Chapter 51: Six Shots Per Second
Sunday afternoon. The weather at Hogwarts was poor. Gray clouds hung low, and the surface of the Black Lakereflected the leaden light of the sky, looking like an unpolished sheet of tin.
Cassius walked along the gravel path on the west side of the Castle toward the lake. It wasn't a long walk, about fifteen minutes. This path was rarely used—it didn't lead to any classrooms or common areas, ending at a rocky beach on the north shore of the Black Lake. Jumbled shale extended from the lake shore, forming a natural platform about thirty meters wide. The stones were slippery, with dark green water weeds growing in the crevices.
The advantage of this place was its seclusion. The nearest building was the base of the West Tower, separated by a dense thicket of bushes and three willow trees so old they were about to topple over. Unless someone specifically came around to this angle, nothing happening on the rocky beach could be seen from any of the Castle's windows.
Cassius needed a place where no one could see him to conduct his tests.
He stood at the edge of the rocky beach. The shale beneath his feet had been washed by the lake for centuries, its surface smooth, with a thin film of water on top. The surface of the Black Lake was just two meters in front of him—calm without a single ripple, save for the occasional bubble rising from the depths, bursting into a small ring on the water.
Cassius squatted down, unbuttoned his school robes, took them off, folded them, and placed them on a dry, elevated rock behind him. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt to above his elbows.
In the Scotland Highlands at the end of October, the wind by the lake carried a distinct chill. But he didn't care.
The "Dual-Soul Furnace" was operating steadily deep within his chest. The two soul cores outputted magic at complementary frequencies—when one ramped up power, the other was responsible for stabilizing the circuit. It was like a twin-turbo engine; there was always one turbine charging and standing by.
Cassius straightened up.
He adjusted the output power to ten percent.
This figure had been calibrated before he came to Hogwarts. A ten percent output was roughly equal to the total amount of magic consumed by an adult Wizard when casting a full-powered Reducto. For him, this was the warm-up gear.
The thing he was testing today, he had already completed the theoretical deduction for in the library yesterday.
The "Magic Gatling."
The principle was not complicated. The traditional Reducto, "Reducto," was a single-cast spell—a Wizard raised their wand, chanted the incantation, and a ball of destructive magic shot from the tip, hitting the target and shattering it. One cast, one hit, one bullet.
What Cassius wanted to do was change this process. Eliminate the wand. Eliminate the incantation. Break apart the full magic packet of the Reducto—not throwing one whole bomb, but breaking the explosive into a hundred parts, loading them into a hundred small projectiles, and then firing them continuously like a machine gun.
The power of a single shot decreased. But the rate of fire compensated for it.
Ten shots per second. Each shot was roughly twenty to thirty percent of the equivalent of a full Reducto. Ten shots stacked—approaching three times the total output of a full Reducto.
And it was continuous.
Giving the target no chance to catch their breath.
Cassius raised his right hand.
His five fingers spread open. His palm faced the lake ten meters away.
He did not chant. He closed his eyes—not because he needed to concentrate, but because visual information was redundant at this stage. What he needed was pure magic perception.
The magic circuits within his body began to rearrange.
The magic circuit for normal spellcasting was like this: core → main path → arm meridians → palm → release. A straight line. One pass. After the release was complete, the circuit emptied, recharged, and released again.
The change Cassius wanted to make was to add a step before the "palm"—a shunt.
High-frequency cutting of the magic surging through the main path at the wrist. A continuous stream of magic was cut into segments—each segment was an independent, micro-Reducto pulse that had already been directed and shaped. The frequency of the cutting determined the rate of fire.
Cassius first tried three shots per second.
To be conservative.
The magic circuit at his wrist began to "switch" at a frequency of three times per second—open, close, open, close, open, close. Every time it opened, a fist-sized ball of compressed magic shot out from his palm.
The first shot.
"Bang."
There was no visible light in the air—this was not a formed spell, no iconic red or blue light. What shot from Cassius's palm was a colorless, high-speed moving mass of magic. The way it hit the lake was similar to a cannonball slamming into the water.
The water surface exploded.
The spray shot up about two meters high. The shockwave drew a white circle with a diameter of three meters on the lake surface—that was the foam belt created when the water body was instantly compressed and then rebounded.
The second shot followed closely.
