Chapter 56: The Conflict Between Hermione and RonBegins
Quirrell sat at the very end of the long table. His plate was piled high with food, but he hadn't touched a single bite. His hands were under the table, fingers interlaced, his knuckles white from the pressure.
He was listening.
The thing beneath his turban was speaking to him. The voice was very faint, like a snake hissing in his ear.
"Do not touch him," Lord Voldemort's remnant soul said. "Before I regain my full strength, do not make any contact with that boy. Focus on the Philosopher's Stone. Once you have the Philosopher's Stone, everything will change."
Quirrell nodded slightly. The movement was so small that no one else would notice.
His hands gripped even tighter beneath the table.
— —
After dinner, Cassius and Draco were on their way back to the dungeons.
Students in the hallway would automatically clear a path when they saw them. It wasn't a deliberate avoidance—it was more like an instinctive reaction. Just like if you saw a truck driving down the road, you wouldn't stand in the middle of the road waiting for it to stop. You would move out of the way.
Draco walked half a step behind and to the left of Cassius. The bandage on his right index finger had been changed; the new one was wrapped more neatly than yesterday—he was learning to tend to his own wounds.
"About today," Draco began. His voice was very low, audible only to Cassius. "The Boggart thing."
"Hmm."
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Draco said. "You deliberately didn't use magic. You intentionally hit it with your hand."
Cassius did not answer.
"You wanted everyone to see," Draco continued. "You wanted them to know that you don't even need to use magic."
Cassius glanced at Draco.
"You've been talking more lately."
Draco shut his mouth. But the corners of his lips curled up—it was suppressed quickly, but Cassius saw it.
They turned into the corridor leading to the Slytherincommon room. Green lanterns hung on the damp stone walls, the light was dim, and the air held the distinct fishy smell of water seeping from the Black Lake.
"Are we going to the dungeon today?" Draco asked.
"Yes."
"Good."
Draco said nothing else. He quickened his pace, walking ahead of Cassius.
Cassius watched his back.
Draco's stride was steadier than it had been a week ago. His shoulders were no longer habitually hunched forward. When he walked, he no longer looked around, nor did he subconsciously turn back to confirm if Cassius was following behind.
This was a good change.
— —
The last week of October.
Pumpkin lanterns began to appear in the corridors of Hogwarts. House-elves hung them up at night, and every pumpkin was enchanted; the candlelight inside was blue, turning orange whenever someone passed by. Bats flew in and out of the cracks in the ceiling, occasionally circling above a student's head before flying away.
The atmosphere of Halloween was growing stronger.
The decorations in the Great Hall changed every day. The tableware on the long tables had been switched from silver to a black and orange pattern. There was a new flavor of pumpkin juice—a limited edition with cinnamon and cloves, which made Draco wrinkle his face after one sip.
Cassius had no interest in these things.
He had spent his time this week mainly on two things.
The first was continuing to optimize the output model of the "Magic Gatling." Test data from the Black Lake last week showed that after the Four-Channel Shunt output continuously for more than ten seconds, the synchronization rate of the third and fourth channels would show a deviation of 0.3 percent. This deviation was negligible when dealing with ordinary targets, but if the opponent was at the level of Lord Voldemort—a 0.3 percent deviation meant that the landing point of three pulses per second would shift by about fifteen centimeters. Fifteen centimeters was enough for a top-tier Dark Wizardto dodge sideways.
So he needed to correct it.
The second was supervising Draco's special training.
Draco would appear in the abandoned dungeon on time every afternoon. He no longer complained, made excuses, or asked, "Can we take a break today?" He simply walked in, crouched down, and reached out his hand toward that feather.
Progress was very slow.
After that first success on the first day—the feather had jumped two centimeters—Draco had failed to replicate it for three consecutive days. His magic control was too unstable. Sometimes he used too much force, and the magic erupted from his fingertips, blowing the feather straight to the end of the corridor. Sometimes it was too weak, and he couldn't even blow the feather's down.
But he did not give up.
On the fourth day, the feather moved again. This time it didn't jump; it slid. It slid about five centimeters across the stone floor and then stopped.
Draco stared at the feather for a long time. He didn't shout excitedly like he did the first time. He just stood up, stretched his sore wrist, and said, "Continue tomorrow."
Cassius leaned against the wall and turned a page of the book in his hand.
He did not speak. But he noted this time point.
— —
Thursday. After Charms Class.
