Hogwarts joint lectures were traditionally split into two core blocks, separated by a brief mid-class recess.
During the second half of the period, Professor McGonagall meticulously dissected the standard blunders the young wizards had repeatedly committed during their initial attempts.
Backed by her targeted guidance, several more students successfully produced fully realized needles, while Neville Longbottom managed to manifest a flawless eye of a needle.
“If we were to fuse the sharp point from your previous attempt with the eye produced this period, Mr.
Longbottom could technically be considered successful,” Professor McGonagall evaluated dryly.
The absolute second the dismissal bell echoed, Neville gathered his textbooks and shuffled over to stand directly before Silan.
“Silan…
I genuinely want to thank you again.
For everything.” “Think nothing of it, Neville,” Silan replied smoothly with a reassuring smile.
“We are friends.
This is merely what friends do.” Neville’s grip on his heavy textbooks tightened instinctively, his fingernails lightly digging into the parchment-wrapped cover.
To a boy who had spent his entire existence stranded in isolation, the weight of the word “friend” was an incredibly rare, precious commodity.
“Right…
yes, we are friends,” Neville agreed, mustering every shred of his latent courage to voice the statement he had been meticulously rehearsing for the past hour.
“If you ever find yourself in a tight spot or require a hand with anything at all, please–you must tell me.
What I mean to say is…
I would be absolutely honored to help you.” Saying those words represented a massive personal milestone for him.
Back during his primary school days, he had tentatively offered an identical sentiment to a boy he had desperately considered a companion.
The gesture had yielded nothing but a chorus of mocking laughter: “If my life ever deteriorates to the point where I require a hand from a pathetic squib like you, I’d rather throw myself off a bloody cliff!” Even though his intuition insisted Silan belonged to an entirely different breed of wizard, Neville remained incredibly tense.
Years of bullying had effectively obliterated his self-worth, forcing his subconscious to accept the humiliating labels his peers routinely pinned on him.
“Er…
though, to be perfectly frank, I suppose I might not be of much use…” Neville added in a small, defeated whisper.
“Neville,” Silan interrupted, his expression softening into a genuinely warm smile as he extended an open hand toward him.
“You are incredibly important.
You are a deeply valued friend of mine.” “Oh…
cheers, mate.
Thank you, seriously!” Overwhelmed with absolute, unadulterated joy, Neville beamed radiantly, stumbling over his own words as he repeated his thanks in a dizzying loop.
It took him a solid minute to register that he had an immediate History of Magic lecture to attend.
“See you later, Silan!” Neville turned on his heel to sprint toward his next destination, the brilliant smile never wavering from his face.
Silan watched him go, a trace of affectionate exasperation surfacing as he called out to redirect him.
“The History of Magic classroom is actually down *this* corridor, Neville.” Following the rigors of Transfiguration, the first-years transitioned to History of Magic.
The course was presided over by Professor Binns, the solitary ghost occupying a teaching residency at Hogwarts.
While his pedagogical delivery was notoriously dry, monotonous, and practically engineered to induce immediate narcolepsy across the student body, one had to begrudgingly acknowledge that his encyclopedic command of historical wizarding knowledge was nothing short of staggering.
Professor Binns had been an active faculty member during his corporeal existence.
According to castle lore, he had simply drifted off to sleep before the staffroom hearth one evening and quietly passed away.
The following morning, his spirit had casually risen from the armchair to conduct his scheduled lectures, completely unbothered by the transition and seemingly entirely oblivious to the reality of his own demise.
Silan couldn’t help but admire such an unhinged work ethic.
The bloke had effectively secured an absolute, eternal iron rice bowl for himself.
After all, forcing Dumbledore to formally terminate an educator who was actively pulling shifts long after dying in the line of duty would be an administrative nightmare.
Yet, while Professor Binns’ martyrdom was highly commendable on paper, his lectures were an absolute snooze-fest.
The ghost remained completely marooned within his own internal vacuum throughout the period, utterly indifferent as to whether the living children before him comprehended a single syllable.
He merely read aloud from his dense manuscripts in a dry, rattling drone that resembled a wheezing holographic recording.
Nevertheless, the students harbored zero active resentment toward the instructor.
If an educator never recorded attendance, never cold-called students for answers, and simply delivered their monologue before vanishing the second the bell rang, they would invariably be classified as an easy, low-stakes class–an academic loophole no student would ever complain about.
Silan initially attempted to keep pace with the ghost’s historical timeline.
However, he quickly realized that Professor Binns was far too detached, and his bizarre, flat cadence sounded precisely like a swarm of angry hornets buzzing in a relentless loop against his eardrums.
It was vastly more efficient to simply digest the textbook at his own leisure.
The rest of the classroom had promptly collapsed into various states of decay, with students slumping over their desks to catch up on lost sleep or staring blankly into space.
Only a single soul in the entire room remained sat perfectly upright, consuming the historical knowledge with radiant, sparkling intensity.
Hermione Granger.
