Ch. 14: Casting Curses

Song for this Chapter: Tell Me I'm A Wreck - Every Avenue

"Elle." A man whispered in my ear and I backed away from him. At first I was going to trade his chocolate mine for my pet dragon, but now that I knew his voice was so girly I was having second thoughts.

"Elle!" He shouted at me and I began to walk away from him. What a weirdo. "ELLE! WAKE UP!" 

      All too soon, the swirling fantasy of chocolate fields and tiny dragons washed out of my head and I scrambled up from the safety of my four-poster bed. I floundered around for a moment before I realized I was at Hogwarts, and Jenna was hovering over me, her grey-blue eyes twinkling with amusement.  

       I could tell, by the pale blue light peaking delicately through the glass window panes, that it was way too damned early!

       "What the heck, dude?" I whined, flopping back down to my cushy bed and glaring up at her through the cracks in my fingers, as my hands made feeble attempts to block out the devilish sun rays glinting through the Gryffindor Tower's windows. Every fracture of glass panelling sent a dagger of sunlight into my corneas. 'Cursēd Tower! ' I thought darkly to myself.  

      Jenna shrugged and scratched at the back of her neck. "Well, you wouldn't wake up and Hermione asked me to tell you that 'If you don't get up soon, you're going to be late'," She sang Hermione's line in a soft, melodramatic British accent that sounded muddled. 

     I took a moment to appreciate her soft blonde curls, pulled into two buns at the side of her head. It should have been serving me Princess Leia, but... it worked. 

I looked down at myself and saw that I was back in my bed, wrapped tightly in my blankets. I have no idea how I got here. I pulled out my uniform and suited up quickly. Once I had pretty much gotten everything that I needed, I looked down at my pocket watch. Yes, I do have a pocket watch and yes it is pretty amazing.

      I read the time and shrugged. School began at 9 in the morning, and it was only 7. Hermione was over-reacting!

"Huurrrryyy uup, Elle! I'm staaarriiiving!" Jenna whined and threw herself against the door frame, pitifully rubbing her flat stomach.

I rolled my eyes, but grabbed my book bag and slung it over my shoulder. "Psshh Jenna you're always hungry."

     "What are you trying to say?" 

     She looked so offended that I couldn't help but laugh her off and change the subject. "Hey, where is Lana?"

"Ohh, yeah she went down to breakfast already with that one kid." Jenna and I hoped out of the common room entrance and began to make our way to the Great Hall. "The one who was...Irish?"

     "Er...Seamus, right?" I shook my head at the thought of Lana. She was already meeting new boys. "Figures."

      "Lana's lucky guys like her so much!" Jenna pouted as we flounced through the Great Hall doors; her eyes travelled over to the Slytherin table, where the Durmstrang boys were staying. 

I sighed and put a hand on Jenna's shoulder and guided her to the Gryffindor table. "Come on, Hungry. Time to eat."

      I plopped down in a seat that Hermione and Lana had saved for me and snatched an orange off of a plate on the table. "So. What do we have the first block?" I jammed my thumb into the top of the fruit and tore at the peel, getting annoyed each time the peel snapped off suddenly, and not peeling in perfect rows. 

Ron, who was in between mouthfuls of pork and eggs, spoke up sending tiny bits of food across the table. "Defense Against the Dark Arts. With Moody."

My left eye twitched a little and I wiped the back of my hand against my dress robes, he got me a little. "So he's teaching this year." I pulled out my schedule and sighed. "I have no idea how I'm going to balance all of these classes this year. I'm booked tight."

Hermione's eye brow twitched as she watched Ron cram a waffle into his still full mouth. "Let me look it over? It can't be as bad as mine was last year." She looked around the table and leaned in to whisper in my ear. "I had to sign up for a time turner."

"Really?!" I whispered back, excited. I'd always wanted to use one. Time travel always confused and excited me. "Do you still have it?!" 

      Hermione sighed and shook her head at me, disappointed in how eager I was. "No, I returned it to Headmaster Dumbledore at the end of term. I'm not sure where it is now."

       "Oh, too bad," I admitted with a mournful sigh. I had gotten my hopes up, only for them to be snatched away by the Headmaster himself. 

     Hermione's eyes scanned my schedule. "We have every class together except Potions and Divination." She snorted and rolled her eyes.

      "What?"

      "You're in for a real treat. Divination is a load of rubbish and, since you are in Advanced Potions, you get the delight of being with all the pretentious Slytherins." Hermione rolled her eyes with a grunt of distaste. I could tell there was some sort of story there, and based on the encounter we'd had with that Draco boy back at the World Cup, I wondered if it was similar.  

