Despite her shaking, that audacious girl raised her hand again. "Yes, Granger?" "Avada Kedavra," she whispered. Several people looked uneasily around at her. The circle that the Potter girl had surrounding her actually glared at Granger, appearing to try to close ranks while remaining in their seats.
If the Potter girl appreciated the sentiment or even cared about what Granger had said, she gave no sign of it; instead, she stared calmly at the notes she was taking and idly stroked her doll's hair. "Ah," said Barty, a slight smile twisting his lopsided mouth.
"Yes, the last and arguably the worst. Avada Kedavra . . . the Killing Curse."
He retrieved the last spider and placed it upon the desktop. It started to scuttle frantically across the wooden surface. "Avada Kedavra!" he roared. 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 failed to stifle their cries.
"Not nice," he said calmly. "Not pleasant. And there's no countercurse. There's no blocking it. Only one known person has ever survived it, and she's sitting right in front of me." The Potter girl's cheeks reddened as all eyes fell on her. She hugged her doll tighter but said nothing in acknowledgement.
"Avada Kedavra's a curse that needs a powerful bit of magic behind it," Barty eventually said, drawing attention back to himself. "You lot 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. "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 Barty finally dismissed them, a torrent of talk burst forth. As the crowd of chattering students swept out of the classroom, Barty noted that Potter drew the Longbottom boy into the midst of the herd of Hufflepuffs, pulling him along to walk arm in arm with her.
"Come on, Neville," he could see her lips forming the words. "Let's get you a nice cup of tea." With an imperceptible glance and an unwavering disapproving frown in Barty's direction, Potter ushered the still distressed boy out of the room. For reasons beyond Barty's comprehension, his stomach churned in the same way it did when the Dark Lord expressed his displeasure with him.
Heri looked up from the book she was reading at the sound of confusion from the person next to her. "And what's that supposed to mean?" Sally-Anne mumbled, casting an annoyed look at her notebook. It was the second week of term and all classes were in full swing, the hustle of lessons as active as ever. The excitement over the Tournament had died down a bit when the daily grind set in and now it was only discussed during free periods instead of up and down the corridors as it had during the first few days.
Out of the two that had Time-Turners the year before, Heri was the only one still making use of hers. Hermione had turned hers in at the end of last year after she finally accepted that she wasn't capable of using it to the desired effect. Without the Gryffindor girl acting as an ever-present pressure to obey the rules strictly, Heri had taken to sneaking in a few turns of the hourglass for other academic (though personal) pursuits. It wasn't as if she was goofing off! Professor McGonagall had said the Time-Turner was for her studies, and Heri sure as Hell was studying things in depth during her extra hours.
She would likely be the very top of the class in Ancient Runes, Ghoul Studies, and divination for all the extra effort she was putting into them. She knew that some people thought she flew through lessons with minimum effort, but it wasn't possible for anyone to be good at everything, and if there was one thing Heri was familiar with, it was hard work.
Hard work was a given when you were often begrudged the very air you breathe. Still, to maintain her image, she had taken to doing the majority of her assignments either under her invisibility cloak during her repeated days — when she only needed to be seen in public during her extra electives — or in her stolen moments. On this day, being Friday, Heri was taking advantage of the fact that all her assignments for the week were already completed to build onto her image of not needing to put in an effort.
While her friends and hanger-ons buckled down to finish up for the weekend, she was reading a graphic novel about the adventures of a gutsy warrior-in-training during the era of an ancient Japanese civilisation that used their magic as a tool for warcraft.
She had been utterly absorbed in a moving dialogue by Maelstrom (the main character) when Sally-Anne made her displeasure known. "What's wrong?" Heri asked, marking her page and putting her book down. "Divination assignment," Sally-Anne sighed.
"You know the one. We're supposed to keep a log of predictions we make every day using the methods we've been taught.
Then we're supposed to compile the predictions and explain what we think it means."
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