The Great Hall's ceiling still showed the same gloomy gray-blue as the sky outside — that damp, April chill that never quite left the Highlands. Harry Potter poked at the mashed potatoes on his plate. He could feel the tension crawling across the long tables like invisible smoke.
This wasn't the usual house-rivalry nonsense — hexes in the corridors or shouted insults. This pressure came from somewhere colder: the heavy silence at the staff table and the low, clipped conversations at the tables around them. It squeezed the air right out of your lungs.
His eyes flicked toward the staff table.
Dumbledore was calmly slicing a piece of smoked ham, but the seat to his left — the one that should have been Quirrell's — was now occupied by a middle-aged man Harry had never seen before. The guy wore expensive robes that somehow still looked uncomfortable on him, and the badge pinned to his chest screamed Ministry of Magic.
"That's Chilton," Hermione whispered, voice tight. "From the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures." She hadn't talked much lately, so even this short sentence felt heavy. Her hands were locked around the book in her lap like it was a lifeline. "He showed up at two this afternoon. I saw him carrying a stack of sealed Ministry documents straight into Professor McGonagall's office."
"Is he here for Norbert?" Ron's face had gone a sickly green under the gray light. His hands shook under the table. "Damn it, Charlie's letter still hasn't come back. If they move now —"
"They can't move without following procedure," Hermione said firmly.
The Ministry under Cornelius Fudge wasn't the full-blown dictatorship it would become under Umbridge later. In these early days it ran on a fragile bureaucratic balance. They feared Dumbledore's reputation, but they also loved flexing their little rules and paperwork to remind everyone who really ran things.
Just like Lucius Malfoy had planned.
They wouldn't storm the castle with Aurors — that would be political suicide. They sent inspection teams.
Right then, a purple paper airplane swooped through the arched ceiling and landed neatly in front of Chilton.
Harry noticed Dumbledore's knife pause for half a second.
That tiny hesitation felt heavier than it should have.
"Look at the Slytherins," Ron muttered, nudging him.
Draco Malfoy was tearing open a croissant with slow, deliberate elegance. No sneering. No loud taunts. Just a calm, almost pitying little smile when his eyes met Harry's.
That polite confidence was worse than any insult. It said I already won.
Draco wiped his fingers on a napkin with the same careful grace his father used at Ministry galas.
He wasn't the same kid who'd panicked in the mud outside Hagrid's hut anymore.
"Look at Potter's face," Draco said loud enough for the Gryffindor table to hear, slicing into his fried egg. "That house-elf-being-choked expression. I bet he's praying right now that some miracle will make smuggling a dragon stop being a felony on the books."
"Don't be ridiculous, Draco." Pansy Parkinson laughed her sharp little laugh and leaned into him, eyes shining with adoration. "The Ministry doesn't care about miracles. They care about rules. And rules are usually explained by big important people like your father."
"Exactly, Pansy." Draco set down his fork. "Father wrote last night that since our Headmaster likes to call everything an 'accidental fire,' the Ministry has no choice but to step in and help him investigate Hogwarts' fire-safety standards."
"After all," he added, turning to Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini with a smug little smirk, "Hogwarts isn't above the law, is it?"
The boys around him chuckled.
"You know the best part?" Draco lowered his voice just enough to sound conspiratorial. "The more Dumbledore tries to protect that half-giant and the Boy Who Lived, the tighter the noose gets. If we catch them red-handed at the Astronomy Tower tomorrow night, it stops being schoolboy mischief. It becomes international black-market smuggling and harboring a prohibited creature. Even the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot can't spin that one away in front of witnesses."
"I can already picture Hagrid being dragged off to Azkaban," Crabbe grunted, "and Potter losing his Seeker spot and getting shipped back to the Muggles."
Goyle laughed that thick, stupid laugh.
"The show will be better than any Quidditch final," Blaise added, swirling his pumpkin juice.
Draco raised his goblet toward Harry in a mock toast across the hall.
"Enjoy your dinner, Potter," he thought. "It might be one of your last decent ones at Hogwarts."
Harry stared at his plate, fists clenched under the table.
"We can't wait anymore," Ron whispered. "Hagrid looked at me in the corridor earlier. He was crying. He thinks he can save Norbert, but he doesn't know the Ministry's already circling."
"Saturday night," Harry said through gritted teeth, eyes on the rolling clouds above. "We run ahead of their procedure. Charlie's contacts will be at the Astronomy Tower. Once the dragon's gone, there's no evidence left."
"Evidence?"
Lucian pushed his plate away and stood from the Ravenclaw table.
He looked at Harry, then at Draco's triumphant smirk, then at the Ministry official shuffling through paper airplanes at the staff table.
In his eyes, this whole game had reached its most boring stage.
One side was an aging god clinging to crumbling rules. The other was a pack of vultures testing how far they could push.
And these kids thought they were the ones who could break the board.
"Is this what they call 'fighting people is endless fun'?" Lucian thought to himself.
He walked out of the Great Hall without another word.
Behind him, another purple paper airplane lifted off and headed toward the dungeons.
That one was addressed to Snape.
The whole castle was marching quietly toward Saturday midnight.
Rain began tapping against the stained-glass windows.
And up on the Astronomy Tower, the darkness waited.