Cunning and Ambition

Draco Malfoy stomped his way back down to the Slytherin dormitories. Vincent was just as angry but with less stomping and followed closely behind him. The last few hours for Draco had been the worst of his life. He had reported to Mr. Filch's office for detention where that squib made him abandon his wand, then made threats against him to chain him up like a slave and whip Vincent.

Then he gave them muggle cleaning tools and marched them up to the owlery where they had to scrape shite off the walls for hours. That good-for-nothing squib sat next to them and played with their wands and ate his lunch while they worked. Every time they stopped he deducted points or told them about all the ways he used to be allowed to punish children back in the old days. They were assigned another afternoon in December at the end of the detention as the caretaker thought they hadn't worked hard enough.

He was a Malfoy! This was work for house elves or trained trolls. His usually immaculate robes were covered with owl droppings and feathers. Harry would pay for this, he had to be controlling Lyra somehow. No Malfoy would ever put herself beneath a half-blood. Then there was Greg, that traitor, standing beside them like he hadn't been raised to be Draco's shield. They would all get what was coming to them. The Carrows were worthless, he would need to find others to stand with him against Potter and any others who would back him.

Finally, he and Vincent reached the dorms. Facing the blank wall entrance, he called out, "Purity," and then walked straight through the blank wall.

That was one of the last defensive measures the Slytherin common room had. Not only was there no obvious sign that the entrance was there but it also didn't actually have a door. When the password was spoken, you had to just walk through the wall, trusting that you used the correct phrase. Sometimes if a prefect didn't like you, they'd change the password as you were arriving and you'd bang your nose as you entered. They did that regularly to half-bloods that the stupid Sorting Hat decided to place in their house.

Draco loved the common room, just sitting around made him feel like he was a Dark Lord. The entire room was decorated with various motifs of venomous snakes, and there were a few terrariums with living ones near the sitting areas. Each sitting area was set up with numerous couches, but there was always one high-backed chair in each grouping that served as a kind of throne. Every group of students had a leader who would get that chair. Draco had claimed a spot last year near the window looking out into the lake; he enjoyed watching the merpeople swim by his spot like they were in his own private aquarium. When he was Lord Malfoy, he would commission an aquarium for Malfoy Manor with Caribbean Mermaids living in it instead of these cold-water monstrosities they had in Scotland.

As he entered the common room, Pansy Parkinson intercepted him. She looked a bit disgusted at the state of his clothes but rallied herself quickly.

"We've got a problem, Blaise is in your spot."

"What?" Draco whispered loudly.

He marched around the corner to see Blaise sitting in his chair by the window. He was perfectly relaxed with a crystal brandy glass in one hand looking through it at the blue light coming in from the lake. It probably had butterbeer or cider in it and not actual brandy but the effect did give him an air of sophistication. Sitting in the spots next to him were Daphne Greengrass and that half-blood Tracey Davis. Draco had enjoyed getting a prefect to change the password on the door for her a few times and watching her bang her face on it. Now she always walked through with her arms outstretched. Daphne looked calm but Tracey's face revealed her anxiety.

Draco was about to draw his wand when he noticed a number of the other students were watching from the shadows of the room. This room had many shadows. Vincent was moving to draw his wand, but Draco motioned for him to stand down. He would get Blaise to move now, and when there was no one else around, that's when he would give a painful reminder to the boy that he was not to be trifled with.

"Good evening, Mr. Zabini," Draco said calmly as he approached, "are you lost?"

Barely sparing Draco a glance, "No, Mr. Malfoy, I think I'm exactly where I need to be." He took a sip of his drink and reached down to pick up a transfiguration book to start reading.

Draco squashed down his fury at the rebuff, "I think you must be lost and confused. You are in my seat."

Blaise took his time responding, finishing the page he was reading before closing the book and turning to Draco. "As I said, I'm exactly where I need to be. Where I'm supposed to be. I felt like this seat had been foolishly abandoned by its previous occupant."

Draco was seething now. He wished he could just hex the boy where he was sitting, but not in front of so many witnesses. The boy was challenging his cunning and guile, so he needed to respond in kind. Vincent was suppressing his desire to curse Blaise as well and was focusing as hard as he could following Draco's lead. Pansy, on the other hand, did not have their control.

