After the First Task ended, the competitors' rankings were announced.
1st place: Fleur Delacour2nd place: Viktor Krum3rd place: Cedric Diggory
Unranked: Elaina Celestia, Harry Potter
Originally, Harry and I were treated as observer participants and were not supposed to receive scores, so this ranking was reasonable enough.
Fleur's strategy, which earned her first place, involved using a Charm of Enchantment to lull the dragon into a state of bliss and render it harmless. She completed the task in the shortest time, just ten minutes, and her elegant, swift performance was highly praised. There was an accident in which flames blown from the dragon's nostrils while it snored set her skirt on fire, but she immediately produced water from her wand to put it out, so it seems there was no major deduction.
Krum, who placed second, used a straightforward tactic of targeting the dragon's weak point, its eyes, and landed a direct hit with a Conjunctivitis Curse. However, because the dragon thrashed about in pain, half of the real eggs were crushed, which apparently resulted in a point deduction.
Cedric, who came in third, used a tactic similar to mine, a diversion created through Transfiguration. He transformed a rock into a Labrador retriever to draw the dragon's attention, then took the egg while it was distracted. However, his time was a rather long fifteen minutes, and he also suffered burns, which led to deductions.
Harry used a Summoning Charm to call his Firebolt, then mounted it and toyed with the pursuing dragon before grabbing the egg as if catching the Snitch. It was a performance that fully showcased his skills as a Seeker, but when evading the dragon, one of its spikes grazed his shoulder, injuring him and costing him points.
However, separate from the official scores, a poll was taken asking, "Which student's match was the best?" By virtue of overwhelmingly striking visuals in battle, one beautiful, strong, and clever witch claimed first place with ease. Who might that be?
Yes. It was me.
A few days later, a lavish celebration party was held in the Slytherin common room.
"Elaina, you're basically first place!" Pansy exclaimed.
As she bounced around excitedly, Draco and the others prepared mountains of food and drink. Everyone quickly grabbed glasses and tankards, and Daphne thrust a microphone toward me like a press conference reporter.
"Now then, let's hear some thoughts from today's star!"
Since the moment had come, I cleared my throat with a deliberately dramatic cough.
"Well, let's see. Even though I won, it's only the end of the opening stage, so there's still a long road ahead. That said, I do think the significance of winning the first match isn't small, and I'd like to once again share this victory with all of you and, going forward—"
"Alright, that sounds like it's going to take a while, so let's toast first," Millicent cut in.
"Cheers!"
To the cheer led by Millicent, which cut off my supposed victory comment, all the Slytherins clinked their glasses together with cries of "Congrats!" and "Good work!"
Is it just me, or is how they treat me getting more casual every year?
"Elaina, here."
While I puffed out my cheeks in a sulk, Draco handed me a bottle of Butterbeer. Other students followed suit, holding Firewhisky, iced cherry syrup soda, and more. Preparations for a Butterbeer shower were complete.
"Alright, here we go."
I raised my own bottle of Butterbeer, then—
"Slytherin is—"
"The strongest on earth!"
With a thunderous shout, everyone splashed their drinks onto one another. Bottles and fizzy drinks were shaken hard, spraying foam everywhere as we drenched each other without discrimination.
Incidentally, in the British wizarding world, drinking is permitted from the time one enters Hogwarts as long as it is under the supervision of a guardian, whether a parent or a teacher. Naturally, Professor Snape was in attendance as well, but he looked rather fed up with the flashy, insular revelry of these wealthy, elite heirs.
"Warrington, isn't that height difference cheating!?""Cold!? Zabini, you idiot!""Heh heh… Astoria, you're completely soaked already.""Take this, Euphy! This is for all my daily grudges!"
Daphne was mercilessly attacked with Butterbeer by the large Cassius Warrington. Draco had a chunk of rock ice shoved down his collar by Zabini, who had snuck up behind him. After thoroughly soaking Astoria, Millicent even started harassing her. Surrounded by her juniors, Euphemia Rowle tried to brandish her authority as a prefect, threatening, "If you splash me, I'll deduct points—" but before she could finish, her mouth was sealed by a flood-like Butterbeer shower.
