class. We compared the parts we had found difficult, and our answers differed enough to make the exchange useful. I added her observation beneath mine instead of assuming my third attempt had settled everything about hedgehogs.

Flitwick took an interest in another part of my earlier work. With his permission I prepared two low-powered Impello pieces for a familiar relay, leaving one beside the practice block. I threw the other and spoke; its pulse reached the waiting charge, and both papers were spent as the block slid across its marked patch of desk.

‘Rather more than either piece alone,’ Flitwick observed. He examined the space between the starting point and the block. ‘Provided the first spell reaches the place you have prepared.’

I assured him I would remember that condition. Then I showed him the short-range release I had practised under McGonagall, using one newly prepared, low Incendio piece in a holder beside the fireproof tray. My fingers rested on the blank edge as I settled the direction and called up the connection I knew from preparing it.

The charge answered touch and intent without a spoken word. A brief flame blackened the shaving in the tray, and I removed my hand as the paper spent itself. Flitwick looked from the holder to the notes I had brought.

‘Only the effects you have practised this way?’ he asked. I confirmed the pulse and small flame; I still threw and spoke for the others.

‘You are arranging what you can do to considerable advantage,’ he said. ‘That matters in a duel. So does knowing which arrangements you can make while someone is trying to prevent you.’

I wrote that down. The little block had proved an excellent opponent by declining to interfere, and I doubted many others would extend the courtesy.

The author's chapter appears on NovelPhoenix, though this version was reproduced without consent; reading the published chapter supports them.

Potions offered less applause, although the work felt different beneath my hands. I recognised a change in the mixture’s surface before it became the wrong colour, lowered the heat and checked the time. For once the next ingredient went in without my having to chase the previous mistake.

Snape stopped beside me, inspected the cauldron and turned to my notes. ‘The quantity in your sample, Mercer?’ he asked, directing my attention towards the vial I had filled too high.

‘I’ll correct it, Professor.’ I reached for it, careful not to catch the cauldron’s handle with my sleeve. Apparently a competent brew did not excuse an incompetent submission, which he explained before deducting points for ignoring the instruction.

The brew itself earned a good mark when I saw the corrected work. I managed to be pleased about that and annoyed about the vial without either feeling preventing the other. It gave me something precise to improve besides hoping Snape might become easier to impress.

By Monday my revised timetable bore smudges, alterations and entries showing what had actually happened. Three Transfiguration pieces, two for the relay and one for the contact flame: six spent, with notes worth keeping. I closed the notebook and went to find out whether Moody could teach me what the campsite had made me want to know.

His magical eye had already acquired more powers in conversation than most of us had learned in three years. It could see behind him, through walls and through clothes. Someone claimed it could see through an Invisibility Cloak, on the authority of somebody else who seemed unlikely to have owned one.

Harry was particularly quiet during that discussion. I told him we did not need to volunteer his cloak for an experiment, and he assured me he had no such intention. Ron peered through the classroom door, discovered Moody already waiting and brought our conversation to an end.

The walking stick leaned within reach of his desk. His blue eye turned towards us before his head did, and the room filled with bags being lowered, benches scraped carefully across the floor and books laid out without our usual competing conversations. Moody waited for the last student to settle, then wrote his name on the board.

‘Former Auror,’ he said, turning beneath the rough white letters. ‘Now your Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. The Ministry and I have disagreed about a number of things. With luck, you’ll learn something from the disagreements I survived.’

Nobody laughed. His natural eye travelled along the benches while the other swung in the opposite direction, making it difficult to decide when I was being watched. I could understand why people talked about it.

Ron had told us stories of Aurors facing Death Eaters and bringing prisoners out of places nobody wanted to enter. I had also seen Aurors fire towards the wrong people in smoke. The title did not tell me how this particular man would act; his lesson might.

‘The Headmaster hasn’t brought me here for play-acting,’ Moody said, tapping the board. ‘You need to know what an enemy can do. Forget the idea that remembering a chapter heading means you’ve understood the thing beneath it.’

Hermione’s hand paused on her book. Moody let his gaze move along the desks before acknowledging that some of us had been well taught. It would do us no good, he said, if we left those lessons neatly on the page when we needed them.

I remembered Lupin making us try again, and McGonagall correcting little movements we had thought did not matter. Moody could test what we knew. Persuading me it had been worth nothing would have required considerably more than his reputation.

‘Who can tell me what we mean by the Dark Arts?’ he asked. He waited through the first silence until Hermione rose.

‘Professor, do you mean a definition, or the categories of—’ She stopped when he interrupted to demand a definition and told her to remain standing. Colour rose in her face before she continued. ‘Magic designed to harm or control, particularly curses which injure, corrupt or deprive someone of the ability to choose. Though the boundaries aren’t always clear.’

‘Burn a house down with the charm you learned to light a fire.’ Moody turned towards her fully. ‘What do you call that?’

‘An attack,’ Hermione answered after a moment. ‘Having an ordinary use doesn’t change what the person did with the spell.’

Moody approved the distinction. I raised my hand, and his magical eye swung towards me before he called my name.

‘Are we studying how curses are recognised, or how they’re cast?’ I asked. His answer concerned recognising them quickly enough for it to matter, so I pressed the other part. ‘And the counters?’

‘Where there are counters,’ he replied. He allowed that to remain in the room while I felt the edge of my pouch against my hip. ‘Miss Granger. How many Unforgivable Curses?’

Hermione gave the number. He asked why they bore the name, and she explained that using one on another human being could earn a life sentence in Azkaban. Moody struck the chalk against the board hard enough to break its tip.

‘No convenient excuse about meaning only to frighten someone,’ he said. ‘The person at the other end doesn’t suffer less because the wizard holding the wand claims to have had a difficult afternoon.’

Hermione drew breath and began asking whether he expected us to attempt them. He interrupted again, saying that he intended us to know them on sight.

‘Then you might let me finish asking,’ she said. Ron looked quickly from her to Moody, and I stopped moving my quill above the page.

The magical eye fixed on her. For a moment I expected a shout, but Moody told her to finish, his natural eye narrowed.

‘Are students expected to attempt any of these curses in this lesson?’ Hermione asked. She remained standing until he said no, then thanked him and sat. Ron pushed her quill back from the edge of the desk, and she took it without looking at him.

I admired the question and understood why it had required two attempts. Moody returned to the board, telling us that some people at the Ministry would rather keep these subjects from us until we were older. Those using the curses were not obliged to wait for our birthdays.

Harry’s shoulders went rigid. I could not disagree with the point, and disliked how precisely it found the part of me which still wanted a different ending to the campsite.

‘Didn’t Aurors use them?’ Seamus asked. Moody looked back over his shoulder before answering.

‘Some powers were authorised during the last war which hadn’t been before. Read the history if you want to know about those decisions.’ He faced the board again. ‘Don’t mistake a badge for permission to do anything you fancy.’

The chalk moved in rough strokes. Two places away, Seamus removed a piece of gum from his mouth and lowered his hand beneath the desk.

‘The bin, Finnigan,’ Moody said without turning. ‘Not underneath the furniture.’

Seamus froze. Moody turned then and flicked a piece of chalk towards us; it struck the desktop beside Seamus’s hand with a sharp crack. He jerked backwards before getting up, pale and angry-looking, to take the gum to the bin.

Dean moved his books to make room when he returned. I looked at the chalk mark, then at the eye which had seen something behind its owner. We had evidence for that much. The rest of the stories remained stories.

Moody put down the surviving chalk and closed his fingers around his wand. ‘You’ve given me the number and told me what the law calls them,’ he said, looking along the benches. ‘Which one shall I demonstrate first?’