Harry Potter and the Surprisingly Competent History of Magic Professor Chapter 227 227: Dread

Hello everyone. Hope you're all doing well. I'm pretty ill, seems like seasonal flu. Today isn't too bad, but I can't really say how tomorrow will be. Hopefully I'll start feeling better from here on.

That said, if things don't improve, the chapter schedule might slow down or beco a bit inconsistent for a while. We'll just have to see.

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Oh boy. If the old guard hated the new law...

Lucius tried appealing the ruling twice. First ti, the committee secretary sent the form back with a tea stain and "No" scribbled across the front. Second ti, they didn't bother responding.

The Ministry, to its credit, actually implented the tracking ward on ti. The Unspeakables patched it in quietly. Just a note sent to Dumbledore in a sealed black envelope and a ripple across the country's ambient grid.

Now, when soone cast a harm spell at a Class Three creature, the lattice flickered. Ministry staff were still figuring out how to process the alerts, early logs included a wizard shouting at his owl and a two-hour standoff in Kent involving a kneazle.

Cassian reviewed the feed once. Decided never again. The number of grown n trying to Crucio their own teacups was frankly worrying. He wasn't given permission to do sothing he wanted... That was a bumr, but he hasn't given up on it yet.

So families tried to bypass it with clever spellwork. Illusion layers, muted incantations, runes to mask intent. None of them worked. The patch was smarter than that. One bloke in Yorkshire ended up flagged seventeen tis in a single night for "enhanced obedience rituals" on a pair of cats. The cats were fine. The bloke had to attend a seminar.

Bathsheda had laughed herself hoarse.

School picked up. Classes ca and went. Hermione's lot kept H.E.A.R.T. running. They moved out of the library and into one of the empty classrooms. Made signs. Assigned roles.

It was slow. But it was sothing.

***

Cassian sat in an abandoned classroom with Malfoy. "One more try and we will wrap this up."

The boy nodded. Taking a deep breath.

One hand steadying the boy's temple, the other flicking his wand, Cassian said, "Legilins."

Draco gritted his teeth. The air shifted. The classroom peeled back, and they dropped straight into mory.

Cassian found himself in the Manor again. Sa marble floors, sa stiff air. It always slled like old coins and cleaner. Draco's mind had taken shape in the only place he knew how to fortify, ho turf. Problem was, that also made it predictable.

Malfoy Manor was built to impress and deceive. Perfect symtry, corridors that looped when you weren't paying attention, doors that changed where they led if you didn't know the trick.

Most people saw a grand house and missed the rest. Cassian knew better. The walls weren't just walls. They were watching. Every mirror had a twin. Every hallway had its decoy. It was like walking through a chessboard that hated you.

He moved carefully through the corridor Draco had chosen for the day's lesson. Walnut panelling, portraits of long-dead Malfoys glaring from the shadows. One blinked and tried to bark sothing at him. Cassian raised a brow. The fra snapped shut.

"Nice," he muttered. "Paranoid. Effective."

Draco didn't answer. He was behind him, sowhere deeper in the mindspace, dragging Cassian where he wanted him.

The problem was, Draco was trying too hard to guide it. That made it clumsy.

Cassian moved through the space like a ghost, careful not to trigger the obvious decoys. He'd been down this path enough by now to spot the habits. And patterns.

Certain mories kept cropping up.

Surface stuff. But the kind that stuck for a reason.

Draco, eleven, stepping into the Great Hall. The lanterns floating, the Sorting Hat humming to itself. His robes brand-new, his spine straight. Crabbe and Goyle flanking him. Then he caught sight of Cassian at the staff table, youngest professor in the room. Already infamous.

Draco had laughed.

"That's the squib-turned-teacher," he whispered, just loud enough for a few other purebloods to catch. "Bloody miracle he can hold a wand."

Crabbe snorted.

Cassian watched it replay without flinching.

Another door. Another flick.

Consequences ca fast... First class. First blow.

