Slytherin, Raised By Wolfstar: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

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Chapter Twelve: The Unforgivable Curses

The weekend passed quickly, it was beautiful outside but Harry didn’t get to enjoy it from all the research he was assigned. The fourth years midnight Astronomy class did help as he was able to ask Professor Sinistra what planet was most in focus near the end of July, which happened to be Venus, and this helped him get on the right path of his homework.

Monday was one of Harry’s most busy days, having History of Magic, Care of Magical Creatures, and Charms class. His ghostly Professor for History of Magic was as dull and boring as ever, but Harry managed to stay awake because he was looking forward to the class immediately after.

A booming bell echoed throughout the castle, signaling the end of the lesson, and the class separated; the Ravenclaw’s climbing the marble steps towards DADA, and the Slytherins headed in the other direction, they went outside, down the sloping lawn toward Hagrid’s small wooden cabin, which stood on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. The Gryffindors had already arrived.

Hagrid was standing outside his hut, one hand on the collar of his enormous black boarhound, Fang. There were several open wooden crates on the ground at his feet, and Fang was whimpering and straining at his collar, apparently keen to investigate the contents more closely. As they drew nearer, an odd rattling noise reached their ears, punctuated by what sounded like minor explosions.

‘Mornin’ everybody!’ Hagrid said, grinning at Harry, Tracey, Allison, and Theodore. ‘Now before I begin, I would like ter show ya all somethin’. Blast-Ended Skrewts!’

‘Sorry? What?’ said Harry.

Hagrid pointed down into the crates.

‘Ewww!’ squealed Daphne Greengrass, her face contorting at what she saw.

“Ewww!” just about summed up the Blast-Ended Skrewts in Harry’s opinion. They looked like deformed, shell-less lobsters, horribly pale and slimy-looking, with legs sticking out in very odd places and no visible heads. There were about a hundred of them in each crate, each about six inches long, crawling over one another, bumping blindly into the sides of the boxes. They were giving off a very powerful smell of rotting fish. Every now and then, sparks would fly out of the end of a skrewt, and with a small "phut", it would be propelled forward several inches.

‘On’y jus’ hatched on Thursday,’ said Hagrid proudly, ‘so I’ll be makin’ it a project for yeh’ll ter raise ’em yerselves! It’ll be fun.’

‘And why would we want to raise them?’ said a disgusted Malfoy. Draco didn’t really like Care of Magical Creatures, especially after having his arm broken by a hippogriff the year before. The only reason he seemed to stay in the class was breeders of powerful creatures like dragons and unicorns make a lot of money. He seemed only interested if the creature had a purpose other than simply living. ‘I mean, what do they do? What is the point of them?’

Hagrid opened his mouth, apparently thinking hard; there was a few seconds’ pause, then he said roughly, ‘Tha’s next lesson, Malfoy. Yer jus’ feedin’ ’em today. Now, yeh’ll wan’ ter try ’em on a few diff’rent things—I’ve never had ’em before, not sure what they’ll go fer — I got ant eggs an’ frog livers an’ a bit o’ grass snake — just try ’em out with a bit of each.’

‘And I thought angry Veela’s were ugly,’ muttered Allison.

Nothing but admiration for Hagrid could have made Harry, Theodore, Allison, and Tracey pick up squelchy handfuls of frog liver and lower them into the crates to tempt the Blast-Ended Skrewts. Harry couldn’t suppress the suspicion that the whole thing was entirely pointless, because the skrewts didn’t seem to have mouths.

‘Ouch!’ yelled Dean Thomas after about ten minutes. ‘It got me!’

Hagrid hurried over to him, looking anxious.

‘Its end exploded!’ said Dean angrily, showing Hagrid a burn on his hand.

‘Ah, yeah, that can happen when they blast off,’ said Hagrid, nodding.

When the smell of the livers started combining noxiously with the Skrewts blast, Tracey couldn’t take it anymore and had to ask, ‘Hagrid, why did you get these, I don’t see a purpose to them at at?’

‘I didn’ get em, I bread em myself. The ministry asked me to make somethin’ no one’s ever seen before an’ dats all I’ll say.’

Suddenly Lavender Brown let out a moan, ‘Eurgh! Hagrid, what’s that pointy thing on it?’

