Outside the Castle, thunder rolled, and dark clouds loomed over the school like a heavy shroud.
Inside the metallic Chamber of Secrets within the Room of Requirement, Hermione and Lia stood side by side. The air was thick with the tension of ancient runes and Dark Arts artifacts intertwined.
Lia's voice was soft, yet it struck like a heavy hammer in the dead silence.
"They are coming."
Before her voice could fade, the tall, black vanishing cabinet in front of them emitted a faint humming sound.
The snake patterns carved on the cabinet doors seemed to come alive, writhing slowly in the dim light.
Faint ripples of ancient, decaying magic seeped out from inside the cabinet, carrying the scent of a space far away.
With a tooth-grinding screech, the door of the vanishing cabinet slowly opened a crack.
A foot wearing an exquisite dragon-hide boot stepped out tentatively.
With a cruel sneer on his face, he looked around.
But his smile quickly froze.
This was not the Astronomy Tower he had expected. There was no open starry sky, and no old man with a white beard.
This was... a completely enclosed, massive cube made of an unknown metal.
The walls were smooth, without a single crack, save for that eerie vanishing cabinet right in the center.
"What's going on?" a gravelly voice sounded from behind him.
Another person squeezed out, looking equally confused.
One by one, more Death Eaters poured out of the cabinet like a swarm of poisonous insects crawling out of a rotten nest.
Every one of them was excited, wands in hand, ready for a grand slaughter.
However, the scene before them made them all stop in their tracks.
Ten... eleven... twelve... Hermione silently counted the numbers through a pin-sized observation hole she had left.
When the thirteenth person, Fenrir Greyback, squeezed through the cabinet door with his bear-like frame and bared his signature fangs, the vanishing cabinet's teleportation finally ceased.
The Death Eaters looked at each other, the atmosphere shifting from the excitement of a hunt to an eerie vigilance.
"A trap!" a female Death Eater shrieked.
Fenrir turned abruptly, trying to reopen the vanishing cabinet door, but it wouldn't budge, as if it had fused into the metal wall.
Boom!
A curse struck the wall, but it only kicked up a tiny spark, leaving not even a scratch.
Panic began to spread.
Behind the observation hole, Hermione's expression remained calm.
She gave the command to Lia beside her.
"Begin, Lia."
"Mhm."
Lia reached out her small hand and lightly pressed the central node of the complex runic array drawn on the floor.
Vroom—
A low rumble echoed through the entire chamber.
To the Death Eaters' horror, dense, blood-red lines instantly lit up on the floor and the surrounding walls!
Those lines were like a giant spiderweb, ensnaring all of them within.
Even more terrifyingly, the antiques in the corners of the room, which had seemed like mere junk, all came to life at this moment!
A silver hourglass shattered with a bang, and countless shrill wails turned into physical soundwaves, battering their souls!
A human-skin magic book flipped open frantically, and every ancient character that drifted from its pages carried a maddening whisper!
The obsidian dagger floated up, and streaks of malicious black light silently crisscrossed through the crowd!
"Ah—!"
A Death Eater's scream was cut short as his body was instantly dismembered by several blades of light, his blood evaporating in mid-air.
"Defend! Quickly, defend!" one of them roared, propping up a Shield Charm.
But it was all in vain.
This wasn't just a simple spell attack; it was a death storm composed of pure Dark Arts energy, amplified hundreds of times by the array!
Beams of cursed light in various colors shot out from the runic nodes on the walls, weaving into a net of death with no blind spots.
One Death Eater was engulfed in purple flames, instantly turning into a charred corpse.
Another was splashed by green acid, his flesh sizzling away until only a skeleton remained in the blink of an eye.
Others, amidst the maddening knowledge and malicious curses, clutched their heads as blood leaked from their orifices, dying from mental collapse.
This wasn't just a trap.
This was a slaughterhouse Hermione had meticulously prepared for them.
At the center of the storm, only two people were still standing.
Fenrir Greyback had shifted into his Werewolf form. His tough fur and beastly instincts allowed him to endure the first wave of impact, though he was already covered in wounds.
The other was Alecto Carrow. A pitch-black cloak on her body emitted an ominous glow—clearly a powerful Dark Arts defensive item that had blocked the fatal attacks for her.
But their doom was far from over.
Hermione watched all this and calmly activated the second phase of her plan.
She didn't need to kill everyone herself; she only needed to deal with the stragglers.
"Lia, let's entertain them somewhere else."
A hint of excitement appeared on Lia's small face. She reached out her finger again and moved it rapidly across another section of the runic array.
The blood-red runic lines instantly turned an icy blue.
On the floor of the chamber, a portal suddenly flared to life beneath Greyback and Carrow.
"No—!"
Greyback let out a roar of unwilling rage, feeling an irresistible spatial pull.
In the next second, he and Carrow were forcibly stretched and distorted before disappearing with a 'pop'... At that same moment, at the bottom of the Black Lake at Hogwarts.
It was deep and freezing.
A giant squid slept in the distance, and Grindylows lurked among the water weeds.
Splash!
Two figures appeared here without warning.
It was Greyback and Carrow.
Before they could react, the terrifying water pressure—strong enough to crush steel—pressed in from all directions.
Greyback's powerful body imploded instantly. Bone, organs, and flesh mixed together, turning into a blur of bloody water.
The Dark Arts cloak on Carrow flickered once before going completely dark. She couldn't even manage a scream; her eyes bulged as she suffocated in extreme agony.
The lake water soon returned to its calm state... Back in the Room of Requirement, Hermione directed Lia to randomly teleport the remaining gasping Death Eaters to places outside Hogwarts that even she didn't know.
The entire metal room was finally cleared.
Nothing remained but piles of ash and a pungent smell mixed with charred odors and soul fragments.
"Hermione," Lia tugged at Hermione's sleeve and pointed at the Dark Arts artifacts that had dimmed after exhausting their energy. "These 'fireworks' don't taste good."
"I'll find you something better next time," Hermione said, stroking her head as she closed the observation hole.
Her "welcome gift" had been delivered.
Now, it was time for the protagonist of another play to take the stage... [If you've read this far, please click for more updates to give me some motivation! I'm begging you!]
[I wish for everyone to have a Cat-girl to warm your hands when the weather gets cold!]
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