The staff room smelled like old ink and tea leaves someone had forgotten to clear out. Cassian sat with one ankle hooked over the other, a pen dangling between his fingers and a half-finished draft in front of him. Bathilda Bagshot had pulled up a chair beside him, leaning close, pointing at one of the questions with a disapproving wrinkle of her nose.

  "We'll change these," she said, sliding him the revised draft.

  "Eh," Cassian said, squinting at the third page. "Isn't this a bit much?"

  Bagshot didn't flinch. "Your exams are too easy."

  Cassian blinked. "That's the point, isn't it?"

  She gave him the kind of look usually reserved for idiots and poorly transfigured hedgehogs.

  "Every year," she said, "I tell you to make them more challenging. Every year, most of your class gets O's."

  He gave her a grin and a thumbs-up like she'd handed him a compliment. "Exactly. If the point of education is to pass, they'll focus on passing. If it's not about passing, they'll focus on the class. Maybe learn something."

  She leaned forward slightly. "And if they don't care at all?"

  He shrugged. "Then I've nothing to teach them anyway. They'll memorise, they'll regurgitate, and they'll forget by summer. What's the point?"

  Bagshot looked two seconds away from smacking him with her folder.

  Across the room, Bathsheda had set up shop near the wide windows, half-buried in a stack of books, parchment spread across her lap. She sat next to Goshawk and Selena, who looked about as invested in the conversation as anyone forced to listen to Cassian and Bagshot argue for the fourth year running.

  Fleur, sitting between them, looked mildly alarmed. "Is something wrong?"

  Selena didn't glance up from her notes. "Don't worry. They do this every year."

  Cassian underlined something on the test sheet with exaggerated care. "What's next, you want me to include a trick question about the birth order of the Bloody Baron's cousins?"

  Bagshot scoffed. "If it'd make the exam up to the Ministry standards, yes."

  Cassian leaned back in his chair. "You are a menace."

  "Better than being a babysitter in a waistcoat."

  "Excuse me, this waistcoat has personality."

  She sniffed. "So does a boggart."

  Cassian grinned again, flipping the test sheet to the next page. "Still not changing it."

  Bagshot snatched the pen out of his hand. "I'll do it myself."

  He let her, watching with interest as she started scratching notes in the margins. "You're going to break them."

  "Good."

  Cassian took her quill and tapped it on the table, unbothered. "Besides," he went on, "I'd rather have a room full of overconfident teenagers than ones afraid to think out loud."

  Bagshot arched a brow. "You'll have both."

  "Well, then at least I know who needs extra biscuits."

  He turned another page, held it up between two fingers. "This one's got three different answer paths depending on how you interpret the Nile River Reversal War's root logic. Isn't that a bit cruel?"

  Bagshot didn't look up. "That one's mine."

  He blinked. "Of course it is."

  "And it's meant to be cruel."

  Cassian sighed, laid the page down with a bit too much force. "You expect them to memorise which tribal envoy wore which ceremonial earring on what moon cycle, instead of, say... the actual war?"

  "They'll need those details," she said, still scribbling notes.

  "They'll need the cause. The spells involved. Who used what where. What it broke. Not which priest kissed which warwife at the treaty fire."

  "That's history."

  He gave her a look. "No, that's gossip with a title."

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  Bagshot finally paused her quill. "It's the difference between cause and context."

  "Context," he said, gesturing vaguely at the pile, "is fine. This is trivia. Might as well test them on wand lengths while we're at it."

  Bagshot nudged the paper back at him. "If they want O's, they should earn them."

  "They're fifteen, not books."

  She started flipping through his questions with a faintly smug air.

  Cassian leaned back. "Alright then. Explain to me how knowing the exact number of oxen traded between the Mero? clans helps you counter a blood-silt curse."

  Bagshot didn't hesitate. "Because the oxen weren't just livestock. They were tether-markers. The numbers defined magical ownership. And silt magic responds to memory-binding, not blood volume."

  He stared at her.

  She tapped the parchment. "That's in the notes."

  "It's in your notes," he muttered. "Not in theirs."

  "Then you should teach them better."

  Cassian sucked in a sharp breath. "How dare ye."

  Bagshot closed her eyes for a beat. "Fine. I shouldn't have said that." She leaned back, fingers pinching the bridge of her nose. "Look. The Ministry's breathing down my neck. They want harder papers this year. No explanation. Just that if I don't set them, they will."

  Cassian's easy slouch vanished.

  "So that's what this is."

  She nodded. "This is me being merciful."

  He stared at the paper. If students couldn't score an E.E. or an O, they weren't eligible to take N.E.W.T.-level classes. That was the Ministry requirements. If too many students failed, it wouldn't just look bad. It would land squarely on him.

  Not the curriculum or Voldemort. Him.

  Cassian stared at the papers, eyes gone cold.

  Was this the move? Not a direct attack, no, that would be too easy to counter. But if they made it look like the subject was failing, like he was failing, they could justify pulling it from his hands.