Cassius headed to the library alone. He needed to look up some information regarding magic channel synchronization rates—theories on this were almost impossible to find in standard textbooks, so he had to look through some obscure academic journals.
In the hallway, he passed the corridor on the first floor that led to the Great Hall.
About twenty meters ahead, Harry, Ron, and Hermionehad just come out of a classroom. The three were walking together, but the atmosphere was off.
Ron walked at the front, taking large strides, his face wearing a look of frustration that had been bottled up for a long time and was finally about to explode. Harry walked in the middle, his expression somewhat troubled. Hermione walked at the very back, hugging a stack of books, her pace getting slower and slower.
Cassius slowed his pace. Not because he wanted to eavesdrop—he had no interest in Gryffindor's internal conflicts—but because he didn't want to run into the three of them in the hallway. Unnecessary social contact would only be a waste of time.
But Ron's voice was too loud.
"She's a nightmare!" Ron's voice echoed in the hallway. "No wonder she doesn't have any friends!"
Cassius stopped walking.
He stood at the corner of the hallway, leaning against the shadows of the wall. From this angle, he could see the three people ahead, but they could not see him.
Ron was still talking: "She has to raise her hand in every class! She has to answer every question first! You say one sentence, and she can correct you three times! Who can stand that?"
Harry nudged Ron: "Keep it down, Ron."
"I won't keep it down!" Ron's volume actually increased. "She's just a know-it-all monster! Walking around all day waving books in your face, as if she's the only person in the world who's ever read a book—"
Hermione pushed past them.
She walked very fast. Her head was down. A stack of books was held to her chest, held very tightly.
Cassius saw her profile.
Her eyes were red. Her lips were pressed into a thin line. Her chin was trembling.
Chapter 57: The Approaching Plot
She did not turn back. She did not retort. She did not snap back at Ron in her usual sharp tone.
She just walked away.
Walking faster and faster.
Finally breaking into a run.
A book fell from her arms. She did not stop to pick it up.
Harry bent down to pick up the book, glanced in the direction Hermione had run off to, and turned back to glare at Ron: "You went too far. She heard you."
Ron's expression stiffened for a moment. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end, he just shoved his hands into his pockets and muttered: "So what if she heard. I was telling the truth."
The two stood in silence for a few seconds. Then Harrysighed, took the book Hermione had dropped, and chased after the direction she had run. Ron hesitated for a moment but did not follow. He kicked a stone at the corner of the wall and turned to walk towards the Great Hall.
The corridor fell silent again.
Cassius stood in the shadows, not moving.
He recognized this scene.
In the original work, on Halloween, Ron spoke ill of Hermione after Charms Class. After hearing it, Hermionehid in the girls' bathroom and cried for the entire afternoon, missing the Halloween feast. Then a Troll broke into the Castle, Harry and Ron went to save her, and the three of them became friends because of it.
The timeline matched up.
Today is the day before Halloween. Tomorrow is the Halloween feast.
Cassius continued walking towards the library.
He was running a simple risk assessment in his mind.
A Troll. Let in by Quirrell. The goal was to create chaos, and while the Professors went to deal with the Troll, sneak into the third-floor corridor to steal the Philosopher's Stone.
In the original work, the Troll was knocked out when Harryand Ron used the Levitation Charm to drop its club onto its own head. The process was thrilling, but the result was safe.
But the variable now is Draco.
Cassius was not sure where Draco would be tomorrow. If Draco stayed honestly in the Slytherin common room, then there would be no problem. The Slytherin common room is in the basement, the Troll is on the first floor, and there are several flights of stairs and corridors between them.
But Draco's behavioral pattern had changed recently.
He was no longer the coward who only knew how to shrink behind Cassius. He had started to have his own thoughts and his own actions. This was a good thing—but good things sometimes also meant being uncontrollable.
Cassius pushed open the library door.
Madam Pince saw him and reflexively stood up from her chair, her hands tightly shielding the borrowing register in front of her.
"Mr. Malfoy." Her voice was sharp and tight, "What do you intend to read today?"
"Literature related to the synchronization rate of magicchannels." Cassius walked to the bookshelves in the regular section, "Do you have any recommendations?"
Madam Pince was stunned for a moment. This was the first time Cassius had actively asked her for book recommendations.
"That... Volume 17 of the 'Journal of Advanced magicEngineering' has a paper on multi-channel parallel output... It's on the top shelf of the fourth row..."
