Chapter 108: Moody's Terrible Threat
Draco Malfoy was waiting bored at the Slytherin table, hungry enough to eat an entire Hippogriff.
Lightning and thunder roared from the ceiling above the auditorium, dimming the hundreds of candles floating in the air.
Through the gleaming, empty gold plates and goblets, Draco could see Harry emptying the water from his shoes. Hermione was also sitting at the table opposite, dripping wet, her shaggy hair no longer fluffy but plastered to her cheeks, looking as miserable as the other Gryffindor students.
He guessed it was Peeves who had done the trick, because he had seen him holding a large red balloon filled with water before he entered the hall.
I wonder what happened to her scar. Did it get wet?
How could such a clever little witch forget to cast a drying spell or a warming spell on herself? Draco thought anxiously, applauding and welcoming the new students entering Slytherin House: Malcolm Bardock, Graham Pritchard...
The tattered Sorting Hat was incredibly efficient. It wasn't long before all the new students were seated, and Dumbledore, dressed in regal dark green robes, announced the start of dinner. Empty plates were piled high with food, and the hungry students quickly devoured it.
Draco was chewing a piece of steak slowly and carefully. Even though he was very hungry, he tried his best to maintain the etiquette taught by Narcissa. He looked around calmly:
Beside him, Crabbe and Goyle were devouring their food—they were concentrating on a plate of grilled chicken legs as if it were the most important thing in the world.
At the other end of the table, Blaise was saying something to Pansy with a smirk, making her laugh so hard that she fell backwards.
Looking further away, at the opposite table, Hermione accidentally knocked over a tall golden wine glass. She pouted and looked at the orange pumpkin juice on the white linen. Her frown looked a little cute... He suddenly felt a subtle sense of happiness and satisfaction.
Everything is as before, and the world is peaceful.
Hogwarts shut out the bitter wind and rain, and everyone seemed like cheerful little fools.
Memories of his fourth-grade study life in his previous life came to Draco's mind. This year seemed to be a year without any worries for him personally.
He really wanted to stay in this moment forever.
No, maybe there are still worries.
For example, Mad-Eye Moody, who just walked into the hall, is the new professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts.
How could he have forgotten Alastor Moody?
He had humiliated Draco so deeply—turned him into a ferret in public. A Malfoy's pride had been crushed by this horrible former Auror.
When Dumbledore announced that this year's House Quidditch Cup was cancelled, he just felt a little depressed; but when the scarred face, the incomplete nose and the big blue eyes that were rolling around appeared at the door of the Great Hall, Draco felt a stomachache.
He listened to the cheers of his classmates around him - they were excited about the news that the Triwizard Tournament was being held at Hogwarts - and his mood suddenly fell.
"We don't have Professor Moody's class until Thursday!" Ron said disappointedly as he looked through the timetable during Care of Magical Creatures. "George and Fred said he was so cool and understood what 'working outside' meant. He said he'd seen it all!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" Hermione asked, trying to get some frog livers close to the grayish, slimy, deformed, shelled lobsters—the blasting-tailed skrewts that Hagrid had bred.
"No," Draco said, pulling her away quickly. "I don't think it's a good idea to put your hands near their tails. They'll explode. You'll get hurt."
"How did you know that?" Hermione said unconvincedly, and the next second she heard Dean Thomas's scream - "Ouch! It hurts me! Its tail exploded!"
"Ah, yes, that's what happens when they blow up," she heard Hagrid say seriously from the other side.
Hermione turned and looked at him in surprise, "Draco, how did you know? Hagrid just hatched them."
"That's not important. What's important is that we should nip it in the bud before it grows up." Draco said with disgust, "They are of no use."
"Hagrid wouldn't approve," Hermione said, shaking her head. "He's been wanting to keep this thing for a long time. Ron, what did you mean when you said Professor Moody 'knows how to work outside'?"
"I heard he demonstrated illegal Dark Magic spells in class," Ron said excitedly. "George and Fred admire him very much and think he's quite bold. No wonder, he used to be an Auror and caught a lot of Death Eaters, so he must be quite capable."
Draco was silent. Yes, Moody was a former Auror, and he had always been rude to Dark wizards.
He knew that an Auror-turned-wizard like Moody would hate him—hate him for no reason—just as Barty Crouch hated him.
They looked at him, but not just at him, but at the family behind him and his father's arms.
Draco could do nothing about it.
The Malfoy family rules once said: There are some things we cannot control, so we have to control ourselves.
Since he couldn't control their hatred or the fact that they would appear in front of him, he could only control his own behavior and act cautiously under their harsh attitude so that they couldn't find any fault with him.
Try to stay away from Professor Moody, Draco decided.
But some troubles cannot be avoided just by wanting to.
Even if Draco wanted to keep a low profile, Professor Moody was not going to let him off easily.
He showed strong hostility from the roll call during the first Defense Against the Dark Arts class: "Draco Malfoy - ah, yes, I know your father, son... you tell him that Moody is keeping a close eye on his son... you tell him for me..."
His demonic eye darted around in his old, rotten face, making Draco feel sick to his stomach.
"Yes." He said as calmly as possible.
