Once all the food vanished from the plates, every student looked toward their respective Heads of House with eager anticipation.
"Gryffindors, follow me," Professor McGonagall announced loudly, standing beside the Gryffindor table. "For the next two weeks, we will be gathering at the Quidditch pitch."
Kyle followed Professor McGonagall out of the Great Hall.
Each member of the Grief-Bringers was responsible for assisting a Head of House. Considering the atrocious relationship between the trio of Kyle, George, and Fred and the Slytherins following the brawl on the Quidditch pitch last school year, Kyle was sent over to Gryffindor to assist Professor McGonagall. Slytherin, on the other hand, was assigned to Cedric. The remaining Houses, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, were left to the twins.
"Ravenclaw!" Professor Flitwick called out, stepping forward, and Fred immediately fell into step behind him.
Shortly after, the Slytherin and Hufflepuff students began trickling out of the castle one after another.
The Quidditch pitch was massive. Counting the endless, flat lawns stretching beyond the pitch itself, it was large enough for the entire school's student body to undergo military training simultaneously. Thanks to their experience teaching Muggle Art Appreciation the previous term, the four Grief-Bringers were completely in their element when helping the four Heads of House manage the students.
Looking at the students lined up neatly by year into platoons, holding their military posture with perfect alignment, Kyle narrowed his eyes happily as he continuously slurped down a cup of ice-cold Coca-Cola. Watching others endure military training while comfortably sipping soda on the sidelines brought a truly unparalleled sense of joy. Of course, there was a high risk of someone throwing a sack over his head and jumping him for revenge afterward, so one shouldn't lightly emulate this without a certain level of personal strength.
However, Kyle wasn't making them maintain a military posture just for the sake of it.
In the previous term, Kyle had compiled tree-climbing and water-walking—two training methods that could develop magic control—into a textbook and taught them during the Muggle Art Appreciation course. Unfortunately, perhaps due to an over-reliance on convenient wand-casting, or perhaps because the training difficulty was too high, not many of them had managed to master these two techniques.
To unlock the achievement "The Trees in the Forbidden Forest Are Speaking," Kyle scrapped his previous training method of having them start by trying to climb slopes. Instead, he integrated magic control techniques directly into their standing military posture.
Though a wizard's physique is significantly better than a Muggle's due to the influence of magic, standing in a rigid military posture for two consecutive hours was still an almost impossible task for a bunch of teenagers. If they wanted to achieve this goal, they would need magic to support themselves. As for how to use magic to achieve this effect, Kyle had already taught them the relevant magic control techniques before they began standing.
As they gradually attempted to master this technique, Kyle's goal of training them to improve their magic control was naturally accomplished. Improving the students' control over their own magic would be of immense help to Professor Flitwick's Charms classes and Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration classes.
According to the training schedule drawn up by the Grief-Bringers, they would spend one of the two weeks focused entirely on this. Once they completed the two-hour military posture training module, the difficulty would gradually increase until they mastered water-walking.
Only in the second week would the students formally come into contact with the Muggle firearms generously provided by the Grief-Bringers. By then, they would be taught the most basic knowledge concerning firearms—such as, at the very least, knowing how to flip the safety, how to aim, how to shoot, and how to change a magazine.
In addition to magic control techniques and self-defense, there would also be several cookouts in the Forbidden Forest during these two weeks. Unlike the cookouts held during military training in Kyle's previous life, they wouldn't provide the students with any ingredients. This bunch of students would have to forage for edible ingredients themselves in the Forbidden Forest and then cook them into meals with their own hands.
During this process, Professor Sprout, Professor Snape, and Hagrid would all provide assistance. In the process of foraging for and identifying ingredients, they could learn some foundational knowledge about Herbology. As for the cooking process itself, Kyle's past experience studying Potions under Snape indicated that there was actually a tremendous connection between Potions and the culinary arts.
After the cookouts, they would pitch tents and camp out inside the Forbidden Forest, spending a night where beauty and terror coexisted. Although the area designated for the cookouts in the Forbidden Forest had been cleared in advance by Kyle and the others, it was inevitable that some creatures belonging to the Forest would wander in. Even if no creatures wandered in, the Grief-Bringers would drive a few in themselves. This would provide upper-year students with practical opportunities to test their skills, preventing these pampered young masters and ladies from freezing up and failing to cast a single spell when facing an actual emergency.
