It was yet another brand-new day!
Draco pushed open the door to the Alchemy office, and even though the corners of his mouth couldn't stop twitching upward as he rowed his little boat in, he still pressed his lips into a serious line.
"There's no one else here. You can laugh out loud if you want," Kasenhis said as he slowly approached Draco.
"I will next time," Draco nodded, then took out something from his pocket that looked like a very finely crafted envelope.
"Professor, I'd like to invite you to spend Christmas at Malfoy Manor."
The moment Kasenhis heard Draco's invitation, he immediately began shaking his head wildly.
"Nope, nope, not happening. It's not for any particular reason—it's just that I'm really not used to spending Christmas at someone else's house. Same goes for eating or sleeping over at someone else's place."
"Would you mind telling me why, Professor?" Draco asked.
"It's just a personality thing. Nothing else. I'm someone with a very strong sense of personal boundaries," Kasenhis explained, then quickly added in his heart: [...around people I don't know well.]
"Oh... Then do you have any plans for the holidays?" Draco continued.
"Nope."
"My father would like to invite you for a home visit and maybe discuss alchemy a bit. Though I suspect he probably has some kind of fancy alchemy device he wants to ask you to help repair," Draco said.
Life is sometimes just that casual—technically it's still the same thing, but just phrased differently.
In Kasenhis's mind, he naturally reclassified "spending the holiday" as "working."
Compared to spending Christmas with the Malfoy family during the holidays, a home visit to the Malfoys during the break to do a bit of maintenance on an alchemy device sounded much more acceptable.
After all, he just needed to do what needed doing, say what needed saying—didn't even have to stay for a meal.
At that pace, he could probably still get home by noon and order a Christmas pizza.
Perfect.
"So, professor, should I go with you when the time comes?" Draco asked.
"When the time comes, just arrange a time with Mr. Lucius and let me know. I'll head over myself," Kasenhis replied.
"Alright, then."
Watching Draco leave on his little boat, Kasenhis took a sip of water from his cup. From the start of the semester until now, it had already been a while, and he had observed quite a few of the Slytherin students.
Some of them, probably because their family backgrounds weren't particularly powerful, had a good family atmosphere and didn't seem all that different from regular little wizards.
On the other hand, there were the students from those large, pure-blood Slytherin-lineage families...
Those wizarding families basically had nothing to do with love. The purpose of having children was purely to continue the family's honor and wealth.
And the young wizards who grew up in those families naturally became molded into beings centered around the family. Of course, that's not necessarily wrong.
It's all equivalent exchange—these young wizards enjoyed privileged conditions from childhood, so it's only fair they shoulder the family's responsibilities.
But when it gets to the point where even their personalities are completely erased and they become some kind of flesh-and-blood AI... well, that's a bit extreme.
Still, he was just a professor.
He couldn't go around interfering with their family affairs recklessly, right?
He could only, from a reasonable distance, identify those wizarding families that weren't too extreme, and those students who wanted to grasp their own fates—and give them a little nudge from behind.
How far they could go after that was up to them.
After all, he couldn't possibly do something extreme in the name of so-called freedom for just one young wizard.
Like, say, hypothetically, a person is the heir of a great family, his parents are loving, and he grew up wrapped in sweetness and affection. The only requirement his parents had for him was to learn proper knowledge and etiquette, and maybe find a suitable match to marry—ideally someone he liked, but if not, then at least they could live politely together after marriage.
And then along comes some lunatic professor, loudly preaching things like "free will" and "love can't be bought with money," and then uses supreme magical power to destroy his family's entire fortune—and oh, also turns his parents into Inferi.
At that point, the lunatic professor says, "Though you've lost your wealth, your power, your reputation and status, your socially-appropriate wife has left you, and your parents have become undead... none of that matters anymore, because now—you're free! Go chase your true passions!"
Then the lunatic professor patted his butt and walked away, leaving him sitting alone on the ruins with a completely dumbfounded expression.
And what would he be thinking at that moment?
"You're insane!"
Draco still had not reached the end of this massive office in his boat, while Kasenhis, after completing a drama script in his mind, took another sip of water.
Draco, that kid, although a bit of a brat, was acting perfectly normal for his age. Just a teenager being a teenager.
And he wasn't really a bad kid. A little nudge from Kasenhis would be enough—that's all he could do anyway.
After finishing his thoughts on Draco, his mind drifted to Lucius Malfoy. He hadn't interacted with Lucius many times. Of the few encounters they'd had—aside from the very first one—the atmosphere had never been particularly friendly.
So, he figured he'd better set up a few defenses, just in case Lucius Malfoy planned some kind of ambush dinner.
I mean, people have gone to banquets with explosives under their robes, haven't they?
How's that any different from showing up to a meeting without a gun or walking into a rainy night without a knife?
Just going there to eat?
Even though he seriously doubted Lucius had the strength to trap him there, Kasenhis still believed in being prepared.
It's called... ritual.
...
Unknowingly, Kasenhis had taught a few more classes, and Merlin in the sky had apparently dug out some 0D white lace stockings from the bottom of his wardrobe—because snow started falling from the sky.
A steady stream of young wizards made their way from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade Station, and Draco had already sent over the date for the home visit.
Besides that, Sirius cheerfully plopped a big sack of Galleons onto Kasenhis's desk.
"Remus went to visit relatives this Christmas, so I could only come to you," Sirius said with a grin.
"Just say what you want," Kasenhis replied.
"I want to buy Harry a broomstick. I've already picked one—it's this Firebolt," Sirius said, pulling out a flyer and placing it on the desk.
"Oh... max speed of 250 miles per hour... kinda lame. I already gave Harry a better one," Kasenhis explained.
"What? How fast is yours?"
"About double that of the Firebolt—over 700 miles per hour. Breaks the sound barrier," Kasenhis said proudly.
"...Sound barrier? What's that?" Sirius asked, thoroughly confused.
"...Oh, right. I forgot you're illiterate."
"..."
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