Chapter 116: Flipping the Table! Screams from the Diary
"Click."
The brass doorknob turned, and Cassius Malfoy stepped into the circular office, his face expressionless.
On the desk, delicate silver instruments were puffing white mist, and the sound of fine gears interlocking ticked away.
On the walls, the portraits of past Principals lifted their eyelids one after another, their gazes meeting quietly in the shadows.
Suddenly, Fawkes the Phoenix on the mahogany stand let out an extremely uneasy, shrill cry!
The golden-red feathers of this high-level magic creature stood on end instantly, its wings flapping frantically as if it had seen some natural predator; it took off directly and huddled tightly on the rough rafters at the very top of the room.
As Cassius Malfoy stepped forward, the terrifying vortex of magic brewing within this twelve-year-old body had already neared the critical threshold of what this room could bear.
"Please sit."
Dumbledore stood behind the large solid wood desk and pushed a pewter tray containing golden sugar balls forward.
"New lemon sherbet from Honeydukes, would you like to try one?"
He picked one up with withered fingers and slowly peeled the translucent candy wrapper.
But after peeling it, he did not put the candy into his mouth, but instead gently placed it on the edge of the tray.
An extremely cautious detail.
This greatest white Wizard of the century refused to perform any action like "chewing" or "swallowing" in front of this boy that would create even a half-second window of vulnerability.
Cassius Malfoy had no intention of sitting down.
He stood still with a cold gaze, habitually twisting the silver ring on his left index finger.
In an instant, a visible low-frequency hum of dark blue magic exploded around him, directly cutting out a circle of distorted force field.
The detection silver instruments that had been operating regularly all jammed at once, and the gears emitted an extremely harsh, sluggish grinding sound.
"Cassius Malfoy, I understand that you experienced quite a bit of trouble over the summer."
Dumbledore threw the used candy wrapper into the wastebasket, his gaze passing over his half-moon spectacles, pressing against the opposite side with irresistible weight. "The Ministry of Magic's methods were indeed reckless. But that does not mean that power can completely ignore current rules."
The old man's voice was mellow yet extremely oppressive: "Hogwarts is a school, and it requires absolute order here. Talent is a double-edged sword; if it lacks rational guidance..."
"Shut up."
Two words. Cold, arrogant, leaving no room for negotiation.
Accompanying these two words, a substantive pressure of magic forcibly chopped back into the air above his head, violently cutting off the white Wizard's spell-casting preparation and conversational rhythm!
A chorus of gasps came from the portraits on the wall.
Phineas Black, who had been holding his senior posture to adjust his pure gold cufflinks, trembled, and the solid silver cane in the painting clattered against the wooden strip at the bottom of the frame.
He, who usually loved to boss students around, now dared not even breathe loudly.
Dumbledore's voice stopped abruptly. In those deep blue, aged eyes, a touch of extreme sharpness finally gathered.
The gravity in the room doubled without warning. A row of quill pens on the desk snapped one after another, and the ink bottles were pressed until fine cracks appeared.
"Put away your 'big picture' speech for those hot-blooded Gryffindor idiots, Dumbledore."
Cassius Malfoy pressed his hands against the edge of the solid wood desk, leaning his upper body forward, the dark blue radiance flickering in his eyes like a storm.
"You don't care about my talent, nor do you feel the Ministry of Magic was reckless."
Cassius Malfoy curled his lips, pulling out a cold and cruel arc: "You called me here only because you are afraid. You are afraid that I will become the second Tom Riddle, afraid that I will tear this broken Castle down, and even more afraid that the chess pieces you have carefully arranged on this chessboard will be crushed to pieces by me."
No tai chi, no hypocritical testing; all decency was torn apart on the spot.
Dumbledore's withered fingers tightly gripped the handle of his wand at the bottom of the desk edge.
This boy was so smart that it completely defied common sense; he didn't even have a single emotional weakness of a twelve-year-old child, stabbing straight into the heart with every word.
Dumbledore's lifelong obsession was that he failed to stop Grindelwald in his early years and indulged the Dark Lordin his middle age. He would absolutely not allow Hogwarts to hatch another monster that stood above the rules.
"Since you are clear about my concerns, you should understand that I cannot let an uncontrollable, massive threat roam in the school."
Dumbledore completely tore off the gentle mask of an elder. The majestic pressure belonging to a top-tier white Wizard erupted like a tsunami; the entire Principal's office began to tremble violently, and the wall plaster fell in rustles!
"A threat?"
Cassius Malfoy laughed arrogantly.
He was too lazy to even draw his wand; his left hand reached back into the Undetectable Extension Bag at his waist and roughly dragged out an object.
Bang!!
A tattered, Black-covered diary was slammed heavily onto the desk in front of Dumbledore by him! The massive kinetic energy directly smashed a deep pit into the thick solid wood desk, and wood splinters flew everywhere!
"Instead of worrying about me here, you should take a better look at the disgusting residue left behind by your prized student."
The moment the diary touched the desk, the vast and pure white magic aura around Dumbledore immediately triggered a countermeasure.
