As it turned out, Neville’s new found enthusiasm for schoolwork barely survived the first day. This was due to a particularly brutal Potions lesson on the Monday afternoon. Professor Snape was for some reason in an incredibly foul mood and felt no compunction in taking it out on his students. The slightest error or mistake was leapt upon and witheringly criticised. In fact, for once, the Slytherins with whom the Gryffindors were sharing the class fared little better than they did. Snape’s anger seemed indiscriminate.
The whole experience did little for Neville’s confidence and he got through the lesson only by copying Hermione at every possible opportunity. He thought he’d done well to only lose Gryffindor ten points by the end of the lesson. As usual, it was Harry who suffered the worst, with Snape stalking round Harry’s cauldron in his black cloak, like some vampire ready to strike. Neville was quietly astonished with the good humour with which Harry took the abuse meted out to him and reflected on how ridiculously unjust it was that Snape should be so cruel to him simply because of what his father had been like twenty years ago.
“What’s got into Snape today?” Ron asked after the lesson was finally over.
“I don’t know,” replied Dean. “Apparently someone saw him having a row with Dumbledore over something this morning. Maybe that set him off.” Nobody else could offer a better explanation.
All things considered, it was then particularly fortunate that Neville’s timetable called for Muggle Studies first thing on a Tuesday morning. Muggle Studies was Neville’s second favourite subject, behind Herbology. This was all the more surprising because, unlike Herbology, he didn’t have a natural gift for the subject. He was a pure-blood, so inexperienced in Muggle matters, and he generally found essay writing, which was a large component of the subject, extremely difficult.
However, he had become fascinated by the subject and was developing a strong respect and admiration for Muggles. This had largely gone unnoticed by his friends, who politely assumed he took the subject as a mere “easy option”. Similarly the Slytherins didn’t call him “blood traitor” yet, but he supposed it would only be a matter of time. He actually thought he would be quite comfortable with the label.
The attendance in the class seemed sparser than in the previous year to Neville when he entered the classroom. Of course Hermione was no longer there, having dropped the subject at the end of the previous year to lighten her workload, but others appeared to have left as well. Nonetheless, Professor Burbage was not disheartened. It was in a large part due to her enthusiasm that Neville had come to like Muggle Studies so much. She launched into an eager informal debate on recent Muggle history, which would be their topic this term.
Neville had been afraid that now being the only Gryffindor in the class, he would be somewhat isolated, but Burbage’s inclusiveness easily prevented that. She discussed with the students the great Muggle wars of the twentieth century, which all seemed vast and terrible beyond Neville’s imagination, until she explained how the deadliest of the wars had created the turmoil in Europe which allowed the Dark wizard Grindelwald to rise to power. Neville had heard legends of Grindelwald, a tyrant and Muggle-hater as bad as Voldemort in his time.
“Some witches and wizards like to believe the Statute of Secrecy means we never affect Muggles and they never affect us,” observed Burbage. “In fact, that is far from being the case. Just as the Second World War of the Muggles led to wizards suffering under Grindelwald’s tyranny, so Muggles suffered under You-Know-Who’s reign of terror. In wars, everyone suffers in the end.”
Neville left the lesson with his determination to improve in his studies restored. Professor Burbage’s lessons always gave him something to think about. As he was leaving, he overheard a couple of Hufflepuff girls, Susan Bones and Hannah Abbot, approach Burbage and rather impertinently ask her about Sirius Black. Sirius had been quite popular among the female students, and obviously some had found out about Burbage’s relationship with Sirius. Burbage gently batted the questions away with a noncommittal answer. Neville wondered if the relationship had ended, or whether Burbage was simply being discreet.
Meanwhile, Neville’s first lesson with Sirius’ replacement as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor was still upcoming. He had seen Moody stalking around the halls of Hogwarts occasionally, his magical eye keeping a constant watch on everyone around him. Some Gryffindors had already had their first class with him. Fred’s assessment when asked was “Brilliant, but definitely several ingredients short of a potion.” This mysteriousness added to the anticipation among the fourth year Gryffindors for their first experience of Mad-Eye, as everyone seemed to call him.
That moment finally came on Thursday morning. The Gryffindors took their seats in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, which seemed to have changed little from Sirius tenure; it was still somewhat cluttered and disorganised. Their teacher appeared to be late, so they quietly waited for him to arrive.
