"You do realize what class we have next?"

Terry waved the piece of parchment in front of me, our class schedules and timetable scrawled on it in spindly black lettering.

I shook my head. The Weasley twins' faces flashed in my mind, Fred's grin swimming in my vision as I snapped back down to earth. Annoyance pulsed through me again, more of a dull throb in comparison to the fire I felt burning through my veins when I stormed down the corridor to tell them off for their asinine little demonstration. "I was...distracted yesterday. I forgot."

"Well, no fireworks can get us out of this one," he replied grimly, rolling up the parchment and stuffing it into the pocket of his robes. "We've got Defense Against the Dark Arts with Moody."

I had to force myself not to freeze in the middle of the busy passageway as students rushed by us in every direction.

We'd all heard rumors about Alastor Moody. In a school full of teenagers, it was next to impossible not to — they always spread like wildfire, fictitious or not. The rumors ranged on a scale from believable to laughable; from him being hyper-paranoid and always carrying around some Veritaserum to question potential enemies, to him firing a curse at a witch who shouted boo at him on April Fools Day. Some laughed at the stories while others seemed to be undecided on whether they should be in awe or fear of him.

But it wasn't the wild rumors that made my heart pound as Terry and I scaled a moving stairway, swinging to the left to connect with the west wing of the castle, where the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom was.

Alastor Moody was an Auror. A great one, undoubtedly. He'd had more encounters with Death Eaters than any other Auror alive and made sure that they were thrown into Azkaban where they belonged.

My mother had been no exception.

No one else had been able to hunt her down. Concealing her identity; meddling with people's memories so they would forget they ever knew her name. She'd avoided all other Aurors for years until Moody came along.

I don't remember much of it at all — Moody apprehending her. It's more of a vague notion; an understanding of what took place rather than a real memory. None of the rumors about Moody's paranoia could outmatch my mother's — the memories of my childhood were still blurred and confused, stirred up and addled as if my mother had reached her hand in and twisted them until they were unrecognizable. Untraceable. They came back in flashes; sometimes terrible nightmares that had me waking with a start in a cold sweat.

Apparently, even sparkling joke wands were enough to set them off now.

In a sense, I was grateful to Moody. Grateful that he ended my years of torment and darkness, right when I was beginning to believe I would never feel hope again. I started attending Hogwarts shortly after she was sent to Azkaban for life. I would never have to face her again, save for in my nightmares.

But nothing could stop the terror gnawing away at me. The terror of Moody recognizing my face somehow, at him realizing who I was. At him knowing what I'd done.

The image of an Azkaban cell flashed into my mind; dim and gruesome, the rest of the prison filled with other Dark witches and wizards wailing and moaning in their cells, my mother somewhere among them. The very thought of it made my insides cold, as if I had just plunged into the Great Lake in the middle of winter.

I forced the thought out of my head just as we stepped into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, Terry a few steps ahead of me. I settled into the wooden bench next to him as the rest of the students filed in, talking amongst themselves. Within a minute, the door banged open, and Moody lumbered through.

The talking died down almost instantly.

Alastor Moody certainly had a distinct appearance. He was impossible to miss — Dressed in his usual black coat with his flask of putative Veritaserum by his side, he took up the whole room with his presence. His awkward gait was due to his wooden leg, and he used a large, twisted branch of a tree as a walking stick, which made a thunderous clatter on the wooden floorboards. But as Moody reached the front of the classroom and turned around, we were all reminded of his most distinctive feature of all: his magical eye.

Electric blue and bulging out of its metal ring, it whizzed around freely, both transfixing and hideous to watch. That very eye was the reason for his nickname, and it hadn't escaped the rumors, either. Apparently, he had lost his original eye in battle as an Auror, and his new magical eye could see through anything — wood, metal, you name it.

I could only pray it couldn't see through me.

His eye whizzed around to see all of us, and my heart lurched sickeningly as it rested on me.

No.

Please.

He only looked at me for a second before turning to the other side of the room, but my heart was already in my throat, the palms of my hands clammy.

Once Moody had finished his scan — what exactly he was looking for, I didn't know, perhaps there was some truth to the rumors and he was checking to see if one of us snuck in some poison or something — he finally spoke.

"Professor Moody. Your new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Ex-Auror. Full-time Dark wizard hunter." Another eyeball scan of the room.

We all stayed silent.

"Now, for all of you, this is your sixth year. Is that correct?"

Only Terry had the courage to give a nod.

"You've gone through your O.W.L.s. You've been taught about Dark creatures. Theoretical study of counter-curses?"

Another nod from Terry, but no one else.

"Counter-curses," Moody said, turning around and scribbling on the blackboard. "Are something you'll see more of this year. But there's something more important than that." The chalk squeaked to a halt, making a few students sitting in the front row wince at the sound. "How are you to fire the correct counter-curse if you don't even know what kind of Dark magic you're defending yourself against?"

Moody stepped back from the blackboard so we could all see what he wrote, and shivers erupted down my spine as I read the scrawled words.

UNFORGIVABLE CURSES

"Who can tell me what the Unforgivable Curses are?"

A few students shuffled uncomfortably in their seats and exchanged glances, but otherwise stayed quiet, as if wondering who would speak first.

Moody didn't give us a chance to decide. "You!" He pointed at Lillian McCormer, a Hufflepuff girl, who began to turn pink. "Can you tell us what the Unforgivable Curses are?"

"E-excuse me, Professor," the girl said timidly, her eyes wide and fixed on her desk, as if she couldn't believe her own courage in talking back to him. "But I thought the Ministry didn't allow us to be taught about the Unforgivable Curses."

