Chapter 139: The Elite Standard
The Easter holidays brought absolutely no trace of spring to the Slytherin common room.
Submerged deep beneath the murky, crushing weight of the Black Lake, the dungeon remained locked in a perpetual, biting chill. Emerald woven hangings clung to the rough-hewn stone walls, their silver threads catching the cold, sterile glare of the spherical lamps overhead. A salty dampness saturated the air, seeping directly into the bones of the second-year students gathered in a tight, anxious circle around the roaring fireplace.
The source of their collective misery lay flat on the dark oak tables: the third-year course selection forms.
Starting from their third year, Hogwarts students were required to choose elective subjects to study alongside their mandatory curriculum. The core classes—Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, and History of Magic—were already demanding enough. Now, they had to add Arithmancy, Care of Magical Creatures, Divination, Muggle Studies, or the Study of Ancient Runes to their burden.
These electives were not merely to broaden a student's horizons. They were strict prerequisites for entering specific, high-ranking magical professions, particularly when preparing for the grueling N.E.W.T. level exams. For this gathering of self-proclaimed pureblood elites, this parchment was no simple academic checklist. It was a political declaration, a blueprint for their future dominance and power in the wizarding hierarchy.
"This is absolute torture."
Draco Malfoy gripped his silver quill, his knuckles turning white. He scowled, slashing the feather back and forth over the parchment in frustrated, aborted motions, entirely unable to commit to a single mark.
He shot a venomous glare at Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe, who were currently occupied with systematically demolishing a mountain of frosted cupcakes. Draco snapped, his dragon-hide shoe connecting sharply with Goyle's shin.
"Stop eating! You two absolute idiots, have you even decided what to pick?"
"Uh..." Goyle swallowed a massive lump of cake with visible difficulty, his eyes entirely vacant. "I want something easy... maybe Divination? I heard you can pass just by making up a few nightmares."
"And Care of Magical Creatures," Crabbe added, his voice muffled by a mouthful of frosting. "That one doesn't require using your brain at all."
Draco rolled his eyes, letting out a heavy, dramatic scoff.
"I knew it. Expecting you two to amount to anything is less likely than expecting a mountain troll to learn ballet."
He turned his head, casting his gaze toward Tamara Riddle.
She sat enthroned in a high-backed leather armchair, a picture of aristocratic perfection. 'Idiots. The absolute lot of them,' Tamara mused internally, her dark eyes scanning the parchment. Outwardly, her posture remained elegant and composed. Her quill glided across the rough paper with predatory grace, entirely devoid of the hesitation plaguing the rest of the room. The choices that agonized the others were not even worth a second thought in her eyes.
Swish. Swish.
Two sharp, definitive strokes.
"Tamara?"
Draco leaned in, his neck craning as if trying to cheat off an exam paper. "What did you pick? I'd like to use it as a reference... after all, the Slytherin elite should keep their pace consistent, right?"
Tamara made no effort to hide her choices. With a casual flick of her wrist, she pushed the completed form to the center of the table.
Instantly, the surrounding students—Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Blaise Zabini, and the ever-silent Theodore Nott—leaned forward.
On that heavy parchment, among the dense list of electives, only two boxes contained a neat, black checkmark.
Study of Ancient Runes.
Arithmancy.
The entire seating area plunged into a dead, suffocating silence.
"Merlin's beard..." Pansy let out a strained groan, her face twisting as if she had just swallowed a live Flobberworm. "Those are... the two hardest courses in the entire school!"
"Ancient Runes? That stuff is basically gibberish!" Draco sputtered, his pale face losing even more color. "I heard from an upper-year prefect that the homework is absolute torture!"
Blaise raised a dark eyebrow, his smooth tone carrying a distinct mix of mockery and genuine dread. "Are you serious, Tamara? Arithmancy? That's a pure game of numbers and logic. There are zero shortcuts. They say Ravenclaws break down in tears in the corridors every single year because of that class."
"That is only true for mediocrities."
Tamara spoke softly. Her voice was spun sugar and ice, carrying an absolute, crushing arrogance that demanded total submission.
She picked up her porcelain teacup, taking a slow, deliberate sip. Beneath her calm exterior, her dark eyes flashed with a ravenous desire for control over knowledge—the raw, unfiltered essence of power. 'Fools. They want to rule, yet they shy away from the very mechanics of magic.'
"Ancient Runes are the origin of magic," she explained, her tone dropping to a silken purr. "They are the key to deconstructing and manipulating spells at their core."
"As for Arithmancy..."