"Get out of Draco's seat, you stupid wop!" she yelled. Blaise quirked an eyebrow and then started to take a sip of his drink.

Pansy screamed and drew her wand, but Daphne was quicker, jumping to her feet and incanting "Glacius!"

A torrent of ice and snow flew from her wand encasing Pansy in ice, with jagged pieces sticking out behind her with her wand still half raised.

"That was rude," Blaise commented after he finished the sip he had started to take before Daphne's spell. Then, turning to Daphne, "Thank you, but let her go in a minute, we don't want her to suffocate." Then turning back to Draco, "It seems like you want to make this a bigger deal than it needs to be, so let's just settle this with a challenge." He nodded to Tracey.

Tracey got up and went over to the terrariums on the wall and levitated two of them over onto the table in front of Blaise. By the time she got back, Daphne had melted the ice around Pansy's wand and placed it at her feet, and started working on her head.

The challenge Blaise was issuing was a common one amongst Slytherins. Two wizards would drop their wands into a snake terrarium, and then attempt to retrieve them without being bitten. To an outsider, the game would appear to be incredibly Gryffindor-ish, but not to a Slytherin. A player in the game would need to use all of their cunning and guile to find a way to distract or deceive the snake in the tank to retrieve their wand. Draco had practiced plenty of times after watching other students play for real, knowing one day he would use this method to best someone he may not be able to beat in a straight-up duel.

Whenever he had seen other students participate in this challenge and when he had practiced himself, there would only be one snake in the tank and it would be non-venomous. Blaise had done the opposite and both tanks had five venomous snakes in them.

This was crazy, it was suicide. Any of those snakes could kill within an hour of biting someone. Blaise, however, just dropped his wand into the tank closest to him eliciting a hiss from the snakes that it hit as it fell. Then he just stood straight with his hands behind his back and waited.

Blaise was about to speak again when the ice finished melting around Pansy's head and she took a few big gasps of air before screaming, "You crazy bitch! You could have killed me!"

Daphne stared back at the girl before pointing her wand again and casting, "Somnium!" Pansy's head flopped to the side as she fell asleep and Daphne went back to thawing the rest of the girl out.

After the silence returned, Blaise said, "Look, I can understand if you're afraid, these are some very dangerous snakes. But look, I even prepared antidotes." He pulled out two vials of yellowish liquid that had Professor Snape's professional seal on the corks and placed them next to each tank. "Drop your wand or walk away," he said in his first threatening tone so far.

Draco fearfully approached the second tank and dropped his wand in. A few students who had been observing from the shadows had drawn closer to watch the challenge.

"Now take it," Blaise spoke as if it was an order.

Draco kneeled down and started to try to provoke the group of snakes in the tank to the side away from his wand as he purposely had dropped it far to one side. Once he had them as far to the side as he thought he could, he reached into the tank as quickly as he could to grab his wand back. He managed to grab it, but as he was pulling it back out, one snake struck as fast as lightning and bit down on his hand causing him to scream and drop his wand back in. He reached for the antidote as quickly as he could, drinking the first half and then pouring the rest on the bite marks, which had already started to swell.

He collapsed on the sofa next to the table breathing heavily as Vincent started to tie off the arm that was bitten to try to keep the blood from flowing to Draco's heart. Draco could feel the antidote working and the swelling on his hand died down. The panicked noises and expressions of all who were watching started to subside. Draco looked at Blaise who was standing there patiently, Daphne had finished thawing out Pansy and had levitated her to another couch, in an unused corner, and started to cover her with blankets. Tracey had a sadistic smile on her face as she watched Draco deal with getting bitten.

Blaise stepped up to the tank where his wand lay. Looking in, he faced a bigger problem. One of the snakes had actually coiled itself around his wand. He grimaced a bit and made a sucking sound with his teeth closed. Then raised his hands in the universal sign of 'Whatever,' before reaching into the tank.

The four snakes that were not coiled around his wand rose to strike him but then stopped, reared back, and retreated to the corners of the tank. The observers gasped at the sight, and Blaise just picked up the wand with the last snake still coiled around it and slowly pulled it off his wand. The snake was limp as he pulled it off and then he just dropped it back into the tank where it started moving again.

