Author's Notes:
Argh, my schedule is a mess, with mini emergencies popping up left and right. If I haven't replied to your review, rest assured that I've read it. I'm just...indisposed (almost missed this update too).
'-
25 The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men II
(See previous chapter's summary for summary)
'-
"What did he say?" Hermione asked the Hufflepuff witch. She didn't expect to see Verrault fidgeting again.
"Camellia—"
"Jiàn zhī shì hǎo fù, duó zhī shì jù hǔ." Camellia answered.
Hermione gave Verrault an impressed look. "I didn't know you know an East Asian language."
"I still have an accent, as Camellia can tell you. It's not that good." He replied, only meeting her eyes for a moment.
"Are you going to translate that, or shall I?" Camellia asked Verrault without preamble, not even allowing him a moment's respite. The eyes under those long eyelashes had no mercy.
"Lookslikealady, actuallyatiger." He rushed.
Camellia's pink lips pursed in disappointment. Hermione was sure that there were two Hufflepuff wizards and one witch giving Verrault warning looks for vexing their esteemed lady of their house (that Camellia was an important Hufflepuff, Hermione suddenly had no doubt).
"Jan. I actually liked your translation. It preserves the rhythm somewhat and not just the meaning."
He sighed in defeat and actually turned to Hermione. He actually lowered his voice slightly as he spoke.
"When seen, like a respectable lady. When robbed, like a dreaded tiger."
Hermione smiled, amused and flattered at the same time. "Why, thank you, Verrault. I've never been complimented so well before by a new colleague."
"It wasn't a compliment." He ground out, as stubborn as he was awkward and he was now frowning again. "It was an observation."
The beautiful Hufflepuff turned towards Hermione, her expression was polite even if reserved as she extended her hand. There was no warmth in her voice.
"A very apt observation, it turns out. It is…interesting to finally meet you, Miss Hermione Curie."
"Thank you for your compliment as well. I'm Hermione Curie, fifth-year transfer. I'm afraid I still don't know everyone here, though." She certainly couldn't rattle off Camellia's full name immediately.
Camellia's lips quirked slightly into the mildest of smiles; her untouchable air thawed a little. Hermione was sure she heard at least one person behind her sigh.
"Camellia Lee, sixth-year Hufflepuff."
'-
Afterwards, it did not take long for Camellia to ask that they had settled their differences, hadn't they? Because Professor Gildenstern can arrive any moment now and start the class, and she'd hate for them to miss parts of their lesson just because of an argument. Camellia had settled back into her seat behind Verrault, and without the other students pulling their chairs around her desk, Hermione could see that not all her textbooks used the Latin alphabet.
She was watching them both with eagle eyes, as if fully prepared to interfere again if they didn't finish their discussion before class starts. If it wasn't for her house tie, Hermione could've mistaken her for a Ravenclaw.
"Well, Verrault, your friend has a point." Hermione said. "I do want to get ready for class too."
"I have no argument with you." He stated.
"Yes, but your needling at Tom without a shred of evidence is getting tiring."
"I will get find the evidence. When I do, no one can stop me, not even you."
Hermione shrugged as she stood up. "Really, when you do have actual proof, I'll be the last person to stop you. But before that, please hold back mere suspicions."
'-
"Did you have a nice chat?"
As Hermione reached the desk he'd placed her bag on, Tom's question was a dash too casual. She did consider his question seriously.
"Well, it certainly wasn't too bad. Verrault could've been more stubborn." Or more annoying, she didn't say. "He even introduced me to Camellia Lee."
"That's," Tom tapped his quill on the table once, his gaze straying to the hawk feather instead of her.
"Interesting."
It was his tone that caught her attention. "Interesting?"
He pulled his scrolls and books out at such a leisurely rate that she had to clasp her hands together to hold back the urge to help pull things out faster. It was making her fingers itch.
"Don't you know? Where Lucretia Black is Ravenclaw's Princess, then Camellia Lee is undoubtedly Hufflepuff's Lady. She is well-known not just for her beauty, but also for her work ethic and dedication to her house. She actually interacted with many of her housemates—helped them academically—that she was the strongest contender for Hufflepuff prefect in her year."
Hermione frowned as she tried to recall the past conversation. Did Lee wear a prefect badge? No, the Hufflepuff didn't. Her memory told her that.
"Yet she's not a prefect, isn't she? What happened?"
Tom's smile was the perfect picture of kindness. "That, I'm afraid, would be gossip."
