The first afternoon class was Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Kate arrived early as usual, but after a morning spent tangled in indecision, her complexion was visibly off.
She had handed the diary over to Old Man Dumbledore, which meant the rest of the year should, barring any surprises, pass in complete and utter peace.
But that was precisely the problem — because of that, she'd had no opening to join the diary investigation herself.
As for why she had suddenly steeled herself to wade back into this mess... well, that was a question better directed at the System and its talent for making her life miserable.
Just the night before, she had confirmed with the System that there were no active quests. Then she handed over the diary, bolted straight back to the dormitory — and was immediately greeted by the System's warm regards.
[Main Quest 5: Assist Dumbledore in uncovering the secret of the diary]
[Main Quest Extended Mission: Locate and destroy the Basilisk lurking within Hogwarts]
Not a single quest while she was waiting. The moment she handed the diary over, two dropped at once — and both of them Main Quests, no less.
Did this System think she was particularly easy to push around?
Kate was currently consumed with worry. She had combed through the second-year plot of the original works and found that most of it had already been thrown into disarray the moment she submitted the diary.
At the very least, Dumbledore would never open the Chamber of Secrets and release the Basilisk himself. And even if Harry were discovered to be a Parselmouth, the worst he'd face was gossip — there was no real danger in that.
The one thing she could say for certain was that Dumbledore wouldn't destroy the diary just yet, because he still needed to investigate what secrets it held.
Once he learned about the Chamber, he would undoubtedly deal with the Basilisk himself, from start to finish, without alarming the rest of the school — except for Snape.
So how was she supposed to complete the quests?
Was she really going to have to swallow her pride, walk up to him, and declare that she considered it the greatest honour of her life to serve the most magnificent White Dark Lord?
Ha. She'd be struck by lightning before those words left her mouth.
She was still grimacing over how on earth to bring it up with Dumbledore when a figure quietly approached from behind.
"Who's there!"
Her body reacted on instinct — wand drawn and leveled — before Kate turned her head and found Malfoy standing right behind her.
"What do you want?" she asked, brow furrowed.
Surely this person hadn't been trying to ambush her since yesterday? Was she still holding a grudge over last year, when Kate had nudged her into filing that complaint?
Malfoy gave a small, deliberate cough, her face a little red, and carelessly scattered a handful of snacks across the desk in front of her. "Eat up."
"...Huh?" Kate stared at the snack-covered desk with a completely blank expression.
Was she trying to poison her?
"Stop asking so many questions!"
Malfoy let out an impatient huff, purely for show, then glanced around to make sure no other students were nearby before forcibly pressing a piece of chocolate into Kate's hand.
"Eat it, quickly. If you go and faint from hunger in class, it's Slytherin that ends up embarrassed."
With that, she tilted her chin up and fixed Kate with an imperious stare — as though she had no intention of leaving until Kate complied.
Kate looked down at the chocolate in her hand, packaging perfectly intact. She was still a little bewildered, but she knew Malfoy wouldn't use such an obvious method to do her harm.
So... was this person actually showing concern for her?
She silently unwrapped the chocolate and ate it in a few bites, then gathered the rest of the snacks and sweets from the desk and tucked them into her bag before finally looking up. "Is that good enough?"
A faint look of satisfaction crossed Malfoy's face. She turned on her heel and went back to her seat.
What an easy little lady to please.
Kate absently picked up another sweet and tore open the wrapper. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Hermione coming over with her arms full of books — so she casually popped the sweet straight into Hermione's mouth.
"Well? Is it sweet?" she asked with a grin.
A rush of sweetness spread through Hermione's mouth all at once. A faint flush rose to her cheeks, and she pressed her lips together with a little nod. "Mm!"
The two of them were still enjoying their sweet little moment when Harry trudged over from behind, looking thoroughly battered, and dropped into the seat next to Ron.
Kate turned to look at him, taking in his grim expression, and asked in puzzlement, "What happened to you?"
"A first-year came up and wanted a photo with me, and then I ran into Lockhart..."
His words trailed off as Lockhart swept past.
Kate could tell Harry had already taken a distinct disliking to the man. She just smiled and turned to watch a certain buffoon begin his performance.
Lockhart strode to the lectern and cleared his throat with great volume. The entire class fell silent at once.