Draco just stared in disbelief at what just happened. When he regained his composure, he declared, "You jinxed the snakes! Mine were vicious, but yours laid about like flobberworms!"

Blaise just smirked at him, reached into the other tank, and plucked out Draco's wand while brushing the snake that had bitten the blonde boy to the side. Then he just tossed the wand to its master like it was a useless stick. Then he sat back down and reopened his transfiguration book to keep reading. Daphne and Tracey adopted similar postures and took out their own study materials.

Draco was about to challenge Blaise again, but the boy interrupted his thoughts, "Draco, Vincent, you're welcome to stay and study with us. If you don't want to join us, please join Pansy on her couch." He pointed to where the girl was still unconscious and covered with blankets in the corner of the room, away from the windows to the lake, or anything else that was remotely interesting.

There was no way he was going to kowtow before Blaise, even if he had been so soundly beaten by whatever tricks had been pulled with the snakes. It had to have been a trick, that's how the game was played. However, without knowing how it was done, he couldn't say anything about it. So after staring angrily at Blaise, who was just pleasantly looking back at him, he marched off towards where Pansy lay with Vincent following close behind as always.

At breakfast Monday morning, Harry noticed something strange at the Slytherin table. Normally the students arranged themselves more or less by year groups with the oldest sitting close to the teacher's tables. A few exceptions were those with higher social status getting to sit with the older students. Draco's spot with Vincent and a girl named Pansy was somewhere around the fifth-year students, just a little over halfway toward the teachers instead of with the other second-years.

Today, that spot was taken up by Blaise, Daphne, and Tracey. Harry pointed his observation out to Lyra who pointed out Draco and his crew sitting at the far end closest to the door. Even the first-year students seemed to have a better position than he did. A lot of other people noticed and were whispering about it too. Tracey noticed him staring and nudged Blaise who gave Harry a very brief smile. Harry raised an eyebrow in question to which Blaise pulled out a scrap of paper and scribbled down a note and passed it to Tracey, though neither of them got up.

At the end of breakfast on their way to class, Tracey bumped into Harry and he felt the paper drop into his pocket. When the coast was clear, he opened it up and read it quickly.

4:30 p.m. Book: Blunders of 15th-Century Dark Lords

It took him a second to understand the message, and then he continued to Charms class.

Harry left lunch early to get to his meeting with Lockhart. He had been practicing different signatures whenever he had a free moment and he was pretty sure he had one that he liked.

Lockhart greeted him warmly and had some fancy green tea prepared that he claimed to have gotten while he was living with Tibetan Monks while he was writing up his book "Year with the Yeti."

"So, let's see what you've done!" exclaimed his professor. "I assume you've been working hard on it. Being a celebrity, especially an unwitting one, is quite a challenge."

Harry took out his notebook to show his work. He had found a magical marker, probably designed for children that he liked. When you wrote with it, it would write in thick solid lines, but then the ink would vanish in the center leaving just outlines of where it was written. He had written his name with that pen, so his name was written in an outline with 'Harry' directly above 'Potter.' Then he had filled in the empty spots at the top of the 'tt' in Potter with a white pen, so they looked like the antlers of the Lampong. As a finishing touch, he took another magical marker that was white but created a black outline where he drew. He used that one to draw a large circle around his name.

Lockhart studied the signature carefully and picked up the pens that Harry had used and placed them to the side.

"I assume everything here has a meaning? Tell me about it."

"Well, I wanted the 'tt' in Potter to look like my staff," Harry started and then pulled out his staff from the pouch. "The animal it comes from has two large antlers, so I thought I should do my whole name with the outlines and then color in the T's at the top."

"Interesting, did you consider coloring in the tops of the H in Harry as well?

Harry colored the tips of the H in one of his drafts and stared at it before replying, "No, I don't like that very much."

"You need to like what you're doing, or doing it over and over will lose its value for you. So just do it with the T's. Now, what about the white circle around it? I assume the black outline is just so you can see it better?"

