September bled into October with startling speed.
The castle settled into rhythm once more.
Classes.
Homework.
Detentions.
Training.
Political maneuvering hidden beneath teenage routine.
All still normal just a goblet of fire burning endlessly in the entrance hall, enticing all the students who passed by it daily on their way to the great hall for meals.
And slowly—
Draconis House evolved.
Not officially.
Just subtly.
Simply through proximity, personality, and the endless invisible war for Cassius's attention.
By the middle of October the internal hierarchy had reorganized itself almost naturally.
Cassius of course was the one to notice first, though perhaps Lady Draconis herself saw everything even clearer than he did.
The reasoning of course was the introduction of Fleur to the House.
A seventeen year old witch, the most senior of all his current possessions.
How could she possibly get along well with children when she herself was already a woman?
As a result of this divide the one to get closest her her aside from Cassius himself, was Cho the second most senior of the girls.
Their grouping naturally formed the Senior faction.
Then came the core faction, girls the same age and year as Cassius who got to monopolize the most of his time daily as they got to attend classes with him, the group being composed of;
Hermione & Daphne
Then there were the junior girls who were the late entrants to the house only because they couldnt enter school until a year after Cassius and the others;
Luna, Ginny, and Astoria
The junior girls were the ones who felt the most threatened, they couldnt spend as much time with Cassius as the core girls, nor could they attract his attention thanks to their looks like the matured Senior girls.
But thanks to politics they managed an uneasy alliance with the Senior girls to block the core group from get extra attention outside of class.
Classes themselves didnt really change... well except for DADA and that was all thanks to Moody/Crouch Jr.
Rather than join the Griffindors for their class alongside Slytherin, Cassius chose to attend the Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff lesson.
Which didnt much differ as the same content was shown, the three unforgivables were performed right before their very eyes.
And one plucky hufflepuff even mentioned how the real Avada Kedavra looked completly different from Cassius's fake Lumos Kedavra.
This of course interested Moody who asked for a demonstration, which reluctantly Cassius got up to the front of the class and using his wand he chanted out 'Avada Kedavra' when a very convincing green light flashed out of his wand tip and shot towards a amblypygid and for added good measure a silent cast of petrificus totalus cause the 'struck' tailess whip spider to topple over and go limp just like as if it had died.
His technique had improved and it was more of a scare tactic now that everyone saw just how realistic it was to the point most of the class leaned back thinking he had really cast the unforgivable.
Only Moody stood rooted at the front of the class, clapping his hands once in approval of such a convincing deception tactic.
This launched him into a longwinded tale of how deception is possibly your greatest tool when you are still young or up against a stronger foe, be convincing enough and they might actually mistake you for being the stronger one and slip up or give you an opening.
Even if the man was a death eater in disguise his classes were honestly the real deal, and as a result Cassius gained ample experience points for DADA even surpassing the amounts earned during Sirius and Lupin's tenure as professor.
There was another change that Cassius also noticed during this time.
And it involved Fleur herself.
She acted servile around him, at least in private, publically she was just a lovesick puppydog.
However thanks to the ever ongoing conversations of the other girls, Fleur quickly found out about Cassius's plans to participate in the tournament even though he does not match the age requirements.
And almost five minutes after finding this out, Lady Draconis informed him that Fleur had entered her own name into the goblet to compete.
Having learned this he didnt really mind since she origionally participated for the glory of Beaxbatons however he wasnt really sure why she would compete this time seeing as how this was her final year of school anyway so who cares about a school she wasnt going back to after this year was over.
Deciding to find out he got her alone and using the power of the master-slave relationship.
and after nothing even close to an interrogation she spilled her guts on the spot.
It was all for him.
She was going to participate with the premise of acting as his assistant.
Completly ignoreing Headmaster dumbledores warnings that champions stand alone...
even considering what the challenges themselves even were, only the second or third could possibly be assited in.
Fending a dragon off was independant.
And as for swimming... what help could he possibly need.
However when explaining where she went wrong about how the tournament was run, she could only look meek and shy for misunderstanding.
But it was already done her entrance cast and fate no doubt would make sure she was picked, since the cup would choose the strongest from the competitors who applied, making sure for the best possible competition to be had.
Since he learned that she was entering once again he was going to be damned if she went in as unprepared as she had been origionally.
Fleur had already joined the Draconis training sessions, but now her training became almost exclusive, it was already clear she wasnt on the level of the other girls and far from Cassius himself.
Using the excuse that he couldnt have her making him look bad by performing poorly in the tournament Fleur took to the extra training with renewed vigor.
When it came to underwater combat she was a neophyte but by the time the 2nd challenge happened, she would be an expert underwater duelist, one who couldnt possibly fear Grindelows.
The other advantage is that once they were chosen as Champions they could call in coaches to assist themselves a rule that wasnt used in the origional lore since the foreign students already had their headmasters by their sides, Cedric felt he didnt need one, and then Harry... well aside from Sirius who was still wanted, he didnt have anyone else he could call upon to be his coach, leading him to rely on the power of the Golden Trio.
As for the cup itself, Cassius still had half a month to act to his knowledge his own name, and Harry's shouldnt yet be in the goblet but to modify it to select both their names... well shouldnt be to hard.
The cup chose the strongest, so, so long as his name was entered Cassius was confident he'd be chosen all that remained was to make sure a fourth name would be selected, by confundus charming the cup to believe this was a quadwizard tournament and Harry was the only competitor from the fourth school.