‘Ah, some of ’em have got stings,’ said Hagrid enthusiastically (Lavender quickly withdrew her hand from the box, and half the class followed). ‘I reckon they’re the males...The females’ve got sorta sucker things on their bellies...I think they might be ter suck blood.’

‘Well, I can certainly see why we’re trying to keep them alive,’ said Malfoy sarcastically. ‘Who wouldn’t want pets that can burn, sting, and bite all at once?’

‘Every creature has a purpose, Malfoy,’ Hermione snapped.

‘Yeah,’ said Tracey, ‘the creatures you are so interested in, unicorns and dragons, might have incredibly useful magical properties, but if you had them as a pet they would probably kill you within a day.’

Harry, and Tracey grinned at Hagrid, who gave them a furtive smile from behind his bushy beard. Hagrid would have liked nothing better than a pet dragon, as Harry and Tracey knew only too well—he had owned one for a brief period during their first year, a vicious Norwegian Ridgeback by the name of Norbert. Hagrid simply loved monstrous creatures, the more lethal, the better.

‘I’m just grateful they are tiny,’ said Allison as they made their way back up to the castle for lunch an hour later.

‘They are currently just babies,’ Theodore explained cautiously. ‘They seem to be part fire crab or scorpion so they’ll get at least a foot long.’

Harry looked shocked at Theodore, ‘What do you mean, at least?’

‘Well, they are clearly bread with something else, meaning for all I know they could grow from anywhere between one to ten feet long.’

Allison shrugged, ‘If Hagrid and Tracey think they’ll be useful then I guess they’re ok.’

‘Oh, no I think we should sneak out tonight and squash them all while we still can,’ said Tracey to Harry’s surprise. ‘I was just trying to make Malfoy look bad and get on Hagrid’s good side. But yeah, I don’t see a purpose to those things other than to kill anything that gets to close.’

Charms class with Hufflepuff that afternoon was a breath of fresh air, no incredibly boring teacher, and no deadly babies to feed. With the start of their fourth year, they would be moving on from basic charms and into some more larger scale charms that could help them in everyday life.

Tuesday Harry and his friends had their first Herbology class. They crossed the sodden vegetable patch until they arrived in greenhouse three, why Professor Sprout showed the class the ugliest plants Harry had ever seen. Indeed, they looked less like plants than thick, black, giant slugs, protruding vertically out of the soil. Each was squirming slightly and had a number of large, shiny swellings upon it, which appeared to be full of liquid.

‘Bubotubers,’ Professor Sprout told them briskly. ‘For your first class you’ll be squeezing them. You need to collect the pus—‘

'Pus?’ said Theodore disgusted, ‘first frog livers and now pus?'

‘Yes pus, Mr Nott,’ said Professor Sprout, ‘and this pus is extremely valuable, so don’t waste a drop. You will collect the pus, I say, in these bottles. Wear your dragon-hide gloves; it can do funny things to the skin when undiluted, bubotuber pus.’

Squeezing the bubotubers was disgusting, but oddly satisfying. As each swelling was popped, a large amount of thick yellowish-green liquid burst forth, which smelled strongly of petrol. They caught it in the bottles as Professor Sprout had indicated, and by the end of the lesson had collected several pints.

‘You and the other class did very well, these viles will put a smile on Madam Pomfrey’s face,’ said Professor Sprout, stoppering the last bottle with a cork. ‘An excellent remedy for the more stubborn forms of acne, bubotuber pus. With a good supply it should stop students resorting to desperate measures to rid themselves of pimples.’

‘Like that girl Eloise Midgen,’ said Daphne, who loved to gossip. ‘I heard she tried to jinx or curse hers away.’

‘Yes, I had heard,’ said Professor Sprout, shaking her head. ‘But Madam Pomfrey fixed her nose back on in the end.’

That afternoon they had Potions with Gryffindor again, and poor Neville Longbottom melting his sixth cauldron in four years. Professor Snape gave Neville a gruesome detention involving disemboweling a barrel full of horned toads.

‘Snape is often harsh on Gryffindor, but I don’t ever think I’ve seen him give out a punishment that cruel,’ said Harry while thinking about Neville, who had been a childhood friend.