Bang.
Before the spray had fallen, the second impact point appeared half a meter next to the first. The two white circles overlapped partially.
The third shot.
Bang.
Three impact points, three rings of foam, three columns of spray—in less than a second, three pits had been smashed into the lake surface ten meters away.
Cassius opened his eyes.
He watched the white water still churning on the lake surface.
Assessment: The frequency was too low. The interval of three shots per second was too large—there was a three-hundred-millisecond window between each shot, enough for a quick-reacting opponent to dodge or parry. Also, the precision of the magic cutting was not high enough; the trajectories of the second and third shots were off.
He needed to be faster.
Cassius adjusted the structure of the magic circuit at his wrist. He changed the shunt from a single channel to a dual channel—two parallel magic branches switching alternately. When channel A released, channel B was charging; when channel B released, channel A was charging. Theoretically, this could double the effective rate of fire.
Six shots per second.
He raised his right hand again. This time he didn't close his eyes. He stared at the lake. Target area: ten meters directly ahead, a body of water about five meters by five meters. Start.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang—six shots. One second.
The continuous muffled sounds were squeezed together, sounding no longer like individual explosions, but more like some kind of pneumatic hammer on a construction site continuously pounding the ground.
The lake went crazy.
In the five-by-five-meter area, the surface had been churned by the six high-frequency impacts into a boiling pot of white soup. The spray no longer shot up in columns—instead, it collided and overlapped between the different impact points, forming a wall of water about three meters high, then collapsed with a roar, slamming onto the rocky beach and soaking the lower half of Cassius's trouser legs.
He stood still in place.
The wall of water hit the magic barrier in front of him and was deflected. The effect was much better than with three shots. But it still wasn't enough. A suppression density of six shots per second was already enough to render most Wizards unable to counterattack—because the time it took to chant a shield spell was about one and a half seconds, and within one and a half seconds, you would have to withstand nine impacts. An ordinary shield spell would shatter after three.
But Cassius's goal was not "most Wizards." The upper limit he was benchmarking against was an opponent on the level of Lord Voldemort. Lord Voldemort's reaction speed and spellcasting frequency far exceeded that of ordinary Wizards. He could complete a silent shield spell in 0.3 seconds, and the quality of his magic was extremely high; the strength and durability of his shield could not be compared to those of ordinary people. To suppress an opponent of Lord Voldemort's level, he needed more than ten shots per second.
Chapter 52 Magic Gatling
Cassius began his third round of adjustments.
He no longer used two channels; he changed the shunt to a Four-Channel Shunt.
Four parallel magic branches cycled on and off in the order of ABCD.
The charging time for each branch was 400 milliseconds—just enough for a micro-Reducto pulse to form—and the release time was 100 milliseconds.
With the four branches staggered, the theoretical rate of fire was ten shots per second.
However, this placed extremely high demands on the load of the magic circuit.
Having four branches operating simultaneously meant that at any given moment, there were at least two streams of magic flowing through the meridians in his arm in different directions—one charging, one releasing.
If not controlled well, the two streams of magic would collide at the intersection, and then—as the author of that forbidden book warned—the meridians would burst.
The meridians of an ordinary Wizard could not withstand this kind of load.
Cassius's meridians could.
The magic circuit provided by the [Dual-Soul Furnace] was not a single-layer structure.
An ordinary Wizard's meridians were like a water pipe—smooth on the inside, with a fixed cross-section and a limit on flow.
Cassius's meridians were more like an alloy pipe that had been repeatedly tempered by magic—the inner wall was coated with a layer of high-density magic crystals, the pipe wall was three to four times thicker than that of an ordinary Wizard, and the cross-sectional area was more than twice as large.
If the same pressure were applied, an ordinary pipe would burst, but his pipe remained unmoved.
Cassius took a deep breath.
It wasn't nervousness; it was habit. Just a final breathing adjustment before high-output.
He raised his right hand.
This time, he expanded the target area to the entire stretch of water from ten to twenty meters directly in front of him, with a width of ten meters.
The Four-Channel Shunt formed inside his wrist. The four magic branches began to activate alternately, like four pistons.
ABCD.
A charging—B releasing—C charging—D releasing—A releasing—B charging—C releasing—D charging—
Cycle.
Cassius opened his palm.