"I, Gilderoy Lockhart, Order of Merlin, Third Class, Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defence League, five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming-Smile Award — but I never talk about that. I didn't defeat a Banshee by smiling at her!"
A few people in the class laughed.
"I see you've all bought the complete set of my books — I thought we'd kick things off today with a little quiz, nothing to worry about, just to see how well you've been reading."
He handed out the papers, returned to the lectern, and said: "You have thirty minutes. Begin!"
Kate took her quiz and skimmed it over. Sure enough, just like in the original works — every single question was about Lockhart personally. Things like his favourite colour or his birthday.
She glanced over to see Hermione pick up her paper with a knowing smile before immediately setting to work with her quill. She turned back and noticed that a handful of the girls in the class wore similarly eager expressions, heads bent over their papers.
As if filling every line on the page would somehow earn them Lockhart's affections — though to be fair, young witches that age probably didn't have any deeper aspirations than simply feeling closer to their idol.
What girl, in her youth, hadn't had a few idols?
But for some reason Kate couldn't quite name, seeing Hermione wear that expression of admiration — even directed at such a fraud — put her in a distinctly bad mood.
Not that idol-worship was inherently wrong. But surely the object of one's admiration ought to at least meet some basic standard of character and competence?
Hermione still had Kate's sweet in her mouth, and yet her hand was busily recording the personal preferences of someone else. Kate had never once noticed Hermione showing this much interest in her preferences.
Staring at the blank paper in front of her, Kate found herself recalling something she had heard in a past life.
How do you make a naked person look even more naked? Put socks and shoes on them.
By the same logic, the best way to make an already blank exam paper look even more blank was simply to write your name at the top.
She glanced again at Hermione, who had already powered through dozens of questions. For the first time, Kate thought: that's actually a brilliant idea.
Half an hour later, Lockhart collected the papers and began flipping through them in front of the whole class.
"Tsk, tsk — almost no one remembered that my favourite colour is lilac. What a shame..."
His hands and voice stopped at the same time. He pulled one paper from the pile. "Oh, let me see — the student who submitted a blank paper is... Kate Shafiq, is it? Would that student please stand up?"
Kate stood amid the surprised stares of her classmates.
Lockhart walked over to her, his most-charming-smile still firmly in place. "Miss Shafiq, if you were hoping to attract my attention by leaving your paper blank — congratulations, you've succeeded."
She leaned back slightly without a word, and without changing her expression.
Lockhart, however, seemed constitutionally incapable of detecting awkwardness. When she said nothing, he simply took her silence as agreement, and gave his hair a rather self-satisfied toss.
"However, Miss Shafiq, submitting a blank paper in class does carry a point deduction. I trust that next time you wish to get close to me, you'll consider the consequences first."
Kate could already feel the mocking weight of several sets of eyes boring into her.
A faint smile curled at the corner of her lips. "But Professor," she said, "memorising your personal interests and hobbies is hardly useful for our education, is it?"
The moment those words left her mouth, she saw Lockhart's winning smile falter. Even Hermione beside her looked startled, and quietly tugged at her sleeve, urging her not to continue.
"An interesting perspective," Lockhart said, just barely holding onto his composure. "As I mentioned, the purpose of the quiz was to test whether you'd read my books in advance..."
"But surely what matters is the methods in the books for dealing with various creatures?" Kate tilted her head in feigned confusion. "Or are you suggesting that memorising a hundred personal facts about you would somehow help us fend off a Banshee or a Hag if we encountered one?"
Harry, listening from the row behind, couldn't hold back a laugh at that last line.
Faced with her relentless pushback, Lockhart finally showed a flash of real irritation — though he forced himself to recover with as much dignity as he could muster.
"Deliberately provoking me to get my attention — very well, Miss Shafiq. Do come and find me on a weekend evening. I'm sure you'll be quite happy to help me with a few small tasks."
He forcibly steered the conversation elsewhere. From behind the lectern he produced a large cage covered with a cloth and set it on the desk. "Now, I am about to release what is perhaps the most fearsome creature in the magical world..."
Hermione yanked Kate firmly back into her seat. While Lockhart was still in the middle of his speech, she leaned close and hissed, "What were you doing just now, Kate? You were talking back to a professor!"
For the usually gentle and reserved girl to suddenly be this brazen with a teacher — Hermione half-wondered if the person sitting beside her had been replaced by someone else.
