Harry Potter 04 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

McGonagall stared anxiously after them for a few moments, then waved her wand at her fallen books, causing them to soar up into the air and back into her arms.
    ‘Don’t talk to me,’ Ron said quietly to Harry and Hermione, as they sat down at the Gryffindor table a few minutes later, surrounded by excited talk on all sides about what had just happened.
    ‘Why not?’ said Hermione in surprise.
    ‘Because I want to fix that in my memory for ever,’ said Ron, his eyes closed and an uplifted expression on his face. ‘Draco Malfoy, the amazing bouncing ferret …’
    Harry and Hermione both laughed, and Hermione began doling beef casserole onto each of their plates.
    ‘He could have really hurt Malfoy, though,’ she said. ‘It was good, really, that Professor McGonagall stopped it –’
    ‘Hermione!’ said Ron furiously, his eyes snapping open again. ‘You’re ruining the best moment of my life!’
    Hermione made an impatient noise and began to eat at top speed again.
    ‘Don’t tell me you’re going back to the library this evening?’ said Harry, watching her.
    ‘Got to,’ said Hermione thickly. ‘Loads to do.’
    ‘But you told us Professor Vector –’
    ‘It’s not schoolwork,’ she said. Within five minutes, she had cleared her plate and departed.
    No sooner had she gone than her seat was taken by Fred Weasley. ‘Moody!’ he said. ‘How cool is he?’
    ‘Beyond cool,’ said George, sitting down opposite Fred.
    ‘Supercool,’ said the twins’ best friend, Lee Jordan, sliding into the seat beside George. ‘We had him this afternoon,’ he told Harry and Ron.
    ‘What was it like?’ said Harry eagerly.
    Fred, George and Lee exchanged looks full of meaning.
    ‘Never had a lesson like it,’ said Fred.
    ‘He knows , man,’ said Lee.
    ‘Knows what?’ said Ron, leaning forwards.
    ‘Knows what it’s like to be out there doing it ,’ said George impressively.
    ‘Doing what?’ said Harry.
    ‘Fighting the Dark Arts,’ said Fred.
    ‘He’s seen it all,’ said George.
    ‘’Mazing,’ said Lee.
    Ron dived into his bag for his timetable.
    ‘We haven’t got him ’til Thursday!’ he said in a disappointed voice.

 
     
— CHAPTER FOURTEEN —
     
The Unforgivable Curses
    The next two days passed without great incident, unless you counted Neville melting his sixth cauldron in Potions. Professor Snape, who seemed to have attained new levels of vindictiveness over the summer, gave Neville detention, and Neville returned from it in a state of nervous collapse, having been made to disembowel a barrelful of horned toads.
    ‘You know why Snape’s in such a foul mood, don’t you?’ said Ron to Harry, as they watched Hermione teaching Neville a Scouring Charm to remove the toad guts from under his fingernails.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Harry. ‘Moody.’
    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.
    ‘Imagine if Moody turned Snape into a horned toad,’ said Ron, his eyes misting over, ‘and bounced him all around his dungeon …’
    The Gryffindor fourth-years were looking forward to Moody’s first lesson so much that they arrived early after lunch on Thursday and queued up outside his classroom before the bell had even rung.
    The only person missing was Hermione, who turned up just in time for the lesson.
    ‘Been in the –’
    ‘– library,’ Harry finished her sentence for her. ‘C’mon, quick, or we won’t get decent seats.’
    They hurried into three 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