Right Now Could Last Forever

“That was a lie, Harry,” said Hermione sharply over breakfast, when Harry told us that he’d told Sirius that he had imagined his scar hurting. “You didn’t imagine your scar hurting and you know it.”

“So what?” said Harry. “He’s not going back to Azkaban because of me.”

“Drop it,” I said sharply to Hermione, as she opened her mouth the argue some more, and for once, Hermione heeded me, and feel silent.

A couple of weeks went by and out lessons were becoming more difficult and demanding than ever before, particularly Defence Against the Dark Arts. To our surprise, Moody had announced that he would be putting the Imperius curse on each of us in turn, to demonstrate its power and to see whether we could resist its effects.

“But – but you said it’s illegal, Professor,” said Hermione uncertainly, as Moody cleared away the desks with a sweep of his wand, leaving a large clear space in the middle of the room. “You said – to use it against another human was –“

“Dumbledore wants you taught what it feels like,” said Moody, his magical eye swivelling onto Hermione and fixing her with an eerie, unblinking stare. “If you’d rather learn the hard way – when someone’s putting it on you so they can control you completely – fine by me. You’re excused. Off you go.”

He pointed one gnarled finger towards the door. Hermione went very pink, and muttered something about not meaning that she wanted to leave. Harry, Ron and I grinned at each other. We knew Hermione would rather eat Bubotuber pus than miss such an important lesson.

Moody began to beckon students forwards in turn and put the Imperius curse upon them. I watches as, one by one, my classmates did the most extraordinary things under its influence. Dean Thomas hopped three times around the room, singing the national anthem. Lavender Brown imitated a squirrel. Neville performed a series of quite astonishing gymnastics he would certainly not have been capable of in his normal state. Not one of them seemed to be able to fight the curse off, and each of them recovered only when Moody had removed it.

“Samuels,” Moody growled.

I moved into the middle of the classroom into the space that Moody had cleared of desks. So far only Harry had been able to fight it, and Moody had made him go through it four times in a row, until he could throw the curse off entirely. Moody raised his wand, pointed it at me, and said, “Imperio.”

It was the most wonderful feeling. I felt a floating sensation as every thought and worry in my head was wiped gently away, leaving nothing but a vague, untraceable happiness. I stood there feeling immensely relaxed, only dimly aware of everyone watching me.

And then I heard Moody’s voice, echoing in some distant chamber of my empty brain: Do a handstand... do a handstand...

I positioned myself, ready to flip my legs into the air.

Do a handstand...

Why, though?

Another voice had awoken in the back of my brain. Stupid thing to do, really, said the voice, pointless.

Do a handstand...

No, I don’t think I will, thanks, said the other voice, a little more firmly ... no, I don’t really want to...

NOW!

I don’t want to, said the voice in my head stubbornly, yet still more firmly than before. Slowly, I felt the empty, echoing feeling in my head disappear. I remembered exactly what was happening.

“Excellent, Samuels, excellent!” Moody said.

“The way he talks,” Harry muttered, as he hobbled out of the Defence Against the Dark Arts class an hour later, “you’d think we were all going to be attacked any second.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Ron, who was skipping on every alternate step. He had had much more difficulty with the curse than me or Harry, though Moody assured him the effects would have worn off by lunchtime. “Talk about paranoid...” Ron glanced nervously over his shoulder to check that Moody was definitely out of earshot, and went on, “No wonder they were glad to get shot of him at the Ministry, did you hear him telling Seamus what he did to that witch who shouted “boo” behind him on April Fools’ Day? And when are we supposed to read up on resisting the Imperius curse with everything else we’ve got to do?”

All the fourth-years had noticed a definite increase in the amount of work we were required to do this term. McGonagall explained why, when the class gave a particularly loud groan at the amount of Transfiguration homework she had set.

“You are now entering a most important phase of your magical education!” she told us, her eyes glinting dangerously behind her square spectacles. “Your Ordinary Wizarding Levels are drawing closer –“

“We don’t take O.W.L’s ‘til fifth year!” said Dean Thomas indignantly.