"Thanks."
Cassius walked towards the fourth row of bookshelves.
Madam Pince watched his back as he left, slowly sitting back down in her chair. She found that her palms were covered in sweat.
——
The library was very quiet.
Cassius found the paper and sat by the window to read it. The author of the paper was a nineteenth-century German Wizard, studying the phase difference problem when wand dual-core parallel output is used. Although it did not perfectly match Cassius's wandless Four-Channel Shunt, the underlying mathematical model was universal.
He was doing correction calculations in his mind as he read.
About forty minutes later, the library door was pushed open.
The footsteps were very light. But not the kind that were deliberately quiet—it was because the person walking didn't have much weight.
Cassius did not look up.
The footsteps stopped at the position of the third row of bookshelves behind his right. Then came the sound of page-turning. It was turned very quickly, not like looking for specific content, but more like flipping through randomly, using the action of flipping books to cover up something.
Cassius's ears caught a very soft sound.
Sobbing.
Intermittent sobbing, suppressed in the throat, that she didn't want anyone to hear.
He knew who it was.
Hermione Granger.
She didn't go to the girls' bathroom. She came to the library.
This actually fit her personality. For someone who treated books as a faith, the library was more of a sanctuary than a bathroom.
Cassius continued reading his paper.
The sobbing lasted for about five minutes. Then it stopped.
The sound of page-turning resumed. This time, it was slower, as if she were actually reading the content.
Another ten minutes passed.
"Malfoy."
Hermione's voice came from behind the bookshelf. It was hoarse, with a heavy nasal tone, but the tone was steady.
Cassius turned a page of the paper.
"What you did in class today," Hermione said, "the Boggart. You didn't use magic."
"Not entirely."
"You compressed magic into a physical medium." There was something complex in Hermione's voice—not questioning, not curiosity, but more like a person confirming they hadn't gone crazy. "You used the density of magic to break through the physical immunity threshold of a magical creature."
Cassius stopped turning the page.
He hadn't expected Hermione to be able to deduce this conclusion in such a short time.
"Your analytical ability is not bad," he said. This was an objective evaluation without any emotional color.
There was silence behind the bookshelf for a few seconds.
"I looked through all the literature in the library on the interaction between magic density and matter," Hermione's voice regained some strength, "Only one book—'Advanced magic Deconstruction and Destructive Remodeling'—mentioned a similar theoretical framework. But that book is in the Restricted Section."
"Do you want me to help you get it out?"
"No," Hermione's answer was quick, "I want to know how you did it. Not the theory—the actual operation. How did you compress magic to that kind of density? The magiccircuits of ordinary Wizards simply cannot bear that kind of load."
Cassius leaned back in his chair.
"You asked the wrong question," he said.
"What?"
"You shouldn't ask 'how it was done'. You should ask 'why it needed to be done'."
There was silence behind the bookshelf again.
"A Boggart is not worth me using magic," Cassius said, "It's as simple as that."
He stood up, tucked the paper into the book, and put it back on the bookshelf.
When walking past the row of bookshelves where Hermione was hiding, he caught a glimpse of her in his peripheral vision. She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bottom shelf, her knees curled up, holding an absurdly thick book in her arms. Her eyes were red and swollen, but her expression was serious.
Cassius did not stop his steps.
But he said one sentence as he passed by. The voice was not loud, but it was clear enough in the quiet library.
"Granger. People say you are a nightmare because they cannot keep up with you. This is not your problem."
He walked out of the library.
No response came from behind him.
But the sound of page-turning stopped for a long time.
Chapter 58: Where Did Draco Go?
Halloween.
The Great Hall was decorated beyond recognition. Thousands of bats circled the ceiling, giant jack-o'-lanterns floated above the four long tables, and the candlelight was enchanted so that all the flames were an eerie blue, illuminating the students' faces like a massive ghost story gathering.
The food on the tables was abundant to the point of extravagance. Roast turkey, pumpkin pasties, caramel pudding, and toffee apples were all steaming hot. The goblets were filled with a limited edition cinnamon pumpkin juice, its cloying sweetness permeating the air.
Cassius sat in the middle of the Slytherin table.
On the plate before him lay a slice of roast turkey breast and half a roasted pumpkin. He ate slowly. His right hand held his cutlery, while his left hand flipped through the seventeenth volume of the 'Advanced Magical Engineering Journal' he had borrowed from the library, resting on his lap.