"Elai-na! Elai-na!"
Soon, chants of my name began, and amid applause, I was carried to the center of the common room and tossed into the air by all the Slytherins.
"Wasshoi! Wasshoi!"
As everyone grew more and more drunk, even unrelated people started joining in with cries like "Yeah!" and "Woo!" tossing others up as well. Around the time Professor Snape, who was tipsy from nettle wine, firmly refused to be lifted, Miles Bletchley raised the golden egg.
"Let's open this thing!"
"What, are we making dragon egg omelets or something?" Pansy replied lazily, clearly drunk. Zabini grinned and beckoned me over.
"Elaina, open it!"
"Ta-da! The dragon egg cracking show begins!"
With Daphne calling the cue, I dug my nails into the groove around the egg and pried it open. And then—
A scream.
The next instant, a horrifying shriek like that of a wailing banshee echoed through the room, and everyone clutched their ears.
"What was that, anyway?"
The day after the party that had gone on until late at night, I immediately began investigating the egg. Opening it inside the castle would obviously cause a noise disturbance, so I went to the edge of the grounds, near the deserted lakeside, and pried it open again.
I borrowed a pair of earmuffs for mandrakes from Professor Sprout and listened to the golden egg's scream for a while. If it were just loud and hard to make out, this might have helped, but as expected, the task was not that simple.
Still, it was not entirely fruitless. As I listened, it seemed the screaming was not random. There appeared to be a certain rhythm to it.
"If there's a rhythm, then by analyzing these sound waves, we might be able to extract some kind of message."
I immediately looked up magic related to sound in the library, but it did not turn out to be such an easy problem, and in the end, I learned nothing.
"In situations like this, if we had that magical analysis institution, the Wizarding Engine, we could probably analyze it the same way you'd break a cipher…"
As the saying goes, you should leave things to the specialists. So at the weekend's regular meeting, I decided to consult the seniors at GM Company, and Penelope Clearwater appeared in the Polymirror.
"Huh? Is Farley-senpai not here today?"
"She said she's off 'cozying up to some lecherous old men from noble families.'"
"Your phrasing…"
In other words, it was business entertainment combined with a meeting.
Behind GM Company's rapid growth from a humble student startup lay not only the appeal of products like the Polymirror and the Anti-Curse Vest, but also sales activities such as investments from backers, introductions to reliable contractors, and networking with business partners.
"Being in Ravenclaw gives you more knowledge than other houses, but that alone isn't enough for business. I really learned that after I started working. Connections and money matter in the end, and Slytherin completely dominates in that area."
Ultimately, no matter how capable you are, without trust you cannot draw even a single Knut. And in the business world, gaining trust inevitably requires connections.
Of course, making introductions comes with costs and risks for the person doing so, which means the caliber of people you are introduced to is proportional to your own reputation. To expand your network to influential figures, you must provide value worthy of it.
In short, Slytherin House is a place where pure-blood noble families that control the wizarding world's wealth reproduce their vested-interest networks. At the same time, it also serves as a screening ground that accepts ambitious and capable half-blood outsiders as peers in order to maintain the competitiveness of the elite.
"So Gemma is currently at the Nott Foundry with Gordon, inspecting a possible material change for the commissioned Anti-Curse Vests. If there are no issues—"
After wrapping up the regular meeting like that, I brought up the matter of the golden egg to Penelope-senpai. As expected, she said there was a strong possibility that some kind of message was encrypted within it.
"For example, in the Muggle Prime Minister's office, phones use a device called a voice scrambler. It converts frequency components into different signals to prevent wiretapping. It's probably something like that."
"So in other words?"
"To restore encrypted information, you need an encryption key. Put another way, if you can find the key, you can decipher the message."
"That's easier said than done…"
When I grumbled, Penelope-senpai smiled wryly and said, "If you sent me a voice sample, I could probably analyze it, though."
Of course, I would love to do that, but going that far would definitely be against the rules.
So instead, I asked for advice within the absolute limits.
"By the way, with the Wizarding Engine, how would it actually decrypt something like this?"
"First, it magically records the memory itself. Then it takes the encrypted audio information, what we call 'secret speech,' and runs it through a brute-force comparison against Riddle 94, which has been fed a massive amount of literature, to determine the encryption key."
