By noon the next day, seven or eight owls arrived at 12 Grimmauld Place almost simultaneously, as though by prior appointment, swooping into the Black ancestral home in a bustling flurry.
They brought Harry replies from everyone except Kyle.
Upon receiving the letters, Harry couldn't wait to grab the stack of envelopes and scurry up the stairs, rushing straight back into his room.
"Cho Chang's... Cho Chang's..." Harry kept muttering under his breath as he rapidly shuffled through the stack of envelopes in his hands, searching for the one belonging to the goddess of his dreams.
When he finally spotted the envelope with Cho Chang's name, Harry's eyes lit up instantly. "Found it!"
Though his heart surged with impatience, Harry wasn't overly rough when opening the envelope. Instead, keeping the envelope completely intact, he painstakingly opened it and extracted the letter within.
Having read only the first few lines, Harry felt as though his vision went dark, as if the entire world had turned to grayscale.
In her reply to Harry, Cho Chang had written:
"Thank you for the invitation, but Cedric and I are currently in the small town of Tenby in Wales..."
As for what was written after that, Harry's eyes could no longer see clearly.
The town of Tenby...
Harry vaguely recalled that it was a coastal town in southern Wales.
The Dursleys had vacationed there before—without taking him along.
Glancing out the window, Britain was gradually entering the height of summer; the weather outside grew hotter by the day, and the air, smelling of orange soda, was filled with the constant chirping of cicadas.
Harry's heart grew colder and colder.
Midsummer. The seaside.
Cho Chang and Cedric would definitely be playing at the beach, wouldn't they?
If they were going swimming or diving, they would surely be wearing swimsuits, wouldn't they?
An image of Cho Chang in a swimsuit instantly floated into Harry's mind—it was bound to be a wonderful sight.
At the thought that he wouldn't be able to appreciate such a beautiful view, while Cedric, besides enjoying it, might even take things a step further, Harry felt as though the sky were about to collapse.
He wished he could rush out the door right now to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters at King's Cross Station, hoist the Hogwarts Express over his shoulder, and sprint straight to where Cho Chang was.
Once there, he would directly crush that eyesore Cedric to death with the locomotive engine.
Regrettably, this scene could only exist within his imagination.
Setting aside whether he could actually lift an object as heavy as a locomotive engine, even if he could, he still couldn't beat Cedric in a fight.
Despondently stuffing Cho Chang's letter back into its envelope, a heartbroken Harry hung his head low, pulled open his desk drawer, and extracted a small wooden box.
Stored inside the wooden box were every single reply Cho Chang had ever written to Harry.
Harry stared at the wooden box for a long time before suddenly flinging it out with a burst of irritation.
The wooden box struck the wall with a loud bang, and the massive impact instantly shattered it to pieces.
Looking at the envelopes and letters scattered across the floor, a wave of remorse instantly rushed into Harry's heart.
Why couldn't he control his own hands?
In the end, he silently walked forward, gathered the items from the floor, found a new box, and packed the letters inside—along with the one Cho Chang had just sent back to him.
Sitting at the desk by the window, Harry took a long time to compose his emotions before picking up the other letters to read them one by one.
Far away in France, Kyle received Harry's letter approximately two days later.
Because a sea separated Britain and France, though for a ridiculously overpowered Obscurial that sea was no different from a drainage ditch in front of his house, ordinary owls still couldn't fly straight across the Channel.
So when Harry sent a letter to a certain Obscurial using Hedwig, Hedwig had to fly to a post office to hand the letter over to other birds—such as seagulls—to deliver it on her behalf.
After all that hassle, taking only two days from sending to receiving was already considered exceptionally fast.
Glancing casually at the letter Harry sent, Kyle turned around and plunged straight into Dumbledore's study, but he didn't find the item he was looking for in Old Deng's room.
The item Kyle was searching for was Hufflepuff's Cup.
His trip to the Black ancestral home upon Harry's invitation this time was primarily to locate another one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Never in history had there been a wizard as insane as Old Vol, who had forcibly torn his own soul into so many pieces.
Kyle reasoned that perhaps some unknown connection existed among the souls attached to these Horcruxes.
If his Albus Dad hadn't yet disposed of the piece of the Dark Wizard Ah-Vol's soul inside the cup, perhaps he could have Harry—this special living Horcrux—use the cup to try and sense the locations of the other Horcruxes.
Having searched the entire room without finding a trace of the cup, Kyle directly whipped out his Two-Way Mirror to make a video call to Dumbledore.
Soon, the image in the mirror revealed Dumbledore's iconic long white beard, followed by his face.
Through the vague background images in the mirror, Kyle deduced that his old man was currently in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts.
He had only stayed in Nurmengard for a few days—why had he run back again?
"Dad, have you disposed of that piece of soul inside the cup yet?"
Dumbledore froze for a moment; he had been so busy lately that he had completely forgotten there was still a cup left untreated.
"I haven't had the chance to deal with it yet, you..."
Before Dumbledore could finish his sentence, the video call on the Two-Way Mirror cut off instantly.
Looking at the Two-Way Mirror in his hand that had already lost Kyle's video feed, Dumbledore's face darkened—this son of his was getting more and more out of line.
Even daring to cut off his Two-Way Mirror...
BOOM!
Before Dumbledore could even finish the thought in his mind, a figure clutching a missile smashed violently through the wall of his office, executing a power slide that instantly reduced his desk into a pile of splintered wood.
The expensive silver instruments on the desk clattered as they rolled all over the floor.
Fawkes, the Scottish long-tailed turkey on the bird perch behind the door, was frightened out of its wits; the old tool bird, already close to rebirth, collapsed right off its perch with a flap.
Amidst a cloud of dust, Kyle slowly stood up, rubbing the bump that had been knocked onto his forehead.
"Dad! Lend me the cup for a bit! I have a major use for it!"
Dumbledore picked up the dust-covered golden cup from the pile of desk debris on the floor with a completely dazed expression, then handed it over to Kyle, still thoroughly dazed.
If he remembered correctly, Kyle had been at Nurmengard Castle in France just a moment ago, right?
So how did he...
Taking the cup, azure lightning flickered all around Kyle's body. In the blink of an eye, Kyle leaped out through the giant hole in the office wall that he had just blasted open.
Transforming into a streak of lightning, Kyle shot dozens of meters through the air in an instant.
At 0.3 seconds, mid-air, Kyle drew a missile-shaped flying broomstick with a backhand motion and mounted it.
At 1.7 seconds, the missile, spewing a searing tail flame, carried Kyle across the sky to break the sound barrier.
At 2.3 seconds, Kyle blasted past the boundary of Hogwarts' Anti-Disapparition Jinx.
At 2.4 seconds, the figures of Kyle and the broomstick vanished together into the swirling, twisting space.
Dumbledore's entire old face twitched.
So that was how the kid had flown straight over from Nurmengard.
————
Supporting me on Pa-treon to gain early access to advanced chapters and enjoy expedited updates. Your support is greatly appreciated.
pat-reon .c-om/Dragonhair
(Just remove the hyphen - and space, to access Pa-treon normally.)