Chapter 640: You’ve Finished Talking About the Reward, So What’s the Punishment?

— — — — — —

At Hogwarts, the atmosphere had relaxed considerably after the end of the third task.

The school term entered a rare period of calm. Even Dumbledore finally had some free time, leisurely drinking tea in his office.

He skillfully dropped two spoonfuls of sugar into his cup.

"Finally, some peace..." The old man sighed softly.

But just as he raised the teacup for a sip, one of the ornaments in his office suddenly erupted into a shrill alarm.

The sudden blaring alarm came without any warning at all.

Caught completely off guard, Dumbledore nearly had a heart attack. The old man’s body jerked violently from the fright.

The lemon tea had already reached his lips and tilted halfway.

As a result, the entire cup spilled straight onto him.

The noise didn’t just scare Dumbledore either. The former headmasters sleeping peacefully in their portraits all jolted awake one after another.

The moment Phineas Black saw the scene, he burst out laughing.

"Dumbledore, are you finally old enough to start wetting yourself? Looks like you’ll be joining us on the wall soon enough."

"Idiot," a heavily bearded former Hufflepuff headmaster sneered disdainfully. "Do you think Dumbledore pees from his mouth or something? Look at his beard and clothes—that’s just illogical. Idiot Phineas."

Dumbledore’s mouth twitched. "Thank you for defending me, Heathledger, but perhaps refrain from doing so next time."

After hearing those two go back and forth, he completely lost his appetite for tea.

He walked over to the silver instrument making the racket. It was a pair of connected cymbals, their lid trembling violently as the metal scraped together with an ear-piercing screech.

Standing before it, Dumbledore finally remembered what it was. A gift from an old friend in Africa.

Both a present and a long-distance communication device capable of transmitting brief messages, though it had limited uses.

His old friend was rather traditional and never adapted well to new inventions. Even now, he still refused to switch over to the far more convenient Codex.

Next time he wrote to him, Dumbledore decided he absolutely had to recommend buying one. Otherwise, his poor heart wouldn’t survive many more scares like this.

With that thought in mind, Dumbledore lifted the lid.

Inside the cymbal, the blurry image of an elderly man appeared, accompanied by a metallic humming resonance.

|"Dumbledore! It’s me, Muhammad Ali! Hurry, come quickly! Save my family! A bandit showed up and robbed all our ancestral treasures! He didn’t leave a single thing behind! Damn thief! Damn Sun-Chasers!"|

Sun-Chasers?!

Dumbledore’s eyes narrowed instantly.

The relaxed laziness from moments earlier vanished completely, replaced by a heavy, imposing calm.

He didn’t particularly care about the treasures his old friend had lost. What shocked him was hearing the name "Sun-Chasers" come from his mouth.

Those mysterious wizards connected to the Feathered Serpent Quetzalcoatl had finally started exposing themselves?

Dumbledore quickly returned to his desk and wrote a letter, sending it off to Africa with Fawkes.

After watching Fawkes depart, he pulled out his iCodex and directly initiated a video call with Grindelwald.

Only two or three seconds later, Grindelwald’s slightly surprised face appeared within the glowing screen.

"Albus, is something wrong?"

The two of them didn’t communicate very often. Usually they exchanged short written messages. A direct video call like this was rare.

Instead of answering, Dumbledore immediately asked. "Gellert, where are you right now?"

"Berlin. Ah... I see."

Grindelwald raised a brow, a half-smile appearing on his face. "Go on then. What chaos has happened in the wizarding world this time that made you suspect me again?"

He honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed.

It had always been like this. The moment anything unusual happened, this old friend of his would immediately start suspecting him.

And the worst part was... Most of the time, Dumbledore wasn’t wrong.

But things were different now.

He, Gellert Grindelwald, hadn’t done anything this time.

The one throwing the world into chaos now was someone else entirely—someone living under the same roof as his old Dumbles.

...

..

"Achoo!"

Inside the Slytherin common room, Tom rubbed his nose.

Astoria was stunned, then hurriedly summoned a house-elf and ordered it to prepare hot tea as quickly as possible, complete with the finest cold-curing potion.

Only after giving the instructions did she finally look back at Tom with concern and guilt written all over her face.

The girl genuinely thought she’d accidentally caused him to catch a cold.

Across from them, Draco Malfoy stared blankly at the entire sequence of events, completely dumbfounded.

Seriously?

Tom just sneezed once, and she is acting like he’s already down with a fever.

Even if I hit forty degrees, nobody treats me this well!

"It’s fine. How could I possibly catch a cold?" Tom wiped his nose, took a sip of tea, then smiled reassuringly at Astoria. "My nose just suddenly got itchy. No need to panic."

After saying that, Tom turned his attention back toward Draco.

"Draco, there shouldn’t be any problem leaving this task to you, right?"

Draco finally snapped out of his daze and nodded rapidly. His pale face flushed slightly with excitement.

"Don’t worry, Tom. Give me one week. I guarantee I’ll have a perfect banquet ready by Saturday."

The reason Tom had called Draco over was to have him organize a small celebration banquet for Astoria’s recovery.

For the Greengrass family’s situation, the local circles didn’t know the full story, but everyone was aware that the ancient and wealthy family had long been plagued by a troublesome hereditary illness.

Adults had their own social circles. Young wizards had theirs too.

With Lady Greengrass currently struggling from her damaged mental state, expecting her to handle this sort of thing wasn’t realistic. That was why Tom decided to host the banquet at Hogwarts instead and spread the good news through the younger pure-blood crowd.

And the unlucky workhorse he picked for the job was Draco.

To be fair, Draco had decent leadership skills. Aside from Gryffindor students, he got along fairly well with the pure-bloods of the other houses too.

He was the perfect choice.

"Good. Then I’ll leave everything to you." Tom nodded. "Do a good job, and there’ll be a reward. Mess it up, and there’ll be a punishment too."

A distinctly malicious grin suddenly spread across the boy’s face.

"I’ll lock you in a small dark room with Harry Potter for an entire weekend."

"What?" Draco’s expression changed instantly.

Then seeing Tom stop there, he cautiously asked, "You already mentioned the reward. What’s the punishment?"

This time, it was Tom and Astoria whose expressions changed.

Astoria stared at Tom in shock, unsure whether something was wrong with themselves... or whether Draco was the one with the problem.

Even Tom froze for several seconds before finally recovering, practically gritting his teeth as he spoke, "The punishment is... locking you in a small dark room with Ron Weasley!"

Draco shot to his feet so fast it looked like he’d been launched by a spring.

"What! There’s no fun in beating up Weasley..."

"Tom, I’ll go prepare right now!" he yelled while sprinting for the door. "It’ll be the best banquet ever!"

.

.

.