She stared at him in disbelief. If Tom Riddle cared about something about hurting people's feelings with rumours, she'd eat a first edition book. As his expression slid into a grin for a split second, Hermione knew she was right.
"Official notes from one of the meetings of Hogwarts' Board of Governors state that she's too 'distant' to be able to cooperate well with people from other house, not to mention that she is relatively unknown in the school. She did only transfer during the end of her second year. Some mention of 'we should not be too focused on appearance in deciding this' was also in the notes."
Hermione's answer was a low hiss. "That's bull."
"I don't presume to know how they think." His tone was mild.
"And yet you do, anyway."
"You have such faith in me that you'll inflate my ego beyond belief, Hermione." He sounded flattered, and she would've believed it if she hadn't seen the wicked glint in his eyes. As if it hasn't already, she thought cynically.
"Tom."
"Anyway, what did you talk with Verrault about?" He asked back.
"We talked of many things.
Of men and monsters of the mind." Hermione replied carelessly.
"And how not to cross a king?"
She shook her head.
"Motive is queen—but evidence, king."
It was his turn to lower his eyelids and fix his unamused gaze at her. She was undeterred. Step-by-step, a confident smile danced into existence on her lips.
"You helped him."
She waved it away with her left hand. "Oh, please. I only gave him some pointers that he clearly needs. Even now, he's only a pebble in your shoe. Don't tell me you care?"
"It might be…inconvenient."
"It wouldn't be." She answered with certainty. "After all, you're not going to be that madman, are you?"
A question. A challenge.
Even if she wasn't exactly wrong, it didn't mean that Tom was used to another chessmaster working on the same board he was on.
"Are you really prepared to play the game, Hermione?"
"You have your insurance, I have mine. Besides, I'm neither a coward nor an idiot to be concerned with a little risk." She rolled her eyes and pulled her chair flush next to his. "Come on, give me your truth. Are you even worried about him?"
Her left hand was laid lightly on his neck. His gaze flicked towards it for one second.
"If I said that you owe me a favour for the hassle you stirred up?"
"I'll say that you're trying to put me in debt for something you won't even lose sleep over." She pulled her hand away, scrunched her nose at him and shook her head in mild annoyance. Hermione shifted her chair back.
"Nice try, Tom. Try to bluff me like that again, and I'm liable to be a little pissed off. This one's on me because I'm nice that way."
Hermione had started to pull her books and scrolls out that she missed the momentary surprise crossing his face.
"You're joking."
"No, I know you're bluffing. I'm not one of your followers or your fawning masses to take you at face value. I can tell. Keep trying to convince me otherwise and maybe I'll choose to get pissed off now." She answered with barely a concern on her face, already half-distracted as she opened the textbook and skimmed it once to make sure she'd read ahead the correct chapter last night. She didn't notice him stare at her for a long moment before he shook his head with a wider smile than before.
There was no way she was going to tell him that she just used a manual interrogation trick she learned from Harry right then. There was no need for him to know all her cards, was there? Of course not.
Her hand was right over his jugular as she asked him questions.
Oh, she knew she had to adjust her methods to his psychopathology. An average person's heartbeat would increase when they lie and it would stay steady when they speak of something they knew to be the truth. But this wouldn't be true in the case of a psychopath or a sociopath. They would have no guilt in lying to other people. But she knew she could still get a rise out of him—she wasn't trying to detect him lying to her, she was trying to detect whether he was as emotional as he seemed.
His heartbeat was as even as a metronome.
He was simply trying to see if he can get one past her. As if! A wild wolf wasn't going to change his habits immediately, she already knew that. At least this would teach him a lesson that she could see through him, and that she had no patience for his more irritating games.
Professor Honoria Gildenstern was walking into the class when mini paper bowls surreptitiously danced their way across her table. It was filled with small squares of peaches lightly splashed with cream with thin shavings of almond.
Hermione raised an eyebrow at Tom.
His regretful expression was too melodramatic that she couldn't help her snort and her rapidly-suppressed laughter. She didn't care which Slytherin just had their snacks appropriated by Tom; she simply decided to use the available toothpick to pick the cubes and start snacking. They can mope and suffer for all she cared. He certainly owed her the bribe.
'-
Hermione was not satisfied with her three-layered ward. It was obviously big. It took too much space. Some parts were clearly redundant and not in that good way that meant back-up systems, just bloat.
It was not elegant.