"Sizzle—"
A harsh, concentrated acid corrosion sound exploded from the gaps between the pages! A mass of thick, pitch-Black, substantive mist struggled desperately to squeeze out from the edges, trying to escape this place filled with pure magic.
"Ah!!!"
An extremely shrill, throat-tearing scream exploded in the office! It was the desperate wail emitted after a soul was torn apart by extreme pain.
Dumbledore stumbled back half a step, his lower back hitting the wooden armrest of the high-backed chair. The old man's breathing stopped instantly.
He recognized the essence of this thing at a glance—a Horcrux! An extremely evil Dark Arts creation!
Just as the mass of Black mist that was trying to escape spilled out half an inch, Cassius Malfoy snorted coldly with disdain, his right hand's five fingers pressing down violently into the void above the diary.
Crack!
A high-density web of dark blue magic covered it violently from above!
What magic mutual generation and restriction, what attribute suppression—in the face of this pure violence, everything was vain!
Cassius Malfoy simply used the absolute crushing of the magic dimension to nail that mass of Black mist back into the pages!
"Spare me... No! Don't kill me!!" The remnant soul of the Dark Lord, under the ruthless cutting of the dark blue magic, emitted a trembling plea that made one's scalp tingle.
Its last remaining weak remnant had been tortured to the verge of collapse by Cassius Malfoy during the long summer vacation, and now it didn't even have the strength to say a harsh word.
The extremely terrifying visual impact swept across the room.
The Dark Lord, whom the magic world spoke of with terror, the highest-level evil Horcrux.
At this moment, it was being ruthlessly trampled underfoot by a twelve-year-old boy using the most unreasonable violent means, right in front of the greatest white Wizard, just like stepping on a bug.
Dumbledore stared fixedly at the frantically trembling Horcrux on the desk, his heart beating violently in his chest like a drum.
He had spent his whole life looking for the secret to why the Dark Lord was "unkillable," and now, the truth was right before his eyes.
And what made him truly terrified was that this "monster freshman" he feared the most had actually tossed the Dark Lord's biggest trump card onto the table like trash as a bargaining chip!
What kind of terrifying strength and background did this require?
What kind of city-slaughtering, nation-destroying level of atrocities had he committed over the entire summer vacation?!
"See it clearly, old man."
Cassius Malfoy casually withdrew his right hand. The diary instantly became as quiet as a chicken, presenting the dead state of a piece of rotten wood.
He stood up straight again, throwing down his judgment from a high position:
"This piece of garbage is a down payment I'm giving to Hogwarts. A down payment to buy you not bothering me."
Cassius Malfoy turned and walked toward the door, his pure Black school robe drawing a sharp arc in mid-air. When holding the brass doorknob, he tilted his head slightly and dropped the final ultimatum:
"In the second year, move your gaze away from Slytherin. What I want to do, you can't manage, and even less can you stop."
"I want absolute freedom in Hogwarts. Otherwise, next time what I slam on the table won't be this broken diary, but the bloody heads of that group of idiots at the Ministry of Magic."
The door was slammed shut heavily.
The office fell into a tomb-like silence.
Dumbledore slumped into his high-backed chair, defeated.
He looked at the diary on the desk that had retracted all its evil aura and was playing dead to the end, cold sweat slowly sliding down the deep ravines on his forehead.
He finally understood that he had miscalculated everything from the very beginning.
This was not some second Tom Riddle at all.
This was a magical tyrant who crushed all rules and only believed in pure violence.
And now, the gaze of this tyrant was clearly already fixed on certain things deeper within Hogwarts.
Dumbledore's withered fingers slowly tightened, gripping the peeled lemon sherbet on the edge of the tray.
With a "click," the hard candy was subconsciously crushed into sticky, broken residue by his strength.
Chapter 117: The Soul-Crushing Bargaining Chip
The chill in the entrance hall was bone-deep.
Snape strode up the stone steps, his black robes whipping behind him in a sharp arc.
He glared at Harry and Ron, who were huddled in the corner, his pale fingers irritably scratching at the handle of his wand.
The two second-year Gryffindors were covered in mud and water, their robes torn into shreds by the Whomping Willow, with a mixture of mud and tree sap dripping from their hemlines.
Ron clutched his wand, which was snapped in two and held together only by a single Unicorn hair; the chattering of his teeth echoed through the corridor.
Snape looked away, deliberately avoiding those irritating green eyes of Potter.
"Driving a piece of junk, flaunting it about, and crashing into the Whomping Willow that dates back to the school's founding."
Snape spoke rapidly, venom dripping from his lips, "Potter, has that head of yours, stuffed with nothing but nonsense, actually taken the crazy talk from Cassius's mouth as truth? Do you think Hogwarts is some 'low-grade storybook for you to grind hero achievements' and that school rules are just 'decorations'?"
Harry clenched his fists, trying to argue, "Professor, the platform entrance was sealed—"
"Silence!" Snape barked, interrupting him, his wand striking the stone pillar heavily.
Under normal circumstances, he would have dragged Potter to the dungeons for detention and deducted all of Gryffindor's points.
But tonight, he didn't have the patience for that.