Zabini sat across from him, piling a third pumpkin pasty onto his plate.
"You know," Zabini said, pointing his fork at a bat flying particularly low near the ceiling, "last Halloween, those Weasley twins stuffed a whole bag of Dungbombs into the jack-o'-lanterns. When they went off, the entire Gryffindortable was covered in green."
Cassius ignored him.
He set down his cutlery and glanced to his left.
Draco's seat was empty.
The goblet was there, the pumpkin juice untouched. The plate was empty too—not because he had finished eating, but because no one had even sat down to serve themselves.
Crabbe and Goyle sat further away, both burying their heads in their food, cheeks bulging like two hamsters.
"Where's Draco?" Cassius spoke up.
Crabbe, mouth full of toffee apple, said indistinctly, "Don't... don't know..."
"When did he go missing?"
Goyle, reacting half a beat faster than Crabbe, swallowed his food: "He was there during class. Later he said... said he had something to take care of. Told us to go ahead."
"What thing?"
"Didn't say."
Cassius set down his book.
He recalled the timeline for this afternoon. After Charms Class ended, he went to the library and stayed there for nearly two hours. During that time, Draco should have been with Crabbe and Goyle.
"Which direction did he go?"
Goyle tried hard to remember: "It seemed like... the first floor? He saw that Gryffindor girl—the one with all the hair—running past crying. Then he followed her."
Cassius's hand stopped on the tabletop.
Gryffindor girl. Lots of hair. Running past crying.
Hermione Granger.
When Cassius encountered Hermione in the library, she had indeed been crying. But that was in the library. When did she leave the library? How long had she stayed there?
He re-evaluated the time in his head.
It was about five-thirty when he left the library. Hermioneshould have stayed there for a while after he left to read. If she later left the library and went somewhere else—
The first floor.
The girls' bathroom.
Cassius's brow twitched. In the original story, Hermionehid in the first-floor girls' bathroom because of Ron's words and cried until the Halloween feast without coming out. Then the Troll broke in, Quirrell raised the alarm, the Professors went to handle the Troll, and Harry and Ronran to save Hermione.
But the situation was different now.
Hermione hadn't stayed in the girls' bathroom the whole time. She went to the library. She spoke with Cassius. Where she went after leaving the library, Cassius wasn't sure—but if she eventually ended up back in that bathroom—
And Draco followed her—
Cassius's thoughts were interrupted by a massive commotion.
The doors to the Great Hall were slammed open. The sound of the impact against the doorframe echoed throughout the hall, even startling the bats on the ceiling into scattering.
Quirrell rushed in from outside.
His turban was crooked, its purple ribbon drooping loosely over his shoulder, revealing half his bald back-of-head. His face was as pale as parchment, and he took alternating steps forward—less running and more lunging in a posture that looked like he might collapse at any moment.
"Troll!" Quirrell's voice went shrill and out of tune. "Troll in the dungeon! Thought—thought you ought to know—"
He ran to the staff table, swayed twice, his eyes rolled back, and he fell flat on the floor.
The Great Hall erupted.
Screams, cries, and the sound of chairs falling over all layered together in the same second. A young girl at the Hufflepuff table burst into tears from fright. Seamus Finnigan of Gryffindor jumped onto a table. Several older Ravenclaw students instinctively drew their wands, but they didn't know where to point them.
Dumbledore stood up.
His movements weren't fast, but the moment he stood, all the candles on the staff table went out. Only a single point of white light remained at the tip of his wand—that point of light was particularly piercing in the darkness.
"Silence."
One word.
It wasn't shouted. Dumbledore's volume was even lower than his usual speaking voice. But the word produced a strange resonance in the Great Hall—as if reflecting off all four walls and the ceiling simultaneously, filling everyone's ears.
The noise in the Great Hall dropped to zero within two seconds.
"Prefects." Dumbledore's gaze swept across the four long tables. "Lead the students of your respective houses back to the common rooms immediately. Professors, follow me."
Chaos resumed, but this time it was orderly chaos. The Prefects of the four houses began to stand up to count heads and organize the lines. Percy Weasley's voice rang out from the Gryffindor table: "First years follow me! Don't push! Don't run!"
On the Slytherin side, Farley had already stood up. Her voice was steady:
"Slytherins, line up. Follow me. Do not fall behind."
Students stood up one after another, surging toward the Great Hall doors.
Cassius didn't move.
