"Are you really that concerned about Malfoy?" Tris looked at Harry with a hint of suspicion.
"No. Why would I care about him?" Harry rolled his eyes, as though Tris had said something ridiculous, then asked eagerly, "I heard Malfoy's house Prefect gave him a week's detention. Is that true?"
"Huh?" Tris paused, quickly running through his memories before recalling that, at the opening feast, Draco had broken Prefect Farley's rules, and she had said she would give him detention.
Draco clearly hadn't believed her at the time, and neither had Tris.
Whatever else might be said, the Malfoy family still had considerable influence in the wizarding world. Very few people were willing to offend them. Even Snape seemed to have a special connection with the Malfoy family, which earned Draco a little preferential treatment.
Tris had thought it unlikely that a Prefect would give Draco a week's detention over a single remark.
Yet reality had proved both Draco and Tris very wrong. From the first day of term onward, Draco had unfailingly had to report to the dungeons for detention after his evening classes.
Three hours every day.
At first, Draco had refused to accept it, shouting that he would go to his father and his Head of House.
Yet on the second and third days, he had still gone to the detention room as usual. During that time, Draco must have contacted his father, Lucius, or his mother, Narcissa, and he must have spoken to his Head of House, Snape, about it.
Communication in the wizarding world might not have been as convenient as it would be in the information age twenty years later, but it certainly wasn't so inefficient that a reply would take three or four days.
That was rather intriguing.
Possibility one: Lucius, Narcissa, and Snape had received Draco's plea for help but done nothing.
Possibility two: Lucius and Narcissa had acted, but Snape had turned them down.
Possibility three: Lucius, Narcissa, and Snape had all acted, but Farley had turned them down.
Whichever it was, this Farley was quite something.
After noticing this, Tris had made a point of asking around about Farley. What he learned, however, was a little hard to make sense of.
The Farley family wasn't a prominent family in Britain's wizarding world. In fact, it was scarcely known at all. Farley's parents were both perfectly ordinary wizards, the sort nobody had ever heard of.
Yet Farley herself-perhaps thanks to some genetic mutation-had displayed extraordinary talent from the moment she started school.
She had shown astonishing aptitude in both Charms and Potions, and was the only student Snape had praised in two consecutive lessons over the past decade.
Snape praised students in class no more than thirty times a year, and at least twenty-five of those were sarcastic.
That alone showed how outstanding Farley was.
After Farley became a Prefect the previous year, Snape had handed almost complete authority over running the house to her. Whatever punishment Farley imposed, no matter how many objections came from elsewhere, he firmly supported her.
Although Farley wielded considerable power in Slytherin, she was extremely fair and impartial. Even students she had punished, while naturally resentful, could rarely claim that their punishment had been wrong or unreasonable.
Farley had an excellent reputation not only in Slytherin, but in the other houses as well. She didn't casually deduct points or punish students. But whenever she caught someone genuinely doing something wrong, her punishment was always justified. She never favored one side because of their house.
That was fairly rare among Prefects.
By now, more than half the students across the four houses believed that, next school year, Farley would naturally become Female Head Boy as a seventh-year. There was simply no rival who could match her.
Could a student leader really wield such influence just by being outstanding? Tris was honestly rather surprised, especially since she had managed to satisfy Snape.
Could this Farley look like Lily Evans?
Once Hagrid gives Harry that photo album, I can take a look...
While these stray thoughts ran through his head, Tris answered Harry's question. "Malfoy broke the rules on the day we were Sorted, so the Prefect punished him. He's still serving detention in the dungeons."
"So it's actually true?" Ron waved his arms in delight.
Then a shout from the librarian, Madam Pince, made him jump-though the shout was transmitted by magic, so only Ron could hear it.
Ron was so startled that he fell straight under the table, while Tris, Harry, and the others beside him had no idea what had happened.
Padma left after finishing her questions. Her friends were at another table a short distance away.
As Padma headed back, Tris glanced over and saw several girls making faces in their direction-or, more precisely, at Padma as she returned.
Hmm. Probably thinking up some gossip?
Tris didn't know much about girls, but he could more or less guess what they were talking about.
Still, it wasn't anything he needed to worry about. Pretty as Padma was, she was only eleven. Tris might have been a bit of a pervert, but not to that extent.
A heavy rain fell early on Friday morning.
Although it rained often in Britain, it was usually a fine drizzle. Even when it rained in the morning, it didn't interfere much with Tris's workout.
