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Chapter Three:
unforgivable curses

ADELAINE was relieved when she found out it wasn't her doing that turned draco into a ferret. it was actually professor moody. although, she couldn't relax until she safely made it out of the great hall and into the library, and it was only then did she let out the breath she was holding in.

she spotted cedric at a table by the window and hurried over to him. she covered his eyes with her hands as she stood behind him and said, "take a guess."

she felt cedric's body move as he chuckled. "bagoly?" he said the name of her owl. she laughed and removed her hands from his eyes. he turned around and grinned. "i never would've guessed."

"you'll never guess what happened today in the great hall," she squealed, feeling herself get excited just thinking about the moment. "i cast a spell on draco malfoy and he flew 10 feet into the air! and then he turned into a ferret, but that wasn't my fault -"

"slow down," cedric laughed. "you cast a spell on draco malfoy? for what reason other than he's a bit of a pain in the ass."

"i," she paused, not really sure exactly why she did it. "he was arguing with harry potter and ron weasley."

"since when do you get yourself in the middle of their feud?"

adelaine slumped down in her chair and looked anywhere else but cedric's gaze. "you sound disappointed," she finally said after a few minutes.

"i could never be disappointed in you, aines," said cedric, his gaze softened. "i just don't want you in association with harry potter. i like harry and think he doesn't have a bad bone in his body but, bad things seem to follow him everywhere he goes. you're good adelaine, you get good grades, you care about people, who knows what'll happen if you get yourself mixed up into harry potter 's business."

adelaine didn't know what to say. instead, she pulled out her school work from divination and began to work that out. every so often she would glance up at cedric and almost tell him that him entering the triwizard tournament was probably just as, or even more dangerous than hanging around harry potter and yet she could tell he was going to enter the tournament besides.

no matter how hard she tried to focus on divination, she couldn't, so she rolled it up and tossed it inside her bag with all the other crumpled up notes she had. she was never a neat person with the perfect notes, she was the more laid-back ravenclaw. she envied the other ravenclaws who finished homework on time but she liked focusing on different things that actually interested her, like manticores.

cedric finished his homework and they decided to play a game. cedric would toss balls of parchment at her and she would have to use her wand to block them. she would miss a few of them and end up getting hit on the forehead but she found it hilarious. another time, she accidentally made the parchment fly across the library and hit a slytherin on the back of the head. the two quickly turned their backs and pretended to be focused on their homework while the slytherin looked around for who did it.

an hour passed and adelaine had to leave to meet with the weasley's. she didn't know why she was bothering to help them when she thought the whole idea was absurd but she already told them yes and couldn't bow out now.

"why didn't you just ask hermione for help?" adelaine asked while they wandered around the halls, wondering why they didn't ask the most brilliant witch of their age, who was actually in their house.

"we tried," answered fred. "she thinks it won't work, not the potion, but being able to find a loophole."

"but it's brilliant," said george with a wide grin. "it's just dumb enough to work."

they stood upon the stone steps. fred and george staring eagerly at her. adelaine stood with her arms crossed and sighed. "alright then. i'm going to need you to snatch a few things from snape for me."

"done," they said at the same time.

adelaine pulled out a roll of parchment and wrote down the items she would be needing to brew the potion, then handed it to them. they looked it over and scoffed, "easily."

adelaine grinned, because little did they know that she wrote down a few things on the list that weren't needed for the aging potion, but something else she was working on. "if either of you gets caught i want my name to stay out of your mouths," she said sternly. "i don't want detention for the rest of the month over an idea that wasn't mine to begin with."

"don't you worry, love," said fred. "focus on brewing the potion."

✶

days passed and the weasley twins haven't conjured up all the things on the list yet because snape was keeping a very close eye on them. adelaine didn't mind though — she was busy doing other things like helping harry and ron with their divination homework. she figured out how to do it and since they were kind enough to let her sit with them, she helped them.

on thursday, she noticed them waiting outside of moony's classroom. "hey, adelaine!" ron yelled, beckoning her over. "this lesson is going to be amazing according to my brothers. they say he knows what it's like to be out there fighting the dark arts. huge step up from gilderoy lockhart."

"hopefully he's as good as professor lupin," said adelaine.

"no one will be as good as him," said harry.

the bell rang and they walked into the classroom. adelaine felt her heart sink when she noticed that the desks only held three people and knew hermione would be sitting with harry and ron. she was just about to tell them she'd talk to them later and go sit at a table near the back when harry said, "they really should make the tables longer. sucks for those people who have 4 in a friend group. let's sit over here adelaine, and ron can sit with hermione when she shows up."

harry didn't give her time to reject because he was already sitting down at one of the tables and ron was sitting down in another one. she had friends at hogwarts but never any really close friends that she could talk to about anything, except for cedric, and she couldn't lie and say she didn't feel goosebumps on her arms when harry referred to her as a friend in his group.

they took out their copies of the dark forces: a guide to self-protection, and waited. harry leaned over to her and whispered, "thanks by the way, for what you did to malfoy the other day."

her body froze. "i don't know what you're talking about."

"you were the one who cast the spell that made him fly up into the air," explained harry. "neville longbottom saw you. he was standing behind you and talking to luna lovegood."