“Maybe not, Thomas, but believe me, you need all the preparation you can get! Miss Granger and Miss Samuels remain the only people in this class who have managed to turn a hedgehog into a satisfactory pincushion. I might remind you that your pincushion, Thomas, still curls up in fright if anyone approached it with a pin!”

Hermione, who had turned rather pink again, seemed to be trying not to look too pleased with herself.

I found myself a little disappointed when Trelawney told Ron and Harry that they had received top marks for their homework in our next Divination class. She read out large portions of their predictions, commending them for their unflinching acceptance of the horrors in store for them – but my spirits lifted slightly when she asked them to do the same thing for the month after next. I knew for a fact neither of them had every many ideas left for catastrophes.

Meanwhile Binns, the ghost who taught History of Magic, had us writing weekly essays on the Goblin Rebellions of the eighteenth century. Snape was forcing us to research antidotes. We took this seriously, as he had hinted that he might be poisoning one of us before Christmas to see if our antidote worked. Flitwick had asked us to read three extra books in preparation for our lesson on Summoning Charms.

Even Hagrid was adding to our workload. The Blast-Ended Skrewts were growing at a remarkable pace, given that nobody had yet discovered what they ate. Hagrid was delighted and, as part of our ‘project’, suggested that we come down to his hut on alternate evenings to observe the Skrewts and make notes on their extraordinary behaviour.

“I will not,” said Malfoy flatly, when Hagrid had proposed this with the air of Father Christmas pulling an extra large toy out of his sack. “I see enough of these foul things during lessons, thanks.”

Hagrid’s smile faded from his face.

“Yeh’ll do wha’ yer told,” he growled, “or I’ll be takin’ a leaf outta Professor Moody’s book... I hear yeh made a good ferret, Malfoy.”

The Gryffindors roared with laughter. Malfoy flushed with anger, but apparently the memory of Moody’s punishment was still sufficiently painful to stop him retorting. Hermione, Ron, Harry and I returned to the castle at the end of the lesson in high spirits; seeing Hagrid put down Malfoy was particularly satisfying because Malfoy had done his very best to get Hagrid sacked the previous year.

When we arrived in the Entrance Hall, we found ourselves unable to proceed owing to the large crowd of students congregated there, all milling around a large sign which had been erected at the foot of the marble staircase. Ron, the tallest of the four of us, stood on tiptoe to see over the heads in front of us and read the sign aloud to us.

TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT
The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving at 6 o’clock on Friday 30th of October. Lessons will end half an hour early –

“Brilliant!” I said. “It’s Potions last thing on Friday! Snape won’t have time to poison us all!”

Students will return their bags and books to their dormitories and assemble in front of the castle to greet our guests before the Welcoming Feast.

“Only a week away!” said Ernie Macmillan of Hufflepuff, emerging from the crowd, his eyes gleaming. “I wonder if Cedric knows? Think I’ll go tell him...”

“Cedric?” said Ron blankly, as Ernie hurried off.

“Diggory,” I said. “He must be entering the Tournament.”

“That idiot, Hogwarts champion?” said Ron, as we pushed our way through the chattering crowds towards the staircase.

“He’s not an idiot, you just don’t like him because he beat us at Quidditch,” I said.

“I’ve hear he’d a really good student – and he’s a Prefect,” said Hermione, speaking as though this settled the matter.

“You two only like him because he’s handsome,” said Ron scathingly.

“Excuse me, I don’t like people just because they’re handsome!” said Hermione indignantly.

Ron gave a loud false cough, which sounded oddly like “Lockhart!”

The appearance of the sign in the Entrance Hall had a marked effect upon the inhabitants of the castle. During the following week, there seemed to be only one topic of conversation, no matter where I went; the Triwizard Tournament. Rumours were flying from student to student like highly contagious germs; who was going to try for Hogwarts champion, what the Tournament would involve, how the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang differed from ourselves.