As for Silan, he had smoothly transitioned into a state of total, unadulterated slacking.
Regarding the post-class essay?
He would simply copy Hermione’s notes later.
Reaching into his robes, Silan pulled out his accumulated capital to conduct a precise financial audit.
He counted the twenty gold Galleons seized from Chris Nott’s wager, the solitary Galleon generously donated by Prefect Rosier, and the remaining silver leftovers of his Hogwarts stipend–fifteen silver Sickles.
Twenty-one Galleons and fifteen Sickles.
To an orphan from London, this represented a staggering fortune.
While the magical-to-Muggle exchange rate experienced minor seasonal fluctuations, a single Galleon traditionally commanded a value of roughly five British pounds at Gringotts.
Doing the math, Silan was currently carrying approximately one hundred and ten pounds in cold cash.
In the economic landscape of 1991 Britain, one hundred and ten pounds was more than sufficient to comfortably sustain an average working-class family for several weeks.
Watching Silan methodically count the gleaming gold pieces from across the aisle, Chris Nott ground his teeth together like an emasculated, bitter husband.
Yet, despite the boiling resentment screaming in his chest, he didn’t dare utter a single word of protest.
*That is my entire allowance for the term!
My money!
My beautiful gold!* To Silan, however, this capital injection remained vastly insufficient for his broader ambitions.
Setting aside his primitive, inherent affection for physical currency–the sheer psychological comfort of watching numbers grow–he possessed a pressing, requirement for massive amounts of gold.
While tuition, room, and board at Hogwarts were entirely complimentary, advanced potion ingredients and high-grade magical artifacts carried premium price tags.
If he intended to brew complex concoctions, he couldn’t exactly raid Severus Snape’s private ingredient lockers every time he needed a rare root.
At least, not at his current power level.
Furthermore, he intended to finance a proper, formal education for his network of orphans back in London.
Knowledge was the ultimate lever of power.
A pack of illiterate street urchins possessed limited operational utility; they could handle petty theft and minor street scams, but they would never yield the astronomical dividends he required.
His target was vastly grander.
By financing their academic development, he would effectively engineer a highly educated, fiercely loyal corporate to manage his interests across the Muggle domain.
But orchestrating a educational pipeline for an entire orphanage required a capital layout that his current pockets simply couldn’t cover.
“Tsk…
I need a reliable, high-yield revenue stream,” Silan mused silently to himself.
“But what’s the optimal way?
Mass-producing commercial potions and smuggling them into Hogsmeade for retail?” “Harvesting capital directly from my peers remains a viable option.
These pureblood families are absolutely loaded; every single one of them is an exquisite, plump sheep waiting to be sheared…” While Silan was busy plotting his financial expansion, the narrative of Chris Nott’s public apology had already mutated and spread across the castle corridors like a wildfire.
The students had naturally processed the nuance through their own fractured lens, distilling the event into a singular, explosive headline: *Slytherin has formally bowed its head to Gryffindor.* Passed from mouth to ear, the gossip was refined into a highly sensationalized, captivating piece of social news that rippled through the houses with blunt, unstoppable momentum.
While the young wizards were busy debating the fallout over lunch, Albus Dumbledore was quietly standing within the headmaster’s tower, hand-feeding Fawkes.
The magnificent phoenix had accompanied Dumbledore across vast stretches of time.
Since the creature was still a considerable distance away from its scheduled burning day, its current form was breathtakingly beautiful, its crimson and gold plumage shimmering with radiant intensity under the midday sun.
“Oh, my old friend,” Dumbledore murmured softly, his eyes fixed on the bird.
“What is your assessment of young Silan?” Fawkes merely kept his head buried in his food dish, entirely ignoring the headmaster’s philosophical musings.
Dumbledore reached into a delicate crystal bowl, popping a cockroach-shaped cluster of sugar into his mouth before sinking back into his heavy desk chair.
His long, slender fingers began a slow, rhythmic, hypnotic tapping against the polished wood.
By the time the lunch rush officially commenced in the Great Hall, the news of the Slytherin capitulation had cemented itself across every corner of the institution.
The rumor had even breached the depths of the dungeons, reaching the ears of Severus Snape.
The Potions Master was currently standing rigidly by the narrow window of his private office, the glass cracked open a mere fraction of an inch as his obsidian eyes tracked the sea of students milling about the grounds below.
Harry Potter and Ron Weasley happened to be walking directly beneath his vantage point.
“Oh, the boy certainly possesses a spectacular talent for stealing the spotlight,” Ron’s voice drifted upward through the gap.
“He’s barely cleared his first day of school, and he’s already managed to become every bit as famous as you, Harry.” Looking down from his lofty height, Snape failed to catch a glimpse of those vivid green eyes.
With a slow, heavy finality, he reached out and snapped the window firmly shut.
It was time to prepare his syllabus.
The first-years were about to experience their very first Potions lecture.
— [Total Bonus Chapters Achieved: 0] []