She allowed a soft, contemptuous laugh to escape her lips.
"It is the only method that does not rely on fleeting inspiration or blind luck. It uses rigorous, obvious calculation to deduce the future. Only by mastering these disciplines can you truly understand magic."
As she spoke, her gaze drifted down the list to another popular option—Divination.
The air in her lungs turned to ash. Her eyes instantly darkened with a loathing so extreme, so visceral, it was as if she were staring at a rotting carcass.
Prophecy.
Tamara chewed on the word in the darkest corners of her mind. Her fingertip pressed against the parchment, the nail turning stark white, the sharp point threatening to tear straight through the heavy paper.
Reason dictated that the subject was a complete and utter scam. Interpreting soggy tea leaves as omens of death and staring into the cloudy mist of a crystal ball for guidance was a pathetic insult to the very concept of magic. The truly strong never placed their faith in fate; they believed only in the wand in their hand and the absolute superiority of their own power. Only weak, incompetent fools would desperately seek a sense of security from such ambiguous, drunken ramblings.
Yet, a phantom chill silently crept up her spine.
Decades ago. A rain-swept night in the Hog's Head Inn. The suffocating stench of cheap sherry and stale sweat. The raspy, theatrical voice of that fraudulent madwoman remained lodged in her soul like a poisoned, rusted thorn.
'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him... he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other... born as the seventh month dies...'
It was just a few lines of absurd, laughable, illogical gibberish.
It should have been a joke.
Yet, it was precisely those few lines of a joke that had lured her—the greatest Dark Lord in history—into a pathetic, fatal trap. She had walked right into it, led by the nose like a common beast, only to be ripped from her physical form and blown to pieces in front of a wailing infant's crib. Reduced to a miserable, wandering spirit in the Albanian forests.
What a sickening irony.
She despised fate. She loathed destiny. But she had been forced to learn the catastrophic, destructive power that believing in fate could bring. The sheer stupidity of hearing a prophecy and then personally handing a weapon to her own gravedigger was her life's greatest shame. It was a deep, festering humiliation that she refused to acknowledge as fear.
"A scam."
Tamara took a sharp breath, violently slamming the iron door shut on the memory. She forced that uncomfortable, crawling wariness back into the deepest abyss of her mind.
When she looked up, her dark eyes were sharp, cold, and entirely devoid of emotion. She extended a slender finger, tapping heavily on the word 'Divination'.
"That is a scam prepared specifically for people with shriveled brains."
"Sitting in a musty, suffocating attic, rambling over a pile of wet tea leaves or a glass ball, and daring to call that the Inner Eye?" She let out a soft, chilling laugh. She swept her gaze across the surrounding Slytherins, her tone dripping with a warning that made the temperature in the room plummet. "If any of you intend to go waste your lives in that classroom, I suggest you keep your distance from me. I fear that level of stupidity might be highly contagious."
"Beyond that..."
Tamara narrowed her eyes, her voice dropping low, delivering the words like a judge passing a death sentence.
"True fate is never something to be seen. It is something to be crushed under the boots of the strong. Going to a class that only teaches you how to envision your own miserable death serves absolutely no purpose other than to break your own will."
The effect was instantaneous.
The few students who had originally planned to follow Goyle into the easy grade of Divination violently jerked their hands back from their parchments as if the paper had caught fire. They frantically crossed out the option in their minds.
It was social suicide. If Tamara Riddle publicly labeled them as having shriveled brains, how could they ever survive the vicious hierarchy of Slytherin House?
"Y-you're absolutely right!"
Draco swallowed audibly, his Adam's apple bobbing as he loudly voiced his agreement. "I was thinking the exact same thing! How could the true elite possibly play around with dirty tea leaves!"
He gritted his teeth. His silver quill trembled violently as he dragged it across the paper, carving two heavy, definitive checkmarks into the columns for Ancient Runes and Arithmancy.
Internally, his soul was weeping. He despised rote memorization, and he hated mathematics even more. But to follow in Tamara's footsteps and prove he wasn't a weak-minded fool, he had no other choice.
"That's more like it."
Tamara graced him with a small, satisfied look. That single glance acted like a balm, making Draco feel as though his academic sacrifice was entirely justified. "Spoken like a true Malfoy."
"Of course!" Draco puffed out his chest, his pale cheeks flushing with pride. He immediately turned his newfound superiority onto the stunned Goyle and Crabbe. "What are you two staring at? This is the choice of the elite! People with your thick skulls wouldn't understand!"
"I will also choose these two."