"don't tell anyone, okay?" she begged. "my parents would be so disappointed." cedric didn't like it, so her parents definitely wouldn't.

"i won't tell anyone," said harry. "but you should know it was brilliant."

soon they heard moody's distinctive clunking footsteps coming down the corridor, and 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."

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 red caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, kappas, and werewolves, is that right?"

"and boggarts, sir," said hermione granger.

"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 from his spot beside hermione.

"i'm staying just the one year. special favor to dumbledor....one year, and then back to my quiet retirement."

adelaine couldn't say that she was sad about that, because moody gave her chills and didn't know how she was going to survive the whole year in his class.

"curses. they come in many strengths and forms. 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."

adelaine had been drawing on a piece of parchment, only half-listening because she already knew everything he was saying. plus, she didn't have to be focused to absorb what professors were saying. professors always think she's not paying attention and ask her a question as punishment, in which she answers perfectly and boredly. the professors can't do anything else because she was always right despite not really paying attention.

"hallows!" professor moody yelled, making her jump. "do you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?"

"yes," adelaine sighed. "the three unforgivable curses; the imperius curse, the cruciatus curse, and ... avada kedavra." she tried not to look at harry like everyone else, knowing his history with the last curse. "the killing curse."

"explain them to me," said moody.

"the imperius curse places the victim completely under the casters control, though some people can resist it," explained adelaine.

moody reached into the jar, caught one of the spiders, and held it in the palm of his hand so that they could all see it. he then pointed 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. it stretched out its legs rigidly, then did a back flip, breaking the thread and landing on the desk, where it began to cartwheel in circles. moody jerked his wand, and the spider rose onto two of its hind legs and went into what was unmistakably a tap dance.

"years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the imperius curse," said moody, and adelaine knew he was talking about the days in which voldemort had been all-powerful. "some job for the ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will."

"next one," moody told adelaine.

"the cruciatus curse inflicts excruciating pain on the victim," adelaine said apprehensively. "it's used as torture."

turning back to the class at large, he reached into the jar for the next spider and placed it upon the desktop, where it remained motionless, apparently too scared to move. "the cruciatus curse," repeated moody. "needs to be a bit bigger for 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, ron pushed his chair backward, as far away from 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 and began to twitch horribly, rocking from side to side. no sound came from it, but adelaine was sure that if it could have given voice, it would have been screaming. moody did not remove his wand, and the spider started to shudder and jerk more violently.

"stop it!" hermione said shrilly.

"pain," said moody softly after reducing the spider back to original size. "you don't need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the cruciatus curse....that one was very popular once too."

"and the killing curse, miss hallows?" prompted moody.

adelaine could hear harry's shallow breaths from beside her. his hands were clenched under the table as every student in the room stared at him. "no," adelaine mumbled. she knew he was going to perform the curse and she didn't want any part of it. especially when it was going to be performed in front of harry. it was the first time she's ever said that to a teacher.

moody stared her down, fire in his eyes. "say it!"

adelaine stood up so abruptly that her chair scattered across the floor. "no," she glared. "i will not."

he put his hand into the glass jar, and almost as though it knew what was coming, the spider scuttled frantically around the bottom of the jar, trying to evade moody's fingers, but he trapped it, and used his wand to place it in front of adelaine on her desktop. it started to scuttle frantically across the wooden surface.

"avada kedavra!" moody roared as he pointed the wand at the spider.

there was a flash of blinding green light and a rushing sound, as though a vast, invisible something was soaring through the air - instantaneously the spider rolled over onto its back, unmarked, but unmistakably dead. several of the students stifled cries; adelaine stood frozen.

"not nice," moody said calmly. "not pleasant. and there's no countercurse. there's no blocking it. only one known person has ever survived it, and he's sitting right in front of me."

adelaine picked up her chair and sat down slowly. her eyes shifted to harry's clenched hands and before she knew what she was doing, she was gently releasing them and giving him a comforting touch. harry let his breath out and looked at her with appreciation.

"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 at me 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? because you've got to know. you've got to appreciate what the worst is. you don't want to find yourself in a situation where you're facing it. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" he roared, and the whole class jumped again.

"the use of any one of the unforgivable curses on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in azkaban. that's what you're up against. that's what i've got to teach you to fight. you need preparing. you need arming. but most of all, you need to practice constant, never-ceasing vigilance. get out your quills...copy this down...."

adelaine didn't need to copy them down, she knew enough about them already. she sat there with her arms crossed as an act of defiance. she hated professor moody for bringing up the fact that harry was a survivor of the killing curse. everyone in the room knew it already, it didn't need to be brought up again. she hated him even more for using the curse in front of him.

professor moody walked across the room and stopped beside her desk. "if you can't even talk about the killing curse how are you supposed to fight against it?" he asked harshly.

"tell that to the people who can't even say lord voldemort out loud," she retorted. the students close enough to hear what she said let out quiet gasps. harry looked at her but didn't say anything. moody grunted and walked away.

"you're really something," said harry under his breath. a small smile forming on his lips.

"i hope it's a good kind of something," said adelaine. harry looked over at her and nodded.

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AN:

i always use hallows as a last name because i love it so much. adelaine and cedric are so cute but so are harry and adelaine. i can't wait for the drama to unfold. this story is following very closely to the book but it will soon start becoming my own.