The blazing tongue of fire was already inches from Kate's face. She could practically feel the terrifying heat radiating from within those flames.
So this was why Katherine had thought it was a good idea to demonstrate Fiendfyre — an outright dark magic spell — to a class of first-years. What on earth had possessed her?
Was she trying to cause problems for Hogwarts?
And now Kate was the one who had to clean up the mess left behind by these little snakes and their suddenly inflated ambitions.
What a pain.
She gave her wand a casual flick. The flames stopped dead, held back by a transparent barrier as though they weighed nothing at all.
"You wanted to see what Fiendfyre could do?" Her voice was low and measured. "That pitiful little flame doesn't even qualify as Fiendfyre."
The words had barely left her mouth before a torrent of fire erupted from her own wand.
But compared to Crabbe's single, unfocused burst of flame, hers was fiercer — far hotter — and had already begun to take on the vague, roiling shape of something alive.
The fire dragon spread its massive jaws wide and swallowed Crabbe's Fiendfyre whole. Then it wheeled — and lunged straight for him.
"Protego!"
Malfoy threw up a Protego with a face drained of all color, catching the fire dragon behind the barrier.
But it was her first time casting Protego under real pressure. The shield crumpled almost immediately — eaten through like tissue paper — as the fire dragon bore down on both of them.
On pure instinct, Malfoy threw her hands up over her face and squeezed her eyes shut.
The searing pain she braced for never came.
She opened her eyes, trembling — and found that the terrifying fire dragon had stopped dead, suspended in midair just one meter away.
Her legs gave out beneath her. She crumpled straight to the floor, sinking into a half-kneel.
Crabbe, standing just behind her, fared no better. His face had gone the color of ash. He toppled and sat down hard, both legs still shaking uncontrollably.
Kate recalled the fire dragon with visible effort, and her expression wasn't exactly pleasant either.
She swept her gaze across the students surrounding her, drew a long, slow breath, and tilted her head back. "Did you all see that? That is what happens when Fiendfyre loses control."
What Crabbe had just done was textbook loss of control.
This idiot couldn't manage Fiendfyre even in his seventh year in the original story. Expecting him to control it as a first-year — in a completely unpracticed state — was never going to end any other way.
The only saving grace was that he was a first-year. His total Mana pool was negligible. If it had been otherwise, Kate wasn't sure she could have stopped him.
She raised a hand and wiped the sweat from her forehead, then straightened her spine. "I'll say it one more time: Fiendfyre may look easy to learn, but the real threshold is extraordinarily high. Without precise control and absolute concentration, you would do well not to cast it carelessly."
She had absolutely no interest in falling asleep one night only to wake up to some corner of the Common Room on fire.
If it were just a fire, that would almost be manageable.
The Slytherin Common Room was at the bottom of the Black Lake.
If someone practiced Fiendfyre in secret, lost control, and the wards on the outer walls cracked — the Black Lake would come pouring in. The entire Slytherin House would be finished.
The ones with talent might claw their way to safety. The ones without? They'd drown at the bottom of the Black Lake.
It wouldn't just be the worst incident in Slytherin's history — it would be the greatest catastrophe in Hogwarts' entire eight centuries of existence.
Not just Snape — Dumbledore and every last one of the professors would go down with them.
So who, exactly, had decided that a private tutoring session was a good idea? And who had decided that the Common Room was the appropriate venue for it?
Kate's gaze settled on Pansy, whose head had already dropped in guilt.
Kate herself had been pushed into this without any say in the matter — but was Pansy really going to pretend she hadn't known the risks? Were the rest of them?
Or had the hunger for power simply overridden every shred of common sense? Had they all stopped thinking entirely, stopped caring whether they lived or died?
The more Kate thought about it, the angrier she got — but she couldn't exactly tear into this many people at once. That would only breed resentment.
The important thing was that she'd managed to put the brakes on this particular bout of collective madness in time. She'd laid out the real threshold for Fiendfyre, and they'd all seen firsthand what losing control of it looked like.
With any luck, the entire Snake House would stay quiet for a while.
Even so, this still had to be reported to Snape. He needed to know.
Kate's gaze drifted to Malfoy, who was still sitting on the floor in a dazed stupor.
Tattling was a job best left to the experts.
She walked over to her unhurriedly and extended a hand.
Malfoy slowly raised her head. She looked at Kate for a long, complicated moment — and had just started to reach for the offered hand when Kate brought her palm down in a sharp, merciless slap.
"Young Master," Kate said, her eyes cold as winter glass as she stared down at her, "I warned you. Have you learned your lesson?"
That voice — frigid, cutting, laced with quiet disappointment — was enough to make anyone's heart clench.
Malfoy in particular felt it the moment she heard the mocking title. She already had a fairly clear picture of what Kate was feeling right now.
Kate was angry. Furious.
Was it because she, for the sake of her own pride, had stood by and let Crabbe hurt her? Was that why?
With a knot of tangled, conflicted feelings tightening in her chest, Malfoy scrambled somewhat ungracefully to her feet under Kate's unwavering stare. "Shafiq, I—"
"You and Vincent Crabbe will face the consequences of your recklessness."
