John flicked his hand casually, and the arrows shattered, flying back in reverse.
Boom!
With a sudden yank, the bound Bane was flung like a bowling ball, slamming into the other centaurs and scattering them with cries of pain.
Another pull brought Bane crashing down at John's feet. Looking down at him from above, John said coldly, "Weakness isn't what threatens your survival. Arrogance is. Don't think you can challenge a dragon with your fragile little lives."
With a flick of his hand, he sent Bane flying again. Then he lowered his wand and stood there, face calm and indifferent.
The three behind him were stunned into silence. The once-proud centaurs were now all collapsed on the ground, not one able to get back up.
The pressure still hung over them like a mountain, pinning them in place.
Magorian hadn't been attacked. He could only stand there and watch helplessly as John crushed the centaurs like dry twigs.
Lifting his gaze to Magorian, John gave a faint smile. "You're smarter than they are. Go back and tell the centaurs in the forest—you know what to say."
Magorian was drenched in cold sweat. For a moment, it felt like he had seen a black dragon tear through everything they had.
Life, in front of it, felt unbearably fragile.
He nodded stiffly. John withdrew the pressure.
As John walked forward, the terrified centaurs instinctively curled their hooves inward.
When he stopped in front of the badly injured Bane, the look in his eyes—like he was staring at something already dead—made Bane slowly lower his head.
"If a Hogwarts student is attacked in the Forbidden Forest, I'll hold the centaurs accountable—every last one of you, without exception. You should know enough to understand I have the power to do that."
John bared a chilling set of white teeth. Like a dragon gently stroking a lamb's head, he hauled Bane upright.
The centaur staggered to his feet and stood there silently. Without even glancing back, John said, "Let's go. I bet the Quidditch Cup belongs to Slytherin again this year."
Hagrid, who had been on edge the entire time, finally lowered his crossbow in a daze.
Harry stared at John's back, unable to stop his thoughts.
Firenze was right—this man was incredibly dangerous.
At the mention of Slytherin winning the Cup, Harry slowly muttered, "Then I bet it's Gryffindor."
John gave a soft, ambiguous laugh in response.
Harry suddenly felt a little less confident.
...
Out of the Forbidden Forest, with one less worry weighing on him, Hagrid became noticeably more cheerful.
In the distance, the Quidditch match was nearing its end.
Harry and Hermione went off to watch the game, while John returned to the Slytherin common room.
There, he ran into Pansy's ex-boyfriend.
"Not often you meet someone who isn't interested in Quidditch."
John walked over to the sofa and sat down, picking up the mug Daphne had given him for Christmas and taking a sip.
Pansy's ex-boyfriend watched from behind his book, the corners of his mouth lifting in a smirk.
Outside, a ruckus erupted.
John looked over to see Malfoy's ostentatiously platinum blond hair appear in the doorway.
Right behind him were Goyle and Crabbe, each holding one of the silver Quidditch Cup's handles.
Montague was bawling like a baby—tears of pure relief. He no longer had to worry about being remembered as the worst disgrace in Slytherin Quidditch history.
They had preserved their winning streak, and no one was more thrilled than he was.
Malfoy strutted in with a smug air and declared loudly, "Hahaha!! Not a big deal—we weren't going to lose anyway."
It had been a close match. Gryffindor had beaten Ravenclaw by the skin of their teeth.
The Weasley family had gone full beast mode, like gods descending from the heavens.
Ron had a sudden moment of enlightenment, as if divine favor had struck, pulling off a flawless spinning save move that blocked several of Ravenclaw's shots in a row.
Ginny, carrying Harry's will like a celestial mission, practically plucked stars from the sky as she snatched the Golden Snitch right under Cho Chang's nose, securing a last-second win for Gryffindor.
"We were just twenty points away from losing," Daphne exhaled as she returned from watching the match, finally letting go of the breath she'd been holding.
Malfoy cleared his throat awkwardly—if he hadn't been showboating during the match against Cedric last time, the score probably wouldn't have been that tight.
Even with the Weasley siblings going all out, they still couldn't shake Slytherin's aura of dominance.
With a final score difference of twenty points, Slytherin claimed this year's Quidditch Cup.
"Montague looked like he was about to whip out his wand and cast a hex the moment he saw the Weasley girl chasing the Snitch," Pansy complained. "If they'd overtaken us, he would've gone absolutely insane."
