Since Kyle arrived at Hogwarts, the number of patients the hospital wing had to admit each month had been steadily rising.
Especially after the introduction of military training—a grueling, exhausting activity—the student patient count had completely skyrocketed.
Madam Pomfrey felt utterly drained.
Faced with an increasingly chaotic school hospital, Madam Pomfrey had no choice but to poach two trainee healers from St. Mungo's to share her workload, just so she wouldn't drop dead from overwork right at her post.
Pansy Parkinson, who had been carried into the hospital wing by Goyle and Crabbe, was assigned to one of these trainee healers.
Having graduated only recently, the trainee lacked practical experience and was rather clumsy while treating Pansy.
After taking a flying kick from Kyle, Pansy actually only suffered a few fractures in her arm and ribs, along with a mild concussion from slamming into a tree.
If this injury had been left to Hannah, it would have been sorted out in barely two minutes.
But under the fumbling care of that trainee healer, Pansy didn't reappear in the Great Hall until Thursday morning.
Miserable. A thick plaster cast was wrapped around her arm; she looked as pathetic as could be.
That morning, Gryffindor and Slytherin had a joint Potions class.
Kyle also showed up in the old bat's Potions classroom.
That's right—he was still there in his capacity as a teaching assistant.
At present, Kyle's magical proficiency—whether in Charms, Transfiguration, or Potions—had already far surpassed the level of any ordinary Hogwarts student.
Most of the courses at Hogwarts were essentially redundant to him. It was only out of respect for the professors that he still attended a few of them to listen.
But as for subjects like History of Magic, Kyle had stopped showing his face there since his first year.
The professors turned a blind eye to this. After all, Dumbledore took a completely hands-off approach to raising Kyle, and none of them were bored enough to babysit for Dumbledore.
Only Snape had requested Kyle from Dumbledore to serve as his teaching assistant for Potions.
Snape's reasoning was that when Kyle originally studied under him, some of Kyle's innovations in Potions—such as using culinary methods to brew them—had given him great inspiration.
He believed that if Kyle's innovations were popularized, they could elevate the quality of Potions instruction to a whole new level.
In Kyle's eyes, however, the old bat had made this request to Dumbledore mostly to avenge having his hand chopped off the previous school year.
Because ever since he became the Potions assistant, the old bat dumped all the grunt work onto him.
This grunt work included keeping the Potions classroom clean, prepping potion ingredients, restoring the messy classroom to its original state after class, and helping the old bat deal with cauldron explosions during lessons...
If anyone claimed this wasn't a petty vendetta, Kyle absolutely wouldn't believe them.
Right now, Kyle was sitting on a small folding stool behind the lectern, listening with utter boredom as Snape explained the brewing process for the Shrinking Solution.
"In the time remaining, you are to brew a batch of Shrinking Solution. I will be feeding this concoction to your pets at the end of class."
Snape spoke slowly in a completely emotionless tone, while simultaneously smacking his textbook heavily against the head of Ron, who was whispering to Harley.
"If you do not want your rat to suffer a gruesome death, I suggest you take careful note of what is written on the blackboard."
"Of course, given that your miserable brain possesses an intelligence roughly equal to that of a troll, I doubt that rat will survive past the end of this period."
Sitting on the platform and watching the drama unfold, Kyle almost snorted with laughter.
Ever since their first year, the Savior had always appeared in Potions class as Harley.
Snape's current demeanor made him look exactly like an overprotective father, vigilantly guarding his precious daughter.
Once the students began brewing the Shrinking Solution, Pansy raised her uninjured left hand. "Sir, I need someone to help me cut these daisy roots, because my arm..."
Snape had absolutely no intention of paying her any mind.
He knew exactly why Pansy had been injured.
Toward anyone who wanted to harm Harley, it was already a miracle that Snape hadn't blasted Pansy with an Avada Kedavra right then and there. Did Pansy honestly expect him to show her an ounce of leniency?
Not a chance.
Snape refused with disgust, "Even if both of your hands were crippled, Miss Parkinson, you would still have to find a way to complete it yourself."
Hearing Snape's words, Pansy Parkinson's breath instantly caught in her throat.
Over at Harley's table, Ron and Draco both secretly gave Snape a mental thumbs-up.
That was a brilliant move by Snape.
Meanwhile, somewhere in a wizarding settlement in Britain.