All eyes went back on Moody, who huffed.

"The Ministry can allow and disallow what they want," he said. "Dumbledore would prefer you to be prepared for anything. And that especially includes the Unforgivable Curses."

Lillian grew pinker, ducking her head. Moody turned, readying to select another out of the room, but then someone else spoke up just in time.

"The Unforgivable Curses are considered the most wicked curses a witch or wizard could ever cast on another, Professor." The voice belonged to Mallory Dillard, a dark-haired fellow Ravenclaw. "Even a single use of them results in the caster of the Curse earning a life sentence in Azkaban."

Dread seeped into my bones as Moody pointed at her. "Correct! And how many of them are there?"

"Three, sir."

"Ten points to Ravenclaw." He turned back to the blackboard, scribbling a number 1, 2, and 3 below UNFORGIVABLE CURSES.

My heart lurched in my chest. I was beginning to feel nauseous.

"Now who can tell what those three are?"

No. Please.

Don't look this way.

No one spoke up this time.

"When it comes to the Dark Arts," Moody said after a few moments of silence, "I've always believed in a practical approach." He took out his wand, flicking his hand toward Mallory. "You. Come up here."

Mallory walked up to the front of the classroom hesitantly, her eyes flicking back and forth from Moody's eye to his wand, her jaw set and head held high as if trying not to show any fear.

"This is just a demonstration, or the Ministry'll have my neck," Moody said as he gripped his wand and aimed it at Mallory, whose eyes widened for a fraction of a second before he uttered the words: "Imperio."

Instantly, Mallory's entire demeanor changed. Instead of looking tense, her eyes were suddenly unfocused and dreamy, a smile forming on her lips. She snatched a piece of chalk from the blackboard and started writing without diligence to the screeching noise she was making, and almost everybody yelped and covered their ears as she wrote.

Once she stood back, we could see what she had written, just to the right of the number 1:

The Imperius Curse.

Someone in the back of the room gave a snicker, and within a second, Mallory launched the piece of chalk in her hands their way, making them duck before it cracked neatly in half against the back wall. Moody was glaring at them.

"Makes the bearer of the Curse do your bidding," Moody explained as he lifted his wand, breaking the curse. Mallory looked around the classroom, then down at her hands in visible confusion, which were still white and dusty from the chalk. With another flick of Moody's wrist dismissing Mallory, she scurried back in her seat, her cheeks flushed.

"Who can tell me another one?" Moody's question permeated the still air.

His eye whirled around. Left, right, center. And then back on me.

No.

"You."

Please.

I lifted my gaze to meet his, blood roaring in my ears.

The silence in the room was deafening. All I could hear was my mother's voice in my ear.

You know the spell.

I forced myself to speak, but even when I did, it didn't sound like my voice at all, flat and distant. "The Cruciatus Curse."

"Correct," Moody said, his eye still on me.

My thoughts began to run wild. Did he recognize me somehow after all? Would he call me out in the middle of the classroom? Take me aside after class? Turn me into Dumbledore himself?

Please, don't make me say anything more, I begged silently as I dropped my gaze back to the desk in front of me.

I heard the clunk of Moody's wooden leg as he made his way over to a small cage that had been left on his desk. "Can't demonstrate that on any of you, or the Ministry'll really have my head. Not that you'll want to experience that — and you'll understand why."

When I looked up, Moody had a large spider in his hand, his wand pointed directly at it.

My heart fell as I realized what he was going to do, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.

"Crucio."

The spider instantly squirmed uncontrollably in his hand. It sounded like it was emitting a high-pitched shriek of sorts, but it was far away, like screaming underwater. All I could hear was the boy's screams that made my stomach turn over and chilled me to the bone.

I fought the urge to bolt from the classroom altogether as Moody finally lifted his wand, relieving the spider from its torture and putting it back in its cage. He scribbled on the blackboard again, this time next to the number 2: The Cruciatus Curse.

"Particularly nasty curse," Moody said gruffly. "Inflicts extreme pain on the victim of the curse. Not like any pain you'd ever felt before."

I implored my heart to slow down, to no avail.

This is your last command, Arianna. Do it.

"I don't suppose anyone will tell me the last Unforgivable Curse?"

Silence.

"I thought as much." Moody pointed his wand back at the spider, who was trembling and twitching from its recent ordeal.

"Avada Kedavra."

A flash of green light emitted from his wand, and as soon as it hit the spider, it toppled over and lay still, all of its legs stiffening and the rest of its body suddenly immobile.

"The Killing Curse," Moody said, and this time, he didn't bother writing it on the blackboard. "It has no known counter-curse or survivors, save for one."

He didn't have to say the name for all of us to know. Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. The only known survivor of the Killing Curse.

"A witch or a wizard can get resistant enough to shake off the Imperius Curse altogether," Moody said, his eye flicking back and forth to look at all of us. "Even the Cruciatus Curse won't work unless the caster of the curse intends to do great harm to the other to their very core."

The boy's screams echoed endlessly in my ears.

"But casting any one of them, as your fellow classmate pointed out, sends you straight to Azkaban, no questions asked," Moody said, gripping his walking stick. "And labels you a Dark witch or wizard the moment you fire it."

A rustling punctuated the air as a few students shifted in their seats.

I kept my eyes on the desk in front of me for the rest of the lesson, my own voice reverberating in my head, the words of the curse I had fired upon the trembling boy in front of me. The very curse I should have been sent to rot in Azkaban for, and hadn't. The very curse that made my hands and soul black with my dark, sordid deeds, no matter how much I tried to scrub them clean.

Crucio.