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Sunday morning brought no rain, but leaden clouds pressed low against the Great Hall's enchanted ceiling, suffocating the room.
At the Gryffindor table, Harry, Ron, and Neville were huddled together, aggressively demolishing plates of smoked sausage and fried eggs.
They sported dark, heavy bags under their eyes, yet every movement radiated the airy, triumphant energy of conquering heroes.
Hermione Granger sat directly across from them. Her oatmeal remained untouched.
From the second the three boys strutted into the Hall, she knew something was deeply wrong.
No prefects had come to confiscate their wands. No stern glares from Professor McGonagall. Up at the staff table, Dumbledore had even offered a subtle, raised-goblet toast in Harry's direction.
"So—" Hermione took a sharp breath, her spoon clattering against the edge of her bowl. "You went to the Astronomy Tower last night, got caught red-handed by Umbridge, and then... came back without a scratch?"
"More than just 'without a scratch'!" Ron swallowed a massive gulp of pumpkin juice, leaning in with a wildly animated whisper. "You should have seen that toad-faced woman's expression! She whipped out a mountain of legal garbage to arrest us, and Dumbledore just stepped in and shut her down with a single sentence!"
"What did he say?" Hermione's heart sank.
"The Headmaster said it was an 'empirical study of magical creature life cycles under extreme conditions' for a specific teaching phase!" Harry cut into his egg, his voice dripping with raw admiration. "He's basically a superhero, Hermione. He legalized Norbert right in front of the Ministry! That old hag Umbridge was so mad she couldn't even hold her fake smile. She just grabbed some signed parchment and slinked away."
"Wait."
Hermione's mind went entirely blank.
Drawing on her deep understanding of both Muggle and Magical law, she latched onto the most lethal detail in that entire story.
"You just said the Headmaster signed a parchment. What kind of parchment?" Her voice suddenly shook, entirely out of her control.
"Who cares what it was? Probably just some certificate saying the school had a dragon." Ron shrugged it off. "The point is, she's gone, Hagrid is safe, and we crushed Malfoy's little plot. That's Gryffindor—"
"It was a Hogwarts Campus Management Safety Risk Assessment Report or some other qualitative legal document!" Hermione's voice spiked, drawing sideways glances from a few Ravenclaws at the next table.
She immediately clamped a hand over her mouth, fighting back a panicked gasp.
Harry and Ron dropped their silverware, staring at her in total confusion.
"Hermione, what's wrong with you? We won." Harry didn't sound worried; he sounded mildly annoyed that she wasn't celebrating with them.
But Hermione looked at them like they were two grinning idiots happily sticking their own necks into a guillotine.
"We didn't win, Harry—" Hermione's hands and feet felt like ice. Her eyes reddened from the sheer, tragic absurdity of it all.
"The Ministry never wanted to arrest you, and they didn't want a dragon! They were waiting for Dumbledore to step in and protect you. The second the Headmaster signed a document admitting to administrative negligence or a campus safety risk, he handed the Ministry a legal lever to interfere with Hogwarts' internal affairs! Next time, they won't send a couple of inspectors—they'll send officials armed with a mountain of regulations to take over the school!"
She looked at the three boys, practically glowing with blind optimism, and shivered.
This hot-blooded Gryffindor courage was devastatingly fragile in the face of a political butcher's knife—if Dumbledore wasn't there to block it.
What was worse was that these boys, the ones blindly swinging this double-edged sword, had absolutely no idea how much damage they had just inflicted on the people who loved them, and on the very castle that sheltered them.
"Give it a rest, Hermione," Ron sneered slightly. "You always overcomplicate everything. Dumbledore is invincible. Fudge isn't fit to lick his boots."
Hermione snapped her mouth shut. She looked down at her freezing, congealed oatmeal.
In that moment, it felt like she and the boys were living in two entirely different realities.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Great Hall, the Slytherin table was steeped in a bizarre, heavy tension.