He sat there, looking at Draco's empty seat.
The pumpkin juice in the goblet reflected the blue light from the jack-o'-lanterns above, shimmering with fine ripples.
"Malfoy." Farley glanced back from the front. "Keep up with the line."
Cassius stood up. But he didn't follow the Slytherin line.
He turned and walked in the opposite direction.
Farley's brow furrowed. She opened her mouth to shout, but a second-year girl beside her grabbed her sleeve in terror, forcing her to comfort her student first.
Cassius walked against the flow of people toward the Great Hall doors. When students saw him coming, they parted reflexively, like river water around a stone. No one dared block his path.
At the door, Snape was preparing to follow Dumbledoreout.
He saw Cassius walking against the crowd.
Chapter 59: The Visitor in the Girls' Bathroom
"Malfoy," Snape's voice was cold and hard. "Return to your group."
"Draco is on the First Floor." Cassius did not slow down.
Snape's footsteps faltered for a moment.
"The First Floor is within the Troll's range of activity." Cassius brushed past Snape. His voice was level, but every word carried an air that brooked no argument. "I'm going to get him."
"You—"
Snape reached out, intending to grab Cassius's shoulder.
When his fingers were still five centimeters from Cassius's school robes, a wave of heat radiated from Cassius's shoulder. Snape's fingers felt as if they had touched a red-hot iron wall, and he instinctively pulled back.
Cassius did not look back.
His feet stepped onto the stone corridor, every stride steady and swift. The [Dual-Soul Furnace] within him had switched from standby to operation mode. Magic accelerated through his meridians like an engine revving from idle to three thousand RPM.
The corridor was empty. All the students were evacuating toward their Common Rooms. Only Cassius was walking in the opposite direction.
He released his perception.
Magic transformed into an invisible web, spreading out from him, creeping along the stone walls, floors, and ceilings, covering all space within a fifty-meter radius.
In the lower levels of the Castle—at roughly the first basement level—there was a turbid, low-level magical fluctuation. It was the Troll. Massive in size, inferior in magic, and slow-moving, yet every step carried a distinct tremor.
Not in the Dungeon.
Quirrell said the Troll was in the Dungeon, but Cassius's perception told him that the turbid fluctuation was moving through the First Floor corridor.
The direction was—
The Girls' Bathroom.
Cassius's pace changed.
He was no longer walking.
The stone slabs beneath his feet let out a dull thud under the instantaneous infusion of magic. Cassius's body seemed to be catapulted forward, rushing out at a speed completely uncharacteristic of an eleven-year-old. The torches on both sides of the corridor flickered violently in the draft he created, and several were extinguished outright.
He moved at high speed through the dark corridor, hearing only the sharp whistle of his school robes cutting through the air.
First Floor.
Corner.
Stench.
A stench so thick it was nauseating hit him. It smelled like a mixture of a rotting sewer, moldy old socks, and spoiled animal entrails that had been steamed at high temperatures for three days.
Cassius knew he had found the right place.
He sped up.
At the end of the corridor, from the direction of the Girls' Bathroom, came a dull impact—followed immediately by the sound of wood splintering, pipes bursting, and a sharp, feminine scream.
Then came another voice.
"Tarantallegra!"
That was Draco's voice.
Hoarse, trembling, and forced out through gritted teeth.
But it was indeed a spell.
Cassius's pace quickened even more.
Thirty seconds earlier.
Draco stood at the entrance of the Girls' Bathroom on the First Floor, listening to the crying inside, hesitating whether to push the door open.
He had originally intended to mock Hermione. A Gryffindor, and a Muggle-born Witch at that, being reduced to tears by someone like Weasley—a week ago, this would have been his favorite pastime.
But he hesitated.
Not out of sympathy. There was no such entry as "sympathy" in the education of Malfoy Family. The reason for his hesitation was simple—Cassius had said on the train last week that using words to bully those weaker than oneself was the lowest form of behavior.
Draco thought about it and felt that his current strength really didn't qualify him to talk trash to a girl. He could barely even move a feather with Wandless magic; what right did he have to mock others?
He was just about to turn and leave.
Footsteps approached from the end of the corridor.
Heavy. Deep. With every step, Draco could feel the stone slabs beneath his feet vibrating. It was as if someone were repeatedly hammering the ground with a log.
The stench arrived along with the footsteps.
Draco's first reaction wasn't fear, but disgust. He covered his nose, scrunched up his face, and glanced toward the end of the corridor.
