"Fiendfyre — a high-level spell capable of producing a powerful, intensely hot magical flame that can destroy nearly everything in its path."
Katherine conjured a soaring eagle of living fire from her wand, the heat radiating off it so fiercely that the lectern itself seemed on the verge of melting.
"This spell is not especially difficult to learn. However, very few wizards can control it completely. I hope that none of you attempt to use it against another person until you have fully mastered it."
She said it — and then her gaze settled directly on Kate.
"Pick up your wand and give it a try."
By now, everyone in the room knew perfectly well that Katherine had a blatant favorite. Whatever the question, Kate was always the first one called on to answer.
In this classroom, even Hermione — the self-declared know-it-all of the year — rarely bothered to raise her hand.
Kate stood, cast a glance at the blazing eagle still wheeling overhead, and raised her wand toward it.
Every student assumed she would conjure some creature of her own out of Fiendfyre to grapple with the eagle. But the pale white light that shot from her wand made it immediately clear she was casting something else entirely.
And yet — the fire eagle, the one that had been radiating heat intense enough to make the whole room swelter, began to dissolve at a visible rate. Within moments, it had unraveled into nothing.
"A very clean Finite Incantatem," Katherine said, unable to suppress her approval. "But — why not Fiendfyre?"
Kate lowered her head slightly. "Professor, I can't fully control Fiendfyre yet. If I were to release it inside a classroom, I'd put my classmates in danger. Please forgive me for not demonstrating it."
Honestly, a first-year who could cast Fiendfyre with full control would be more cause for alarm than praise.
She was already attracting far too much attention. The last thing she needed was to invite even more.
"You showed consideration for your fellow students and pointed out a gap in my teaching. Well done. Five more points to Slytherin!"
Mum. She literally earns points for everything, doesn't she.
Kate could already feel the weight of stares pressing into her back — some furious, some grudgingly admiring.
Her cheek twitched. She sat back down quietly and made her best effort to become invisible.
Perhaps sensing her discomfort, Katherine finally settled into an actual lesson after that, and didn't call on Kate again for the rest of the class.
Thank the stars for small mercies.
The moment the bell rang, Kate — terrified that Katherine would ask her to stay behind again — swept her books into her bag with record speed and bolted for the door, dragging Hermione along with her.
The scrambling, fleeing quality of their exit was unmistakable to anyone watching.
Katherine, who had just finished tidying her lesson notes and had been about to call someone back, blinked — and then let out a soft, indulgent laugh, shaking her head.
Her sister's child, all right. Sharp as a tack.
From that brief, darting glance Kate had shot her this morning — the split second of instinctive avoidance — Katherine had already guessed that the girl had remembered something.
But some things can't be outrun just by running away.
She reached up to adjust her black-framed glasses, then looked down at the exam paper tucked inside her lesson notes — still half-finished, questions not yet completed — and frowned with visible impatience.
She looked precisely like an office worker desperate to clock out, forced to stay late writing documents against her will.
She'd finish the exam questions first. Then she'd go find the child.
· · · · ·
Meanwhile, Kate — having successfully dragged Hermione all the way to the corridor — glanced back toward the direction they'd run from and let out a quiet, measured breath of relief.
"You — what were you running for?!" Hermione panted beside her, barely recovered from being hauled at full sprint. She was still catching her breath.
The two of them were a full head's difference in height, and Hermione had none of Kate's constitution — she finished her homework every evening and went straight to bed. She was absolutely no match for someone who trained every single day.
Kate snapped back to herself and fumbled out an excuse, her delivery slightly too stilted to be convincing: "I... I'm not really comfortable with Professor Wynyard's teaching style."
"Is that right," Hermione said, her own brow furrowing. "She actually had us studying Fiendfyre — that's dark magic!"
"Well, technically speaking, the reason Fiendfyre is classified as dark magic isn't that it's inherently evil — it's that the barrier to learning it is low enough, but the number of people who can actually control it is vanishingly small."
Kate heard herself defending Katherine and didn't quite stop. "Historically, Fiendfyre caused enormous casualties precisely because so many people misused it. That's why wizards came to regard it as dark magic. But in principle — if you genuinely master it and keep it under control, the spell itself isn't as dangerous as it sounds."
Like Katherine herself. The way she handles Fiendfyre is practically an art form — that level of mastery has to be at least rank seven proficiency. Among all practicing wizards, that's genuinely impressive.
"Hmm?" Hermione looked at her sideways. "Didn't you just say you weren't comfortable with Professor Wynyard's teaching style? Why are you defending her?"
Kate startled. She immediately raised a hand to her mouth and gave a small, diplomatic cough. "I'm not defending her — I simply wanted to correct your understanding of Fiendfyre."
She paused.
"Though I'll admit — teaching Fiendfyre to first-years is, objectively, a little extreme."
Fortunately, Katherine had clarified before the end of class that Fiendfyre was extension material — students who wished to learn it could approach her privately. Incendio was the only spell they were actually required to study.
Incendio and Fiendfyre...
From the moment Katherine had announced her unit on spells for handling Forbidden Forest creatures, Kate had had a feeling.
The so-called "extension" spells weren't random. They were specifically chosen for Kate.
