Harry Potter: Fire Lord Black

Edward noticed the change in Slytherin before anyone mentioned it to him. Students who had once given him a cautious nod now stopped to ask about classwork. Pansy wanted to know why his binding spell in Defense had held when several others collapsed. A third-year asked whether the movement of his wand had mattered. Even Crabbe and Goyle began saving him a place at breakfast without being told.

The attention was pleasant in the way a warm room was pleasant after rain. It was also dangerous.

A single good performance had become a story, and stories grew cleaner each time they were repeated. By the end of the week, Edward had supposedly subdued every pixie in Lockhart's classroom by himself. He corrected that version twice, then stopped chasing every whisper through the dungeons. Anyone who asked him directly received the truth: several students had helped, the spell had worked because they had coordinated, and Lockhart's lesson had gone wrong long before Edward intervened.

Draco found the new reputation much easier to enjoy.

"See?" he said one evening as they left Potions. He tilted his chin toward two younger Slytherins who had just greeted Edward. "You barely have to do anything now."

"That is exactly why it is a bad measure of anything," Edward replied.

Draco looked offended by the idea. "Reputation matters."

"It does. It just is not the same thing as competence."

The answer did not spoil Draco's mood. He had begun speaking about influence in Slytherin as if it were a set of seats waiting to be occupied. Edward had used similar language only weeks earlier. Hearing it repeated back to him made it sound less impressive.

Their first proposal for the Flame Serpent group still lay folded in Edward's trunk. The revised version had no permanent offices, no blood-based ranks, and no promise that older families deserved command. They had not agreed on an emblem either. Draco kept sketching a silver serpent and raven around a flame, while Edward kept asking what purpose an emblem served before the group even knew what it wanted to become.

That argument followed them into the cloister one cold afternoon.

"People need something recognizable," Draco said.

"People need rules before symbols."

"Symbols are rules people can see."

"That is one of the more alarming things you have said this week."

Draco opened his mouth to answer and nearly walked into Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they turned the corner.

Hermione carried three books pressed against her chest. She was explaining, with mounting irritation, why one of Lockhart's claims about a Welsh Green Dragon made little sense. Harry listened with the expression of someone who had heard the argument before but had decided resistance was useless. Ron walked beside them with his damaged wand held carefully away from his body. The break from the Whomping Willow had been bound together, but the wood still bent where it should not.

Draco's eyes went straight to it.

"Still using that thing, Weasley?" he asked. "I would be afraid to light a candle with it."

Ron stopped.

Harry caught his sleeve. "Keep walking."

Draco might have let them pass if he had stopped there. Instead, he looked at Hermione and added, "I still do not understand why someone who can actually brew a potion chooses this company."

Hermione's expression hardened. "My friends are not a school assignment, Malfoy."

"No, clearly not. If they were, you would have corrected them by now."

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Crabbe and Goyle, a few paces behind, laughed. Draco glanced at Edward as if expecting approval.

Edward did not give it. "Leave it."

Draco frowned. "I was complimenting her."

"You insulted two people to do it. That is not a compliment."

Ron had already pulled free of Harry. His face was red, and months of irritation seemed to gather in the hand around his wand.

"Take it back."

Draco's mouth twisted. "Which part?"

"Ron," Hermione warned.

Ron raised the broken wand.

Edward moved at the same time as Harry, but neither reached him before Ron shouted, "Rictusempra!"

The wand bucked. Instead of a clean jet toward Draco, the spell burst at the damaged join and snapped backward. Ron staggered as his cheeks ballooned. A wet choking sound escaped him, followed by the first slug.

For half a second everyone stared.

Then Hermione dropped her books and caught Ron by the shoulders.

"Do not cast anything else," she said. "Harry, help me get him to Hagrid or the hospital wing."

Another slug hit the flagstones. Ron doubled over, mortified.

Draco laughed once, sharply. Crabbe followed. Goyle did too.

Edward turned on them. "Enough."

Draco stared. "He tried to hex me."

"And his wand punished him for it. You do not need to help."

Harry looked ready to argue about who had started the confrontation, but Hermione was already guiding Ron away. She paused only long enough to gather her books with a Summoning Charm.

"He should not have cast," she said to Edward. Then she looked at Draco. "And you knew exactly what you were doing."

Draco's smile disappeared.

They left with Ron making miserable choking noises between them. The few students who had stopped to watch began moving again once it became clear there would be no second duel.

Draco waited until the corridor emptied.

"You embarrassed me in front of Gryffindors."

Edward met his stare. "You were laughing at someone who had already hurt himself."

"He attacked me."

"Then report the attack. Snape will agree that firing a spell from a broken wand was reckless. He may also ask why you blocked their path and kept provoking him after Harry tried to leave."

Draco looked away first.

Edward picked up a scrap of parchment Hermione had missed and handed it to a passing Ravenclaw who offered to return it. His own irritation had not vanished. Ron had made a stupid choice, and Edward had no intention of pretending otherwise. But Draco's delight in humiliation bothered him more than it would have a month earlier.

That bothered Edward too.

He had spent much of the term thinking about how to identify useful people: who stayed calm, who learned quickly, who had access to old family knowledge. The method sounded practical until he watched Draco reduce three classmates to categories in a corridor. Bright. Poor. Famous. Useful. Foolish.

Edward had been doing something similar with better vocabulary.

They resumed walking toward the dungeons.

"You still think Weasley is an idiot," Draco said after a while.

"I think casting through that wand was idiotic. That is different."

"And Potter?"

"I think Potter attracts trouble with remarkable consistency."

Draco snorted. "Finally."

"That was not agreement with everything else you said."

The common room was warmer than the corridor. Several students looked up when Edward entered, and the attention returned at once. One first-year asked whether he could demonstrate the binding spell from Defense.

Edward considered the request, then shook his head.

"Not in here. Ask Professor Flitwick or Snape for a supervised practice room. I can show you the wand movement there."

The boy looked disappointed but nodded.

Draco dropped into a chair beside the fire. "You are becoming painfully responsible."

"I was nearly hexed by a wand held together by hope and bad glue ten minutes ago. It encourages reflection."

Pansy laughed from the next sofa. Draco did not.

Later, Snape called Edward and Draco aside before dinner. Ron's attempt to cast in the corridor had already reached him. So had the provocation that preceded it.

"Mr. Weasley has earned a lecture from his Head of House and, I am told, another unsuccessful plea for a replacement wand," Snape said. His gaze moved to Draco. "You will not interpret his punishment as permission to bait him into repeating the mistake."

Draco stiffened. "He attacked me."

"And failed without your assistance. Try to survive the disappointment."

Snape then looked at Edward. "You stopped the mockery after the spell rebounded. Earlier would have been preferable."

Edward accepted the criticism. He had noticed the direction of the exchange long before Ron raised his wand. He had simply decided that other people's ugliness was not his problem until magic made it dangerous.

That distinction no longer satisfied him.

At supper, the story had already changed again. A Hufflepuff claimed Edward had caught Ron's curse and reflected it. A Ravenclaw insisted Draco had cast the slug spell. Someone farther down the table said Harry had threatened all of Slytherin afterward.

Edward corrected the students within hearing. He had done none of those things. Ron's damaged wand had rebounded. Harry had helped him leave. Draco had mocked him but had not cast.

The corrections made the story less exciting. Several listeners lost interest.

Edward considered that a success.

His name was spreading through Slytherin, perhaps farther. He could use that attention to collect followers, as his first plan had assumed. Or he could learn whether people still listened when he told them no, admitted uncertainty, and refused to turn every conflict into a contest.

The second test seemed more useful.