Kate lifted her chin and swept her gaze over the crowd of onlookers still hovering at the edges of the room. Her voice dropped to something soft and dangerous. "If Fiendfyre had gone fully out of control — and I hadn't been able to stop it in time—"
She left the sentence unfinished.
She didn't need to finish it. Every student in the room had already filled in the blank on their own.
A collective shudder ran through the crowd as the image flashed through each of their minds — Fiendfyre raging out of control, casualties mounting.
Several Prefects immediately stepped forward to take charge.
"Practicing Fiendfyre in the Common Room was a terrible idea to begin with," one of the male Prefects said, his expression grave. He glanced between Malfoy and Crabbe. "Fortunately, Miss Shafiq was here. She's the only reason we all walked away tonight."
He continued, looking directly at the two of them: "Regarding tonight's events — I'll be speaking to the Head of House on behalf of everyone present."
Malfoy's face went white.
This hadn't even been her affair to begin with.
She hadn't organized the headcount. She hadn't been part of the crowd gathering to watch Kate make a spectacle of herself. She hadn't been involved at all.
She'd even tried to talk Pansy out of it when she'd heard about the plan — but too many people had already thrown their support behind it, and she hadn't been able to stop the tide.
As for Crabbe stepping forward on his own — that had been entirely his decision. He hadn't consulted her for even a second.
And yet she had still chosen, for the sake of her pride, to tacitly endorse his behavior. And it had almost become a tragedy.
"Senior," Kate said, stepping forward before he could continue, "half the house had some part in this. If you report it exactly as it happened, Professor Snape is going to lose his mind."
Their own house's students, queuing up to learn dark magic — of course that would send Snape into a fury.
The male Prefect had apparently already pictured that particular scene in vivid detail. He went a little pale.
In all of this, the most blameless person present was almost certainly Kate — she was the only one who'd been dragged into this whole situation without knowing a thing beforehand.
So the Prefect simply turned to her and asked, "Then what do you think we should do?"
"Simple," Kate said. "Everyone present keeps quiet. And we make it clear to everyone else in the house — anyone who wasn't here tonight — that talking is not an option."
"As for Crabbe — he goes to the Head of House on his own and takes his punishment. The official version: he was practicing Fiendfyre in private, nearly caused a disaster.
"As for Malfoy — as Crabbe's friend, she failed to notice what he was doing and take action in time. She goes with him to confess to the Head of House."
Spread a secret across a large enough group, and it becomes almost impossible to break — anyone who talks becomes an outcast, condemned by everyone else who had something to lose.
If Malfoy — who had considerable family influence and standing within Slytherin — went to take the fall, the damage to the rest of them would be minimal.
That was only the first move. The longer game involved slowly steering Malfoy toward reporting the incident herself, willingly.
With Kate herself proposing it, no one else who'd been involved had any grounds to object.
If the Prefect marched in and gave Snape the full, unvarnished truth, half of Slytherin would be in trouble.
This way, only Crabbe and Malfoy suffered the consequences — and that was, by any measure, the best outcome they could hope for.
Better you than me. It had been true across every culture and every era. As long as they themselves could escape unscathed, it didn't matter who took the fall.
Nowhere was that instinct more perfectly embodied than in the Snake House.
The quiet murmur that had been filling the Common Room swelled. Everyone was talking over each other, debating Kate's proposal.
Only Malfoy stood motionless in the middle of the crowd, face tight and ashen, watching Kate's perfectly composed expression — and feeling something she couldn't quite name.
By Kate's own reasoning, even if she went to confess to the Head of House, the punishment might not necessarily be severe.
What she couldn't work out was why Kate had made a point of dragging her into it. Was it truly just because she'd stood by without stopping Crabbe, all for the sake of saving face?
After a long while, as the noise in the Common Room continued to build, several Prefects were finally forced to step in and call for order.
"Since no one has raised a different suggestion, we'll go with what Miss Shafiq has proposed — does everyone agree?" the lead Prefect called out.
Some nodded. Others simply said nothing.
The Prefect read the room and made the call. "Then it's settled. Tomorrow, Miss Malfoy — please bring Mr. Crabbe with you to see the Head of House."
With the matter decided, most of the students wasted no time retreating to their dormitories before any further consequences could find them.
"Seniors — why don't you all head back as well," Kate said with a smile. "I just need a quick word with these two."
The Prefect nodded. "You've worked hard tonight, Shafiq."
That much was true. She'd been shoved into this without warning, dragged up as the solution to a mess she hadn't made — and somehow still had to let everyone else walk away clean.
Kate kept the polite smile fixed on her face and watched them file back into their dormitories.
[Congratulations, Host. Academy Reputation +10!]
She ignored the System's notification.
When she turned around, only four people remained: Pansy, Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle.
"Pansy," Kate said, "go wait for me in the dormitory."
Malfoy followed. "Goyle — this doesn't concern you. Back to the dormitory."
"But—"
"No buts. Go. Now."
At her tone, Goyle scrambled away without another word.
Malfoy looked down at Crabbe, who was still sitting on the floor in a vacant daze. She grabbed him by the arm and hauled him upright, then turned back — her gaze settling on Kate for a long, quiet moment.
"Outside, or here?" Kate asked, nodding toward the corridor beyond.
Malfoy's expression darkened. Without hesitation, she walked out.
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