That evening, Kate emerged from the office clutching a bottle of Draught of Peace — Snape's grand gift of the day — and, with practiced ease, fished a piece of chocolate out of her pocket and popped it into her mouth.
The chocolate's cloying sweetness began to chase away the nauseating bitterness still coating her tongue. Kate closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath.
When she opened them again, she found Malfoy and Crabbe trudging down the dungeon corridor toward her, their expressions thoroughly sullen.
Her eyes met Malfoy's by accident — a pair of grey irises in a face that looked utterly awful — and Kate blinked, instinctively dropping her gaze the moment their eyes connected.
"Ahem. Head of House is in his office," she said, scratching the back of her head awkwardly, and stepped aside to let them pass.
Malfoy's eyes shifted slightly. She said nothing, and simply led Crabbe past Kate and knocked on the office door.
A moment later, Snape's voice rasped through the wood, telling them to get in.
Malfoy pushed the door open and stepped through — but paused on the threshold, turned, and looked back at Kate once. Then she lowered her eyes and walked inside.
The door swung shut behind her. Kate stood at the entrance, staring blankly at the closed iron door.
Why was it that... she kept feeling like Malfoy's expression just now had been strange? Something about it left her with a feeling she couldn't quite name.
Just thinking back on it gave her a peculiar, hollow sensation in her chest.
Unconsciously pressing a hand to her sternum, Kate felt the tension she had only just managed to ease come rushing back.
Her feelings about Malfoy were complicated.
From the very first time she had laid eyes on her, Kate had known: the Malfoy family, once followers of Voldemort, had been complicit in the deaths of her own family.
So from the start, she had never thought much of this little Malfoy, and any contact between them had been limited to the occasional polite nod.
Every provocation and approach since then had been entirely one-sided on Malfoy's part. Kate had watched it all with cold detachment, never reacting in any particular way.
But after Kate had lashed out with spells to vent her own emotions — that was when things began to go sideways.
She had discovered that Malfoy was a girl. And that she was carrying an alchemical item passed down from Kate's own ancestors. It had forced Kate to start paying her a little more attention.
That was when she had begun to notice that beneath Malfoy's sharp tongue and haughty exterior, there was actually something — a little endearing, even.
At least, after the brief time they had spent together, Kate's feelings toward Malfoy had graduated from active dislike to something closer to neutrality.
So in the eyes of outsiders, the two of them had gone from a state of open hostility at the start of term, to one-sided bullying, to something resembling uneasy coexistence.
And then came this latest incident — where Kate had dumped the entire blame squarely on Malfoy's head.
In Kate's estimation, Malfoy should have distanced herself after this, or at the very least turned even colder than before.
That would have been the appropriate way for someone from their two families to behave toward each other.
But Malfoy's reaction just now seemed to be saying: she didn't blame her?
Was she joking?
Was this really the petty, vindictive, never-forgive-and-never-forget little Malfoy from the original works?
Well... the whole person had turned out to be a girl, so maybe a little character shift wasn't all that surprising after all.
Kate genuinely couldn't make sense of how she felt right now, nor could she figure out why Malfoy's attitude toward her had become so strange.
Could it be the influence of the alchemical item — making her feel a certain goodwill toward anyone from the Shafiq family?
That didn't quite track, either. The item had been forged by her ancestor for a lover. How could something crafted for true love possibly be laced with magic that would taint and cheapen it like that?
From inside the office came the sound of something being sliced, followed by Snape unleashing a stream of venom-laced sarcasm at the two of them.
Apparently, even being born a Malfoy was no shield against Snape's caustic brand of condescension.
Kate had no interest in eavesdropping on their humiliation. She collected her thoughts and turned to leave at a brisk pace.
Per their arrangement, she was due at Katherine's office today to help with lesson preparation.
Truthfully, she still couldn't fathom what on earth a student was supposed to help a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher prepare.
She dragged her feet the whole way, weighed down with heavy thoughts, and had barely reached the office door when a cheerful voice floated out from within, before she had even raised her hand to knock.
"Is that little Kate? Come in, come in."
That voice — honeyed and soft, with just the faintest trace of a purr — sent an immediate crawl of unease across Kate's scalp.
She pushed the door open with a pained expression and found Katherine hunched over her desk, a magically animated quill scratching away ceaselessly across a sheet of parchment.
"Professor," Kate said, giving a stiff little bow. "What would you like me to do today?"
Katherine looked up, adjusted her glasses, and beckoned her over with a smile. "This is the scope for the fifth-year examination — have a go at it."
"Ah..." Kate reflexively took a step back. "Professor, if the exam content is leaked before the test..."
"This is just a general topic outline, not the actual exam paper." Katherine gave an unconcerned wink. "I only want to see how you find the difficulty — to gauge whether it's appropriate for fifth-years."
All well and good, but wasn't this still a bit off? Did this woman really have no fear of Kate accidentally letting the content slip?
Kate wrestled with her misgivings for a moment — and then it hit her all at once. She shook her head in something close to alarm. "I — I don't even know fifth-year material!"
She was just an ordinary first-year student!