The feast in the Great Hall hadn't ended yet when he sensed a terrifying shockwave of magic erupting from the direction of the Principal's office.
Cassius Malfoy was confronting Dumbledore.
Compared to Potter's foolish flying car farce, that supernaturally powerful Slytherin thug was the real madman capable of overturning the entire'server' of the magic world.
"I have no time to deal with your petty nonsense tonight." Snape dismissed them coldly, "Get back to your tower. If you dare take another step, I will personally stuff you into the boiler of the Hogwarts Express to add some fuel."
Harry and Ron, as if granted amnesty, scrambled up the stairs to escape.
Snape ignored them, his leather shoes stomping heavily through the puddles on the stone floor, as he headed straight for the eighth floor, filled with irritation and deep apprehension.
Along the way, he ran through countless ways Dumbledore might suppress Cassius.
The old Principal had plenty of cards up his sleeve; no matter how large that boy's magic reserves were, he was ultimately just a twelve-year-old student.
The moment he pushed open the brass doors of the Principal's office, Snape stopped in his tracks.
All the silver instruments on the walls were jammed, their gears screeching as they ground against each other.
The air was filled with the pungent smell of ozone, mixed with the burnt scent of solid wood being scorched at extreme temperatures.
In the center of Dumbledore's heavy, century-old oak desk, a black hole two inches deep had been gouged out.
The wood grain at the edge of the pit was shattered, as if it had taken a direct hit from a heavy siege hammer.
Snape's breath hitched. He immediately caught the residual background noise of magic in the air.
A tyrannical, deep blue magic that repelled all external elements.
There were no traces of spellcasting.
Absolute destruction caused purely by terrifying mass and the forceful compression of the environment through high-density magic.
This was what Cassius often referred to as "Brute force creates miracles."
Dumbledore was sunken into his large high-backed chair.
The centenarian looked ashen.
He kept his head down, his withered fingers peeling the wrapper off a lemon sherbet.
The translucent yellow candy rolled onto the desk, picking up ash from the edge of the black pit, but he didn't bother to pick it up.
His fingertips turned to point at the object in the black pit.
A black-covered diary.
A moldy piece of trash, lying there without a shred of life.
"Severus, you are here." Dumbledore's voice was dry, as if he were chewing on grit.
Snape approached quickly.
With just a glance, his pupils contracted.
A high-level evil power was locked tight within those few pages of ruined paper.
The familiar, cold sensation, spanning eleven years, precisely stung the Dark Mark on his left forearm.
He gripped his forearm hard through his sleeve, his long fingers turning white at the knuckles, masking his instinctive trembling.
This was the humiliating brand left by Lord Voldemort.
"This is..." Snape pressed his hand against his wand, "That man?"
"A Horcrux." Dumbledore dropped the bombshell, "Irrefutable proof of Tom splitting his soul."
Snape gasped.
Lord Voldemort had created a Horcrux.
This thing trampled the laws of life and death in the wizarding world into the dirt.
As long as the Horcrux remains, the Dark Lord cannot die.
If this news got out, the Ministry of Magic would have to line up on the rooftop to jump tonight.
But what made Snape's scalp tingle even more was the current state of the diary.
As a top-tier Dark Arts artifact, a Horcrux comes with built-in mechanisms for bewitchment, defense, and retaliation.
But in Snape's perception, the fragment of Lord Voldemort's soul inside was extremely weak, on the verge of annihilation.
Like a viper that had been skinned and roasted over a fire for three days, only twitching by reflex.
"Cassius Malfoy threw it here."
Dumbledore pulled a white cloth over the diary, looking exhausted, "His bargaining chip—a pass to ensure Hogwarts never interferes with his freedom."
Snape stepped closer, staring intently at the tiny cut marks on the cover.
"Impossible." Snape's voice rose, "Horcrux defenses are known as the absolute barrier of the magic world. Nothing can break through them except Basilisk venom and Fiendfyre. What method did he use?"
"He didn't use any known destructive spells." Snapereached a conclusion that chilled him, "He wove a net of high-density pure magic, forcibly shredded the Horcrux's shell, and carried out a unilateral physical slaughter of the Dark Lord directly on the soul dimension!"
Blasting a void soul as if it were a physical target.
Outrageous micro-manipulation of magic, combined with bottomless magic reserves—it simply ignored the basic laws of magic.
"Tom created Horcruxes to exploit the loopholes of life and death." Dumbledore crossed his fingers under his chin, "But Cassius... he is a walking calamity himself."
The old man sighed, "Tom pursued absolute dominion, but this boy doesn't care at all. He acts entirely on his whims, relying only on violent solutions, crushing anyone who stands in his way."
Dumbledore looked up at Snape, "It's unknown how many Horcruxes Tom left behind. I'm more afraid of Hogwartsbeing dismantled now. Cassius's growth defies all logic; if he were to lash out, the Castle's defensive array would collapse in three seconds."
You could hear a pin drop in the office.
The portraits of past Principals huddled at the edges of their frames, not daring to breathe.
After a long while, Snape spoke coldly.
"Albus, you are trapped in your own fixed mindset." Snapecrossed his arms, his pale face regaining its composure.
