— — — — — —
Inside the Headmasters' Box, Fontaine watched as the old professor he had worked so hard to invite was hauled away like a complete clown. His face flushed crimson with rage.
"Dumbledore, you owe me an explanation. It took me a month and a half of letters to convince Joseph to participate in this tournament. And what does Riddle do?"
"This is blatant targeting! An insult to Ilvermorny itself!"
Bang!
Fontaine slammed his hand onto the table and shot to his feet, eyes blazing. "You people have always had it out for the American magical community. You're targeting us at every turn! Dumbledore, I'll expose you and the British Ministry of Magic for what you really are!"
"And you lot too!" He spun around abruptly, bloodshot eyes landing on Madame Maxime, Okeye, and the other headmasters. At this point, he had completely lost it.
"You just stood there and watched Tom Riddle bully me! Fine. When it's your turn someday, don't expect any help from me. I'll sit back and watch too!"
The other headmasters' expressions darkened.
Fontaine was practically pointing at their noses and calling them cowards, accusing them of being intimidated by a mere student.
Which, admittedly, was true.
Still, saying it out loud was incredibly rude.
As for his threats, nobody really cared. A monster like Riddle? They would have to be insane to provoke him on purpose.
After nearly half a year at Hogwarts, these headmasters had all come to understand one thing: as long as you didn't clash with him, Tom was actually quite reasonable. Mature. Even polite.
Only Fontaine was stubborn enough to keep butting heads with him. Or perhaps the conflict between them had simply become impossible to resolve.
Either way, their feud was their own business. None of the other headmasters felt the slightest sense of shared suffering.
Meanwhile, Grindelwald watched the entire spectacle with obvious amusement, like an audience member enjoying a play.
Fontaine had been clever enough to avoid directing any accusations at him. It was almost as though the room contained only six headmasters instead of seven.
But since he wasn't being dragged into it, why would he bother stepping in?
"Agilbert, please calm down. You're overreacting."
Dumbledore remained as composed as ever despite Fontaine's furious outburst.
"Neither Riddle nor I have any intention of targeting America. In fact, we have many friends there, and they're wonderful people."
His expression hardly changed.
Scenes like this had become routine over the past few years. He had helped Tom deal with Ministers for Magic, stood against inquiries from the International Confederation of Wizards, and now he was being grilled by Fontaine.
He had been so busy cleaning up after Tom that he barely had time to carry out his plans for training the Chosen One.
Though, to be fair, that wasn't entirely accurate. Tom was perfectly capable of handling every problem himself. The issue was how he handled them.
Nobody could accept his methods. And Dumbledore's job was simply to minimize the fallout and keep the damage contained.
"How am I supposed to calm down?!" Fontaine pounded the table repeatedly, venting the fury boiling inside him.
"That, I'm afraid, is your problem." Dumbledore shook his head calmly and even offered him a smile. "The only reason I advised you to calm down is because complaining to me is pointless. Tom oversees the certification examinations as the representative of Astra Abyssum. Even as his headmaster, I have no authority to interfere. If you truly can't let this go, you're welcome to file a complaint with him once he returns."
"No need."
The furious Fontaine instantly regained his composure.
In a low voice, he said, "Dumbledore, do you really take me for an idiot? If I went to argue with Riddle and he didn't beat me up on the spot, I'd hand you the position of Headmaster of Ilvermorny myself."
Then he flashed Dumbledore a strangely satisfied grin, "This arrangement is much better. I vent my frustrations to you, feel a whole lot better afterward, and dump all my problems onto your shoulders. You can go negotiate with Riddle. Whatever the final outcome is, I'll accept it."
"Dumbledore, even if the wizard ranking examinations have nothing to do with you, I'm still staying at Hogwarts right now. As the host, shouldn't you be responsible for your guests' safety?"
The entire box fell silent.
The smile on Dumbledore's face slowly faded.
First came disbelief.
Then it turned into a bitter, helpless smile.
Fontaine... His brain had leveled up.
The old Fontaine would never have been this shameless. For Ilvermorny's honor, he would have confronted Tom directly even if he knew he couldn't win.
Now things were different. Tom was making Fontaine miserable, so Fontaine had decided to make him miserable in return.
The worst part was that his reasoning was perfectly sound.
Dumbledore couldn't simply sit back and watch something happen to Joseph today.
Which meant... He would have to interfere.
"Let's just watch the match. Yeah, just watch the match." Unable to think of a better solution, Dumbledore sighed. "After the competition ends, I'll speak with Tom."
Only then did Fontaine finally look satisfied.
...
..
Meanwhile, inside the Howling Abyss, Professor Flitwick landed but made no immediate move toward the front lines where the dragon awaited.
Instead, he stood admiring the surrounding architecture.
The entire area had been built in the style of a frozen tundra. Behind him stood a statue of a hooded woman. Her face was hidden beneath the cowl, her hands clasped together in prayer.
A faint aura of frost lingered around the statue. Though he couldn't see her face, Flitwick inexplicably felt certain of one thing. This was Rowena Ravenclaw.
The statue carried the same quiet elegance and wisdom as the one in Ravenclaw Tower. The resemblance wasn't exact, but the temperament felt eighty percent identical.
''Why would Tom place a statue of Ravenclaw here?''
Flitwick couldn't understand it.
Yet as he thought back on various events over the years, he realized something strange.
Tom seemed unusually fond of Ravenclaw. He mentioned her more often than Slytherin, and he maintained an exceptionally close relationship with the house ghost, the Grey Lady.