Suddenly a flash of red light shot over their heads, instinctively making them duck, and the spell impacted on the blackboard at the front of the classroom, leaving a large scorch mark. From behind them a gruff voice boomed out, “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!” Everyone turned. Professor Moody stood in the doorway of the classroom, wand outstretched. He lumbered past them to the front of the room and turned, affixing them with a beady stare from his magical eye.
Without bothering to introduce himself, he growled, “Not one of you was watching the door, and half of you don’t even have your wands out. If you want to have any hope of defending yourselves you need to BE ALERT!” He yelled the last two words so loudly half the Gryffindors jumped in their seats, and everyone scrambled to get out their wands. “You! Potter!” he cried, pointing at Harry.
“Yes, sir?” said Harry, bemused.
“If you’re going to bring Dungbombs into my classroom, I would thank you not to keep them in your desk, boy.”
Harry was astonished, but dutifully opened his desk and removed the Dungbomb, placing it in his robe pocket. “How did he know it was there?” he whispered to Ron. Ron pointed at his eyeball by means of explanation.
Meanwhile, Moody had taken out a copy of the textbook and was holding up to the class. “Everyone has a copy of one of these?” he asked. There were murmurs of agreement and much rummaging in bags to retrieve the book. “Good, because you will need it for the assignments I will set, which will not be easy, I can assure you. But inside this classroom I don’t want to see them. Put them away. Here, and when facing real danger, they are as much use as this.” He tossed the book into a waste paper bin. Hermione looked slightly affronted.
Moody leaned on the teacher’s desk, his wand twitching in his hand. “The world is a dangerous place. Anyone that tells you otherwise is fooling you, or fooling themselves. It is not my job to sugar-coat those dangers, or to tell you that everything is going to be all right. Chances are it won’t be. No, my job is to give you a fighting chance and I intend to do that, my own way. When I took on this job, I told Dumbledore I would do it by my rules, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. So you can forget the syllabus. You’re old enough to know the truth, and I’m going to give it to you.”
He reached back down into the bin and pulled out the book again. Pointing his wand at it, he transfigured it into a small grass snake. “If you’re going to know the truth, that means knowing the worst of it. The Unforgivable Curses.” There was a sharp intake of breath around the room. “The Ministry would prefer you not be told about them; that you’re too young and not in any danger yet. Nonsense. The time is NOW!” Again he bellowed. “We are all constantly in danger, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help. And I know for a fact that for each curse, at least someone in this room has had close experience of it.
“Use of any of the three Unforgivable Curses carries an instant life sentence in Azkaban. Why is that? Some would say there are equally insidious spells out there. I’ll tell you why. A lot of nonsense is put about saying these spells are extremely difficult. They’re not. In pure magical terms, they are relatively simple, requiring little expertise. But the point is, to execute them properly against another human being, you have to want to cause pain and suffering. You have to train yourself into the mindset to take pleasure in the outcome of the curse, to truly desire the effect it has. That is what makes them so evil, and so difficult for most people. Each time a person uses them in anger, it only corrupts them more and more.”
The Gryffindors were sitting on the edge of their seats listening to him, fascinated and terrified by what Moody was saying. “Curse number one: the Imperius Curse.” He levelled his wand at the grass snake and cried, “Imperio!” Instantly the snake stopped slithering, as if rigid. Directing his wand, Moody began to toy with the snake, making move, rise up and fall like an expert snake charmer would. After a few seconds he stopped. “Power over the mind,” he explained. “The Imperius Curse makes the sufferer utterly subservient to the caster’s will, so long as the caster chooses to exercise that power.
“In the war against You-Know-Who, the Imperius Curse was his most powerful weapon. How do you know who to trust, and how do you know if a wizard is truly innocent or guilty of his crimes? Constant vigilance is your only protection.” He paused for a moment. Neville looked round to see that Parvati Patil was shaking a little.
“Curse number two,” Moody continued, “the Cruciatus Curse.” He pointed his wand once more at the snake. “Crucio!” The snake began to writhe and twist in terrible agony. Moody stopped after only a few brief moments. “Power over the body. The Cruciatus curse inflicts terrible, unimaginable pain. If prolonged, it can cause permanent injury, or even death. It is the rarest of the curses only because delight in such pain is felt by few of even the most depraved Dark wizards and witches.” Moody’s eye briefly glanced up to the back of the room.