Fire.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang—
Ten shots. One second.
The sound had changed. It was no longer a series of distinct, muffled thuds. The interval between the ten shots had been compressed to under one hundred milliseconds, making it impossible for the human ear to distinguish individual explosions. It sounded like—
Tearing cloth.
A giant canvas being violently ripped apart from both ends. A continuous, dense, high-frequency tearing sound that made the eardrums numb.
The scene on the Black Lake was even more terrifying.
The entire stretch of water from ten to twenty meters was completely covered within one second. It was no longer impacts on individual points—it was blooming across the entire line simultaneously. The water surface was no longer being "punched" into pits; it was being "shaved" away layer by layer.
Ten impact points repeatedly hammered the same stretch of water at a frequency of ten times per second, with an effect equivalent to a giant hydraulic cutter sweeping across. Within the impact zone, the lake water was repeatedly compressed, bounced up, compressed again, and bounced again—the water body was struck back down by the next impact before it could settle—giving the entire area a bizarre "boiling" state.
Water columns. Water mist. Water vapor.
The water temperature rose sharply under the high-frequency magic impact. The magic pulses were not pure kinetic energy—each pulse carried a small amount of thermal energy, and after ten shots stacked up, the water temperature in the center of the impact zone climbed from eight degrees to over sixty degrees in just three seconds.
Steam began to rise from the surface of the water.
White water mist rose from the Black Lake, mingling with the gray sky. From a distance, it looked as if someone had set a fire on the Black Lake.
Cassius did not stop.
He maintained the output of ten shots per second for five consecutive seconds.
Fifty shots.
The water surface within the twenty-meter range was completely churned up. The water was no longer liquid—the entire area had turned into a boiling, thick soup mixed with mud, fragments of water weeds, and bubbles. Black silt from the bottom of the lake was churned up by the shockwaves and mixed with the boiling lake water, emitting a fishy smell and the stench of rotten mud.
Then he stopped.
He lowered his right hand.
His palm was slightly warm—not from magic overdraft, but from the frictional heat generated by magic passing through his palm during high-frequency output. It was like the heating of a gun barrel after continuous firing. Not burning hot. Just a warm heat.
He looked at the lake surface.
The effect exceeded his expectations.
An output frequency of ten shots per second was sufficient to form effective fire suppression. Under this density of attack, no defensive magic could last for three seconds—because the strength of a shield spell had an upper limit, and it would lose a portion of energy with every impact; ten shots per second meant the shield spell's energy would be broken through within one second, and a Wizardneeded at least one second of lead time to cast a second shield spell.
Within that one second of lead time, he could fire another ten shots.
No shield spell could keep up with this rate of fire.
Cassius was satisfied.
He squatted down and scooped up a handful of water from the edge of the rocky beach to rinse his hands. The water was cool. The hot water from the impact zone had not yet spread to the shore this close.
His attention was interrupted by a movement.
On the Black Lake, about forty meters away from the rocky beach, something emerged from the water.
A head. Gray-green skin. A pair of huge yellow eyes. Gills flattened against the sides of the skull. Two rows of fine, sharp teeth inside the mouth.
A Merperson.
To be precise, a freshwater Merperson from the Black Lake. Unlike the beautiful mermaids in fairy tales, the Merperson of the Black Lake was closer to a kind of aquatic humanoid creature—its gray skin was as rough as a shark's, its eyes were on the sides of its face, and the gills on its neck were flapping open and closed in the air.
The Merperson was holding a bone spear in its hand. The spear tip was pointed in Cassius's direction. Its expression—if the tightening of that face could be considered an expression—was one of anger.
This area was the edge of the Merperson tribe's territory. Cassius's fifty-shot volley just now had boiled the water right at its doorstep.
The Merperson opened its mouth and emitted a series of harsh, grating sounds—that was Merperson language. Above the water, Merperson language sounded like someone scraping fingernails against a blackboard.
Cassius could not understand Merperson language.
But he understood body language. A spear pointed at him, combined with that expression of wanting to bite someone—the meaning was very clear.
Cassius glanced at the Merperson.
Then he raised his right hand.
His palm was facing the water surface forty meters away.
He didn't intend to actually attack. He just slightly released the magic on his palm—a layer of faint blue light flashed across his palm.
