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At Hogwarts, the atmosphere had relaxed considerably after the end of the third task.
The school term entered a rare period of calm. Even Dumbledore finally had so free ti, leisurely drinking tea in his office.
He skillfully dropped two spoonfuls of sugar into his cup.
"Finally, so peace..." The old man sighed softly.
But just as he raised the teacup for a sip, one of the ornants in his office suddenly erupted into a shrill alarm.
The sudden blaring alarm ca without any warning at all.
Caught completely off guard, Dumbledore nearly had a heart attack. The old man’s body jerked violently from the fright.
The lemon tea had already reached his lips and tilted halfway.
As a result, the entire cup spilled straight onto him.
The noise didn’t just scare Dumbledore either. The forr headmasters sleeping peacefully in their portraits all jolted awake one after another.
The mont Phineas Black saw the scene, he burst out laughing.
"Dumbledore, are you finally old enough to start wetting yourself? Looks like you’ll be joining us on the wall soon enough."
"Idiot," a heavily bearded forr Hufflepuff headmaster sneered disdainfully. "Do you think Dumbledore pees from his mouth or sothing? Look at his beard and clothes—that’s just illogical. Idiot Phineas."
Dumbledore’s mouth twitched. "Thank you for defending , Heathledger, but perhaps refrain from doing so next ti."
After hearing those two go back and forth, he completely lost his appetite for tea.
He walked over to the silver instrunt making the racket. It was a pair of connected cymbals, their lid trembling violently as the tal scraped together with an ear-piercing screech.
Standing before it, Dumbledore finally rembered what it was. A gift from an old friend in Africa.
Both a present and a long-distance communication device capable of transmitting brief ssages, though it had limited uses.
His old friend was rather traditional and never adapted well to new inventions. Even now, he still refused to switch over to the far more convenient Codex.
Next ti he wrote to him, Dumbledore decided he absolutely had to recomnd buying one. Otherwise, his poor heart wouldn’t survive many more scares like this.
With that thought in mind, Dumbledore lifted the lid.
Inside the cymbal, the blurry image of an elderly man appeared, accompanied by a tallic humming resonance.
|"Dumbledore! It’s , Muhammad Ali! Hurry, co quickly! Save my family! A bandit showed up and robbed all our ancestral treasures! He didn’t leave a single thing behind! Damn thief! Damn Sun-Chasers!"|
Sun-Chasers?!
Dumbledore’s eyes narrowed instantly.
The relaxed laziness from monts earlier vanished completely, replaced by a heavy, imposing calm.
He didn’t particularly care about the treasures his old friend had lost. What shocked him was hearing the na "Sun-Chasers" co from his mouth.
Those mysterious wizards connected to the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl had finally started exposing themselves?
Dumbledore quickly returned to his desk and wrote a letter, sending it off to Africa with Fawkes.
After watching Fawkes depart, he pulled out his iCodex and directly initiated a video call with Grindelwald.
Only two or three seconds later, Grindelwald’s slightly surprised face appeared within the glowing screen.
"Albus, is sothing wrong?"
The two of them didn’t communicate very often. Usually they exchanged short written ssages. A direct video call like this was rare.
Instead of answering, Dumbledore imdiately asked. "Gellert, where are you right now?"
"Berlin. Ah... I see."
Grindelwald raised a brow, a half-smile appearing on his face. "Go on then. What chaos has happened in the wizarding world this ti that made you suspect again?"
He honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed.
It had always been like this. The mont anything unusual happened, this old friend of his would imdiately start suspecting him.
And the worst part was... Most of the ti, Dumbledore wasn’t wrong.
But things were different now.
He, Gellert Grindelwald, hadn’t done anything this ti.
The one throwing the world into chaos now was soone else entirely—soone living under the sa roof as his old Dumbles.
...
..
"Achoo!"
Inside the Slytherin common room, Tom rubbed his nose.
Astoria was stunned, then hurriedly summoned a house-elf and ordered it to prepare hot tea as quickly as possible, complete with the finest cold-curing potion.
Only after giving the instructions did she finally look back at Tom with concern and guilt written all over her face.
The girl genuinely thought she’d accidentally caused him to catch a cold.
Across from them, Draco Malfoy stared blankly at the entire sequence of events, completely dumbfounded.
Seriously?
Tom just sneezed once, and she is acting like he’s already down with a fever.
Even if I hit forty degrees, nobody treats this well!
"It’s fine. How could I possibly catch a cold?" Tom wiped his nose, took a sip of tea, then smiled reassuringly at Astoria. "My nose just suddenly got itchy. No need to panic."
After saying that, Tom turned his attention back toward Draco.
"Draco, there shouldn’t be any problem leaving this task to you, right?"
Draco finally snapped out of his daze and nodded rapidly. His pale face flushed slightly with excitent.
"Don’t worry, Tom. Give one week. I guarantee I’ll have a perfect banquet ready by Saturday."
The reason Tom had called Draco over was to have him organize a small celebration banquet for Astoria’s recovery.
For the Greengrass family’s situation, the local circles didn’t know the full story, but everyone was aware that the ancient and wealthy family had long been plagued by a troubleso hereditary illness.
Adults had their own social circles. Young wizards had theirs too.
With Lady Greengrass currently struggling from her damaged ntal state, expecting her to handle this sort of thing wasn’t realistic. That was why Tom decided to host the banquet at Hogwarts instead and spread the good news through the younger pure-blood crowd.
And the unlucky workhorse he picked for the job was Draco.
To be fair, Draco had decent leadership skills. Aside from Gryffindor students, he got along fairly well with the pure-bloods of the other houses too.
He was the perfect choice.
"Good. Then I’ll leave everything to you." Tom nodded. "Do a good job, and there’ll be a reward. ss it up, and there’ll be a punishnt too."
A distinctly malicious grin suddenly spread across the boy’s face.
"I’ll lock you in a small dark room with Harry Potter for an entire weekend."
"What?" Draco’s expression changed instantly.
Then seeing Tom stop there, he cautiously asked, "You already ntioned the reward. What’s the punishnt?"
This ti, it was Tom and Astoria whose expressions changed.
Astoria stared at Tom in shock, unsure whether sothing was wrong with themselves... or whether Draco was the one with the problem.
Even Tom froze for several seconds before finally recovering, practically gritting his teeth as he spoke, "The punishnt is... locking you in a small dark room with Ron Weasley!"
Draco shot to his feet so fast it looked like he’d been launched by a spring.
"What! There’s no fun in beating up Weasley..."
"Tom, I’ll go prepare right now!" he yelled while sprinting for the door. "It’ll be the best banquet ever!"
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