I went to grab for the last sausage, just as Ron did. Angrily, I smacked his hand away. "No. Bad!" He looked up at me as if I was a new life form, before dropping his hand and reaching instead for a couple more strips of bacon.

I chewed the greasy sausage in delight and grinned. Victory never tasted this good. "Hey, Hermione."

       She rose a brow at me as she looked over her Daily Prophet. "Hm?"

"You're gonna need to learn how to cook. I can teach you if you'd like." I grinned evilly, but she seemed a little confused.

"Why would I need to know that?" 

I glared at Ron with a smirk. "I have a feeling he's gonna eat you out of house and home. " I sniggered under my breath as her face began to glow bright red. No one around us had picked up on anything I had said, but she took it as if I had declared war on her.

Angrily, she grabbed her purse and began stalking away, but not before calling out to me under her breath. "I don't like him!"

Lana looked up from her cream of wheat and grinned at me. "Elle aime le garçon." She likes the boy.

   "Oui, je ne peux pas croire... er.. que le garçon ne le voit pas." Yes, I can't believe that he doesn't see it, I attempted to say in broken French. I could tell by the wince Lana feigned that it wasn't quite right. I shook my head with a slight smile and looked over to see Ron peering at the two of us, bits of bacon hanging from the corners of his mouth.

       "You should tell him to wipe his mouth", Jenna pipped up with a whisper to Lana and me, tearing her eyes away from the Slytherin table to chat with us.

     I shook my head at her, switching back to English. "Well," I popped the last couple of slices of my orange into my mouth. "Class starts in ten, we should be off."

      I stood up and shouldered my bag. "See ya later, Harry, Ron." I saluted them before walking off, Lana and Jenna tailing me. 

      I pulled out a map and directed us towards the Defense Against the Dark Arts class. As we ascended the many stairs, I suddenly had a deep sense of respect for every person that attended this school. The leg muscles they must have! 

"Please, Lana you must teach me your ways, Oh Mighty Goddess of Love and Beauty!" I sniggered and Lana rolled her eyes and pulled her arm from Jenna's desperate grasp.

      "Jenna Chase! I think you are overreacting. You're plenty attractive and you could get any guy you want." Lana rubbed her temples but was clearly flattered by Jenna. After all, how would you react to being called a goddess?

        "Then why won't he love meeee?" She fake pouted and groaned.

I busted up laughing and clutched at my sides. "Jenna, maybe it is because you are too...obsessive? Or maybe it's the fact that he hasn't even...I don't know...talked to you before?"

Jenna scoffed and shook her head at me. "That's not it, I must be too blond for him or something! I can dye my hair."

I stopped to pound my head against one of the stone walls. "Touch your beautiful hair and I will kill you."

"Can you please hurry along, girls?" A deep and older voice coldly called to us from behind the open door. "We do have a class to teach here."

 We turned around and peered into the crowded class room to see Ron and Harry and Hermione all peering at us with amused glances. "How did you get here before us?" I looked down at my map and frowned. 

"It's a secret." Harry grinned and shrugged.

I looked at Ron with a begging look and he flushed bright red under the pressure. Tunnel. He mouthed and I just shrugged, I didn't have any idea what that even meant, and found an empty desk for me and Jenna while Seamus Finnigan called over Lana to sit by him.

     I carefully sat down on my stool and cautiously watched the Professor hobble to the forefront of the classroom. His fake leg made metallic clangs against the cobbled stone flooring, but no one dared look down. 

     He was a dishevelled, older man with untamed honey hair and the sort of expression that screamed quite loudly that you wouldn't want to cross him. Perhaps it was the wild way his prosthetic, magical eye swivelled around and landed on each and every person in the class, never missing a beat. 

"My name is Alistor Moody-but you are permitted to call me Professor M-O-O-D-Y." He spelled out the name on the chalk board with a force, and turned his glass eye towards the class. "ex-Auror and your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher."

I rose a brow and looked around the class, noticing that I had chosen the desk that was right next to the blond boy named Draco that I had punched at the World Cup. Awkward.

"I am here because Dumbledore asked me to be, that's it, end of story, good bye, the end." He peered around the room sternly. "Any questions?"

      No replies were given.

He continued, "When it comes to the Dark Arts, I like to use the practical approach. But first, which of you can tell me how many Unforgivable curses there are?" 

      My stomach clenched and unclenched under Moody's gaze. Something about him threw me off, warned me that he wasn't all there, in a sort of wisted way. However, many adults would probably sum this all up to a hard life lived hunting down Dark Wizards and locking them away. I tried not to think about all he must have seen.

      "Three, sir." Hermione piped up with a sombre face. A dark gloom cast over the rows of students. It seemed to suck the life out of the room, and I couldn't help but wonder where the hell this guy was going with this on day one of class.

