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Chapter Text

Li Qingzhao wondered if Tom Riddle ever felt suffocated by his own ambition.

She eyed his head from the back of the classroom, feet tapping softly on the stone floor. In the near silent 5th year Slytherin-Ravenclaw History of Magic classroom, her soft taps rang loud, echoing in the silence. Professor Binns droned on, ignorant to the sleepy faces gazing back at him.

She sighed. She contemplated whether becoming a witch was even worth it if she had to listen to this absolute drivel all day.

Two rows in front of her, Evander Nott leaned across the aisle, face turned toward Orion Black. She watched as they both exchanged whispers, then turned like a two headed snake—heh—toward Genevieve Ollivander, ancestor of the famed Garrick Ollivander.

Nott nudged Black, his face creased in a mischievous grin. Black nudged back, expression focused, eyes zeroing onto the side of Ollivander’s pretty brunette head.

Ollivander glanced at Black, demure, but sly, before leaning away to whisper with Patricia Parkinson and Jamila Shafiq. The three girls giggled, then shifted forward, purposefully focusing back on Binns, smiles eager and sweet.

She sighed again. Five days into the school year, and her classmates were back to their usual antics.

The bells chimed, signifying the end of class, and Qingzhao watched as Black got to his feet, rolled his shoulders, and marched forward to offer to carry Ollivander’s book bag on his shoulder.

Oh, the intricacies of 1940s Great Britain. Offering to carry a woman’s book bag might as well have been an offer to snog in a dark closet.

She watched as Riddle exited the classroom, a charming smile on his lips, arm and arm with pure-blooded Laurelle Perot, the two the picture of aristocratic perfection. She mentally rolled her eyes, reaching down to grab her own book bag, adjusting her sweater as she went.

To be or not to be. To kill or not to kill. To shoot Riddle where he stands, or to let him live and watch as he goes on to slaughter millions.

She cursed inwardly. Christ, she hated Hamlet, and yet here she was, letting thoughts of Riddle direct her towards thoughts of Hamlet. Ugh.

Two feet in front of her, she watched as Evander Nott slapped a friendly hand on Atticus Avery’s shoulder, leaning in to pull Avery’s book out of his hands. Avery scowled, pushing Nott away, making Nott laugh and tousle Avery’s hair in jest. The two slowly trailed after Riddle, like dogs following their master.

Ah, what an awful piece of pond scum. Evil, thy name is Tom Riddle.

Qingzhao pulled out her wand, casting a quick Tempus to check the time. 10:45. Good. Now, for an hour and a half of relaxation.

With a skip in her step, Qingzhao made her way toward the grand staircase, mind already geared towards the library.

Thankfully, Riddle and his posse of future terrorists had joint Herbology with the Gryffindors next period, leaving the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs to have a free block before lunch.

She entered the library happily, practically leaping toward her favorite table–a small little thing located in a dusty alcove. She inhaled. Ah, the smell of teenage hormones, mixed with a hint of murder and a dash of pre-exam anxiety. What could be better?

She slumped in her seat, wriggling slightly, before pulling out her wand to cast a slight notice me not. With that done, she reached into her bag, pulling out a large roll of blank parchment, a muggle pencil, and a pair of round reading glasses.

She tapped the parchment with her wand, tracing the character for open in traditional Chinese, fingers light but insistent. At her touch, ink bloomed into being, showcasing blueprints for an enhanced rifle, complete with a litany of notes written in a mixture of English, Latin, traditional Chinese, and pinyin.

In another life, Li Qingzhao might have been a graduate from M.I.T, working with the U.S military as a mechanical engineer specializing in weapons manufacturing. In this life, she’s a brilliant Ravenclaw muggle-born from London’s Chinatown, with incredible talent, but not enough drive to use it.

Ah, well.

She glanced towards the bottom of the page. In the margins, a younger, fresh faced, 2nd year Qingzhao had written a litany of questions, pondering the complexities of magic and the magical world at large.

Wands, words, runes. Magic. How does it all connect?

Ah, the mysteries of magic. Oh, if only the author of Harry Potter bothered to do a little more world building and a little less plot.

With a deep sigh, Qingzhao spent the next thirty minutes improving her rifle design, making notes on metal type, firing speed, and potential recoil. It was calming, peaceful work, more of a fantasy than an actual plan. Had Qingzhao had a bit more motivation, a bit less apathy towards her situation, a bit more excitement towards the world of magic, she could have turned her plans into reality much, much earlier.

As it were, the magical world was a mess, Hogwarts was a mess, hell, the muggle world was a bit of a mess—she was just planning on doing the bare minimum to graduate before getting the hell out of the dodge as fast as she could.

She hummed as she drew, mindlessly sketching designs for a magical rice cooker. No, a magical air fryer? No, a magical steamer? No—

“If only you weren’t so lazy.”

Qingzhao looked up. Yun Hee Cho, ancestor to Cho Chang, smiled down at her, brown eyes glinting like gold in the sun.

“If only you weren’t on my case all the time.” Qingzhao rolled her eyes.

Yun Hee collapsed in the chair next to her, one hand already in her own book bag.

“I’m serious.” She said, her light Scottish accent curling her words, “You’re brilliant, absolutely bloody brilliant. I don’t understand why you don’t ever use your intelligence more.”

“We’re both brilliant.” Qingzhao pointed out. “We both ended up in Ravenclaw for a reason.”

“No.” Yun Hee shook her head, gentle but not without force. “I’m here because I’m book smart. You’re here because, well. I’ve never seen creativity quite like yours.”

“I like where I’m at.” Qingzhao shrugged. “Everyone else can do what they want. I’m staying right where I am.”

Yun Hee sighed. “Such wasted potential.” She ended her statement by shuffling through her bag, pulling out arithmancy papers and divination Homework.

“Damn right.” Qingzhao nodded. She looked at Yun Hee’s messy arithmancy scribbles, immediately solving her problem at a glance. “…you’re going to want my help with that, right?”

Yun Hee nodded. “Yep.”

Qingzhao smiled. “Give it here.”

And that was the end of that.

At around half past noon, the lunch bell chimed, signaling the end of their free period. As they walked toward the Great Hall, Qingzhao mentally reviewed her schedule—Herbology, then Potions, as well as a guidance meeting with her head of house at the end of the day.

Ugh. Even in a magical boarding school, she couldn’t escape guidance meetings.

Outside the Great Hall, she observed Riddle holding the door open for a group of giggling first years, a charming smile affixed to his face. Yun Hee tugged her arm, gesturing, forcing the two of them to make eye contact with the boy a couple paces away. Even as a gross adolescent, Riddle was stunningly handsome, with dark, perfectly coiffed hair, clear blue eyes, and cheekbones that could cut glass.

“Cho. Li.” He inclined his head in greeting.

She smiled back, enjoying the view. “Riddle.”

The three of them entered the Great Hall together, before parting ways–Qingzhao and Yun Hee off to sit with a bundle of book-reading Ravenclaw 5th years, and Riddle off to surround himself with the nascent versions of the Knights of Walpurgis. Unfortunately for the hearts of the general Hogwarts population, the Knights of Walpurgis were all disgustingly handsome–well bred in a crisp, aristocratic way, that hid the centuries of inbreeding and carefully planned family trees.

As she watched a large spread of food appear upon the table, Qingzhao idly wondered what it must be like to be forced to snog your own cousin.

Today’s lunch appeared to be cottage pie, complete with a light salad on the side and scones with all manner of jam. Yun Hee grumbled next to her, face scrunched in resignation. They both exchanged a look of mutual suffering.

“What are you craving?” Qingzhao asked. She reached for the cottage pie.

“Jjajangmyeon, or maybe some spicy tteokbokki. You?”

“Hoeng Gong Jian Mien, or Char Siu with rice.”

Yun Hee stabbed her fork aggressively into her salad. “Bibimbap.”

“Wuntun Mien.”

“Samgyeopsal.”

“Shumai.”

“Bulgogi.”

“Mapo Doufu—“

“Blimey, you two.” 6th year Lyall Lupin muttered next to them, his face buried in a book. “Some of us are trying to bloody concentrate here. Can you two talk about your weird Japanese foods somewhere else?”

“This one’s a mouthy one, isn’t he?” Qingzhao grumbled.

Yun Hee laughed.

As one, they turned to give Lupin a nasty side eye, before resuming eating.

Two more years, Qinzhao chanted in her mind. Two more years.

In her mind’s eye, Qingzhao imagined opening a roll of parchment, prepping a muggle pen, and sketching out the proportions for an magical rice cooker. It would have a 3 cup carrying capacity, use wood rather than stainless steel, and be inscribed with the runes Kenaz, Gebo, and Jera to enhance her spellwork. It would be powered by a small coin cell battery. The battery would be created from a typical electrochemical combination of silver oxide, alkaline, and possibly lithium, although the ratios would have to be adjusted given the addition of magic. Could she use a magical replacement for lithium, such as an adder stone? Magical stones did have chemical properties, just like any other raw material, if she—ow!

Qingzhao rubbed her cheek, glaring at Yun Hee.

“Hey—“

“You have your thinking face on again.” Yun Hee pinched her cheek again. “The face you wear when you’re thinking thoughts none of us can ever quite understand. Tell me what’s going on in there.”

“No. I was just—” Qingzhao refocused her gaze directly in front of her, eyes landing in the Slytherin 7th year on the next table.

As if sensing her stare, Nathanial Mulciber looked up from where he was pounding through what was probably his 3rd serving of cottage pie, raising an eyebrow at her penetrating expression. She forced a blush, softening her lips into a gooey smile, purposely dragging her gaze to his defined forearms. Mulciber scowled, clearly unamused, before turning his gaze back to his own meal.

“I was just admiring Mulciber’s arms.” She said blandly, voice monotone, “Christ. If he’s that much of a snack on top, I wonder—“

“Sweet Merlin Li.” Lyall Lupin shuddered in disgust, snapping his book shut. “Can you keep your thoughts inside your head? Have some decency.”

The two girls ignored him.

“Don’t be like that. You couldn’t give a hoot about Mulciber and we both know it.” Yun Hee scrunched her nose. “I know that face. It’s the face you wear when you’re thinking of something brilliant. ”

“I really was thinking of Mulciber.” Qingzhao said. She was not. “I was thinking about shoving him into a broom closet, running my hands down those scrumptious shoulders—“

“Forget I asked.” Yun Hee sighed in defeat. She picked at her plate, face moody, eyes downcast.

A beat.

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty enough to tell you?”

Another beat.

“Is it working?”

Qingzhao sighed. She laid her head on Yun Hee’s shoulder, watching the light from the projected ceiling–sky above paint shadows across her friend’s face.

“You know, I have an appointment with Professor Merrythought today.” She said. “I think she’s going to tell me the same thing you’ve been telling me.”

“That?” Yun Hee didn’t look down, but her face visibly softened. Qingzhao smiled. That’s her best friend.

“That I need to apply myself more. That I should–I don’t know–join one of the clubs, take an advanced class this year, just–do something with my life.”

“You should.” Yun Hee said softly. “You should.” She patted Qingzhao’s head. “Oh, to have your intellect.The things I would do, if I had even an ounce of it.”

Qingzhao said nothing. For just a moment, she is twenty three years younger, holding her Harvard diploma and burning under the grasp of her own ambition. In that moment, she is not Li Qingzhao, brilliant but lazy muggle-born witch from the slums of London. She is somewhere else entirely–someone else entirely.

“I’ll show you.” She murmured.

“What?”

“What I was thinking about.” Qingzhao said. “Your birthday is coming up, right Yun Hee? In September. I’ll show you then.”

Yun Hee smiled. “Alright.”

—----

Professor Merrythought’s office was an utter disaster, and that was being kind about it.

Every inch of space seemed to be bursting with clutter, as if Merrythought had made it a mission to make her office feel as cramped as possible. The walls were covered from floor to ceiling in thick mahogany shelves, bursting with all manner of things, including a mountain of softly glowing magical tomes, all three volumes of Pride and Prejudice, and what seemed to be a taxidermy…platypus? The floors themselves were no better—every square meter of space not taken up by a chair or a stool or Merrythought’s ebony wood desk seemed to be filled with something, be it more books or a vaguely carnivorous-appearing plant or a loose bucket filled with scrap metal.

God, Qingzhao locked eyes with the platypus, this lady is crazy.

Her gaze moved through the bookshelves, taking note of a text proudly titled with the words The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, &c. Who Was Born in Newgate, and During a Life of Continu’d Variety for Threescore Years, Besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, Five Times a Wife (Whereof Once to her Own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at Last Grew Rich, Liv’d Honest, and Died a Penitent.

And, Qingzhao felt herself die a little bit on the inside, she’s my advisor!

The woman herself was sitting behind her desk, her hair drawn up into a tight bun and her robes discarded for a sharp muggle pantsuit. She was looking down at the papers in front of her, a fierce scowl on her face, dipping her quill into what looked to be a jar of red ink.

”By Morgana’s tits, you would think a 6th year student would know how to write better.” She muttered, her quill aggressively scratching a T for Troll onto the parchment.

Qingzhao winced in sympathy. She closed the door behind her.

At the sound, Merrythought raised her head, blue eyes sharp and piercing. Qingzhao shuffled in, edging around various obstacles, before finally settling in the bright yellow chaise lounge in front of the woman’s desk.

“Qingzhao Li.” Merrythought set her chin against her palm, expression inscrutable. “Well met.”

“Well met, Professor Merrythought.” Qingzhao nodded.

A pause. The two evaluated each other in silence.

Merrythought shifted, lifting her wand into the air, flicking it in a small half circle. There was a slight shudder of movement in the masses of clutter that littered her office, before a small file came whizzing out of the depths, marked with the name Li, Qingzhao. Qingzhao watched Merrythought flip through the pages in silence.

“Evaluation of Qingzhao Li, provided by Albus Dumbledore.” Merrythought read out loud. “Li is a good, obedient student, with a penchant for showing up to class two minutes early on the dot. She participates well in class discussions and obeys all the instructions given to the letter. However, she has had repeated issues with active engagement and doesn’t actively seek to communicate or collaborate with her peers. She is also, at times, apathetic and listless. I would like to recommend her for a check-in.”

Qingzhao is silent.

“Ms. Li, how many classes are you taking this year?”

“Seven.”

“And how many classes are you required to take this year?”

“Seven.”

“How many of these seven classes are electives?”

“None.”

“Do you see the problem here, Ms. Li?”

“No, professor.” Qingzhao replied blandly.

Merrythought raised an eyebrow.

“Are you in any clubs, Ms. Li?”

“No.”

A beat. Qingzhao idly wondered why the books never mentioned that Hogwarts had guidance meetings. What was this, some sort of actual school?

“Ms. Li,” Merrythought sighed. “Hogwarts is the best secondary school of witchcraft and wizardry in all of Great Britain, barring the Elysium Gardens in Ireland which specializes in druidry. It is also the only school that offers classes in such a wide range of magical disciplines, although Merlin’s Academy of Sorcery and Secrets in Camelot has us beat in terms of non-magical classes offered.”

Qingzhao nodded. “I see, professor.”

She did not.

“Each student, as you know, is required to take an entrance exam, where they are tested on their comprehension and magical ability. Thus, our school is renowned for its rigorous curriculum and for producing the best the British Isles can offer.” Merrythought continued, “We aim to make sure that each and every one of our students lives up to their full potential.”

Merrythought leaned forward, her blue eyes sharp and pointed.

“You, Ms. Li, are not living up to your full potential.”

“On the contrary, I think I am, professor.” Qingzhao said. “Classes here are just quite hard, if you haven’t heard. I always get an Exceeds Expectations, no matter how hard I try. I really am doing my very best.”

“That’s a lie, Ms. Li.” Merrythought raised an eyebrow. “And I think we both know it.”

A beat.

Qingzhao pushed her fingers into the oddly plushy chaise lounge, did not comment, and tried to smile as charmingly as possible.

Merrythought did not look amused.

“As you very well know, last year there was a competition hosted between the Ancient Runes and the Arithmancy department, open to the 6th and 7th years. The winner would receive a grand prize of 500 galleons, and a recommendation to a future apprenticeship with Cian Garanhir, a descendant of the great mage Talisin—”

“Wasn’t that the competition Riddle won?” Qingzhao asked.

Merrythought shot her a glare.

Qingzhao snapped her mouth shut.

“The competitors were given the results of an ancient vala ritual, and over a period of six days tasked with reverse engineering the runes used and the anrithmancy involved to get the correct result. There were 123 competitors. Of this number, only 30 managed to find the correct runes, 25 managed to find the divine the correct equation, and 2 managed to combine the two. However, only 1 competitor managed to produce the correct answer.”