She could compare herself to most of her classmates contenting themselves with single-layer wards no matter how complex, but it wouldn't be a fair comparison since she was sure that almost all of them were new at this. Even if she herself did not specialise in wards, she'd set up more than one before and helped tweaked the plan for others. She had a better understanding than anyone who'd never tried to applied their ancient runes knowledge to actually breaking or creating a ward.
Hermione, however, was not like Luna.
The Ravenclaw picked up dead languages the way other people picked up hobbies, and she'd done this since she was young. The blonde had several under her belt and was always casually reading up more. Her wards were unbelievably strong for their size—her signature style was density and compactness. It was her polyglot nature that allowed her to realise which words had stayed recognisable across cognates in several languages. Of course, cognate words are not exact copies of each other either. Their meanings differ slightly, thus carrying slightly different effects too. Luna merely considered all that as a challenge to her creativity.
That was why if Luna ever created a three-layered ward, with each layer having spellwork from different languages, she can actually skip some words in one or even two of the layers. She didn't just skip some words—she pared a quarter of it. This is because she'd link those layers with symbols and words in the third layer that she knew can still mean the same thing. Instead of looking like an onion with its layers, her work was more like a crisscrossing web or densely woven basket.
(To be honest, Luna's wards usually had at least five layers. But Hermione knew her own limits.)
On the downside, it made her work far less readable for people not versed in all the languages involved. On the upside, it forces people who wanted to break it to go through the much more exhausting brute force method because it was too hard to unravel it intelligently—most people would just fail to understand how it worked as a whole. Trying to understand it and find its weak points would be beyond almost everyone but an actual master warder.
Hermione supposed it was possible to make all three layers with spellwork based on the same language, but it would be too easy to read and break.
Luna's wards were the pinnacle of design, as strong as they were beautiful. It was why it was frustrating when she couldn't even recreate a simpler version of one.
Honoria Gildenstern stalked over to where Hermione's face was in a complicated frown, peering over the Ravenclaw's shoulder like an overly-curious hawk. Considering her aquiline nose and the colouring of her clothes, it was an appropriate imagery.
"You have a problem in sketching your outline?" She asked. Hermione sighed and passed her work over. To her credit, the professor took it in a stride.
"This is…isn't this a little complex? Most would start with one layer or two."
"Well, it's natural for people who'd never raised or tried to break a single ward in their life. I have, so it's natural if I have a bit of a feel already of the practical side to go further. Anyway, the problem isn't in the layers. I've figured out a way to stabilise and synchronise them so they actually strengthen instead of weakening each other, as you can at these sections."
Hermione pointed out the relevant parts on the foundation of each layer. That was the basic parts she'd understood quickly when Luna showed her. Less than half an hour of reading had refreshed her memory on what it required. She could hear Professor Gildenstern humming in agreement with what she did. Not that Hermione ever doubted that.
"My problem is that I haven't been able to reduce the volume much." The brunette said.
The professor's eyebrows rose in curiosity as she began to read the details Hermione's work.
"Mmm, this isn't the Elder Futhark, is it?"
"Only the basic parts, the core as you can see. Yet I wanted to be more specific with the capabilities and the effects of the ward in general. Elder Futhark is good for essential work, but it's hard to wrangle for fine details—probably because we don't know all that much about how it's used. I used the futhorc for the rest instead."
The dark-haired witch read on and frowned.
"Wait, this doesn't make sense. Unless… Hmm. The uniform orthography is actually an illusion. You didn't choose just a single language to work in even if this is all Anglo-Saxon runes, did you?" She mused aloud.
"Of course not," Hermione said. "As you can see, this layer—and I use the term layer loosely since they weave around each other so much—is Old Frisian. The one lower than that is Old English. This is why you see me piling all these phrasebooks, grammar books and dictionaries on the table. The problem is just that the layers isn't sufficiently interwoven yet."
Gildenstern laughed, sounding surprisingly youthful for once.
"I thought all these books meant that you simply couldn't make up your mind on a language! Well, this is an interesting concept. I don't think I've ever seen anyone try to apply it that way, though. Wherever did you get the idea?"
"A friend of mine could actually pull it off. I was trying to recreate what she could do."
The professor nodded. "You get points for being honest. I'll still give you more than enough credits if you choose to go forward with this, Curie. Constructing this from scratch by just using the vague memory of what your friend can successfully construct is not an easy thing to do either."
"Thank you, Professor."
"Your friend must be a talented wardcrafter. You'll have to introduce me to her sometime."
The brunette witch's sharp laughter was closer to a sob that Honoria abruptly turned towards her.