Draco had tried his little routine, sneering, showing off, so insult flung at Bathsheda about being a 'Mudblood sympathiser.' Cassian casually drew his wand. In three seconds flat, Draco's voice was gone, and his mates' too. They stood there, mouths moving like goldfish.

He let them stew for half the period. Then gave their voices back.

Draco, back in his room that night, slamd his mirror down and cried for Daddy Lucius.

The mory flickered.

Lucius appeared in the mirror, pale and unbothered.

"Don't fear him," he'd said. "I've handled it."

A few days later, Draco walked into flying class with a touch more swagger. Tried again. Neville fell, Rembrall snatched, broom rising. Cassian intervened.

He told himself it didn't matter. Cassian was biased. Potter-worshipping scum.

Later that evening, Lucius sent a one-word reply to Draco's mirror call.

Behave.

That mory stuck hard. Cassian could feel the sha roll off it like steam. The confusion. The fury.

Draco wasn't used to being told no like that.

He challenged harder. Mocked Potter louder. Pushed more.

Never won.

Second year was worse.

The Chamber opened, and fear crept like rot through the corridors. That evening, reading the bloody letters, Draco called out for Mudbloods. Cassian was there behind students. He didn't see him.

He just yanked Draco off the ground with a flick of his wand and left him dangling like a hung coat.

Snape stord in seconds later, snarling.

Cassian didn't budge.

Punishnt ca.

The Sorting Hat itself was brought out.

If Draco wanted to speak like that, he could be re-evaluated.

The whole Board watched.

"If he so much as breathes wrong again," the Hat had said, loud enough for half the room to hear, "I'll re-sort him. Third ti, he is out."

Draco left red-faced and quiet.

He didn't speak for the rest of the day.

When Potter was out as a Parseltongue, Draco thought that was it. Ga over. Black mark on the boy's na, expulsion on a plate. Any normal year, it might've been. But no, Cassian, that interfering, history-obsessed nace, had rushed to save the boy.

Draco got banned from the duelling club over the whole ss. Potter got applauded.

It only got worse from there. His father, furious, marched into Hogwarts with half the Board in tow, ready to sack both Cassian and Dumbledore in one go. Draco thought it was going to be a clean sweep. Bit of theatre, Cassian humiliated, school reset.

Except the Board stepped back. As if soone had muttered "Rosier" and hexed the room.

That sumr, Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban. Draco didn't care.

Technically, he was family, Uncle Sirius, pureblood, Black line and all that, but Draco had never t the man. All he knew was, if Sirius finally kicked it, the Black estate would be his.

That idea beca possible when an old man ca calling.

"If Sirius dies before he signs a will," the man said, "you know what happens, don't you?"

Lucius listened. Then bowed.

And Draco... Draco just stood there and watched.

That was the day he realised sothing important.

His father wasn't the strongest.

Wasn't the rightest.

Wasn't even the richest.

Lucius Malfoy had spent Draco's entire childhood telling him that Malfoys ruled by blood and coin. That Draco could do anything. Say anything. Get away with anything. Because they were Malfoys.

But here he was. Bowing.

Not to the Minister or a Lord. Just to soone stronger.

And the mont the door closed, Lucius turned and kicked a house-elf.

Hard. Twice.

That was the second realisation.

They didn't rule. They just bullied better.

Everything Draco had been taught started to wobble. That strength ant cruelty. That power ant control. That respect ca from bloodline.

But watching Lucius bow low, then kick low, it all started to rot.

They weren't noble.

They were cowards who snarled when they had the leash, and cowered when soone else held it.

He rembered a man.

Who stood in front of the Board of Directors, called them old fools to their faces, then turned around and crouched eye level with House-Elves. Who gave Mudbloods ti and attention. And still had ti to correct essays with tea stains on them.

That sumr, when he heard Cassian Rosier dragged Peter Pettigrew out of a cupboard, exonerated Sirius Black, then punched him square in the jaw. Because he felt like it.