“Who?” Qingzhao widened her eyes.

“One Torquil Travers.”

“Isn’t he, uh…he’s a 6th year, right? From Hufflepuff?”

“Upon further investigation, it was discovered that Mr. Travers had received outside help from one Charlotte Abbot, who had come to obtain a perfect report of the finished runic equation. She claimed to have obtained said report from Carmine Brown, who in turn received the report from Eirian Clearwater. Through Clearwater, professors tracked the report all the way to Yun Hee Cho, who claimed to have written it without help.”

Well. Fuck.

Qingzhao wondered if she would still be able to graduate if she stunned Merrythought, obliviated her, and made a break for it. Her hands inched toward her wand, tucked in the safety of her robe pocket.

Merrythought caught the movement, leaned forward, and slowly pulled out her wand to twirl it between her fingers.

Well. Double fuck.

“Yun Hee Cho does take arithmancy, but it is clear from her poor test scores–” Qingzhao winced. “--that she would not have had the capability to perform such a complex feat of reverse-engineering, especially as a mere 4th year. However, upon consultation with Professor Vector, it has come to my attention that her arithmancy homework is always perfect, with nary a flaw in sight.”

Triple fuck.

“Who’s Yun Hee?” Qingzhao asked. When in doubt, deny, deny, deny.

Merrythought snorted.

“I supposed you take me for a fool?” Merrythought asked. “I’ve seen you two studying together in the Great Hall since you were little 1st years. I’m a woman, not blind.”

Touché lady, touché.

“You might have the largest potential in this entire school, Ms. Li. And you’re purposely attempting to not to pursue it.”

“I really think Yun Hee is just a lot smarter than you give her credit for.” Qingzhao tried.

Merrythought ignored her. With a quiet accio, she summoned a dark blue pamphlet from across the room, letting it slap onto the desk with a loud smack!

Christ, is that what she thinks it is? Qingzhao might be in even more trouble than she thought. Ugh, she was never helping Clearwater ever again.

“Here is a list of elective classes offered at our school. I’ve already taken the liberty of signing you up for Advanced Arithmancy, Alchemy, and Ancient Runes, as well as Magical Theory.” Qingzhao opened her mouth to protest. Merrythought help up a hand, “Furthermore, I’d like for you to consider joining either English: Wizarding Literature and Composition, or English: Linguistic Thaumatology.”

Qingzhao floundered, sputtering in horror. “No? I—wait. What?”

Her free time! All her free time!

“I would also like to see you join two clubs. One of which being the A^4 Club—which meets every month, for your information—the other of which can be of your choosing.”

I physically hate you, Qingzhao thought. How dare you want me to succeed? What happened to all the blatant child neglect that was supposed to occur here? Was the author just talking out of her ass when she was writing her books?

She only agreed to come because she assumed that there would be child neglect, and she would be allowed to do whatever she wanted for her entire adolescence.

“Are we in agreement, Ms. Li?”

“Wait, blimey hell holdup—“ Qingzhao’s thoughts scrambled a mile a minute. “How about this—I’ll take Arithmancy, Runes, Alchemy, and Magical Theory, but I want to drop Astronomy and Herbology.”

Merrythought inclined her head. “And the English classes?”

“I’ll try Linguistics.” Qingzhao agreed grudgingly.

“And the clubs?”

Qingzhao reached for the pamphlet, cursing Clearwater, Travers, Brown, just about the whole damn school. She opened its glossy cover, eyeing with apprehension the first thing on the list.

Quidditch.

She sighed. She was going to be stuck in this office for a while.

Chapter Text

Qingzhao gave her best winsome smile. Bright brown eyes, creased eyes, visibly pearly white teeth.

Nathaniel Mulciber stared back at her from the entrance of Greenhouse 3, face visibly judgmental, body half hidden behind the building’s great wooden door.

“Hi.” She waved.

He did not wave back.

“This is, the uh…” She paused, glancing down at the list in her hand. She squinted. “…The Sprout Squad?”

Mulciber blinked, slowly. Looked her up, then down, slightly disbelieving.

“Yes.”

A beat.

“My name is Li Qingzhao and, uh, I’m here to join!” She smiled harder.

Another beat.

“I take it you’re the leader?” She added.

Then, without further ado, Mulciber turned around and slammed the door in her face.

Qingzhao blinked, digesting what just happened. She then blinked, much harder, before gasping in affront, marching up to the door to yank its handle.

The door was locked. Damn it.

“Oi.” She knocked on the door. No response. “Oi!”

She pulled out her wand, aiming for her throat.

Sonarus, she thought.

Then, outloud, a bit desperately, with the image of Merrythought rising like an ugly shadow in her head, “Oi! Mulciber! Get back here! I really do want to join this club!”

Still no response.

She signed, glancing back down at her pamphlet. With a feeling of deep resignation, she crossed out The Sprout Squad, gaze moving to the next choice on her list.

The Hogwarts Howler. Meets after class at 4pm every Thursday. Classroom 1A.

Well, onto the next one.

Come Thursday, she found herself outside classroom 1A, located near the Owlery, watching from the corridor as students bustled around the cramped room.

The Hogwarts student paper was composed of a hodgepodge mix of self-proclaimed professional gossip mongers, self-proclaimed talented writers, universally accepted horrible writers, and the one student in the entire school (in this case, 3rd year Margaret Skeeter) who’s favorite spells involved the use of the of a quick-quotes quill and three bottles of golden ink.

And, surprisingly enough, Tom Riddle.

Tom Riddle, who–judging from the small pin affixed to his robes, and the swarms of adolescents following his every move–currently held the title the lead editor-in-chief of The Hogwarts Howler.

An overachiever at its finest, was the first thought that ran through her mind. Screw that guy, was the second.

She eyed him dubiously from the hallway, noting the way he leaned against his desk like a prince reclining on a throne. He raised his head, piercing blue eyes meeting her own. She blushed, pushing a besotted smile onto her face, before quickly glancing away, and then back, as if caught in the act. He smirked, the action aggravatingly charming, before turning away to talk to one of the club members approaching him.

The moment he turned his back, she scowled fiercely, before pulling out her pamphlet, power walking away as fast as she humanlycould.

The Sprout Squad
The Hogwarts Howler
Model Magical UN (Biweekly Wednesdays, during lunch, Little Auditorium)
Debate club (After class on Wednesdays, classroom 27H, 7th floor, right corridor)
Etiquette Club (On Saturday, during lunch, Great Hall)
Dead Poets Society (Biweekly Thursdays, at midnight, classroom 12A, dungeons)

She sighed, crossing The Hogwarts Howler off the list. Here we go again.

The next week, she found herself sitting in the back of the little auditorium, watching as Riddle climbed on stage and flashed his signature panty-melting grin. She swore she could feel the temperature in the room heat up, as the entire club blushed as one entity.

Evander Nott followed him, turning to blow a kiss to Charlotte Abott, who rolled her eyes and scowled heavily. He shrugged, before climbing onto the stage, smiling to the crowd whilst wiggling his eyebrows.

“Keep it in your pants, Nott.” Riddle said, amused.

“Ah, Riddle. Always a buzzkill.” Nott shot back, face light and teasing.

The entire club giggled–all 30 members, and acted as if whatever they had just witnessed was not pure codswallop but the funniest joke to ever exist. Qingzhao groaned inaudibly, rubbing her eyes to erase the sight from her brain. He’s playing you all like a fiddle, she moaned internally. No, like a cheap, cheap, store bought harmonica.

Mentally, she crossed Model Magical UN off her list.

Riddle and Nott continued to jest, ribbing each other for the benefit of the crowd. Qingzhao sloached further in her chair, moving from rubbing her eyes to rubbing her entire face.

“Something the matter?” A voice next to her.

Qingzhao opened her eyes.

7th year Cedrella Black peered back at her in concern, from where she had turned in slightly in her seat to get a better look at her.

Qingzhao shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Black eyed her dubiously before nodding, turning her attention back to Riddle once more.
Qingzhao resumed rubbing her face. It’ll be fine.

Four hours later, she watched as Riddle stepped to the front of classroom 27H, pulling out his wand to command the chalk to write out the day’s agenda on the blackboard.

“Welcome to Debate Club.” He said, face turned toward a small group of 1st years, before his gaze landed on her. He inclined his head. “My name is Tom Riddle, and I’m the president.”

This is not fine, Qingzhao felt herself start to sweat. She smiled, sweetly, fluttering her lashes like she had seen Clearwater do one time whilst dating Alfred Thomas in 3rd year. Riddle smiled back, the motion cool, suave, and effortless, and she resisted the urge to start screaming right then and there.

She smiled even harder. She even gasped, as if besotted, and pressed her hand against her heart.

Internally, she reviewed her pamphlet again, crossing Debate Club off the list. She held back a deep groan.

Come Saturday, she found herself sitting in the Great Hall, watching as Abraxas Malfoy lifted his fork and knife, looking increasingly like a nincompoop the more he tried to demonstrate how to chew his sandwich “ with elegance.”

Across from her, Black glanced at Malfoy in disdain, before grabbing his sandwich with his bare hands and stuffing it into his face. Malfoy squawked in horror, setting his cutlery down to launch into a lecture, in which he needled Black for both his lack of manners and for having“common decency of a pig.”

At his side, Cadmus Rosier sniggered, hiding a grin in his own sandwich.

Qingzhao eyed Nott further down the bench, before spotting Atticus Avery in the corner, watching the proceedings with an expression of stone.

Good lord, it’s death eater central here, she mused. She turned, making eye contact with Calypso Greengrass, who sent her a cold glare and turned her nose up in the air. She rolled her eyes. And death eater-adjacent.

She put her head in her palm, watching as Malfoy turned his lecturing on Isabella Crabbe, who had apparently lifted her fork “like a barbarian wielding a sword,” rather than the lady she was supposed to be. Crabbe yelled back in offense, face turning a rather unflattering shade of purple.

Qinzhao mentally scratched out another option off her pamphlet.

The Sprout Squad
The Hogwarts Howler
Model Magical UN (Biweekly Wednesdays, during lunch, Little Auditorium)
Debate club (After class on Wednesdays, classroom 27H, 7th floor, right corridor)
Etiquette Club (On Saturday, during lunch, Great Hall)
Dead Poets Society (Biweekly Thursdays, at midnight, classroom 12A, dungeons)

The coming Thursday, she found herself in the depths of the dungeons, watching as 4th year Eileen Prince animatedly chatted with the Bloody Baron about muggle poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

There were only two other people in the club—not including the ghosts that had suddenly started to swarm en masse—and the two of them had relocated to a corner of the classroom to, in their words, “prepare for the reawakening of Coleridge,” whatever that was supposed to mean.

She hoped they weren’t talking about amateur necromancy.

She watched as Prince walked over to her fellow club members, pulling out from her satchel what appeared to be a preserved parrot, a sheep’s leg, and a jar of blood. The Bloody Baron hovered over the group, face marginally less grumpy than usual, as the other Hogwarts ghost tittered and gossiped.

She really, really hoped they weren’t talking about necromancy.

Prince waved her wand, summoning a dusty looking grimoire embroidered with the words Talking to Muggle Ghosts: Modern Necromancy Made Easy.

Well, fuck. They were defintely going to attempt some sort of amateur necromancy. Qingzhao glanced around frantically. Where was an overbearing-but-well meaning adult when you needed one? Furthermore, which nitwit had given Prince a bloody necromancy grimoire??

Oh Sweet Mother of Mary. Qingzhao paused in her chair. Was she the responsible adult here?

Qingzhao got up from her seat and edged toward the door as quickly as she could. Unfortunately, just as she was grabbing the door handle, Prince grabbed her by the wrist, expression cheerful but menacing.

“Hey!” She said, pulling her wand out to tap it against her cheek,“Where are you going? We’re just about to start!”

“Um.” Qingzhao said. She fought the urge to squirm. “Out? I’m…” think, think! “Cold?”

“Oh, you should have just said so!” Prince grinned, the gesture slightly insane, “Here. I’ll cast a warming charm.”

She flicked her wand towards Qingzhao’s body, before dragging the girl further back into the room. Qingzhao watched as one of the club members began sketching the rough outline of a sigil on the floor, dipping a raven feather quill in the jar of red-liquid-that-looked-suspiciously-like-blood.

“I can’t believe you almost missed the best part.” She added.

“Yeah..” Qingzhao nodded weakly, “Me...me too.”

The next day, she stumbled her way into the Great Hall, barely avoiding tripping over Black, who gallantly attempted to hold the door, and successfully smashing into Avery, who was trying to make his way to the Slytherin table without getting clobbered by any of the milling first years.

“Watch it!” Avery hissed, face screwed up in disgust. His gaze focused on her face—“uh..”

There was a pause.

“Li.” She said blandly. “Qingzhao Li. We’ve been in the same grade together since 1st year.”

Avery turned slightly red.

“Watch it, Li.” He huffed, before flouncing off, nose turned up in the air.

Now Riddle, she could understand, but Avery? Qingzhao wondered why no one had noticed his tendency towards mass murder sooner. What a prat.

She shrugged, before walking over to the Ravenclaw table, slumping down next to Yun Hee and Carmine Brown. Carmine was waving her hands animatedly, her hair crackling at the tips, pointing to the textbook in her lap with enthusiasm.

As she approached, both girls perked up, pausing in their conversation. Qingzhao grinned, heart swelling, rushing forward to plop down onto the bench next to them with a dramatic sigh.

Carmine snorted. “I take it by your calm arrival that the club search is going well?”

Qingzhao laid her face against the table. Carmine winced in disgust.

“Sweet Morgana no.” Qingzhao groaned. “Why are all the clubs at Hogwarts so, so, so…”

“Strange?” Yun Hee asked.

Riddle infested, she almost said. Out loud, she said “Yeah. Strange. And full of those awful pure bloods.”

“Hey!” Carmine cut in. “We’re not all awful.”

“Sorry.” Qingzhao grinned lightly. “Full of Slytherin purebloods.”

“Don’t start,” Yun Hee groaned. She turned to Carmine, voice teasing, “Look, she’s going to start talking about why she’s weirdly avoidant of all the Slytherins in our year, but not the rest.”

“They’re destined for something awful.” Qingzhao shrugged. “I just get this wobbly-wiggly feeling, you know?”

“We know.” Both girls chorosued. Qingzhao rolled her eyes, expression fond. Of course they did.

“But seriously,” Yun Hee started. “No luck?”

“The Dead Poets Society is up to some shady stuff down in the dungeons.” Qingzhao said instead of answering, face haunted. “I’m telling you. It’s-it’s bad. I almost disappeared into a vortex.”

“That’s the club run by Prince, right?” Carmine reached for some pork roast. “The little 4th year?”

Qingzhao shuddered. “Little implies she’s sweet and harmless. There’s nothing sweet or harmless about that madwoman.”

“You should join me in the Gobstones Club. Flemont Potter runs it.” Yun Hee said. “Nice bloke, that boy.”

“Isn’t that the game that sprays stink spray in your face?” Qingzhao wrinkled her nose. “That’s almost worse than Prince.”

“So choosy.” Yun Hee grumbled.

“Septimus Weasley has a Wizarding Chess club,” Carmine offered. “I hear the club is quite welcoming. Although, I do think Tom Riddle attends.”

Qingzhao leaned back, burying her head in her hands.

“I just need somewhere that no self-respecting pure blood would ever go, less they humiliate themselves. Something so horrible, maybe something related to muggles..” She pulled her pamphlet out of her satchel, ruffling through the pages.

Wait-!

“Here we go.” She grinned, wide and proud and triumphant, pressing her finger on the paper. “I didn’t know why I didn’t think of this before.”

“What is it?” Carmine asked.

“This?” Qingzhao smirked. “This, is the Muggle Enthusiasts Club.”

___

“Hello.” Qingzhao said brightly. “My name is Qingzhao Li.”

“Hi?” Despite his monotone, 4th year Alphard Black looked at her as if she had grown two heads. At his side, Cadmus Rosier was no better, peering at her as if she had decided to strip naked and start turkey dancing right then and there.

The Muggle Enthusiasts Club was located in the Muggle Studies Classroom, on the fourth floor of the east wing of the castle. The classroom itself was structured like a two part muggle kitchen and living room, complete with out-of-date cleaning supplies, a sink, a fridge, oven, a telephone, a telly, a large dining table, and a ugly green couch. As predicted, the club was barren of life, save for the hunched over shapes of Black and Rosier, who had appeared to be deeply invested in a muggle card game when she arrived.

Riddle would hate this, Qingzhao thought with glee, watching as Black and Rosier continued to stare at her in silence. It was perfect.