"Was there some secret behind all this?"
Smart people often had a habit of overthinking things. Before long, Flitwick had become completely absorbed in trying to connect the dots.
A furious roar from the Hungarian Horntail finally snapped him back to reality. Only then did he remember that he was still in the middle of a competition.
With hurried little steps, he rushed toward the battlefield.
But by this point, the Hungarian Horntail had already run out of patience. The moment it spotted Flitwick, it glared at him and unleashed a blast of dragonfire straight from its jaws, venting all the frustration of being kept waiting.
...
"What?!! How can it unleash fire that quickly?"
The professors in the waiting area had no time to mourn Joseph being dragged away. Every ounce of their attention was fixed on the match unfolding before them.
From dozens of meters away, the Hungarian Horntail opened its jaws and unleashed a torrent of flame toward Flitwick.
The heat was so intense that the air itself warped and shimmered. Even the image displayed on the Lume-Lens became blurred and distorted.
As the flames swallowed the diminutive professor whole and Flitwick vanished from sight, every professor present tensed.
Just from that opening attack, the more experienced observers could tell this Horntail wasn't merely putting on a show. It was genuinely terrifying.
A dragon capable of spewing a stream of fire dozens of meters long in an instant was every wizard's nightmare. Most spellcasters would probably be reduced to charcoal before they could finish casting a spell.
Fortunately, the one standing on the field was Professor Flitwick. Hogwarts' master of Charms. And the champion of countless dueling tournaments.
Among Hogwarts' Heads of House, only McGonagall could rival him in combat experience. Even Snape fell short in that regard.
Many people assumed Snape was the strongest of the four Heads of House. Later, they discovered that wasn't quite true. Snape was undoubtedly a genius. The problem was that the others were geniuses too.
When talent levels were comparable, overcoming decades of experience wasn't nearly as easy as people imagined.
...
Less than two seconds after the flames engulfed Flitwick, the dueling master demonstrated exactly why he was so respected.
An invisible blade split the sea of fire in half.
At the same time, a transparent shield surrounded him, completely isolating him from the flames and leaving him unharmed.
Those with sharp eyes quickly realized it wasn't an offensive spell at all.
Flitwick had simply transfigured a Shield Charm into the shape of a blade and used it to part the inferno.
The elegance of the solution drew immediate admiration.
Guillaume Moreau of Beauxbatons clapped his hands appreciatively, "Filius is still as precise and elegant as ever."
"Oh?" Tom, who was accompanying the professors, immediately looked interested. "Mr. Moreau, you know Professor Flitwick?"
"Of course." Moreau nodded. "Back in those days, Filius was an absolute dueling fanatic. He traveled all over the world competing in tournaments. If there weren't any competitions available, he'd go around challenging famous duelists instead."
He pointed at himself, his expression turning helpless, "I was one of his victims. And not just once."
A trace of nostalgia appeared in his eyes. "Later we became friends, of course. But do you know what Filius was like back then?"
"He was unbelievably annoying. For a while, I genuinely thought he'd graduated from Gryffindor."
The corner of Tom's mouth twitched.
He hadn't expected Professor Flitwick to have such an embarrassing chapter in his past. A battle-crazed honey badger who ran around challenging people everywhere?
That image really didn't fit the refined Charms professor of today.
"Riddle, where did you even get a dragon like that?" Snape leaned closer and asked in a low voice, his gaze fixed on the Horntail with undisguised interest.
A dragon this powerful and well-developed would undoubtedly produce dragon blood, scales, and other magical materials far superior to those harvested from ordinary dragons.
"I raised it myself." Resting his chin on one hand, Tom let out a yawn. "Remember the Gringotts robbery in Egypt last summer? I helped recover the stolen items, and those dragons were given to me as a gift."
"Originally, I planned to keep them as guards for Astra Abyssum. But now that I've built a city, they'll be staying in Dalaran as city guardians instead."
If Tom were dropped into a Pokémon world, he would unquestionably qualify as a Dragon-type Master, perhaps even a Champion-level trainer.
Raising dragons was simply too easy for him. Whenever he had free time, he would tame them using his natural pressure and bloodline. Then he distributed pieces of the old scales he had taken from Rayquaza, one scale for each dragon. Once the aura faded, he would simply replace it with a fresh one.
That was all he did.
Yet the dragons still began showing signs of atavistic evolution, slowly regaining their ancient bloodlines.
Combined with their already excellent power, these dragons were undoubtedly the strongest dragons seen in centuries.
"I don't need their heart or anything outrageous. Just some dragon blood will do."
Snape's eyes burned with desire.
In the end, he couldn't resist the temptation of such rare ingredients and practically walked up to the chopping block himself.
Naturally, Tom wasn't about to miss the opportunity.
He immediately named an outrageously high price.
The two haggled back and forth for a few exchanges before Snape suddenly stopped bargaining altogether.
It wasn't that he no longer wanted the dragon blood. Rather, he'd just realized something.
Dragon blood, wasn't that easy?
As long as he managed to injure the dragon during his match, he could simply collect some afterward.
Now that he had found a way to get it for free, there was no way he was going to pay Tom's extortionate price.
Tom merely assumed his asking price had scared Snape off and didn't think much of it.
Instead, he turned his attention back to the arena, enjoying Professor Flitwick's performance.
After the initial exchange, Flitwick had already figured out the Hungarian Horntail's attack patterns, habits, and overall combat strength.
More importantly, he had found the perfect way to deal with it.
.
.
.