Harry Potter and the Secret Treasures

Chapter 517: Moody’s First Lesson

The storm had blown itself out by the following morning, though the ceiling in the Great Hall was still gloomy.

Heavy clouds of pewter gray swirled overhead as Evan and Colin arrived to the Great Hall. 

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were examining their new course schedules at breakfast.

Of course, it was mainly Hermione who talked while Harry and Ron were both listening.

A few seats along, Fred, George, and Lee Jordan were discussing magical methods of aging themselves and bluffing their way into the Triwizard Tournament.

In fact, all the young wizards in the Great Hall were discussing this topic.

The senior wizards of the right age are all secretly complacent, and each had a good feeling that he was about to become a champion.

“Good morning, Evan, Colin, I just heard about your schedule from Hermione; it’s really good!” said Harry, greeting Evan and Colin, who sat down. “Your first course is with Mad-Eye Moody. That must be great.”

“Yeah, my course schedule is a little worse!” said Ron, who was running his finger down the Monday column of his schedule. “Look at this morning. Herbology with the Hufflepuffs and Care of Magical Creatures… damn it, we’re still with the Slytherins!”

“Double Divination this afternoon.” Harry groaned, looking down. Divination was his least favorite subject, apart from Potions. Professor Trelawney kept predicting Harry’s death, which he found extremely annoying.

“It’s not until Friday afternoon that we’ll have Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and it’s after having Potions all morning.” Ron went on and read, “That’s really bad. Why can’t we just have this class on Monday like we did in third year?!”

Harry also nodded and agreed with Ron.

If they knew that Moody intended to use black magic such as some of the Unforgivable Curses on students, Evan wondered if they would be so longing to his class.

“Evan, here’s your schedule. I’ve magically marked the lessons and it will remind you of them automatically.” Hermione handed him the schedule, “So you won’t be late when you’re too absorbed by reading in the library..”

“Thank you!” Evan put the schedule in his bag.

Compared with last term, he also had a lot of courses this year.

He took Divination, Care of Magical Creatures, and the Study of Ancient Runes, and Colin chose the same.

“Hermione, I notice you’re eating again!” said Ron, watching Hermione adding jam to her toast.

“I’ve decided there are better ways of making a stand about elf rights,” said Hermione haughtily.

“Yeah.. . and you were hungry,” said Ron, grinning.

Either way, it was a good thing that Hermione took the initiative to eat. Otherwise, Evan would have to ask Dobby to prepare food for both of them separately.

After a while, while they discussed what creatures Hagrid would show them in this year’s Care of Magical Creatures class, Hedwig flew into the Great Hall with a mail. It was a package from Sirius.

He sent Harry a lot of candy for everyone, which made Harry particularly happy.

On the first day of school, the owls brought a lot of things the young wizards had forgotten at home. 

Over time, this had become a school tradition, owl mail from home.

For the first time, Harry received a parcel at this time, giving him the warm feeling of having a home.

After breakfast, the students went to their different classes separately.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were going to the outside greenhouse for Herbology, and Evan and Colin went to the Defense Against the Dark Arts on the second floor.

When they both arrived, they found that the classroom was already full of students.

Everyone was in high spirits and was looking forward to Moody’s course. This was a first in recent years.

Ginny had arrived early, and she kept the two of them two chairs right in front of the teacher’s desk; they rushed to sit down.

In the classroom, the mood was exceptionally quiet, and everyone took out their copies of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection, and waited.

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. I don’t need those things in my class. Wands out!”

The young wizards returned the books to their bags, and they were extremely excited.

According to past experience, taking out the wand meant that this course was to be very interesting.

A few seconds later, 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 my predecessor, and I know something about your current progress. Although you have accumulated some foundation in dealing with dark creatures, you still lack actual combat experience and have not seen real black magic. This is the most crucial thing.”

His magical eye turned quickly, and Moody reworded what he had said to Evan last night.

He told everyone to be prepared and alert.

“So… do any of you know which curses are most heavily punished by wizarding law?” 

Evan sighed. Sure enough, this guy was really ready to use Unforgivable Curses in the classroom.

No one in the class answered, and the young wizards seemed to be frightened by Moody’s teaching theories.

They looked at each other uneasily, and finally focused on Evan, expecting him to answer the question.

“Mason, you answer!” said Moody. After confirming that no one would answer, he called out Evan’s name directly.

“Professor, there are many incantations that the Ministry of Magic forbids wizards to use. At present, there are about ten thousand legal documents still in force. They can be traced back to thousands of years ago, involving tens of thousands of incantations.” Ivan answered, “The details are unknown, but once these curses are discovered, they will be severely punished by the Ministry of Magic. I made a simple categorization of these black magic spells, which can be divided into Curses, Horcruxes, Necromancy, Evil Spirit Summoning, family-blood magic, and magic that directly illegally alters the bodies of humans and magical animals. Of course, this is not all, and…”

The classroom was silent, and everyone looked at Evan with surprise, their mouths open wide enough to swallow an egg.