Kane: ???
Hagrid nodded. "Even though your preparations, along with Harry, Ron, and, oh, Mr. Longbottom's cooperation, were practically flawless, the greenhouses contain a lot of dangerous plants, such as Mandrakes and Biting Cabbages. So Dumbledore specifically placed a special spell on them."
Kane picked up the rock cake he had dropped onto his plate. However, because his eyes were fixed firmly on Hagrid's face, he failed to notice that what he had picked up was not the rock cake at all, but a shard of the white porcelain plate.
"So? What exactly does this spell do?"
Hagrid paused to consider his wording. "Simply put, the spell can record anything that happens inside the greenhouse. Whenever necessary, it can replay everything that happened there."
Crunch!
Kane bit a chunk straight out of the white porcelain plate, which had been fired at twelve hundred degrees Celsius.
"Great. Just great. They've even invented magical surveillance..." Kane sighed dejectedly. "Dumbledore set me up."
He lowered his head, only then noticing the chunk he had bitten out of the plate.
......
"So none of you were planning to warn me?" Kane looked around at Harry, Ron, and Hagrid, only to find all three staring at him in shock.
"You..." Ron pointed at Kane, then at the plate in his hand. "Did you just... eat that?"
Only then did Kane realize there was still a mouthful of silicon dioxide in his mouth. He hurried over to a rubbish bin and spat it all out.
Then he picked up the rock cake again. "Once I finish this rock cake, I'm going to Dumbledore to accept my execution."
Hagrid waved his hands awkwardly. "It's really not that serious."
Kane nodded. "I know. I'm joking."
With that, he viciously bit down on the rock cake.
.........
Under Hagrid's expectant gaze and Harry and Ron's horrified stares, a thin trickle of blood appeared at the corner of Kane's mouth.
"Are these rock cakes poisonous?" Ron cried in alarm, immediately tossing his own onto the table.
Kane released his bite and shook his head. With a look of acceptance, he slipped the completely undamaged rock cake into his pocket.
"It's just too hard. My gums..."
He slowly stood up. "I'd better get going. Before I see Dumbledore, I need to stop by the hospital wing and figure out how to heal my teeth... Meatballs would work too, I suppose. They restore Health either way..."
The three people remaining in Hagrid's hut listened as Kane's voice grew farther and fainter until his muttering eventually sounded like some bizarre delirium, making the whole thing extremely unsettling.
In the end, Hagrid was the one who tried to revive the mood.
"Why don't you two try some of my biscuits? They're so good they'll make you bleed!"
As he spoke, he pushed the plate of biscuits toward Harry and Ron.
Harry and Ron, however, stared at the porcelain plate Kane had unconsciously bitten apart, then at the blood from his gums left behind after his attempt on the rock cake...
It was very difficult to agree with Hagrid's assessment.
Unlike the three people in Hagrid's hut, who were now occupied with the pointless question of how one might use tooth enamel to attack diamond, Kane had already arrived at Dumbledore's office.
Unfortunately, Madam Pomfrey was nowhere to be found, and Kane had been unable to locate a potion for treating teeth anywhere on the enormous shelves in the hospital wing, so he had simply come to Dumbledore first.
The Headmaster's office was usually quite peaceful. At the moment, for example, only Kane and Dumbledore were present, assuming one ignored the portraits of former headmasters hanging behind Dumbledore.
"Well, do you know why I asked you here?" Dumbledore asked with a smile.
"Isn't it because I stole a Mandrake?" Looking at Dumbledore pretending not to know the answer, Kane could only see a lonely old man desperately trying to make conversation, so he decided not to play along.
"I specifically asked Hagrid not to tell you. I wanted to give you a fright." Dumbledore put on a disappointed expression, then looked at Kane again. "In that case, hand over the Mandrake. That plant truly is far too dangerous."
Kane sighed and pulled the Mandrake from his pocket, the same Mandrake that had dropped dead in the Great Hall the instant he had pulled it from the soil, and placed it in front of Dumbledore.
"This is... a Mandrake?"
Dumbledore stared in astonishment at the thoroughly dead, ugly little radish in front of him.
That wasn't right.
Admittedly, the last time he had attended Herbology class had been more than a hundred years ago, but he was quite certain Mandrakes were not supposed to look like this.