The silence stretched on.

She squinted at the cards in their hands.

“Is that Go-Fish?” She asked slowly.

Rosier nodded.

“Can I play?”

Black and Rosier silently made room for her on the large dining table they were playing on.

“Are you…” Black said, face stoic but voice leading. “A pureblood?”

Qingzhao shook her head. “Nope.”

“Half-blood?” Rosier tried.

“Nope.”

“You’re…a muggleborn?!” Black’s face barely twitched.

“Yep.”

A beat of silence.

The two exchanged glances, then looked back at her.

“I know poker.” Qingzhao offered. “It’s a muggle game. I can teach you.”

They exchanged another glance. Slowly, Rosier picked up their cards and reshuffled the deck.

“Welcome to the club.” He said, a soft smile on his face. “We’re happy to see you.”

She grinned back, face brighter than the sun. This was going to be fun.

Chapter Text

This did not look fun. 

Qingzhao rubbed her eyes, staring at the letter dropped into her morning porridge with disdain. 

Across from her, Eudora Fawley glanced at the letter with sleepy eyes, before turning away and resuming the consumption of her daily coffee. Qingzhao nodded emphatically. It was simply too early in the morning for Merrythought’s bullshit. 

Well. Onto the letter. 

With no small amount of trepidation, she reached into the porridge, pulling out the slightly soggy but otherwise relatively unharmed letter. 

She unfurled it, gazing at it like a criminal awaiting her execution. 

Ms. Li, 

Attached below is your new schedule. I hope you enjoy the rest of the school year.

—Merrythought 

Qingzhao eyed Merrythought’s signature with distaste, her face a battle of forlorn resignation, amusement, and hatred. Her gaze travelled to her new schedule. The hatred won. 

“Your new schedule?” Yun Hee leaned over her shoulder, expression stary, clearly won over by Merrythought’s bullshit. 

“Yes.” Qingzhao wondered what she had done to deserve this. “Unfortunately.” 

“Unfortunately?” Yun Hee gasped. “Study of Ancient Runes, Advanced Arithmancy, Alchemy,  Ancient Studies—“ 

“She added Ancient Studies?” Qingzhao cut in. 

“Yep, you have a full 3 hours of it every Thursday.” Yun Hee answered absently. She flicked a piece of porridge on the letter, expression expectant.“Qingzhao, don’t you know what this all means?” 

“It means I’ll have 3 hours of Ancient Studies.” Qingzhao said. “And homework. Piles of it. ” 

Piles of endless, horrid homework, that she would be forced to do to prove knowledge she already knew. Torture, thy name is the Hogwarts guidance program. 

“Merrythought clearly thinks you have the potential to study creation magic! To be a curse breaker! To be,” here, Yun Hee gasped, “An Arcanist.” 

“Funny. And here I thought I was going to be a mahjong casino owner.” Qingzhao mused. 

“You would never be a casino owner, Qingzhao.” Yun Hee shook her head. She paused. “Well, actually, I could very well see you becoming one, if only to spite me and Merrythought and your entire Hogwarts education.” 

Yun Hee hit the nail right in the head, and Qingzhao wondered what that said about her. Inwardly, she changed her future career path from layabout muggle casino owner to layabout muggle loan shark. Then, upon further reflection, changed layabout muggle loan shark to layabout muggle pothead. There, that was a choice that was infinitely more loathsome. 

“Me, an Arcanist.” Qingzhao laughed, long and loud, as if the whole concept of a future beyond Hogwarts was the funniest joke she had ever heard. “Now, that—that would be something.” 

“Then, I suppose we’re lucky I have enough ambition for the both of us.” Yun Hee sniffed. She waved her wand, making a small copy of Qingzhao’s schedule to stuff into her own book bag.  “You’ll be the best Arcanist to ever live, I promise you that. I’ll drag you to it, kicking and screaming if I have too.”  

She meant it, Qingzhao could see it in her eyes. It was flattering, really, how much faith Yun Hee had in the universe, in Qingzhao, in their power as background characters in a villain's story. There was something to be said there, about hope, love, and possibility, and well, that was one of the reasons why Qingzhao adored Yun Hee with everything she had. 

Qingzhao hummed, thoroughly amused. “Will you?” 

They ate the rest of their breakfast in content silence. 

————

Unfortunately for Yun Hee, and her dreams of turning Qingzhao into the best Arcanist to ever live,  Arithmancy was full of slightly above average idiots, average idiots, and below average idiots, who all collectively had the average intelligence of a koala and the creativity of a smooth walnut. 

Oh, and Riddle. Ah, good ol Tommy. 

Qingzhao watched, too resigned for disgust, as good ol Tommy sat primly in the front of the class, back straight, shoulders set, eyes dead set on Professor Manteia. She slouched, forever grateful for unassigned seating, and watched as his perfect head nodded in time to Manteia’s lecture. 

The lecture itself was an introduction to the differences between stirring counterclockwise seven times and stirring clockwise seven times when making Veritaserum. According to the current prevailing theories on magic, the art of potion making was similar to muggle chemistry, with a mage’s magic acting as a trigger of the ingredients magical properties. The number seven was Veritaserum’s ‘trigger’ with a counterclockwise stir causing the newt’s leg to combine with the frog’s heart, and a clockwise stir causing the newt’s leg to to combine with the baby’s breath. 

According to Ravensbane's law of potions, an ingredient's magical property inherently overrules its chemical ones, Qingzhao mused. But, what if one combined the two…

She shook herself out of it, and promptly resumed glaring resentfully at Riddle. No thinking, she scolded herself. Thinking leads to actually trying. 

She closed her eyes and slumped in her chair, willing her mind to drift into slumber. She thought of soothing things, like sheep, and advanced potion making, and finding the derivative of an equation using the chain rule when taking time into account. 

Her breathing slowed. Distantly, she heard Manteia muttering, voice ebbing in and out about a month-long partner project. 

Wait. 

What? 

Qingzhao opened an eye, watching lazily as Manteia wrote down pairs on the board. Potter and Selwyn, Greengrass and Fawcett, Li and Riddle, etc. 

Wait. 

What?!

She sat up straighter. The room burst into chatter, as students made their way to their partners. Two rows down, Riddle stood, stretching in a way that made his broad shoulders even more broad, before turning around to make eye contact with her. Qingzhao blanched. He waved. 

She raised her hand, gesturing as rapidly as she could. Manteia glanced over, met her frantic gaze, and promptly smirked before turning away. Qingzhao’s mouth fell open.She slowly put her hand away. 

“Stare any longer and you might catch flies.” 

Qingzhao felt every hair on her head cringe in horror. 

Next to her, Riddle gave her a charming smile, looming like a demon straight from the book of revelations. He was so damn attractive, so radiantly handsome, that Qingzhao’s mind almost balked at connecting his visage to that of his rather hideous Gaunt forebears. 

“Riddle.” She greeted him. 

“Li.” He said pleasantly. 

The two stared at each other in silence. In a rare flash of intellect, Qingzhao put her prodigious brain to quick work, running through possible scenarios at the speed of light. 

Scenario 1: She kills Riddle, right here and now, and then gets the hell out of Hogwarts as fast as she can. Fuck the timeline, fuck canon, fuck everything. 

Scenario 2: She kills Manteia, then Riddle, and then the entire class while she’s at it. No witnesses. Then she makes a break for it. Again, fuck everything. 

Scenario 3: She gives Riddle her best blushing smile, plays the lovesick school girl throughout the entire project, and acts as mediocre as possible. Shouldn’t be hard, really, she’s been doing that her entire Hogwarts career. 

Scenario 4: She scraps the blushing entirely. She acts as lazy as possible, pulls out all the stops on screwing with Riddle, and waits for him to be infuriated enough to ask Manteia to get rid of her himself. He can’t kill her now, hopefully, now while they’re still in Hogwarts. Once she graduates, she gets the hell out of dodge, and disappears into the bowels of muggle London.

Hmmm, a conundrum indeed, she mused. Scenario 3 would make the most sense given my portrayed character, but scenario 4 is much, much easier. 

And above all, Qingzhao has always, always, been infuriatingly lazy. 

She looked Riddle dead in the eye. Smirked, stupid and unmotivated, and leaned as far back in her chair as she could go. Oh, she was going to eat him alive. 

His smile didn’t twitch, but she was almost certain his looming became slightly more menacing. 

“What’s happening again? I wasn’t listening.” She said. When in doubt, use weaponized incompetence. It never failed to piss people off. 

Riddle stared at her for a moment, clearly questioning her intelligence—good! As he should—before visibly moving on. He waved his hand, wandlessly summoning his textbook like the show off he was, before commanding the book to open and flip to the correct page. 

She refrained from rolling her eyes. 

Riddle leaned forward, bringing with him the smell of citrus and cinnamon. He pressed his palm against the page, his fingers long and slender and beautiful. Jealously, Qingzhao noted that her own hands looked like they belonged to a troll in comparison. 

“We’ve been assigned to predict the possible outcomes of stirring counterclockwise five, six, and eight times when brewing Veritaserum. We will be writing a full report, complete with a detailed proof. Since the potion has 27 ingredients, the outcomes are numerous, so the project will take little over a month.” 

“Ah.” She said. “How many outcomes, exactly, will we need to calculate?” 

“Around 3,000.” Riddle hummed, as if looking forward to the challenge. 

She eyed him in slight disgust. Good ol Tommy. He was basically Hermione’s evil twin, the right proper bastard. 

“Ah, well.” She nodded. She pulled out her wand, cheerfully transfiguring her own Arithmancy textbook into a pillow. “Good luck to you then.” 

“What are you doing Li?” Riddle’s tone was mild, milder than milk, but beneath his benign charm she could sense a hint of warning. 

“Sleeping.” She said blandly, resting her head on her pillow. She kept half a wary eye fixed on his stupidly perfect face. 

“Really, Li? You’re going to leave me out here on my lonesome?” Riddle’s voice was cajoling, the perfect mix of tease and charm. It was manipulation at its finest, designed to prey on her obvious attraction to him and her (debatable) desire to make him happy. 

He was good, she’ll give him that. 

“Yes.” Qingzhao smirked, deliberately provocative. “I will.” 

But oh, she was better. Being an utter pain in the arse was her birthright. 

“We need to get this done, Li. This project will last until the Christmas holidays if you don’t help, and I have no doubt Manteia would mark us down for lateness.” He said, pronouncing the last word like it was the greatest of sins. 

Which, to mini-Voldemort, it probably was. 

“Christ, what a crime.” 

Riddle wrinkled his nose at the muggle expression, but impressively kept his bigotry to himself. “Indeed.” 

“You should plan your schedule accordingly,” she added helpfully, “Looks like you’re going to have quite the workload ahead of you.” 

“We’re going to have quite the workload,” Riddle said. “Unless you want me to tell Manteia that you’re being uncooperative?” 

They both turned in unison to watch Manteia scribble on the chalkboard, her back to their piercing eyes. As if sensing their gaze, she turned, scowling, her expression the epitome of fuck around and find out. 

“Go ahead.” She said, expression taunting,“She’s all yours.” 

Riddle scoffed, something she suspected was the most honest portrayal of his real emotions all day, before getting up to tattle like the little narc he was. 

Ten minutes later, after finding out through a very thorough scolding from Manteia in which she was berated on all manner of things from her posture to her lack of discipline, Qingzhao begrudgingly agreed to meet a smug Riddle in the library later to work on their project. 

What a pity. Looks like they were both in for a world of suffering.

Three hours later, Qingzhao found herself crammed into her least favorite library nook—which, to absolutely no one’s surprise, was Riddle’s favorite— hunched over a truly massive Arithmancy textbook, as Riddle attempted to drag her presumably dimwitted mind through a truly massive amount of maths. 

As expected from a society that had no regulations on any sort of standardized early childhood education, the majority of wizarding children arrived at Hogwarts with only a rudimentary knowledge of basic mathematics. As a result, the prerequisite knowledge needed to take any class in the Hogwarts advanced math department (i.e, Arithmancy, Alchemy, Advanced Potions), essentially boiled down to knowing elementary subtraction, addition, division, and multiplication. 

Truly, the hallmarks of an enlightened society. 

Thus, Riddle’s attempt at tutoring her in what was essentially magical pre-calculus. Yes, attempt. For all his much lauded intelligence, Riddle made for an absolutely terrible mathematics tutor, a keen character flaw unfortunately accentuated by his own belief that he was the best—if not the greatest— mind to ever grace the Hogwarts grounds. 

She sighed, deeply and heartfelt. One day, the boy in front of her would be a giant snake man bent on world domination. And here he was, forcing her to study until her eyes rolled out of their sockets for the sake of a grade of all things. Honestly, he needed to go ahead and kill the rest of his remaining family, then get his priorities straight. 

Beyond their heavy textbooks, their shared table was laden with an assortment of quills, pens, parchment, and what appeared to be the wizarding version of an abacus. Riddle had taken the initiative to create a schedule of their shared free time —a neat, overly large, color coded thing, that took up a good chunk of space and seemed to glow menacingly whenever Qingzhao glanced at it.  

“You know, I think you might want to check your highlighter.” She mused out loud. “It’s starting to look a bit radioactive.” 

“It’s starting to…what?” Riddle paused in his monologue, looking up from where he had been verbally dissecting her equations. 

She already knew they were wrong, but it was really very funny to watch him try and squint at her scribbles in an effort to tutor her. 

“Radioactive. You know, the glow?” She said leadingly. 

Riddle slowly blinked, once, then twice, his expression one of polite incomprehension. 

“Have you ever heard of unstable nuclei?” She tried.

Another long, slow, judging blink. 

Abruptly, Qingzhao remembered that it was the 1940s, Tom Riddle was from a poor muggle orphanage, and knowledge of nuclear physics wasn’t something that any little street urchin, no matter how intelligent he was, could just pick up by coincidence.  

Good lord did she miss her own time. She really was quite funny when her jokes made sense. 

“Never mind.” She said. “Resume your attempts to read my handwriting.” 

“You really need to start taking this seriously,” Riddle remarked, pausing to aggressively circle one of her ‘mistakes,’ “Our OWLs will be upon us sooner than you think, and I for one don’t intend to squander the opportunity.” 

Oh, but it wasn’t about OWLs, was it? It wasn’t about getting record-breaking OWLs, or graduating with the best damn grades Hogwarts had ever seen. It wasn’t about opportunity, or changing the world.  It wasn’t even really about convincing poor unmotivated mudblood Qingzhao Li. It was about Riddle himself, and his all-encompassing ambition, his ambition that would one day grow to swallow him and all of wizarding Britain. It was about proving to everyone—the muggles at the orphanage, the purebloods in Slytherin, the judging Albus Dumbledore—that Tom Riddle could be someone.  

It was almost…it was almost like gazing in a funhouse mirror, if her reflection were not only warped but deeply evil and prone to domestic terorrism. Because hadn’t she once been like that too? Hadn’t she once craved recognition, craved prestige, craved to make an impact? Craved to prove to someone, anyone, to an invisible audience only she could see, that Qingzhao Li meant something? 

Oh, it was horrible thought, but as Qingzhao watched Tom Riddle stare at her equations with a look of quiet exhaustion on his face that even his charisma couldn’t hide, she wondered if maybe they weren’t so different after all. Just as she died by an unremarkable car accident, so too would he be brought low by a squalling, squealing infant. 

Maybe it was the extreme Riddle exposure, or her proximity to the dreaded thing that was homework, but Qingzhao was suddenly hit with a wave of deep, deep homesickness. She stood up, slamming her textbook shut, exhausted and worn down and longing for a world that didn’t exist.  

God, she just. She just couldn’t. Not now. 

“Well, Riddle, it’s been a pleasure.” She gathered up her work, pulling out her wand to levitate everything neatly behind her, “Let’s do this never.” 

“Li, where are you going? Li, get back here—“ Riddle stood, his movements sending a burst of wind to rustle his truly horrifying schedule. 

“Thank you very much for your time, ” she said, walking towards the library entrance. She paused slightly to add, “But I’m afraid my poor dimwitted soul craves sustenance.” 

“Li—“ 

“And, perhaps invest in some new highters,” she added, “I think you need them.” 

And with that, she was rounding the corner and booking it for all she was worth. 

Chapter Text

“Riddle.”

“Professor Manteia.”

Now, before he had graduated, and swanned off to produce millions of pureblood babies, Arturus Black had once warned Tom that there were two professors that should be avoided at all cost. Dumbledore, for his rather obvious distaste of all things Slytherin; and Manteia, for her rather obvious distaste for student issues.

Unfortunately, Tom very much had a student complaint.