The torchlight illuminated a massive silhouette at the corner of the corridor.
A Troll emerged from behind the corner.
It was four meters tall. Its head nearly touched the ceiling of the corridor. Its gray skin was covered in lumps and scars, looking like a piece of granite magnified dozens of times. A ridiculously small head sat atop a thick neck, its two eyes like soybeans embedded in dough, glinting with stupidity.
Its right hand dragged a wooden club. That club was longer than Draco's body, its end scraping across the stone floor with a piercing friction sound.
Draco's legs refused to obey him.
He wanted to run. His brain was desperately issuing commands: Run. Run back. Get out of here. But his legs felt as if they were nailed to the floor, and he lost all sensation below the knees.
The Troll saw him.
Its two soybean eyes rolled, focusing on Draco. Then its mouth peeled back—not in a smile, but in a pure, instinctive physiological reaction to seeing prey. Its teeth were sparse, each the size of a baby's fist, with bits of food or something else hanging from them.
The Troll took a step. It walked toward Draco.
Draco finally moved.
But not to run.
He didn't know why he didn't run. Maybe it was because his legs truly wouldn't move. Maybe it was because the door to the Girls' Bathroom was right behind him, and there was someone crying inside. Maybe it was because the training in the Dungeon over the past week had made his body remember one thing—
A Malfoy does not retreat.
Draco threw open the door to the Girls' Bathroom and stumbled inside.
"Granger!" His voice was distorted and shrill with fear. "Granger! Quick—there's a Troll—"
Hermione poked her head out from the innermost stall. Her eyes were swollen like walnuts. She froze when she saw Draco—she hadn't expected someone from Malfoy Familyto burst in.
"You—what are you doing her—"
Her words were cut short.
The Troll squeezed its body through the bathroom doorway. The frame was too narrow, so it used its shoulders to smash away large chunks of the brick wall on either side. Bricks and dust showered down onto the floor.
Hermione saw the Troll.
Her scream pierced the ceiling.
The Troll was enraged by the scream. It let out a low growl, raised its wooden club, and brought it down hard on the Sink counter in the center of the bathroom.
ceramic tile,water pipe,The mirror shards exploded in the same second.Water gushed out of the broken pipe.,A layer instantly accumulated on the ground.
Draco was knocked back two steps by the jet of water from the pipe. His feet slipped, and he fell heavily into the standing water. His head hit the tiled floor, and his vision went dark.
Hermione screamed and retreated back into the stall, huddling in the corner with her hands over her head.
Chapter 60: Draco's Courage
The Troll swung its club again. This time it smashed into the wooden partition of the stall. The thin wood was no different from paper against the Troll's strength; the upper half of the entire row of stalls was swept away in one clean sweep, splinters flying everywhere like shrapnel.
Hermione let out a scream as a piece of wood grazed her arm, cutting a bloody gash into her skin.
Draco lay prone in the pooled water, looking up at the Troll's massive back.
The monster stood between him and Hermione. Its attention had been drawn by Hermione's scream, and it was now closing in on her in the corner. With every step, its sole crushed a ceramic tile. The water on the floor splashed everywhere under the pressure of its weight.
Draco realized his right hand was in his pocket.
His fingers touched his wand.
Hawthorn. Ten inches. Unicorn Hair.
Cassius's voice rang out in his head.
"If you don't even have the courage to draw your wand, you don't deserve the name Malfoy."
Draco grit his teeth.
He scrambled up from the water, soaked through, his blonde hair plastered to his face. He pulled his wand from his pocket with his right hand.
His hand was shaking. Shaking violently. The tip of the wand didn't draw a straight line, but a messy, jagged one.
But he stood up.
He aimed at the Troll's back—that massive target like a grey city wall—and opened his mouth to recite the only offensive spell he had practiced so far:
"Tarantallegra!"
A thin orange beam shot from the wand's tip. It flew crookedly for about three meters before hitting the Troll's lower back.
Nothing happened.
The Troll's rough skin didn't even have a red mark left on it. The orange light was like a drop of water falling on a rock, vanishing without a sound.
But the Troll stopped.
It turned its head. Its bead-like eyes stared at Draco.
It changed its target.
The Troll turned around, raised the wooden club that was taller than Draco, and brought it crashing down toward his head.
Draco watched as the base of the club rapidly enlarged over his head.
He didn't close his eyes.