‘Don’t you see, he was his regular grumpy self on Friday, but after Moody went to see him he’s in a funk,’ Theodore explained.

It was common knowledge that Snape really wanted the Dark Arts 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 overt animosity to Mad-Eye Moody. Indeed, whenever Harry saw the two of them together—at mealtimes, or when they passed in the corridors—he 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,’ Harry said thoughtfully.

‘After what happened to Pansy, maybe he thinks Mad-Eye will turn him into a ferret and bounce him around,’ Allison laughed.

Wednesday they had Transfiguration with Hufflepuff, then another History of Magic class. It was Wednesday that Harry also received a letter from home which he read at once.

“Dear Harry

As you probably have read in the papers by now, I was forced to close the cafe, but not exactly for the reason they said I did. The protests were far from peaceful and it starting to become dangerous for the local muggles going about their daily lives, that and the enchanted graffiti was starting to get to much attention as well. I just want you to know though that everything is ok, I am not upset about closing shop, in fact it allows me to spend more time with Padfoot. So there is no need to worry.

One more thing though, she is to proud to tell you, but some second years got a look at the Werewolf registry list and have been bullying Canini. She says she can handle herself and I believe her, just keep an eye out to be safe.

~With love: Remus.”

Harry was somewhat relieved by this letter, but not quite. It was good to know Remus was ok and not upset, but it was still unfair that he had to lose the part-time job that had given him such joy. Also he now knew that a handful of students knew Canini’s secret and were harassing her for it which he would have to deal with when he gets the chance.

The day flew by quickly however and before he knew it he had finally made it to Thursday.

Bother the Slytherins and the Gryffindor fourth years were looking forward to Moody’s first lesson so much that they arrived early on Thursday lunchtime and queued up outside his classroom before the bell had even rung. The only student missing was Hermione Granger, who turned up just in

time for the lesson.

Harry and his friends hurried into four chairs right in front of the teacher’s desk, took out their copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, and waited, unusually quiet. 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.’

They returned the books to their bags, Theodore looking extremely excited.

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 boggarts, Red Caps, hinkypunks, grindylows, Kappas, and werewolves, is that right?’

There was a general murmur of assent, as well as some muffled laughter by Pansy and her gang when Moody mentioned Remus.

‘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 Weasley blurted out.

Moody’s magical eye spun around to stare at the Gryffindor; Ron looked extremely apprehensive, but after a moment Moody smiled—the first time Harry had seen him do so. The effect was to make his heavily scarred face look more twisted and contorted than ever, but it was nevertheless good to know that he was capable of doing something friendly such as smile. Harry could see Ron take a deep sigh of relief.

‘You’ll be Arthur Weasley’s son, eh?’ Moody said. ‘Your father got me out of a very tight corner a few days ago...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 hands together.

‘So—straight into it. Curses. They come in many strengths and forms. Now, 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. Their not going to do it nice and polite to your face. You need to be prepared. You need to be alert and watchful. You need to put that away, Miss Brown, when I’m talking.’

A Gryffindor girl, Lavender Brown, jumped and blushed. She had been showing Parvati Patil her completed Divination horoscope under the desk. Apparently Moody’s magical eye could see through solid wood, as well as out of the back of his own head.

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

Several hands rose tentatively into the air, including Allison’s , Theodore's, and Hermione Granger’s. Harry knew of all three illegal curses, but only one by name, and he didn’t feel like talking about it with the class, especially with Pansy in the room. Moody pointed at Ron, though his magical eye was still fixed on Lavender.

‘Er,’ said Ron tentatively, ‘my dad told me about one...Is it called the Imperius Curse, or something?’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Moody appreciatively. ‘Your father would know that one. Gave the Ministry a lot of trouble at one time, the Imperius Curse.’

Moody got heavily to his mismatched feet, opened his desk drawer, and took out a glass jar. Three large black spiders were scuttling around inside it. Harry felt Tracey shiver when she saw them—ever since their second year, spiders had made Tracey uneasy.

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.

Everyone was laughing—everyone except Moody. ‘Think it’s funny, do you?’ he growled. ‘You’d like it, would you, if I did it to you?’

The laughter died away almost instantly.