“You’re here about Qingzhao Li, aren’t you?” Manteia leaned back in her chair, her feet propped up against her desk and her face unamused.

Ah, Qingzhao Li. Now, what to think about Qingzhao Li?

Based on her pre-established mediocrity, Tom had originally assumed that the project would be an easy one. Li was a Ravenclaw, and while there was no one in her house currently that could ever hope to match his intellect, he had presumed that she would know her way around a book, simply by virtue of her being sorted into the house of goddamn learning. In fact, Li—with her obvious but silent crush on him—seemed far more preferable than the likes of Potter (who only talked about Quidditch) or the likes of Greengrass (who only talked about marriage).

Yes, he thought. The whole thing would be quick, easy, and over before he knew it.

Unfortunately for all parties involved, Li was a horrible Ravenclaw—not only that, she was proving to be one of the laziest, stupidest, oddest, most infuriatingly incompetent Ravenclaws of all time, surpassing even Myrtle Warren in terms of sheer ineptitude. And, well, Tom had once thought it impossible to surpass Warren on that level.

In simple terms, Tom needed a new partner. And, by Morgana, he was going to get one.

“Regrettably, I’ve found that Li is…” impressively stupid, “Not quite up to the standards for this course. Though I took it upon myself to tutor her, as is my duty as her partner, my attempts to bring her up to speed were insufficient. I’m afraid that she’s just… too far behind.”

At this, Tom frowned, and fixed his expression into one of sympathetic but pitying concern.

“Considering the length and rigor of our project, might I suggest that I be assigned a new partner and Li be assigned something…more on her level?”

A beat. He waited expectantly, charm radiating from every perfect pore.

Manteia stared at him for a moment, face incredulous, lips twitching, looking at him with a mixture of pity, glee, and mild disdain, like he was the butt of some cosmic joke and she was the audience unfortunate enough (or lucky enough) to watch it in action.

“Mr. Riddle,” she wrinkled her nose, like the sight of him at her desk was the most disgusting thing in the wizarding world, “This level of shamelessness truly is beneath you.”

He felt his smile twitch, “Pardon me, Professor?”

“And here I thought you were one of the smart ones.” She shook her head, leaning back even further in her chair to pull out a small pack of cigarettes from her pocket. “Seems like Ms. Li managed to hoodwink you too, boy.”

She lit a cigarette, and let the smoke waft onto his face. Tom silently seethed, gainfully refraining from letting his thoughts drift towards mass murder.

“Qingzhao Li,” A small smile drifted onto Manteia’s face, “Is the cleverest witch I’ve ever had the displeasure of teaching.”

What. Tom wondered if he had suddenly caught an infectious disease—likely, considering he spent his summers surrounded by smelly awful gross orphans—that had somehow seeped into his brain and made him hallucinate the wildest things, like Manteia saying Qingzhao Li was clever.

“She has the potential to reach the height of creation magic. To be more than a simple spell weaver, potion maker, or alchemist.” Manteia’s small smile grew even bigger, “To be an Arcanist, one of the rarest professions in all of wizardry.”

What.

He must be dead. He must be dead, this must be hell, and Manteia must be a demon sent to torment him with images of Qingzhao Li as a bloody Arcanist. Ms. Cole must have finally succeeded in exorcizing him, his body must be stuck in that dreadful orphanage, and his soul must have been forced through the gates of hell for the sin of being entirely too charming. Oh, and killing Billy Stubbs’ rabbit, terrorizing the general Slytherin populace, and plotting to commit murder.

May Morgana protect him.

“She might even be cleverer than you, Mr. Riddle,” Manteia continued, “I’d wager that if she tried, Qingzhao Li would have the best marks in your year. Better than even yours.”

And that. That statement. Oh, that statement, that one proclamation, was enough to turn Tom’s rage from a permanent simmer to a raging boil. Because he may be many things—a liar, a manipulator, a muggleborn peasant—but above all he was a damn good wizard. It was an integral part of his identity, the one thing that kept him going, the one thing that kept him sane back when he was still worthless and penniless and without even a wand to his name.

If there was one thing that made Tom Riddle, well, Tom Riddle, it was that he was the cleverest wizard in Hogwarts, with the best marks to prove it, and everyone, especially him, knew it.

He was the epitome of extraordinary.

Except, it seems, when compared to bloody Qingzhao Li.

Mediocre, incompetent, impressively stupid Qingzhao Li. By Merlin, he still wasn’t quite convinced he wasn’t in hell.

“Unfortunately, for her future and for my own temperament, Ms. Li is about as motivated as a sea slug,” Manteia concluded. “No, that’s an understatement. Even sea slugs have more initiative than that girl.”

There. That was the first statement that made sense this entire conversation.

Manteia waved her wand, banishing her cigar and the smell of smoke from the air. She leaned forward, steepling her palms in front of her face, gaze focused and serious.

“You are not allowed to change partners. Ms. Li and you are the brightest student Hogwarts has had in a long, long time. You two have the potential to create something groundbreaking, something far beyond this class.” Manteia said, “I was once a Slytherin too, you know. I know how to recognize greatness when I see it.”

At that, she met his gaze, her eyes piercing, her face all together far too unnervingly and far too knowing. Now, Manteia had never given Tom any indication that she suspected Tom Riddle was anything other than an overachieving mudblood, but in that moment he wondered if she had always known what lurked beneath his shell of a schoolboy. If she could see, had always seen, that deep, hidden, waiting part of him, the part of him he had one winter evening quietly dubbed Voldemort.

He leaned away, pulling his mask of charm even tighter around his body. Manteia seemed to smirk, just slightly, before she broke her burning eye contact and let him slink away back into the shadows of fake obscurity.

He resolved to keep a closer eye on her from now on.

“You two could be great.” She said softly, as if speaking to herself. “Only time will tell whether it is a terrible greatness or a wonderous one.”

She looked up, as if remembering he was still there, her face twisting into a scowl.

“Now, get the hell out of my office,” she waved her hand, “Before I throw you out myself.”

——

She looked different in Hogwarts.

He watched as she leaned forward, slouching in the library chair, face pressed into the palm of her hand. From this angle, he could faintly see the dark of her hair curl against the curve of her cheekbones, framing her eyes in soft, gentle waves. In the setting afternoon light, she appeared as if made from spun gold—an otherworldly, fey creature, who for reasons unknown had decided to walk amongst mortals in a human body.

But then, Riddle opened his mouth, drawing her attention without even trying, and in the split-second space between the thump of his heartbeat and the blink of his eyes, Orion Black could only watch as the the fey creature before him easily slid back into her skin of mediocrity like she had never left.

“No, you need—you need to take into account the movement of this variable over time, Li, we just discussed this—“ Tom Riddle said, his tone politely irritated, his voice carrying across the library. “Stop. Stop. Stop—what are you doing—“

“I’m doing what you told me to do.” Qingzhao Li replied, equally as irritated. “If you would just let me finish the problem—“

“Well, you’re doing it wrong.” Riddle cut in, “Here, let me show you, it’s basic maths—”

“I can do basic maths,” Li said.

At that, Riddle raised an eyebrow, his perfected mask of politeness not quite hiding his quiet disbelief at the thought that Qingzhao Li could be anything but intellectually incompetent.

“I’m sure.” Riddle agreed slowly.

Like he said, different.

“Orion. Orion. Dammit Orion, stop ignoring me—“ A hand waved in front of his face. “This is why I told you we shouldn’t study in the library, there are too many distractions in here and we need to focus—“

“My apologies,” Orion said. He closed his eyes, blinking, letting his gaze refocus onto Sebastian Fawley’s exasperated face. “I was distracted.”

“You always say that.” Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Shove off, let me see what you’re looking at.”

As one, the two turned, straining, looking over to look across the library towards the odd partnership that was the Li-Riddle duo. At the minute, Riddle appeared to have finished his lecture, leaving him to stare down at Li in mild disbelief as the girl successfully butchered yet another equation.

It was bloody unnerving.

It had always been unnerving, always just a touch too disconcerting, watching Qingzhao Li slide into the role of a background character with the ease of a snake slipping out of its skin. Because there was the girl she was at Hogwarts, the girl who fumbled at spells he had once watched her do in her sleep, and there was the girl he had once knew, who had at one point in a dark London alleyway expertly summoned fire to warm them both with her bare hands. Qingzhao Li may have been sorted into Ravenclaw, but Orion would bet good money that the hat had offered her Slytherin, too.

“Merlin, not her again,” Sebastian groaned quietly, eyeing the burning train crash that was the Li-Riddle tutoring session with exasperation. “Orion, mate, we’ve talked about this.”

“We have,” Orion agreed. He didn’t look away.

“And I keep telling you—this creepy obsession you have with her is starting to become, well, creepy! Look, it would be fine if you thought she was pretty or something, but I think your obsession is less romantic and more…disturbed.” Sebastian hissed.

“I wouldn’t call it an obsession,” Orion argued, just for the sake of arguing. “Merely…a passing interest.”

“Your flirtations with half of the female student body are passing interests,” Sebastian pointed out. “This? You’ve been watching her since first year.”

“Half? My, I dare say I’ve flirted with at least three-quarters of the female student body.” Orion mused. “Do keep up, my friend.”

Sebastian rubbed his palms down his cheeks. Together, the two watched as Qingzhao Li successfully drove Tom Riddle from polite irritation to outright irritation, his face finally cracking and twisting in that haughty, arrogant way that it always did when he thought someone was truly stupid.

“It’s 2.” Qingzhao insisted. “The answer is 2.”

“Li. Li. Repeat that again. Look at the problem,” Riddle hissed. “Look. At. It.”

For a cold, terrifying moment, Orion could see as the entire room shuddered, the shadows of the library rolling and stretching and warping to Riddle’s growing rage. Orion stood, ears ringing, chair scraping against the floor, his magic humming with something he couldn’t name and his mind screaming screaming screaming—

“Woah, Riddle. Hey. Calm down.”

Qingzhao leaned back in her chair, her posture lax, her wand lazily twirling in her hand. A thin, almost invisible—if he weren’t looking, he would have missed it—stream of gold drifted away from its tip, curling around Riddle in soft, steaming trails. Riddle twitched, eyes momentarily going glossy and yellow and glazed, before he relaxed, face visibly softening.

Sweet Circe.

Orion sighed. Unclenched his hand. Slowly, slowly, settled back into his chair.

“Calm down, the answer is—” Qingzhao leaned back even further, barely glancing at her paper. “2.785.” She shrugged, “You were right. It wasn’t 2.”

Orion almost laughed. Oh, he had almost forgotten about that. He had almost forgotten that, for all her masks, for all her veneers, for all her stage names and veils and hidden smiles, there was one thing about Qingzhao Li that would absolutely never change.

Her balls of absolute fucking steel.

“She’s lucky she’s a Ravenclaw.” Sebastian exhaled next to him. “Or Riddle would have taught her a lesson for her insolence.”

“Riddle would have tried,” Orion said. “But I doubt he would have succeeded. Qingzhao Li is many things, but being easily cowed has never been one of them.”

There was a small pause. In the lull of quiet, Orion watched as Sebastian leaned back, his expression unusually pensive. He glanced at Riddle, then at Qingzhao, then at Orion himself, looking between the three of them like they were a particularly complicated puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.

Then, “You know, I think you might want to check your highlighter,” Qingzhao’s voice rose once again out of the silence. “It’s starting to look a bit radioactive.”

Sebastian blinked, clearly taken aback, before he closed his eyes and rubbed his brows, visibly seeming to flush the thought of Qingzhao Li being anything but mediocre down the metaphorical loo.

“Right then,” Sebastian muttered, almost to himself. “Back my Potions essay.” He blinked, clearly realizing what he just said, then groaned, slumping in his chair. “Back to my Merlin-damned Potions essay.”

Ah yes, Orion mused. The three certainties of life. Death, taxes, and the accursed thing the Hogwarts academia likes to call “Potion’s Homework.”

“Best get started,” Orion advised, “Since your essay is due tomorrow. Now, I don’t want to nag,” he added, nagging, “but perhaps procrastination wasn’t the best strategy?”

“Sod off,” Sebastian grumbled, reaching into his satchel to pull out a fresh quill.

“I will,” Orion agreed pleasantly, “but only after you complete that essay.”

——

There was once a time before Qingzhao Li’s intentional mediocrity.

No one at Hogwarts spoke of it, neither the professors, nor the students, not even the ghosts, as if they all had at one point fallen under a school-wide Obliviate, but yes, at one point in time, there was a period at Hogwarts before Qingzhao Li’s mediocrity.

Often, Yun Hee Cho wondered if she was the only one who remembered.

Their first meeting was something she would never forget.

There Yun Hee had sat, waiting beneath the sorting hat, listening as the ratty old thing droned on and on about houses and mascots and what was essentially some sort of demented personality quiz. It had been cold up there, she remembered, by her ancestors, it had been cold, and her legs had been stiff from all the waiting. At a certain point, somewhere around five minutes in, she had scoffed under her breath, shifted, and thought for fuck’s sake, sort me into Ravenclaw and be done with it you stupid sentient rag.

And, well. She didn’t know it, couldn’t have at the time, but that was the start of her great British adventure.

There was a great huff from the stupid sentient rag, a cry of Ravenclaw! and then a slow, steady, building applause, as if her new house wasn’t quite sure what to make of her but was too polite to say so. In that split second of darkness, in the pause after the hat had declared its verdict and before it was lifted, Yun Hee imagined her life at Hogwarts unfolding behind her eyelids.

She would step off the stool, face stiff, serious and unsmiling. She would walk to her table, head held high, shoulders straight, uniform perfectly pressed. She would endure the whispers and rumors and stares and glances, and sit at her table, quiet, unaffected, and controlled, for this was Britain and she was foreign and there was a certain way the world worked.

She would spend hours in front of the bathroom mirror, perfecting her consonants and syllables, gradually shaping her tongue into an accent so familiar to British ears it felt foreign to her own. She would learn etiquette and wizarding chess and polite conversation, all those silly things the British wizarding aristocracy seemed to adore, and eventually forget the taste of kimchi and jajangmyeon and the feeling of go pieces under her palms. She wouldn’t even yearn for it—no, she couldn’t, she made that mistake once and would never make it again.

She would prove her brilliance. To those who were looking, to those who were not, to the invisible critic only she could hear. In every assignment, test, and exam she would prove to them all—her professors, her peers, even her enemies—that she was brilliant and capable and worthy of attending Hogwarts. No, not just that, not just worthy of attending Hogwarts, but worthy of far greater things, such as her magic and her blood and the new wand currently clutched tighter between her fingers.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Mark her words, Yun Hee Cho would twist and mold and break and become, for this was a gambling game of survival and she had never played with anything but a winning hand.

“Yes.” Yun Hee had whispered then, quiet and soft and certain.

Then the sorting hat was lifted from her head, there was a great roar of applause, and suddenly she was blinking, her eyes weak like those of a newborn’s, her vision filled with candlelight and innocent faces and the great vastness that was Hogwarts.

And there, somehow dead center in the crowd, looking at her like she would rather be anywhere else in the world, was Qingzhao Li.

Oh, Qingzhao Li.

Even at the diminutive age of twelve, there was much to be said about Qingzhao Li. She was a little wisp of a thing, slender and pale and tiny, with the fluffiest dark hair Yun Hee had ever seen. She didn’t carry herself with arrogance, or pride, nor even flavorings of wealth—no, she carried herself like she had something to hide, like she was one giant labyrinth built purely to protect the gleaming vault of secrets that lay deep at her center.

And yet, her gaze was not shadowed —no, on the contrary, it burned.

She pulled Yun Hee in with that burning gaze, those eyes that sizzled with something that was at once both familiar and disconcerting. Just as there was something secretive about her posture, there was something barely concealed about her emotions; it was almost as if she was leaking out of her pores, her hair, her fingers, her feet; every surface and centimeter of space on her body seemed to bubble, as if she was a volcano just before eruption.

Qingzhao Li looked like she had either watched the world burn, or wanted to be the one doing the burning.

And, perhaps out of all of them—out of all those professors and ghosts and students who sat upon their ivory thrones, far away from the fights of the far east and the subjugation of the entire Korean Peninsula—Yun Hee Cho alone could emphasize.

Like a moth to a flame she followed that burning gaze, moving through the mass of curious students to sit down beside Qingzhao Li, in what would become known as their fateful first meeting.

“Well met,” she greeted. Instead of bowing, she stuck out her hand, perfectly British, and perfectly acceptable. “My name is Yun Hee Cho.”