Inside a rather luxurious study, the floor tiles were as bright as mirrors, and a magnificent crystal chandelier hung from above—
A massive pile of manuscripts lay scattered across an elegant black wooden desk, and various historical reference materials and books littered the floor, leaving this otherwise pristine study in an utter state of disarray.
But the owner of the study had no time to worry about that. At this moment, she sat blankly before her desk, staring dazedly at a completed press release in her hands, lost in thought.
Her hair was styled into elaborate, rigid, and bizarre curls that looked completely mismatched against her heavy-jawed face.
Rita Skeeter was a reporter for the Daily Prophet, responsible for the newspaper's entertainment section.
At the same time, she was an independent media writer and had even published several biographies of prominent figures.
She owned an enchanted Quick-Quotes Quill that could transform ordinary statements from her interviews into unrealistic, wildly exaggerated sentences, heavily reminiscent of sensationalist clickbait.
Thanks to this sensationalist style that was twenty years ahead of its time in the wizarding world, Rita Skeeter's articles were incredibly popular among a certain segment of readers, and the income she earned from her pen was exceedingly handsome.
Otherwise, she would never have been able to afford the renovation costs for such a lavish villa.
Rita Skeeter always managed to obtain firsthand information on various news events through methods no one else would ever expect.
What no one knew was that she was actually an Animagus.
An unregistered, illegal Animagus.
Her Animagus form was—a beetle.
Thanks to the stealthiness of her beetle form, she could fly around completely unhindered, capturing and eavesdropping on anything she could later twist into absolute nonsense.
Not long ago, relying on her Animagus transformation, she had eavesdropped on an extraordinary piece of news in Diagon Alley.
Who could have ever guessed that Albus Dumbledore, the greatest light wizard of the modern wizarding world, and Kyle Dumbledore, the youngest recipient of the Order of Merlin, Second Class in magical history, were actually father and son?
Furthermore, this rising star of the wizarding world, Kyle, possessed another secret surname—Grindelwald.
After spending more than two weeks gathering information, Rita Skeeter had finally uncovered the tip of the iceberg regarding the crimes committed by Grindelwald within a vast sea of magical history books.
She had even found some incredible things in unofficial histories.
Who could have imagined that Albus Dumbledore, the greatest light wizard of the modern wizarding world, and Grindelwald, the most sinister Dark Lord of the first generation, were actually lovers?
And that the two of them had even used forbidden means to give birth to a sinful descendant like Kyle Grindelwald?
This monumental discovery left Rita Skeeter so shocked she was utterly speechless.
For a moment, she had no idea what to do.
The draft in her hands had already been completed for three days.
The content of the article ranged from the unspeakable affairs between Dumbledore and Grindelwald that took place in a barn, to the reasons behind their eventual falling out.
When it came to matters involving the first-generation Dark Lord, Rita surprisingly didn't dare to fabricate things wildly.
In truth, she was simply terrified. After all, old Dumbledore was still alive, and Grindelwald was rumored to be alive as well.
The manuscript also placed special emphasis on Kyle's lineage—the Son of Grindelwald.
As for what she had overheard that day about Sirius Black being innocent and Peter Pettigrew—what ordinary reader would care about that kind of stuff?
Rita Skeeter had automatically filtered that matter out.
Right now, she cared far more about GGAD.
If this article were published, there was no doubt that the fame and wealth Rita Skeeter would reap from this report would surpass the total of everything she had ever written combined.
As the saying goes, wealth is found within danger—but the risks it brought were also astronomically high.
Although Grindelwald had been imprisoned in Nurmengard Castle and had vanished from public view for over forty years, Rita Skeeter could not guarantee that there weren't still Acolytes loyal to Grindelwald lurking in the modern wizarding world.
A rumor had always circulated in the wizarding world that a massive number of Acolytes were still hiding throughout Europe, waiting for Grindelwald to make a comeback.
If she exposed Kyle's hidden identity, she knew that following the fame and fortune, what would inevitably come next would be a relentless, mad hunt by these fanatical Acolytes.
Furthermore, the wizarding world would once again plunge into turmoil.
Rita Skeeter didn't care whether the wizarding world fell into turmoil; she only cared about her own little life.
After thinking it over repeatedly, Rita Skeeter sighed and ultimately slid the manuscript back into her drawer.
Her life was more important!
She would decide whether or not to publish this piece only after she made a trip to the European continent to investigate and see if the legends about the Acolytes were actually true.
————
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