Chapter 77: Slytherin’s Court

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5 September 1992, Hogwarts

However, Harry just scared him and motivated him at the same time. A boy with such a large ego would do his best to not be humiliated by the public, and that's not even counting his competitive desire to defeat his rival. Yeah, the boy was going to train night and day to make that happen.

This was how Harry was able to give the entire castle a vacation from Malfoy for at least a couple of months. Yeah, you're welcome, Hogwarts.

By the time Harry arrived in the Great Hall, he was congratulating himself on the way he dealt with Malfoy. It was so simple. He didn't need to intimidate the boy or threaten him. Just confuse him and distract him with someone else. A boy like him was given everything he ever asked for, only treasured things he earned. Oh, he was still prone to a tantrum if he was ever refused anything, but giving him a challenge, something that means something to him, like proving to the entire school that he was better than Longbottom, but also threatening his pride if his performance is disappointing. The carrot and the stick and at the same time, where his own pride is enforcing both. And to do it, he'll need to be too dedicated to bother stroking his ego with his little taunts and bullying since he has a lot on the line.

Yeah, Harry was proud of coming up with this in a second, and it showed with the smile he was wearing on his face as he sat next to his friends. Tracy looked at him and grumbled, "What are you so happy about?"

She was always grumpy in the morning, that one, and Harry was too good of a mood to let that ruin it, "I just took care of something rather annoying."

Blaise snorted, "Speaking of annoying, have any of you seen how Malfoy's been strutting around ever since he bought his way into the Quidditch team? I really wanted to punch his face."

"Yeah, he spent the entire day saying that he was the new leader of our year and that we all had to listen to him," Daphne complained.

"Guys, he's not that bad. It's just some posturing because he's happy. It'll blow over quickly," Harry said.

"I don't know why you're so unconcerned about it, Harry. You're the one Draco is trying to dethrone."

The Potter scion raised an eyebrow, "What are you talking about?"

"As the leader of our year," Daphne answered slowly like he was dumb or something, "You must have noticed that we all keep following your lead, that's not just our group, but all of our Slytherin classmates. You're in a prime position to get a good position in the Slytherin court next year, while Draco has done nothing but lose confrontations with you and throw his father's name around."

Yeah, the infamous Slytherin's court. Honestly, he didn't know anything concrete what it was, no one did unless they were part of it. There had to be privileges and responsibilities that came with it. As far as he could tell, the court was in charge of making house laws and punishing the people who break them, they arranged for the yearly rituals and protected the younger members of the house from being bullied. People still had grudges against members of the House of Snakes because of Voldemort's war. But outside of that, they were a basic smuggling ring of sorts. You paid them to court with a favour or something of equal value, and in exchange, you can ask for anything, be it information on another student, help on an assignment, an illegal ingredient of sorts, or banned books on forbidden magics. Everything had a price in the house of snakes and the court embodied that characteristic.

To be perfectly honest, it wasn't really that big of a deal to Harry who was mostly preoccupied with discovering more about magic as possible, but it could give him enough contacts when he tries to raise the Potter name in the future. His magic would be enough, but old magical families still had enough pull to make things difficult for him.

People fought tooth and nail to be part of the court, even in the lower echelons. The positions were based on chess, oddly enough. The game was pretty popular in the House of Snakes, and there were tournaments for people to showcase their skills, but those were limited to upper years. As for the court position, there were exactly twenty positions in the court. It's made up of eleven pawns, two knights, two bishops, two rooks, two queens and a single king, the undisputed leader of the house, not that anyone knows who any member was. Outside of the pawns and the king, the positions are named after black and white. For example, there was a Knight of Black, and a Knight of White, taken in by two different people.

As stated before, the King was the one that commands the house and makes the rules, the Queens are his ambassadors, in a way. They rule when the king is not there. The Rooks are the enforcers, they are charged with the protection of the house's interest and enforcing its unspoken rules, the bishops are the researchers, which are involved whenever a magical matter is needed, like adding in a ward or an enchantment. The Knights protect the members of the house from outside threats, like bullies from other houses. Finally, the pawns are just there to help in any way, and should they prove their worth, they are upgraded to a higher piece with better responsibility.

Now, the entire upper court (all the pieces aside from the pawns) votes for the candidature of the next pawns. They also vote for promotions from any piece to one of the Queens, and when a King leaves the castle and graduates, which Queen to take their place.

It was a very convoluted way to make some kind of hierarchy in the House of Snakes, which honestly doesn't mean much in the long term outside of the connections you make for fellow members of the court, and maybe the quick response if you want something to be made. It was a dramatic way to structure a house, but well, the house of snakes was dramatic, wasn't it? There were probably more rules and regulations on that front, but that was what his friends had told him, anyway.

Harry was brought out of his thoughts when he felt someone poking him. It was Daphne, "Come on Harry, you spaced out again."

