Chapter 22: Goblin History
Slanted rays of afternoon sunlight bled through the gaps in the heavy velvet curtains, pooling lazily across the scuffed wooden floorboards of the History of Magic classroom. Thick motes of dust hung suspended in the golden shafts, spinning in a slow, hypnotic waltz.
Up on the podium, Professor Binns—looking considerably paler than a fresh corpse—hovered semi-transparently in mid-air. He droned on, reciting his ancient notes with the mechanical, soul-draining monotony of a fingernail dragging across brittle parchment.
"...Therefore, in 1612, a rather unpleasant meeting took place at a Goblin inn on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. Ragnar the First believed that wizardkind lacked sufficient respect for the silverwork manufactured by his brethren, and this unfortunate misunderstanding eventually led to..."
His voice operated like a rusted, poorly maintained vacuum cleaner, methodically siphoning every last ounce of oxygen and vitality from the room.
Down below, the Slytherin first-years were enduring a brutal test of human endurance. The entire class had succumbed to a state of collective, open-eyed coma.
Vincent Crabbe had surrendered entirely. He was slumped forward, his massive head pillowed on his arms, a thick string of drool pooling onto the pristine cover of his 'A History of Magic' textbook as he let out a wet, rhythmic snore.
Gregory Goyle sat with his eyes wide open, but his glassy stare was completely vacant; his soul had clearly vacated the premises, likely drifting off toward the kitchens or somewhere else entirely.
Even Draco Malfoy, who usually guarded his aristocratic decorum with his life, was currently propping his heavy skull up with one hand. His eyelids drooped as though lead weights had been stitched into his lashes. His quill twitched unconsciously, dragging wobbly, erratic circles across his parchment that resembled a disintegrating broomstick.
Only one person remained entirely lucid.
Tamara Riddle sat dead center in the front row, her posture rigidly perfect. The quill in her hand scratched furiously against the parchment, the sharp rustling sound echoing her blistering pace.
But she certainly wasn't taking notes.
Had anyone dared to lean over and peek at her desk, they would have seen a brutal massacre of ink. After every single sentence Professor Binns uttered, she slashed a violent 'X'across the page, followed by jagged annotations:'Rubbish', 'Stupid embellishment', or 'Completely illogical'.
'Misunderstanding?'Tamara carved the word so deeply into the parchment that the nib nearly tore through, then struck it out with a vicious slash.'This is the most ridiculous joke I have ever had the displeasure of hearing,' she sneered inwardly.
As the Dark Lord who had once held the entire Wizarding World by the throat, she knew this era of history intimately. Goblins. Those greedy, base, subterranean rats with their spindly fingers and perpetually filthy faces. They never waged war for something as lofty as dignity. They never rebelled over mere misunderstandings.
There was only ever one driving force behind their uprisings. Greed.
They coveted the wands of wizardkind. They hungered for a power that their inferior, mud-dwelling bloodlines could never truly master. Yet here was Professor Binns, a doddering old fool who had been dead for Merlin knew how many centuries, actively whitewashing their blatant acts of slaughter and thievery, dressing it up as a tragic failure of communication.
"...Both factions missed the optimal window for peace negotiations due to sheer arrogance," Professor Binns droned on, his hypnotic cadence unwavering. "If the Wizarding Council of that era could have simply yielded a single step and formally acknowledged the Goblins' ownership of their silver, perhaps that riot, which plagued the countryside for three months, would never have occurred..."
"Ha."
A short, cold, and razor-sharp scoff abruptly severed the deathly silence of the classroom.
The laugh wasn't particularly loud, but in a room suffocated by nothing but Binns's endless buzzing, it rang out like a gunshot. It was a needle popping a heavily inflated balloon.
Professor Binns stopped.
His vacant, pearly-white eyes, magnified behind thick spectral glasses, shifted with agonizing slowness. He peered through the floating dust motes, his gaze settling on the student in the front row who had dared to make a sound.
"...Is there a problem? Miss?" Professor Binns asked, his voice dragging. He rarely retained any impression of his students; to him, the living were nothing more than a temporary, shifting backdrop to his eternal lectures.
The sudden break in the monotony jolted the drowsy Slytherins awake. Draco's head snapped up, nearly slipping off his hand. He hastily wiped a suspicious trace of moisture from the corner of his mouth, blinking at Tamara in utter bewilderment.
Tamara set her quill down with a deliberate, quiet click.
She rose to her feet with fluid elegance, planting both hands firmly on the edge of her desk. Her pitch-black eyes locked directly onto the semi-transparent ghost hovering above.
"I have a very big problem, Professor," Tamara said. Her voice was crisp, perfectly modulated, and laced with an unquestionable, heavy authority. "You just stated that the 1612 rebellion occurred because wizards refused to acknowledge Goblin ownership of silver products, and that the entire conflict was born of a misunderstanding. Is that correct?"
"Er... yes." Professor Binns blinked, seemingly entirely unequipped to handle a student who actually listened, let alone one who dared to challenge him mid-lecture.
"I do not believe that is correct," Tamara cut him off, her tone dropping to a glacial chill.
A collective gasp rippled through the first-years.
"The fundamental cause of the Goblin rebellions was never about silver. Nor was it about dignity." Tamara stepped smoothly out from behind her desk, pacing slowly into the center aisle. Her pristine black robes billowed behind her like the leading edge of a storm cloud. Every single eye in the room was glued to her. "It was because they wanted wands."
She turned on her heel, facing the cluster of wide-eyed, bewildered Slytherins, and proceeded to deliver their first true lesson in history.