      "And why are they so named?" He turned to the board and began scrawling a list.

     Hermione looked down at her hands with a frown, I could tell that she was disturbed by this topic. Even I was to an extent, who began the start of term with such a gruesome topic? "Because they are Unforgivable. Use of any one of them would-"

     "Would give you a one-way ticket straight to Azkaban!" Moody's crazy eye swirled around the room in a circle, almost hypnotizing. 

     "Now, the Ministry says you are too young to see what these curses can do, but I say different! You need to know what you're up against! You need to be prepared! You need to find another place to stick your chewing gum beside the underside of your desk, Mister Finnigan!"

    I snapped my head behind me and snorted as Seamus was caught about to stick some ABC gum under his oak wood table, a nasty habit. I snorted at him as he muttered under his breath. "Old codger can see through the back of his head," he muttered under his breath to Dean and Lana beside him.

Suddenly, an old and dusty eraser was flying across the classroom and smacked Finnigan right in the face. 

"And hear across classrooms!" I burst out a chuckled despite how hard I tried not to laugh and turned back in front of the class to watch Mad-Eye Moody. "So-which curse shall we see first?"

    "Wait, wha--," Jenna whispered softly to me, trying not to be the next eraser victim.

     Suddenly my heart was pounding and my palms were sweating. He was really going to demonstrate the curses to the class? The dark feeling that was encasing my body from this man had me freaking out and I wanted to run out of the room.

     "WEASLEY!"

      "Ye-yes." Ron looked up at Mad-Eye and paled with fear.

"Stand." Ron did as commanded. "Give us a curse."

     I sat straighter in my chair, bracing my feet against the dark stained floor, trying to tell my brain to keep my feet where they were. Ron muttered the name of the Imperious Curse to Moody and then quickly sat down. 

     "He couldn't do this," I muttered to Jenna and we both watched in anticipated horror.

     Moody walked back to his desk and grabbed a fairly large spider. Pointing his wand at it, he muttered. "Imperio." 

     Faintly, I looked at Hermione and saw that she had the same scared expression on her face as I did. These curses were not to be done at all, let alone in front of students.

 Moody made the spider fly across the room and crawl on top of people, but I didn't find it amusing like the rest of the class. It made me sick to see the creature being used as a puppet and it made my mind think of all of the poor people who were forced to do things when Voldemort was still at large.

    "What should I have her do next? Jump out the window?" People began to realize that it was not something to laugh about and the room became dead silent. "Drown herself?" I looked up at Moody darkly, I knew what he was trying to get across to us, but this was just horrific.

    "You see, many witches and wizards have claimed that they only did You-Know-Who's bidding because they were under the Imperious Curse. So, how do we sort out the liars?"

I cringed and Neville slowly began to raise his hand. "The Cruciartis Curse?"

"Correct! Correct! Come, come." Moody waved him over to the spider that lay limp on the table. "Crucio"

The spider began to scream and writhe around, but Moody just watched it. Neville's face became contorted and her began to cover his ears. My stomach twisted in to knots and before I knew what was happening, I was out of my set yelling at the professor.

     "Are you seriously suggesting that the Ministry of Magic, the people who made the Unforgivable Curses unforgivable, actually used Cruciartis on innocents?!"

     Hermione protested at the same time, tears budding in the corners of her eyes. "Stop it! Can't you see what you are doing?! Stop it! This is torture!" 

    Suddenly, everything was silent, the spider had stopped crying out and everybody was staring at my sister in awe. Slowly, Moody walked over to Hermione, spider in hand and set the creature on the desk. He coughed and looked me in the eye. "Don't put too much faith in your government, young lady." 

     I swallowed the bile in the back of my throat and shook my head in disbelief, muttering lowly under my breath: "They're not my government," as I sat down, feeling deflated.

     Professor Moody tapped a thick, scarred finger against the desk in front of my sister's face and scowled. "Maybe you can give us the last curse, Miss Granger?" Hermione choked on a knot in her throat and shook her head. He was not going to make her contribute to this. 

       "No?" He frowned at pointed his wand at the spider. "Avada Kedavra." A flash of green blinded me for a few seconds, but when it faded I saw the limp spider laying on my sister's desk.

     "You're disgusting," I muttered at him. 

His glass eye swirled around to meet my dark gaze and a nodded. "Good-you need to know that followers of You-Know-Who are not to be played with and that they are disgusting."

     I just turned my face away from him and looked across the room and at the wall. However, even after I turned away, I could still see the limp body of the insect in my mind, and I could hear the echos of its screaming in my memory.

