Chapter 201: Malfoy Put on the Spot, Let's Stir Up an Even Greater Panic
The Slytherin Stands
Draco Malfoy watched the match with total concentration, his attention fixed above all on the broom beneath Ravenclaw's Seeker.
As the game went on, his eyes grew brighter and brighter.
"Faster," Draco breathed, excitement climbing in his chest. "The turns are sharper, and that short, sudden vertical climb… Leonardo's finished improving the East Wind."
He was still riding that rush when a solid figure barged through the crowd and planted himself at Draco's side. A rough, booming voice rolled over him.
"See that, Draco?"
Marcus Flint jerked his chin at the stretch of sky where the East Wind had just knifed through the rain-grey air. He forced a grin that didn't reach his eyes.
"That's the real thing. Go on. Find your friend Grafton and get us seven of those for the team."
Heat rushed to Draco's face. He stared at Flint as if he'd misheard.
"I just donated seven brand-new Nimbus Two Thousand and Ones to the team," he snapped, the words coming out in a low, furious hiss. "They're the best brooms on the market."
"They were," Flint cut in, waving it away.
Then he leaned closer, his voice dropping, hard and mean.
"I put you on this team because your brooms made us faster. Because they let us crush Gryffindor and their antiques. But now the East Wind's here."
He stepped in until his shadow swallowed Draco.
"Listen carefully. I can find another Seeker. Someone better than you. Don't start thinking we can't do without you."
Draco knew what this was.
Flint had been in detention, and Draco had run a few training sessions in his absence. For a captain who liked absolute obedience, that would have felt like a challenge. Now he was taking the first excuse he could find to press Draco back into place.
Anger and humiliation churned in Draco's chest, but he didn't snap back. Not here.
A stubborn, wary part of him kept whispering the same thing: he still wasn't strong enough to deal with someone like Flint, thick as he was, when he was built like a troll and twice as brutal.
The Next Day
After a sleepless night, Draco still went to find Leonardo. He explained everything in a halting rush, as if the words tasted sour on his tongue.
Leonardo listened without interrupting. In his hand, he idly turned a thunderbird feather that flickered with faint, deep-blue arcs of electricity. When Draco finished, Leonardo was silent for a moment.
Typical bullying. Slytherin never missed a chance to turn Quidditch into a pecking order.
And Draco really did love Quidditch, didn't he? He didn't want to lose his place.
Or perhaps he simply didn't want to give up the one place where he could properly chase and compete with Harry Potter.
Leonardo asked calmly, "When you pick Quidditch players, what matters most?"
Draco blinked, then answered on instinct. "Flying skill. Fitness. Reflexes…"
Leonardo nodded slightly. From their flight training, he'd already confirmed Draco had real fundamentals and genuine passion for the sport. At least when it came to Quidditch, Draco wasn't just a pampered boy treating it like a pastime.
"You're the Seeker," Leonardo said, gaze steady. "So tell me this. Among the Slytherins who are qualified, and willing, to play Seeker, where do you rank?"
Draco froze.
He'd never really looked at it from that angle.
"I…" He hesitated, then the thought began to build as he spoke. "To be honest, not many older students try out again. One, they're drowning in O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s. Two, anyone who truly wanted to be on the team already joined years ago."
He frowned, continuing as the logic clicked into place.
"And first-years aren't even eligible, so that's not a factor. Someone like Potter is… hard to find twice."
His voice steadied as he followed the trail Leonardo had laid down.
"So my real competition is mostly second-years to fourth-years…"
Hogwarts wasn't large to begin with, and Slytherin didn't have endless numbers either. Draco's mind ran quickly through names, measuring them, weighing them.
He was agile in the air. His build suited a Seeker. And, most importantly, the Malfoy family's resources meant he'd had better training than most.
Yes, Slytherin had other wealthy pure-blood families, but not every pure-blood student loved Quidditch enough to throw themselves into it. Even fewer were eager to fight for the Seeker position, where personal technique mattered more than anything.
By the time Draco finished that silent calculation, the truth was obvious.
Within Slytherin, Draco Malfoy was actually very good.
Watching the light dawn in Draco's eyes, Leonardo waited until he fully understood. Only then did he speak, calm and certain.
