Tom was busy today and had no time to spare for whatever "amusing incident" had happened at school.
He'd slept soundly through the night, and the moment he woke, he took Fawkes back to Antarctica to deal with the two researchers' memories. Not that he'd exactly brought Fawkes along. The fat bird had insisted on tagging along, and there was no shaking him off.
There was no contest today, so Tom kept an easy pace, treating the trip as a chance to get used to his newly gained power. Even so, he ended up moving faster than he had the day before.
He finally understood why phoenixes found Apparition so effortless. When he called on his magic, he felt no resistance from space trying to stop the whole of him from being sent to his destination. If anything, the way lay wide open, his for the taking. Not only did it cost less magic, his mind felt strangely light as well.
His maximum Apparition range was now more than double what it had been, and the mental strain barely registered. A few jumps carried him from the Scottish Highlands to a cattle pasture in New Zealand.
For the rest of the distance, Tom skipped Apparition and turned himself into a streak of fire, flying straight for Antarctica.
His flying speed had picked up considerably too. He could feel how his magic responded: the faster he flew, the more magic it took, not just to drive himself forward but to keep his body from being crushed to paste by the wind pressure. In the past, his total reserves would have kept draining the whole way. Now, recovery and expenditure had nearly reached a balance.
Honestly, fusing with the ancient phoenix bloodline was something of a waste for him. The phoenix's signature vitality did him little good, since the Golden Apple's effect was already stronger in that department. And yet there was still a real difference between the two.
The vitality the Golden Apple granted was eternal and unchanging, as if the power of time simply lost its grip on his body and soul. The phoenix bloodline, on the other hand, kept its vitality cycling endlessly through death and rebirth, which indirectly boosted every kind of recovery he had.
By the time he touched down at the South Pole, Tom had a rough sense of how the bloodline had changed his constitution. The gains to his fire and to his purification abilities would need slower testing to confirm.
The research station's door was shoved open, a blast of freezing wind poured in, and the researchers inside jolted upright at once.
"Who's there... you're the one from yesterday!"
"Shh."
Tom raised a finger to his lips. "Quiet, gentlemen. You saw a few things you shouldn't have. Relax. It'll all be over soon."
Very soon, the room settled into an uncanny silence.
The whole group slumped over, unconscious. Once he'd rewritten every one of their memories and destroyed the security footage, Tom didn't rush home. Instead, he sat down at the South Pole and enjoyed a rather special lunch, all the while keeping an eye on the tenth palace in his mind.
Tom had assumed the tenth trial would open the moment the ninth was finished, but even now, the tenth palace showed no real sign of activity. That wasn't quite true, actually. There was some activity, a faint glow, just a touch brighter than the two palaces beyond it.
He was starting to feel a bit uneasy about it. The longer this dragged on, the bigger the trial waiting at the end tended to be. The ninth trial had already been brutal enough, taking the better part of a year, and only clearing once he'd become a Century Sovereign. Was the tenth going to be some kind of nightmare?
...
Diagon Alley. Sirius happily welcomed Lupin and personally handled his membership badge.
"You made absolutely the right call, Remus. Guild work is a lot more fun than teaching at that school." Sirius wouldn't stop chattering. "If it weren't for the Guild, I'd probably be off right now tracking down some smuggler dealing in broomstick parts, some bloke who stole trade secrets from Nimbus. The Ministry can't be bothered with that sort of thing..."
"Sirius." Lupin took the paperwork and the badge and pinned it to his robes without thinking, then said with a teasing smile, "Didn't you say you'd take over my post once I quit, to teach Harry?"
Sirius admitted it without any embarrassment. "My temperament really isn't cut out for teaching, and besides, there's still that greasy git at the school. If I went there, I'd end up brawling with him within a week and putting Dumbledore in an awful spot. As for Harry..."
At the mention of Harry, Sirius's face broke into a smile. "His training can wait for summer. I'll take him along on a few easy jobs. It'll do him far more good than sitting through classes."
"By the way, Remus, want me to pick you out a job? Get a feel for it?" Sirius leaned in. "Trust me, it'll be well worth your time. Between the two of us..."
"I'll pass." Lupin shook his head.
"Why?" Sirius asked, puzzled. "Tomorrow's the weekend. Don't tell me Hogwarts is making you run remedial classes now."
"Well, there is extra tutoring needed for the competitors lately, but that's not why."
Lupin explained, "The other schools arrive next Monday. Professor McGonagall's given us no shortage of tasks to prepare."
Sirius smacked his forehead. "I completely forgot about the tournament. Oh, and you know Grindelwald's coming too, don't you?"
Lupin nodded, his expression turning grave. "Of course I do. What do you think we've been preparing for? We're worried the man's been brewing up some plot."