We should probably count ourselves lucky that Potions is followed by the weekend. Two whole days without having to see any professors? Yes please.
Lynn ran into Draco in the Great Hall, and he couldn't help shooting the guy a tiny look of pity. Yeah, snitching isn't the coolest move, but Lynn really didn't want to waste any more time on Malfoy. The way Draco kept glaring at him made it obvious (even Lynn's toes could figure it out) that the ferret was plotting something. Instead of playing childish games with him, Lynn figured it was easier to just let Snape handle it.
That look made Draco scowl even harder, but for some reason he also felt weirdly nervous. He had this sudden, inexplicable sense of impending doom. Without thinking, he grabbed his belt and yanked his pants up higher.
Even though he'd already cinched his belt tight, Draco still wasn't taking any chances. The public humiliation on the first day of school had been so bad he'd barely spoken to anyone since. Forget bragging to his classmates; those days were over.
Draco's Hogwarts life was… not going great.
Lynn, on the other hand, had zero such problems. Gryffindor is the kind of house where making friends is stupidly easy. The little lions are loud, friendly, and the common room is always full of laughter.
After surviving the first week of classes, everyone was extra pumped for the first weekend in September. The Great Hall was buzzing, and the Gryffindor table was the loudest spot by far.
The Weasley twins plopped down right across from Lynn and Harry, grinning like usual. Those two are inseparable, total legends in Gryffindor, and the house team's Beaters to boot. Everybody loves them.
"Afternoon, Lynn! Hey, Harry!" they chorused, practically bouncing in their seats. "We heard about what you two pulled off; nice one!"
"Uh… what'd we do?" Lynn asked, totally lost.
"Look over there!" The twins pointed dramatically at the giant hourglasses on the wall. "See that? Gryffindor's actually in the positive!"
"Ever since Bill started here, Gryffindor has never once ended the first week in the green."
"Last year was brutal," George continued. "Somebody blew up a cauldron in Snape's class and splashed potion all over his robes. Boom; twenty points gone. At this exact time last year we were thirty-something gems in the hole."
"You know what you did, Harry?" Fred said, throwing his arms wide like he was announcing a Quidditch final. "You got points from Snape. In his class. That's more shocking than McGonagall inviting first-years to her fancy Transfiguration club!"
Harry blinked. "Wait, but I got the points. Does that mean I'm not invited to McGonagall's club?"
The twins exchanged a look and cracked up.
"Funny you should mention that," Fred said. "Because on Friday, McGonagall totally laid into us third-years."
He cleared his throat, sat up straight, and did a scarily good impression of Professor McGonagall: "You are third-years now. I refuse to accept that a single summer holiday has wiped from your minds how to correctly turn a mouse into a teacup. This is basic living transfiguration!"
George picked it right up: "She said, 'Your first-year juniors have already mastered this spell. I do not expect you to match the student who produced a cup with zero remaining mouse traits, but your teacups had better not have tails or squeak and scurry across the desk. I will not have first-years replacing you at the inter-school Transfiguration tournament!'"
Fred shrugged dramatically. "So yeah, we've got a surprise quiz next week. Fail it and some of us are gonna be hand-mixing fertilizer with Professor Sprout. Trust me, you won't want lunch for a week after that."
"Transfiguration tournament?" Lynn asked.
"Oh yeah!" the twins said together. "It's this whole thing with the other schools. If you get picked, you join the professor's club. Transfiguration, Potions, and Charms tournaments happen pretty regularly. Herbology's rarer; like every two or three years, because Castelobruxo is so far away and they usually compete with Ilvermorny instead."
"But the real big one," Fred said, eyes sparkling, "is the Triwizard Tournament; happens every four years. Last year it was at Durmstrang. Charlie absolutely destroyed them. The final task was fighting this gigantic kelpie-horse-thing to grab the golden cup it was guarding. Charlie said when it was in horse form it was seven or eight stories tall; way bigger than the one in the Black Lake."
"Triwizard Tournament?!" Lynn blurted, suddenly sitting bolt upright.
"Yeah, totally normal you haven't heard of it," George said. "It's this centuries-old contest between Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang. Got banned for a while because people kept dying, but about a hundred years ago it started back up. Rumor says some Hogwarts alum went out after graduation, beat the snot out of every wizard in Europe, brought crazy glory to the school, and boom; Triwizard Tournament was cool again."
"Some… Hogwarts alum?" Lynn repeated slowly. This was starting to sound way too familiar.
"Oh man, this guy's a total legend," the twins said, practically glowing. "He transferred into fifth year when he was fifteen, and in just one year he single-handedly crushed the third goblin rebellion and killed their leader, Ranrok. And that was, like, his warm-up."
"Our great-grandma was Deputy Headmistress back then; she saw everything. At the time there was this huge poacher ring called the Ashwinders; basically running the Forbidden Forest like their personal black market. You could smell blood outside the trees."
"But in the two-plus years after this guy showed up? He pretty much wiped the Ashwinders off the map by himself. And after he graduated he kept going; hunted poachers across Europe all the way to Africa. There's still a statue of him in the courtyard at Uagadou for everything he did protecting magical creatures."
"Some people try to call him a dark wizard, but no way! The dude's a Gryffindor hero! Sure, his chain-lightning Kedavra was kinda terrifying; one spell and half a battlefield drops dead; but that doesn't make him any less of a champion for justice!"
Lynn went completely silent.
He knew exactly who this "legendary alumnus" was.
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