"That's incredibly brute-force."
Even for an inter-school tournament between the three great magical academies, I doubt they would demand that level of processing power.
"For now, I'll send you a few books on cryptography by owl."
The very next day, just as promised, about ten thick books arrived from Penelope.
Among the books I read, such as Applied Cryptography and The Wizards of Bletchley Park, the one that caught my attention most was An Introduction to Codebreaking Through History.
During the Pacific War, minority languages were sometimes used as codes. The more complex a cipher is, the more time it takes to create and decipher it. On the front lines, using languages that could be intercepted but not deciphered was considered one solution. The American military used Navajo, while the Japanese military used the Satsuma dialect.
"Ah, I see. This is…!"
It was a blind spot.
"Now that you mention it, there's a chance it's simply using the language of an intelligent magical creature…"
I immediately combed through the Magical Creatatures section of the library from end to end, reading every book related to languages.
"Hmm… All beings classified as human possess their own linguistic systems, and among magical creatures, centaurs, merpeople, veela, giants, goblins, banshees, fairies, and the like also have unique language capabilities…"
That narrowed things down considerably.
Werewolves, hags, imps, vampires, house-elves, centaurs, merpeople, veela, giants, goblins, banshees, fairies. If I thoroughly investigated the languages of these twelve species, I might be able to analyze it properly.
Among them, the most likely candidates were four species capable of communicating in sound ranges beyond human hearing: vampires, banshees, merpeople, and nymphs.
"Of these, the easiest to analyze would be… merpeople, I suppose."
Unlike Vampire Speech, which seems to operate at the same frequencies as bat echolocation, Mermish is simply inaudible outside of water.
If the voice emitted by the golden egg was in Mermish, then all I had to do was listen to it underwater. It would not get any easier than that.
For now, I decided to start with the most approachable option, Mermish.
"Well, if things worked out that conveniently, it wouldn't be so—"
They did.
I promptly filled the large communal bath in the Slytherin girls' shower room with hot water and sank down into it together with the golden egg. A mysterious chorus reached my ears.
Come seek us where our voices sound,We cannot sing above the ground.While searching, ponder what you've heard,The precious thing that we have seized.
An hour is all the time you'll find,Retrieve what matters most to mind.If time runs out, no hope remains,It will not come to you again.
"So all that was needed to decode the sound… was to take a bath."
I lifted my face above the foamy surface and shook the water from my glossy, wet hair.
"Once the trick is revealed, it feels rather anticlimactic. I can't help but think I took quite a long detour."
At this point, the hint was more than sufficient. Judging by the song, the opponent would be merpeople, the task would be a search, and the venue would be the Black Lake.
"There's still time. I suppose I'll prepare at my leisure."
◇◆◇
I had found the solution to the Second Task far earlier than expected and thought I would be able to relax until Christmas. That illusion was short-lived, however, as I was summoned by an upperclassman as soon as I returned to Hogwarts Castle.
"Celestelia-san, I'd like to have a word with you."
The one who called out to me, accompanied by four other girls, was the prefect Euphemia Rowle. I was escorted into an empty classroom, surrounded in a deserted place by a group larger than myself. It was practically a textbook example of intimidation.
"…So, what do you want?"
As I suspected, the conversation was about to head in an unpleasant direction.
"Do you have someone you like?"
Huh?
The question that came out of Rowle's mouth was completely unexpected. I could see no connection to the situation at all.
Yet the "atmosphere" created by five upperclassmen facing a single underclassman overwhelmingly affirmed her question, leaving me no room to refuse.
Was this one of those situations where Rowle-senpai had someone she liked, but that person was interested in me, so she wanted me to back off?
"No… not really."
Rowle-senpai eyed me suspiciously with her olive-colored eyes and pressed on.
"Really? I can see that Theodore is unlikely, but what about Draco? There's really nothing there?"
"They're both just friends."
When I answered calmly, Rowle-senpai finally relaxed her expression.
"Then there's no problem."
Her suggestive tone made me tilt my head.
"Did something happen?"