‘Total control,’ said Moody quietly as the spider balled itself up and began to roll over and over. ‘I could make it jump out of the window, drown itself, throw itself down one of your throats...’

It was now so silent in the room that Harry almost swore everyone was holding their breath.

‘Years back, there were a lot of witches and wizards being controlled by the Imperius Curse,’ said Moody, and Harry knew he was talking about the days in which Voldemort had been all-powerful. Remus and Sirius had never said the curse by name, but they had said how many Deatheaters were innocent people under his spell. ‘Some job for the Ministry, trying to sort out who was being forced to act, and who was acting of their own free will. The Imperius Curse can be fought, and I’ll be teaching you how, but it takes real strength of character, and not everyone’s got it. Better avoid being hit with it if you can. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!’ he barked, and everyone jumped.

Moody picked up the somersaulting spider and threw it back into the jar.

‘Anyone else know one? Another illegal curse?’

Allison’s hand went up once more, but to Harry’s shock, so did Neville’s. Harry knew a little bit about what happened to Neville's parents, and he never thought in a million years that Neville would discuss it in class. Neville looked surprised at his own daring.

'Yes?' said Moody, his magical eye rolling right over to fix on Neville.

'There’s one—the Cruciatus Curse,’ said Neville in a small but distinct voice.

Moody was looking very intently at Neville, this time with both eyes.

'Your name’s Longbottom?' he said, his magical eye swooping down to check the register again.

Neville nodded nervously, but Moody made no further inquiries, which Harry assumed must have been a relief for Neville. 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,' said 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. Several students, including Tracey, pushed their chairs 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 Harry 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 Granger said shrilly.

Harry turned around and looked at her. She was looking, not at the spider, but at Neville, and Harry, following her gaze, saw that Neville’s hands were clenched upon the desk in front of him, his knuckles white, his eyes wide and horrified. Harry could see the past trauma all over his ghost white face.

Moody raised his wand. The spider’s legs relaxed, but it continued to twitch.

'Reducio,' Moody muttered, and the spider shrank back to its proper size. He put it back into the jar.

'Pain,' said Moody softly. 'You don’t need thumbscrews or knives to torture someone if you can perform the Cruciatus Curse...That one was very popular once too...Right...anyone know any others?'

Harry knew the final one, it was the curse that had caused all his early tragedies, that had taken his biological parents away, the reason he had his scar. He didn't want to be the one that volunteered it. From the looks on everyone’s faces, he guessed they were all wondering what was going to happen to the last spider, almost no hands were raised, not even Allison's. Hermione’s hand shook slightly as, she raised it into the air.

'Yes?' said Moody, looking at her.

'Avada Kedavra,' she whispered.

Several people looked uneasy just at the name of the spell being spoken, Harry's year might have been born at the end of the war, but most had still lost someone from that curse.

'Ah,' said Moody, another slight smile twisting his lopsided mouth. 'Yes, the last and worst. Avada Kedavra...the Killing Curse.'

He put his hand into the glass jar, and almost as though it knew what was coming, the third spider scuttled frantically around the bottom of the jar, trying to evade Moody’s fingers, but he trapped it, and placed it upon the desktop. It started to scuttle frantically across the wooden surface.

Moody raised his wand, and Harry felt a sudden thrill of foreboding.

'Avada Kedavra!' Moody roared.

There was a flash of blinding green light and a rushing sound, as though a vast, invisible something was soaring through the air, this flash and rushing sound had haunted Harry's nightmares for nearly thirteen years—instantaneously the spider rolled over onto its back, unmarked, but unmistakably dead. Several of the students stifled cries; some couldn't stop staring at the spider that had been perfectly fine only a moment earlier, and Harry could not get the green flash of light out of his head.

Moody swept the dead spider off the desk onto the floor and spoke calmly, 'Not nice. 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.'

Harry felt his face redden as Moody’s eyes (both of them) looked into his own. He could feel everyone else looking around at him too. Harry stared at the blank blackboard as though fascinated by it, but not really seeing it at all...He hated everyone treating him differently for something he couldn't remember even doing, he knew just as little as they did...Had his parents been unblemished and unmarked too? Had they simply seen the flash of green light and heard the rush of speeding death, before life was wiped from their bodies?