Qingzhao paused mid-bite, her hair fluffing around her face, her leg of chicken held precariously in mid-air. Up close, her gaze was even more searing, a sort of knife-like thing that shimmered with a shrewd kind of anger that she couldn’t quite seem to hide.

“Fuck off,” she said.

It was, as they say, the start of a beautiful friendship.

Chapter Text

It was slightly strange to admit, but the thing Qingzhao most often dreamed of was dim sum restaurants.

The time and name varied, the waiters, the food, the diners, even the theme of the decor, but some things, some things that in Qingzhao’s mind were so quintessentially dim sum restaurant—those things, oh, those things never changed.

There was something strangely wonderful about her dreams in this lifetime, something strangely intimate about how they encapsulated and blurred and exemplified. Qingzhao could walk into her dream restaurant to be greeted by Tom Riddle in a catsuit, sit down by a window and watch as Albus Dumbledore did the can-can, open up her offered teapot to see a macaroon smoothie being served instead of tea. Yet there were always certain things, certain minuscule, yet monumental things—like the roughness of the tablecloth against her fingertips, the wet feeling of just-washed chopsticks, the old nostalgia of home and warmth and Sunday lunches—that remained.

The night after the precalculus lesson from hell, Qingzhao closed her eyes to the feeling of cold Scottish air and opened them to the smell of egg tarts drifting upon a foggy breeze.

She found herself seated at a round table, topped with a lazy susan and perched by a large window with a view of the ocean. There was a soft clatter of silverware in the air, along with the sound of a dozen hungry patrons, their voices mingling with the sea breeze and their faces wavering in and out of view. In the distance, the pillars of a red, rusted bridge glimmered in the midday light, rising above a bank of fog to brush against the curves of a clear August blue sky.

There was a lucky cat statue by the entrance of the restaurant this time, a large, porcelain thing painted in red and gold and sat atop the front counter on a pile of paper menus. Behind its waving paws sat a small altar to a red-faced man dressed in green robes, laden high with oranges and small sticks of incense.

There was a small click, of a speaker being tuned above the chatter, and then, after a beat, a soft crooning in the air. It was…a lilting Cantonese song, something from sixty years in the future and twenty years into the past, and someone at her table (her mother? which mother? her first mother? Oh, she couldn’t quite tell..) had begun to softly sing along.

She inhaled. The air smelled of home and nostalgia and just the right amount of red vinegar.

“I wish you would come home more often.” Someone touched her hand. Their fingers were old, wrinkled. Tanned, with sunspots on the edges.

She frowned, just slightly. Her … Grandmother? Probably. Yeah.

Probably.

The lazy susan started to spin and spin and spin.

“I wish I could come home too,” she said. Her voice seemed at once distant and all too close, echoing through the dream to the thump of her heartbeat. “God, I wish I could come home.”

Food started appearing on the lazy susan, swirling into creation in bursts of mist and sunlight. Bamboo baskets of barbecue pork buns, platters of shrimp dumplings, chicken feet, potstickers, and oh look—

“You got my favorite.” She reached for an egg tart. “You know, I can’t find these at all anymore. They’re just being invented, in this stupid, silly time period, so I need to wait a couple years before they get to Britain.”

“How is Britain, anyway?” Someone else asked. Her aunt, most likely, judging by her nosy, but pleasantly familiar, voice. “Give us the details! Some of us want to know.”

“It’s cold,” she said. “Miserably rainy, and foggy all the time, oh—get this! I finally mastered the British accent. Took me a while, you know, to lose the American one and then the Chinese one, but I did it.”

“That’s it?” Her aunt chided, “Tell us about the sights! The food! The people! It’s been so long since we've seen you. Years? Has it been years?”

“Yes,” Qingzhao smiled sadly. “It has.”

“I once had British curry you know,” one of her cousins said. “Well, British-Indian curry. It was amazing—Did you know they made curry their national dish?”

“You made that fish curry for us one time, with the shrimp?” Another cousin asked. “Remember? There was also that one with the cheese and the spinach—“

“That one did not go down well,” her mother added. “But the fish one was the best—“

Qingzhao bit into her egg tart. It tasted like vanilla extract and flaky crust and a warm, bubbling emotion that settled in her stomach like tea on a cold day.

“What are you talking about?” Her uncle asked. “The best curry was obviously that one with the chicken. The flavors were perfect—“

“No, the fish curry takes the cake,” Qingzhao called over the insuring debate. “Obviously.”

“You look skinny,” her grandmother pushed a platter of sweet and sour pork towards her plate. “Come on, eat, eat. Your arms are like sticks. What are the British feeding you anyway? Oatmeal and biscuits?”

“My arms are not sticks,” Qingzhao laughed. “You say that everytime.”

“I just can’t with oatmeal,” a third cousin chipped in. “It’s so…mushy.”

“Mushy,” Qingzhao snorted.

“Yep. Mushy,” her cousin nodded. “I just—even if you added something, like honey or blueberries or some sort of topping it’s just—it’s not my thing”

“Isn’t oatmeal the British version of jook? Of rice congee?” Her mother asked.

“You are not comparing jook to oatmeal, of all things,” someone else at the table groaned. “That’s an insult to jook.”

“White pepper, century egg, and green onions. Best jook toppings,” her grandma added.

“Yao Tiao,” her second aunt added. “Yao Tiao, and bits of fried shallots.”

“Okay, hear me out,” Qingzhao pitched her voice to be heard, “Just plain white pepper, and some chili oil. That’s it. ”

“That’s it?” Her uncle snorted. “See, the best thing to do is to go all in. Sesame oil, chili oil, peanuts, fried shallots, yao tiao, meat floss, green onions, the works.”

“You might as well be making a hotpot broth at that point,” Qingzhao pointed out.

“Oh! We should go to that restaurant I saw down the street—what’s it called, Old Pie Hotpot,” her mother said.

“Old Pier Hotpot,” Qingzhao corrected.

“Wait, I think we’re getting off track here, you still haven’t told us about Britain—“ Her first aunt interjected. Then, addressing the table, “Is no one else but me curious about what she’s been up to?”

“Jook is nothing without century eggs,” her grandmother scoffed quietly. “Children these days. No taste.”

“You people need to stop changing the topic so much,” someone groaned. “You all do this every week.”

At that, Qingzhao laughed. Long, hard, and happy.

The next morning, Qingzhao awoke slowly, with the taste of egg tarts in her mouth and the sight of a dim sum restaurant she hasn’t been to in over fifteen years seated beneath her eyelids.

It was dark in her dorm, the curtains magically drawn tight over the castle windows, with the only sounds in the air being Yun Hee’s slight snoring and the soft, steady quietness of the early morning.

For a moment, she laid there in her bed, eyes wide open but staring into nothing, mulling over things such as memories and families and the strange sensation of feeling nostalgia for a world that didn’t exist. She always did that, always forced herself to do it, for it was in these moments, in these small slices of time between waking and realism, that Qingzhao Li knew she had to accept that even if she waited fifty years, or sixty, or more, nothing would ever quite be the same.

(She had wanted it to be. Oh, she had prayed, and she had tried, and once upon a time she had even gambled with a god in exchange for a path home.)

(She won, in the end. But she didn’t get her prize. For how can you find something that does not exist?)

Because while she had magic, and knowledge, and quite possibly more than enough genius to hop a dimension or timeline or two, the truth was, the honest, horrible truth, was that nothing again would ever quite be dim sum lunches on Sunday in a restaurant near the ocean. She was too old, too learned, and perhaps in many ways far too tired.

And well.

That was something she knew that even magic couldn’t truly fix.

Sometimes, she didn’t quite know how to feel about that.

Slowly, Qingzhao pushed herself to her feet, suddenly filled with the restless urge to run and run and run. The air outside of her covers was cold, almost wintry, seeping into her bones with a deceptive sort of gentle harshness that only autumn could bring.

Why was she here? Why had she stayed?

To her right, there was a soft, slight snuffle, then a sigh, then the unmistakable sound of Yun Hee slowly turning over in her sleep. In the low light, Qingzhao could faintly make out the tip of her nose, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest. One bed over, Carmine slumbered quietly, rolled tight into a thick cacoon of blankets.

(For them?)

A beat.

Qingzhao inhaled, then exhaled, then slowly walked out of the room.

———————

The most beautiful and most complicated aspect of magic, Qingzhao’s old master had once explained, was that it only made as much “sense” as you allowed it to.

That was, in Qingzhao’s humble opinion, just a rather nice way of saying that magic was bullshit. Quantifiable bullshit, as Arithmancy proved, but still. Bullshit.

When she had told her master so, her master had laughed in her face.

“You always make things so complicated, child,” her master had sighed, “It’s always the long route with you, never the short one. Just trust your master, okay? Can you do that?”

“I just don’t get it,” Qingzhao had replied.

“See, that right there,” her master wagged her finger, “Always the long route.”

As she searched for a small hole in the Hogwarts wards, with the express aim of apparating through it to buy an authentic go set from London’s Chinatown rather than transfiguring a board like a normal witch, Qingzhao was once again reminded of her old master’s words.

Always the long route.

Yet, Qingzhao mused, slowly weaving her way toward the Great Hall, the long route is not always an unpleasant one.

Magic, she had always personally thought, was quite a bit like the mathematical concept of infinity. It made sense, in a horrid, abstract way, but then it didn’t sometimes, and then you had to squint at it and stare at it and “push” it until it turned into something that the human mind could comprehend.

In that same vein of thought, the Hogwarts wards were a bit like the mathematical concept of functions on a closed domain.

Two years ago, Qingzhao had once witnessed a young muggleborn student ask a surprisingly redheaded Professor Dumbledore what “shape” the Hogwarts wards took. This specific muggleborn, made an orphan by the Blitz, was quite concerned about whether the wards offered adequate enough coverage on the offhand chance that the Germans decided to blow the entirety of the Scottish highlands to smithereens.

With a characteristic twinkle in his eye, Dumbledore had calmly assured the students of their safety, describing the wards as “one giant bubble of protection.”

To this day, Qingzhao was still impressed by the amount of bullshit Dumbledore managed to spew on a daily basis with such a straight face.

With a grunt, Qingzhao pushed open the door to the Great Hall, slinking in with gentle, muffled footsteps. Bereft of its boisterous occupants, the hall was still and quiet, filled with a sort of eerie weariness that reeked of centuries upon centuries of wear and tear.

Slowly, Qingzhao climbed on top of the Ravenclaw table, tilting her head to face the star-studded ceiling.

She concentrated, extending her senses. It was somewhere around…

There.

She inhaled.

Okay. Game time.

“天堂嘅賢人之眼,” she breathed.

There was a slight, echoing splash, the sound of a smooth stone hitting a pool of clear water, followed by the hum of a guzheng hitting just the right note. Someone laughed in the distance, a hand ruffled her hair, before something soft and silky like the feel of a veil was pulled across her face. Then, right before her eyes, the waking world shuddered, rippling away from sight, the view before her exploding into bright bursts of technicolor.

In the darkness, the wards shimmered a thousand different hues, manifesting as glimmering lengths of rope that floated across the hall in a million different directions. They were tied together at each crosspoint by intricate druid knots—massive, shimmering things, that glowed at certain angles like the shards of a fallen star.

There was a distinct beauty to the chaos, a symmetry to the lines and lines and lines of overlapping rope. This creation wasn’t a representation of one protective spell—no it was a representation of several. Every line, every knot, every length of rope, was the manifestation of a single ward spell, woven together in such a fashion as to create a massive web of protective magic.

These were not the type of wards that were made in a day. These were the type of wards that were made over the course of an entire lifetime.

Four lifetimes, Qingzhao mused. Four founders.

As she continued to watch, the very air seemed to hum, pulsing between her ears and twisting into her body. It was a sound she had always imagined the sun would make —a vibrating, restless noise, that was as instinctual and important to the human condition as it was terrifying.

It was a bit—it was a bit like standing inside a rainbow, and watching the light refract and undo itself on your skin. Except, it wasn’t just that, it was also like floating in the great vacuum of space, swimming on the surface of the ocean, and lying back in a forest to watch the sun paint the sky the golden hues of sunset.

To witness magic in its raw form was to peer across the edge of chaos, her master told her once. To comprehend the true essence of the universe, within the limits of the strange thing known as mortal sight.

“Fluffy words,” Qingzhao had said back.

“Such disrespect,” her master had replied. “And you dare call yourself my disciple?”

“You bet,” she had said. “And just you wait. I’ll master your hardest technique. I’ll be the best disciple you’ve ever had.”

She had been, and then she wasn’t, and then she had called upon her master to drown an entire island. Now, she was a lazy layabout straight E student, who, was using her master’s most sacred, most powerful, and most valuable technique to essentially jump the fence and skip a bit of class.

Funny, how the world turned out.

Now, it wasn’t quite true that the Hogwarts wards were akin to functions on a closed domain. Rather, to be specific, they were more like a multitude of functions on the same closed domain with the added aspect of removable discontinuities. And, in theory, all she needed to do to find a “hole” in one of the functions was to evaluate each function at zero.

It was, to put it simply—pure calculus.

And Qingzhao had always been quite good at calculus.

She rolled her shoulders back. Flexed her fingers, then her mind, then the very magic pulsing through her body. Badum. Badum. It always sounded, she thought, a bit like her heartbeat.

She reached out, reached forward, reached through—

She spun on her heel—

A small hand grabbed hers.

Later, over a game of go and a bag of Chinese take out, with the smooth evening lamplight playing across their faces, she would tell Yun Hee it went a little something like this:

To find the equation of a function, she needed coordinates. Inputs, outputs, something to outline the function’s boundaries and help her roughly estimate the length, width, and depth of the rope-shaped wards. The slight problem, she would explain, was that she didn’t have any sort of means to find the coordinates of something as intangible as magic, but well, what she did have was a seafaring spell made for navigation and a bit of creativity.

It was wildly experimental, and, she would muse later, quite possibly a terrible idea, but in the moment she had thought she was pretty damn brilliant. And well, it had worked, even though it shouldn’t have, because she wasn’t even sure magic was three-dimensional sometimes and genuinely how the fuck would you find coordinates for something that was at times one dimensional and was at times five dimensional, and was at times non-perceivable on this plane of existence.

But well, it has worked, purely because for some inane reason the Hogwarts wards at that exact moment in time choose to be three-dimensional, and within no time at all she was left with about a hundred or so different equations to evaluate.

“Wait, but how did you know?” Yun Hee would later ask. “How did you know that the hole in the wards would be in the Great Hall?”

She hadn’t really, it had been one giant guess, but she had had a theory that the area where the Hogwarts wards would be weakest was where they were under the most stress. There were more than just protective wards at Hogwarts, she remembered learning a couple years back, there were also wards that absorbed any sort of potentially volatile production of accidental magic generated by large amounts of hormonal teens in confined spaces. Thus, the logical train of thought taken from that knowledge would be that more teens, equals more accidental magic, equals more absorption, equals more stress. From that stress, she had been willing to bet that the wards suffered from at least a small amount of degradation—a bet that had ultimately paid off.

“Luck,” she would answer.

Evaluating a hundred equations on the spot wasn’t easy, and god, she had wished she had had a calculator, but the one good thing about being a prodigy in multiple lifetimes was that her brain was scarily good at being terrifyingly efficient. She had found the hole, around ten or so minutes in, ‘aimed’ her body through it, ended up in muggle London, and snuck back into Hogwarts the same way a couple hours later.

That’s what she would tell Yun Hee.

The truth, however, was something like this:

There was a small hand holding her own. A small hand, a child’s hand by the looks of it, clutching onto her right in the middle of her apparition. Now, normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, side-along apparition existed for a reason— but right now she was in the middle of moving through a hole only big enough for one. And well, Qingzhao may be many things, but she wasn’t a murderer of creatures smaller than she was and she was entirely positive that accidentally getting a child splinched six ways to Sunday counted as murder.

The hand wasn’t letting go. It was sort of—sort of floating in mid-air, which meant it was attached to an invisible body, a body potentially hidden by an invisibility cloak, which meant not only was this a child she might be about to murder it was. Oh god, it was.

It was.

She had about five seconds. That’s roughly how long a full apparition took, before your brain along with your body was whisked away towards your destination. Which, well, it wasn’t a lot of time, god it wasn’t a lot of time, she was so so so fucked-

No.

No.

A strange wave of calm rushed over her, drowning the incoming sense of hysterical all-consuming panic. Her mind went quiet, a dead, eerie quiet, the kind of quiet that Qingzhao only associated with desperate times and truly desperate situations. There was no time for panic, no time for emotions, no time for anything but thinking.

So, she did.