His hand held the wand, tip pointing toward the ceiling, his mind blank on what spell to chant—everything he had learned evaporated at this moment. He only knew he couldn't close his eyes. A Malfoy doesn't close his eyes.
The club came crashing down.
And then—
Boom.
A loud crash. It didn't come from above. It came from behind, from the direction of the bathroom door.
Draco felt a surge of power from behind him. It wasn't a shockwave—it was more like a wall suddenly appearing above his head. An invisible, scorching hot, and unreasonably hard wall.
The Troll's club smashed into that wall.
The sound of wood splintering.
It wasn't that the club smashed through the wall. It was the wall that repelled the club. The recoil was so great that Draco clearly saw a gash open in the web of the Troll's right hand holding the club, deep red blood gushing from the cracks in its grey skin.
The Troll, in pain, staggered back a step.
Draco turned his head.
The bathroom door was gone. The doorframe was gone. Even the half-meter of wall on either side of the door was gone. In its place was a jagged hole about two meters wide. Bits of brick were still trickling down.
A person stood in the opening.
A white shirt. Sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Blonde hair glowing faintly in the afterglow of the corridor's torches.
Cassius Malfoy.
His feet stepped on the broken bricks and water. A few drops of dirty water splashed onto the surface of his leather shoes, but he didn't care.
His eyes were fixed on the Troll.
Deep within his grey-blue irises, a faint, ethereal blue light was slowly brightening. It wasn't a flicker—it was a continuous, steady brightening. Like the door of a furnace being opened.
"Cassius!" Draco cried out.
His voice was incredibly raspy. There was a sob in his throat, the relief of surviving a disaster, resentment, grievance, and a little bit of—though small, it was definitely there—pride.
Because he hadn't run.
Cassius's gaze shifted from the Troll for a second. He glanced at Draco.
Drenched. Hair a mess. School robes covered in brick dust and dirty water. Right hand holding the wand, hand shaking, but not lowered.
Cassius withdrew his gaze and looked back at the Troll.
"Well done," he said.
His voice wasn't loud. But Draco heard it. His nose tingled, and he almost burst into tears on the spot. He bit his lower lip hard, forcefully suppressing that surge of emotion.
The Troll recovered from the initial shock of the pain. It looked down at its split hand, then up at the little thing that had kicked in the door along with the wall, letting out an ear-piercing roar.
Saliva flew from its crooked, gaping maw, splashing onto the ceiling.
It raised its club—this time with both hands—and swung it toward Cassius.
Cassius didn't retreat. He didn't even move his shoulders.
He raised his left hand, palm facing up.
A layer of milky-white light film formed above his palm. It wasn't a spherical shield—it was a flat plate. About the size of an open book. So thin its thickness was almost invisible.
The club came crashing down with all the monster's brute force.
It smashed into that flat plate.
A dull thud.
Cassius's feet sank about a centimeter—not because he was pressed down, but because the stone floor beneath his feet was crushed by the force. His body remained motionless. His arm remained motionless. Not even a finger bent.
The club stopped on the Magic Plate for less than half a second.
The Troll's hands were repelled again. This time, they were flung even further and harder. Its entire right arm was thrown upward by the recoil, and the club almost slipped from its grasp.
Cassius withdrew his left hand. He looked at the Troll.
"It's too slow."
He spoke those three words. His tone was exactly the same as when he evaluated the firing rate deviation of the Magic Gatling by the Black Lake. Flat. Technical. Like he was discussing a math problem.
Then he moved.
His right foot stepped forward. The stone slab shattered. This step wasn't walked—it was propelled by magic. Dracoonly saw a blurred afterimage flash past his eyes.
Cassius's right leg rose. His knee folded to the limit. The muscles in his calf, infused with magic, tightened into an iron bar.
A Sidekick.
A textbook, mechanically efficient Sidekick, completely devoid of any redundant movement.
The outer edge of his foot swept precisely against the outside of the Troll's left knee joint—from an anatomical perspective, the weakest point of the entire leg's structure. Ligaments crossed here, the gap between bones was greatest, and lateral load-bearing capacity was worst.
The density of magic attached to Cassius's foot was at the same level as when he blocked the club—but while the block used a shield that dispersed the force, this kick was concentrated on an area of about fifteen square centimeters on the outer edge of his sole.
The impact force per unit area increased dozens of times over.
The sound of bone fracturing exploded in the bathroom.