Derek stepped onto the half-height wooden platform, his face tight and pale.
He could feel the dozens of gazes at his back, sharp and fixed.
Curiosity. Sympathy. And more than anything else, schadenfreude.
His palms were sweating. He clenched his fists until his fingernails nearly broke skin.
Fall backwards?
Hand his safety to this bunch of... rabble?
To that Gryffindor named Caldwell, who was as scrawny as a day-old chick?
It would've been less humiliating to have tea with an Acromantula in the Forbidden Forest.
Behind him, at the center of the protective formation, T24 Stephen Caldwell pressed his lips into a line.
He could feel the rigidity in Derek's body , that resistance had almost become visible, something that twisted the air between them.
He could hear Derek's breathing. Heavy. Deliberate.
Stephen exchanged a glance with the members beside him: a Hufflepuff, a Ravenclaw, a few others. Their eyes held the same tension, the same resolve.
Seven arms locked together.
They formed a net — not wide, but unshakeable.
Stephen met Derek's gaze head-on. Suspicion. Contempt. He didn't flinch.
He put everything he had into keeping his voice level.
"T22. We're ready. Trust us."
Derek didn't move.
The seconds stretched.
"Hey, T22!"
An impatient voice cut in from another group.
"Can you do it or not? Some of us are waiting!"
Pure provocation.
Derek's face went red in an instant , the particular flush of someone humiliated in front of a crowd.
He wasn't afraid of falling.
He was refusing this. The act of turning his back. Of being vulnerable to people he considered enemies.
It felt like a betrayal of his name. A stain on Slytherin's honour.
Remus Lupin didn't push him. He watched quietly.
He knew this was a threshold Derek had to cross himself. Any external nudge would hollow the whole exercise out.
Derek's gaze moved across the seven faces below.
Impatience. Concern. Nervousness. Encouragement.
Finally, it stopped on Stephen, dead center.
No mockery on that face. Just a stubborn, patient waiting.
Derek ground his teeth.
He couldn't back down. Backing down was cowardice.
He couldn't stand here forever. That would make him the school's favourite joke for months.
He closed his eyes.
Stiffly, with the finality of someone deciding something, he fell backwards.
It wasn't trust.
It was resignation.
The world tilted.
Wind rushed into his ears.
Weightlessness seized his heart and clenched it tight. Cold spread outward from his chest, crawling through his veins inch by inch.
He braced himself for the hard ground. For the pain. For the humiliation he'd already half-decided to expect.
Then he hit something warm and solid.
Not the ground.
Not a soft bed, either.
A surface of arms , uneven, lumpy, impossibly firm.
More than a dozen hands caught him and held.
Derek's eyes snapped open.
Sweaty faces pressed in close above him. And at the center, nearest of all, was Stephen Caldwell's.
That thin face was flushed red from the effort, forehead slick with sweat.
But the eyes looking down at Derek were startlingly bright.
Derek didn't say anything. He pushed himself upright and climbed out of the tangle of arms, movements a little clumsy.
He stepped to the side without a word. No thanks. No acknowledgment.
But his shoulders were no longer locked the way they'd been.
Something in his posture had loosened , barely, almost imperceptibly, but it was there.
Remus Lupin's gaze passed over the third group. He made a small mark in his notebook.
"Good. Next group."
The rest of the exercise went considerably smoother.
Derek's fall, and being caught, was like a stone dropped into a still lake, sending ripples no one could quite see.
The students were still awkward, still generating plenty of small friction. But that frozen barrier between them had begun to crack.
Once every group had done one trust fall, Remus Lupin clapped his hands.
"Good. Warm-up's over."
"Warm-up?" someone blurted. "We're dead!"
Remus smiled.
"Now, today's second exercise." He pointed toward a stretch of open ground nearby. "Human knot."
What followed was organized chaos.
Each group held hands in a circle, then followed Lupin's instructions , stepping over arms, ducking under them, twisting into configurations that had no business existing on a human body.
The complaints came fast at first.
"Stop touching me, your hands are soaked!"
"Hey — that's my foot!"
But then, gradually, the students discovered that the only way out was to work together. To tell each other where to step, when to turn, when to crouch. Cooperation wasn't optional; it was the only exit.
And when you're being slowly strangled by a human pretzel, house loyalties become a lot less interesting than hurry up and untangle me, I can't breathe.
Two hours later, Remus Lupin blew the whistle.
They were all panting, soaked in sweat, training clothes caked with mud and grass clippings. But when they stood together now, the hard lines between them had gone soft.
"Alright. Morning training ends here."
Remus looked at them , exhaustion written all over every face, but something different in their eyes too. A faint, fragile thing. The kind of connection that only forms after you've been through something together.
"This morning, the groups were deducted a combined total of twelve points," he announced calmly. "Because without realising it, you were still using your house walls to keep yourselves separate from your teammates."
He let that sit for a moment.
"You also earned six and a half points. Because some of you began to try — to trust, to cooperate."
He looked at each of them in turn.
"Remember how that felt. Remember the fear of putting your back to someone else. Remember the steadiness of being caught. Remember the frustration of being trapped in the knot, and the relief when it finally came loose."
Silence.
"Very good." Remus clapped his hands, pulling their attention back to him. "The morning session is officially over."
A wave of exhausted, suppressed cheering broke out.
Remus watched them , these tired, half-victorious kids , and a rare, slightly wicked smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"I know you're exhausted. But hold off on that for just a moment."
The cheering cut off.
"And don't celebrate too early, either."
He pointed toward the far edge of the Forbidden Forest, where the Holmes Orchard sat waiting.
"Unfortunately," Remus said, "for the next seven days, none of you will be returning to your dormitories."
---
P.S.
Last chapter's daily question , answer.
Answer: C
Explanation: Willpower doesn't only affect the success rate of a transformation; it also determines how stable the result remains afterward. Fragile willpower causes the transformed object to break down when exposed to external interference. Option C treats these as unrelated, which is a fundamental conceptual error.
➤ Next: Snape's Challenge: Care to Practice in My Domain?
───── ⊹ ⊹ ─────
📖 Main story COMPLETED + Bonus Stories ongoing on Patre\on
🔍 Search:p a t r e o n.com/GoldenLong
───── ⊹ ⊹ ─────