Harry nodded and stood up, then tapped his staff into the floor, his shield expanding into existence around him. "I wanted to make it a symbol of protection."

"Excellent symbology!" Lockhart praised him. "You should look into getting this as a stamp and save doing it by hand for when you are doing it in person or for someone special. Alternatively, get a stamp just for the circle, and then sign your name inside it. Now for your picture of the lady with blue hair, did you think of a dedication to write along with the signature?"

Harry frowned and shook his head, "I couldn't think of anything."

"Don't worry, I figured that might happen, so I took the time to think of one for you. You'll need to practice to come up with something that sounds meaningful, that people will remember, and want to look at to lift their spirits." He pulled out his notebook and opened it up to show:

"May the skies above you be as blue as the hair I gave you that day."

Harry smiled as he read it, "That's perfect!"

"Good. Now, I assume you haven't studied calligraphy yet, right?" Harry shook his head. "Ask your tutor for someone to help you with that in the future. For now, just put your signature in the bottom right of the back of the photo and I'll write the dedication for you."

Harry gathered up the markers he used for the signature while Lockhart pulled out a wooden box with some very complicated-looking writing tools and a midnight blue inkwell. Harry signed his name but asked Lockhart to remove it twice with magic before he got it just right. Then his professor assembled the writing tools and wrote the dedication above it in a very fancy style that had the lines bending and thickening in a style as elegant as it was sophisticated. When he was complete, he cast a spell on the back that sealed the writing into place so it couldn't be modified or erased.

"It looks perfect to me," Lockhart smiled. "When you get a chance, we should take a photo together and sign it for our collections. When you get older, you will probably have a whole cabinet of pictures of the people you will meet. It's good you are getting such an early start."

Harry agreed and thanked him just as students started coming in. He went back to sit at his desk with Lyra and showed her the photo. She thought it looked great.

At the end of class, Lyra went off to meet with Seamus for their lessons on controlling fire while Harry headed for the library.

There were still teams of students and adults working on the catalog system and he spotted Hermione and Penny at the search desk colored inks and a stack of metal plates. Both of them were so absorbed in their work, they didn't see Harry until he sat down at the unused search station next to them.

"Harry!" Hermione blurted out, "Could you help us with something? You need to find a book, right?"

"It will need to be pretty quick, I'm meeting someone."

Hermione frowned but pulled one of the metal plates in front of her and placed it next to Harry. "Go ahead and pull up the card of the book you want."

Harry pulled out the note and copied down 'Blunders of 15th Century Dark Lords' and a single card came out of the drawers above them.

Penny raised an eyebrow at the title and asked, "How fast do you want the feather to find it? It will have a trail."

Harry considered telling her to make it full speed just to scare Blaise if he was right next to it, but decided against it, "It will have a color trail? I guess it can go about jogging speed, I don't think I'll run after it, but I also don't want to stop and wait for it."

Hermione took the plate that she had given him before and switched it with another, then took a feather and dipped it in blue ink before pressing the card and feather together on top of the plate. The feather glowed blue for a moment before jumping up and flying into the stacks leaving a trail behind it softly pulsing as it went.

"Thanks!" Harry called out as he hustled off, following the trail.

It seemed like Blaise had taken Gemma's comments to heart as they were deep into the stacks. Harry continued to follow the trail of the blue feather for nearly thirty minutes before the floor had turned to dirt and the feather zipped upwards where he saw Blaise, Daphne, and Tracey sitting at a table on top of one of the bookshelves, the feather he had been chasing had found its book on their table. There was a tree growing across the way, so he quickly scaled it, then climbed out on a limb and dropped down onto the platform they were sitting on.

All three of them stared at him for a moment before Daphne said, "There was a ladder on the other side."

Harry peered over to see it but just shrugged, "I didn't see it but this was just as easy."

Tracey smiled, "He used to be the fastest kid in kindergarten, now he's the best climber too, I guess."

"Lyra is way faster," Harry informed them. "So what's the deal in Slytherin now?"

"Well after Draco got his very public smackdown," Blaise began with a smirk, "I felt that it was the right time to rearrange the hierarchy of the house. There are a lot of power structures in Slytherin that I won't go into for an outsider, but essentially the three of us knocked him down to the bottom. I used that snake shed you gave me as an instrumental tool in the power play, so I wanted to thank you."