"She's…she's not…" She took a deep breath and composed a sentence that would actually make sense instead of babbles about futures she'd left behind and friends lost in wars she no longer even had any memories of. Hermione needed something that wouldn't make her sound insane.
"As far as I know, she's not among the living now." She spoke softly.
Professor Gildenstern gave her a sombre nod of understanding, patted her arm, and moved on. In a way, she was thankful for the teacher's discretion as she closed her eyes and tried to centre herself.
She wished she could say that she'd left Luna safe and happy in the future. It was a wish that she felt from the deepest recess of herself. Yet it was one that her gut feeling disagreed with. (She still wasn't sure whether to hate or to thank her lost memories).
The best hope she could give herself was that Luna was going to live a long and happy life when she's born in this timeline—Luna and everyone else she'd left behind.
Hermione was going to make that better future with her own hands if necessary.
'-
Honoria Gildenstern had looped away from Hermione Curie in her casual stroll, just to give the poor young woman some space, and was rounding back in the same general direction because she wanted to check on Tom.
She was torn between gladness and exasperation when she saw Tom Riddle being crowded by other students in his seat. He was pointing out the weaknesses in his classmates' designs, she knew that, as well as mark out the more egregious mistakes along with several less noticeable ones. It was significant feedback for most of them, even if he did not actually go through any one of them thoroughly enough to notice the subtle flaws—or whether the other students had actually chosen the correct design principle in the first place.
There was no doubt that he made her job easier. Always helpful, that one. Well, Camellia too, she mused, as her gaze travelled to the other group in class.
They were both her best students. Lee was at the centre of another group of students looking for help, but the Hufflepuffs usually already took too much of her time that students of other houses have to queue behind them. She also gets distracted into the details too easily—Tom did a better job in dispensing just enough advice to get people going before moving on to someone else, thus managing to help more of his classmates than she did.
On the other hand, if Tom was this free with his time, it meant that he'd considered his work more-or-less finished. That implied, in turn, that he'd done it quickly.
He could've done a much more impressive work if he'd spent the time on his own design. It wouldn't have the level of insightful shortcuts that Hermione Curie's design would have. Only Camellia Lee's work was slightly more sophisticated than Curie's—but considering the Hufflepuff witch had a mother who was a warding grandmaster, it was rather useless to compare Camellia to anyone else.
It was good for Tom and Camellia to get some competition. Especially Tom. Really, she was sure he was getting too complacent recently.
Hermione's level of knowledge also caused Honoria to conclude that, similar to Camellia, Hermione must have trained with a master warder at one point or another. How the young witch's OWL-equivalent scores from Norway were exceedingly exceptional across all subjects began to make sense now. She had probably been raised among masters all her life. Then, being the young genius that she would have been even then, she soaked a wide variety of knowledge from them like a sponge.
That girl is going to hit the wizarding world like a storm once she graduates, the professor thought, with not a little schadenfreude as she imagined seeing some plodding Ministry officials having to face the full blast of one Hermione Curie.
Yet it also made Curie's sudden silences and occasional shock (as Phyllida had relayed in the teacher's lounge) made sense with that context. The witch was here alone now, wasn't she? Just how many people had she lost? Practically her entire world, she'd bet.
Honoria shook her head from thoughts about their most recent transfer and focused on the dark head that was at the centre of a circle. She could hear his patient voice occasionally rising above the quiet. A prophet, waited on by his disciples, she thought with an inward chuckle at her own joke.
Chairs had been dragged from nearby spots to his position, tables have been shifted and rearranged; she was a relatively hands-free teacher. She set tasks for them and she waited for them to turn them in. She didn't care how the tables and chairs were going to get configured at the end of the day. Honoria approached him casually, making no effort to quieten her footsteps. She was mildly disappointed that only a few students even noticed her, with Tom included in that few, of course. The rest was too focused on their work.
Galatea has a lot of bad habits to fix from these kids.
"Tom," she called out, "you do remember what I said to you the last time around, don't you?"
"I'm sure I remembered you telling us that we should assist each other in class, Professor Gildenstern." He sounded too innocent to be true, which was how she first figured out that he had a mischievous streak buried deep inside his perfect student appearance.
She didn't mind; it was proof that he was as human as everyone else.
There were the surprised gasps of many who didn't think their professor was so close already. The other students around him mostly yelped or rushed back to their seats. She chuckled because truly, Tom had the right of it. There was nothing wrong with helping each other in class. They were being a bit too paranoid.
"I also remembered asking to everyone to do their best." Honoria said.