And yet the magical fluctuations coming from the plant made it unmistakably clear that it really was a Mandrake...
"So you used that strange shadow ability of yours to turn this Mandrake into this... dead radish?" Dumbledore curiously poked the Mandrake with one finger.
"Mm-hmm. It's actually pretty useful. You can use it to craft a magical item that puts other creatures to sleep. It's called a Pan Flute," Kane explained, saving Dumbledore the trouble of continuing to probe for answers.
Dumbledore leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers together. His expression might as well have had I don't believe a word of that written across it.
He then asked, "Does it have any other uses?"
"Eating it," Kane replied.
Dumbledore nodded. "Do you need a knife and fork?"
"Not at all."
Kane spoke as he familiarly made his way toward the bedroom.
"There isn't a dining table in my bedroom, Kane," Dumbledore said in confusion as he followed.
Then he watched Kane sit down on the lower bunk of the bunk bed, stuff the entire Mandrake into his mouth, chew it a few times, and promptly topple backward.
In that instant, Dumbledore became certain that Kane had not been lying about the Mandrake being capable of producing an item that could put other creatures to sleep.
Because right now, he was beginning to feel a little...
Thud.
Evening.
Kane strode energetically back into the Gryffindor common room and was immediately surrounded by a huge crowd of young witches and wizards, all chattering at once.
Most of their questions boiled down to why he had disappeared during the afternoon Flying class. If Kane had been there, Slytherin definitely would not have dared bully Neville so badly.
A few others had different concerns.
Harry and Ron, for example, asked something much more practical.
"Professor Dumbledore didn't expel you, did he?" Harry asked quietly.
Not far away, Hermione was reading a book. She had already learned the true reason for Kane's disappearance from Neville in the hospital wing. Most likely, the whole business about stealing the Mandrake had finally blown up in his face.
Still, considering Kane's status as one of the magical world's privileged elite, there was almost no chance he would be expelled over something like this. They would probably make an enormous fuss about it, then let him off with a slap on the wrist.
Well, that was what happened when you were part of the elite. They couldn't actually expel him, could they?
Even so, if he received some halfway reasonable punishment, it would at least send a message to disadvantaged people like them. Hogwarts, as an abstract institution, still recognized right and wrong, and Dumbledore, as the flesh-and-blood person representing it, could still distinguish between the two.
It was rotten, but perhaps not rotten all the way to the roots. There might still be a chance to fix things in the future.
Hermione could live with that.
Just as she was congratulating herself on the accuracy of her deduction, Kane spoke.
"Of course not. I just took a nap there, that's all. Then Dumbledore gave me some private tutoring for my Summoning Charm study plan and asked me to help him with a few things."
As Kane spoke, he pulled his wand from his pocket and gave it a gentle wave. Through a combination of the Summoning Charm and his shadow abilities, a toad with glowing eyes appeared before him and dropped to the floor.
Kane looked toward Harry, the closest person to him.
The toad seemed to understand what he wanted. Its tongue shot out at tremendous speed and gave Harry a heavy lick.
It did very little damage, and honestly, it was not even particularly insulting.
Harry's wand, however, had somehow been licked straight out of his possession and into the toad's grasp.
Watching this, Hermione was stunned. Part of her instinctively felt happy for Kane. She was not a petty person, after all. Seeing a classmate learn new magic was naturally something worth celebrating.
The remaining ninety percent of her emotions, however, consisted entirely of outrage at Hogwarts and the magical world for their blatant unfairness.
At this point, they could not even be bothered to pretend he was not receiving special treatment.
Change?
Fix things?
Fix my arse!
Hogwarts and this stinking magical world were probably rotten straight down to the roots.
If she stayed even one extra day after finishing her seven years at Hogwarts, she would spell Granger backwards!
Having silently made that vow, Hermione sprang angrily from the sofa and stormed out of the Gryffindor common room.
She needed some fresh air so she could temporarily forget about class conflict and turn her attention to some other source of happiness close at hand.
Kane and the other two did not notice anything unusual about Hermione.
Harry, meanwhile, snatched his wand back from the toad.
The next instant, the toad vanished with a pop, leaving absolutely nothing behind.
"What about Dumbledore?" Ron asked. "What did he ask you to do?"