I noticed, too, that the castle seemed to be undergoing an extra-thorough cleaning. Several grimy portraits had been scrubbed, much to the displeasure of their subjects, who sat huddled in their frames muttering darkly and wincing as they felt their raw pink faces. The suits of armour were suddenly gleaming and moving without speaking, and Argus Filch, the caretaker, was behaving so ferociously to any students who forgot to wipe their shoes that he terrified a pair of first-year girls into hysterics.

Other members of staff seemed oddly tense, too.

“Longbottom, kindly do not reveal that you can’t ever perform a simple Switching Spell in front of anyone from Durmstrang!” McGonagall barked at the end of one particularly difficult lesson, during which Neville had accidentally transplanted his own ears onto a cactus.

When we went down to breakfast on the morning of the thirtieth of October, we found the Great Hall had been decorated overnight. Enormous silk banners hung from the walls, each of them representing a Hogwarts house – red with a gold lion for Gryffindor, blue with a bronze eagle for Ravenclaw, yellow with a black badger for Hufflepuff, and green with a silver serpent from Slytherin. Behind the teachers’ table, the largest banner of all bore the Hogwarts coat of arms: lion, eagle, badger and snake united around a large letter ‘H’.

We spotted Fred and George at the Gryffindor table. Once again, and most unusually, they were sitting apart from everyone else and conversing in low voices. Ron led the way over to them.

“It’s a bummer all right,” George was saying gloomily to Fred. “But if he won’t talk to us in person, we’ll have to send him the letter after all. Or we’ll stuff it into his hand, he can’t avoid us forever.”

“Who’s avoiding you?” said Ron, sitting down next to them.

“Wish you would,” said Fred, looking irritated at the interruption.

“What’s a bummer?” Ron asked George.

“Having a nosy git like you for a brother,” said George.

“Oi,” I said, hitting them both on the back of their heads, and sitting between them, “be nice.”

“You guys got any ideas on the Triwizard Tournament yet?” Harry asked. “Thought any more about trying to enter?”

“I asked McGonagall how the champions are chosen but she wasn’t telling,” said George bitterly.

“Really? I thought for sure that she’d tell us,” I said, a little disappointed.

“Yeah, she just told me to shut up and get on with Transfiguring my raccoon.”

“Wonder what the tasks are going to be?” said Ron thoughtfully. “You know, I bet we could do them, Harry, we’ve done dangerous stuff before...”

“Not in front of a panel of judges, we haven’t,” I said.

“McGonagall says the champions get awarded pointed according to how well they’ve done the tasks,” said Fred.

“Who are the judges?” Harry asked.

“Well, the Heads of the participating schools are always on the panel,” said Hermione, and everyone looked around at her, rather surprised, “because all three of them were injured during the Tournament of 1792, when a cockatrice the champions were supposed to be catching went rampage.”

She noticed us all looking at her and said, with her usual air of impatience that nobody else had read all the books she had, “It’s all in Hogwarts: A History. Though, of course, that book’s not entirely reliable. “A Revised History of Hogwarts” would be a more accurate title. Or “A Highly Biased and Selective History of Hogwarts, Which Glosses Over the Nastier Aspects of the School.”

“What are you talking about?” I said, though I thought I knew what was coming.

“House-elves!” said Hermione loudly and proving me right. “Not once, in over a thousand pages, does Hogwarts: A History mention that we are all colluding in the oppression of a hundred slaves!”

I shook my head, and applied myself to my bacon. Our lack of enthusiasm had done nothing whatsoever to curb Hermione’s determination to pursue justice for house-elves. True, the three of us had paid two Sickles for a S.P.E.W badge, but we had only done it to keep her quiet. Our Sickles had been wasted, however; if anything, we seemed to have made Hermione more vociferous. She had been badgering Harry, Ron and I ever since, firstly to wear the badges (which I still wouldn’t do), then to persuade others to do the same, and she had also taken to rattling around the Gryffindor common room every evening, cornering people and shaking the collecting tin under their noses.

“You do realise that your sheets are changed, your fires lit, your classrooms cleaned and your food cooked by a group of magical creatures who are unpaid and enslaved?” she kept saying fiercely.

