Harry Potter : Chapter 9: Rising Star II

His eyes met mine then, and he openly smirked before simply touching the top of the black hourglass and the head of the black king with his wand, before repeating the process with the white pieces.

Little motherfucker. I cursed mentally at him: by doing everything silently and without movement of the wand that I could see, he had effectively stopped me from learning something new.

...

"Would you like a match?" he repeated with a sly attitude that screamed 'yeah, I kept what you wanted to see hidden, we both now it, deal with it'.

Or maybe I'm just fucking annoyed by this little shit. I frowned before moving my queen pawn ahead of two spaces, spying the white sand in my hourglass as it flowed for an instant, stopping immediately when my piece landed in its box.

"Pawn B6." he answered with a frown, and my eyes widened as I saw his sand fail to flow at all.

I moved without thinking, following my usual routine. If you give the order the sand doesn't move? I had forgotten that the chessboards were alive!

"Bishop B5."

"Knight F3." I caught up with his method and stared pleased as the grain of sands didn't move from their place in my hourglass.

My eyes found Riddle's briefly before I returned my full attention to the game, my lips twitching upwards. This will be fun until I figure a way to kill this little fucker.

I didn't know when bullet chess actually got started, because I only knew that computers started to consistently win against humans in 1997, that was yet another useless bit of trivia that was even more useless now than it was in my previous life.

The annoying part, was that Riddle played like he was used to such fast-paced matches, which, given his brief frown when I had spoken about 'one minute match', was bullshit. Pure and simple.

"If you wanted to learn how to enchant, you would be better served by asking directly." he casually pointed out at the end of the first game, in which he somewhat stole a draw.

I'm going to strangle him. I sighed, reining in my instinctive answer.

Who knew that planning the death of a 13 years old wizard would come so instinctively to me?

...

Three weeks after the beginning of term, Horace Slughorn, Master Potioneer, Professor of Potions, Head of House Slytherin, ad general hedonist, walked at his own pace in a scantly illuminated Hogwarts, his ears peeled and his eyes charmed to pick up, even in the dark, the presence of students out after curfew, while his mind freely roamed from one consideration to another. 

It wouldn't do to reveal my position with a Lumos now, would it?

He greatly enjoyed flexing his networking skills. It wasn't like he actually needed those, because at this point in life, he was a reasonably powerful wizard, and if he ever started producing potions to sell could live quite comfortably.

He didn't need powerful friends in order to live a life of luxury. But the act of handpicking the brightest of each generation, helping them when they were young and directionless, foretasting the privileges that would come when those pupils started to actually shine in the wider world.

He enjoyed boasting of his 'friends' all over the world, he loved the respect and veiled, oblique power that came with having the ear of so many people, and he luxuriated in the simple joys of life.

Nicking a few leaves from the greenhouses here and there, occasionally 'helping' the Professor of Care of Magical Creatures and thusly ending up with free and fresh ingredients.

Reselling the, admittedly few, perfect potions that his students managed to brew. Receiving thanks in a multitude of forms throughout each day of his life.

He even enjoyed the occasional detention, a somewhat mean habit of his, but students somewhat were justly served by receiving a little hard talking to.

And if he used such occasion to see if the bombastic student had a hidden talent in this or that branch of Magic... well, it was a good thing for everyone, wasn't it?

Horace had spotted the bright intellect of Tom Riddle within his first month at Hogwarts, and the Professor had been since then overjoyed to spy the constant, quiet inquisitive of the talented youth, often wondering if that was what Albus' professors had felt when they taught him.

Oddities happened, here and there, magic wouldn't be so if it didn't come with its small quirks, after all, and while somewhat Horace 'bent' a little his rules and helped along with this or that Heir in order to keep friendly ties with the next generation of Lords, he was very aware that he shouldn't expect another like Tom Riddle for the rest of his tenure in Hogwarts.

Horace huffed as he strolled across the dark halls of Hogwarts, forcing himself to complete his patrol despite the general distaste he felt for such occupation.

That was the very reason why Prefects were made, in his opinion at least. Letting young wizards and witches to freely roam at night was an obvious recipe for disaster, that he knew, but it didn't mean that he would enjoy having to wake up before dawn.

Sure, he could attend to some potions that were better treated at night that way, or just before breakfast, but it was still murder on his sleep cycle.

Oh well, the Head of Slytherin House sighed, nothing a small dose of Sleeping Draught cannot quickly adjust. With another annoyed sound, he started to climb the Astronomy Tower, quickly falling back into his self-reflection and inane musings about his life, appreciative of the results he had got thus far.

He hadn't dare hope to ever meet another pupil of Tom's calibre, until that uncannily tall first year came along. Rubeus Hagrid. 

The image of the unreasonably tall Slytherin appeared clear in his mind: shaggy dark hair and a generally unkempt fashion, accompanied by black eyes that seemed ready to devour every snippet of magic he found interesting, failing to hide his sharp mind.

Besides his generally unruly behaviour in class, at least going by what Horace's colleagues muttered from time to time, he was undeniably gifted. No, gifted was not the correct word: he assimilated the principles behind the working of Magic just as fast as he encountered them.

Such understanding was clear in all of his essays, which seamlessly brought together different Branches of Magic.

Why, just the week before Horace had the occasion to read one of his Astronomy essays, in which Mr. Hagrid had managed to use the symbolism inherent of Charms in order to showcase why the phases of the Moon were capable of influencing a Potion.

If only he could write essays of the required length. The Potions Professor mused, a soft smile curling upwards his lips. For all of his insight, he doesn't seem to be willing to spend any time more than strictly necessary on his essays.

He can be awfully concise, and he doesn't bother polishing his coursework.

Perhaps it was understandable, the first year was clearly annoyed by the slow pacing of the coursework, and thusly was unwilling to spend much time on topics that he felt he had easily understood. What was unusual was his general disinterest in his grades, which never dipped below Acceptable.

When professor Farsee had required Rubeus to write an essay of the proper length, lest he received a failing mark, the cheeky first year simply added a drawing of the mechanism explained in the first half of the parchment, not seeing any need to expand on his words.

Horace kept huffing on the staircase until he reached the very top, shaking slightly his head at the few aversion wards that washed ineffectively over his disciplined mind.

"Dear me, I hope I'm not interrupting..." he started to speak as he opened the door to the top of Hogwarts' tallest tower, expecting to be crashing a secret meeting between randy teenagers, only to be met by something completely different.

His casually jovial opening, designated to increase the embarrassment of whoever he spotted, fell into silence while his eyes took in the top of the tower.

The stone platform had been freed from the stools and wooden planes over which the students leaned upon in order to chart the skies, and despite the lack of moon in the sky, the light of the stars seemed to shine just a bit too much for it to be natural, showing a memorable student that had been occupying Horace's most recent thoughts.

Calmly seated on an enlarged stool, one Rubeus Hagrid was slowly but constantly stirring a rather large iron cauldron, bluebell flames calmly shimmering between the cauldron and the stone floor, and a wide, curved shape of glass hovering just above the potion.

The student's eyes jumped up at the interruption, but he didn't stop his movements.

"Good night for a stroll, professor? Even if we're almost at dawn." he tilted his head toward the East, where the sky was starting to abandon the black of the night to become deep blue, slowly but surely tilting towards purple.

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