Tom's wand fell from his hand with a clatter, landing on the ground beside his feet.
He clutched his head with both hands, his face filled with disbelief.
"I killed Wade... I killed Wade... How is that possible? How is that possible?!"
Tom rushed over and grabbed Wade by the shoulders, shaking him in disbelief.
"It's over! The body's already stiff! Impossible! How could I possibly hit you? That's impossible... impossible..."
"If you know it's impossible, then let go already. What are you yelling for?"
Tom froze.
He slowly raised his head again and stared hard at Wade, unable to believe what he was seeing.
"You're fucking alive?!"
"Don't flatter yourself. You think that Killing Curse of yours could actually kill me?" Wade looked at him with disdain.
"Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!" Tom was completely shaken. "I'd already started wondering which cell in Azkaban I was going to end up in!"
"Sigh. How heartbreaking. I thought you were genuinely worried about whether I was alive or dead. Turns out you were only worried about being sent to Azkaban."
As Wade spoke, he casually pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.
Only then did Tom notice two trails of blood running from Wade's nose.
Wade wiped away the blood with the handkerchief, looking completely unconcerned.
"Tch... that's the level of your Killing Curse? You're a disgrace to Slytherin."
Only a failed Killing Curse would leave someone with nothing more than a nosebleed, and even then, that usually only happened when the caster was a young wizard whose magic was not strong enough.
That should have been impossible for Tom, especially with his current magical abilities.
Yet the facts proved that the power of Tom's Killing Curse was indeed frighteningly weak.
"I wasn't actually trying to kill you... You scared me to death. My whole life almost got ruined."
Tom slumped onto the floor, too drained to even care about Wade mocking him anymore.
But after all the chaos and shock, the resentment that had been pent up inside him for so long finally dissipated.
"Still, that doesn't make sense. How could you fail to dodge my spell?" Tom narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Don't tell me... I've already become that strong?"
"Give you one compliment and you immediately get carried away?" Wade pulled over a chair and stole a chicken leg from Tom's lunch. "You think the Wade you're looking at is really me? You think you actually hit me?"
"You mean... the you sitting there eating my lunch right now isn't really you?" Tom frowned at Wade.
That did make sense when he thought about it.
With Wade's cautious personality, even if he knew Tom's Killing Curse was weak, there was no way he would simply stand there and refuse to dodge.
It was still the Killing Curse, after all. One mistake could be fatal.
Wade took a bite of the chicken leg and smiled.
"I can be real, or I can be fake. I might be real while I'm eating, then fake again once I'm full..."
Tom quickly grabbed the other chicken leg before Wade could take that one too.
"I think every version of you I've seen since second year has been fake!"
"Who knows?" Wade said mysteriously. "What your eyes see can be false. What your ears hear can be false too. Only when you can figure out which one is the real me will you have any chance of defeating me."
"I still feel like you're lying to me!" Tom said, looking completely unconvinced by his explanation.
Wade tossed the chicken bone onto the table.
"Then I'm lying to you."
Tom stared in shock at the bone, which had been picked completely clean, without a scrap of meat remaining.
"How did you eat it that fast? Didn't you only just start?"
Wade spread his hands innocently.
"I already told you, what you see isn't necessarily real. So I didn't just start eating. I started a while ago. You simply didn't notice."
Tom suddenly lost his appetite and tossed the chicken leg he had taken one bite from back onto the plate.
Wade smiled and picked it up again without hesitation.
"I already bit that!" Tom reminded him.
"Did you? Where?"
Wade held the chicken leg out in front of him so he could see it clearly.
Tom was shocked once again.
He clearly remembered taking a bite from it, yet now the chicken leg was completely untouched, with no trace of his teeth.
"You used Reparo? No..."
As Tom spoke, he suddenly realised that his lips, which had been greasy just moments ago, were clean again, as though he had never eaten the chicken leg at all.
"This... this is fake too? You manipulated my senses!"
Wade smiled, placed the chicken leg back on the plate, and patted Tom on the shoulder.
"Keep working hard, Tom. You may already be very strong now, but there's still quite a gap between you and me."
By the time Wade withdrew his hand, it was completely clean, without a trace of grease.
Tom watched numbly as Wade left, still trying to make sense of everything.
Only after a long moment did he suddenly realise something and jump to his feet.
"Wait! Your hand didn't get clean because you never touched the chicken leg! You wiped the grease on my clothes!"
...
After undergoing the Pensieve trials, Tom's strength had visibly improved.
Wade had sensed it the moment he first saw Tom after he emerged from the Pensieve.
It was a complete transformation in his bearing and presence, something that could be noticed almost immediately.
Thanks to Wade and Slytherin, Tom had already learned a great deal of magic over the years.
Before, he simply had not fully integrated that knowledge or learned to use it flexibly in actual combat.
After being put through such brutal training inside the Pensieve, even the techniques he had once struggled with should now have been thoroughly mastered.
Of course, knowing Tom's personality, a sudden increase in strength would inevitably make him overconfident, especially after everything he had endured.
So Wade deliberately demonstrated his own abilities in front of him, reminding him how much further he still had to go.
As a result, Tom, who had just started getting carried away again, immediately became much more obedient.
______
[]~(￣▽￣)~*
Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69