Some people, like Neville, had paid up just to stop Hermione glowering at them. A few seemed mildly interested in what she had to say, but were reluctant to take a more active role in campaigning. Many regarded the whole thing as a joke.

Ron now rolled his eyes at the ceiling, which was flooding us all in autumn sunlight, and Fred became extremely interested in his bacon (both twins had refused to buy a S.P.E.W badge). George, however, leant towards Hermione.

“Listen, have you ever been down in the kitchens, Hermione?”

“No, of course not,” said Hermione curtly, “I hardly think students are supposed to –“

“Well, we have,” said George, indicating Fred and I, “loads of times, to nick food. And we’ve met them, and they’re happy. They think they’ve got the best job in the world –“

“That’s because they’re uneducated and brainwashed!” Hermione began hotly, but her next few words were drowned by the sudden whooshing noise from overhead which announced the arrival of the post owls. I looked up, and Hedwig grabbed my attention straight away. Hermione stopped talking abruptly; Harry, Ron, Hermione and I watched Hedwig anxiously, as she fluttered down onto Harry’s shoulder, folding her wings and held out her leg wearily.
Harry pulled off Sirius’ reply and offered Hedwig his bacon rinds, which she ate gratefully. He then started to read out the letter to Ron and Hermione in whispers, before handing it to me.
I read it, making sure that Fred and George couldn’t see and were still talking about the Triwizard Tournament.

‘Nice try, Harry.
I’m back in the country and well hidden. I want you to keep me posted one everything that’s going on at Hogwarts. Don’t use Hedwig, keep changing owls, and don’t worry about me, just watch out for yourself. Don’t forget what I said about our scar.
Sirius’

I handed it back to Harry who rolled it up and slipped it inside his robes. I suppose he’d have to use a different owl because Hedwig would draw to much attention; I knew that because, even here, in the Great Hall, I could easily spot her in the masses of brown and black. Snowy owls aren’t exactly native birds.

There was a pleasant feeling of anticipation in the air that day. Nobody was very attentive in lessons, being much more interested in the arrival that evening of the people from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang; even Potions was more bearable than usual, as it was half an hour shorter. When the bell rang early, we hurried up to the Gryffindor Tower, deposited their bags and books as we had been instructed, pulled on our cloaks and rushed back downstairs into the Entrance Hall.

The Heads of Houses were ordering their students into lines.

“Weasley, straighten your hat,” McGonagall snapped at Ron. “Miss Patil, take that ridiculous thing out of your hair.”

Parvati scowled and removed a large ornamental butterfly from the end of her plait.

“Follow me, please,” said McGonagall, “first-years in front... no pushing...”

We filed down the front steps and lined up in front of the castle. It was a cold, clear evening; dusk was falling and a pale transparent-looking moon was already shining over the Forbidden Forest. I was standing in the fourth row from the front, between Harry and Ron.

“Nearly six,” said Ron, checking his watch and then staring down the drive which led to the front gates. “How d’you reckon they’re coming? The train?”

“I doubt it,” I said.

“How, then? Broomsticks?” Harry suggested, looking up at the starry sky.

“I don’t think so... not from that far away...” said Hermione.

“A Portkey?” Ron suggested. “Or they could Apparate – maybe you’re allowed to do it under seventeen wherever they come from?”

“You can’t Apparate inside the Hogwarts grounds, how often do I have to tell you?” said Hermione impatiently.

We scanned the darkening grounds excitedly, but nothing was moving; everything was still, silent and quite as usual. I was starting to feel cold. I wished they’d hurry up... maybe the foreign students were preparing a dramatic entrance... I remembered what Mr Weasley had said back on the campsite before the Quidditch World Cup – “Always the same, we can’t resist showing off when we get together...”

And then Dumbledore called out from the back row, where he stood with the other teachers – “Aha! Unless I am very much mistaken, the delegation from Beauxbatons approaches!”

“Where?” said many students eagerly, all looking in different directions.

“There!” yelled a sixth-year, pointing over the Forest.

Something large, much larger than a broomstick – or, indeed, a hundred broomsticks – was hurtling across the deep blue sky towards the castle, growing larger all the time.