(That’s what always happened, in the end. At her lowest, at her hardest, at any point in her life where she was panicking, Qingzhao turned off her emotions and thought her way out. It worked, it always did, and it was going to work now. It had too.)

One.

The “hole” in the Hogwarts wards she was aiming to apparate through wasn’t big enough for two. She had to find a new one, which meant that not only did she have to find a new area where the wards were degraded enough to produce a hole, she needed to find a space that was big enough for two.

But where, where, where—

The common rooms. The greenhouses. The library. The—

The Quidditch stands.

Plethora of student and professor traffic, high emotions, constant use.

Two.

She needed new coordinates. Her seafaring spell only produced coordinates based on her own relative position, so she would need to anchor her spell off another that produced a structure similar to her body weight and magical signature in a different location. A remote golem spell? No, that would require the aid of a potion, and a constant outpouring of magical energy, but well, maybe, maybe if she combined a couple different spells that produced enhanced plant matter…

Three.

She could see it. Her hunch was right. There was a small opening in the wards, a minuscule thing really, barely big enough for two, dead above the quidditch stands. God bless wizarding schools and their obsession with flying rugby.

Four.

There was a soft hum in her bones, the quiet vibrations of her magic slowly reworking itself into her atoms and breaking apart her earthly flesh. Apparition always felt like that—or at least, her reverse engineered version of it—like stepping three steps in the wrong direction and squeezing through a vacuum to get there.

There was the phantom press of a wooden bow against her dissipating palms, and the feeling of taut string between her fingertips. She imagined her destination in her mind’s eye, forming the location beyond the edge of an arrow made of light with picture-perfect clarity.

There. Right there.

She inhaled, took aim—

(Distantly, she could feel the press of her master’s hand between her shoulder blades.)

Five.

—and fired.

Crack!

Chapter Text

Click. 

Here’s the thing—in the greatest of ironies, the majority of Hogwarts thought that 2nd year Fleamont Potter was a little bit of a freak. 

It wasn’t really because of his appearance. He had that typical Potter look about him—the dark, wild hair, the pale skin, the mischievous shit-eating grin—a combination that no small number of students found to be boyishly charming. It wasn’t really because of his personality, either. While not nearly as extroverted as his older cousin, Charlus Potter, Fleamont Potter had a distinctly mild-mannered politeness about him, that had old ladies in his younger years squeezing his cheeks and cooing over his manners. It wasn’t even because of his blood status—unlike the majority of the Slytherin house, Fleamont Potter toed the line between being an uppity pureblood but not a racist one, which endeared him to both his muggleborn classmates and his pureblooded ones. 

He wasn’t even stupid, no, in fact he was quite bright, of that there was no doubt, and if it weren’t for the fact that the title of school genius was currently hogged by one Tom Riddle, (and, on a quieter note, by one Qingzhao Li), he might have been given the title himself the moment he stepped on campus. 

Click. 

No, what unnerved his classmates, and his professors, and, on the day of his birth, even his parents, was that there was something so distinctly, inanely, perfect about him. This perfection surrounded him like a cloud, a bubble, and was instinctively obvious to all who met him. It was the sort of perfection that would not be found out of place amongst the fey folk, the veela, or even the occasional Greco/Roman statue, except the problem was that Fleamont Potter appeared to be (and yes, his parents, and his teachers, and even some of his classmates, had checked) the epitome of a normal wizarding boy. 

Three years ago, when giving him a passing glance from a short distance, Qingzhao had wondered if he was touched . 

Now, sitting across from him, in a dingy Chinese restaurant (that Potter had somehow known to lead them too), eating an egg tart and trying not to judge as Potter attempted to stuff three tea eggs (that Potter had somehow known how to order, in perfect Cantonese) into his mouth, Qingzhao was almost sure of it. 

Click. 

To be completely honest, she had been sure of it the moment he had looked up, really looked up, with eyes like starlight and a soft, knowing smile.

(It hadn’t been the eyes, in the end. It had been that damn smile.)

(Her old master had once worn a smile like that, too. Sometimes, Qingzhao wondered if she would ever be rid of it.) 

Click. 

Potter’s latest go piece clicked against the tacky, rented board. Qingzhao watched, and this time, judged, as he stuffed another tea egg into his mouth. 

Click. 

Qingzhao made her move. 

Click. 

Potter made his. 

Click. 

Her turn. 

Click. 

His turn. 

Click. 

Go was her favorite game. It hadn’t started off being her favorite, in her old life, in her old timeline, oh no, that had been mahjong. Mahjong had been associated with fond memories, of hearing the whoosh whoosh of tiles against a cherry wood game table, of watching her many uncles complain as gambling money changed hands. Mahjong had been Sunday afternoons and the squeaky sound of the old fan and the way her grandmother smiled. Yet, somewhere along the way, she had fallen in love with go , fallen in love with the infinite strategies and the strange intimacy of seeing how another’s mind worked. And, even quieter, in the silence of her mind where no one looked, she had fallen in love with the way it made her think. For there was only one thing she had had, when she came to this world, and that was her memories, and her mind, and what was go if not a game of the mind? 

Click. 

She needed go , sometimes. It reminded her that she was real. That she was herself, flesh and blood, bone and chi , real soul and spirit beneath the magic and the different name and the different fucking world. 

She needed it, sometimes, whenever she looked at Tom Riddle’s flesh and blood face.

So, London. And the impulsive need to buy a go board. 

Click. 

Her turn. 

Click. 

Wait.

Click. 

Holdup. 

Click. 

Qingzhao was a genius. That was an indisputable fact. Games of the mind came easy to her, swam through her thoughts like a duck did water. She had been unbeatable the moment she had set her mind to it, the moment she had truly worked out the kinks and rules. 

Click. 

Truly, in recent memory, she had only truly lost to three people. The first, was to her sister, on that cold winter’s day when she had first begun learning how to play. The second, was to her master, in a gambling den thick with the scent of opium and cheap perfume. The third, was to Carmine Brown, on the day when Yun Hee would declare them all best friends forever.

Point being, Qingzhao Li did not simply lose. 

Except. 

Except Fleamont Potter was currently winning. 

Click.

What the fuck? 

Click. 

Yeah. What the actual fuck? 

Click. 

He played go like her master did. Her master had always had a distinct style, a way of placing the pieces that had always made Qingzhao feel like she was three steps behind on the wrong path. What was strange about Potter, what she had to admit was—as much as she loathed to agree with her sheep-like and flying rugby obsessed classmates–just a little bit freaky, was that he played exactly like her master. Down to every move, every pause, every shift of his hand. 

Click. 

It was like, like looking in a mirror. Except, for the life of her, Qingzhao couldn’t quite wrap her head around why. 

Click. 

His turn. 

Actually, his win. 

Not for the first time, Qingzhao looked up into Fleamont Potter’s knowing smile and large, starlit eyes, and wondered to herself just how much that gaze could see. 

She had seen it, that moment in the alleyway, when his invisibility cloak had slipped off and her sage eyes had still been activated. 

It had been just a hint, a small glimpse, but oh, Sweet Mother of Mary, the things she could say about that small glimpse. 

It was like looking into the sun . 

There were certain things Qingzhao could always tell a person was meant for. Yun Hee was meant for rebellion. Carmine was meant for high society. Fleamont Potter? He was meant for magic itself. 

If other wizards had magical cores that resembled fireflies, Fleamont Potter had a magical core that resembled a star. He didn’t just have magic, rather, he oozed it, bathed in it, and was so full of it that if Qingzhao hadn’t known better she might have thought she was looking at the magic of a burgeoning god. Magic didn’t just acknowledge him, no, it blessed him, to the point where it swam from his pores and his nails and every single tangible point on his body. 

The sheer amount of magic was even worse in his eyes. If magic seeped from his body, it pooled in his eyes, dripping down around his cheeks like two streaks of glimmering star fire. Looking into his inhuman gaze was like staring across the edge of the horizon, like the whoosh whoosh of mahjong tiles, like looking up into the night sky and thinking of what could be. 

That gaze wasn’t meant to be contained in a human body. Yet it was, and continued to be, in the most inconceivable yet strangely fitting way possible. Potter wasn’t meant to have that much magic, no human was, truly, yet he did and so it had seemed to Qingzhao’s enhanced sight that his body wouldn’t be able to function with anything less. It was a bit like ivy growing on a wall, or an old tree—two different things intertwined so fiercely that the two would be unimaginable without each other.

Then she had blinked, and he had slipped on his invisibility cloak, shrunk it and tied it like a bandana around his wrist, and the visage of magic disappeared, and she was left to wonder just how much Death’s cloak prevented what was on the outside from looking in and what was on the inside from leaking out. 

It explained why she hadn’t noticed him, in any case. Why she hasn’t seen the way his magic was sloshing out of his body a lot sooner. 

Click. Click click click click click click click click. 

Qingzhao watched as Potter rearranged the go board, his movements calm but sure. In yet another eerie recreation of her master, he tilted each go piece just so , round edges poised to catch the mid-morning light. 

His win, she thought. My master’s playstyle. 

On the outside, she said, “You’ve won.” 

On the inside, she thought, what the actual fuck. 

“I play to win,” Potter smiled.  

"I play to win."

For a moment, Qingzhao was three years old again, sharp eyed and skeptical, inhaling the heady scent of opium and incense and roasted sweet potato as familiar, eerily familiar, words fell out of her mouth—

“That’s funny,” Qingzhao narrowed her eyes, “So do I.” 

Potter laughed at that, breathless and cheerful and excited, and if she didn’t know any better, she could have sworn that in that moment her soul heard the soft click of destiny falling into place. 

———

You see, the thing about destiny, and fate, and all things that surrounded the realm of predetermined futures, was that it wouldn’t be destiny if it wasn’t a little bit unexpected and quite a bit out of left field. 

So it was ordained by destiny, that the morning after Qingzhao Li and Fleamont Potter apparated through a crack of time and space, Charlus Potter woke up from his post-Potions exam nap to the sight of Tom Riddle smiling at him with all the unholy charm he could muster. 

Ah, Charlus thought, wiping the drool off his checks, this is unexpected. 

As if sensing his thoughts, Riddle raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, his expression both scathing and devastatingly handsome all at once. 

Charlus raised a not-so-perfectly sculpted eyebrow back. 

Riddle smirked, and if he was surprised that Charlus hadn’t immediately gotten up to grovel at his feet, he didn’t show it. 

The thing about Charlus was that he didn’t have anything against Tom Riddle. No one at the school did, really, it would be strange if you did, but that being said he wasn’t head-over-heels in love with the boy as the rest of the school seemed to be. No, he didn’t have anything against him, but he didn’t have anything for him, either, and it wasn’t so much anything to do with Tom Riddle as it was to do with Fleamont Potter. 

It had started like this: 

Charlus Potter knew the moment the clock struck midnight on November 29, 1909. It had been a strange sort of feeling, reminiscent of sliding bolts and keys that fit just right, but all the same he had bolted awake the moment the clock hit midnight with an almost surreal certainty that his life was about to change forever.

He wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep afterward, would instead float between waking and dreaming, his magic trembling softly like ripples over still water, and his heart fluttering as though caught in the rhythm of some unseen tide. Later, he would call it anticipation, but in that hazy moment, it felt like something far more powerful, far more potent than simple anticipation—a beckoning, soft and insistent, as if the very fabric of the universe was pulling him towards a new horizon.

(Even later, far, far later, he would perhaps, in the quietest areas of his mind, call it destiny.)

Six hours later, on November 29, 1909, Charlus Potter met Fleamont Potter for the first time. His aunt slid the boy into his arms, his young, childlike arms, and for a moment Charlus was back in his bedroom once more, listening to the beckoning of fate. She told him that the baby had been born at the peak of midnight, and had slid into the world easily, bathed in blood and birthing magic and traces of autumn chill. Charlus Potter looked down at that baby, that oddly clear-eyed, softly smiling baby, and thought I knew. 

I knew. 

Destiny was a strange, strange thing. 

So it was that sometime later, whilst shopping in Diagon Alley, the Potter cousins would run into Tom Riddle. The boy had been fresh out of Ollivander’s, wide-eyed and shocked, clutching his new wand to his chest and staring at his surroundings with a wonder that Slytherin hadn't yet taught him to hide. Charlus had watched him go, and shrugged, and thought of other things, like new quills and new books and new clothes, but Fleamont had paused, eyes gleaming, face turned into a soft frown. 

At that, Charlus had paused, too. 

“Charlus,” Fleamont began, eyes following Riddle, “Stay away from him.”

“Who?” Charlus asked. 

“That one.” 

“The muggleborn? The one we just passed?” 

“Yes,” Fleamont said. His gaze turned distant, before refocusing, sharpening into something that looked, oddly and eerily enough, like pointed rage. He didn’t add anything more. 

“Why?” Charlus asked, a bit unnerved. “He doesn’t seem like much of a treat.” 

“I just…” Fleamont shrugged, his previous anger melting into confusion, “Have a feeling. A bad feeling. You know?” 

It was a bit strange, sometimes, how certain memories would resurface at the oddest moments. Charlus hadn’t meant to think of it, but all the same in that moment there he was, five years old again and watching as the oddly aware baby Fleamont blinked up at him with all-too-knowing eyes. 

“Yeah,” Charlus said, eyeing Riddle’s back one last time, “I know.” 

No, Charlus mused, watching as Riddle slipped into the chair across from him and neatly adjusted his robes. It wasn’t that he had anything against Riddle, really. He just wasn’t leaping out of his seat to befriend him, either. 

“You must be wondering why I’m here,” Riddle said, a beautiful smile neatly slotting into his perfect face. 

Charlus braced himself for the immediate hit to his self-confidence, and subtly lifted his hand to his chin to feel for any remaining drool. 

“Well, yes, it is a bit odd,” Charlus conceded. “I’ll be the first to admit that, despite the fact that we share many of the same classes, we don’t exactly run in the same social circles.” 

“Ah yes, it is a bit of a shame we haven’t talked more,” Riddle said. 

“Quite,” Charlus nodded politely. 

A beat. 

I miss my nap already, Charlus mused silently, eyeing the perfectly comfy library table beneath him with longing. Whatever this was, it certainly wasn't worth waking up for.

Charlus attempted to shuffle awkwardly, and tried in vain to see if said attempt would help Riddle know to take the hint and leave. 

Riddle, to the detriment of Charlus's nap, did not take the hint and leave. 

“Well, you see, the Arithmancy for All club is hosting something of a small school wide competition. Since I’m the president, I thought it would be prudent to give a helping hand in asking participants to join. I know you were one of the select few underclassmen allowed to participate in the one last year, so I thought I would get the word out to you.” 

“I didn’t know you knew I participated,” Charlus said. 

“Well, word does get around eventually,” Riddle said, “But, between you and me, it was really Dorea singing your praises in the common room.” 

After that, he smiled, rather bashfully, and for a brief moment Charlus shamefully considered the minuscule possibility that Fleamont might be, Merlin forbid, wrong. Because Tom Riddle was just, well, he was just so damn charming , even more so up close and personal than he ever was from afar. 

He was an awful cousin wasn’t he? 

“Is there a prize?” Charlus asked. “And is it restricted amongst the grade levels?” 

“The club did a fair bit of fundraising, so there is a grand prize of 1500 galleons—“ 

Charles nearly choked on his saliva, his brain jolting out of his previous drowsiness like a thunderclap. 1500???!

Riddle smirked. “—and no, any Hogwarts student can join.” 

“I’m in,” Charlus said quickly, the number 1500 repeating through his head in a mantra. “I’m in.” 

“I figured,” Riddle laughed. “Do you know anyone else who might like to join? I’ve talked to most of the people in our class, but I’m afraid the club still wants to recruit more people.” 

Charlus almost shook his head, but then—

“Who are you looking at Fleamont?” 

A memory. 

“That girl, by the Ravenclaw table.” 

Somewhere around his fourth year, when Fleamont had just arrived. 

“Qingzhao? She’s in my year. A bit mousy, that one. Below average intelligence for a Ravenclaw too.” 

A pause. And then—

“Hmm. I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” 

He hasn’t given the conversation much thought afterwards, wrapped up in schoolwork and extracurriculars and everything of the sort, but now that Riddle was asking…

“Have you tried talking to Qingzhao Li?” 

Riddle paused. 

Charlus paused. 

For a moment—and only just a moment—something dark and angry and rageful flashed across Riddle’s face. Then, as if it had never been there, it vanished beneath a wave of reinforced charm, leaving Charlus to wonder if he had ever seen it at all. 

Smoothly, as if he hadn't missed a beat, Riddle said, “Qingzhao?” 

“Yeah. I think she’s your partner for our project?” 