  Reassigning the post. Killing it quietly. He'd lost his magic. The vultures had circled since the beginning of the year, waiting for the excuse.

  And Umbridge...

  He still remembered her prissy little smile at the start of the year. "Mr Rosier lost his magic. Can he still teach?" She wanted this job. If he went, she'd be the one they'd slot in. History gutted, restructured, spun into some bright, sterilised version of itself with Ministry slogans between every chapter.

  Was that the plan all along?

  Or was it messier than that? Slytherins had been standing by him all year. Maybe that was the threat. Or Potter. Could be they wanted to cut that tie before it stuck. Separate Cassian from the students who still saw him as something worth listening to.

  Weaken the foundation, and the whole thing cracks.

  He tapped the stack a few times.

  If this was their move, he'd seen worse plays. But it meant the game was on.

  Bagshot watched him carefully. "Don't poke them. I loathe the Ministry as much as you do, more, frankly, I've had longer to grow tired of them, but they're jumpy. Something's put them on edge."

  Cassian gave a short, humourless scoff. "Jumpy bureaucrats. Always a delight."

  He didn't look at her as he spoke next. "They think if they squeeze hard enough, the class will break. That the kids will turn on it. On me."

  His fingers flattened the papers. "They're wrong."

  Bagshot lifted her head. "Cassian..."

  "Bathilda. This year," he said, "there'll be more Outstandings than they've ever seen. Mark it."

  She studied him. "Don't do anything stupid. You're bound by the rules. You can't help them cheat."

  Cassian finally looked up. A slow grin tugged at his mouth.

  "I rigged the Triwizard Cup," he said lightly. "You really think the Ministry's going to stop me teaching?"

  Bagshot stared at him for a long second, then snorted despite herself. "Merlin save us all."

  Cassian gathered the papers, tapping them into a perfect stack. "Don't worry. I won't hand them answers."

  He paused at the door, glancing back over his shoulder.

  "I'll just make sure they know how to think."

  ***

  Bathsheda didn't look up, but something was extremely wrong, something shifting in his face, too familiar by now to miss. She huffed through her nose.

  The Ministry was, once again, thoroughly screwed.

  She dropped her eyes back to the page.

  Goshawk adjusted her glasses and leaned in. "The revised stroke on line six, why did you swap the descending arc?"

  Bathsheda flipped to the margin notes. "Because the previous arc hooked too close to the radius. In Coptic Rooting, that causes skew. If you're drawing from lunar ley-flares, it'll burn the cast rightward."

  Goshawk made a quiet sound of agreement. "You're using mixed influence, then."

  Bathsheda nodded. "Futhark hybrid. The base is Lunar Four, but the echo's weighted in early Greek harmonic cadence. Keeps it clean, but still lets you float the binding."

  "Not many spot that," Goshawk murmured. "Selena missed it, right?"

  Selena nodded, brushing the page's corner smooth.

  Bathsheda sighed. "If even she missed it, we should cut the question. She's one of the best."

  Selena gave a quiet smile. "I doubt that."

  Bathsheda smirked. "Don't be modest."

  She turned the page back toward Goshawk.

  "This one's stronger. Runic layer's clean, no ambiguity in the anchoring path. The distortion test holds across all four variants."

  Goshawk tapped a line with the back of her quill. "You shifted the primary stroke left. The curve follows Derveni principles."

  "Not strictly," Bathsheda said. "It holds the arc but not the logic. I dropped the dual-cadence, otherwise it loops on itself when mirrored through fifth-structure bindings."

  Goshawk nodded. "Good. That stops the advanced students overcomplicating it."

  Selena looked down at her own page. "You're not using the standard Elder Futhark reference?"

  Bathsheda shook her head. "They'll recognise the pattern too easily. I borrowed from Phaistos layering. Early, unpolished, but enough to push them."

  Goshawk took the parchment, ran her fingers over the rune lines, eyes narrowed slightly. "Does it stack against N.E.W.T. level?"

  "Not cleanly. That's the point. They'll have to root through the cadence rather than lean on the reference sheet."

  Selena looked faintly alarmed. "So the entire test shifts depending on how they read the initial pattern?"

  Bathsheda slid the sheet closer to her. "Yes. But if they follow the harmonic correctly, it settles. If they treat it like surface-level alignment, it fractures after the second cast."

  Goshawk gave a quiet hum, still tracing the shapes. "That'll throw half the class."

  "They'll manage. And if they don't, they'll remember it next time. Failing this question won't ruin the paper, but getting it right means they understand rhythm-based root casting, not just visual matching."

  Selena sighed. "He is too soft compared to you."

  Bathsheda flicked a glance toward the door just as Cassian left.

  "No. He's worse."

  She slid the next page across the desk. "Here. Sixth question. Double-check the translation key on this one. I used the older structure."

  Goshawk picked up her quill and got to work.

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