Professor Moody looked at him fiercely for a moment before shaking his gray hair away from his twisted, scarred face, revealing his nose with a piece of flesh missing, and continued to call out names from the roster.
This is just the beginning.
In the next class, Professor Moody made a spider bigger while demonstrating the Imperius Curse, and it scared people everywhere. He made the poisonous spider tap dance and stay on Draco's face for a long time, and there was laughter in the classroom.
"Back then, the Imperius Curse caused the Ministry of Magic quite a bit of trouble," Moody said softly, controlling the twitching spider with his wand with great interest. "A considerable number of cowards, in order to avoid being thrown into Azkaban, made up all sorts of lies, saying they were under the Imperius Curse. I think they were just making up nonsense, though."
Draco tried to keep a straight face. It took a lot of self-control not to scream, not that he was as afraid of spiders as Ron, but anyone who had such an experience would feel physically uncomfortable.
"It's completely under my control." Seeing that he didn't react, Moody seemed a little bored and began to control the spider to roll continuously on the spot. "I can make it jump out of the window, or drown itself, or jump into the throat of one of your classmates..."
Ron in the front row shuddered. At this moment, all the students stopped laughing because of Professor Moody's words. Draco tried not to think that Professor Moody was threatening him.
Next, Professor Moody demonstrated the "Cruciatus Curse".
This was more like torture to Draco.
Professor Moody took a sip of the drink from the curved bottle he carried with him, smacked his lips with satisfaction, licked the corner of his mouth, and said coldly to the enlarged spider: "Crucio!"
Immediately, the spider's legs retracted and clung to its body. It turned over, and its body twitched violently, shaking from side to side.
If it could scream...
Suddenly, Hermione's horrible scream appeared in Draco's mind.
Bellatrix carved the name "Mudblood" into her bit by bit with a knife. She twitched all over under Bella's "heart-wrenching" torture, and her once bright eyes looked at him with pain and pleading.
And what was he doing at that time?
At that time, the hand holding the wand was shaking slightly, like a coward, and his heart was gradually filled with great pain and tearing feeling... but he did not move.
No... Hermione... He's going crazy...
"Stop!" screamed Hermione Granger.
She was sitting not far from Draco, so she could clearly see Draco's white-knuckled hands tightly gripping the table; she could also see that his gray eyes, which had just remained calm in the face of the spider, were now filled with deep fear.
Facing the Cruciatus curse, he looked like he was facing a werewolf or something even more terrifying with his bare hands.
There's something wrong with him, Hermione thought worriedly.
"...excruciating pain," Moody murmured, finally stopping his torment of the poor spider. "If you could cast the Cruciatus Curse, you wouldn't need thumbsticks or knives to torture someone...it was also quite popular at one point."
He glanced at Draco, obviously discovering the weakness of the young Malfoy. His crooked mouth twitched into a mocking smile.
"There's one last, most powerful spell." Professor Moody took out the last struggling spider from the jar and placed it on Hermione's desk, as if to express his slight dissatisfaction with being interrupted in his spell-casting. "Avada Kedavra!"
A green light flashed, and the spider turned over and lay on its back on the table. There was no scar on its body, but it was undoubtedly dead.
Just like Professor Charity Burbage, the former Muggle Studies teacher, lying on his back on the table, lifeless. Draco looked at the spider with a pale face, and those dark memories of the past came flooding back like a tide.
"The Avada Kedavra curse requires very strong magical power as a foundation - you can all take out your wands, point them at me, and recite this spell. I suspect that the most I will do is bleed from my nose..." Moody's voice echoed in the classroom, sometimes far away and sometimes near, prompting all the students to take out parchment and write down these knowledge points.
Hermione saw that all the students showed a feeling of extreme discomfort.
Harry turned pale, and Neville's face turned pale even earlier than his; Ron almost fell off his chair.
She also felt uncomfortable, she felt the threat of death, and she felt the awe of life.
But what she cared about most was Draco.
He remained motionless, clutching the corner of the table, as if he were experiencing the greatest fear in his life.
As soon as the get out of class was over, he jumped up and rushed out of the classroom with a pale face, as panicked as a murderer on the run, without even saying hello to her.
"I have to go now," she said hurriedly to Harry and Ron, whose face had returned to its normal color and who was speaking admiringly of Professor Moody.
For some reason, she found the tone harsh.
"Going to the library again?" Harry asked casually.
"No, I'm going to find Draco!" She hurriedly picked up the book "Dark Arts: A Guide to Self-Defense" and squeezed out from between the crowded students.
Hermione found him by the Black Lake, lying on the grass under an oak tree, staring blankly at the large, dark blue-gray clouds rolling across the sky - it looked like it might rain at any moment.
"Draco, why don't you go to dinner?" She appeared above his sight, blocking the gloomy sky with her fair face, and said in a light tone, "I saw there was chocolate cake in the hall today. Wouldn't you like it very much?"
"Hermione..." The boy on the grass looked very sad, even a little weak. He murmured, "I'm sorry... Hermione..."
"Why are you apologizing to me?" Hermione squatted down to look at him anxiously. His eyebrows were twisted up in a way that looked ugly. She tried to smooth them down with her hands, but to no avail.