“Yes. I’m aware.” Riddle’s left eyebrow twitched, just slightly. His smile widened. Somehow, his face became even more dazzling. 

“Well, she’s a bit mousy, doesn’t talk much, never has, but,” Charlus shrugged. “Someone once told me that she’s smarter than she looks.” 

Riddle’s smile widened even further. 

It looked, from the right angle, almost manic. 

“And, she’s in our Arithmancy class, so there’s that,” Charlus added. 

“Yes,” Riddle nodded slowly, his face giving away nothing but charm. “There’s that.” 

“You should keep her in mind,” Charlus said, “Really.”

“You know,” Riddle’s said thoughtfully, his gaze sharpening like a stone beneath chisel, “I think I will.”

Charlus held his gaze, and in the contemplative silence that followed, was struck by the powerful but peculiar certainty that he, by the will of fate, had somehow just accidentally hammered the nail in someone else’s coffin.

Chapter Text

“So, like, it’s not that bad,” Qingzhao said, chewing on her breakfast toast.

“What do you mean it’s not that bad?” Yun Hee aggressively scooped a mound of cottage cheese onto her plate. “You went missing for two days, came back covered in dirt, and you reckon it’s not that bad?

“Yeah,” Qingzhao nodded. “Not that bad.”

“How in the bloody hell did you even manage to get to London?” Yun Hee demanded, munching on her cottage cheese in disbelief. “I just—how—I can’t even—”

“I took the train,” Qingzhao shrugged. She reached for more eggs. “Really efficient, that train.”

“I can’t believe they didn’t give you detention. I would have given you detention!” Yun Hee bemoaned.

Across from them both, Lupin shot her a withering glare. “I can’t believe we’re losing house points for this. Honestly, Li, you would think you would know better than that by now.”

“Piss off, Lupin.” Carmine rolled her eyes, “What I want to know, and, what I think we all deserve to know,” she gestured pointedly with her fork, “Is what in Merlin’s good name is he doing here.”

As one, the four of them turned to look at Fleamont Potter, who was cheerfully slouched at the far end of the Ravenclaw table, shoveling food into his mouth with a look of blissful ignorance.

At their staring, he looked up, then waved.

Qingzhao waved back.

“He’s a Hufflepuff,” Lupin whispered, with the same gravitas that one would say the words serial killer.

“He’s at our table,” Yun Hee observed.

“He looks like trouble,” Carmine said.

“He’s eating our eggs,” Lupin hissed.

“Oh yeah, him?” Qingzhao gave Potter a once over, before turning back to her blood pudding. “He’s my new apprentice.”

A moment of incredulous silence. One by one, each person at their little corner of the Ravenclaw table turned their heads from looking at Potter to looking at her.

“Not that bad,” Yun Hee finally whispered in despair, burying her head in her hands. “Not that bloody bad.”

———

So what’s the actual story with the Potter boy, is what appeared later on Qingzhao’s note-less Defense notes. Don’t tell me he’s actually your disciple?

She looked up from where she was doodling a rather unflattering caricature of Abraxas Malfoy, meeting Yun Hee’s eyes from across the aisle. Yun Hee gave her a pointed look, before flicking her eyes to Qingzhao’s parchment, up and down in a manner that was rather reminiscent of a cat eyeballing a moving laser.

Yun Hee’s neat penmanship appeared again. Qingzhao! Answer me. I know you see this.

Qingzhao added a small mustache to mini-Malfoy’s face.

Don’t ignore me! Since when have you started taking notes, anyway?

Offended, Qingzhao lifted her eyes from her paper, turning to shoot Yun Hee an affronted glare. Yun Hee met her gaze, then gave her a small shrug, unrepentant.

Merrythought scolded me, Qingzhao finally wrote. It was this or more detention.

Merlin forbid, Yun Hee wrote. Qingzhao could almost picture her eye roll.

Merlin forbid, Qingzhao agreed solemnly.

So is he really your disciple? Yun Hee continued, never one to politely let sleeping dogs lie. You didn’t answer my question.

Yes, Qingzhao wrote.

Why?

Qingzhao paused, muggle ballpoint hovering above the page.

“Why?” Was the same question Fleamont had asked, “Why not?”

Because Qingzhao was an adult and a child and something else in between at the same time, and honestly that wasn’t the best thing to be when you were supposed to be the example. Because she wasn’t really very good at teaching, hadn’t ever been, and the one time she had tried it had been to a group of highly intelligent—but at the time, highly confused—Stanford undergrads when she was just finishing up her master’s. Because this entire accident was a coincidence, a mistake, and the story of Fleamont Potter would be better off without her involvement. Because she had sunken a city once, long, long ago, and that just wasn’t the kind of magic that should ever be taught ever again.

“I don’t take students,” Qingzhao had said.

“What? But that’s such a shame,” Fleamont whined, “You’re clearly the most powerful mage I’ve ever met.”

The sort of magic you’re really known for is downright infamous. You know it. I know it. I remember the headlines, Yun Hee wrote. Do you?

Well, it’s not like I have a choice, Qingzhao wrote back.

“Right then, well, let me rephrase.” Fleamont had said.

It had been a bit disconcerting, talking to Fleamont, because for all intents and purposes he was a very cheerful little boy. A bit on the shy side, but with a dash of extroverted humor that believed his more sarcastic inner thoughts. Except sometimes he delivered information that wasn’t cheerful or happy or funny at all, and in those moments it was like a switch would flip, and he would become solemn and grave and aged beyond his young years.

The words he had said next were delivered in that same solemn tone.

“You know, I was told you would say that,” Fleamont said. He pulled something out from the pocket of his night robes—a small slip of parchment—before sliding it towards her across the table. “I was also told this might change your mind.”

Qingzhao took the paper. Read it. Felt her blood go ice cold.

“Well,” she had said lightly, over the sound of her rapidly thumping heartbeat, “I suppose I do owe you a large favor.”

What do you mean? Yun Hee wrote. He didn’t blackmail you, did he?

No, Qingzhao wrote, He just knew things he shouldn’t.

——

The hike up to the Hogwarts Owlery was a long and miserable one, punctuated by the growing scent of owl shit and the growing feeling of owl droppings beneath one’s feet.

It was also, to Qingzhao’s growing consternation, punctuated by the rising sound of Fleamont’s complaint-fueled whines. Unfortunately, it seemed that even prodigious intelligence, immense magical talent, and eerie levels of knowledge he shouldn’t have, did not prevent Fleamont from acting like a normal, bratty, 12-year-old boy.

God, Qingzhao thought, listening as Fleamont complained about the steepness of the steps for what was possibly the 50th time, save me.

“Can we take a break? We’ve been doing this…doing this….Merlin…these stairs…” Fleamont’s whine trailed off, as he wheezed for air next to her, “Can’t we just ask the stairs to move us the rest of the way?”

“No,” Qingzhao said shortly.

“Brilliant,” Fleamont puffed, “Let me just…take…a small breather…”

He collapsed, sitting on the steps beneath her, bum unfortunately landing against a small mound of owl shit. Qingzhao winced, before casting a quick wandless scourgify, pausing her ascent to let Fleamont catch his breath.

“My legs…no feeling…owwww…” Fleamont moaned dramatically. He cast her a pitiful look. “Owwww…”

“Look, kid,” Qingzhao rubbed her face, “It’s either this or waxing a car. It's your choice.”

“What…is…that?”

“Right, I forgot that isn’t really a thing here. Well, essentially, a car is a horseless carriage that runs on electricity, for you I would say think magic, but for muggles, and what I’d have you do would be clean it and then wax it.” She paused, and then considered the plot of Karate Kid a bit more, “Oh, and hopefully you would learn some protagonist level life lessons while doing so, preferably after defeating all the bad guys and winning over the girl.”

Fleamont stared at her with all the sassy judgment he could muster in his small body, before pronouncing, in an almost wonderous tone, “Wow. You’re absolutely rubbish at this.”

“I think what you mean to say is, ‘You kinda suck,’” Qingzhao provided helpfully.

“You do kinda suck,” Fleamont acknowledged sadly.

“Never said I didn’t. But, might I point out that you did sign up for this,” Qingzhao shrugged. She glanced up towards the rest of the stairs, before adding cheerfully, “Come on now, you’ve rested long enough. Time to keep going.”

Fleamont let out a long, sad groan.

Qingzhao rolled her eyes, before sticking out her hand. Fleamont took it, hauling himself up on unsteady legs.

For a moment, the two restarted their ascent in blissful, complaint-free silence.

Then, because Fleamont was compulsively chatty, which overpowered the fact that he was wheezing every three seconds, “So…once…we’re down with this…what’s next?”

“For you? Stretches, and then plenty of fluids. For me? Tutoring in the library,” Qingzhao said.

“You? Tutoring?”

“Well, it’s less of a tutoring session and more me being deadweight to Riddle’s incurable genius, but you know, same thing.”

Fleamont paused to catch his breath before stating, “I don’t…like…Riddle…Merlin who designed these stairs…stairs…owwww…”

“He’s a bit of a prick, isn’t he?”

“Very much so,” Fleamont agreed, with surprising vehemence.

Qingzhao paused. Next to her, Fleamont, in a strange twist of character, began scowling heavily, before radiating an impressive amount of murderous intent. It was as cute as it was disconcerting.

Qingzhao patted his head. Much like a puppy, Fleamont brightened, his aura of anger vanishing instantly.

“So…stretches and fluids? Then what?” He asked with renewed vigor.

“We wake up tomorrow to run laps around the Black Lake. Well, you’ll be waking up, I’ll be sleeping in. Waking up early is for apprentices and suckers.”

“Am I a sucker?”

“Very much so,” Qingzhao said with a sigh.

“And after that?”

“You’ll do a few more stretches—don’t groan—” Fleamont groaned even louder. “Oh, don’t be so dramatic; I can hear you perfectly well. Now stuff it, would you? And after that, I’ll drag myself out of bed at some ungodly hour to join you.” Qingzhao paused to shudder. “Ugh, God. The things you make me do.”

“What about…what about training… sitting cross-legged under a waterfall…or, huff, or, huff ow…or holding two buckets…huff of water and…balancing on a beam?”

“Those aren’t actual training techniques,” Qingzhao remarked. “Besides,” she added, “you can barely manage the trek up to the Owlery as it is.”

“You didn’t warn…me…..why are we off to the Owlery…anyway…huff…is it just for the sheer joy of…huff…inflicting our quads…with all this exercise..?”

Qingzhao smacked him upside the head for his cheek, rolled her eyes, and said, “I’m here to fetch the latest edition of The Sorcerer’s Standard. It’s arriving today, and it’s the only paper worth reading for proper news from the Continent. You, on the other hand, are here because apprentices don’t get to ask questions.”

Fleamont whined in offense, then went quiet. Then, in a solemn tone, “Grindelwald?”

Qingzhao glanced down to meet his eyes. In the soft light of the nearby sconces, his gaze glimmered a crisp, clear white.

“Yes,” she admitted, “Something along those lines.”

——

Grindelwald Forges Pact with Japanese Imperial General in Shocking Global Alliance!

By Marie Monroe and Katrin Schmidt, reporting from Vienna

In an epic turn of events that has sent shockwaves through the wizarding world and beyond, Gellert Grindelwald, the infamous dark wizard and leader of the Global Wizarding Supremacy Movement, has forged a clandestine alliance with the prominent Japanese Imperial General Dōman Ashiya . This unexpected union represents a seismic shift in the geopolitical landscape, both magical and non-magical.

Sources close to the matter suggest the agreement was finalized during a highly secretive meeting in an undisclosed location in Vienna. Witnesses report heightened magical activity in the city, with mysterious enchantments and unusual weather phenomena accompanying the clandestine gathering. The Austrian Ministry of Magic has declined to comment, adding further intrigue to an already shadowy affair.

A Shared Vision of Supremacy

Grindelwald, notorious for his silver tongue and unyielding ambition, has long advocated for the subjugation of non-magical communities to wizarding rule. This alliance with the Japanese Imperial faction, known for its militaristic strategies and expansionist ideology, could signal a shared vision of dominance that transcends traditional boundaries of magical governance.

“Grindelwald is playing a dangerous game,” said Professor Elspeth Maurer, a leading historian at the Institute for Magical Diplomacy. “This alliance not only undermines international magical law but also risks inflaming tensions between magical and non-magical societies globally.”

A Growing Conflict

As talks between Grindelwald’s representatives and the Japanese Imperial faction continue, fighting in France shows no signs of abating. Grindelwald’s forces have pushed further south, leaving destruction in their wake as they advance toward the Mediterranean coast.

Marie Moreau, reporting live from Paris, shared the perspective of Éloïse Dubois, a graduate of Université Paris Cité and a survivor of several attacks in the region. “The local magical communities are being torn apart,” Dubois said. “Families are fleeing their homes, and even those with the means to defend themselves feel increasingly vulnerable. The French Ministry of Magic seems overwhelmed.”

Meanwhile, tensions rise in the Far East as rumors circulate about further discussions addressing the Chinese uprisings. This volatile situation could signal a broader strategy of destabilization in Asia, aimed at expanding Grindelwald’s influence.

What Comes Next?

As Grindelwald strengthens his alliances and turns his gaze eastward, the wizarding world faces an unprecedented challenge. The International Confederation of Wizards, now holding emergency talks, must weigh immediate intervention against the risks of inflaming an already volatile global landscape.

With no resolution in sight and fractures widening across the magical community, the stakes have never been higher. The question remains: will the forces of good unite to counter this dark tide, or will Grindelwald’s vision of supremacy plunge the world into chaos?

……

Red Notices Issued by the International Criminal Police Commision: Division of Magical Affairs

The Division of Magical Affairs, the magical enforcement branch of Interpol, has issued red notices for several high-profile individuals. Alerts will be dispatched to involved countries, as part of coordinated international efforts to apprehend dangerous magical criminals.

Zhang Dinghuang

Affiliations: Kuomintang (KMT), Bamboo Union (Taiwan)
Danger Level: A

Known Aliases: Zhang Fengju, Jimmy Zhang

Crimes: Illicit opium trafficking, financial fraud, organized racketeering, human trafficking

Description: 167 cm, black hair, brown eyes, distinctive birthmark beneath left eye. Weighs 65-75 kg.

Last seen: Tarvisio, Italy. Suspected to have intentions of crossing the Austrian border.

Law Enforcement Notes:

Zhang Dinghuang is known to utilize advanced Transfiguration spells and modified versions of the Polyjuice potion to alter his appearance, making identification challenging. He has been spotted in both magical and non-magical districts, frequently under assumed identities. He is also suspected of leveraging alliances within the Bamboo Union to establish smuggling routes across magical borders.

….

The Division of Magical Affairs has urged all magical law enforcement agencies, particularly those in Europe, to remain vigilant and report any sightings immediately. Zhang is considered armed and dangerous, with a propensity for using dark magic to neutralize threats.

Further updates and additional names from this red notice will follow as they are confirmed.

Chapter Text

Interacting with Qingzhao Li, Tom decided, was quite possibly the most infuriating exercise ever known to mankind.

There was no part of working with her that she did not somehow seek to ruin. When formulating equations, she groaned, fidgeted, and stared longingly at the library exit like a prisoner counting down the minutes. While reviewing concepts (concepts she should have already known, mind you), she’d interrupt him mid-sentence to brush her hair or wave at a passing yearmate—sometimes both, without so much as a warning. And when it came to writing, she insisted on using a Muggle ballpoint pen, as if using a proper quill like a normal witch was an exercise too complicated to grasp.

Worse still—because there had to be worse with Qingzhao Li involved— if Manteia was right about her so-called genius, then Qingzhao Li was being this infuriating on purpose.

“Oh shit.”

Tom watched as Li hunched over their shared paper, squinting at one of their finished proofs like a far-sighted first year who had forgotten her glasses. She winced, cursed (always quite crass, that girl), then turned to smile at him sheepishly, before pointing down at the offending “issue.”

“It’s not a minus sign. It’s a plus,” she said. “We might…need to correct this.”

“That…” Tom said slowly, “Issue is from the first half of the whole problem. If there’s an issue there, there’s an issue with the entire proof. We’d have to do at least three more hours of work. ”

“Yeah,” Li nodded, already pulling out a new roll of parchment and marking their names on the top with her Merlin-damned muggle ballpoint, “So I guess we better get comfy.”

She wiggled her bum for emphasis. Tom wondered if she had been raised by literal street rats.

“Merlin, no, let me see-“ he pulled the so-called ‘botched’ proof closer. To his further consternation, it seemed that Li had been right. There was a plus that had been mistaken for a minus sign. They would need to start over.

It was, admittedly, quite the important catch.