"Goblins possess their own unique brand of magic. They can forge metal applies and weave enchantments into steel that even we cannot replicate—but that does not mask one glaring, pathetic fact." Tamara raised a single, pale finger, wagging it slightly. "They are jealous. Bitterly jealous, because they are forbidden by law from wielding wands."
"They watch wizards channel magic, they watch us dictate the rules of the world, while they are left to hammer away in the dark, damp earth. Over the centuries, that jealousy fermented into a toxic brew of greed and hatred."
"In 1612, Ragnar the First did not march to that inn to negotiate. He arrived with three hundred fully armed Goblin guards, intending to ambush and kidnap the most renowned wandmaker of the era—Gervase Ollivander."
"That was the true catalyst for the rebellion."
Draco Malfoy stared at her, his silver eyes wide. He had never read a single word of this in their assigned textbooks, but his father, Lucius, had voiced nearly identical sentiments over firewhisky in the Malfoy Manor drawing room—speaking at length about the inherent inferiority and insatiable greed of non-human beasts.
Tamara pivoted sharply, her dark gaze piercing straight into Professor Binns's hollow, ghostly eyes.
"Professor, peace is never signed with ink at a negotiation table."
"If the Wizarding Council of that year had not chosen the coward's path of compromise, but had instead made those greedy creatures understand exactly who the true masters of this land are, the subsequent rebellions would never have happened."
The classroom was so silent one could hear a pin drop.
Every breath was held, every gaze darting between the eleven-year-old girl and the floating spirit. Yet, Professor Binns did not look flustered, nor did he appear offended by the blatant insubordination as everyone expected.
Instead, he stopped shuffling his endless stack of dull notes. For the first time in perhaps decades, those pearly-white eyes behind the thick lenses truly focused. He looked at Tamara. His gaze was incredibly still—as calm and unreadable as a pool of ancient, stagnant water. It was a look of deep indifference, the gaze of an entity that had passively witnessed thousands of years of empires rising and crumbling to dust.
"The 1612 Wizengamot Trial Records, Volume Seven, Page Forty-Two," Professor Binns stated suddenly. His voice retained its characteristic monotone, but it was suddenly laced with a razor-sharp precision that sent a collective chill down the students'spines. "As well as the personal accounts detailed within'The Secret History of the Ollivander Family'."
"You are correct, Miss Riddle."
Professor Binns drifted slowly downward, passing effortlessly through the solid wood of the podium, and came to a halt directly in front of Tamara.
"The official Ministry records of the era did indeed cover up the fact that Ragnar the First attempted to abduct the wandmaker. In order to maintain the incredibly fragile financial stability of the wizarding economy in the aftermath of the war, the Ministry of Magic chose to officially categorize this bloody period of history as a mere 'cultural conflict'."
The Slytherins sat paralyzed in shock.
So the old ghost knew all along!
"But history textbooks exist to do more than simply record the objective truth. They also serve to maintain the current order." Professor Binns stared down at Tamara, his translucent eyes seemingly peering straight through the facade of the eleven-year-old girl, catching a glimpse of some dark, familiar, and highly dangerous quality lurking beneath.
"The vast majority of people only require the final results and the dates. As for those bloody, visceral motives... the cruel, unvarnished reality of human nature..." Professor Binns let out a faint, reedy sigh, a hollow sound unique to the dead. "...That belongs strictly to the world of politicians, not the required coursework for first-year students."
"However."
The ghost's tone shifted, a faint ripple in the stagnant water.
"Given that you have clearly sought out and read those original, unredacted dossiers—texts that are entirely absent from the syllabus and were intentionally buried by time..."
"This spirit of digging for the historical truth is worth encouraging."
"Five points to Slytherin."
With that, Professor Binns floated backward, drifting up to the podium and instantly reverting into the mindless, script-reading automaton that only knew how to recite dates.
"Now, let us turn to page fourteen and continue with the signing date of the Greengrass Treaty..."
Tamara narrowed her eyes slightly, studying the ghost who had smoothly returned to his mind-numbing drone.
'This old fossil,'she thought coldly.'He's doing it on purpose. He knows exactly what happened, yet he actively chooses to let generation after generation of students grow up as ignorant fools.'
"Thank you, Professor," she murmured politely, taking her seat.
The bell signaling the end of class finally chimed.
As Tamara neatly packed her parchment and books into her bag and stepped out into the stone corridor, Draco Malfoy was the first to scramble after her.
"Tamara! You were absolutely brilliant just now!" Draco practically vibrated with excitement, a flush of color high on his pale cheeks. "I have to write to my father and tell him about this! He's always said the current History of Magic textbooks have been butchered beyond recognition by those bleeding-heart fools who preach equality for all beings!"
"It was nothing, Draco." Tamara clutched her books to her chest, her pace measured, her tone perfectly flat. "Recognizing the truth of history is simply the only way to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past."
She paused at the top of the stairwell, glancing back over her shoulder at the small entourage of Slytherins trailing in her wake.
"When you hold power in the future—and I mean, if you ever get the chance to wield it..." Her dark eyes glinted with a terrifying, ancient coldness. "Never try to reason with the greedy."
"Crushing them is the only mercy they deserve."
Leaving the stunned first-years in her wake, she turned and descended the stairs, her black robes sweeping the stone.
In the shadowed corner of the corridor, a sleek black cat named Nagini crouched in the gloom. The feline watched the entire exchange, stretched its front paws, and let out a long, thoroughly bored yawn.
"Meow."
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