     "Only one person has survived the Killing Curse. And he is sitting in this room." Moody walked towards Harry and Ron's desk, peering darkly down with his chin tucked, both eyes boring deep into Harry's bespectacled ones. "Class dismissed."

     I looked at my pocket watch to see that it was ten minutes early, but frankly, I didn't care. I needed to get out of this classroom as soon as possible. Quickly, I gathered all of my books and stalked out of the room, wanting to put as much space between DADA class and me as quickly as possible.

     I took the corridors blindly, unsure if Jenna and Lana were close behind or not. I was probably getting myself lost somewhere in the halls of the Castle, to be honest.

      A loud chuckle rang out from behind me, but I kept moving towards my next class which was in the dungeons. "Stop it! Can't you see what you're doing? Stop it!" The voice mocked me in a high pitched squeal.

    My emotions were running high and I didn't have any patience to deal with annoying people right now, so I ignored her. 

     "Can't you see what you're doing?!" She mimicked again. "You and your sister really are pathetic, Granger. It was only a stupid spider. Quite the melodramatics, but what else are we to expect from Americans?"

    Again I ignored the girl, but it was getting harder and harder to do, I began to descend the spiral steps, the girl kept up with my pace. She was a Slytherin with cropped black hair at her chin and an upturned nose that was perfect for looking down at others, despite her short stature. 

"Stop it! Stop it!" She chuckled, but all I saw was red.

In my anger, a stain glass window next to me quivered with brute force, but I couldn't get a handle on it this time. Who was this black haired chick to think that torturing an innocent creature was perfectly okay? Suddenly my hand reached out and grabbed her by her shirt and slammed her against the wall. "Shut up." I hissed quietly at her, venom seeped through every word.

       Her mint green eyes tripled in size. Just as I'd thought, all talk. "W-What are you goin-g to do if I d-on't?" Her lip quivered, but she tried to pretend she was as hard as a rock.

I shoved her against the wall once more with a glare and rolled my eyes at her as she whimpered. "Nothing, you aren't worth it." I let go of her and began to descend the stairs once more.

     The girl shoulder-checked me as she scampered down the rest of the stairs, joining forces with a couple more girls dressed in green cloaks at the bottom. I could hear them asking 'What's wrong, Pansy?' 

     Ha, Pansy.

     I inhaled deeply through my nose and tried to stifle the mixed emotions swirling around my brain. Something told me that may come back to haunt me, but I couldn't focus on it for too long.

      "What was that all about?" A french-accented voice rang out from the top of the stairs and I looked up to see Lana peering down at me with pride, whisps of fire-engine red hair falling out of her braids around her devilish grin. She was always one to enjoy a good fight or two. Behind her, Hermione, Ron, Jenna and Harry had gathered with curious expressions.

     "I guess I took that a little far, huh?" I sighed and rubbed my forehead.

Ron laughed out loud and grinned. "I would never fight a girl, but I say that you put Pansy in her place."

     "I agree." Hermione frowned, an angry crease formed between her brows. "There is a reason those curses are unforgivable! And to preform them in a classroom!" They had walked down the steps to meet me and we continued to the main floor as one big group. "I mean did you see Neville's face?!"

     I nodded solemnly as Harry tapped Hermione, pointing at a disengaged Neville who was standing right next to us, peering through a stained glass window. She hadn't even seen him, and I could tell by the quick flush in her cheeks that she'd said something embarrassing and private at that moment. 

     Neville, however, didn't seem to notice our existence at all. He simply continued to stare out the stained glass window, watching the rain beat against the panes as he clutched his Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook against his chest.

"Neville?" Jenna reached out and shook the boy and he jumped a little. "What's the matter?"

     Suddenly, heavy foot steps were behind us and a thick hand reached out and grasped Neville's other shoulder. I glared up at Professor Moody, not expecting to see him. For a moment, I felt a quiet rage. But, there was a softness in his expression, as he gruffly addressed our classmate. 

     "Neville, are you all right?" He looked around at our group before looking back at Neville. "Come with me to have a cuppa. I want to show you something." And then, they were gone. 

     Lana came over and stood beside me. "Come on, Elle. We have Advanced Potions next, don't wanna be late." 

________

[2011 A/N:

Hey All!

So! Here is the latest installment of the Fred Weasley story! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did writing it-actuallyI hope you enjoy it even more than that! XD

See you all in the next chap!! If you see this commmmeeeennntt....hmm...comment 'Iced Tea'?

Love you guys!

xoxo Jess

Please Comment, Vote and Fan? 

Song for Today: Tell Me I'm A Wreck-Every Avenue ]

[10-YA A/N: Can't believe how long it took me. What would you like to see in this re-write? ]