And after Wade deliberately let Tom's Killing Curse hit him once, most of the resentment Tom had been carrying had also disappeared.
As a result, the tension Tom had been carrying finally relaxed under Wade's influence.
After sitting in a daze in the training ground for a while that day, Tom returned to his room and fell asleep almost immediately.
Wade did not see him again until noon the next day.
By then, Tom had changed into a fresh set of clothes and looked completely refreshed. Although there was still some childishness in his face, the air around him had changed noticeably from before.
Everyone could sense that subtle transformation, even without knowing exactly what he had experienced.
And it was only after going through the Pensieve trials that Tom had changed so much.
So Anne dragged Nagini and Elena along, planning to try Wade's Pensieve as well and experience the training for themselves.
"Wait a moment. I'll teach you how to turn off the pain synchronization..." Wade said with a smile.
Tom, who had been calmly eating lunch, instantly bent the fork in his hand.
He looked up and glared at Wade, veins throbbing on his forehead as he struggled to contain his anger.
"You mean... all that pain that made me wish I were dead could actually be turned off?"
"It can," Wade said, nodding as though it were perfectly obvious.
Tom slammed both hands on the table and shot to his feet.
"Why the hell didn't you tell me earlier?! Do you know what I've been through these past few days? Do you?!"
Wade looked surprised by his reaction.
"You never asked."
"They didn't ask either!" Tom's face darkened even further.
"How can you compare yourself to them? They're delicate girls."
"Fuck this! You've gone too far! Don't you dare leave after lunch. I'm duelling you!" Tom completely lost it, his earlier composure vanishing.
...
One hour later.
"Huf. huff.. haa.." Tom lay on the training ground with a bruised and swollen face, staring blankly at the ceiling.
His Yew wand had rolled several metres away, looking almost as defeated as its owner.
"You should be calm now, right?" Wade unwrapped a Chocolate Frog and stuffed it into Tom's mouth.
Tom said nothing and simply chewed the chocolate viciously, as though taking his anger out on it.
"Oh... I actually got a Grindelwald card." Wade happily slipped the card into his pocket.
Tom had fought with everything he had, using every technique he could think of, yet Wade had not even broken a sweat.
And after losing, Tom remembered that the Wade he had just fought might not even have been real.
For a moment, he felt completely hopeless.
There was no way to fight this.
Absolutely no way.
It was incredibly difficult for an ordinary person to fight someone who was basically cheating, no matter how good their duelling skills were.
"Have you figured it out yet?" Wade asked. "If not, get up. We can do it again."
"No need. I understand now."
Tom struggled to his feet and picked up his wand from where it had fallen.
"What did you understand?" Wade asked.
"I'm different from them. I need to become stronger in a short amount of time, so I have to endure some hardship. They don't. They just want to try it and improve step by step."
Tom wiped his wand carefully, wearing an expression so sensible it was almost heartbreaking.
"Then at least that beating wasn't wasted," Wade said. "If you want to become a powerful wizard, raw strength is only one part of it."
"What are the others?" Tom asked, looking at him attentively.
"Emotional stability, and the ability to stay calm no matter what happens."
Wade pointed at him.
"Are your emotions stable?"
"No..." Tom admitted, then added somewhat unwillingly, "But I think anyone would've been angry after what happened just now."
"There's nothing wrong with being angry. Even Dumbledore and Grindelwald get angry over things all the time. But they don't let anger make them act impulsively," Wade said calmly.
"And you? You got angry and impulsively challenged me to a duel, even though I'm an opponent you still can't defeat. The result was that you gained nothing except a beating."
Tom thought back to the way Dumbledore and Grindelwald handled things whenever they encountered trouble.
After a long while, he had to admit that Wade was right.
He had seen both Dumbledore and Grindelwald angry more than once, but after getting angry, the first thing they did was think about what to do next rather than losing their heads and acting recklessly.
Even the arrogant Grindelwald was the same in that regard.
That night, during the operation against the Scourers, Grindelwald had discovered that someone had been leading him around by the nose.
He had been furious, but he had not thrown caution aside and ordered the Alliance to act recklessly in retaliation.
Instead, he had temporarily endured it and waited to see what would happen next.
Because he knew that only by holding back for the moment could he catch the enemy when they exposed themselves again.
"I think I understand what you mean," Tom said, his expression gradually becoming calm again.
Then, right in front of Wade, he pressed his wand to his temple and extracted a memory, dropping it into the Pensieve.
"This is the memory of the fight I just had with you..."
A wild gleam flickered in Tom's eyes as he looked at the Pensieve.
Wade smiled, immediately understanding what he intended to do.
"Then I suggest turning off the pain synchronization this time. Of course, if you've suddenly awakened some strange preference for getting beaten up, pretend I didn't say anything."
Tom looked at Wade calmly, refusing to let the words affect him.
"I know you're still trying to make me angry, but I'm not falling for it again!"
Wade gave him a thumbs-up, then turned and walked away.
The kid was growing up.
Even messing with his head was getting harder now.
______
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69