Chapter 19 : The Knowledge Wars
Hogwarts Library — October 25, 1991, 4:22 PM
Hermione slapped ten Chocolate Frog cards on the table like a gauntlet thrown.
"Rules," she said, standing across from Matt with the focused intensity of someone who'd been planning this for days. "Ten questions each. Alternating. You pick a topic, I pick a topic. No textbooks. No notes. Pure recall."
Matt looked at the cards. She'd arranged them in two stacks of five — one for each contestant, scored by flipping a card facedown for each correct answer. It was, he had to admit, an elegant scoring system.
"Stakes?"
"Loser admits defeat. Publicly. In the Great Hall. At dinner."
Terry Boot, two chairs down, looked up from his Herbology essay with the expression of someone who'd just been offered front-row seats to a duel.
"You're serious," Matt said.
"I am always serious about knowledge." Hermione sat, pulled her hair back with a band — a gesture he'd come to recognise as her pre-combat ritual, the intellectual equivalent of cracking knuckles — and folded her hands on the table. "Your first question."
"Creature Studies. Name three ingredients in a standard Doxycide and their function."
Hermione didn't hesitate. "Bundimun secretion as the base solvent. Streeler venom for the paralytic agent. Cowbane infusion to bind the other two. The Streeler venom is the active component — it disrupts the Doxy's nervous system while the Bundimun dissolves their protective mucus."
Matt flipped a card facedown. "Correct."
"My turn." Hermione's eyes glinted. "Transfiguration. State Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration, including all five principal exceptions."
"Matter cannot be created from nothing. The five exceptions are food — which can be multiplied, summoned, or transformed but not conjured from air — money, which resists duplication through goblin-wrought protections —"
"That's the modern theory. The original exception is precious metals, not money."
Matt paused. She was right. The original Gamp's formulation predated the Goblin Currency Treaties by two centuries. He'd defaulted to the updated version from his meta-knowledge rather than the historical text.
"Split credit?"
"No." Hermione flipped her own card. "My point. Precision matters."
The battle escalated.
Hermione dominated theory. Her recall was photographic — dates, page numbers, exact quotations from textbooks Matt had only skimmed. She recited the thirty-seven uses of dragon blood without stumbling, named every Minister for Magic since 1707, and explained the theoretical underpinning of the Undetectable Extension Charm with the fluency of someone who'd written the chapt er rather than read it.
Matt dominated application. He described how levitation charms were modified for different creature weights, explained the symbiotic relationship between Bowtruckles and their tree hosts — knowledge drawn from four years of living with Twig — and detailed the proper approach protocol for six different magical species, including the difference between Hippogriff etiquette and Thestral behaviour.
By question sixteen, they were tied eight-all, and the library had acquired an audience. Terry had abandoned his essay entirely. Two Hufflepuff third-years had pulled chairs closer. Even Madam Pince had stopped shelving and was watching from behind the Restricted Section gate with the conflicted expression of someone who disapproved of noise but approved of academic rigour.
"Question seventeen," Matt said. His voice was hoarse. His throat ached — two hours of rapid-fire answers with nothing to drink. "Potions. What happens when you add powdered moonstone to an infusion of wormwood before the third clockwise stir?"
Hermione's brow furrowed. She chewed her lower lip — processing, cross-referencing, running through every Potions lesson and textbook page. "The moonstone would... catalyse a reaction with the wormwood's absinthin compound. It would produce a variant of the Draught of Peace, but unstable. Potentially explosive if not cooled immediately."
"Close. It produces a precursor to the Draught of Living Death, not Peace. The absinthin-moonstone interaction requires counter-clockwise stir to stabilise, which is why Snape's method specifies direction changes."
Hermione's mouth opened. Closed. Her eyes did the thing — the rapid calculation, the cross-referencing — and then she exhaled. "You're right. The Living Death. I confused the base compounds."
Matt flipped a card. Nine-eight, his lead.
Hermione's jaw set. "Question eighteen. History of Magic. In 1612, the goblin rebellion of Hogsmeade was resolved through a treaty negotiated by which wizard, and what was the specific clause that prevented future violence?"
Matt knew the wizard — Oswald Beamish, a half-blood diplomat whose family had goblin-friendly politics. But the specific clause — he'd read it once, in a footnote of a footnote, in a History text he'd skimmed during a pre-Hogwarts study session.