Harry had been picturing his parents’ deaths over and over again for almost his entire life, more so since he was nine when Sirius had gently told him they had been murdered and not simply died, and especially ever since he’d found out what had happened that night: Wormtail had betrayed his parents’ whereabouts to Voldemort, who had come to find them at their cottage. How Voldemort had killed Harry’s father first. How James Potter had tried to hold him off, while he shouted at his wife to take Harry and run...Voldemort had advanced on Lily Potter, told her to move aside so that he could kill Harry...how she had begged him to kill her instead, refused to stop shielding her son...and so Voldemort had murdered her too, before turning his wand on Harry...Harry had been piecing these details together slowly over the last few years, from what he had heard from his parents’ voices when he had encountered some dementors last year, from little bits of information from Sirius and Remus, and from other people who had been around that night so many years ago.

Moody was speaking again, from a great distance, it seemed to Harry. With a massive effort, he pulled himself back to the present and 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 at me and say the words, and I doubt I’d get so much as a nosebleed.'

Harry wasn't so sure, in his second year Harry was able to learn a very dark spell and although he couldn't control it, he was able to cast it just fine. And Harry knew others in the class that knew one of two dark spells, Malfoy, Allison, even Hermione.

'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.

'Now...those three curses—Avada Kedavra, Imperius, and Cruciatus—are known as the Unforgivable Curses. The use of any one of them 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...'

They 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 them and they had left the classroom, a torrent of talk burst forth. Most people were discussing the curses in awed voices—'Did you see it twitch?' '—and when he killed it—just like that!'

They were talking about the lesson, Harry thought, as though it had been some sort of spectacular show, but he hadn’t found it very entertaining—and nor, it seemed, had Neville.

'Come on Harry,' Allison called out.

'Go on ahead, something I need to do.'

They all looked back with curiosity for a moment, but then Tracey got them to move along.

Neville was standing alone, halfway up a side passage, staring at the stone wall opposite him with the same horrified, wide-eyed look he had worn when Moody had demonstrated the Cruciatus Curse.

'Neville? Are you ok?' Harry asked gently.

Neville looked around.

'Oh, hello Harry,' he said, his voice much higher than usual. 'I'm fine. Interesting lesson, wasn’t it? I wonder what’s for dinner, I’m—I’m starving, aren’t you?'

'Neville,' Harry said slowly, 'what you did in class today was very brave. Although I think seeing the Cruciatus Curse made you think about your parents more than the Killing Curse made me think of mine.'

'Harry-' Neville gabbled in the same unnaturally high voice. 'It was horrible, I feel-'

But he was cut off by an odd clunking noise sounded behind them, and they turned to see Professor Moody limping toward them. The two of them fell silent, watching him apprehensively, but when he spoke, it was in a much lower and gentler growl than they had yet heard.

'It’s all right, sonny,' he said to Neville. 'Why don’t you come up to my office? Come on...we can have a cup of tea...'

Neville looked even more frightened at the prospect of tea with Moody. He neither moved nor spoke. Moody turned his magical eye upon Harry.

'You’re all right, are you, Potter? Do you need some tea too?'

'No, I am good,' said Harry as he backed away slowly, 'but thank you Professor.'

Moody’s blue eye quivered slightly in its socket as it surveyed Harry. Then he said, 'You’ve got to know these Curses. It seems harsh, maybe, but you’ve got to know. No point pretending...well...come on, Longbottom, I’ve got some books that might interest you.'

Neville looked pleadingly at Harry, but he didn’t say anything, so Neville had no choice but to allow himself to be steered away, one of Moody’s gnarled hands on his shoulder.

'What did you and Neville talk about?' asked Tracey when Harry caught up to his friends.

'Its personal, sorry. Not my place to tell.'

'That was some amazing lesson?' said Theodore as they set off for the Great Hall. 'Even when I lived with my father I never saw dark magic like that up close. It was just like I had heard it described, the Avada Kedavra curse, a flash of green light and instantly-'

'THEODORE!' Allison scolded. Theodore looked like he was about to question her, but she then pointed at Harry and his eyes widen a bit. He looked at Harry’s face and didn’t speak again until they reached the Great Hall, when he said he supposed he had to focus on his Transfiguration homework, and then later he was hanging out with Colin.

