While Viktor and the old professor were happily tending to the little rescues he'd brought back from all over the world,
Viktor suddenly felt the ground shake beneath his feet.
Thump! Mac, who'd been draped over Viktor's shoulder, tumbled off with a completely bewildered expression.
Viktor blinked. What the hell? An earthquake here in the Scottish Highlands?
Another tremor hit. Birds exploded from the Forbidden Forest in a chaotic cloud—every species of bird and flying magical creature spiralling into the sky in panic.
But Viktor and Kettleburn weren't looking at the birds.
Their jaws had literally dropped. Eyes wide, they stared in stunned silence at the sight of Hogwarts Castle… dancing on the highlands.
Before either of them could process it, the ground jolted again. This time the entire castle leapt upward like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on!
Towers, walls, courtyards—everything shot straight up as if riding invisible springs.
The main tower curled high like a tail. The long corridors arched like a startled cat's back.
"Merlin's beard!"
Kettleburn's feeding ladle clattered to the grass.
"Tom!!"
The name flew out of Viktor's mouth before he even thought about it.
He was already reaching into the suitcase for his broom when—
BOOM.
A far bigger shockwave erupted from under their feet, bouncing both men straight into the air.
And Hogwarts… launched like a rocket.
For a brief, surreal moment in mid-air, several towers went pop-pop and detached from the main body, spinning like Lego bricks.
The Gryffindor tower even cheekily tilted sideways; a few terrified portraits fluttered out of windows like startled bats.
But just as everything seemed about to scatter for good—whoosh—they snapped back into place with perfect, crisp brick-on-brick clicks.
When the castle landed again, it kicked up a huge ring of dust and smoke. The tall towers puffed out clouds like industrial chimneys.
It bounced twice more—each jump smaller than the last—then wobbled side to side before finally settling.
Through the entire ridiculous performance, if you ignored the fact that a thousand-year-old castle had just started doing the Highland fling, not a single roof tile had come loose.
Only a few startled textbooks sailed out of windows in wild arcs before the downdraft of the castle's return sucked them right back inside.
Viktor didn't waste another second. He leapt onto his broom and rocketed toward the still-bouncing castle.
Behind him, Kettleburn finally snapped out of his daze.
He fumbled for a nearby Thestral, then—somehow—produced a whole string of extremely dangerous small creatures (Venomous Tentacula vines, baby Blast-Ended Skrewts, who knew what else), gripped his wand like a man going to war, and flew after Viktor.
Meanwhile, inside Hogwarts itself—pure pandemonium.
House-elves were Apparating frantically through the corridors, shrieking "Earthquake! Earthquake!" while desperately layering reinforcement charms on every wall and beam.
But no matter how hard they tried, with each rhythmic tremor the walls, towers—everything—kept peeling away from the foundations and snapping back together like elastic.
Up in the Headmaster's office on the eighth floor,
Albus Dumbledore's usual gentle, twinkling expression had shattered into fragments.
Behind the half-moon spectacles, those famous blue eyes were bulging. Even his famously crooked nose was being rhythmically straightened by the force of each bounce.
But what had Dumbledore truly gobsmacked wasn't his straightening nose.
It was the fact that the floor beneath him had vanished.
His entire office—desk, Fawkes's perch, spinning silver instruments, the lot—had detached from Hogwarts proper and was now floating independently.
Behind him, the wall of former headmasters' portraits reacted even more dramatically.
As the office leapt skyward again, the portraits all went whoosh and ejected themselves from their frames in a screaming cloud.
"Merlin's—panties—ahhh!!"
"What in the—?!"
"Is it—Voldemort—back—with—an—army—?!"
Dumbledore himself, now airborne alongside his office furniture, wore an extremely peculiar expression.
Through his Headmaster privileges he had already identified the culprit behind Hogwarts' sudden aerobatics.
Without hesitation he lunged, grabbed the tail of a very curious-looking Fawkes, and vanished in a burst of phoenix flame amid Fawkes's indignant trill.
The other portraits quickly received the news from the rest of the castle's paintings and fled in a chorus of shrieks.
In the end, only Phineas Nigellus Black remained, jumping up and down in his frame and cursing furiously.
Just as Hogwarts launched into yet another bounce, three figures arrived almost simultaneously at the fourth-floor corridor.
Viktor burst through a window on his broom.
Dumbledore emerged from a swirl of phoenix fire.
And Professor McGonagall—transformed back from cat form—landed neatly beside them.
The three of them stared at the same scene.
Constantine fighting Lai (no)—Tom (no)—wait.
Nine Toms.
Each one a spectral, glowing cat soul, each wielding an enormous hammer labelled "100t" in bright cartoon letters, chasing Peeves around in a frenzied game of whack-a-ghost.
And with every synchronized WHAM of those nine hammers against the floor—
Hogwarts lurched upward again, performing its merry little jig across the Scottish landscape.
"Ohhh… Merlin's… beard…"
McGonagall and Dumbledore spoke in perfect, trembling unison.
They obviously recognised Tom—but how had one chaotic cat turned into nine souls in the space of an hour?
And how were those nine cartoon cat ghosts somehow strong enough to override centuries of protective enchantments and make the most heavily warded castle in Britain do the can-can?
While Dumbledore was busy pondering the metaphysical implications of cartoon-physics souls affecting reality,
McGonagall's first coherent thought was:
If the Weasley twins ever meet this cat, Gryffindor is going to become Gryff-"f"indor overnight.
At that exact moment, a furious roar echoed through the corridor, loud enough to rattle the remaining windows.
"TOM!!!"
The nine hammer-wielding Tom souls froze mid-swing.
Every single one of them shuddered from ears to tail-tip.
The giant hammers—raised high—slipped from their paws.
Plop plop plop plop plop plop plop plop plop.
Nine perfectly flattened cat pancakes appeared on the flagstones.