Draco Malfoy's hand hovered over his plate, a silver fork frozen mid-air.
He was staring daggers at the Gryffindor table.
Harry Potter was laughing. That impoverished Weasley was stuffing his face. That bumbling idiot Longbottom was actually drinking milk.
"This is impossible..." Draco's face twisted in pure disbelief.
He shoved his plate away, the porcelain clattering loudly against the wood.
"Draco—didn't you say Potter was getting expelled this morning?" Pansy Parkinson leaned in cautiously, doubt lacing her tone.
Across from them, Blaise Zabini remained silent, but his calculating eyes darted between Malfoy and Potter, clearly assessing whether the mighty Malfoy family had just made a massive blunder.
Humiliation.
The sting of a very public slap in the face rushed straight to Draco's head.
He had spent last night eagerly rehearsing exactly how he was going to mock Harry. He had been practically vibrating with anticipation to watch the Aurors drag Hagrid away. He truly believed a trap personally laid by his father was foolproof.
Was Dumbledore actually powerful enough to rip up written Ministry law and bend reality to his will?
Just as Draco was about to stand up, march over, and demand to know what underhanded trick Potter had pulled, an eagle owl swooped through the gloomy ceiling. It dropped a letter sealed with the Malfoy family wax crest directly in front of him.
His father.
Draco's breathing hitched. He tore the envelope open, bracing himself. He expected furious reprimands, or a vicious rant about incompetent Ministry bureaucrats.
Instead, as he unrolled the parchment, he was met with Lucius Malfoy's elegant, perfectly relaxed cursive.
The letter was brief:
> My dear son:
>
> When you see Potter still sitting in the Great Hall eating breakfast, do not let anger ruin your composure.
>
> You fixed your eyes on the fate of a vulgar beast and the imprisonment of a Mudblood giant. For a Malfoy heir, that vision is far too narrow.
>
> Always remember: if you wish to hunt the Lion King, do not waste your energy trying to crush the cubs hiding beneath its paws. You must force the old lion to willingly stick its own neck into a snare of your making, simply to protect those cubs.
>
> Thanks to Mr. Potter's highly cooperative, blind, and foolish heroism, the Ministry has successfully obtained signed confirmation of Hogwarts' campus autonomy risks. Dumbledore's impenetrable, independent kingdom has finally cracked.
>
> He won last night's fairy tale. We took tomorrow's power.
>
> Give the smug Mr. Potter my most sincere gratitude. >
> Your loving father,
> Lucius
After reading the final word, Draco clamped down on a surge of wild ecstasy and slowly raised his head.
His frustration and rage vanished without a trace. His face settled into an expression even more arrogant than before.
"Draco?" Pansy jumped, startled by the sudden shift in his aura.
"It's nothing, Pansy." Draco neatly folded the letter and tucked it securely inside his robes.
He looked back toward the Gryffindor table. Harry was practically doubled over laughing at something Ron said.
Before last night, seeing Harry laugh would have filled Draco with jealous, burning rage. But now, Draco just looked at him and let out a theatrical, pitying sigh.
"Zabini," Draco picked up his goblet of pumpkin juice. "You were right. The Ministry doesn't operate on God's good graces. They operate on leverage."
He raised his glass across the long aisle, offering a mocking, deeply cynical toast to the completely oblivious Harry Potter.
Here's to our great Savior, Draco thought. Keep dreaming your little hero dreams.
The storm was far from over. This ancient magical school was accelerating down a steep slope, pushed willingly by its most fearless students.
A sudden thought about his upcoming detention in the Forbidden Forest made Draco's face fall for a split second. But then he remembered his father's philosophy: It's merely a bit of wind and frost.
His smug satisfaction returned in full force.
If it ensures these self-satisfied idiots help my father tear down Hogwarts' walls, a trip to the Forbidden Forest—hell, even a swim in the Black Lake—is totally worth it.
At the poker table of power, only the winner earned the right to complain about getting mud on their robes.