Today's rain was so heavy that going outside was out of the question, leaving Tris no choice but to run inside Hogwarts Castle.
Harry and Ron had apparently assumed that Tris would take a break in such heavy rain, so they hadn't even left their dormitory. Tris couldn't get into the Gryffindor common room, either, so he had no way to drag them out.
Still, he was ready to give them a thorough mocking after class.
There was no need to do it during the lesson. They had Potions Class today, and Tris reckoned his shampoo-averse Head of House could give Harry a thorough mocking all on his own.
As for Ron, who would be left out, Tris would make it up to him twice over.
Mockery from his own younger brother was bound to be particularly lethal.
After showering, Tris changed into clean, dry clothes and headed to the Potions classroom in the dungeons, where he ran into Harry and Ron at the door.
Harry, who had no idea what awaited him in this lesson, seemed quite cheerful. He greeted Tris with a smile. "Tris, the rain was too heavy today, so Ron and I didn't go. You didn't go outside either, did you?"
"I didn't go outside," Tris said, first nodding, then shaking his head. "I ran inside Hogwarts Castle. I'd been thinking I could show you two around the different parts of Hogwarts Castle while we were at it."
"Huh?" Harry and Ron were both dumbfounded.
Tris's approach had clearly caught them off guard.
Ron instinctively hunched his shoulders, already bracing himself for Tris's mockery and scorn.
Of the two of them, he was the older brother, and Tris was the younger.
Yet over the past ten years, Tris had always been the steady one, the one who seemed more like the older brother. Plenty of times, Ron had impulsively tried to reclaim his authority as the elder sibling.
So far, however, he had never truly succeeded.
To Ron's surprise, Tris said nothing more. He merely pointed at the classroom door. "Let's go in. Class is about to start."
"Huh?" Ron froze, not expecting Tris to let it pass so easily.
Harry was just as surprised.
Although they had only known each other for a little over a month, Harry had already learned just how sharp Tris's tongue could be when he got going.
Had he turned over a new leaf today?
Or was Tris in an especially good mood?
Could it be...?
Ron and Harry exchanged a glance, suddenly thinking of a possibility.
Before yesterday's Transfiguration lesson, that pretty Slytherin girl had come to see Tris. She seemed to have been asking about running. Could the two of them have gone running together?
Ron was a little envious of how popular Tris seemed to be with girls, but he was also quite used to it.
They were twins, but since they were fraternal twins, they looked nothing alike. Tris was much better-looking than he was, and had always been a little more popular growing up-the Weasley family had poor relations with the pure-blood clans, but still socialized with some ordinary wizarding families.
Whenever they visited a family with young girls, those girls always liked Tris a little more than Ron.
If that had been all there was to it, Ron might not have been quite so calm.
But since school started, he and Tris had been in different houses and spent less time together. Meanwhile, he had Harry beside him!
Harry was even more popular with girls than Tris-or at least attracted more attention!
In less than a week, Ron had already watched more than twenty girls approach Harry to talk, hoping to get to know him.
And they came from every year.
By comparison, Tris, who only had girls from their own year occasionally approach him, really couldn't stir up any strong feelings in Ron.
The gossip, on the other hand, interested him much more.
Unaware that his troublemaking older brother was busy speculating about his love life, Tris ushered the two of them into the classroom, glanced around, then headed to the front row and plopped down beside Hermione.
That move made quite a few students already in the classroom frown, most of them Slytherins.
As far as they were concerned, they could accept Tris being close to Ron and Harry. Being close to Hermione, however, was going too far.
Almost none of them would say the word "Mudblood" aloud, but more than a few were thinking it.
The Gryffindors were a little better, though many of them also looked surprised.
None of that surprised Tris. What did surprise him was that even Hermione refused to give him a friendly look. When he sat beside her, she huffed, rolled her eyes, and ignored him.
"What's wrong? When did I offend you?" Tris was puzzled, but since he never wasted energy agonizing over things, he didn't beat around the bush and simply asked.
"Did you let Harry and Ron copy your homework?" Hermione asked coldly.
"Ah..." Tris froze. He really hadn't expected that to be the reason.
That made things a little awkward.
Just as Tris was struggling to come up with an excuse to bluff his way through, the classroom door was shoved open from outside, and Snape, clad in a black cloak with greasy hair hanging down, swept into the classroom like a gust of wind.