That was the strange thing about Li, in that it seemed that her genius was only ever utilized to further her own purposeful incompetence. He’d noticed it, now that he was looking, here and there in the brief flashes where her mask of idiocy fell. At times, she would act incompetent, appear as lazy and uninvested as ever, and then just as quickly as she sabotaged the situation she would use her genius to slightly “fix” it before things went too far. It culminated into an ending product that while lacking any major mistakes, was always just the right side of imperfect to prevent her from being outed as having any sort of above average intelligence.

It was, to put it mildly, something he simply couldn’t quite comprehend, had never tried to and would maybe never hope to, because Tom Riddle had never lived in a world where he had not sought to use every resource at his disposal for his own personal societal gain.

To intentionally self-sabotage in the pursuit of mediocrity? Now, that was a concept to him that was as infuriating as it was simply unfathomable.

“You know, personally, I’ve never been a big fan of quills,” Li said idly, rewriting their equation with the proper arithmetic, “Like, you really gotta wonder where they’re getting the feathers from. Are these things sourced sustainably? Do they like. Pluck owls like they pluck chickens? I want to know.”

A couple passing students—purebloods, by the look of them—gave her looks of quiet horror. Their eyes moved from him, to Li, to him again, their faces silent but judgmental.

Great. Not only was she making him lose his mind, she was making him lose his social capital, too.

“I mean, I don’t know, I don’t really feel comfortable using non-sustainably sourced feathers. Also, there’s like, the whole price thing too, like sure there’s re-inking quills so you don’t have to lug around an inkwell everywhere, but come on. Those cost like, two galleons. Each. I can’t afford that!” She gave him a look, “Can you afford that?”

Tom was going to kill her one day.

“Yes.” He said shortly, giving her the nastiest look known to mankind, “I can.”

Her body visibly flinched, and her face fell, but there was no fear in her large, dark eyes.

“Jeez,” she muttered, “Talk about a hard crowd. It’s all work, work, and more work with this one.”

“This is our midterm,” Tom reminded her. “You would know this if you hadn’t flounced off to London for three days.”

“Two days,” Li clarified. “I was gone the third because I ended up in detention.” At that, she gave him another sheepish smile, as if getting detention made her an academic achiever rather than an academic liability.

Merlin, this girl.

He sighed. “An achievement, surely.”

“Right?” Li laughed. “I’m lucky I wasn’t expelled. I sure thought I was going to be, though.” She finished the last bit of their corrected equation, closing her ballpoint with a click of its cheap plastic cap.

He grabbed the parchment, checking for any last minute mistakes. There were none. For once, it seemed, her arithmetic was flawless.

He gave her another once over, taking in her bored eyes and her glazed over expression. It seemed that even she had grown tired of doing such simple equations, though she still clung to her mask of idiocy with a stubbornness that was as impressive as it was tiring. She wouldn’t give it up easily, he had assumed as much in the brief time he had observed her, but he would draw her out eventually, of that, he was certain.

“You know,” he said casually, “I’m hosting a bit of a competition. An Arithmancy one. Someone told me that you might be interested in that.”

Qingzhao didn’t even look up. “I’m good.”

“The prize pot is rather large,” he cajoled, “1000 galleons, if that interests you?” Because what poor muggleborn wouldn’t be interested in such a large amount of money?

“I’m not interested in money,” said the poor muggleborn.

He blinked, baffled, eyes tracing the small traces of wear and tear on her clearly secondhand clothes. “What?”

“Yeah, I’m not interested in the money. I know I won’t win,” she continued, “Like, a pot of galleons would be nice, but it’s a bit too much effort for me to expand to a lost cause.”

“You wouldn’t even try? You might have a good chance of winning…we don’t have many entries yet,” he lied. “It is good prize money after all. Sponsored by multiple elite families too.”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Li shook her head. “Really.”

“The challenge isn’t too hard either,” he said, a bit annoyed now, “It’s a classic spell invention prompt, and as such, things like creativity and ingenuity are rewarded. There’s no year limit for a reason, we’re trying to make it more of a fun challenge than a grueling competition. ”

“Yeah I’m not, nope,” she shook her head, “That’s not really up my alley. I’m more of the following directions kind of gal. Besides,” Li added, “If I were to participate, I bet I would invent a spell that would like, I don’t know, shine shoes more effectively. ”

Tom allowed himself to rub his face, and gainfully refrained from tearing his hair out.

——

The issue with running from something was that you never quite knew when to stop.

Yun Hee raised her bucket of purified salt higher, dusting the edge of the Forbidden Forest in flakes of white crystal. The maedeup bracelet around her wrist hummed a soft autumn gold, illuminating the dark air around her in a brilliant ray of light. In her ear, a faint rustle sounded, like the jingle of a thousand bells.

She inhaled. That should do for now…

“I hope you didn’t steal that bucket of salt from the kitchens.”

Yun Hee jumped, dropping her bucket of salt, whirling to face the owner of the voice, her wand raised and ready. If she should be found now—!

There was a small moment of silence, before Qingzhao stepped forward, hands in the pockets of her ratty old nightclothes, face turned toward the light. In the glow of Yun Hee’s bracelet, her cheekbones shimmered as if adorned in dragon scale, her divine features for just a second overtaking her usual glamor.

“Gods above,” Yun Hee lowered her wand, heart pounding, “I almost killed you.” She paused, “And no, I stole this bucket of salt from the potions classrooms.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” Qingzhao teased.

She smiled at Yun Hee then, her eyes almost blue, glinting like sea glass in the sun. In Mt. Jirisan, it was said that those who curried the god’s favor also bore the weight of their gaze. At times, when she wasn’t looking and her burning heaven’s vision was turned elsewhere, Yun Hee wondered what Qingzhao had to sacrifice to earn eyes quite like that.

“You sensed them too?”

“Of course,” Qingzhao stepped forward, moving past Yun Hee to run her hands through the air. Like a weaver at her loom, her nimble fingers gradually coaxed thin strands of magic to curl through the air, shimmering like freshly spun silk. For a moment, Yun Hee was transfixed by the sheer splendor of it—this mortal girl wielding the techniques of the heavens. “Besides, I read the news. I figured the powers that be would send their dogs sniffing around here soon enough.”

Yun Hee laughed, because if she didn’t laugh she might start crying.

In Mahoutokoro, she, along with her year mates, were once taught how to command the rolling summer skies. By day, the students would leave to tumble down the slopes of the mountain side, to breathe in the humid air and move their magic in time to the bamboo stalks shifting in the breeze. By night, they would practice their skills by hunting nightingales through the muggy forests, capturing them mid-flight in nothing but spinning balls of wind and cages made of thunderclaps. At times like this, Yun Hee felt like another one of those poor, helpless birds; forever running from a danger that she had never escaped to begin with.

“Is it the Japanese? Or Grindelwald's men?” Yun Hee asked tensely, “I couldn’t tell for sure.”

Qingzhao hummed, weaving her magic threads into carps made of light. They burst from her arms in massive, fluttering schools, streaking off into the distance like trails of falling stars. Qingzhao smiled, the expression soft and found and for once not guarded, and for a moment Yun Hee was struck off guard by the sheer amount of jealousy and anger that surged through her head.

It was a great transgression, her Halmeoni once explained to her, for a mudang to lust for the heaven’s power, to hunger for what she could not hope to understand. And while Yun Hee often thought herself beyond such trivial anger, such jealousy, there was still a small part of her that ached whenever Qingzhao displayed the magical strength she would have traded anything to have.

Oh, the things she could do with such power…

“Can you see them?” Yun Hee pressed, pushing down her negative thoughts, “You must.”

“We’re all in luck,” Qingzhao murmured, her blue gaze locked fiercely into the darkness of the Forbidden Forest with an eerily unerring precision. “There’s three of them now, just beyond the forest. Hidden under quite the powerful concealment charm, and wearing cloaks marked with Grindelwald’s brand.”

Yun Hee exhaled sharply, her relief rushing out of her body like a gust of southern wind. “They’re here for Dumbledore then. I saw glimpses of his fate. He’ll have his destined battle with Grindelwald come winter, if the gods so will it.”

“The gods? Psshhh the gods couldn’t care less.” Qingzhao snorted, “No, those two…those two would find each other even in another lifetime. They’re too tightly bound by their red strings of fate.”

Yun Hee rolled her eyes at that, ignoring her best friend to inspect the wards above them. To her skilled eye, the so-called impenetrable wards of Hogwarts vibrated a buttery yellow, pulsing with a vibrancy untouched by the claws of age. She eyed the barrier critically, looking it over for weak points, gaze tracing every millimeter for wear and tear.

“Will it hold under direct assault?” Qingzhao asked, gaze turned toward the barrier too, “You’re better at determining those things than me.”

“For some time,” Yun Hee said consideringly, “There are war runes etched into it, after all.”

Years ago, the slopes of Mt. Jirisan bore wards far stronger than these—war sigils carved into stone beneath the guidance of dragons and tigers. But even then, the Onmyōji had come, laying waste to her homeland and enslaving her clan for generations to come.

“Perhaps these wards might stall Grindelwald,” Yun Hee said, because if they couldn’t he wouldn’t have sent his lapdogs, “But the Imperial Army has crushed far older magicks than these. I know that.” She sent Qingzhao a look, “You know that. Our only option is to hope that they aren’t interested in conquering new territory.”

“Hah,” Qingzhao said, but there was no laughter in her tone. “Well, I guess we should focus then on adding our own protection charms to the wards. We might need it.”

“Yes,” Yun Hee felt her stomach curl with foreboding, “I think we will.”

———

“Well met, Tom Riddle.”

Fleamont Potter slid into the library seat across from him, face solemn, hair an unholy mess. Next to them both, Malfoy stared, before quickly lowering his gaze to his textbook, turning away under the pretense of giving them some privacy.

“Potter,” Tom acknowledged, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Tom didn't have much to say about Potter the younger, for virtue of never having needed to acknowledge his existence. There were two Potters at Hogwarts after all, the normal one and the freak, and the elder did well enough for whenever he needed to interact with anyone from that family.

Nonetheless, in recent days, for some inane reason, the boy had become involved with Qingzhao Li, and for that alone, however much it irked him, Tom was grudgingly willing to hear him out.

“I hear you're holding an Arithmancy competition,” Potter said, casual, bored, the epitome of as-you-please, “I’d like to join.”

Tom raised an eyebrow, interested in where this was going, “I didn’t know you were such an enthusiast.”

“Oh, I get by,” Potter shrugged, before eyeing Tom like he would rather be anywhere but there, “Is there a sign up sheet?”

“Somewhere to be?” Tom asked lightly, prodding, summoning the sheet with a casual wave of his wand.

“Something like that,” Potter hummed, leaning forward, reading the directions with sharp hazel eyes.

“I hear you and Li are quite close these days, ” Tom said idly, “Charlus mentioned you two are often down by the lake, training.”

“We are,” Potter muttered, pausing to glance up at Tom with narrowed eyes. What Tom had done to warrant such suspicion, he didn't know, but it was clear that whatever it was was not well received. Potter stood, pushing the sign up sheet back, the dismissal obvious on his face, “Here.”

“Wait,” Tom held up his hand. Potter paused, face scrunched like he hadn’t wanted too, staring at Tom with an expression that very clearly said get on with it! “Just so I have a bit of reference—what will you make, exactly?”

At that, Potter finally brightened, before shooting Tom a look like he was the butt of some silent joke, “Oh, it’s nothing much. Just a spell that shines shoes!”

-------

Grindelwald and Japanese Allies Plant 50 Sakura Trees at Nurmengard in Symbolic Act of Unity

By Marie Monroe and Katrin Schmidt, reporting from Vienna

In a highly secretive and extraordinary display of unity, Gellert Grindelwald and his Japanese Imperial allies have overseen the planting of 50 sakura trees at Nurmengard, the dark wizard's imposing fortress. This private ceremony, attended only by Grindelwald’s most trusted supporters and select Japanese dignitaries, has stunned the wizarding world, signaling a deeper and more formidable alliance between the two factions.

The Sakura: A Gift of Strength and Legacy

The sakura trees, known for their beauty and deep cultural significance in Japan, have now been planted at the very heart of Grindelwald's stronghold. The cherry blossom, which traditionally symbolizes the transient beauty of life, now carries a darker, more ominous meaning within the context of this magical partnership.

“This gesture transcends simple diplomacy,” remarked Professor Elspeth Maurer, a leading historian at the Institute for Magical Diplomacy. “In Japan, the cherry blossom signifies the cyclical nature of life, but it is also a symbol of renewal and the pursuit of perfection. Here, it suggests that this alliance is not only about the present but about sowing the seeds for future dominance.”

The Private Ceremony at Nurmengard

The ceremony took place in the shadow of the looming Nurmengard, Grindelwald’s notorious prison and stronghold, located in the heart of Austria. The event was deliberately kept under wraps, with only a select few permitted to attend. Sources close to the event described the scene as meticulously choreographed, with members of Grindelwald's inner circle casting spells of protection around the saplings. Japanese onmyōji — practitioners of Japanese mysticism — were reportedly present, offering prayers and incantations to ensure the trees would thrive and serve as a powerful, long-lasting symbol of the alliance. Some academics claim that the trees are linked to the spiritual realm and may serve as a conduit for energies that could enhance Grindelwald's dark ambitions.

"The trees will thrive in Nurmengard, and with them, the alliance between East and West will take root," said a Japanese diplomat at the event, who chose to remain anonymous. "This is a pact forged not just in words, but in magic."

A Growing Symbol of Global Power

While the sakura trees may appear innocuous at first glance, their symbolic weight cannot be underestimated. This planting marks a significant turning point in the ongoing struggle for dominance in the magical world. Grindelwald’s relationship with the Japanese Empire, once thought to be merely a tactical alliance, now seems to be a more permanent union with far-reaching consequences.

"The sakura trees planted in Nurmengard are a marker of what’s to come," said Marie Moreau, a journalist reporting on Grindelwald’s rise. "They are not only a symbol of this dark alliance but also a statement that Grindelwald's grip on Europe — and possibly beyond — is growing stronger with every passing day."

The Growing Threat

The planting of the sakura trees has raised alarm within certain factions of the magical community. While the act may seem peaceful, it is being interpreted by some as a direct challenge to the stability of the wizarding world.

“This is not just a gift or a peaceful gesture; it’s a statement,” said Lukas Müller, a German magical historian and one of the many who fear the growing alliance. “The Japanese have long been interested in the occult, and combining their ancient spiritual practices with Grindelwald’s dark magic is a recipe for a catastrophic shift in the balance of power.”
As Grindelwald continues his campaign across Europe and Japan strengthens its ties to his cause, many wonder: will the sakura trees bloom peacefully, or will they become the harbingers of a dark and unrelenting tide of domination?

What Comes Next?

The International Confederation of Wizards has issued a statement urging caution, though no immediate action has been taken. With Grindelwald’s forces continuing their advance through southern France and whispers of further support from Japan, the question remains: how far will this dangerous alliance extend?
As the sakura trees begin to bloom in Nurmengard, the world watches closely. Will these trees stand as a peaceful monument to unity, or will they become the ominous symbols of a new, unstoppable magical order?

-----

Bingo Book #1A3866

Standard Edition. Property of the Japanese Imperial Army. Return after use.

Entry #338

Name: Fujimoto Yoko

Age: 16

Height: 166cm

Weight: 55 Kg

Eye Color: Brown

Hair Color: Black

Distinctive Features: Burn mark on left arm, runs from wrist to elbow

Affiliation/s: Korean Independence Movement, Mahoutokoro (Formerly), Fujimoto Clan (Headquartared in Mt. Jirisan)

Current Status:

Unknown – Last confirmed sighting was near Mohoutokoro on the island of Minami Iwo Jima, but intelligence suggests she may have escaped to Europe. Several reports place her in Paris, possibly aligning with European resistance groups or seeking refuge from Japanese authorities.

Wanted For: Kidnapping, Assault, Aggravated Arson

Threat Level: B, Arrest on Sight

Notable Skills:

封印術 / Fūinjutsu: Fujimoto has displayed a remarkable aptitude for barrier magic. She is capable of creating powerful defensive shields that can protect herself and allies from both physical and magical attacks. She also possesses advanced knowledge of sealing techniques, allowing her to trap enemies, weapons, or even dangerous magical forces in seals. These seals can bind her enemies temporarily or permanently, rendering them powerless.

霊召喚術 / Rei Shōkan Jutsu: Fujimoto has mastered the summoning of spirits, a rare and difficult technique. She can call upon ancestral spirits or elemental entities, each with specific abilities, such as wind, fire, or earth manipulation.