With the bulk of the Father-Vexing Alliance's energy consumed by their hectic work, Dumbledore finally welcomed a long-awaited period of hard-won peace and quiet.
Opening his office window, Dumbledore stood by the ledge, basking in the warm, golden sunlight as he took an intoxicated breath of the crisp air blowing in from the Black Lake.
It felt absolutely wonderful.
There was no scent of gunpowder in the air from the Weasley twins experimenting with weapons.
Nor was there the terrifying, heart-stopping roar of Hagrid practicing the Daytime Tiger under Kyle's guidance.
Though autumn had arrived, the distant Forbidden Forest still looked lush and green, its bursting vitality bringing a wave of pleasure to Dumbledore.
However, the moment his gaze landed on the flat, open ground next to the Quidditch pitch—where thousands of agricultural tractors were parked—Dumbledore's face instantly darkened.
The sight completely ruined the scenery.
Just three days after he had approved their military procurement project, these monstrosities began trickling into Hogwarts Castle.
In a mere two days, the space beside the Quidditch pitch became home to a thousand agricultural tractors and a hundred and fifty dump trucks.
Following that, massive quantities of steel plates and diesel engines began arriving in steady streams.
Because all of this was piled up on the open ground next to the Quidditch pitch, a massive corrugated iron shed would have to be erected in a few days to shield it from the elements.
The sheer dissonance between that eyesore and Hogwarts' aesthetic was as jarring as it could possibly be.
Fortunately, he had heard from Kyle that the giant iron shed would be torn down and everything restored to its original state once they finished retrofitting the thousand tractors.
Otherwise, Dumbledore would have seriously considered using a Time-Turner to go back a week and strangle his past self for signing that military procurement agreement.
With a dark expression, Dumbledore shut the window in front of him. He walked over to another window that offered no view of the Quidditch pitch, took a deep breath to calm his nerves, and began to admire the scenery outside.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, time leaped from mid-September to early October.
Over these two weeks, massive changes swept through Hogwarts Castle.
Virtually the entire school had transformed into a massive construction site. Every day, the whole castle was enveloped in the continuous, rumbling drone of machinery.
The thousand-year-old walls of the ancient fortress had been riddled with holes by workers whom Kyle had asked Alfred to hire.
Their task was to carve out a sufficient number of embrasures in the walls and then install rapid-fire machine guns inside them.
In the event of a foreign invasion, the gun ports would automatically slide open, allowing the rapid-fire machine guns inside to poke their barrels out and riddle the enemies like sieves.
Granted, these workers were all wizards; the entire process of blasting open the walls, mounting the machine guns, setting up the mechanisms, and restoring the masonry to its original look took a mere ten-odd minutes.
But the sheer volume of embrasures required was staggering, and the workforce couldn't be entirely dedicated to just this one project. As a result, after working for over half a month, they were only just barely reaching the wrap-up stage.
The castle's seldom-visited towers had also been dismantled into scattered pieces.
According to the Alliance's plans, these towers would be converted into missile launchpads and anti-aircraft machine gun platforms.
Their primary function was to defend against airborne threats, since flight was hardly a difficult feat for wizards.
But the most dramatic transformation belonged to the open ground next to the Quidditch pitch.
A colossal color-coated steel factory building had risen there, occupying an area even larger than the Quidditch pitch itself.
A thousand agricultural tractors and two hundred dump trucks were parked inside the facility.
For a factory floor bursting with such heavy Muggle industrial atmosphere to sit so boldly right next to a medieval fortress like Hogwarts was truly the height of incongruity.
Fortunately, they only needed to wait another month—roughly until right before Halloween. Once the automated assembly factory beneath Hogwarts Castle was fully set up, this monstrosity would be dismantled.
With over a thousand vehicles, the members of the Alliance certainly couldn't retrofit them one by one by hand.
Not only would that be an immense waste of time, but the efficiency would also be abysmally low.