"Can you tell me what you did?" Harry asked.

"Let's just say it involved some of the more venomous snakes in the common room and leave it at that," Tracey spoke up.

Harry was very interested, "How many are there? Snakes that is? I know they are there, but not how many."

Daphne looked at him curiously for a moment but then told him, "There are nearly a hundred various species both venomous and non-venomous."

"That's so cool, are any of them magical? Or are they all lesser snakes?"

"Lesser snakes? That's an interesting phrase," Blaise looked at him with curiosity. "There are no magical snakes, they would be too dangerous to keep around children. Occasionally, Professor Snape will bring one in for extracting venom or harvesting other ingredients, but none in the common room."

"Before I forget, I have that picture for your mom, Tracey." He pulled out the signed photo and passed it to her.

The three Slytherins looked at the dedication on the back, Tracey blushed and Daphne let out an "awwww."

"That's some impressive calligraphy, Harry," Blaise commented, "and a masterfully written dedication."

"Professor Lockhart helped me. The signature he helped me develop and I did myself, but he thought up the dedication, and did the writing for it," Harry supplied.

"Well, still, it's very impressive. I've barely gotten started on my calligraphy lessons myself. My mother insists that it is a valuable skill to have, even if it's just the basics."

"How's Lockhart doing with your classes?" Tracey asked. "He seems to jump back and forth between being incredibly knowledgable about some things to being completely incompetent about others."

"He seems to know a lot about being a celebrity, that's for sure," Harry told them. "He also knows plenty about household pests and cleaning. The thing that bugs me is he doesn't feel like he could do some of the things he's claimed to have done. Luna, in my house, described it the best. His hands are too soft."

"What?" asked Daphne.

"I didn't understand either until she explained it. The man has spent a year in the mountains, battled against werewolves, killed a banshee for some reason, and much more. His hands however look too smooth, like they have never seen a hard day's work. It's the same thing with his eyes. When you look at someone like Alastor Moody, his eyes tell you that he has seen terrible things. Lockhart's eyes look like most of the students here."

The three Slytherins nodded in understanding. They continued to talk about their other classes for another ten minutes before Tracey thanked Harry for the photo and told him that it would be passed on to her mother. Harry smiled and then took his leave by jumping from the top of the shelves to the tree next to them, catching himself on the trunk and then sliding down to the base.

Daphne called after him, "And Lyra is even better at that?"

After his last class of the day, Seamus Finnegan started to prepare for his tutoring session with Lyra. After switching out the various books in his bag, he exited his dorm and headed to the exit through the common room. Unbeknownst to them, they actually had the smallest dormitories and common room among the other houses, though no one complained about it. Why would they if a good Gryffindor was always out on some adventure and not lazing around at home?

He walked by his year mates - Ron, Dean, Lavender, and Pavarti; the two boys were playing chess, while the two girls were just sitting on the couch nearby chatting and occasionally watching the boys' game.

Ron executed the capture of one of Dean's pawns for him to exclaim, "Ok, now I know you're cheating somehow. That's the third time I've started a strategy for you to just cut it off at the root."

"I don't know what to tell you, mate, I can see ten moves ahead, nothing you can do is hidden from me." Then Ron turned to Seamus, "Oi, are you still going to tutor the Malfoy girl?"

"She's not a Malfoy," Seamus replied. "Everyone knows that by now. Wouldn't you be happy if they kicked you out of their family? She even got Draco slapped in the face, that should give her some credit in your books."

"Yeah, it's even worse now," Ron grimaced, "she's a Black. Don't get too handsy with her or you'll end up in a ditch with your liver cut out to be used in a dark ritual by her uncle."

Lavender and Pavarti shared a whisper and a giggle before Lavender added, "I wouldn't even worry about them when Potter is more likely to just stab you and break you in half with his bare hands. He has more muscles than Lockhart probably does."

"You've been peeping on Potter's muscles?" Dean asked them.