Dumbledore raised his eyelids.
"Cassius is a monster. But he is a monster who puts his bottom line out in the open." Snape hit the nail on the head, "The entire Slytherin house sees it clearly. As long as no one touches Malfoy Family or messes with that idiot Draco, he has absolutely no interest in ruling the magicworld or killing Muggles."
Snape pointed his index finger directly at the diary on the table, "The object that Lord Voldemort treated as his trump card is, in his hands, just a piece of junk used to bang on the table for negotiations."
"With such an unreasonable monster guarding this place, if Lord Voldemort truly dares to resurrect, the first thing he will have to face is Cassius's heavy blow."
"This semester, Potter is not only not in danger, but can rest easy." Snape sneered, "That Dark Lord who cannot be named is definitely more afraid of running into Cassius Malfoy than we are right now."
Dumbledore let out a long sigh.
The old man nodded slowly, smiling bitterly.
"You always see things more clearly than I do, Severus. This time, we were the ones who were limited."
"Let Lockhart handle Malfoy for next week's Defense Against the Dark Arts Class." Snape turned, his robes sweeping behind him, and strode out of the brass doors.
Chapter 118: Tactical Blindness and the Savior's Misjudgment
Dumbledore leaned back in his high-backed chair, his withered fingers crushing the wrapper of a lemon sherbet.
The crisp rustling sound of the wrapper echoed back and forth beneath the dome of the Principal's office.
"Pass the order down." Dumbledore tossed aside the candy wrapper, his voice dry and raspy. "Effective immediately, we shall implement the highest level of tactical blindness regarding all of Cassius Malfoy's actions within the school. As long as he does not tear down the load-bearing walls of the Castle or kill any innocents, all of us Professors shall turn a blind eye."
Snape pulled his wide black robes tight and turned, striding out of the office. The heavy oak door slammed shut behind him.
Faced with absolute, violent suppression, the century-old white Wizard had no choice but to yield his bottom line.
Dumbledore picked up a golden, glistening lemon sherbetand popped it into his mouth, trying to suppress the weariness in his heart with the intense sweetness.
"He cares for his family. As long as he has people he cares about, he will form tangible bonds with the people in this Castle." Dumbledore muttered, biting down on the hard candy. "With attachments, he will not become a second Tom."
Gryffindor Tower, second-year boys' dormitory.
A leather trunk with brass buckles hit the mahogany bedpost with a dull thud.
Ron kicked his trunk over onto the floor, his toe grinding hard into the grain of the wooden floorboards.
He irritably tugged at the old robes he was wearing, the collar already worn and pilled.
This garment had been passed down through three older brothers, and the hem still bore Potion stains that wouldn't wash out.
"Snape is biased to the bone!" Ron kicked a worn-out shoe with a peeling toe, sending it flying; it hit the door panel with a loud bang. "If the Principal doesn't speak up, he'll definitely kick us out of Hogwarts! Did you see the look on his face? He wanted to snap our necks with his own hands!"
Harry lay on his red velvet four-poster bed, staring at the golden tassels on the edge of the bed canopy.
"And that scoundrel Malfoy!" Ron stopped by the window, his fist slamming against the sill and shaking loose a few flecks of plaster.
A folded Chudley Cannons poster fell out of his pocket, its edges worn yellow and soft from handling.
This was the only personal item he owned that he could show off.
"When Cassius sits at the long table in the Great Hall, two hundred Slytherins don't even dare to breathe too loudly! That bunch has become his personal thugs! How are we supposed to walk in the hallways from now on?"
Harry straightened his back and sat bolt upright on the bed.
The intense nervous tension made his temples throb with a rhythmic pain.
The feeling of weightlessness from when the carriage crashed had long since faded.
The image of Dobby frantically banging against the wardrobe door at 4 Privet Drive forced its way into Harry's cerebral cortex.
"The great Harry Potter must not return to Hogwarts!"
"An extremely terrible plot!"
"The Master is planning terrible things... The young Master is very good to Dobby, but Dobby cannot return to Hogwarts!"
Dobby's shrill voice pieced itself back together in Harry's mind.
"The Master" pointed to Lucius Malfoy. "The young Master" was definitely Cassius.
A massive blind spot in his intelligence formed a closed loop in Harry's mind—Lucius was going to release some kind of ancient power at Hogwarts to purge non-pureblood students, and Cassius, who wielded terrifying violence, was the cleaner for this purge plan!
Harry was firmly locked in by the misaligned information, completely unaware that the diary, the source of Dobby's fear, had been forcibly intercepted by Cassius two months ago.
Now, that piece of junk, regarded as the source of disaster, was lying quietly on the wooden desk in the Principal's office, propping up a table leg.
"We must keep an eye on them." Harry gripped the bedsheets with both hands, crushing the cotton fabric into a dozen permanent wrinkles.
"Keep an eye on who?" Ron turned his head, tightly clutching the tattered-edged Quidditch poster in his hand.
"Malfoy." Harry articulated clearly. "Ron, Dobby warned me. Malfoy Family is planning a purge of Hogwarts. If we do nothing, we're just waiting to die."
