"Good, Derek," Lupin said, his tone unchanged. "The teammate beside you. What's their number?"
Derek glanced at the boy next to him with barely concealed disdain.
"T24."
"And his name?"
Derek went still. He hadn't asked. He hadn't wanted to.
"I don't know," he said flatly.
Lupin's gaze shifted to the small, thin boy at Derek's side.
"T24. Your name?"
"Stephen Caldwell, Instructor." The boy snapped upright as he answered.
"Good." Lupin looked back at Derek.
"Listen carefully. Here, there is no Flint and no Caldwell. No Slytherin and no Gryffindor."
"Here, you have numbers and you have names. You don't need to remember his surname. But you will remember his name, because he is your teammate."
"T22 and T24. You are Group Three."
"Learn to work within your team. Learn to respect your teammates. That is your first assignment today, and your most important one."
His voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It landed like a hammer driving iron, and every objection Derek had formed quietly crumbled beneath it.
Derek opened his mouth. Thought better of it. Under Lupin's gaze, gentle on the surface, unyielding underneath, he swallowed whatever he'd been about to say. The color drained from his face, flooded back red, then settled into a deep, mortified liver-gray.
The lottery continued.
No one protested openly after that.
But the silent resistance was still there, thick in the air.
A Gryffindor girl drew a group with two Slytherin boys and looked close to tears.
A Hufflepuff boy found himself surrounded by three taciturn Ravenclaws and stood there completely at a loss, like a rabbit that had wandered into a restricted section.
One by one, the teams took shape.
The four colors that had always kept to themselves,clean, distinct, familiar, were broken apart and scattered.
What was left was a mottled, uncertain gray.
Students who hadn't yet grown into the sharper edges of their House identities were now packed together in close quarters, brushing shoulders with strangers, sizing each other up. The air was thick with awkwardness and the specific discomfort of being somewhere you hadn't chosen to be.
Lupin surveyed the scene.
He wasn't surprised.
This was only the beginning.
"For the next seven days," he said, "the following words are forbidden: Gryffindor. Slytherin. Ravenclaw. Hufflepuff."
He let that settle.
"Also forbidden: 'our House,' 'their House.'"
"The only words available to you are 'team,' 'we,' 'everyone.'"
"Every violation costs your group one point."
He paused, scanning the crowd. Confused faces. Resistant faces. A few curious ones.
"And every time you use the word 'team' correctly,genuinely, not just to say it, your group earns half a point."
Silence.
The children were beginning to understand that this was not a game.
"Now. Listen to my command!"
"Form a square formation—on me!"
The order went out.
And then the chaos began.
A Gryffindor boy immediately shoved toward his friends out of pure instinct. A Ravenclaw student started calling out an efficient arrangement scheme that nobody listened to. Slytherins shuffled grudgingly into position, their expressions broadcasting exactly what they thought about standing next to these people. Hufflepuffs scattered in every direction trying to fill gaps, only to be elbowed away.
"T03! Your teammate is on the right—stop crowding T45!"
"T21! Wrong position! Step out and start over!"
"T68! Dress right! Your shoulder aligns with T67!"
Lupin moved through the disorder without raising his voice, no magic involved, just his hands adjusting one student at a time, nudging a shoulder here, repositioning a foot there. It took a full ten minutes before the crooked, gray-patchwork square resolved into something that could loosely be called a formation.
They stood together, shoulder to shoulder.
And still felt like they were separated by something wide and invisible.
"Good."
Lupin gave no sign he'd noticed the invisible wall.
"First activity."
He pointed to a large sheet of parchment mounted on a wooden stand several paces away.
"The Unity Pact."
"One sentence. That's all it contains: In the name of Hogwarts, transcend House boundaries."
"Everyone signs with their code name."
They lined up. One by one, they stepped forward, took up the ordinary quill, dipped it in ink, and scratched their numbers onto the parchment.
T01. T02. T03.
All the way through.
When the last signature was down, Lupin produced a brass box. Inside sat blocks of hard red wax. He did not reach for his wand. Instead, he took out a Muggle matchbox, struck a match, and lit a small candle, holding the wax over the flame until it began to melt.
DRIP. DRIP. The hot red wax fell onto the foot of the signatures and pooled into a small, perfect circle.
Lupin pressed a seal into it. No House crest. Just a single letter, the Hogwarts H, clean and unadorned.
A deep impression settled into the cooling wax.
The pact was sealed.
In the oldest way. The most deliberate way.
"From this moment on," Lupin said, "remember that you are one whole."
He gave them no time to sit with it.
"In your groups. Next activity."
He pointed to a flat stretch of open grass.
"Trust fall."
The words meant nothing to most of them. Lupin explained the rules as he demonstrated, turning his back to the crowd, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Like this. You fall backward. You give your safety over entirely to your teammates."
He fell.
Straight back, without hesitation, without bracing.
No one caught him.
The moment he hit the ground, a sharp, strangled sound went through the crowd. Some students reached out on instinct. Others stepped back. A cluster of Slytherin students watched the whole thing with smirks they made no effort to hide.
He hit the ground hard.
THUD!
Silence. Then barely swallowed snickers. Then a stiff, uncomfortable quiet.
Lupin stood up, brushed himself off, and spoke in exactly the same tone as before.
"Clearly, none of you see me as a teammate." He looked out at them. "That's all right. My hope is that by the time this week is over, I can fall backward anywhere, at any time, and trust any one of you to be there. I'm a Hogwarts member too, aren't I?"
The children stared at him.
Something in that sentence didn't let go of them.
Lupin didn't wait for them to work out what.
"Now. Each group takes a turn. Every person falls once. Every person protects seven times."
Group One went first.
A tall Gryffindor boy stepped up and practically laughed his way into the fall, treating it like a dare. His seven teammates fumbled, arms colliding, but they caught him.
When the turn came to a slight Ravenclaw girl, she went rigid.
"I—I'm scared..."
"Don't be, T12."
A Hufflepuff boy in her group found his voice.
"Look. There are seven of us. Our arms together are like a net. You're not going to fall through. Trust us."
Something shifted at the corner of Lupin's mouth. Small. Barely there.
The girl drew a long breath. Closed her eyes.
And fell.
A dozen arms met her back, steady, certain, safe.
When the rotation reached Group Three, the whole area seemed to hold its breath.
T22. Derek Flint. The one who had declared minutes ago that he wasn't used to standing with these people.
He now had to close his eyes and fall backward.
Had to give his safety over entirely to the one person he most resented being paired with.
That small, slight figure standing at the center of the protection line.
T24.
Stephen Caldwell.
---
Daily Question , answer next chapter:
Which of the following statements about the Three Principles of Transfiguration (Target, Form, Willpower) is incorrect?
A. Clear target means you must precisely define the properties of the object before and after transfiguration (e.g., "turn a mouse into a cup")
B. The higher the morphological compatibility, the lower the transfiguration difficulty (e.g., turning cloth into a napkin is easier than turning stone into a napkin)
C. Willpower only affects the success rate of transfiguration and has no bearing on the stability of the result
D. All three are essential; removing any one of them causes the transfiguration to fail or hold only briefly
➤ Next: Lupin's Mischievous Smile: The Real Test Begins Now!
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