"Surprised?" Kate gave her collar a casual tug. "I just don't particularly like him."
Hermione frowned and shook her head. "No, Kate, you're definitely hiding something..."
Her words cut off as she caught sight, out of the corner of her eye, of Lockhart whipping the cloth from the cage — which was stuffed full of Cornish Pixies.
"I'll bet you anything," Kate murmured in her ear, "he's about to throw open that cage and turn the entire classroom into a disaster zone."
Hermione instinctively started to argue — but the very next second, she watched Lockhart simply fling the cage door wide open and release every last one of those electric-blue, chattering little pixies into the room.
The classroom erupted into chaos.
The pixies shot around like rockets, wreaking havoc in every direction. Half the class dived under their desks in terror; the other half fled straight out the door.
Strangely, though, while the pixies delighted in tormenting everyone else, not a single one made any move to go near Kate.
The three students sitting closest to Kate — Hermione included — were equally spared.
"What did you do?" Hermione turned to her urgently, watching their classmates scatter in all directions. "How are you doing that?"
Kate spread her hands. "Nothing, really. They just love me too much."
For one fleeting moment, Hermione genuinely thought Lockhart's soul had somehow possessed Kate's body.
Then she turned her head and saw Lockhart rolling up his sleeves, waving his wand, and bellowing: "Peskipiksi Pesternomi!"
Completely, utterly useless.
One pixie snatched Lockhart's wand and hurled it clean out the window. Lockhart let out a strangled gasp and scrambled frantically beneath the lectern desk.
Hermione's brow creased instinctively. "Kate — we should handle this together."
"Alright." Kate rose to her feet, and the two of them raised their wands almost simultaneously, releasing a wave of freezing air that instantly flash-froze every pixie still darting around the room.
Harry and Ron took on the grunt work, picking up the pixies one by one and shoving them back into the cage, then walking to the front and hauling Lockhart back out from underneath the desk.
"Ah — it seems you've got it sorted. Excellent work!" Lockhart resurfaced with his hair in complete disarray, every trace of his earlier polish thoroughly gone.
He hastily awarded Kate and Hermione two points each, then retreated to his office with both hands clamped over his hair.
And so the first Defence Against the Dark Arts lesson of the new school year came to its rather undignified end.
"I wish the school had just kept Professor Wynyard on," Ron muttered under his breath.
She had her faults — that obvious favouritism toward Kate, for one — but her teaching was at least in a different league from this Lockhart.
He didn't dare say that part out loud in front of Hermione, though.
Not that Hermione had any attention to spare for him. She had already grabbed Kate by the arm and was pulling her out of the classroom. "I don't understand, Kate — why didn't you just sort it all out from the start?"
In her view, the whole classroom disaster had been entirely preventable. Kate had simply refused to act — and had even spent the class mocking the professor on top of it.
This was nothing like the Kate she knew.
"Because there was no point."
Kate let herself be dragged out into the corridor, glanced around to confirm there was no one watching, and then — with a distinct flash of irritation — pulled her hand free and turned her back on Hermione.
"Since you admire Professor Lockhart so much, shouldn't you be trusting him to handle a little bit of trouble like this?"
Truthfully, even Kate herself couldn't quite pinpoint what was bothering her as she said it.
Was it her distaste for Lockhart's narcissism — or was it that she couldn't stand watching Hermione look at him with that expression of shining admiration?
Before this fraud had come along, the person Hermione had looked at like that was her.
"He was just trying to give us a chance to practice," Hermione said, looking at her with genuine confusion. "He's done so many genuinely impressive things."
Kate's hand clenched into a fist without thinking. The swell of irritation inside her chest was rising almost to her throat.
But years of cultivated composure kept it all from spilling out. She turned around and looked Hermione squarely in the eyes.
"Fine. Next time something like this happens, don't call on me. Go and ask your beloved Professor Lockhart to deal with it."
And with that, she walked away alone.
She left Hermione standing there, both agitated and bewildered, until Harry and Ron finally caught up — at which point she marched off in the opposite direction with barely contained annoyance.
"What happened to them?" Harry asked, awkward and quiet.
Ron waggled his eyebrows. "Can't you tell? They've had a row."
"Over Lockhart?"
"Who knows."
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