Ron's face turned deathly pale. He shuffled his heels back half a step, stepped on the old shoe he had kicked earlier, and his ankle gave way.
"Harry... have you lost your mind?" The sound of Ronswallowing was amplified in the dormitory. "You're going to watch Cassius Malfoy? Have you forgotten everything that happened at Flourish and Blotts? He said one word, and Lockhart couldn't even hold his wand! He single-handedly crippled an entire squad of adult Aurors over the summer!"
The oppressive atmosphere from Flourish and Blottsresurfaced in Harry's torso.
Cassius's deep blue pupils forcibly enlarged on his retinas.
Back then, all the oxygen in the bookstore had been sucked dry, and Harry had to expend all his strength just to lift his wrist.
Cold sweat trickled down Harry's spine, soaking the back of his undershirt.
He was instinctively afraid.
The survival instinct developed from hiding from Dudley's fists in the cupboard under the stairs urged him to shut up and run away.
But when he closed his eyes, he saw again those adults who had died under the green light to protect him.
"We can't back down, Ron." Harry's chest heaved as he took in a deep breath of cold air. "We must find out what Cassius is planning to do at Hogwarts. Even if I get killed, I have to get the message to Dumbledore."
Ron tightened his grip on the poster, gritting his back teeth, and finally swallowed the words of rebuttal.
Beneath Hogwarts, Slytherin Common Room.
Green flames burned in the brass fireplace, and the dry firewood crackled and popped.
The heavy stone door was pushed open. The sound of the door hinges friction cut through half the room.
The whispering Slytherin students fell silent collectively. All chatter was cut off in their throats.
The Common Room sank into an oppressive silence where even heartbeats could be heard.
From first years to seventh years, two hundred students simultaneously put down their parchment, silver goblets, and half-eaten green apples.
Everyone straightened their legs, hands pressed against their trouser seams, chins lowered, bowing their heads to the figure walking in through the door.
Former Quidditch captain Flint shrank into the shadows of the stone pillar on the far right.
The crisp echo of dragon-hide boots stepping on the stone floor drummed against his eardrums.
Flint held his breath, two fingers digging hard into the silver embroidery on the edge of his robes, the veins on the back of his hand bulging.
He had once broken an opponent's three ribs directly on the Quidditch Pitch, but now, facing this housemate, he couldn't even muster the courage to lift his head to look at the other's chin.
Cassius ignored the cowering of the two hundred living people around him.
He walked through the crowd, the hem of his coat stirring up a cold breeze.
He walked to the high-backed silver snake chair in front of the fireplace, took off his restrictive black outer robe, and tossed it casually onto the back of the chair.
Cassius sat into the chair.
"Draco."
The monotonous voice, devoid of any emotional fluctuation, spread through the basement.
Draco Malfoy, standing three meters away, jolted.
He released his right hand, which had been clutching the left hem of his robe, stepped out of the crowd, and stopped three steps in front of Cassius.
"The wandless magic control training I assigned you over the summer." Cassius lifted his chin, his deep blue pupils locking onto Draco. "Perform it."
Two hundred people looked up at Draco.
Draco's chest heaved rapidly.
He did not reach for the Hawthorn wand in his inner robe pocket.
The extreme special training of the past year had drained the young master airs from his bones.
Several red scars, where the skin had been torn and scabbed over by magical backlash, still remained on the web between his right thumb and index finger.
Draco raised his right arm, his palm hovering directly above the mahogany coffee table.
Magic surged along his meridians, pressing against his blood vessels.
"Rise."
On the coffee table, a crystal goblet filled with clear water shook violently.
The water surface at the rim of the glass broke free from gravity, a stream of water detached from the cup wall and shot straight into mid-air. The water stream stretched, twisted, and was forcibly compressed in mid-air.
Draco clenched his teeth, his wrist beginning to shake irregularly.
The scattered water stream contracted into a solid water sphere ten centimeters in diameter.
Fine ripples continuously appeared on the surface of the water sphere, and the extremely high internal water pressure caused the edges of the sphere to emit a faint, shrill, screeching sound.
The water sphere hovered steadily in mid-air.
Large beads of sweat seeped from Draco's forehead, the sweat dripping down the bridge of his nose onto the stone floor.
His right palm pressed down firmly, maintaining absolute physical control over the high-density water stream.
Chapter 119: Locking Coordinates, The Countdown to a Violent Breakthrough
At eleven years old, he had mastered Wandless Magic and completed initial elemental remodeling.
This precision in magic manipulation was enough to make every seventh-year student present lower their heads and retreat.
Cassius curled his index finger and tapped the wooden armrest of the silver snake high-backed chair.
Tap, tap.
The dull thud from the wood echoed through the stuffy air of the basement.
"magic dissipation rate is forty percent." Cassius gave his judgment, his voice cold and hard. "Your focus is still too scattered. You are still trying to 'hold' it up, rather than 'dominating' it. The efficiency is too low."
Cassius leaned back in his chair. He raised his left hand and pressed his index finger downward into the void.
A high-frequency trembling sound pierced the eardrums of the two hundred people present.
Draco's wrist bones emitted a dull crack.