One of the few cannier students noticed that she wasn't about to reprimand anyone and stayed around. Gildenstern picked up Tom's design and started reading it.
"Well, I gave my best." The Slytherin replied.
"Hmm, dual layered…ah, at least you're still creative. I would hate if you were just following some basic outline. Also, interlinkages between the layers? Not bad," he had undoubtedly read what Curie was working on and included the layering technique that she used as one of the basis of his own design. All in just over half an hour—at most, it took three-quarters of one. Tom's comprehension speed was frankly uncanny, as was his capacity for insight. Another damned genius, she thought wryly.
"There's the Elder Futhark, of course. Quite the textbook use of it at the core, and it is a classic for a good reason. Wait these are…Tom! These are Medieval Runes."
"Why, yes, they are, Professor."
She snorted at his nonchalance and gave him an unamused look. "That means you're practically writing the ward in Latin, barring the use of some conceptual runes. It's phonetic Latin alright, but it's still Latin."
Gildenstern reread his work again. Yes, it was still Latin. Well, orthographically, it was Medieval Runes, but linguistically speaking…
"Well, since this is an Ancient Runes class instead of one on Germanic-Language Spellwork, I thought it would be alright." He calmly replied.
Honoria's braid swung at the speed she turned her head.
"You are an unrelenting smart-aleck, Tom Riddle. You know that no one likes a smart-aleck, don't you?" she commented, with some grudging acceptance. He was right, really—he was still using runes.
"As long as I can pass, I'll be happy," his reply was glib, and she had to stop herself from telling him to stop being a wiseass and settle for a warning look before reading his work again (because professors at Hogwarts had to keep up a certain level of dignity in class, damn him).
The amount of traps and alarms he had layered into his design was definitely beyond what was needed to pass. First, he had to figure out whether any of the traps were going to be at odds with each other, and the more traps used, the more complicated the possible interactions between them become. There was also the issue that the more traps added, the more complicated it would be to route and allocate the power for all of them. He was certainly more hostile in his design principle than Curie—some of the traps were unusual.
You won't know them if you haven't been reading the books trying to collect them.
Still, he could have made the traps more sophisticated. To add something that can capture intruders instead of outright expelling or hurting them is something that she considers still within his abilities. Perhaps he can even figure out how to render the captives unconscious (wait, no, that's wishful thinking and is actually a difficult problem—human brains are such tricky things).
"You know that you could've turned in a better work than this, right?" Professor Gildenstern asked as she handed his design back.
"Really?"
"You could make the traps more complex. I know what you can do, Tom."
"But you did say that students should do their best," he pointed out.
"What does that have to do with…"
He laid his design on the table and tapped over all the alarms laid around the trap. Yes, she did wonder why there was unusually many of them. Most people would not have embedded it so physically and extensively around the perimeter.
"This. This is how I do my best," he remarked.
"Your best is in setting alarms?" She asked, disbelieving.
"I set alarms in wards that will summon me wherever I was, regardless of the distance, when someone tries to breach them. Then, I can deal with the intruders. The wards were never supposed to be the last and only defence."
Honoria reread what he set for the alarms again and saw what she'd thought as overly-powered summoning arrays. Now, she knew why he made them that way. She gave him a wry smile.
"Your best is not in creating wards, is that what you mean?"
His expression was slightly apologetic. "I'm afraid not, Professor. I'm always a little too assertive to be patient in constructing wards. But if I have to create a ward to defend a place that was important to me? This is what my best would look like."
She understood. "A ward that would stall and create problems for the attacker, but the most important part is, it would summon you?"
"Yes," he nodded. "On the other hand, if we can get Hermione to design the ward and allow me to add all the summoning array, I think we'll have something on par with what's sold on the entry-level for home wards right now. It wouldn't be too shabby for an hour's work."
Honoria laughed. She had seen what Hermione Curie did. With time and effort, the witch could easily go beyond that.
What was more important was that she did not forget what she'd seen half an hour earlier.
Most of the students were still too deep in their work to look around their surroundings while she was still watching them. She did not miss the ease Tom and Curie had in passing their work to each other to advise and criticise. She saw the time when Tom Riddle peering over the Ravenclaw's shoulder, casually shifting her extensive curls when he did that; Curie barely reacted to it and only handed her work over. What was more surprising to her was that Tom allowed Curie to do the same when she wanted to check on his work some time later, her cheek probably only an inch away from his. She hovered there for at least a minute.
Honoria had seen Tom since she was a new professor at Hogwarts and he was but a first-year. She'd known him since he started taking her class in his third year. He had scarcely been within an arm's length of someone else.