"So instead of spending Galleons again and again to buy a place that was never secure in the first place, why not put that effort into sharpening your actual Quidditch skill?"
Leonardo leaned forward slightly. A glint flashed through his dark green eyes.
"If you become the best Seeker in Slytherin, the one they can't replace, then as long as they want to win trophies, you won't be the one begging."
"It'll be them coming to you. Because they need you."
He let that settle, then added evenly, "A Seeker catches the Golden Snitch and wins a hundred and fifty points on the spot. That decides the match. I don't think I need to explain how important that is."
Draco stood there, the fury and panic Flint had stirred up already fading. In its place, something heavier, something firmer, began to take root.
Ambition.
Trunk World
"Grrrr…"
Norbert lay sprawled low to the ground, letting out a restrained, rumbling growl.
His massive body was armoured in black scales that gleamed like cold metal. Look closer and you could see fine gold lines etched across every scale in dense, intricate patterns, brightening and dimming faintly with each heavy breath.
Leonardo stood beside him, looking small by comparison.
Focused, he guided his wand through the air with light, precise movements, tapping points along Norbert's spine and wings without ever touching him. Each tap sent a subtle ripple of magic, and the golden lines answered, kindling into a soft glow as though responding to a call.
"Easy, Norbert," Leonardo murmured, steady and soothing. "Just the last step."
He was using Magical Pathway Weavecraft to re-thread and optimise the dragon's natural magical circuits.
Once it was complete, Norbert would stand above other Norwegian Ridgebacks by a wide margin.
But the final step had stalled on a crucial material, something called a Scrying Venom Heart.
When Leonardo first saw the name in the Weavecraft notes, he'd been completely baffled. The wizarding world's materials were a sea without shores, and plenty of old terms had either vanished or shifted meaning over time.
Only after asking his teacher Nicolas did he learn what it truly referred to.
A basilisk's heart.
That heart held the basilisk's lethal venom, and its peculiar magic of petrification and death. In certain forbidden forms of alchemy, especially those involving alterations to living essence and magical conduction, it was an irreplaceable catalyst.
A basilisk's heart…
Leonardo's gaze returned to Norbert, to the golden lines that still seemed faintly sluggish at their ends.
Perfect. He could "borrow" a basilisk's heart.
Defence Against the Dark Arts Office
Lockhart's temples throbbed.
He set down his ornate peacock-feather quill and pinched hard at the bridge of his nose, eyes flicking uneasily over the old diary lying open on his desk.
"Petrify a… pure-blood?"
He muttered it under his breath, confusion and unease threading through his voice.
This wasn't what they'd planned.
From the start, Tom's design had been clear: target Muggle-born students. It matched the "tradition" of the Heir of Slytherin, and it was safer.
But now Tom was asking for something far bolder and far more dangerous.
Lockhart took a slow breath, picked up the quill again, and wrote carefully, the uncertainty bleeding into every stroke.
"Tom, I don't understand. The messages you had me leave on the walls clearly said we were 'cleansing those unworthy of learning magic', driving out Muggle-borns. Why is the target… pure-bloods now?"
Inside the Diary
Fed again and again on the valuable, life-rich offerings Lockhart provided, dragon's blood among them, the image of young Tom was no longer blurred.
His face was sharp and handsome, black hair and black eyes framing a cold, keen composure that seemed far too mature for his age.
He could feel it. Rebuilding a body and escaping the prison of this diary were finally within reach.
When he saw Lockhart's question, Tom's mouth curved into a faint, contemptuous smile.
Vain, stupid man.
He wrote his reply in a clear, elegant hand, every word steeped in persuasion.
"Gilderoy, my friend, you must think further ahead. Attacking Muggle-borns creates fear, yes, but pure-blood families will ignore it, or even approve."
"But if a pure-blood student is attacked, think about it. Imagine the uproar."
"Every student and every parent, regardless of blood, will fall into real panic. Fear will spread like wildfire through Hogwarts, and then burn its way into the Board of Governors and the Ministry of Magic."
He paused, then let his quill glide on, offering bait Lockhart could never refuse.
"The more chaotic the situation, the deeper the terror. And when everyone is at their most desperate, you appear as the hero. You defeat the monster in the Chamber. You defeat the basilisk."