His control over the water flow was brutally stripped away in a tenth of a second.
The water sphere collapsed.
The out-of-control water did not fall to the ground; high-pressure magic locked the water body from all directions, forcibly contracting and stretching it inward.
A deep blue, high-pressure water line, 0.1 millimeters thin, slashed down from mid-air, striking directly at the pure copper fireplace railing three meters away.
The brass snapped.
The solid metal railing, thick as a finger, was cut in two by the high-pressure water line.
The cut was smooth, and the metal surface glowed with a dark red heat due to friction. The broken railing crashed to the floor, splashing out sparks.
A collective gasp echoed through the Common Room.
Flint's knees went weak, and he reached out, gripping the edge of the stone pillar behind him tightly.
He habitually bit the nail of his right thumb.
This was an old habit of his when facing immense pressure.
Flint's mind was filled only with this year's Quidditch Cup; he desperately craved a championship trophy to prove his worth to his mean and biased father back home, not wanting to be treated as a discarded son of the family anymore.
But now, facing this level of magical attack, he felt waves of palpitations.
The water line cut through the brass without any resistance; if it had landed on a person's neck, no defensive spell could have blocked it.
Draco stared at the broken railing.
His left hand, hanging by his side, gripped the silver thread on the edge of his robe.
He deeply loathed the superior sigh his father, Lucius, made whenever he mentioned the savior, Potter, and hated even more that he was always reduced to a background prop for his peers to be compared against.
He had to defeat Potter and trample those purebloods who mocked him underfoot, even if the price was being tortured to death by his clan's elder brother. The muscles on Draco's face tightened, filled with a craving for power.
"I understand." Draco lowered his head, honestly accepting the punishment. "It's that the pressure of the magic output is insufficient. I won't sleep tonight. I will double the compression ratio and obsess over high-level control of water molecules."
"Go to the dungeon. It's quiet there." Cassius withdrew his gaze and waved his right hand.
Draco did not refute a single word, turned around, and strode out of the Common Room, the hem of his robe sweeping across the stone floor.
The current Draco, under the crushing weight of absolute power and extremely cold Spartan-style education, had shed the spoiled demeanor of a young master and become a young snake truly craving venomous fangs.
After dismissing Draco, Cassius closed his eyes.
The suppression of the Dual-Soul Furnace was completely lifted by him.
A massive magic perception net centered on him and pushed outward in layers.
Anti-magic bricks, millennial array patterns, and sleeping portraits lost their effectiveness before this perception net.
His consciousness followed the ley lines of the Castle, sweeping all the way down through layers of underground structures.
The plot advancement was a game belonging to Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort.
The blood words on the walls, the petrification incidents, and collecting clues were meaningless.
His target was extremely specific: locked onto that ancient Basilisk that had lived for a thousand years.
The vital blood in the Basilisk's secondary heart was the only consumable he could use to break through the upper limit of his physical body's magic capacity.
He did not care about the savior's growth arc, nor the Lord Voldemort's resurrection plan; he only sought the ultimate advancement of power.
Find the lair. Break through physically. Go in, kill it.
Three minutes passed.
The perception net wove through the underground water pipe network of Hogwarts.
It passed over damp, moss-covered brick joints and avoided the gray rats scurrying everywhere.
Directly beneath the second-floor girls' bathroom, deep in the underground, the perception net touched a layer of massive shielding mechanism.
A large magic vacuum zone that shielded conventional magic signals occupied the underground. It greedily devoured the vibrations of the surrounding ley lines.
"Found it."
Cassius opened his eyes. A ghostly blue radiance lit up in the dim basement, dispelling the warm light of the surrounding fireplace.
The exact three-dimensional coordinates of the Chamber of Secrets had been completely locked.
He would not go to talk nonsense with the crying Myrtle, nor would he imitate the Parseltongue of some Slytherinheir to open the door.
These processes were dragging and boring.
Tomorrow night.
He would restore himself to his best state, directly break through the stone slabs and water pipes from a physical level, and blow the millennium-old creature hiding in the sewer into a pile of minced meat.
The next morning. Hogwarts Great Hall.
Sunlight fell on the four long tables through the towering magical ceiling, and the aroma of roasted sausages and fried eggs filled the air.
Beside the Gryffindor long table, Harry, with dark circles under his eyes, held a piece of toast covered in raspberry jam, unable to take a bite for a long time.
His right thumb habitually rubbed the lightning scar on his forehead; every time he encountered an unsolvable crisis, he would subconsciously make this movement.
The narrow and stifling life in the cupboard at the Dursleys' home made him extremely insecure, and he swore he would never lose his friends in the magical world.
He had to figure out the plot of that tyrant from Slytherinand nip all danger in the bud.
Ron chewed his oatmeal vigorously, his left hand still clutching the broken wand wrapped in transparent tape.
He had a near-paranoid affection for this wand that could misfire at any moment, because it was one of the few items he could call his own, even though it had just shattered a glass goblet yesterday.
Hermione flipped quickly through the "Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration", muttering to herself, reciting complex casting gestures.
Harry ignored the noise around him, looked across most of the Great Hall, and stared at the head of the Slytherin long table.