Harry felt gloomy for the rest of the evening, he just couldn't get that lesson out of his head, and his friends were now avoiding the topic as they didn't want to make him upset. So as they reached the Slytherin Common room, Harry, who had been thinking of nothing else all through dinner, now raised the subject of the Unforgivable Curses himself.

'Wouldn’t Moody and Dumbledore be in trouble with the Ministry if they knew we’d seen the curses?' Harry asked.

'Not sure,' said Allison. 'It is definitely illegal, however Dumbledore usually is able to get away with what he wants from the Ministry. As long as no one gets hurt, and no student starts to try and use those Curses, they should be fine.'

They all entered the Common Room and sat around one of the stone tables.

'Shall we get our Divination stuff done, then?' said Harry.

'Might as well,' Tracey moaned.

They went up to the dormitory to fetch their books and charts, Harry and Theodore took their copies of Unfogging the Future back down to the common room, and set to work on their predictions for the coming month with Tracey, and Allison worked on her Study of Ancient Runes homework. An hour later, they had made some progress, but not much. Though their table was littered with bits of parchment bearing sums and symbols, and Harry’s brain was as fogged as though it had been filled with the fumes from Professor Trelawney’s fire.

'I haven’t got a clue what this lot’s supposed to mean,' he said, staring down at a long list of calculations.

Allison rolled her eyes, but then a cunning smile crossed her face. 'Harry, you said that you are positive she is a fraud.'

'She has only ever been in a real trance twice, the rest of the time she is just as lost in the classroom as we are,' Harry answered.

'Then make it all up. Come up with realistic prediction and write them down. She will likely never know the difference.'

With that suggestion, Harry, Tracey, and Theodore got to work. Theodore spat out his first idea, 'On Saturday...I'll receive a message from above. Get it, the mail.'

Tracey went next, 'On Sunday I'll be unusually tired. Because we have Astrology the night before. Harry, yours will be easy, just say a lot of bad things will happen to you and she'll believe it.'

'Right,' said Harry, crumpling up his first attempt and lobbing it over the heads of a group of chattering first years into the huge stone fireplace. 'Okay...on Monday, I will be in danger of—er—burns.'

'From those abomination of a creature Hagrid made,' said Theodore darkly. He then started scribbling more ideas down, 'This is going to be fun.'

They continued to make up predictions (which grew steadily more tragic) for another hour, while the common room around them slowly emptied as people went up to bed. Allison's silky black cat Shabaz wandered over to them, leapt lightly into her lap and started purring. 'I think that's my cue to head to bed, don't stay up to late on this.'

They stayed for a little while longer, staring around the room, trying to think of a kind of misfortune he hadn’t yet used, Tracey then put her quill down.

'I am finished,' she said relieved.

'I am done too!' said Theodore triumphantly, throwing down his quill. 'How about you, Harry?'

Harry took one last quick look at his page, making sure that none of his predictions were repeated. After a moment he laid down his quill too, having just finished predicting his own death by decapitation. 'All done. Lets get to bed.'

When Harry and Theodore reached their dormitory, they were met with Hedwig who had a letter from home. Harry picked it up and Theodore tried to read over his shoulder, 'Is it for you Harry, or for me?'

'Its addressed to both of us actually. Here,' he held it out so they could both read it.

"Boys,

Mr Weasley has told us about the Tri-Wizard Tournament coming to Hogwarts. This is exciting times. However we just want to remind you of something before the two schools arrive. The headmaster of Durmstrang, Igor Karkaroff, was once a deatheater, so just stay alert when he is around. We don't think he'll do anything as he was a cowardly one, but it is still best you have all the facts. Now enjoy watching the events, although dangerous the Tri-Wizard Tournament is said to be like nothing else you've ever seen.

With kind regards:

~Sirius & Remus."

This letter was probably meant to reassure Harry that all was well, but it had the opposite effect. For a long time, Harry lay staring up at the dark canopy of his bed. The dormitory was completely silent. He couldn't stop thinking about the coincidences, his scar hurting again after a nightmare of Voldemort, deatheaters terrorizing the World Cup, the Dark Mark being cast, and now another deatheater was coming to Hogwarts. Harry lay awake for over an hour worrying about what this could all mean.