The girls just blushed and Pavarti smirked saying, "A lady never tells…"

"Whatever," Seamus rejoined the conversation, "someone in this house needs to earn us some points after Granger and Longbottom left. Last year the two of them earned three times more than the five of us did together. Maybe if you four could find a way to earn points for playing chess, muggle ball sports, or gossiping and braiding hair then we might have a chance to beat Slytherin this year."

That comment had Lavender's eyes light up in offense, but then she calmed down and whispered with Pavarti before the two of them ran out of the room in a hurry to be somewhere.

"Looks like they're up to something and I have something to do as well, so I'll see the two of you later. What's the point in playing chess over and over if Ron is going to win every time?" Seamus left the two of them there and headed out of the portrait hole.

Ron stared after him before remarking, "He's going to get hauled off by a Black, mark my words."

Seamus arrived early to the Transfiguration classroom to find McGonagall as a cat just laying on her desk. He smirked at the cat sleeping in the sunlight coming in the window. He didn't disturb her cat nap, as he assumed that dealing with hundreds of students a day was exhausting, and started setting up in the corner where they had been working and fireproofing the general area.

When moving one of the desks, it made a screeching noise and the cat jumped up, saw Seamus, and morphed back into Professor McGonagall. She stared him in the eyes while she straightened out her robes.

"Five points to Gryffindor for your future discretion." Her eyes were deadly serious as she stared at him.

"I didn't see anything," Seamus told his head of house and went back to moving the desks and the fireproofing charms.

When Lyra showed up, McGonagall brought out a box of wood of various sizes and had them work on their transfigurations which had a minimal amount of smoke from Lyra. Her control was getting better, but occasionally would cause something to burst into flame at random.

After they had a collection of metal spikes, stakes, rods, and pins from their box of wood, Lyra wanted to show him something she had learned over the weekend.

"On Saturday, my uncle had Augustus Stevens working with me and Harry in the dueling room. He told me to start practicing with you on candle lighting." She pointed to the table in front of her, concentrated, and then with the proper wand movements, incanted, "Lucernascirsa!"

A small white candle about three inches tall was conjured on the desk. "He said to put nine of them in a square and practice lighting them individually."

"That's so cool that you're working with Stevens, have you gotten to see him duel? Like really really duel?"

"No, though he did catch some of Harry's spells with his bare hands and juggle them like quaffles."

"Wicked, so show me the candle spell, and let's get them set up."

It took Seamus about ten minutes to learn the candle spell, earning them five points from McGonagall watching nearby. His candle was shorter than Lyra's but had an extra long wick, which fell to the side when it was fully conjured.

They set up the candles in a square about a foot apart from each other. Seamus tried it first casting Incendio at each in turn then extinguishing them with Nox. He managed to get seven out of nine individually, the last two spots he accidentally caught the neighbor as well.

When it was Lyra's turn, she wasn't able to get any individually. Her attempt to light the middle candle, unfortunately, caught six candles. The very last one she thought had been a success, but an ember that caught on the second candle burst into flame a moment after the first one was lit up. They continued to practice the exercise until Seamus was able to get it perfect and Lyra was able to get three out of nine.

Seamus asked McGonagall to vanish their candles and Seamus walked Lyra back to her common room.

On the way, he couldn't help but remember the conversation with his year mates and asked Lyra, "So, what's Lord Black like? He hasn't been out in public the last few years, so only the older generations know about him."

"Uncle Arcturus? He's ok, I didn't like him at first, but then he apologized for some stuff and he helped me when my father tried to put me in jail. He seems like he's always planning something, but he also seems to want to help me as much as he can too."

"So the gossip around says that when Harry stabbed Draco, he did that for you. Do you think your uncle would also do something like that?"

Lyra had been hearing a lot of the gossip around the castle from the endless stories told to her by Lavender and Pavarti. She was pretty sure that she had let that piece of information about the stabbing slip while chatting with them but wasn't entirely sure. She thought about everything she knew about her uncle and remembered her first trip to Black Manor.

"I don't think he'd stab anyone, maybe curse them or poison them but I don't think he'd stab them." Lyra's voice showed no shock or concern when talking about someone being killed to protect her.