"But it's all good now, right? We've kept the longest winning streak in Hogwarts history," Malfoy muttered.
John glanced at Malfoy. He had a strong feeling that if they had lost, Montague's first target would've been Malfoy himself.
Gryffindor had to swallow the bitter pill of a twenty-point defeat, but Ron Weasley's stellar performance had Angelina proudly declaring she'd made the right choice.
The celebration eventually came to an end, even as Ron dramatically recounted to Harry and Hermione how he singlehandedly held the line.
With the Quidditch Cup over, the final student revelry quietly faded away.
What came next belonged to the library, to exam season.
John was probably the only student in all of Hogwarts who didn't need to spend time there.
...
Silverhand Manor.
Tommy looked at his boss and asked, "My lord, when I was your age, I never even thought about skipping class every day."
John glanced at Tommy. "You know what I'm about to say, don't you?"
"Well, yeah. If I'd been called Johnny Silverhand back then, I probably wouldn't have wanted to go to class either," Tommy said with a sigh.
As a proper subordinate, Tommy could only say that his boss simply couldn't be judged by common sense.
With less than two weeks until exams, other students were practically wishing for extra brains and drinking Invigoration Draughts like water.
But John wasn't just skipping class—he'd outright left the school and returned to Silverhand Manor.
Even Tommy couldn't help worrying about his boss's academic performance.
As it turned out, his concern was completely unnecessary.
John walked into the hidden chamber behind the garden.
A transparent glass dome securely encased the golden cup. The dragon-shaped vessel had already accumulated hundreds of souls.
He released the container filled with souls.
"Animae, ad me revertimini"
John twirled his wand, and the souls, like silk being drawn from cocoons, were pulled out strand by strand and absorbed.
Inside the Room of Unbreakable Binding, the Dementors looked sickly and still, almost petrified.
"There's still quite a lot left," John noted with a glance.
Dementors and the Soul-Devouring Curse had a symbiotic dynamic—one weakens as the other strengthens.
Unless every Dementor was destroyed, there was no need to worry about the Soul-Devouring Curse being broken.
After collecting the souls, John shifted his attention to the golden cup.
"Hufflepuff's Cup."
He opened the casing. This time, the cup didn't react at all.
Looks like it had learned to behave.
"The Sword of Gryffindor is razor-sharp. Ravenclaw's Diadem enhances wisdom. So what about you, Hufflepuff's Cup?"
John stared at the cup and slowly reached out to touch it.
The instant his fingers made contact, a surge of powerful magic burst forth from the cup.
A gleam flashed through John's eyes. He responded by enveloping it with even stronger magic.
"Heh~"
The silver ring covered his right hand as the magic crystal generated a magical field.
Countless strands of black energy pierced into the cup. A shrill, soul-piercing scream echoed from within.
Hmm..
John held his breath and focused, the black threads tightly wrapping around the cup.
"It's time for you to hand it over," John whispered.
The cup shrieked, "No—no! You can't!"
John waved his wand, summoning a Dementor's soul toward it.
Silver streaks laced with soul fragments intertwined within the black threads.
Each silver strand became a razor-sharp scalpel, slicing through the inside of the cup.
The fragment of Voldemort's soul inside the cup resisted violently. Even fragmented, the Dark Lord's soul remained fiercely aggressive.
John took a deep breath, his gaze sharpening with intense focus.
"Revertere anima mea."
His voice was eerie and ethereal, ancient syllables echoing with a chill that stirred the soul.
Atop the cup, a green snake transformed into a handsome young man.
"Arrrgghhhhh... How can you..."
The man's striking features twisted in pain as the black threads bound his limbs, and the silver scalpels carved his form away from the cup.
John said in a low voice, "You, a mere fragment, are no match for me."
His wand ignited the soul—the silver spirit burst into golden flame, searing the cup with divine fire.
His eyes turned into vertical pupils, seeing through the cup to its very essence.
More and more souls were ignited, and the screams from the cup grew fainter and fainter.
John seized the moment and forcefully dragged the fragment out.
The green snake tried to escape as a wandering soul, but John raised his wand and conjured soul-threads to reel it in tightly.
Amid dwindling shrieks and unwilling hisses, the soul fragment was dragged into an unknown space.
Having completed it all, John couldn't help but collapse from exhaustion again.
He fell heavily to the ground, the color rapidly draining from his face as a streak of black flickered beneath his skin.
_________
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