His jaw dropped when he heard it. He wasn't a child anymore. He knew what it ant to punch Sirius Black. That kind of thing had consequences. Family relations would be ruined.

Cassian didn't care. Draco finally got it then.

Power wasn't the na. It wasn't the robes, or the old money, or whatever limp titles Lucius liked to polish in his spare ti.

And that punch, it wasn't political. It wasn't careful.

It was personal.

It said more than all of Lucius's speeches combined. No fear. No waiting for permission. Just truth and consequence, imdiate and honest.

Draco had known, he couldn't do that. Not to Sirius. Not to anyone. Not with Lucius breathing down his neck. Not with the family na strangling every choice he made.

That was the difference.

Cassian was a Rosier, yes. But he wasn't Rosier.

He was Cassian.

Power wasn't your surna. It wasn't how loudly you dropped your Galleons on the table or how quickly soone bowed when you passed.

And all the old books, the endless speeches about legacy and honour and proper breeding, none of it explained how a man like Cassian could walk into a cursed corridor with a smile, risk his job for a Muggleborn kid, or talk to the ghosts like they were gossiping neighbours instead of ancient threats.

Draco had clung to the idea that power ca from standing above people.

Cassian proved it ca from standing with them.

Which was, frankly, disgusting.

And sort of brilliant.

Towards the middle of the sumr, his ideals were cented when that appeared.

It was late, past midnight, going on two. The heat had broken into sothing muggy and still. Draco sat in a corner of his room, wand loose in his hand, sweat sticking his shirt to his back. His thoughts had been spiralling for a while now. Lucius had disappeared downstairs hours ago, red-faced and livid after a floo call.

He'd gone down. Into the cellar.

Draco didn't follow. Didn't want to know.

But his father called him anyway.

Draco rembered the look on his face, tight-lipped, pale, twitching like sothing had gone horribly wrong. Lucius was scared. Properly rattled. He'd looked around the house like soone was watching, soone worse than the portraits, worse than the wards. Draco thought he might actually bolt.

But no. Lucius grabbed him by the arm and dragged him down the stairs.

The cellar was cold. Bare stone. No candles. Just enchantnts humming under the bricks. Draco never liked it. His mother never ca down there. Neither did the elves. It was Lucius's space. A place for... things.

That night, soone waited for them.

With a scream, Draco tore himself free.

The classroom snapped back into place. Dust rattled off the desks. Draco hit the floor hard, palms scraping stone, breath coming fast and shallow like he'd run the length of the castle without stopping.

Cassian was already there, crouched beside him.

"Hey," he said. "You alright?"

Draco nodded, though it took him a second to make his head agree. "Yeah. I..." He swallowed. "I can't show that mory. It's guarded. My father can feel it."

Cassian straightened slowly. His mind went where it had already been circling.

Draco wasn't afraid of punishnt. Or anger. Or failure.

He was afraid of whoever waited on the other side of that door.

Cassian's mind flicked back to the image that had slipped through before the break. The first old man who coaxed Lucius about Sirius was the Selwyn patriarch.

Magnus and Regulus had suspected it for so ti now, soone nudging Lucius toward the Black inheritance, soone with a long hate and longer reach. The Selwyns would gain plenty from a Rosier fall.

But that wasn't it.

Draco hadn't been afraid of Selwyn. Lucius hadn't either.

That last mory though, both of them rigid, cornered, stripped bare by terror.

Cassian shook his head, pushing the thought aside.

"Go and rest," he said. "You did well today."

He reached out and gave Draco's shoulder a pat.

Draco managed a weak smile as he got to his feet. "Sorry. I really want you to see it. But... I'll try to overco the trigger."

Cassian waved a hand. "Don't force it."

Draco nodded, then turned and walked off down the corridor, shoulders tight.

Cassian stayed where he was, staring at the empty space the boy had left behind.

Who scared Lucius Malfoy that badly?

(Check Here)

"Can the defendant explain how they read 219 chapters and left no comnt?"

"I didn't think it mattered."

Gasps from the jury. Author faints.

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