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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Saturday arrived with a palpable tension that Kaelen found privately amusing. He watched the Gryffindor trio throughout the day. They were a walking case study in paranoia, constantly whispering, casting frightened glances over their shoulders, and jumping at every shadow. Their attempts at subtlety were so laughably poor that it was a miracle the entire school didn't know their plan.
Malfoy, by contrast, was a peacock strutting towards what he believed was his coronation. He swaggered through the corridors, sneering at Potter with the smug certainty of a man holding a winning hand, completely oblivious to the fact that the deck had been stacked by another player. Kaelen gave him a brief, encouraging nod in the Entrance Hall, a silent stoking of the fires that made Malfoy's chest puff out even further.
As night fell, Kaelen made his preparations. He had no need for an invisibility cloak; they were a clumsy crutch for those who lacked true stealth. Instead, he relied on timing, silence, and the castle's own geography. An hour before midnight, he slipped out of the Slytherin common room. He moved not like a student breaking curfew, but like a shadow detaching itself from a wall. He knew the patrol routes of the prefects and the ghosts, the timing of Filch's wheezing progress through the dungeons.
He ascended the Grand Staircase, his soft-soled shoes making no sound on the marble. He reached the base of the Astronomy Tower and, instead of taking the main spiral staircase, he located a small, concealed door behind a tapestry of dancing trolls. It led to a narrow, dusty service stairway that wound its way up through the tower's core. It was a route he had discovered during his nightly reconnaissance, a perfect artery of access that bypassed the main thoroughfare.
He emerged into the freezing, wind-whipped darkness of the topmost level, positioning himself in the deep shadows behind the enormous brass telescope. From here, he had a perfect, unobstructed view of the main platform, while remaining utterly invisible to anyone who wasn't actively looking for him. Then, he waited. The wind howled around the crenellations, a mournful song that was the perfect soundtrack for the coming drama.
A few minutes before midnight, the door to the staircase creaked open. Harry Potter and Hermione Granger emerged, struggling under the weight of a large, wriggling crate. Kaelen noted their use of the invisibility cloak—a useful tool, but one that made them clumsy and slow. They were breathing heavily, their faces pale with a mixture of cold and fear.
They set the crate down and began to wait, shivering in the biting wind. Kaelen watched them, his expression as impassive as the stone gargoyles below. He analyzed their body language: Potter's nervous energy, constantly scanning the sky; Granger's guilt-ridden anxiety, her hands twisting the fabric of her robes. They were so consumed by their sentimental mission that their situational awareness was practically zero.
The door creaked open again. This time, it was Draco Malfoy, a triumphant, malicious grin plastered on his face. He was followed by a wheezing Argus Filch and his skeletal cat, Mrs. Norris.
"Well, well, well," Malfoy drawled, his voice full of glee. "We are in trouble."
The invisibility cloak fell away from the trio (Ron Weasley had apparently been hiding under it as well) as Professor McGonagall swept onto the platform, her face a mask of incandescent fury.
"Good evening," she said, her voice dangerously quiet.
It was a beautiful, predictable little tableau. Malfoy's initial triumph curdled into confusion as he realized he, too, was out of bed long after curfew. Potter's defiance, Granger's crumbling composure, Weasley's slack-jawed shock—it was all exactly as Kaelen had anticipated.
"I would have thought," McGonagall began, her voice trembling with rage, "that the three of you would have had enough excitement for one year. Caught. Out of bounds. In the middle of the night." She rounded on Malfoy. "And you, Mr. Malfoy. I believe I told you to remain in your common room."
"But I—Potter has a dragon!" Malfoy sputtered, his plan for a glorious victory rapidly dissolving into a shared defeat.
"Potter's dragon is no longer your concern," McGonagall snapped. "All four of you will follow me. Now."
Kaelen remained in the shadows, a silent observer to the end. He listened as McGonagall deducted twenty points from each of them—a staggering eighty-point loss that would send Gryffindor and Slytherin plummeting to the bottom of the house point standings. He watched them being led away, four lambs to the slaughter, their grand adventure ending in the most mundane and humiliating way possible.
A slow, cold satisfaction settled over him. The experiment had been a resounding success. He had confirmed his hypothesis: sentimentality was a predictable, exploitable, and ultimately self-destructive weakness. He had also, as a secondary benefit, further hobbled Malfoy's already pathetic standing in their house.
He slipped away as silently as he had arrived, returning to the dungeons long before the disgraced quartet had even reached McGonagall's office. He was sitting in his usual armchair, deep into a chapter on the ethical ambiguities of soul magic, when the common room portrait swung open.
Malfoy stormed in, his face a blotchy, tear-streaked mess of fury and shame. "It's not fair!" he wailed to the few upper years who were still awake. "I was trying to help! I was trying to catch Potter!"
No one offered any sympathy.
"You got caught, Malfoy," a sixth-year prefect said with a yawn. "You broke the rules and you were stupid about it. You cost us twenty points. Now go to bed before you cost us any more with your whining."
Defeated and humiliated, Malfoy slunk off towards the dormitories.
Kaelen didn't look up from his book. He simply turned the page.
The news spread like Fiendfyre the next morning. Gryffindor was in an uproar, shunning their former heroes. But the reaction in the Slytherin common room was colder, more calculating. Malfoy was an outcast, a pariah who had brought shame and a points deficit upon them through his own incompetence.
That evening, as Kaelen sat with Nott and Daphne in their now-customary corner, the official notice was posted on the board. The four students would serve their detention that very night.
"A fitting punishment for a fool," Nott remarked, nodding towards the board.
Daphne, who had been watching Kaelen with a thoughtful, discerning expression all day, finally spoke. "It was you, wasn't it?" she asked, her voice a low, silvery whisper that carried no further than their small circle. "You used him. You knew he would run to McGonagall, and you knew he would be stupid enough to get caught himself."
It was not an accusation. It was a statement of intellectual appreciation.
Kaelen slowly lowered his book, his grey eyes meeting hers. He offered a small, cold smile that didn't reach his eyes. "The right tool for the right job, Greengrass. You wouldn't use a trowel to fell a tree."
A flicker of genuine admiration lit her cool blue eyes. "No," she agreed softly. "You wouldn't."
At that moment, the portrait hole opened and Professor Snape swept into the common room. His eyes scanned the room and landed on Kaelen.
"Kaelen," he said, his voice its usual silky drawl. "A word."
Kaelen rose and followed his Head of House out into the cold, damp corridor. He felt Nott's and Daphne's eyes on his back. Snape led him a short way down the hall before turning, his face an unreadable mask in the gloomy torchlight.
"Professor McGonagall has informed me of the results of last night's… extracurricular activities," Snape began. "Four first-years, including two from my own house, caught in a single night. A new record of incompetence, even for Mr. Malfoy."
Kaelen remained silent.
Snape's black eyes narrowed, pinning him in place. "It is a curious thing," he continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hiss. "I find myself wondering how Mr. Malfoy, a boy who struggles to correctly identify a bezoar, could have possibly stumbled upon such a complex and secret plot all on his own. It seems… unlikely."
He took a step closer, the air growing thick with unspoken suspicion. "Tell me, Kaelen. "