"Hey! I was just thinking…"

"About the court?" Tracy questioned with a sly grin.

The Potter scion shrugged, "Maybe. Honestly, for all its perks, I still don't see the point. Yeah, it's nice and everything, but it's not something I'm willing to go to great lengths to get. And if all it took was a Quidditch position and a bribe to get accepted into the court, it would lose a lot of its meaning."

"But…" Tracy started.

Blaise interjected, "He has a point, Trace. Everyone and their mother know that Malfoy spent a small fortune to buy his way into the team."

The brunette pouted, "But he's been so insufferable though. I wanted Harry to scare him away again."

"Well, I don't know about scaring him away," Harry said, "But I did make sure that he would stop bothering us."

Three heads snapped towards him the moment he finished speaking, "How in Morgana's name did you manage to do that?" Daphne exclaimed.

"I just reminded him about the position he put himself in. He could beat Longbottom and show everyone he's superior, or he could fail miserably, and he'll be a laughingstock. He already made our house look back and corrupt since he bought his way in, so he needs to prove to the entire school that he's worth more than a Gringotts vault full of gold. What he did was a gamble and I put it in front of him enough to motivate and scare him into spending every single free moment training for the match. And since the match with Gryffindor is the closest one, he'll be too busy to do anything. See, I don't always have to be violent."

Harry ignored his friends' gaping faces and thought back to the situation Flint was in. Honestly, the Potter scion could sympathize with the Quidditch captain. Taking the broom was strategically the better choice, not just in terms of winning the Quidditch cup, but to dominate the other houses and impress the scouts. Better brooms mean that Flint has a better chance at getting an internship, then a sponsorship, and finally achieving the career of his dreams. So, yeah, at the cost of a single teammate and a slight loss of reputation, the brooms were worth it.

The Potter scion looked back to his friends before wondering, "That's even assuming the brooms were better than the previous model."

"What?" the three of them exclaimed at once.

Harry rolled his eyes, "Brooms are known to be released every three years. It's the time necessary to develop and remove any issues there might be. And since the Nimbus 2000 was only praised in the international scene, the quick release of the 2001 model means that it's either a money grab, and the brooms are essentially the same, or they rushed the development of this broom for some reason, which means that they won't be as stable as the normal 2000 model. They could be technically faster and just better in some ways, but they won't be as stable. So, in the best case, Malfoy was cheated by buying what is probably a prettier Nimbus 2000, or in the worst case, he bought brooms that might hinder the team, and in this case, everyone loses. And while the Nimbus series is perfect for seekers, Beaters would prefer stability over speed to aim properly, and chasers don't really go that fast, but need to be agile."

Tracy was the first one to stop staring at him, "How do you know so much about Quidditch, I thought you hated the game?"

"I don't," Harry answered, "I just like to know about the market. Just because I don't personally like the sport doesn't mean that I'm interested in the economic benefits that can come from it."

"You're planning on investing in its competitors when the professional players start complaining," Daphne spoke up with a start.

"Yeah, I already have a few meetings coming up. I need to get things going a bit since the Potter vaults aren't looking that good in the first place."

Yeah, financially speaking, the Potter family wasn't that well off after two consecutive wars. And with money in the muggle world being practically useless, it wasn't really a reliable way of income since he was planning on staying in the magical world. Of course, he was going to have a little nest egg there, in case he was ever in trouble, or just wanted to buy something from the non-magical side of the world, but he was leaving it for the following summer.

So, yeah, in terms of the magical world, the only product he knew was going to be very successful was the Firebolt broom. He had looked everywhere for any mention of it and found nothing, except for a designer that was laughed at by all broom manufacturers in the country for trying some weird method of incorporating enchantments into the wood, making them more precise and more powerful but a lot more expensive to manufacture. The man, Terrence Smythe, had started his company with his life savings, and Harry had owled the man for a demonstration and details to invest in the company.

It was mostly just fact-checking, but it was an easy way for him to make money. Most of the meetings were scheduled during Christmas vacation when he would be free enough to make financial deals. He still needed to set up some paperwork for the ministry to be able to invest legally, but it should go through rather easily since heirs are often encouraged to invest with their allowances.

Still, with a concrete plan to deal with the financial side of his duties, Harry thought back to his main problem. The Basilisk. With the ingredients still not having arrived, Harry needed to figure out how to actually fight a Basilisk in case he had no other choice. And for that, Harry would need one of his most powerful assets, one that had saved his life in the past, and unfortunately, one that he still had no idea how to use. He needed to figure out how to use his magical crest.

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AN:

Yeah, I know that this is an info dump a bit, but I wrote this while planning a nice plot point that I didn't want to start until I was sure of the details. So I used this chapter to set up the Slytherin Court, which will be a pretty big deal in the future, while I was working on that other thing.

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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.