After some deliberation, the Alliance decided to repurpose the Chamber of Secrets left behind by Salazar Slytherin beneath the castle, turning it into an arsenal.
By using alchemy to forge a series of hard-coded industrial alchemical robots, they could assemble a production line capable of automatically converting tractors into tanks.
By excavating two underground tunnels leading directly to the subterranean chamber from either side, all they would have to do was drive an agricultural tractor in through one end; by the time it rolled out the other, it would be a cheap and highly functional unmanned tank.
And it wouldn't stop at tanks—infantry fighting vehicles designed to transport the castle's stone guards would also stream continuously off a separate production line.
On top of that, there were cheap, mass-produced "Fat Lightning" flying brooms with heavily stripped-down performance specs, as well as the bullets and artillery shells consumed by their firearms and cannons...
[Translator's Note: "Fat Lightning" (肥电) is a popular Chinese military internet slang nickname for the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet.]
As for why they chose to set up the arsenal underground?
If the arsenal were built outside the castle, it would be highly vulnerable to destruction during wartime.
Furthermore, a modernized factory completely clashed with Hogwarts' aesthetic.
Therefore, the absolute best location for the arsenal was the Chamber of Secrets left by Salazar Slytherin deep underground.
The vast space beneath the castle also guaranteed more than enough room to store the manufactured weapons and equipment.
That evening, after toiling away in the Chamber of Secrets for an entire day, the members of the Alliance staggered back into the Great Hall with weak, unsteady steps.
All four of them fell upon the food on the dining table like starving ghouls, ravenously devouring everything in sight.
They had lost themselves so completely in their work in the Chamber today that they had entirely forgotten to eat lunch.
By the time they remembered, the lunch the house-elves had delivered to the Chamber had long since gone stone cold, and dinner was already fast approaching.
They figured they might as well skip it altogether and just combine both meals into one massive feast when dinner rolled around.
The consequence of this decision was that all four of them very nearly starved to death right there in the Chamber.
At this moment, Fred had a chicken drumstick in each hand, stuffing his face from both sides alternately.
George, on the other hand, was holding a massive pie, making a fifth of it vanish in a single bite.
Cedric's table manners were relatively more refined, though "refined" was a term that could only be loosely applied when comparing him to the other three members of the Alliance.
Right now, he was rapidly slicing his steak with a knife and fork. To speed up his eating, he had even resorted to wandlessly casting the Severing Charm.
The most absurd of them all was Kyle, who had bowl after bowl of ramen laid out in front of him.
He picked up a bowl the size of his own face, opened his mouth wide, and shoved the noodles in with a few frantic motions of his chopsticks. The broth and noodles vanished into his maw at a visible rate.
Five seconds later, when Kyle set the bowl down, it was completely empty—not a single drop of broth remained.
With his whirlwind-like devouring speed, a tall stack of bowls quickly piled up on the table.
Only when the stack reached forty-six bowls did Kyle finally set down his chopsticks amidst the horrified stares of the onlookers, letting out a loud, resonant burp.
"Burp~"
George set down his cutlery and wiped his mouth. "The tank production line is finally sorted out."
"With the design experience from this production line, the remaining ones will be much easier," Cedric said, rubbing his forehead in exasperation. "By the way, this was a project you guys took on, wasn't it? Why did you have to drag me into it?"
Fred grinned, slinging an arm around Cedric's shoulders. "Hey, we just figured if there's money to be made, we should all get rich together."
"Get off, get off! Don't touch me with those filthy hands."
The three of them laughed and joked around, while Kyle alone sat with his mind wandering far away.
Right now, Kyle was staring at the Staff Table, where one specific chair sat completely empty.
Snape hadn't showed up to dine in the Great Hall for several consecutive days now.
Could that old bat be so deeply immersed in the false illusions brought by the Resurrection Stone that he can't pull himself out?
Do I need to find some time to give him a forced intervention?
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