The military training program covered the five core compulsory subjects: Charms, Transfiguration, Herbology, Potions, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. This made subsequent teaching much simpler for the professors of these five foundational courses when dealing with the newly enrolled first-years.
Take Professor Flitwick's Charms class, for example. Normally, every year he would have to spend over a month, nearly two, explaining things like the most basic principles of magic, wand movements, and incantation techniques in class. But now, because these concepts were integrated into the military training modules, Professor Flitwick only needed to spend one week in the formal classroom before officially moving on to teaching the first spell—the Levitation Charm.
This was a massive boon to raising Hogwarts' academic standards, so the professors of Hogwarts were all highly supportive of the military training. After inspecting the military training conditions over the first few days, Dumbledore happily decided that Hogwarts would hold such a military training event every year. However, future iterations would likely only be for incoming first-years.
The only dissenter was Madam Pomfrey.
Back when Kyle went through military training in his previous life, the number of students fainting in the ranks during the standing posture drills was by no means small. The Hogwarts students were no exception. Madam Pomfrey wished every student would just sit obediently in their classrooms, and that Hogwarts would abolish all courses except Herbology and Potions, which could barely be linked to healing magic. That way, a world where no one got hurt would finally be realized.
Two weeks flew by in the blink of an eye.
Regrettably, a technique like water-walking, which demanded an extremely high level of magic control, was mastered by exactly zero students before the military training concluded. However, a large crowd managed to master tree-climbing.
The proportion of first-year students who mastered the tree-climbing technique was the highest among all seven years at Hogwarts. Perhaps because they had only just received their own wands, they weren't as dependent on them as the upper years, nor had they formed a fixed mindset that they couldn't cast magic without a wand. Consequently, when it came to learning tree-climbing, their learning curve was far lower than that of the older students.
It was worth mentioning that during the Gryffindors' training, a large black dog would always squat silently at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, watching the students from afar. Sirius Black's name couldn't be cleared overnight, so Dumbledore had settled him in a tower of Hogwarts Castle where students never set foot. With Dumbledore's special permission, Sirius could now squat off to the side and watch Harry from a distance.
However, he could only appear in his Animagus form. This was because during this period, the Dementor population in Azkaban had somehow propagated and replenished themselves with a massive swarm of new kin. The number of Dementors had restored to what it was before the Hogwarts Express incident, and had even exceeded it.
Cowed by the terrifying presence of a certain Dementor-killer, this pack of Dementors didn't dare approach the boundaries of Hogwarts' main castle. Yet, the Forbidden Forest and the mountains surrounding Hogwarts were entirely swarming with Dementors. If Sirius really wanted to speak with Harry in his human form, it could only happen inside Professor Lupin's office.
Today was the closing day of Hogwarts' inaugural military training event.
Originally, according to Kyle's vision, they should have held a Forbidden Forest parachuting "Winner Winner Chicken Dinner" Battle Royale tournament to bring the inaugural military training to a perfect close. The Forbidden Forest was vast—so vast that scattering Hogwarts' five-hundred-plus students into it would be as unnoticeable as pouring a cup of water into a river. Thus, organizing a Battle Royale tournament was completely feasible.
They would first divide the hundreds of Hogwarts students roughly by House, mix up the year groups, and then form teams using a "five people per squad" allocation method. Before setting off, each squad could select a firearm that suited them. Of course, these firearms were nerfed; they could only fire harmless energy bolts. Hitting someone would trigger a magical detection mechanism, judging them as eliminated. Kyle had even generously taken out a massive sum of five thousand Galleons, intending to use it as prize money for the top three teams.
However, Dumbledore vetoed his proposal. After all, throwing so many people into the Forbidden Forest meant that even if the designated tournament zone had been cleared beforehand, there was no guarantee that accidents wouldn't happen. There were only so many professors in the school; even if each supervised three squads, they wouldn't be able to keep track of everyone.
In the end, Kyle's proposal fell through, replaced instead by a military review parade to be held on the Quidditch pitch.
