Chương 60: Between the Lines #1 - Slytherin vs Badger (Read After Ch 56)

After learning Hogwarts itself was basically one enormous contraceptive charm Cassian made his way to the library like a man on a mission. For science, of course. If the castle was wired to snuff out accidents with built-in wardcraft, then the Restricted Section was the obvious next stop. Where else did they keep the real filth? Cassian was snickering, imagining all the juicy gossips, when Madam Pince materialised. She didn't walk out of the shadows so much as condense from them, cardigan weaponised.

"No food, no laughter," she said tersely.

"And if you crease a spine, Professor Rosier, I'll bind yours." Cassian raised his pen in solemn salute.

"My spine is grateful for your vigilance, Madam Pince." She sniffed, adjusted her spectacles, and retreated without turning her back. A tactical withdrawal, not a retreat. The shelves waited. Cassian always imagined the Restricted Section differently when he was a student. A forbidden vault of dark curses, spines shrieking when opened, secrets coiled like serpents. Now? The books purred. No, really. Cassian looked around, nervously. The shelves vibrated faintly when he walked past.

"Stop flattering me," he muttered. The vibration grew warmer.

"Oh, that's not weird at all." He tugged down the first of his quarry: The Charter of Four: A Comparative Paleography by Euphemia Scribner. The weight nearly dislocated his wrist. A thousand pages of medieval scrawl dissected with diagrams. The thing smelled of chalk dust and academic despair.

"Riveting," he muttered, sliding it under his arm. Next came Founding Fables for Young Witches & Wizards. Glossy, cheerful, aggressively wholesome. He flipped it open to a colour plate of Salazar Slytherin grinning like a kindly uncle while handing sweets to children. Cassian squinted. Then he added it to the stack. Book three: On Elitism and the Education of the Magical Child. Author anonymous. Cassian smirked. Nothing better than watching long-dead administrators argue with their own texts.

Fourth, he pulled Rooms That Remember: Protean Architecture at Hogwarts by Persephone Twigg. Now this was fun, speculation, sketches of staircases changing mid-step, a theory about hallways that sulked. He opened at random to a section titled The Seventh Corridor That Wasn't There Yesterday. He closed it immediately and slid it into his coat.

"If a corridor moves, I'm following." Last, he spotted Auto-Script and the Scribe: Self-Writing Quills Through the Ages by Quirinus Fletch. Cassian flipped a few pages. Smug footnotes. Entire chapter on "ergonomic quill design." He hated it instantly. Perfect addition. He settled at a table. Cassian knew better than to trust the neatness of archives. History wasn't neutral. It was a battlefield. The Founders hadn't been drinking buddies. They'd been egos with wands, arguing their way into a school.

Every book here chose a side, polished one truth, buried another. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. He set the pen against the first page of Scribner's tome, rolling his shoulders.

"Alright," Cassian muttered.

"Let's see which lies you lot picked." The Charter of Four: A Comparative Paleography. Cassian tapped the margin with his pen.

"Euphemia, love, no one is seducing anyone with a serif." He closed the heavy tome, checking the next. He ran his thumb along On Elitism and the Education of the Magical Child, not expecting much. But the prologue... oh, the prologue was something else. Flowery, hagiographic nonsense. It lionised Salazar as "the wise shepherd, who discerned the wolf among the lambs." And then, like an afterthought at the bottom of the page, the author tossed in a parenthetical anecdote.

"One must not judge a statesman by rustic failings, as when he hexed a badger in jest." Cassian froze, eyes narrowing.

"I'm sorry. What?" He read it again, slower. And clear as day. Salazar Slytherin, dignified founder, hardliner on blood purity... reduced in the opening paragraphs to a bloke who once hexed a badger. Cassian got up, not caring that the shelves purred after him like they were in heat. You didn't drop a line like Salazar hexed a badger and expect him to sit calmly with his annotated tea. He scoured the adjacent cases first, not even bothering to check if any of the books bit.

Magical Minorities of the 10th Century, On Beasts and Blunders, Epistolary Exchanges of the Early Hogwarts Faculty. Nothing. Nothing. Brief Lives of the Founders had promise, he flipped to the index, skimmed under Slytherin, Salazar. See also: Founding Conflicts, Early Discipline Records, Petty Hexes Petty Hexes.

"Oh, come on," he muttered.

"Please be real." Fifteen minutes and twenty books later, he found it.

"Even his detractors admitted Salazar's wit was quick, though occasionally misapplied. A tavern broadside of the time cruelly alleged he once hexed Helga's tame badger during a dispute. The beast, unimpressed, continued to eat his bootlaces." Cassian blinked. Then blinked again.

"Oh, absolutely yes," he murmured.

"That is going in the lecture slides." He turned the book sideways. Checked for sources. Of course there were none. Just a footnote: Recounted in F. W., "Alehouse Satires and the Wands that Wrote Them" (circa 1134). He scribbled a quick note, cursed the lack of proper citations, then dove into the next promising stack. He needed triangulation. Multiple sources. This couldn't be a one-joke pamphlet.

Back at the table, he tossed aside the sugary Founding Fables for Young Witches & Wizards in favor of The Charter of Four. Dry, diagram-heavy, but near the back, an appendix on "Behavioural Notes Regarding Founder Handwriting." Most of it was tripe. But then:"Slytherin's minuscule 's' fluctuates significantly in post-argument missives. Particularly notable in the weeks following an internal dispute regarding the classification of magical fauna.

One letter (see Folio 11b) contains a marginal scrawl that reads simply, 'She keeps pets. I keep policies.'" Cassian snorted. That was close enough to a confession, by historical standards. And petty as hell. He liked it. He cracked On Elitism and the Education of the Magical Child again. The marginalia was rabid in its defense of Salazar, but the original text was trying too hard.

One phrase stood out:"And yet, in all public controversies, his restraint was unmatched (excepting, of course, the regrettable incident with the creature, of which much has been exaggerated)." Cassian underlined the creature. Then, beneath it, wrote: "oh, I bet." He sat back, tapping the pen to his chin. Three sources now. He glanced toward the purring shelves. One more. Just one more to verify. He saw a citation earlier. Restricted Section, Shelf 7B, Row 4, Volume III. Bestiary of Elusive Beasts.

He moved like he was being hunted. He turned pages, letting the illustrations flicker past, a knarl biting its own tail, a manticore in full opera attire, until he hit badger. There were two full pages. One text. One illustration. The badger's eyes were squinty and unimpressed.

"Commonly associated with Helga Hufflepuff, the badger is a creature of low posture and formidable stubbornness. One anecdote, considered apocryphal but repeated in three 12th-century tavern songs, recounts that Salazar Slytherin once attempted to hex Hufflepuff's personal badger during a heated discussion on colours. The creature was reportedly unaffected and resumed chewing his boots. Slytherin's remarks afterward were not preserved, but several minor scrolls cite a week of canceled meals and slammed doors."

Cassian stared.

"Well," he said aloud.

"I'll be damned." The badger blinked. He blinked back. He shut the book, carefully, reverently, and slid it into the growing stack. He wasn't sure whether it was satire, sabotage, or sincerity. He didn't care. He had what he needed.