"Only then will the praise and glory you receive reach its true peak. Isn't that what you want?"
Of course, Tom had other purposes too.
Those pure-blood parents might enjoy watching Muggle-borns suffer, but the moment their own children were threatened, their attitudes would flip like a switch. They would unite to pressure Dumbledore, even drag the matter to the Ministry.
Tom knew Dumbledore well. A man with enormous power who still chose to bind himself in "rules".
Once the pressure mounted, the old man's attention would be pulled in a dozen directions.
If luck held, Dumbledore might even be forced away from the school for a time.
Dumbledore was the only one Tom truly feared. The other professors were strong, yes, but against a basilisk, against sudden attacks, how many could they really save?
Tom leaned back in the wide chair behind him, voice dropping to a soft murmur.
"First, remove Harry Potter, that stumbling block. Then create a slaughter worthy of being written into history…"
"When the time comes, Dumbledore will be the Headmaster who failed to protect his school, who let countless children die. He won't even keep his post. He could be tried and sent to Azkaban."
The thought burned in him, and he forced it down, continuing to write with patient, guiding ease.
"As for you, Gilderoy, there is no need to worry. At the right moment, you can even step forward 'to help', analysing the clues and gently steering the truth towards the legend of the Chamber's monster."
"That will not only temporarily clear suspicion from you, it will also highlight your intelligence and insight…"
Outside the Diary
Lockhart's brows knitted tightly as he read the words forming on the page, persuasive and smooth.
Tom's explanation sounded reasonable. For fame and honour, a little risk might be worth it.
And the picture Tom painted, the moment of heroic arrival, made Lockhart's heart race.
"Petrify a pure-blood…" he whispered.
Hagrid's Hut
Snow fell thick around Hagrid's hut, laying down a deep white blanket.
Hagrid's balaclava-style wool hat was dusted with flakes, and his low, rumbling voice shook the snow from his beard in soft showers.
"Thanks fer helpin' me with the spells, Leonardo. Otherwise we'd be losin' even more o' me roosters."
His huge frame stood by the chicken coop, heavy with worry.
Leonardo lifted his wand and let the last fine thread of magic sink into the air around the coop.
Layer after layer of trap magic settled into place, enough to deal with whatever Hagrid kept calling "foxes" or "vampires". Hagrid believed those had killed several of his birds.
But Leonardo knew the real culprit was sitting comfortably in the Defence Against the Dark Arts office.
The basilisk. A monster born from a chicken egg hatched beneath a toad.
And cursed by nature itself, because a rooster's crow was lethal to it.
Lockhart was clearing obstacles for that creature. Hagrid's roosters were the first things that had to go.
"No need to thank me," Leonardo said, voice calm. "It was nothing."
Then he added, as if it were an afterthought, "Hagrid, could I borrow a rooster?"
Hagrid didn't hesitate for a second. His bearded face split into a delighted grin.
"Course! Yeh makin' that tasty chicken an' mushroom stew? I got some mushrooms I picked in the Forbidden Forest in summer, dried 'em an' all, if yeh want…"
"No. Not for cooking," Leonardo cut in gently, stopping Hagrid before he could barrel off for the dried mushrooms. He gave a brief explanation instead.
Hagrid, satisfied, went into the coop and came back with a bright, lively rooster, scarlet comb proud and feathers glossy. He put it into a sturdy cage and handed it over.
Leonardo took the cage and turned back towards the castle.
Then Hagrid called after him, the cheer draining from his voice.
"Leonardo… Hogwarts ain't safe lately. That Chamber, the Chamber… it opened fifty years ago."
He rubbed his big hands together, restless and uncertain, as if weighing whether he should say more.
"It really… really can kill. But this time, it's petrifications, an' I don' know if it's the same as back then."
Leonardo caught the fear and confusion in Hagrid's eyes. Hagrid had been blamed once before. He knew what the Chamber meant, and he knew how ugly it could get.
Leonardo lifted the cage slightly, steadying it as the rooster shifted inside, and spoke with quiet reassurance.
"It's all right, Hagrid," Leonardo said quietly. "The truth will come out."
He stepped into the wind and snow, heading for the castle.
From within the cage, the rooster let out a crisp, clear crow.