This was…hmm, this was fascinating. She hadn't had this much fun in a while.
She couldn't wait to get back to the teacher's lounge to chat with Phyllida—she had to repay her last bit of information about the remnants of poor Curie's trauma and her detailed degree of knowledge on plants. Orpheus might also be interested, considering that he'd been hovering around his newest House member like a mother hen when she was still in the infirmary. Honoria could casually drop hints about it and see how he'd react, and then they'd get a third conspirator to share news with. On further considerations, the last time she heard, Curie took Adele's class, didn't she? Advanced Arithmancy. Wasn't Tom also in that one? This is a definite potential partner that she hadn't even checked. Phyllida would be so disappointed in her.
Albus would be an annoying spoilsport, what with his insistence that none of them could see Tom's 'evil' and how he was obviously 'up to no good', so the Gryffindor head would definitely be kept out of the loop.
Horace? Horace would be the last one to know, possibly beyond even Albus, because no one wanted to hear him being a smug arse. There were no questions about it once he heard the news—he will be a smug arse. It was just a fact of the world along with how the sky is blue and the sun is hot. Plus, the Slytherin head would probably plan Tom's wedding by next week, considering how much he valued the talented fifth-year that was the paragon of his House. They could not allow the man to embarrass the young wizard's attempt at courting the girl he was interested in, especially since this was literally the first person that Tom even found interesting.
Tom would thank her for it, she was sure of that.
'-
.
(The short segment after this does not focus on either Hermione or Tom.)
(Really, you won't miss anything in the main story if you jump straight to the end notes and move on. I just had too much time on my hands/is procrastinating that I ended up writing it. It merely covered one of the side characters).
.
'-
Side Story – Minion Blues 1
Pendleton had arrived early to the Advanced Ancient Runes class for the sole purpose of choosing the best seat.
He'd done it for the Ancient Runes class before lunch, almost running into more than one people as he hurried out of ADADA class, and he finished lunch at as much increased pace as he could manage without outright gobbling his food without chewing. He'd figured out the perfect seat—the seating column at the centre of the class gave the best view, while the third row gave him the expansive view of the blackboard without having to tilt his head upwards unnecessarily.
He considered it vital since Professor Gildenstern often drew large scale diagrams that easily took the space of half the blackboard.
The first Hufflepuff entered the class some ten minutes after Pendleton. His shoulders slumped once he saw the Slytherin sitting calmly in the middle of the class.
"Dammit, Pendleton."
"It's not my fault you're slow."
"There's no way I can get you to trade your seat, is there?"
"No. So, you better not try."
Pendleton ignored the annoyed look the wizard sent him and opened what in other schools might be considered a lunch box, but in Hogwarts everyone would recognise as a snack box. Professor Gildenstern was among the more lenient of the professors when it came to it. As long as the students were subtle and the snack wasn't noisy, she ignored them. It might come as a surprise to many people, but Slughorn was on the other end. Yet considering the sort of potion accidents that even Slytherin fifth-years could get up to (even those who should know better), Pendleton did not find it unexpected at all that his head of house didn't want to add poisoning on top of that.
Small squares of peaches splashed with a little cream and the occasional flaked almonds. The last time his family visited Greece, he had developed a taste for pomegranates, so there were small wedges of the fruit inside, the small beads of ripe fruitlets glittering like jewels. The last was actually something new the kitchen elfs offered him. They said they'd made a large batch of pear soaked overnight in litchi honey, and why would he say no to that? He idly mused which student's recipe or order that was.
His grades for the class was good, and he might even be the top of the class in any other, more average school. Alas, he was in Hogwarts; the most prestigious school in the isles, and he had the added bad luck of having live through times of war in the continent. Tom Riddle shot up in any class he entered, and Pendleton had made his peace with that. Then Camellia Lee's parents moved in from wherever it was that they were stationed at in the continent and he was instantly doomed to be a distant third.
To be honest, he didn't really care about it all that much. He just wanted to be able to reconstruct and strengthen the wards at his family's home. Sure, he can always ask for the help of a master warder, but in any old family's demesne, there are always places where it's very unadvised to let a stranger enter.
For those parts, it would still come down to his own expertise in the end.
His books were on the table already, his quills all loaded with the shades of ink that he used, and he had scrolls of empty parchment ready.
The second Hufflepuff and third Hufflepuffs who entered the room was as dismayed as the first to see him sitting at his desk.
