If the Malfoy family hadn't "accumulated virtue" through their ancestors and left their descendants an enormous fortune, Draco Malfoy wouldn't have had the capital to stir up trouble all over the school in the first place.
Just that single word, Mudblood, had already offended countless people. If he hadn't had a rich and powerful father on the school board backing him up, Malfoy would have been beaten eight hundred times over by now.
Last Halloween, when the Chamber of Secrets had just been opened, it was Malfoy who jumped out again and launched a blanket provocation. Although he only managed to spit out half of his filthy words, everyone knew exactly what he was about to say.
At a time when everyone was on edge like that, even Eda wouldn't dare to open fire indiscriminately like that—she'd be afraid of getting beaten to death by a crowd—but young Master Malfoy dared to do it anyway.
The reason young Master Malfoy had been able to live so leisurely at Hogwarts for three years boiled down to three main points: virtuous ancestors, wealth and power, and the kindness of the students.
The most important were still the first two points. Without those as guarantees, the students would have shown him just how violent they could be in minutes.
Back then, when Eda was surrounded by a small group of Gryffindors, wasn't it precisely because she didn't have a rich and powerful father?
On top of that, everyone lacked a clear understanding of Eda's true strength, so they mistakenly underestimated the cost of offending her.
If Draco Malfoy and Eda had swapped places back then, Malfoy would probably have been torn apart alive by that crowd.
Or rather, that's not quite right—if the two of them had switched identities, Malfoy would never have dared to act so smugly in the first place, because he would no longer have had the confidence to do so.
The wording might have been rough, but the reasoning wasn't wrong.
The questions Eda asked were all very direct—she was afraid that if she put things too tactfully, lil prince Dracky poo wouldn't understand.
"Your only support is the Malfoy surname," Eda said, looking down at Malfoy, "but that name can't protect you forever. Like today—every advantage that surname gave you, I've completely neutralized it. I can stand in front of you and lecture you as I please, while you can't do a single thing, only stand there helplessly, frozen in place like a child who hasn't even been weaned yet."
There weren't many people left at the entrance of the Great Hall; most of them had already dispersed. Pansy Parkinson was still sobbing. She covered Malfoy's ears with both hands, refusing to let him continue to be "poisoned" by Eda's words.
Avery and Zabini didn't interrupt, nor did they show any contempt toward Eda. Both of them were quietly reassessing her value.
As for Crabbe and Goyle, the two people whose brains were full of nothing but muscle, they were still cracking their knuckles with loud crack-crack sounds, completely unable to understand a single word Eda was saying.
The twins also hadn't spoken the whole time—not because Eda was displaying some particularly head-boy-like demeanor, but because the brothers had noticed a new change in her.
That change carried a bit of Dumbledore's shadow, yet wasn't quite the same. The feeling was strange, and even the twins couldn't really put it into words.
"This is the biggest difference between you and Harry. Even though Harry can be reckless, and sometimes as stubborn as a mule, once you strip away the halo of 'the Boy Who Lived,' he's still a friend worth befriending, a partner worthy of trust." Striking straight at the heart—Eda knew that for Malfoy, Harry's name was the ultimate trump card.
Sure enough, upon hearing Harry's name, Malfoy reacted again. His eyes were no longer unfocused.
"Why ...are you telling me all this?" Malfoy asked in a trembling voice. No one had ever said these things to him before. He couldn't understand why Eda would say them to him—the two of them didn't seem to have that kind of relationship.
Not only was Malfoy confused, everyone else was as well.
Even Eda herself didn't know why she was saying all this random stuff—shouldn't she be throwing a hard punch at Malfoy instead?
Or cleanly sending him straight to the hospital wing?
"I don't know," Eda said with a smile. "I don't know why I suddenly decided to show mercy and waste my breath on you. Maybe it's because I'm a year older now. Or maybe it's because you're still not worthy of being my opponent."
Eda didn't stay any longer. After calling out to the twins, the three of them headed toward their classroom together.
As they passed by Malfoy, Draco Malfoy instinctively shrank back, putting as much distance between himself and Eda as he could.
Perhaps it was because last time—after Eda's series of soul-searching questions—the punch she'd thrown on her way back had been far too unforgettable. Malfoy was worried that the same pain would recur, which was why his body reacted on instinct.
This time, however, Malfoy's worry was completely unnecessary. Eda left decisively, with no intention whatsoever of striking back.
This farce finally came to an end. No points were deducted, and no one was sent to detention by some biased professor. All things considered, it could be called a happy ending for everyone.
The only person who was truly hurt was Draco Malfoy. Being denounced by everyone, coupled with Eda's blunt words that kept interrogating his inner self, caused him to rein himself in quite a bit over the following days.
Hopefully, this lesson would make Malfoy remember it for a long time, and stop doing those disgusting things again.
...
Today was Friday, and Professor Snape had once again appeared in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom.
Since the start of term three months ago, this was far from the first time Professor Lupin had taken sick leave. This witty and humorous professor seemed to have a few days each month when he wasn't feeling well.
Nothing in the world is difficult if someone sets their mind to it. After Professor Lupin took sick leave three times in a row, Eda—who had been paying attention to Lupin's personal patterns—began to notice something.
She discovered that every time Professor Lupin took leave, it was always around the full moon.
Thinking back, the first time the two of them met was on the Hogwarts Express. At the time, Professor Lupin had already looked sickly. Counting back from the present, the day they boarded the train had also been right around the full moon!
This realization sent a chill through Eda, making her break out in a cold sweat.
Then Eda thought of another odd arrangement from Snape—the Wolfsbane Potion.
He had inexplicably made her brew Wolfsbane Potion and required it to be completed before the full moon. Whenever she asked questions, Snape refused to explain anything. This strange matter had been weighing on Eda's mind as well.
Whenever the full moon arrived, Professor Lupin would fall ill on schedule, and the Wolfsbane Potion also had to be used during the full moon.
Putting these two things together—the full moon and Wolfsbane Potion—Professor Lupin's secret seemed to be surfacing.
It couldn't really be such a coincidence… right?
After arriving at this conclusion, Eda immediately overturned her own speculation. It wasn't because she didn't trust her own judgment, but because she felt that Dumbledore wouldn't be so reckless, wouldn't do something this unreliable.
Eda had never come into contact with werewolves, and she couldn't say she held any particular prejudice against them. But she wasn't a saint either—no matter how she thought about it, placing a werewolf in a school just seemed far too unreliable.
There were simply too many uncontrollable factors associated with werewolves. Even with the Wolfsbane Potion helping to suppress their inner urges, a werewolf would still be an unstable element within the school, capable of threatening students' safety at any moment.
Putting a werewolf among a group of students—how was that any different from releasing a ferocious wolf into a flock of gentle sheep?
Eda overturning her own observations was, to some extent, an act of self-deception.
There were simply too many suspicious points that corroborated her guess, all telling her that this conclusion was entirely correct.
Lupin's extreme poverty was due to his inability to obtain work as a werewolf, leaving him without steady income; his weathered appearance and slightly graying hair all served as proof that this professor had endured far too many hardships over the years.
Yet this inferred conclusion was simply too unbelievable. Eda truly could not bring herself to believe that the gentle and refined Professor Lupin was a brutal, bloodthirsty werewolf.
She felt that she needed to treat this conclusion with caution, observe for a while longer, and be extra careful not to make a misjudgment.
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