"Oswald Beamish." He paused. The clause. Think. Veterinary shorthand wouldn't help here. "The... Beamish Provision? Guaranteeing goblin metalwork autonomy in exchange for cessation of hostilities?"
"The Beamish Compact," Hermione corrected. "And the specific clause was the recognition of goblin-forged artifacts as goblin property in perpetuity, which is why Gringotts still operates independently of Ministry oversight."
She flipped her card with a precision that bordered on violent. Nine-nine.
The library held its breath.
"Last questions," Matt said. "One each. Whoever gets it right wins. Whoever misses, loses."
Hermione nodded. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair had escaped the band and framed her face in a wild halo. She looked — alive. Burning. The way she always looked when knowledge was a contact sport and she was winning.
"You first," she said.
Matt considered. He could go obscure — creature lore she'd never encountered, deep-cut magical zoology that existed only in the Summon family archive. But that felt like cheating. Using a private library against someone whose only resources were public books wasn't competition. It was advantage.
He chose fair ground.
"Defence Against the Dark Arts. What is the primary difference between a jinx, a hex, and a curse, as classified by the Ministry's Standard Spell Classification Board?"
Hermione's answer was instant. "Intent and permanence. A jinx causes minor, temporary discomfort. A hex causes moderate, semi-permanent effects. A curse causes major harm and can be permanent or lethal. The classification is based on the 1749 Spell Taxonomy Act, revised in 1888 to include the Unforgivables as a separate category."
Perfect. Matt flipped his final card. Ten-nine, Hermione's lead.
Her turn.
Hermione leaned forward. The flush on her cheeks deepened. She had the game — one question away from victory — and she could have gone easy, asked something simple, taken the win.
She didn't.
"Magical creatures. The Quintaped of the Isle of Drear — what was the original species before the MacBoon-McClivert feud, and why can't the Transfiguration be reversed?"
Matt stared at her. The Quintaped was deep lore — not textbook material, not standard curriculum. She'd gone to the Restricted Section for this. Or she'd read a footnote that most people skipped.
"The Quintapeds were originally the McClivert clan — human wizards transfigured into five-legged beasts by the MacBoons during a blood feud. The Transfiguration can't be reversed because the MacBoons were subsequently killed by the creatures they'd created, and without the original caster — or a record of the exact spell — the Ministry can't determine the reversal parameters. Additionally, the Quintapeds have bred true for centuries, meaning the Transfiguration has become their biological baseline. They're no longer Transfigured humans. They're a species."
Silence.
Hermione's eyes widened. Then she closed them, and something complicated moved across her face — frustration and admiration and the particular anguish of someone who'd played their best card and watched their opponent match it.
"Correct," she said quietly.
Ten-ten.
The library exhaled. Terry Boot actually clapped before Madam Pince's glare withered the sound in his hands.
Matt and Hermione stared at each other across the table. Exhausted. Exhilarated. His throat was sandpaper. His stomach — traitorously, absurdly — growled, loud enough that Hermione heard it and her mouth twitched.
"Draw," Matt said.
"Draw," Hermione agreed.
Neither of them moved.
"Same time next week?" Matt asked.
The twitch became a smile — small, grudging, real. "You're on. And next week, I'm including Ancient Runes theory."
"I'll start studying."
He wouldn't need to. But letting her think she had the advantage was part of the game. And the game — the competition, the push, the two of them testing each other's limits — was becoming one of the best parts of Hogwarts.
Madam Pince materialised behind them with the silent menace of a librarian who'd reached her tolerance threshold. "If you two are quite finished disturbing the books..."
They left. The corridor outside the library was cold and lamp-lit, and Hermione produced two Chocolate Frogs from her bag — she'd planned for aftermath, apparently — and tossed one to Matt.
"Morgana," he said, checking the card. "Duplicate."
Hermione checked hers. Her eyebrows rose. She held it up: Ptolemy. The rarest card in the standard set.
"Are you joking," Matt said.
Her laugh echoed down the corridor — bright and unguarded and nothing like the controlled girl who sat in the front row with her hand up. Matt bit into his frog and let the chocolate melt and grinned at nothing.
Six days until Halloween. Six days until Hermione would be crying in a bathroom and a troll would be loose in the castle.
I'll be ready.
Hermione's footsteps faded toward Gryffindor Tower. Matt watched her go, chocolate on his tongue, and started walking toward Ravenclaw.
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