Because of what Kate had done in the Forbidden Forest — getting Quirrell hurt badly enough to be bedridden and hospitalized, effectively removing him from Hogwarts — Katherine had stepped in to clean up the mess Kate had made.
And so she was teaching these spells in class. It was almost like personal instruction — a hands-on demonstration of exactly which spells to use when you next found yourself facing dangerous magical creatures in the forest.
That line of thinking might be a bit self-centered. But given how shamelessly Katherine had been stacking points in her favor all lesson, it wasn't exactly a stretch to draw that conclusion.
"By tradition, the school gives students two weeks to revise before end-of-term exams," Hermione was saying, counting on her fingers. "With a month and a half still to go, that means we have another month of new material..."
She exhaled with quiet worry. "Who knows what other outlandish spells Professor Wynyard is planning to teach us."
Her concern was genuine — she was worried that Defence Against the Dark Arts would cover spells too advanced to revise properly before the exam.
As the top student she was, Hermione's academic anxiety ran far deeper than anything Harry and Ron — who treated studying as an unfortunate fact of life — could relate to.
Kate looked at her fretful expression and felt a laugh bubble up. She reached over and gave the top of Hermione's head a gentle pat. "What's the rush? Aren't you forgetting you have me?"
With a time management master like her around, was there any real doubt Hermione would find time to revise?
She slung an arm warmly around Hermione's shoulders. "Come on — out to the lawn. I'll show you exactly how Incendio and Fiendfyre work!"
"Then it's settled," Hermione said, and the smile she was trying to hide did absolutely nothing to conceal her mood. "You're spending the rest of today with me, practicing spells."
Her grip on Kate's arm swayed it back and forth as she spoke. Kate gave in with good-natured helplessness. "Fine. The rest of today is yours."
The two of them headed out of the castle in high spirits and set to work on the lawn.
Neither of them noticed that up above, in the castle, Katherine had already positioned herself at a window — brow furrowed — watching the pair of them.
This morning it was someone else. By noon she'd already switched company?
This child... is she really that charming?
The thought drew a slow, curved smile to Katherine's lips.
· · · · ·
By evening, Kate had successfully pushed her Fiendfyre proficiency from rank three to rank four and at last called an end to the afternoon's training session.
Once again, she had experienced firsthand the particular brand of terror that came with teaching Hermione spells — an unrelenting barrage of questions that left no room to breathe. But she couldn't deny that Hermione's questions had pushed her own understanding of Fiendfyre up another step.
There really was something to be said for learning alongside a top student.
"I feel like I could eat a whole cow right now," Kate said, pressing a hand to her stomach, her face expressionless. It had been growling for a while.
Every ounce of her energy had gone into the practice session. She was walking with a slight sway.
"I could eat two," Hermione said, striking the exact same pose — hand over stomach — and looking noticeably worse off.
Understandably. Two months of daily training hadn't been for nothing; Kate's constitution had caught up to the level of a Hogwarts graduate, which meant she could push through longer than Hermione could.
The two of them quickstepped into the Great Hall, parted by unspoken agreement to their respective House tables, and immediately set upon their food like a pair of small, determined disasters.
"Are you alright?"
"You doing okay?"
The first came from Malfoy. The second from Harry.
Kate shook her head serenely. "Fine. Just approximately starving to death."
"We practiced spells together all afternoon," Hermione announced without any particular filter, giving a full and cheerful account of their day. "It took everything I had just to get Fiendfyre under control. Absolutely exhausting."
Across the table, Harry and Ron — who had spent the entire afternoon messing around on the Quidditch pitch — exchanged a look of sheepish guilt.
Yeah. They'd been slacking a bit lately, hadn't they.
At the Slytherin table, things were considerably calmer.
Pansy ate steadily, occasionally nudging food toward Kate's side of the table, and once or twice asking Malfoy if she wanted any.
"...Thanks," Malfoy said stiffly, accepting what was offered — then glanced at Kate, who was eating with her head down and total focus, and eyed the food in her own hands with mild suspicion.
It was just a fried chicken wing. Was it really that good?
She took a bite.
The crispy, golden flavor spread across her tongue and did something pleasant to her expression.
...Occasionally having this sort of thing wasn't so bad.
She glanced at Kate again — still diligently working through her meal — and, without quite meaning to, her lips curved. She lowered her own head and began, in the same unhurried manner, to nibble away.
Dinner stretched to a leisurely half-hour before Kate finally set down her fork, dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and conceded defeat.
She'd eaten so much she genuinely wasn't sure she'd be able to sleep.
Maybe bump up tonight's training intensity a little.
With that thought, she pushed back her chair and rose to take a walk and let her food settle — only to have Pansy catch the hem of her sleeve the moment she stood.
Kate looked over, puzzled. In her experience, Pansy rarely sought her out directly.
"The spells from today's class... a lot of the first-years in the house want to ask you how to use them properly..." Pansy said, and it was clearly costing her something to ask — her voice lacked its usual confidence. "So — would you be willing to tutor us in the Common Room tonight?"
Kate stared at her, eyes going wide.
She looked around — and found every single Slytherin student in the vicinity already watching her, united in silent expectation.
Her cheek twitched.
Something told her saying no wasn't really an option here.
____
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