The second-period class of the morning was Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures. Compared to when he had first taken up the post in September of the previous year, Hagrid was now a seasoned professor.
He could now handle the lesson plans well all by himself, and he possessed quite rich experience in dealing with all sorts of unexpected situations during class, leaving no need for Kyle, his teaching assistant, to worry about him.
Under such circumstances, Kyle could safely and boldly skip Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class.
And he even sneaked Hermione away from class right along with him.
Kyle had his reasons for spiriting Hermione away.
He intended to let Hermione fuse with the Two-Tails today—the real Two-Tails.
Ever since Ron had fused with a Tailed Beast the previous school year, the Father-Worrying Alliance members had set to work modifying the remaining eight Tailed Beasts.
With the experience of the first modification under their belts, the Father-Worrying Alliance operated at a remarkably fast pace.
Back during their campaign in Albania over the holiday, they had already managed the First-Tails through the Seven-Tails with absolute clarity, and even had enough spare time to modify a Nine-Tails.
However, Kyle had his own ideas regarding the Nine-Tails and hadn't rushed into modifying it yet.
One had to remember that the Nine-Tails in the ninja world could beat a whole group of Tailed Beasts senseless with just half its body; whatever Nine-Tails Kyle manufactured, it certainly couldn't bring shame to the name of Kurama.
Until he was confident enough to let Kurama reach that kind of combat power, Kyle didn't plan to bring it out just yet.
Once the remaining seven Tailed Beasts were modified, the corresponding bloodline-fusion potions began brewing as well.
When Hermione told Kyle yesterday that she wanted to become the jinchūriki of a Wampus cat—meaning the Two-Tails—it saved Kyle the trouble of re-modifying a Tailed Beast from scratch.
Inside the Akina Mountain Manor, Kyle looked at the little Beaver, who had successfully become the Two-Tails jinchūriki, a trace of inquiring curiosity hanging on his face.
"How is it?"
Hermione didn't speak, lowering her gaze instead to look at her outstretched palm.
A ball of eerie, deep-blue Fiendfyre flared into existence right upon the center of her delicate white palm.
Well now, the Grindelwald family's ancestral gas stove magic that she hadn't been able to master after studying it for so long, she learned it immediately just by becoming a jinchūriki?
Could this be manifested through the Fiendfyre magical markings belonging to the Two-Tails, Matatabi?
"What about Susanoo? Can you cast it?" Kyle asked with some curiosity.
Susanoo was a spell that consumed a massive amount of magic power, but that referred to the towering, world-shaking size Kyle conjured. If it was merely shaped into a suit of armor to shroud oneself, it actually didn't consume all that much magic power.
Even an ordinary upperclassman could easily maintain it for over an hour, though entering actual combat might shorten that down to ten minutes or so.
Yet Hermione had never managed to learn how to open a Gundam—no, how to open Susanoo.
Activating Susanoo required simultaneously maintaining two major defensive spells: the Super Shield Charm and the Patronus Charm, which remained far too difficult for Hermione.
After all, not everyone possessed the little Demon Lord's level of talent.
Hearing Kyle's question, Hermione pondered for a brief moment before beginning to construct the ribcage of Susanoo around her body.
The magic power of the Tailed Beast gave Hermione immense confidence. Although she hadn't yet become the complete jinchūriki Kyle spoke of, the little Beaver could already borrow a portion of its power.
The Susanoo she constructed at this moment wasn't the kind that stood barely taller than a person; rather, she aimed for a height of twenty meters.
As the skeletal ribs slowly materialized, a look of delight also appeared on the little Beaver's face.
Yet the very next second, because her concentration slipped, she failed to sustain the magic, and it dissolved into tiny sparks of light that drifted away in the air.
"Looks like it worked," Kyle smiled. "Don't rush, take your time."
The bloodline-fusion potion improved a wizard's magical talent almost instantaneously. Of course, it also helped that Hermione had already laid down about seventy or eighty percent of the foundation needed to cast Susanoo beforehand, allowing her to pick it up so quickly.
If it were Ron, he probably wouldn't even be able to cast a Super Shield Charm right now.
Hearing Kyle's encouragement, Hermione nodded vigorously and plunged back into her practice.
The two of them stayed inside the trunk until close to lunchtime before Hermione finally managed to achieve free control over the spell of Susanoo.
For Hermione at this stage, this spell could only be considered a relatively powerful defensive charm, capable of blocking almost all common spells, including the Avada Kedavra Killing Curse.
To make it possess the same destructive power as Kyle's Susanoo, she probably needed to take an Obscurial along to act as her power bank, or wait until she became a complete jinchūriki.
Emerging from the trunk, the two left the Room of Requirement chatting and laughing.
As they passed the second floor, the two of them happened to run into the seventh-year students flooding out of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom after class.
Kyle called out to a tall, graceful figure amid the crowd.
"Hey, Senior Penelope!"
Penelope, swept along within the stream of students, stopped dead in her tracks.
Turning her head, a smile bloomed across her face when she saw that the ones calling her were the little Demon Lord and the little Beaver.
"Kyle, Hermione."
"Heading to lunch? Care to walk and talk?" Kyle was feeling a bit hungry and didn't want to stand around like a fool chatting with Penelope here.
Besides, he merely wanted to ask Penelope about the teaching quality of their new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
"How was Professor Moody's class?"
Kyle asked his question, and Hermione's eyes lit up with curiosity as well; Kyle's question happened to be what she wanted to know too.
"Quite good," Penelope's eyes lit up at the mention of the recently concluded Dark Arts defense class. "Much better than Professor Lupin last year."
"What did you guys learn?" Hermione asked.
A sense of danger hovered in the air. Hearing that question, Penelope's smile grew even wider, the curve of her lips turning somewhat mischievous.
"The Three Unforgivable Curses."
"What?" Hermione thought she had misheard.
Seeing the little Beaver wear such an expression, Penelope smiled. "You heard right—the Unforgivable Curses. He even let us experience what it feels like to be put under the Imperius Curse firsthand."
"He actually dared to use the Imperius Curse on students?" The little Beaver's expression was one of sheer astonishment. "But those are..."
Penelope shook her head with a smile. "Only through teaching like this can we learn useful knowledge; you can't possibly expect that when you encounter those Dark wizards..."
Penelope trailed off as she spoke of Dark wizards.
She suddenly realized that a Dark wizard seemed to be standing right beside her.
Ever since she first met Kyle by the banks of the Black Lake, she had received gifts from Kyle every Christmas and birthday, the vast majority of which were rare magical books unavailable in the outside world.
Furthermore, among those magical books, there was no shortage of Dark Arts texts.
Kyle didn't notice Penelope's peculiar gaze. He scratched his chin, mulling over Professor Moody's teaching curriculum.
Was he really starting his tenure with such an explosive opening act?
Speaking of the Three Unforgivable Curses... that was actually quite good.
He wondered if he could find time to chat with Professor Moody and incorporate other common Dark Arts into the Defense Against the Dark Arts syllabus as well, letting the students try their hand at countering them?
Otherwise, merely lecturing on the theory of dark magic defense without providing corresponding dark magic for the students to practice countering—how much educational results could such a Defense Against the Dark Arts class possibly achieve?
Decided, then.
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