Chapter 87: Paces!

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"Well, at least that explains why your sporting your hair like that," Tracey commented with a slight smirk.

"What?" Magnus said before he reached to his head and pulled some of his hair into his view and blinked, "oh," he said with a sigh, "well at least it's not Weasley colour," he said before running his hands through his hair as it changed back to black casually, "I hadn't even noticed."

Daphne gave a small smirk, "better, now how are you feeling about later, do you think you're ready?" She asked being as inconspicuous of the subject as she could without directly relating to it.

"Yep," Magnus said with a smirk, "Aunt Andy has been putting me through my paces to sharpen me up, I'm more than ready to trounce the ponce when things start."

"Good," Daphne said approvingly, "it would hardly reflect well on you if you lost, seeing as how you were the one to issue the challenge in the first place, regardless of my advice to wait." She stated primly.

Magnus rolled his eyes, "yes, I know, but don't worry your pretty little head, I'll be sure to put my best foot forward as I dance around the little prick," he smirked as Daphne blustered at his words, Tracey chuckling at her friend's expense.

After a moment to compose herself, Daphne sniffed primly, "yes I'm sure you will, but there are other things that have come up now because of your challenge. If you've taken the time to notice them."

Magnus frowned, "what do you mean?" he asked not sure what she was getting at, wondering what side effects his challenging Draco had done, besides messed with the timeline.

"Honestly Black, do you pay any attention at all," Daphne smirked but not in an amused sort of way.

Tracey giggled, "well you can't exactly blame him, Daphne. He hasn't come out of his dorm room much at all since the challenge, he wouldn't know."

Magnus sighed, "yeah I've been kind of preoccupied with getting ready, so can one of the two of you please fill me in," he said ruefully, "I am but a humble man seeking the aid of two lovely ladies to aid this pathetic fools attempts to know all," he said with a mocking bow of his head.

Tracey giggled at the joke and Daphne smirked tilting her chin a little higher, "And to right, you should." She smugly agreed.

When Tracey's giggles finally passed she shook her head, "it was your challenging Draco, it really stirred things up in the castle, nearly everyone was talking about it by the next morning at breakfast," she explained.

"Every muggle-born was asking questions about it and trying to find out what was going on and what it all meant"

"Granger was relentless after you left, she kept bombarding me with questions with the more answers I gave, it was endless," Daphne said with a sigh.

"After fifteen minutes of answering her questions I finally got fed up and told her to just go look up the books on the matter in the library."

"And come the next morning she wasn't the only one doing so," Tracey smirked amusingly, remembering how annoyed her best friend got at the relentless questioning.

"I heard Madam Prince had a run on the library when she opened the next morning, she actually had to put a ward on the doors to limit how many students could enter at one time, there was apparently a line all the way to the grand staircase of students waiting to get in to look up the books on traditions."

"I heard that most of them couldn't find anything about them and had to resort to asking purebloods and half-bloods about them, most just told them names of books and gave them owl order forms to get them from Diagon alley," Daphne said with a sniff.

"Not surprising given that the library would possibly only have so many copies and the demand was so high"

"Yeah, I heard the owlery was emptied yesterday by lunchtime because of all the students without owls needed to use them to order in the books they were told about." Tracey informed them.

Magnus blinked at that and frowned.

Did his challenge really have such wide-spreading effects before the duel had even taken place?

It made sense, he hadn't been very private about his challenge and as a result, the whole school knew about it.

But something didn't sit right with him, mainly Dumbledore's intervention.

Why did the old man want the duel called off?

Was it to try and get the interest in it to die off? But what would that do, other than disgrace him and House Black for making the challenge and then backing out of it hours before the duel was meant to happen.

No, it didn't add up, Dumbledore wouldn't gain anything, that he could see, by disgracing House Black.

But what else was there…. The books…. Magnus wanted to slap himself when the thought crossed his mind.

'Of course, it's the books in the library. I bet no-one was actually able to find any books on the matter and people just assumed that others got them out before them.'

'When actually they were never there in the first place because Dumbledore removed them for some reason, that's what's going on. The old fuck doesn't want any attention brought on wizarding traditions and things linked to them.'

It made some sense, after all, Dumbledore was clearly pro-muggle-born in all his actions at Hogwarts.

Hell, the school openly celebrated nearly all the muggle holidays.

A fact that never really had made much sense to him given the fact they were witches and wizards and most of those celebrations were started by the Christian faith.

And given it was the Christian church and the ruling king at the time that was responsible for all the witch burnings in the fourteen to fifteen hundreds.

Magnus could see how any purebloods would be annoyed with that.

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