At 8:50 AM, the sky was clear and blue without a speck of cloud, the distant mountains wore a dark green hue, and a gentle breeze brought warmth. Compared to the continuous, gloomy rain from the start of the term, this was exceptionally fine weather. The September wind brushed across the green turf of the Quidditch pitch, causing faint ripples across the grass.
Two of the towering spectator stands surrounding the Quidditch pitch had been dismantled in the center, replaced by a wide grandstand. The lively, solemn, cheerful, and impassioned strains of the Welcome March were currently echoing over Hogwarts Castle via the PA system installed during the basilisk attacks the previous year.
Divided by their respective Houses, the students of Hogwarts stood formed into four parade squares. It wasn't that Kyle didn't want to make it look grander; he truly had no other choice. Hogwarts simply had too few people—it didn't even equal half of a single grade level at Kyle's high school in his previous life. Being able to form four marching blocks was already a solid achievement.
At this moment, Dumbledore, clad in a dark blue robe, stood cheerfully at the front of the grandstand, waiting for the military parade to begin. The expression on his face looked immensely joyful. Nothing made Dumbledore happier than seeing the students so full of vitality.
Behind him stood the rest of the Hogwarts staff, and eleven of the Hogwarts school governors had also been invited to attend. Uh, originally there were twelve, but Lucius had already been ousted from the Board of Governors—even though he still had to pay a hefty sum of educational funding to Hogwarts every year.
When the clock struck nine, the voice of Lee Jordan, the perennial commentator for all Hogwarts tournaments and events, echoed across the entire Quidditch pitch through the PA system. The military parade had officially begun!
"Now marching toward us is the Gryffindor House block!"
The Gryffindor students were all dressed in scarlet and gold robes, vibrant vitality radiating from every single one of their faces. Although no one at Hogwarts was unfamiliar with Gryffindor's history, Lee Jordan still introduced them with tireless enthusiasm:
"Scarlet and gold are the representative colors of Gryffindor! These colors symbolize fearlessness and forthrightness! Their sorting criteria are exactly the same! Every single student of Gryffindor House possesses the qualities of courage, bravery, determination, and daring!"
As Percy, who had already been promoted to Head Boy and was concurrently serving as the flag-bearer for the Gryffindor block, led the Gryffindor students past the grandstand with uniform, synchronized steps, the Gryffindor students shouted their slogan in unison:
"Gryffindor! Courage supreme!" "Our Head of House! Can turn into a cat!"
Quite a few professors on the grandstand burst out laughing on the spot. Dumbledore also found a massive retort stuck in his throat; fortunately, he was professionally trained and managed to hold back his laughter.
Professor McGonagall's murderous glare stabbed like daggers at the figure accompanying the side of the Gryffindor block. This slogan had to be thought up by that absolute bastard, Kyle! But when on earth did that bastard collude with these students? One had to realize that during these two weeks of military training, aside from letting the students return to the castle to shower and sleep, they had been right under her nose the entire time.
If looks could kill, Professor McGonagall would have torn Kyle into a million pieces by now.
Soon, however, something else occurred to Professor McGonagall, and she instantly felt a sense of relief. Given the track record of those four Grief-Bringers, it was absolutely impossible that only the Gryffindor block would shout such a slogan. Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Ravenclaw would definitely not be spared next.
Dumbledore waved cheerfully from the grandstand to the little lions below.
"Hello, students!"
Responding to him was the deafening, unison roar of the little lions—
"Hello, Headmaster!"
"You have worked hard, students!"
Right after Gryffindor came the Slytherin block. Sure enough, as the Slytherin students passed in front of the grandstand, they opened their mouths:
"Slytherin! Supreme in this place!" "Our Head of House! Hair down to his waist!"
This time, Professor Flitwick and Professor Sprout did not laugh out loud. When Professor McGonagall was being teased by her own students just a moment ago, the two of them had laughed the loudest. They knew that after Gryffindor and Slytherin, it would be their turn.
On the contrary, a smile tinged with a hint of schadenfreude appeared on Professor McGonagall's face.
As for Snape, he maintained a deadpan poker face from start to finish, even when mocked by his own House's students. No one knew what he was thinking.
What Snape was actually thinking was that tomorrow, when formal classes officially resumed, he would definitely find a way to make trouble for Cho Chang during the fourth-year Ravenclaw lesson.
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