"Is that so?" Katherine's expression shifted into one of quiet understanding as she settled back lazily in her chair, crossing her feet on top of the desk.
"Funny, though — I could have sworn you'd already taught yourself up to fifth-year level."
The words hit Kate like a cold splash of water.
She lurched backward a full step, and for the first time, genuine panic broke across her face. "I haven't — I never —"
How could she possibly know how far along Kate's self-study had come?
Had she been watching her in secret this whole time?
Since when? After Kate had arrived at Hogwarts — or before?
A tangle of anxious thoughts flooded her mind. Kate looked up and found Katherine watching her with an expression of undisguised amusement, and her heart gave another sharp lurch.
Calm down. She had to stay calm.
The fact that she had been studying obsessively behind the scenes was hardly a secret. Even if someone knew, it wasn't anything to be ashamed of.
Katherine was simply probing her. Nothing more.
Kate quietly invoked a few Occlumency techniques to rein in her spiraling thoughts at speed, drew a slow breath, and sat down in the chair before her.
"Professor, my current knowledge is really only at the level of extending what's in the existing curriculum — nowhere near actual fifth-year standard."
She met Katherine's eyes with a look of earnest sincerity. "But if you'd like me to look it over, I'm happy to — I just might not be able to offer you very useful feedback."
"That's perfectly fine." Katherine propped her chin on one hand, regarding Kate with a warm smile. "I trust your abilities."
And with that, she slid the exam paper across the desk.
Kate inwardly let out a dry laugh and began calculating how best to muddle through — but the moment her eyes landed on the paper, her heart gave a violent lurch.
"Professor..." She raised a trembling hand. "Are you quite sure you haven't given me the wrong paper?"
Having gone through a secondary education in her previous life, she had made a habit of working through past exam papers whenever she had the time — it was practically carved into the soul of anyone who had ever drilled practice questions.
She had worked through multiple years' worth of both O.W.L. and N.E.W.T. past papers, and what sat in front of her now was unmistakably one of the N.E.W.T. papers.
This was the top-tier wizarding qualification — the very exam that sent many graduating students home without a passing grade.
And Katherine was handing it to fifth-years as their practice test?
Were this year's students really being put through that much misery?
"No, this is exactly the scope I want little Kate to work through," Katherine said, smiling sweetly. "The difficulty of the fifth-years' exam is entirely in your hands."
Kate's expression twitched. She understood immediately what that meant.
Katherine would calibrate the exam difficulty based on Kate's score. Too high, too low — the paper would shift accordingly.
In short: whether every fifth-year student failed catastrophically was entirely up to her.
What she genuinely couldn't work out was why Katherine would go to all this trouble just to test her. Was this really worth paying attention to?
Kate bowed her head in silence, skimmed through the questions in front of her, and began to write.
The obviously high-difficulty questions she left blank outright — she needed to gauge the general level of a fifth-year student and answer accordingly.
Fortunately, by this point she had already worked through all of Hogwarts' curriculum from first year through seventh on her own.
She couldn't guarantee she had fully internalized everything, but fifth-year level was well within her grasp.
Then, abruptly, her quill hand stilled for the first time.
Katherine had said earlier that she knew Kate had self-studied up to fifth year — but that had been Kate's progress at the start of term.
Half a week ago, she had just finished working through the seventh-year content. And half a week later, Katherine had asked her to sit a fifth-year paper.
If she had genuinely only reached fifth-year level, then managing her score would not be nearly this simple a calculation.
Which meant: if she deliberately held back her score now, she would be exposing her actual current progress in full.
Completing seventh-year coursework in first year — even by Hogwarts standards across all of history, that was extraordinarily rare.
And so, faced with Katherine's transparently obvious test, the question of whether or not to hold back had become the problem Kate now had to confront.
After more than an hour of steady writing, Kate finally set her quill down and offered the completed parchment across the desk. "Professor, that's all I've got."
Katherine raised an eyebrow, took the parchment — and without so much as glancing at it, burned it to ash.
"Professor," Kate said, entirely unsurprised by the gesture, "you haven't even looked at my answers."
"Looked at or not, your grade can only ever be a T or a D."
T and D — the two lowest grades in the entire grading scale. Worse than failing.
Katherine gently blew the last of the ash from the parchment off her palm and propped her head on one hand. "Well done. I know how to write the exam now — you can go."
"Yes, Professor." Kate nodded with perfect compliance, rose from her chair, and left, pulling the door quietly shut behind her.
Only once the door had closed and Katherine could no longer see her did Katherine allow herself a soft, exasperated tut.
She reached under the desk and retrieved the picture frame, staring at the woman in the photograph. "This child," she muttered under her breath, "is far too cunning."
Not even a little obedient.
____
________________________________________
🌸 Help Love Bloom!
Our girls need a little push... and you can help!
💖 Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter to warm your hearts.
🚀 Community Reward: If we reach 20 supporting members, we'll have a +5 chapter marathon across all stories! The romance won't stop.
👻 Come to our secret corner: Search for GirlsLove on (P). You know that's where the magic happens... 😉