Just like that, through the back-and-forth banter of the Father-Worrying Alliance, their grand scheme to make big news at the Triwizard Tournament was officially settled.
Time slipped away unnoticed. As Hogsmeade Station drew near, the Hogwarts Express gradually slowed down before finally coming to a halt alongside a dark, rain-swept platform.
The train doors slid open, accompanied by the low rumble of thunder overhead. Outside, torrential rain continued to pour relentlessly.
The downpour was fierce and heavy, like buckets of ice-cold water constantly being dumped on the students' heads.
For capable wizards, even the heaviest rain presented little trouble as long as they had mastered the Waterproofing Charm.
However, for the newly enrolled first-years who didn't know a single spell yet, it was pure misery.
"Need a hand, Hagrid?" Kyle called out, spotting the giant figure standing on the platform.
At that moment, Hagrid was wringing his hands in distress over how to take the first-years across the lake. In all his years of escorting new students to Hogwarts, he had never encountered such atrocious weather.
With a storm this severe, there was no telling how many freshmen might tumble into the water during the lake crossing.
Hagrid was holding his tiny pink umbrella, though considering his size, it barely managed to cover his oversized head.
Hearing Kyle's voice, Hagrid reacted as if he had just seen a savior.
"That'd be brilliant, Kyle! Do you reckon you could disperse these storm clouds?"
He had witnessed Kyle's weather magic before. Even with the storm raging so menacingly, he knew it wouldn't pose any real challenge for Kyle.
Kyle glanced up at the sky, which was spewing water as furiously as someone after a bad batch of Wallace fried chicken. "Leave it to me."
Hagrid had expected Kyle to pull out his wand and disperse the dark clouds with his masterful weather charms.
To his surprise, Kyle simply stood in place without making a move.
He parted his lips slightly: "A bag of rice must be carried up how many floors."
"Eh?" Hagrid looked utterly bewildered.
Ignoring Hagrid's confusion, Kyle's body floated gently into the air like a released hydrogen balloon under the effect of the Levitation Charm.
"A bag of rice to the second floor," Kyle's voice echoed from above.
"Giving you so much rice," Kyle's voice continued to resound across the sky, "wants me to wash the rice."
Every student looked up at the tiny black figure drifting higher into the heavens.
From the distant mountain ridges where Hogwarts Castle stood, a faint, choir-like chant echoed through the air—
"Grandma touches you, Olygami Pineapple~"
The rain beat down furiously, pounding against the earth with a deafening roar, yet it couldn't drown out Kyle's voice in the slightest.
Amplified by the Sonorus Charm, Kyle's voice pierced through the nearly impenetrable curtain of rain, reaching everyone's ears with crystal clarity: "I've washed so much muddy rice..."
Although nobody understood what Kyle was saying—since he was speaking Japanese rather than English—everyone inexplicably felt that the tiny figure rising into the sky resembled...
A god.
Or perhaps, a rice porter.
"Every grain has mud—who gave you a bag of rice?!"
Lightning flashed and thunder cracked across the sky, illuminating a small black silhouette amid the dense cloud layers.
Black tomoe quietly surfaced within Kyle's eyes.
He suddenly spread his arms wide.
Endless light and heat erupted above Hogwarts Castle.
"Almighty Push!"
A staggering wave of repulsive force centered on Kyle exploded violently in all directions. The storm clouds in the sky were instantly blown into nonexistence by the expanding shockwave.
The rain stopped.
The moon, previously hidden behind the thick storm clouds, unveiled its face once more.
Bright, pure moonlight washed over Hogwarts Castle in the distance, coating its ancient towers in a delicate layer of silver frost.
Yet hardly anyone noticed such a magnificent sight.
Because the Hogwarts students were still crowded on the Hogsmeade platform.
Their line of sight was blocked by the towering mountains.
Apart from Kyle, who was still floating up in the sky, no one could see Hogwarts Castle.
Looking down at the crowd of Hogwarts students still standing dazed on the platform, Kyle drifted back down from the air.
However, he didn't land on the platform where he had been standing, nor at the main entrance of Hogwarts Castle. Instead, he touched down right next to the Thestral carriages waiting for the students nearby.
By the time Kyle boarded the carriage, Hermione was already inside waiting for him.
Normally, a Thestral carriage wouldn't depart until it was fully occupied.
However, the Father-Worrying Alliance frequently snuck into the Forbidden Forest late at night to roast meat, and the smell of their barbecue had drawn the resident Thestrals more than a few times.
As a result, Kyle enjoyed a great relationship with these creatures, giving him small privileges like setting off before the carriage was full.
At Kyle's word, the Thestral carriage jostled vigorously.
Moments later, they set off along the narrow path toward Hogwarts Castle, wheels splashing noisily as they crushed through the muddy road.
"You Obscurials have such enviable magic power," Hermione muttered softly under her breath after the veteran driver got moving.
Unlike Pain's Almighty Push in the ninja world, which required the Rinnegan to operate, simple applications of repulsive force were fairly straightforward for wizards.
Hermione could use it too, but the repulsive force she could produce through wandless magic was pitifully weak.
Blowing away a standard-weight adult within a five-meter radius was the absolute limit of her current capability. Yet with a single move, Kyle—an Obscurial—had swept away storm clouds spanning dozens of kilometers.
Seeing such vast magical power left Hermione green with envy.
Taking Hermione's hand, Kyle smiled gently. "If you want, I can arrange a Tailed Beast for you."
"A Tailed Beast?" The unfamiliar term piqued Hermione's curiosity. "What kind of magical creature is that?"
Kyle pointed at the mini Two-Tails, Crookshanks, cradled in her arms. "Tailed Beasts are a general name for a class of artificial magical creatures—ordinary magical creatures transformed through magical modification."
Hermione froze. "Isn't that..."
The words caught in her throat before she could finish.
She had been on the verge of saying that it violated Ministry of Magic laws, but who was her boyfriend?
The grand Third-Generation Dark Lord himself—since when did he care about Ministry laws?
Hermione didn't harp on magical modification being too cruel, either. She might have said something like that in the past, but hanging out with the little Demon Lord so often had left her far from a pure-hearted saint.
It was already a miracle she hadn't been led completely astray into becoming a Dark witch.
"Once a Tailed Beast is sealed inside your body, you can borrow its magic power at will. When that time comes, you won't have to envy my magic power anymore."
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