Hermione had never encountered magic quite so unnerving before. When Tom asked if she was ready, she nodded on instinct.
She regretted it almost immediately.
The hazy blue figure extended both hands, and a fireball came screaming toward her at breakneck speed. Only when the searing heat of it brushed against her face did she snap back to herself, shrieking as she flung her wand up to knock it aside.
"Tom, you rotten– that's an ambush!"
"You're the one who said you were ready." Tom dragged a chair over and settled into it, entirely at ease, while the glowing figure never slowed, fireball after fireball taking shape in an endless stream.
Hermione tried using the Shield Charm to block them, and under Tom's precise calibration, each Blasting Curse landed with exactly enough force to cancel her shield out. But her casting speed couldn't keep pace with how fast the fireballs formed, leaving her no choice but to fall back on other methods, either knocking them away with her wand or dodging on her feet.
The fireballs kept coming faster, and Hermione's responses grew more frantic, until one finally caught the ends of her curls alight and she screamed again.
"Tom!"
Tom kept right on smiling. The girl reminded him of an angry lion cub in that moment, thoroughly endearing in his eyes. "I've already got hair regrowth potion and conditioner waiting for you. Spare robes too, as many as you need. Soft, padded training's stopped doing you any good. Until you get hurt, you'll never clear that wall in your own head."
That smile looked positively demonic to the young witch, gorgeous, sure, but a demon all the same.
But there was nothing in Tom's eyes except resolve, and Hermione understood, in that moment, there'd be no escaping this session today.
There was no getting around it. Hermione's psychological block ran deeper than Tom knew how to address through gentler means, so he'd resorted to the crudest method available.
Some barriers only broke once, and after that, everything loosened. Once she got used to the consequences of getting hurt, the fear of it would finally stop holding her back.
This wasn't only about the tournament ahead, either. If Hermione ever wanted to stand on her own two feet down the line, that same steady, unshaken composure would be non-negotiable.
The young man waved his hand, and the paused blue figure gathered another fireball, hurling it straight at Hermione once more.
...
Meanwhile, at the Ministry of Magic.
Fudge, returning from his failed confrontation thoroughly rattled, called an emergency meeting the moment he got back. As the saying went, great troubles called for small councils, and he considered the current problem serious enough that only the Ministry's absolute top tier were invited to attend.
Bones. Scrimgeour. Crouch.
By rank alone, Mrs. Greengrass would have had every right to a seat at this table too, but there was no possible way she could be present for this particular meeting.
Crouch, despite not being fully trusted, still had his ability and his loyalty to the Ministry generally acknowledged.
And finally, one more figure with no real rank of her own but Fudge's deep personal trust rounded out the room: Umbridge.
The room sat heavy with tension, Fudge's expression sour. Remembering how easily that boy had dismissed every single one of his demands without a moment's hesitation left him feeling like a Minister in name only, his usual pleasant mask entirely stripped away, replaced by something dark and simmering.
"You're all aware of this Wizard's Guild business, I take it?"
Everyone in the room nodded. How could they not be? Between the newspaper coverage and a building that size suddenly rising up in the middle of Diagon Alley, it would have been hard to miss.
Well, Fudge himself might genuinely have missed it. He spent most of his evenings at one family gala or another, sleeping off the previous night's drink through the following afternoon before heading right back out again.
"I dislike change, gentlemen." Fudge drew a long breath.
"Our world has always been well protected under the Ministry's care. Everyone in their proper place, living quiet, stable lives. But I've noticed a troubling development recently."
"Riddle. A talented boy, granted, has been taking on far more than he has any business handling. I'll admit he's contributed a great deal to our world, but that doesn't mean every single thing he does deserves a pass, and this Wizard's Guild is exactly the kind of thing I mean."
"Using money and influence to lure wizards into working for him? We are discussing the fundamental order of our entire society here!"
Fudge's face flushed red, breath coming short and hard.
He'd walked a careful path his whole career, forever living in someone else's shadow. During Voldemort's reign of terror, he'd been nothing but a minor Undersecretary, untouched by the weight of it all. It was only after Millicent Bagnold's term ended, and Barty Crouch, broken by his wife's death and his son's trial and conviction as a Death Eater, faded into irrelevance, that Fudge found himself thrust into the Minister's chair by sheer chance, and everything changed.
So he really had been the chosen one all along. He alone had been destined to save England.
Just as he'd been preparing to make his mark, to spread his will across the entire country, he'd discovered a vast web already woven through the magical world, one that had held for decades, spun by an old man with a silver beard and impossibly bright blue eyes.
Even Fudge himself was caught somewhere in that web. To build a web of his own, he'd first had to draw close to that old man, earn his trust and his backing, before he could even hope to qualify for the attempt.