Chapter 9: The Boring History of Magic, Clash of Minds in the Library (Patreon)

September in the Scottish Highlands, and the morning breeze already carried a thread of chill.

The first class at Hogwarts was History of Magic, shared between Gryffindor and Slytherin.

The tiered classroom on the second floor reeked of old paper gone musty.

Professor Binns' nearly transparent ghostly body drifted through the blackboard and settled in the middle of the lectern.

In a dry, droning monotone like the rumble of an ancient vacuum cleaner, he began reading out the dates and causes of the goblin rebellions of the mid-fourteenth century, straight from his notes.

Within twenty minutes, half the room had gone down.

In the back row of the Gryffindor benches, Ron Weasley had buried his head in his arms and was snoring evenly. Beside him even the usually tough Harry propped his chin on one hand, his heavy eyelids fighting a losing battle.

On the Slytherin side, Crabbe and Goyle had long since sunk into a stupor, and Pansy was fussing with her hair ribbon in a little round mirror. Even the ever-proud Draconia rested her pale cheek on one hand, idly twirling a silver quill, and every so often her critical gaze drifted to the back of a certain head in the front row.

Raven Capet sat in the prime spot, front row by the window.

Unlike the drowsy atmosphere around him, his spine was straight as a drawn rapier.

His eyes, with [Magic Circuit Analysis Sight] active, glowed with the faintest pale radiance.

He wasn't looking at Professor Binns' dull blackboard notes. Instead, a heavy seventeenth-century French edition of Proceedings of the Ancient Wizards' Assemblies lay open on his desk. His left hand held down a roll of parchment while his right flew across it with a quill, sketching a complex map of ley lines.

The dreary, lifeless years Professor Binns recited for "Goblins Riot at Dingworth Market" matched, to the letter, the surge cycles of the magical ley lines Raven had observed deep in the castle last night. These so-called rebellions were economic conflicts on the surface. In truth they were subterranean wars the goblins had launched to seize ancient natural nodes of magic.

On the other side of the classroom, the only other student sitting just as upright was the bushy-haired Gryffindor girl, Hermione Granger.

She was frantically recording every obscure name Binns read out, her handwriting packed tight across the parchment.

When she looked up to wipe a fine sheen of sweat from her forehead, her gaze happened to sweep past Raven at the very front, and a flash of surprise and bewilderment crossed her face.

A Slytherin... paying such close attention in History of Magic? And that huge tome on his desk... it surely wasn't the first-year textbook, A History of Magic?

…

When the morning classes ended, Raven didn't follow the crowd to the clamorous Great Hall. He walked straight down the corridor to the library, deep on the second floor of the castle.

Oak shelves towered toward the ceiling in orderly rows, and the air was thick with the rich scent of parchment and old beeswax.

Madam Pince stood behind the lending desk like a wary vulture, glaring with her feather duster at every student who wandered toward the Restricted Section.

Following the nodes of the magical circuits he'd memorized last night, Raven stopped in the "Ancient Runes and Geographical Studies" section between Shelf Seven and Shelf Eight.

He needed a few out-of-print volumes recording the magical seals in the load-bearing walls of Hogwarts' earliest foundations.

But he had barely pulled out a copy of Ancient Mediterranean Sea Charts and Magical Undercurrents when a faint rustle of fabric and a stifled panting came from the next shelf.

"Damn it... just a little more..."

A small figure stood on the very top step of a rolling wooden ladder, up on tiptoe with her arm stretched as far as it would go, reaching for a heavy, iron-cornered book on the top shelf. It was Hermione Granger.

She was leaning too far forward. The ladder's wheels gave a harsh little squeal, and instead of coming down into her hands, the weighty Eminent Wizards of the Middle Ages tipped over and toppled straight down, about to smash right into the girl's face!

Hermione gasped and squeezed her eyes shut.

The expected pain never came. A cool, gentle breeze slipped soundlessly past her side.

The iron-bound book stopped dead in mid-air, as if cradled by a pair of invisible hands. Then it floated down in a graceful arc and settled in a slender, clean palm below.

Hermione's eyes snapped open. Heart still pounding, she gripped the ladder and looked down.

Right below her, Raven held the tome, heavy enough to break a nose, in one hand. His deep black eyes looked especially clear in the dim light of the stacks. He hadn't even drawn his wand. His other hand was still tucked in the pocket of his long robes.

"Leaning that far forward on a library ladder, Miss Granger."

Raven kept his voice low, his tone smooth with the unhurried rhythm of old nobility. "Even if Madam Pince doesn't throw you out for damaging a book, Madam Pomfrey would probably have to reset your nose."

Hermione scrambled down the ladder and straightened her slightly rumpled robes, her pale cheeks flushing pink with embarrassment.

But when she took in the green trim on his uniform, a flicker of wariness and tension crossed her eyes. "Thank you... Mr. Capet. But that was a Levitation Charm you just used, wasn't it? You didn't even say the incantation?"

A top student in the Muggle world who had memorized every first-year textbook before coming to school, Hermione knew exactly how hard nonverbal casting was.

"Just a small trick of directing magic through the hand. Nothing mysterious."

Raven casually handed Eminent Wizards of the Middle Ages back to her, his eyes drifting idly over the subtitle on the cover. "But if you're borrowing this for background on the goblin rebellions, I'd suggest Chronicle of Ministry of Magic Decrees of the Eighteenth Century instead."