Seamus's blood ran cold at the thought of a dark curse or poisoning. His family dealt in enchantments and magical architecture, so he knew a little about what harm an enchanter could do if they wanted to hurt someone. When he thought of poisoners, his mind was always drawn to the constant threats last year of Snape poisoning Gryffindors while they slept.

"Well, I guess that's good to know," Seamus said with a scared smile on his face. They arrived at the entrance to the common room. "I guess I'll leave you here, I'll see you next week?"

"Sounds good!" Lyra smiled before saying the password and running inside.

He could see a pair of shovels against the wall inside the door. The Weasley Twins were currently in detention, fertilizing Hagrid's fields, for trying to break into the Scamander common room. They had tried to dig through the floor to find a switch to let them in. They got caught while digging by Cedric Diggory and turned in to McGonagall. Were they digging in the wrong spot or do the shovels serve a different purpose?

On the other side of the first floor, Cedric sneezed, quickly covering his mouth and nose. He then cast a swift sterilization charm on his hands and face, he was in the infirmary after all. He was there not for an injury but for education. Last week, Mr. Scamander had given him a list of the qualifications he'd need to complete in order to become a prefect next year. The start of the requirements was a large number of spells for healing purposes, which brought him to his current location.

He had asked Madam Pomfrey to help him with his basic healing spells and now he was working on all the small nicks and bruises some other students had come into the infirmary with. The current group claimed they all fell down the stairs, together, but it was obvious they had been practicing dueling without supervision. If they had been any of his house or his old 'Puffs, he would have had serious words with them, however, they were just some first-year Gryffindors playing with underpowered cutting spells and hot sparks.

So he worked carefully on patching them up, knowing this was only encouraging them to continue dueling unsupervised but it would also give him a regular group of students to practice his healing on. However he couldn't let it go completely, so as he was finishing up, he advised them to learn some shielding spells from the older students to keep the stairs from hurting them so much in the future. They all looked a little stunned that he had known the whole time, but then just smiled and ran out when he let them go.

When it seemed like there were no more minor injuries coming in Madam Pomfrey dismissed him. On the way out, he stopped in the Great Hall which operated as a study hall between classes and meals. Sitting down at the closest table, he pulled out the paper that Newt had given to him when he confirmed that he wanted to be a prefect.

Cedric -

I look forward to you being the first prefect of Scamander House next fall. However, it will be much more difficult than if you were in any other house, including Hufflepuff. Please review the following qualifications:

First-Aid Spells - Provide sign-off from any sworn healer for completion

Episkey - Basic cuts and bruises

Anapneo - Clear the throat of a choking victim

Reparifors - Heals minor magically-induced ailments like paralysis

Finite Incantatem - At a level dispelling basic jinxes and hexes

Rennervate - Reviving an unconscious person

Ferula - For basic bandages and splints

Locomotor Mortis - Leg locking spell to immobilize leg movement

Mobilicorpus - Moving a body

Self-Defense - Provide sign-off from a qualified teacher for completion

Protego - Basic shielding spell

Three other shielding spells of your choice

Incarcerous - Binding a target in ropes

Stupefy - Stunning spell

Expelliarmus - Disarming charm

Impedimenta - Hindered the movement of the target

House project - Perform a project of your own design that benefits the house. You may involve only students from your house.

School project - Perform a project that benefits the school as a whole. You may design and perform the project with members of other houses.

Receive 75% approval from the house to be appointed as a prefect.

He looked at it again and sighed. It was a lot of work, but he had the rest of the year to complete it. He had immediately asked Mr. Scamander if forming the house quidditch team could count as a project but it was rejected. He was told that if he wanted to be the captain, he could earn that by assembling the team by the end of the current year. Good thing he had already started working on that, and if forming the quidditch team was out, he would hope that the helmet design would count as the school project.

Back in Hufflepuff, by the time the end of the year came around, there was always a consensus over who the prefects for each class year would be. There still needed to be a vote though and Professor Sprout would need to give her approval. Despite the extra work, Cedric liked this way of doing things more.

