As time marched on, the calendar swiftly turned to October 30th.
Half a month prior, a large notice had been erected beneath the marble staircase in the entrance hall outside the Great Hall:
The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will arrive on Friday, October 30th, at six o'clock in the evening.
The moment this notice was posted, it stirred up a tremendous wave of excitement throughout Hogwarts.
First, a thorough spring-cleaning swept through the castle. Even places that had long remained untouched—such as the right-hand corridor on the fourth floor leading to the chamber where the Philosopher's Stone had once been hidden—were scrubbed spotless by the house-elves.
The dust-covered portrait paintings hanging along the walls were also washed clean.
One had to admit that the moving magical portraits of the wizarding world truly constituted a remarkably wondrous existence.
With a single sweep of a house-elf's rag, the portraits were practically given the skin-smoothing effect of a beauty camera.
Whether the paint on the canvases was scrubbed off remained uncertain, but in any case, the figures within those portraits had a layer of skin rubbed right off.
Shrinking their bodies within their frames, every time they brushed against the newly exposed, tender pink flesh on their faces, they grimaced and gritted their teeth in pain.
Consequently, their grievances ran exceptionally deep.
Those honey-dripping little mouths chattered nonstop, refusing to cease for a single moment over the past half-month.
The suits of armor lining the castle were polished to a gleaming, mirror-like sheen by the house-elves, who even swapped out the weapons they held—spears, halberds, swords, and axes.
Those AKs and RPGs that Dumbledore had tossed into storage to gather dust ever since their purchase were hauled out one after another from the underground secret armories beneath the castle, outfitting the armor suits with a massive equipment overhaul.
Naturally, ammunition and rocket-propelled grenades remained unprovided.
One had to bear in mind that Hogwarts housed a heavyweight existence like Peeves. The fact that ordinary students dared not touch those suits of armor didn't mean Peeves wouldn't dare.
At the start of the term this year, Peeves had even dared to hurl Dungbombs at Professor McGonagall; what on earth was there left in this world that he wouldn't dare to do?
Had Dumbledore actually dared to equip the armor with live ammunition, everyone would be reading news reports the very next day on the front page of the Daily Prophet about Peeves successfully liberating the county town of Ping'an.
To prevent Peeves from making trouble at a critical juncture and causing Hogwarts to lose face before the two visiting magical schools, Dumbledore specifically sought out Kyle—an existence far heavier than Peeves.
After spending a month of blissful quality time cozied up amidst countless flying blades in the Tsukuyomi world, Peeves's eyes brimmed with tears as he reluctantly... quite willingly, signed an unequal treaty that infringed upon ghost rights and national humiliation with Kyle.
With that settled, the school's greatest uncontrollable variable was resolved.
Throughout this half-month, the castle existed in a state of constant restlessness.
The restless hearts of the students failed to calm down as time ticked by; instead, they grew more and more intense as the arrival time of the delegations from the two magical schools drew closer.
On the morning of October 30th, when the Hogwarts students headed down to the Great Hall for breakfast, they were astonished to find that the Great Hall had been redecorated overnight.
Enormous silk banners hung along the walls, each representing one of the Hogwarts houses.
Gryffindor's banner featured a golden lion on a red background, with Ravenclaw and Slytherin following suit with their respective colors.
Among the four banners, only Hufflepuff's banner stood out as distinctly unique.
The other houses adhered to traditional imagery like lions, eagles, and serpents, directly copying the designs of their house crests.
The image upon Hufflepuff's banner, however, was none other than that legendary masterpiece of world art—The Screaming Marmot.gif.
This was personally designed by Kyle's own hand.
The banner had even been enchanted by him with magic: whenever the marmot opened its mouth, an invisible wave of imposing aura would ripple across the Great Hall, exerting a certain psychological deterrence upon anyone staring directly at the banner.
As though some form of invisible pressure existed within the void, it made others too intimidated to look directly at the symbol of Hufflepuff.
Professor Sprout had been utterly thrilled when she received this banner, her face beaming with smiles mingled with a trace of helplessness.
The magic upon it was a fine piece of magic, but as for the picture on the banner...
Words simply failed to describe it.
Kyle's Legilimency hadn't yet been trained to his adoptive father's level, failing to read what the meaning behind Professor Sprout's smile truly was, so he simply defaulted to assuming Professor Sprout loved this banner dearly.
And so the banner was hung up just like that.
Behind the staff table hung the largest banner of all, displaying the Hogwarts coat of arms: a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a serpent linked together, encircling a large letter "H."
During breakfast, the other two paired-off members of the Father-Worrying Alliance bypassed their respective girlfriends, dragging George—the lone single dog—along with them to take a seat at the Hufflepuff table.
The group discussed the issue of tournament registration, focusing primarily on how Dumbledore intended to prevent students under seventeen from entering.
They didn't deliberately muffle their voices, so everything they discussed was picked up loud and clear by Harry sitting right at the neighboring Gryffindor table.
Listening in from the side left Harry's palms itching with anticipation.
According to the Father-Worrying Alliance members, they seemed to possess some sort of method to bypass Dumbledore's age restriction on registration and thus enter the Triwizard Tournament?
Furthermore, they planned to have multiple people enter together, helping one another out during the competition?
Could he perhaps do the same...
Harry possessed a fairly clear-headed understanding of his own capabilities, but if multiple champions helped and supported each other...
Then even at his worst, his performance wouldn't turn out too shabby.
By that logic, perhaps the dream he had the other night might actually come true?
Once Professor Dumbledore announced the registration method tonight! He would go straight to the Father-Worrying Alliance and ask them how to sign up!
No, wait, why wait—I'll go ask right now!
Harry leaped up from his bench with a sudden start, startling Ron right beside him.
When he turned around, however, he discovered that the Father-Worrying Alliance members had already finished their breakfast and bolted, leaving behind nothing more than a dashing view of their backs.
Harry's outstretched hand froze midair. "..."
The final class of the afternoon that day was none other than the old bat's Potions class.
Because of the students' nervous agitation, the number of students experiencing exploding cauldrons during class doubled compared to usual.
Harry, in particular, having fallen out of favor with Snape, saw his performance in Potions drop significantly—while it didn't plummet all the way down to Neville's level, a steep decline was guaranteed.
Especially after eavesdropping on the Father-Worrying Alliance's conversation that morning, Harry's mind remained entirely preoccupied with thoughts of registering for the Triwizard Tournament.
Distracted as he was, his performance in class turned even more wretched.
Snape hunted down Gryffindor students to mercilessly dock points left and right, targeting Harry with particular zeal—the rate at which he subtracted points could barely keep up.
Within the span of a single class, Gryffindor was docked nearly a hundred points by Snape.
This roughly equated to the combined total of all points deducted from the twin brothers by professors over a span of three whole days.
Unlike the twins, however, the points deducted from them could basically always be earned back through various means.
The points deducted from Harry, on the other hand, were gone for good.
In the past, he could rely on cross-dressing and acting cute in front of Snape to claw back a few points for Gryffindor.
That trick no longer worked.
Harry's joy—poof—was gone.
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