Chapter 122: Dark Magic
On Tuesday evening, a Slytherin Prefect delivered a note from Professor Snape to Jon.
Snape ordered Jon to report to his office on Saturday night for detention. The task: gut a large barrel of horned toads and extract their hearts and livers.
Jon took the note helplessly, resigned to the reality of detention.
...
The next two days passed uneventfully.
Many students were eagerly looking forward to Moody's first Defense Against the Dark Arts class.
On Thursday afternoon, before the bell had even rung, they were already lined up outside Moody's classroom.
The moment the bell chimed, the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom doors opened of their own accord.
Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw students rushed inside, clutching copies of The Dark Arts: A Self-Defense Guide. They took the front seats, the atmosphere unusually hushed.
“You don't need those textbooks!” A few minutes later, the distinctive thump of footsteps sounded outside. Professor Moody hobbled in, dragging his heavy wooden leg. “In Defense Against the Dark Arts, all you need is your wand—and to listen to my lectures!”
Everyone eagerly stowed their books back into their bags.
Moody pulled out the roll and began calling names one by one.
His normal eye moved down the list, while his magical eye spun constantly, fixing on each student as their name was called.
“Very good...” At last he lowered the roll, his voice hoarse and low. “I see the hunger for learning in your eyes!”
“...Just a few days ago, I received a letter from Professor Lupin. He told me about your progress in this class. Professor Lupin said you’ve learned the basics of dealing with certain dark magic creatures—you’ve learned how to handle Boggarts, Red Caps, Hinkypunks, Grindylows, Kappas, and Werewolves, correct?”
“Yes!” the students answered, nodding in unison.
“However, when it comes to countering true dark magic, you’re still far from ready... a long way off!” Professor Moody paused, then continued, “That’s why Professor Dumbledore brought me in. I have one year to teach you how to deal with dark magic spells—”
Seeing a few puzzled looks, Moody nodded. “Yes, just one year, doing Dumbledore a favor... one year, then I go back to my quiet retirement.”
“Dark magic—terrifying, dangerous, and treacherous...”
Moody drew his wand and tapped the blackboard lightly. A large image appeared upon it.
“Can anyone tell me what this is?” Moody asked in a deep voice.
Jon frowned. The image showed a person—or rather, a corpse—its skin and features rotted and ruined. It stumbled through the darkness, tearing and crushing everything around it...
A Ravenclaw girl raised her hand, trembling.
“Very good, Miss Bobbin!”
“Professor Moody, I think... this should be...” Ravenclaw’s Melinda Bobbin stood, her voice shaking. “Inferius!”
“Correct. This is an Inferius—no life, no soul, no thought. Summoned and controlled by dark magic... a true walking corpse,” Moody said in a low voice.
“An Inferius begins as a dead person. If you brutally murder a Muggle or a wizard and leave the body intact, you can turn it into an Inferius... During the Dark... Dark Lord’s reign of terror, there were countless Muggle massacres, yet the bodies all vanished... Minister Millicent Bagnold suspected the Dark Lord was trying to build an army of Inferius, but before he could finish, he was defeated by a one-year-old child, and the matter faded away!”
Jon keenly caught Moody’s slip of the tongue, though the other students clearly didn’t.
“Inferius have obvious weaknesses; they fear fire and light and prefer dark, damp places... so simple magic can work wonders against them!”
“Now, let’s move on to the next...”
Moody gave his wand a flick. The image vanished, replaced by a mass of blazing fire.
The flames seemed alive, constantly shifting into ferocious beasts as they devoured and incinerated everything.
Almost everyone looked puzzled. Jon sat quietly, not raising his hand.
“The Fiendfyre,” Moody sneered. “A flame that cannot be extinguished!”
“Indeed, you can hardly put it out—with neither water nor sand. A terrifying blaze, it consumes everything it touches, including the one who summoned it... The most powerful Incinerating Fire in history nearly destroyed a city of a million souls!”
“There are only a few spells that can halt the Fiendfyre, and they’re all exceptionally advanced...”
Moody stood there for a moment, thinking, and didn’t elaborate further on the Fiendfyre.
Then he waved his wand one last time.
The final image appeared—a woman, a living woman... Her face twisted with pain and ferocity, her body shifting again and again until she finally turned into a gigantic spider.
Zacharias Smith shot his hand up.
“Oh, Mr. Smith?”
“I know what this is, Professor Moody!” Zacharias said excitedly. “It’s an Animagus, right?”
Moody froze, then forced a strained smile.
“An Animagus... No, certainly not an Animagus,” Moody shook his head. “An Animagus is a powerful Transfiguration spell, not dark magic. Clearly this is not that. This is one of the most dreadful, most cruel curses.”
“A Blood Curse!” Moody’s expression grew grave. “It binds the soul of a monster to the soul of a young wizard... an unbreakable curse, unless you destroy both fused souls simultaneously with a Counter-curse...”
“Typically, the Curse of Blood can only take hold of a wizard’s soul in the womb or during infancy. Male wizards, whose innate souls are weaker, have their souls devoured almost instantly; female wizards may last a bit longer, but that’s hardly a blessing!”
“The monster’s soul will still gradually seize control and become dominant. Early on, the wizard will transform into the monster involuntarily and unpredictably; later, at a certain point, the wizard will completely lose memory and consciousness and become a true monster!”
“It might be a giant spider, a snake, or something even more terrifying...”
“Wizards who become monsters possess power beyond ordinary beasts!”
“There is no cure—unless you destroy both souls at the same time... There are a few known spells that can delay a blood curse’s eruption, but they only hold it off for a decade or two at most!”
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