In the Badger's den, Theodore Nott was relaxing. When he was in Slytherin, he had been nearly forced to sit in Draco Malfoy's court as one of his 'subjects.' However, in Hufflepuff, there was no enforced hierarchy and everyone always helped everyone else. For Slytherin, that meant an endless number of opportunities to create alliances without the need for precautionary measures. People would just help you out of the goodness of their hearts, though you were also expected to do the same.

The day after the resorting, a few fifth and sixth-year Slytherins thought he was now a good target for bullying. Two seventh-year Hufflepuffs quickly absolved them of that idea with a short stay in the infirmary. The Puffs were just as vicious as any Slytherin, if not more so, and more open and direct with their reprisals. He found himself standing up for a couple of first-years who were being picked on later in October.

Before that, he hadn't made any friends but after he stood up for the first-years, he was approached by Ernest Macmillan and Zacharias Smith, who decided to study with him. Both boys seemed to have plenty of ambition, but not a lot of cunning. They would be perfect test subjects to see what a Badger could do when taught how to be truly cunning.

So here was Theo, relaxing in the light from the evening sun coming through the windows into the den waiting for Ernie and Zach to come back from a mission he sent them on. The barrel on the front door swung open and the two boys approached him quickly.

"We got it!" Zach exclaimed.

"What did it cost you?" Theo asked.

"A promise to pass on any rumor of how to get into the Scamander common room," Ernie replied.

"That's all the Terror Twins wanted? There are ten new rumors every week," Theo said in amazement. "Well, let's go see if it works."

The three of them exited the common room, Zach guiding them down the hallways until they ended up standing in front of a painting depicting a bowl of fruit. Ernie consulted a slip of paper in his hands then reached up and scratched the pear in the bowl while whispering, "Tickle, tickle." The pear seemed to shake and then it actually started to giggle before it morphed into a brass door handle.

Theo reached out and turned the handle to open the painting, like a door. Behind it was a room as big as the Great Hall. In fact, it was exactly the same size as the great hall, a perfect replica - tables and all. The only differences were the ceiling was only seven feet high and it was swarming with house elves. The students observed the elves running every which way for a few moments. All of the elves wore a white tea cozy with the Hogwarts crest embroidered on it, though there were many different colored ropes tied around it. It didn't take more than a few seconds to realize that the belts matched the different houses with red, green, yellow, blue, and orange ropes.

Suddenly, one of the Hufflepuff elves called out, "Students!" and ran up to the boys. A few other elves looked over but continued their work, only the ones who also wore the yellow belts approached them. The first one smiled and said, "I's be Minksy! How can I's help? would yous like something to eat?"

It was right before dinner, so they would probably just wait. Theo was trying to teach the boys cunning, so he said, "Hello Minksy, my name is Theodore. This is Zacharias and Ernest. We were hoping we could get hot chocolate before we go to sleep tonight. Can we call on you in the future?" He held out his hand to the elf, palm up.

Minksy bounced up and down before saying, "Minksy would loves to helps yous sirs!" Then reached out and placed his tiny hand on top of Theo's leaving a small red mark that faded away quickly. Theo motioned to his friends to do the same. Minksy also marked them.

"Thank you Minksy! We will give you a call later tonight! Your help is much appreciated!" Theo said cheerfully and Minksy was almost vibrating with happiness. Then he guided Zach and Ernie out of the kitchen.

Once they were out and the door was closed, he turned back to the two boys, "That was perfect. Since you don't have your own elves, let me explain what just happened. We forged a connection with an elf from Hogwarts. We can't give them orders, but we can call on Minksy specifically when we want to make requests. This is not something to be abused as we probably aren't supposed to be able to call elves without being a prefect or professors. Make sure whenever you speak to Minksy that you thank him for his help, as that is what he lives for, your gratitude and nothing else. Before we go to sleep tonight, we will get hot chocolate to celebrate."

"Cool!" Zach smiled, Theo could see him calculating the possible uses for this.

"Remember, that you also have your promise to the Weasleys as well. They're in detention now for trying to dig up the entrance to the Scamander common room, so that probably isn't the way to get in. Your promise only applies to rumors of how to get in. So if you find out for certain how to get in, that doesn't count as a rumor and you can keep it to yourselves," both boys smiled.

"To ourselves, and you Theo," Ernie added on, and Theo smiled too.