Theodore Nott, who had remained entirely silent until now, suddenly spoke up. The thin, gloomy boy pushed his parchment toward the center of the table. The ink was already dry next to the exact same courses.
He looked directly at Tamara, a rare glimmer of genuine respect flashing in his dark eyes. "I also trust the cold precision of numbers far more than vague, ethereal prophecies."
Tamara gave Nott a slightly appraising look. 'This one,'she noted internally,'usually keeps his mouth shut, but his brain is infinitely more useful than Malfoy's. A tool worth cultivating.'
"But..." Pansy twisted her face into a bitter pout, mounting one final, desperate struggle against her impending academic doom. "Won't taking only these two be horribly boring? Isn't there anything... slightly more interesting?"
She had absolutely no desire to waste her youth buried under heavy dictionaries and endless calculations.
"Interesting?"
Draco's eyes suddenly lit up, seizing the opportunity to prove his worth again. He slashed a heavy checkmark at the very bottom of the parchment, right on the course Tamara had ignored.
"Care of Magical Creatures!" Draco announced excitedly, his tone swelling with the arrogance of a conqueror. "My father said this course is actually very useful."
"Think about it. If we can learn how to dominate those dangerous beasts... exactly like how Tamara dealt with that giant snake before!" He looked eagerly at Tamara, practically vibrating as he sought her approval. "This is a mandatory course for the strong! Mastering beasts and forcing them to serve us!"
Tamara raised a delicate eyebrow.
Mastering beasts?
She was well aware that the Care of Magical Creatures Professor next year would be that bumbling, brainless oaf, Rubeus Hagrid. However, the incompetence of the teacher did not diminish the inherent value of the subject itself. More, she desperately needed to level up her [Magical Creature Affinity] passive skill to maximize her control over the darker denizens of the forest.
Tamara picked up her quill, the feather brushing against her cheek, and placed a neat checkmark next to the subject.
"That is actually a rather decent idea, Draco."
Tamara did not crush his enthusiasm; instead, she offered a slow nod of approval. "Understanding a creature's fundamental weaknesses is indeed the very first step to ruling them."
Having received her official blessing, Draco's pride swelled to bursting. He slapped his parchment flat onto the table, raising his chin haughtily at the surrounding purebloods.
"Did you hear that? This is the standard configuration for our Slytherin core circle!" he declared loudly. "Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and Care of Magical Creatures! Anyone who dares to choose Muggle Studies or Divination is actively choosing to degenerate!"
Under Draco's aggressive instigation and the crushing weight of Tamara's silent pressure, the second-year Slytherins folded.
One by one, the students who had fully intended to coast through their remaining years tearfully abandoned their dreams of easy grades. They were violently forced onto this arduous, grueling academic journey now dubbed the 'elite route'.
Even Goyle and Crabbe, wilting under Draco's vicious glares, tremblingly checked the box for Care of Magical Creatures. As for Runes and Arithmancy, Draco possessed just enough self-awareness to let his bodyguards off the hook; forcing them into those classes would result in literal academic death.
Looking at this group of terrified subordinates she had effectively hijacked onto the path of extreme self-improvement, Tamara felt a dark wave of satisfaction. She elegantly rolled up her parchment.
"Very well."
She stood up, her pristine black robes swirling in a sharp, dramatic arc behind her.
"I expect that next semester, I won't find any of you weeping over your piles of numbers and runic symbols."
"After all..."
She paused at the heavy stone door of the common room, glancing back over her shoulder. A beautiful, entirely hollow smile curved her lips.
"I have absolutely no time to give remedial lessons to a bunch of failures who cannot keep up."
With that final, chilling promise, she turned and swept out of the room.
She left the crowd of Slytherins sitting in the damp chill of the dungeon, staring down at the heavy course forms in their hands. They sank into a deeply complex, nauseating mix of pureblood ambition and absolute despair for their impending third year.
"Can we... really do this?" Pansy whispered, staring at the word 'Arithmancy' as if it were a death warrant. The future looked pitch black.
"Of course we can!" Draco gritted his teeth. Though his hands were visibly shaking, his silver eyes burned with a desperate, frantic determination. "As long as we follow Tamara... we are going to be the strongest year Hogwarts has ever seen!"
Blaise Zabini watched the entire display play out. He shook his head helplessly, his quill scratching the exact same three options onto his own form.
"It's truly insane..."
He let out a long, weary sigh, yet a distinct hint of an amused smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"But... following a madman is infinitely more entertaining than following a fool."
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