“The final curse,” he went on, “and the most feared. The Killing Curse. Power over life and death.” Pointing the wand at the grass snake for the last time he cried, “Avada Kedavra!” A jet of green light struck the snake and it fell dead instantly. Everyone in the classroom gasped and Neville shivered, unbidden scraps of memory surfacing in his mind. “I do not apologise for showing you that,” said Moody, seeing the reaction. “Ignorance is far more dangerous than anything the truth can do to you. No known magical barrier is effective against the Killing curse. If struck, the victim dies instantly, leaving no visible mark. On only one known occasion have both those things failed to happen, some thirteen years ago.”
Neville, sitting at the front of the class, could feel the eyes of his classmates boring into the back of him. Instinctively, his hand went to the scar on his forehead, the unique mark that set him apart. It seemed to tingle, as if recognising the spell that had created it.
Moody however paid Neville no attention and merely continued his lecture. He described how to detect evidence that the curses had been used, what defensive measures could be used to combat the Cruciatus Curse, and how to prevent oneself falling victim to the Imperius Curse. “Preparation, determination, and a strong mind are essential,” he said. “Also, never allow yourself to be caught off guard, not even for a moment. A split second mistake can be your last.”
It was clear from listening to Moody that he had a vast array of experience of fighting Dark wizards to draw upon, which, together with his many scars, perhaps explained his rampant paranoia. Neville found himself somewhat in awe of the man, with his imposing demeanour and his blunt no-nonsense approach to teaching. He was both frightening and inspiring at the same time.
At the end of the lesson, everybody left chattering amongst themselves, except for Harry and Ron, who filed out quietly. As Neville was just getting up, Moody said, “Longbottom, stay a moment.” Surprised, Neville glanced at Hermione, wondering what he’d done wrong. Hermione just shrugged and said, “I’ll see you at lunch, Neville,” before leaving.
Moody waited until the classroom was deserted apart from him and Neville before pulling up a chair opposite Neville and sitting down. “I wanted to have a private word with you, Neville,” he said. “It’s good to meet you at last. You may not know, but I knew your parents quite well.”
“Really?” said Neville. He hadn’t known. Nearly everything he’d learnt about his parents he’d got from Gran, and she’d never mentioned Moody.
“Oh, yes. Your mother was the finest recruit I ever taught in Auror training, and your father the most determined. We fought together many times in the war. I attended their wedding. I hardly saw them again after you were born and they had to be put under guard, and I couldn’t protect them in the end. So I’ve always felt I owed something to Frank and Alice’s son.”
Moody drew a hip flask from his pocket and took a swig. He offered one to Neville, who was rather disappointed to discover it was only water. “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, what were my parents like?” he asked.
“They were soldiers, my boy. Fighters on the front line. Always first into the fray and the last to retreat. Alice Jones, as she was then, was my protégée, and a finer caster of defensive wards I have not seen. But where there was Alice, there was always Frank Longbottom. Inseparable they were. I’ve never met a man so gentle in private, and yet so fierce in combat. Didn’t your Gran tell you about them?”
“Not much,” Neville admitted.
“Funny old woman, Augusta Longbottom,” Moody mused. “Some said she was half mad, though they’ve called me worse. Frank’s death hit her hard. I doubt she likes to dwell on it.”
“She’s always telling me how I have to live up to them,” Neville said.
“A tough ask. If you want my advice, be yourself, Neville. Your parents believed in that, and so do I.” Moody’s magical eye spun to look at the clock on the wall. “Well, I’m keeping you from your lunch. Dumbledore tells me you’ve struggled in some classes and confidence is your biggest problem. I just wanted to say, I’ll be watching out for you, and if you keep up with my class, I’ll make sure we’ll find some of that patent Longbottom courage in you. See you next lesson.”
Neville went to go, astonished at what he had just learnt and wondering what it would mean for the year ahead. But as he approached the door, Moody called out, “One last thing, Neville, towards keeping my promise to watch out for you. I have one further piece of advice, and this is very important. Do not, under any circumstances, trust Severus Snape.”
Neville Longbottom and the Goblet of Fire by Sonorus
Chapter Notes: In which we encounter Alastor Moody and view his class on Unforgivable Curses.