Cassius sat on a wooden chair.
There was no white porcelain dinner plate in front of him, only a glass of iced water.
Harry saw it clearly; Cassius was not looking at the noisy crowd around him, much less at the Gryffindor direction.
He kept his head down, his expression cold, with all his attention focused on the action in his hands.
His right hand held a black quill, quickly sketching lines on parchment.
Harry narrowed his eyes, and with his excellent eyesight, he saw the complex pattern on the parchment.
It was a hand-drawn architectural structure diagram.
The direction of the underground pipe network, the thickness annotations of the load-bearing walls, combined with a cross-sectional analysis of the deep passages.
Cassius stopped the quill. He used the tip of the pen to draw a bright red cross firmly on the special node in the center of the drawing, marked with a sewer icon.
The nib pierced the surface of the parchment, leaving a rough tear.
Seeing the red cross, the danger alarm in Harry's mind rang wildly. After experiencing the life-and-death tests of Quirrell and Lord Voldemort, his intuition was far beyond his peers.
That was an execution route map planning a slaughter.
Cassius put down the quill, pushed back his chair, and stood up straight.
The blond boy folded the drawing, stuffed it into the inside of his robe, and strode toward the Great Hall doors.
His movements were filled with a straightforward aura of slaughter.
Cold sweat seeped from Harry's palms.
A disaster, even more dangerous than the warning in Dobby's words, was about to unfold at Hogwarts.
At the teachers' table, Dumbledore was cutting sausages and discussing the weather with Professor McGonagall. Snape was drinking black coffee with his head down.
The students were loudly discussing the weekend's Quidditch match, arguing until their faces were red for the honor of their respective houses.
Harry threw the uneaten toast into the white porcelain plate, grabbed the holly wand beside him, pushed away the wooden stool, and followed behind Cassius out of the Great Hall doors.
Chapter 120: Death Zone and Hunting Deduction
"Are you crazy? Are we really going to follow him?"
In the corridor on the second floor leading to the main staircase, Ron hissed in a low voice, his body pressed tightly against a giant suit of medieval knight armor.
He held his broken wand, which was wrapped in two layers of transparent tape, against his chest, his thumb incessantly picking at the curled edges of the tape.
Ron was actually terrified, but he absolutely did not want to show weakness in front of his best friend, especially since Mr. Weasley had just been publicly humiliated by the elder Malfoy, and he had been holding this grudge inside.
"Shut up, Ron, keep your voice down." Harry grabbed the old robe Ron was wearing, which was washed out and had loose threads at the cuffs.
Harry kept half his body hidden in the shadows, poking his head out just enough to stare intensely at the black figure walking further and further away.
He raised the back of his hand to push up the round-rimmed glasses that had slid down his nose, his eyes filled with suppressed panic and determination.
For this boy who had lived under others' roofs since childhood, Hogwarts was the only sanctuary he had, and he absolutely would not allow a Death Eater's son to destroy it.
Even if Dobby's warning was absurd, he dared not gamble with the safety of the school.
Cassius Malfoy was not walking fast.
His deep black, high-end dragon-hide boots stepped onto the ancient stone slabs of Hogwarts, producing an extremely rhythmic echo.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Each stride was about sixty-five centimeters, and even the point of force application was as precise as a precision machine.
The sound echoed in the empty corridor, carrying a natural sense of oppression.
Cassius had his right hand in his pocket, his index finger tapping against the lining of his robe in a specific triple-time rhythm; he had a pathological desire for control over numbers and rhythm.
He paid absolutely no attention to the two little mice behind him, because most of his computing power was highly concentrated deep within his mind at this moment.
The [Dual-Soul Furnace] was running at full power, performing a high-frequency review of the architectural cross-section he had drawn in the Great Hall earlier.
In Cassius's vision, Hogwarts had shed its disguise of magical wonder, transforming into a massive 3D coordinate system filled with geometric lines and load-bearing wall data.
He deconstructed the so-called Chamber of Secrets into pure geographical coordinates.
"Salazar Slytherin is truly sick in the head," Cassiusthought coldly to himself.
Building the Chamber of Secrets in a sewer and having to enter through a sink in the girls' bathroom—this twisted aesthetic made him sick.
The direction of the pipe network. The thickness of the load-bearing walls. The density distribution of the underground rock strata.
These data points were the core of what Cassius focused on.
Based on the massive magical shielding zone he perceived, the Basilisk's lair was likely about one hundred and fifty meters underground.
That thousand-year-old creature had lived too long and its body was extremely massive; using traditional spells to bleed it out bit by bit was purely moronic behavior.
"To kill it, one must use the highest density firepower grid for indiscriminate coverage," Cassius practiced the tactics in his mind.
The secondary heart was located below the third vertebra of the Basilisk's tail, where the thousand-year essence blood he desperately needed was stored.
He couldn't damage it, and he couldn't miss it.
He had to grind the serpent's head and torso into pulp within ninety seconds, while perfectly protecting the material in the tail with a gravity field.
This required unleashing an extremely violent amount of magic in a short time; the firepower density would be three times that of the previous purge of the Acromantula nest.