"Well, during the celebration party the other day, I got carried away while drunk and ended up kissing him."
"I see. By the way, who initiated it?"
"…I'm joking."
Rowle-senpai let out a deep sigh.
"From the looks of it, there really is nothing going on. Poor Draco."
Judging by her behavior, it seemed she had merely been testing me. If I reacted with jealousy, guilty. If not, innocent.
"Sorry for doubting you. I just wanted to be sure before the dance party. You're cute, Celestelia-san, so you're bound to attract attention from the entire school."
I see. If I'm cute enough to draw the attention of the whole school, then I suppose it can't be helped.
In short, the reason I had been summoned was that a cute, academically capable champion like me dancing at the Christmas Ball with some random nobody would be a matter affecting Slytherin's honor, and as a prefect, she could not overlook it. Serious in a strange way, or perhaps just meddlesome.
"Even so, dancing together doesn't necessarily mean you're dating…"
As I was about to say that she was overthinking it, Rowle-senpai shook her head.
"That's not necessarily true. This Triwizard Tournament is being held for the first time in about two hundred years, and the Ministry of Magic, as the host, has its prestige on the line. The Ministry plans to promote this tournament across all of Europe alongside the World Cup, so be more aware of your position."
"You really do stick your nose into everything…"
When I muttered that, Rowle-senpai snorted derisively.
"Oh? I think this concerns you as well, Honorary Chairwoman of GM Company."
Seeing me tilt my head in confusion, she continued.
"It's true that there's an element of excessive promotion to distract from recent scandals, but Minister Fudge's original platform was a continuation of former Minister Bagnold's policies. That is, the normalization of the British wizarding world through swift postwar reconstruction."
With Voldemort's rise plunging the British wizarding world into a de facto civil war, people died, but beyond that, the nation lost vast amounts of wealth and infrastructure due to emigration and a decline in domestic and foreign investment.
As a result, former Minister Bagnold pursued judicial bargains even with former Death Eaters if they cooperated in reconstruction, working to restore public safety and revive the economy. She strove to dispel the perception that "Britain is unsafe," encouraging the return of émigrés and revitalizing investment.
"If large international events like the Quidditch World Cup draw in tourists, Diagon Alley becomes more active. And if the Triwizard Tournament makes Britain's recovery known abroad, domestic investment and business opportunities will increase, allowing companies like GM to grow."
Our own pure-blood family businesses are not unrelated either, Rowle-senpai added.
"That's why there can be no compromises at the upcoming dance party. As the face of Slytherin House, you must choose a partner worthy of that status."
This was starting to sound like a political marriage.
"Well, I understand what you're saying, but…"
If that was the case, then she did not need to ask so roundabout a question like "Do you have someone you like?" in the first place. As I grumbled—
"I'm not heartless enough to forcibly tear apart a couple who truly love each other."
Oh. She's unexpectedly kind.
"If the partner is worthy, then all is well. If not, we'll give them a trial and turn it into a fine story everyone can accept. If they can't endure it and you break up, then we'll take advantage of your heartbreak to arrange a suitable partner."
"Do you even have a heart?"
Anyway, Rowle-senpai ignored my retort and continued.
"If you don't have anyone you particularly like, we'll prepare several candidates on our end."
"Um… what about going with a female friend?"
"What do you think five hundred years of Triwizard Tournament tradition, dating back to the thirteenth century, means?"
She cut that idea down with a strictness reminiscent of Professor McGonagall.
"Listen carefully. You will be attending an important ceremony as Slytherin's champion. Be fully aware of your position and choose your partner accordingly. We will responsibly provide the necessary environment for that."
"…Right."
By the way, what exactly is that "necessary environment"?
"Two weeks before Christmas, McGonagall will formally announce the dance. We'll make our move before it turns into a free-for-all."
What do you mean by "make our move," exactly?
While I stood there bewildered, Rowle-senpai wore a fearless smile and declared loudly,
"The showdown is this Sunday. Slytherin House will host a matchmaking party, selecting famous figures and beautiful men and women from all three schools. We'll monopolize the most desirable people and show everyone the difference in class!"
And then she added one final remark.
"Of course, without Gryffindor."
(End of chapter)
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