Hermione froze for a moment, then tugged at her collar. Her top-student instincts wouldn't let it pass. "Why? Chapter Four of Eminent Wizards has an entire section on Uric the Oddball, and Professor Binns mentioned him this morning as a key exam topic!"

"Because the author, Edgar Sprout, served two terms as head of the Goblin Liaison Office."

Raven pulled out another dusty, slender volume, opened it to page 42, and tapped a passage of yellowed text with his fingertip. "To curry favor with the pure-blood families who were then pressing down on Gringotts' financial tax rates, he deliberately concealed the fact that in the Hogsmeade riot of 1612, wizards struck first, using forbidden dark curses to seize the underground veins of ore. He laid all the blame on the goblins' supposedly savage nature."

Raven raised his eyes and calmly regarded the girl before him, the one who would one day be called a "know-it-all." "Textbooks only give you the dates and names the victors want remembered, Miss Granger. But real history usually hides in the unpolished ledgers and casualty lists."

Hermione stood there clutching the big book, her mouth opening and closing without a single word coming out.

Since childhood she'd been used to treating textbooks and authority as the standard, firmly believing every line of printed type was absolute truth.

Yet this boy her own age, a Slytherin no less, had not only seen through her reason for borrowing the book at a glance, but had also tossed aside the textbook's rose-tinted filter with an offhand, lofty scholarly air!

A wave of unprecedented shock and frustration rose in Hermione's chest. Close on its heels came something else: a fierce urge to compete, and curiosity at finding a true intellectual peer.

"How... how do you know all this?" she couldn't help pressing, her eyes astonishingly bright. "Where did you see the original ledgers?"

"The library at Capet Manor has a few medieval odds and ends."

Raven gave a slight nod, his tone courteous but distant. "I'm glad to discuss scholarship with you, Miss Granger. But please excuse me, I have other documents to look through."

With that, Raven stepped politely aside and walked to a quiet empty seat at one of the long tables.

Hermione stayed where she was, watching his cool profile as he sat down with composure and unrolled his parchment. Her arms tightened around the books against her chest, which rose and fell faintly.

It was the first time since arriving at Hogwarts that she had felt such a deep, heavy sense of pressure in intellect and knowledge.

…

"Capet! I knew I'd find you here!"

Just then, a clear voice, sharp and a little irritated, rang out suddenly from around the corner of the shelves.

Draconia Malfoy strode over in her dainty leather boots.

Today the young lady had tied her dazzling platinum hair into a high ponytail with a dark-green velvet ribbon, showing off the long, pale line of her swan neck.

She was hugging a slim copy of Advanced Potion Ingredients Guide. Her proud, icy little face darkened abruptly the moment she saw Hermione standing dazed in front of the shelves, and Raven seated quietly at the long table reading.

"Miss Malfoy."

Raven didn't even look up, his quill still scratching across the page. "Madam Pince is thirty feet away. If you don't want to be chased out of the library with a feather duster, I suggest you drop your voice by an octave."

Draconia choked, shot Raven a vicious glare, then turned her eyes on Hermione beside him.

At the sight of the lingering pink in Hermione's cheeks and those big, curious eyes, an unaccountably sharp irritation welled up in the young lady's chest.

She clutched her potions book tighter, lifted her chin high, and let out a sneer in a cuttingly condescending tone. "What an eye-opener, Capet. A pure-blood heir who calls his lineage ancient, chatting away in a public reading room with some Gryffindor who can't even hold her wand steady, some Mud—"

"Miss Malfoy." The quill in Raven's hand stopped dead.

He slowly raised his head, and his deep black eyes fell without a trace of warmth on Draconia's pretty, spiteful little face.

In that instant, the flow of magic in the air seemed to stagnate for a heartbeat. A cold, still pressure tightened Draconia's throat, and the filthy word was stuffed back down.

"If your vocabulary is so poor that you can only cover your ignorance with crude slurs about blood, I wouldn't mind teaching you a silent Tongue-Tying Curse right now."

Raven's voice was very soft, yet it hit Draconia like a basin of ice water over her head. "Knowledge has no bloodline. There is only the difference between foolishness and clear sight. And one more thing... don't disturb me when I'm trying to read."

Draconia's snow-white face flushed bright red in an instant. Her pale grey-blue eyes brimmed with disbelief, hurt, and fury.

He was scolding her!

And all for some bushy-haired Gryffindor girl he'd known for barely half a day. He had the nerve to dress her down to her face in that icy tone?!

"Raven Capet... you! You absolute scoundrel!!"

The young lady's eyes reddened, her small chest heaved, and she stamped hard. With a violent flick of her ponytail, she turned and fled the library clutching her potions book like a wronged little swan.

Hermione, standing nearby, was thoroughly stunned. She looked at the pure-blood princess storming off in a huff, then at Raven, who had calmly picked up his quill again with a blank face, and she quietly held her breath.

Deep in his mind, the System's chime sounded, timely and restrained:

[Ding. Important character 'Hermione Granger' has had her fixed perception of the Slytherin group altered, and academic respect has been established. Causal Reversal Points +120.]

[Total remaining Causal Reversal Points: 1100.]

Listening to the crisp chime of points being credited, Raven drew the final stroke of his sketch with his quill, and the corner of his mouth curved in an almost imperceptible arc.

Daily life at Hogwarts... was turning out to be far more interesting than he'd expected.