"It just had to be Pendleton," the wizard said with a theatrical sigh. He seemed to be one of those wizards who was like Alphard—in his enthusiasm, he forgot to use indoor voice.
"I'm sure there's something we can trade with him, right?" The witch asked her companion.
"No, not really. We tried in the Ancient Runes class last year, remember? That wasn't because we were out of things to trade with."
Pendleton eyed them oddly. Really, there were light conversations, and if you were trying to negotiate with another party, you do not let them see all the cards you were holding. Was it just because they were Hufflepuffs and thus less vigilant about it? Or was this actually on purpose to get him to lower his guard or make assumptions about them?
"You know that I'm not going anywhere, don't you?" The Slytherin asked.
"We were hoping you would say that." The witch deadpanned. The wizard looked as if he still hadn't quite given up.
"Come on, Pendleton. It's for Camellia."
"You should try that on another Hufflepuff, not someone from a different house." He remarked.
As beautiful as she was, he was not sacrificing the best seat for her. What use was beauty to him, anyway? It wasn't even something he could snack on, unlike the perfect fruits he had right now. He picked a small piece of pomegranate and ate that. The juice burst in his mouth.
"Urgh."
"Try getting here faster."
"We did! The only way to get out of lunch faster was to barely have any!" The wizard said. He had the upper body solidity of one who was his house's beater.
Pendleton shrugged. It wasn't his business that they couldn't eat like an Auror rushed to go on a long, boring, tailing mission. Which, to be less polite, was to eat like a pack of starving jackals.
"How did you even still have the time to get snacks?" The witch asked in disbelief. She was eyeing his open snack box with a discomfortingly covetous look. Pendleton shifted its position on his lap.
He didn't tell them that he had it prepared since the morning. It wasn't as if the box didn't have some light preservation charms on them.
"Can I have some?" She asked. His answer was straightforward.
"No."
The witch threw her hands up. What was her name again? Something Anderson. Lana? No, not Lana. Ah, it was Iona. "Oh, for Merlin's sake. It's just snacks, Pendleton."
"Then I'm sure you can get some yourself."
"We wouldn't have made it here on time! I didn't even get to have any dessert at lunch." She complained.
Well, being you sounds like a miserable experience.
"My condolences," was his dry reply. It didn't stop him from picking one of the peach squares with a toothpick and eating it. It was perfectly sweet and juicy, the occasional cream and crunchy almond providing a smooth contrast. He'd even properly planned when he was going to eat which quarter of his snacks to make sure he had enough snack from the beginning of the class to the end.
"That is just not fair." The wizard groused again.
"Plan better."
The two of them glared at him, which slid off as easily as water off a duck's back. He simply savoured another square of peach in front of them.
'-
To her credit, Camellia Lee entered the class without even blinking when she saw where he was (Pendleton was distracted for a few seconds as her dazzling being entered his view—until he remembered why he always looked away from her. She was hell on his situational awareness). She simply moved on and took the seat right behind him. It was, he had surmised, the second-best seat in the class. Tom usually took the one on the second or first row—why he did that, Pendleton had no idea and was only too glad that he thought that way. At least he wouldn't be asked to give up his seat for his liege.
Well, he wouldn't say no, but he'd do it very slowly and with regrets.
To his surprise, Tom didn't enter alone—there was a witch by his side. There was only one witch with that mass of curls; Hermione Curie. A second later, he berated himself for being surprised.
Did he miss how Tom almost went all out in a fight with her in Advanced Defence? Yes. But then, he thought she was just a talented duellist. Delagardie certainly was. Then again, he didn't think he'd seen Tom go that far even with Delagardie, no matter how hard Augusta pushed (to her frustration).
Maybe Tom only wanted to see how long it would last until Curie bored him. Yes, that was probably it.
"Psst. Pendleton!"
A glance to his left and the previous Hufflepuff beater turned out to have taken the seat there. One of the Adewale brothers, wasn't he? He only raised an inquiring eyebrow at the other wizard.
"Trade my liquorice strings for some of your snacks?"
His forehead creased slightly. "Those taste like cough medicine to me."
"Come on. Well, it's not just liquorice. I'm pretty sure there's cherry, pineapple and green apple liquorice among others."
Pendleton glanced down at the box he'd placed on the table (for the moment). He'd already quartered it properly, and he'd always brought just enough for himself to eat…
"Please? Pretty please? I'll even go easy on Slytherin in our next practice match?"
"That would just make the team underestimate you in a real match." Pendleton pointed out.
"I'll go all out during practice, then?"