Problems followed.
Through the computing power deduction of the [Dual-Soul Furnace], Cassius directly ruled out the option of acting in the dead of night.
Hogwarts was too quiet in the dead of night, and the ley lines were in a dormant state.
If he unleashed that magnitude of magic without restraint, the high-frequency vibrations underground would definitely travel along the rock strata directly to the Principal's office.
Those strange silver instruments on Dumbledore's desk might even explode due to overload detection.
He didn't want to have a full falling out with the old bee just yet; that would invite meaningless surveillance and bickering.
Cassius was an extremely rational tyrant; he would never use his fists to smash through trouble if he could avoid it by using his brain.
"I need a perfect time when the noise is deafening and everyone's attention is drawn away."
He quickly scanned the school calendar in his mind.
One second later, the answer appeared.
Saturday morning, two weeks from now: Slytherin versus Gryffindor. The first Quidditch match of the semester.
The entire school would be gathered at the open-air stadium. The roaring from the stands, the whistling of the Bludgers, the turbulent magical currents stirred up by hundreds of broomsticks darting through the air.
This was the most perfect white noise cover.
By then, no one would care about that slight, dull vibration underground. Even if Dumbledore noticed an anomaly, his judgment would be interfered with by the chaos in the sky.
That would be the best moment to clear the field, pierce the crust, and extract the essence blood from the Basilisk's secondary heart.
The hunting time was set.
Forty meters behind the corridor, Harry's heart turned into a wild beast in his chest, slamming against his ribs.
The distance was too great; he couldn't hear Cassius's breathing at all.
But his mind was filled with the terrifying image of Cassiusdrawing that bright red cross on the parchment.
Harry's palms were slick with cold sweat, the moisture soaking into the wood grain of his wand.
After being completely led astray by Dobby's neurotic warning, the Savior's persecution complex had skyrocketed to its limit.
"Ron, listen to me." Harry spoke rapidly, his voice trembling, "That drawing is the underground structure of the entire Castle!"
Ron swallowed hard, gripping his broken wand tightly: "Why is he drawing the Castle's layout early in the morning? Is he planning to change careers and fix the toilets at the Ministry of Magic?"
"No! He's looking for demolition points!" Harry stated with absolute certainty, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying, fierce light.
In Harry's god's-eye view, the logic had completely closed the loop.
"That cross was drawn on a deep pipeline node! Dobbysaid that Malfoy Family has a terrible conspiracy targeting the entire school!"
Harry began to stack evidence incoherently.
"Cassius took down an Auror squad by himself! His father threatened Mr. Weasley in Diagon Alley! Now, he's measuring the load-bearing walls of Hogwarts!"
Ron's eyes widened like copper bells: "You mean..."
"He's going to blow up the entire foundation!" Harry threw out his final conclusion, his face deathly pale.
Harry was convinced that Cassius was preparing to plant some kind of large-scale destructive Dark Arts in the underground to directly bury the entire Gryffindor tower or all the Muggle-born students alive!
This was a shocking, bloody purge conspiracy plotted for the glory of pure-blood!
The Savior, hiding in the shadows, had managed to concoct a world-ending drama solely based on incomplete information.
Unfortunately, this extreme tracking in his eyes didn't even count as a comedy in Cassius's view.
Cassius, walking in front, didn't need to look back at all.
From the very first second he stepped across the threshold of the Great Hall, the magical perception net overflowing from the [Dual-Soul Furnace] had already precisely locked onto the two heat sources behind him with rapid heartbeats.
The one on the left had a heart rate of 140, and the one on the right had a heart rate of 150.
The frequencies were chaotic, and adrenaline was surging due to fear.
This kind of peeking and tracking from behind armor was, in essence, like two idiots streaking on a playground wearing plastic bags in front of a human radar like Cassius.
But he couldn't be bothered to pay attention.
Let alone drawing his wand to warn them, Cassius didn't even have the interest to stop and mock them for a couple of sentences.
This was the purest arrogance of a superior being.
When an elephant walks through the wilderness, does it care if two ants on the side of the road are secretly spying on its path?
As long as Potter didn't rush up to block his way, he could follow all he wanted; in any case, this idiot wouldn't understand what he was going to do anyway.
Cassius kept his hands in his pockets, maintaining that steady, unchanging pace.
He turned a corner in the third-floor corridor, and not far ahead was a fork in the road leading to the Ravenclawtower.
Light slanted in through the narrow Gothic windows, coating the floor in a layer of golden spots.
Cassius stopped.
It wasn't because Potter behind him had exposed his tracks, but because the road ahead was blocked by a strange scene.
A dozen meters away, on the cold stone floor, a blonde girl stood with her back to him.
Luna Lovegood.
She was standing barefoot with her pale feet on the stone tiles, her body bent at a ninety-degree angle.
The girl was humming a bizarre, terribly out-of-tune song, her hands rummaging behind a rusted, hollow iron breastplate, her nails scraping against the inner metal wall with a harsh sound.
The scene was extremely comical and abrupt.
"Did you hide my shoes here, Wrackspurt?" Luna murmured to the empty helmet.