"...I'm just afraid the surprise is going to turn into a scare for no reason."
Avada rolled his eyes. He hated this sort of half-spoken, cryptic prophecy the most.
"Ha! So you do know what a scare is!"
The moment Grindelwald heard that, he immediately started glaring and blowing his beard in outrage.
"And this is exactly why you came pounding on my tower in the middle of the night? Do you think I'm still like you young people, full of energy and able to go several days and nights without sleep?!"
"..."
Avada silently glanced at Grindelwald's blazing spiritual power, which was several times more vigorous than his own, and said nothing.
"If there's nothing else, then hurry back."
Grindelwald could tell from Avada's expression exactly what he was thinking, so he took the initiative to start driving him out.
"And don't even think about using my spiritual power to enter the timeline again unless you've decided not to participate in the Tournament. Time flows strangely in there. Next time you wake up, who knows how long it'll have been..."
And so, Avada was unceremoniously shoved out the door by a thoroughly displeased Grindelwald. He then found a random wall, opened a passage through it, and returned to his dormitory at Leach University.
All in all, though, the trip had at least given him some peace of mind. Even if Grindelwald, that walking riddle, had hidden the details and refused to tell him exactly what would happen, he was still a reliable great Seer. And since everything he had just said was true, Avada felt much more reassured. He even slept extremely soundly for the rest of the night.
In truth, just as Grindelwald had said, with his current level of spiritual power, going several days and nights without sleep really was no big deal. But he was still only a fifteen-year-old teenager, after all. More rest was never a bad thing.
...
The days that followed were fairly uneventful. Nothing new came up on Leach University's side—no new assignments, no urgent research projects. His daily routine consisted of teaching classes, answering questions, and occasionally continuing his work with Professor Belby on completely overcoming the werewolf curse. And on the Hogwarts side, there was nothing else weighing on his mind either. He was not worried in the slightest about the upcoming Triwizard Tournament qualification test, so life was rather relaxed...
But there was still one matter on which he had not let up at all: recording Harry Potter's soul characteristics.
Since his trip to Durmstrang was almost guaranteed at this point, and since Dumbledore clearly was not going to deliberately make things easier for anyone this time, he did not think Harry's current level would be enough to pass an exam that would only select a few dozen students from the entire school. To say nothing of Harry—even Hermione might not make it. And that also meant that for the entire coming year, he would have no chance to continue researching the soul inside Harry, all while Barty Crouch Jr. lurked nearby like a tiger watching its prey...
So within this short span of a little over a week, he had to do to Harry what he had once done back in second year—completely and meticulously record his spiritual characteristics and soul structure without missing a single detail, then take that record with him to Durmstrang for further detailed study.
But that meant almost all of his free time had to be spent inside the space between layers of reality, silently floating beside Harry with a notebook and a special recording device in hand, documenting his mind and soul...
It really did make him look like some kind of stalker.
Fortunately, he was now far stronger than he had been three years ago. Even with Harry's incredibly complex dual-soul system, he still managed to record everything perfectly before the qualification exams began.
And after that came the massive schoolwide examination for selecting Hogwarts's champion candidates—a huge test that lasted the entire day, examining everything from theoretical knowledge to practical skill to combat. Even the Forbidden Forest, which students normally were not allowed to enter, had been requisitioned as a temporary testing ground. Nearly a third of the entire school took part in it.
In the written portion of that test, even the most basic and simplest questions covered material that students normally would not learn until fifth year. In fact, content from the actual Hogwarts textbooks accounted for only about two-thirds of the exam—the rest consisted of utterly hellish questions far beyond the syllabus.
In fact, before the written exam had even ended, more than eighty percent of the students had already chosen to quit midway through, reducing the number of examinees to only a few dozen.
And incredibly, compared to the tests that followed, the kind of assessment that would have gotten students in the Muggle world to curse the school out actually counted as the better part.
After finishing that torturous paper, they had barely been allowed to rest before being taken to the specially modified Quidditch pitch for an obstacle-course-level cross-country run. Then, after a simple lunch and a bit of recovery, they were taken into the Forbidden Forest, where they were chased all over the place by a slimy wormlike creature newly bred by Hagrid. Only after fleeing for quite a while did they barely manage to figure out the characteristics of the new creature, summarize their observations, and hand them in to the examiners...
At first, Avada had thought the thing was probably the Blast-Ended Skrewt from the original story. But when he saw one of the worms spit a spell at him from more than ten meters away—a blast comparable to Blasting Curse-level power—his expression changed.
He had almost forgotten that compared to the original story, Hagrid now had research resources many times greater than before. Not only had he gotten his wand back, he also had access to a large amount of basilisk material that scholars outside would have killed for, and was working with big names like Newt Scamander and Professor Kettleburn on the basilisk ranch project...
As a result, even a top-tier student like him, someone who would rank among the very best in the whole school, had been caught completely off guard by that swarm of worms and driven into a dusty, rather miserable scramble.
Still, the final result did not disappoint him.
On the morning of the day after the exam ended, the results were announced.
Among the students who successfully earned champion-candidate status, there were more than a dozen seventh-years, nine sixth-years, and four fifth-years. Those four were himself, Baron, and two academic monsters who always ranked just behind them in the end-of-term exams—including the Ravenclaw who had snatched first place from Avada at the end of first year...
As for everyone below fifth year, total annihilation.
There was, however, one rather strange thing among all this.
Hermione Granger, the student on whom many people had pinned their hopes—the one widely expected to represent the upper limit of what students below fifth year could achieve—had not come to take the qualification exam at all.
And according to rumor, when people went to ask her why, all they got were a bunch of "crazy and utterly illogical" answers, plus a badge forcibly shoved into their hands with the word SPEW engraved on it. No one seemed to know what was going on exactly—though Avada did. The Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare.
Honestly, seeing that happen was rather comforting to him.
At this point, it was one of the very few things left that still matched the original story.
And so, after a few more days passed and Dumbledore repeated all kinds of precautions in their ears no fewer than dozens of times, the day finally arrived for them to leave Hogwarts and head to Durmstrang for the Tournament.
(End of Chapter)