He sighed. The things he'd do for his House. Captain Flint was going to owe him some drinks in the next Hogsmeade weekend. "Fine. Please don't take too much of the peach."
Adewale whooped. Pendleton winced a little at the Hufflepuff's volume control as he resigned himself to the trade.
"That's your favourite, then?" Adewale asked. Pendleton merely shrugged.
'-
Class would begin soon, and it was just the right time he was waiting for as no one was paying particular attention in his direction.
He'd just managed to quietly place the box on the table when Tom suddenly turned around on his seat to face him. His smile was not exactly reassuring to Pendleton, who'd seen it often enough right before Tom gave him and Ves more assignments to do.
"Thank you, Pendleton. I'll take that."
Without as much of a by-your-leave, Tom floated the mini paper bowls of peaches up. It was so fast that Tom's wand was only a blur. Confounded as he was, Pendleton still had enough presence of mind to snatch the last bowl.
His peaceful plans of working on Runes while having some finger foods as distraction vanished like a mirage in the desert. The pitying looks from Adewale on the next table from his didn't help. Pendleton was still staring at the single peach square he'd managed to secure.
"Here, have one of my peach squares." The Hufflepuff had moved his dessert before he even finished his sentence.
"Thank you Adewale, but it's not necessary." Pendleton finally managed to say.
"Oh, it's alright. Just consider this one's on me. Man, you Slytherins overcomplicate everything."
The two miniature paper bowls with peaches on the table were as lonely as they were poignant.
'-
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End Notes:
Teachers are not blind, alright? I find it weird that only Dumbledore is able to sense 'the evil' in Tom and everyone else is oblivious as he spreads maiming and mayhem in Hogwarts. It's more likely that Tom actually manages to be a good student and have a good relationship with them. The situation is similar to those serial killers who have a good relationship with their parents or neighbours. After all, the smart ones know that you don't shit where you eat—you don't hunt in your home territory.
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List of Stuff One Might Try to Look Up:
Cognate: (Linguistics) Words that are cognate have the same linguistic derivation as another (e.g. English father, German Vater, Latin pater). This definition is sourced from Oxford English Dictionary, with minor adjustments.
Elder Futhark: (Linguistics, Orthography) also called Older Futhark or Germanic Futhark, it's the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It's a writing system used by Germanic Tribes, the precise geographical location of which I'm sure Wikipedia can show you. Inscriptions in Elder Futhark are found on artefacts from the 2nd to 8th century.
Old English: (Linguistics) a. k. a. Anglo-Saxon, the earliest historical form of English language. Spoken in England and eastern parts of Scotland in the early middle ages. Brought to Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers probably around 5th century.
After the Norman Conquest of 1066 (by William the Great, a. k. a., William the Bastard), the language of the upper class became Anglo-Norman, and this meeting ended up with Anglo-Saxon receiving many new words and shifting in form. This is when it begins to change into Middle English.
Old Frisian: (Linguistics) a West Germanic language, spoken between 8th and 16th century in the area between the Rhine and the Weser on the European North Sea coast. The people who settled England from about 400 onwards came from the same region and spoke more or less the same language (different dialects at most), hence the close relationship between Old English and Old Frisian. (Courtesy of Wikipedia. I don't know Western European Linguistics that much).
Anglo-Saxon runes, futhorc: (Linguistics, Orthography) Runes used by early Anglo-Saxons as the alphabet for their writing. The futhorc (as the runes are collectively known) are descended from Elder Futhark. Since they are first thought to be used in Frisia before the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, they have also been called Anglo-Frisian runes. Artefacts have been found scattered in England and the places that used to be Frisia, etched with these runes, written in Old English and Old Frisian respectively.
Not to be confused with Younger Futhark, which is also a descendant of Elder Futhark, but is in use in the Scandinavian region, first to write Old Norse, and as the language began to shift later, its descendants (until the script mutates again).
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Additional Notes:
Jiàn zhī shì hǎo fù, duó zhī shì jù hǔ:
见之似好妇，夺之似惧虎 (Simplified)
見之似好婦，奪之似懼虎 (Traditional)
Actual a fragment of poem/turn of phrase from the Wúyuè Chūnqiū ("Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue"), an unofficial history from the era of the Eastern Han (206 BCE – 220 CE). The freestyle translation is my own (apologies if it's not precise/kinda rough) because yes, I was trying to find one that at least has a similarly rhythm in English. The phrase means what you think it means, at least when it's used these days. Don't ask me about the subtle contexts in Classical Chinese.
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