"What happened? Was he scared by the Cruciatus Curse? Or the Killing Curse?" A worried look appeared on Hermione's face, and she continued to stroke his eyebrows.
He didn't answer.
Like a drowning man, he grabbed her wrist, grabbing the only piece of driftwood in the deep lake. He cast his eyes frantically to her arm - smooth, white, and without any scars.
"Thank goodness, thank goodness." He looked relieved, and his thumb kept stroking her arm, as if he could never touch her enough.
A faint blush crept into Hermione's face.
Draco - he was always a gentleman and polite to her.
Of course he touches her.
Their fingertips always touched as they worked together on potions in the dungeon. Their arms sometimes rubbed against each other as they worked on homework together in the library. He would hold her waist during the crowded camp, hold her legs when he carried her back to the tent, and hold her hand when he applied potion to her... but after all, there were good reasons for all this.
He never touched her casually without knowing why.
Until today.
He touched, squeezed, pressed, and rubbed her, without any reason or reason. This was the first time.
He looked very abnormal now. He seemed very fragile.
"Draco, are you okay?" she asked in a trembling voice, her mind wandering.
"No." After a pause that lasted a lifetime, he finally answered her, "Very bad."
Her heart choked at his tone. She asked him worriedly, in a low voice, "How can I make you feel better?"
"Uh-" He breathed out, his eyes sliding from her wrist to her eyes, staring at her with broken eyes. While staring at her, he slowly moved her wrist to his cheek.
"This," he whispered, the air from his lips brushing against her wrist, "this will be better."
Hermione's pupils dilated.
She couldn't understand any of his actions at the moment, let alone the logic behind them.
He made her flustered. Blushed. Bewildered.
But she couldn't bring herself to break free from him.
She liked his touch, always had; she couldn't hate it even if it was a touch for no reason; most importantly, he seemed to need her very much now.
So, she suppressed the embarrassment that washed over her face and continued to let him do what he wanted to her wrist. She let him press his cold cheek against her wrist, motionless. His pale lips pressed stiffly against her skin. The heat from his nose steamed over that small area, nearly scalding her.
He kept looking into her eyes—with a certain kind of single-minded sadness—that made it difficult for her to refuse.
Her face gradually felt like it was on fire. It was as if his heat was flowing down his wrist and onto her face. She didn't even dare to clench her hand, or even move herself.
For a moment, she was afraid that any slight tug of muscle would startle his cheek and increase the sadness in his gray eyes. That sadness was too strong, so strong that it made her uneasy.
She suppressed her anxiety and waited for him patiently. She waited for a long time, squatting until her legs were numb.
She had forgotten how many homework assignments she had to start immediately, how many books on house-elf rights she had yet to finish. She just wanted to be with him through this strange and sad moment.
Plop. A drop of water hit the grass beside them. Then a second drop, and a third.
"Draco," she began hesitantly, "it's—it's starting to rain."
She used the other hand that was not held by him to gently cover his face, trying to shield him from the few scattered raindrops - she didn't want the water to drip into his eyes.
Those clear, gentle, fleeting eyes.
Through the gaps between her fingers, she could see those eyes blinking in confusion, until the calm dark gray finally returned to his pupils.
"I'm so sorry, Hermione. I won't let that happen again," he whispered, his lips moving as if he were kissing her arm.
But his expression was completely devoid of any seductiveness. He said firmly, "Never."
He looked at her through his fingers, but it seemed that he was looking through her at something else. It was a strange feeling, but she just felt that way.
She could only try her best to smile at him with an unstable heartbeat, to let him know that she was fine and did not need an apology.
"Can you forgive me?" Draco asked cautiously and painfully, watching her smile.
It was a look of someone who had never experienced pain before - she had never experienced what it meant to be "heart-wrenching and bone-wrenching".
This smile was so beautiful, but at this moment it made him feel a piercing pain.
He suddenly understood one thing.
He was willing to pay any price to protect her innocent and fearless smile.
"I don't even understand what you're talking about. What's there to forgive? I never blamed you for anything. Don't scare me like that again, okay?" Hermione said gently, tilting her head and looking at his face.
Her words completely woke Draco up.
He slowly sat up from the grass, brushed off the grass debris on his robe with his hands, and at the same time brushed off those emotions, turning into the calm and elegant young master of the Malfoy family again.
"Okay," he said.
The raindrops suddenly grew larger. They fell like pebbles, soaking everything around them.
"Oh no!" They looked at each other and laughed at each other's messy wet hair.
The familiar Draco was back. He stood up, pulled her up, and looked at her proudly yet tenderly. The fragility in his eyes suddenly disappeared, like raindrops disappearing into the vast black lake.
"Come with me!" he said to Hermione, the corners of his mouth starting to rise. Before the two of them were completely soaked, he took her and ran towards the castle.
His hands gripped her arms tightly, as if he never wanted to let go.
Hermione was pulled by him and jogged all the way. She was happy about his vague happiness at the moment; although she still didn't understand why he was sad before.
The only thing she could be sure of was that the place where he held her seemed extremely hot in the cold rain.