The Merperson's yellow eyes widened instantly.
It recognized that light. Thirty seconds ago, it was this very light that had turned the water twenty meters above its head into boiling water.
The Merperson dived into the water with a speed absolutely disproportionate to its bulky physique.
It didn't even splash much.
When it left, it also took away two other heads that had just emerged from the water—likely companions coming to help. Three gray-green heads retracted beneath the water surface at a speed visible to the naked eye and then fled desperately toward the center of the lake.
Cassius lowered his hand.
He walked back to the rock where he had left his school robe, put the robe back on, buttoned it up, and adjusted his collar.
On the way back to the Castle, he mentally compiled an update log.
Magic Gatling—test passed. Effective rate of fire: ten shots per second. Effective range: twenty meters. Single-shot equivalent: approximately twenty-five percent of a full-version Reducto. Fire sustainability: at ten percent output power, it can fire continuously for about ten minutes before reaching the upper limit of the comfort zone. If the output power is increased to thirty percent, the rate of fire can be further increased to over fifteen shots per second, but the duration will be shortened to about three minutes.
Enough to deal with a Merperson.
Enough to deal with a Troll.
To deal with Lord Voldemort—more data is needed.
Cassius put his hands in his pockets and walked back to the Castle along the gravel path. The wind blew from the direction of the Black Lake, carrying a fishy smell of boiled mud.
Chapter 53: First Year Boggart?
Monday. Defense Against the Dark Arts Class.
The classroom was at the end of the third-floor corridor. This classroom was darker than the others—there was only one window, and it was mostly covered by heavy purple velvet curtains.
The insufficient light was supplemented by wall sconces, but those candles were yellowed, flickering, and the type that could be blown out by a draft at any moment.
The classroom was filled with an extremely pungent smell of garlic.
Braids of garlic hung from the edge of the desk, the corners of the window frames, and even above the blackboard.
It was said that Professor Quirrell did this to ward off Vampires—he had encountered one while traveling in Albania during the summer—but the entire classroom was fumigated to smell like the kitchen of an Italian restaurant.
Cassius and Draco sat in the middle row of the classroom. Draco was on the left, and Cassius was on the right.
A new circle of white bandage was wrapped around Draco's right index finger—he had gone to the dungeon to practice for two hours again yesterday. This was the third day. The feather still hadn't managed to float a second time.
But he didn't give up, nor did he complain. Every afternoon, he simply wore himself out between Cassius and that feather, then crawled back to the common room to continue practicing.
Cassius noticed a new red mark on Draco's right ring finger—yesterday's magic backlash had leaked out from another weak point. It wasn't serious. But it indicated that Dracowas using greater force to push his limits.
He didn't offer any comment. What Draco needed wasn't a comment, but silence.
Professor Quirrell stood at the podium. He was wearing an oversized purple robe, with that signature purple turban wrapped around his head.
The enormous turban wrapped his head into a comical sphere, forming an uncoordinated proportion with his thin, withered body.
Cassius watched Professor Quirrell.
From the first day of school until now, he had been using the sensory ability of the Dual-Soul Furnace to monitor the thing inside Professor Quirrell.
Lord Voldemort's soul fragment.
That thing was parasitic on the back of Professor Quirrell's head, hidden under the turban. Its magic signature was very peculiar—it didn't resemble an energy field emitted by a living organism, but rather like a mass of high-pressure gas forcibly compressed into a small space, ready to overflow at any moment.
And it was deliberately suppressing itself.
Every time Cassius appeared within a fifty-meter radius, the magic fluctuations of that soul fragment would shrink sharply—just like a mouse smelling a cat, curling itself into the smallest volume, attempting to avoid the cat's notice.
Cassius noticed this. But for now, he didn't intend to expose it.
The timing wasn't right.
Exposing Professor Quirrell meant a direct confrontation with Lord Voldemort's soul fragment. With his current output power of ten to thirty percent, dealing with a weak soul fragment attached to a host wouldn't be a problem—but the issue lay in the aftermath. Lord Voldemort had Horcruxes. Killing one soul fragment wouldn't solve the fundamental problem. Instead, it would alert the enemy and cause the other Horcruxes to change their hiding spots.
So Cassius chose to wait.
To wait until he had the ability to sweep all the pieces clean at once before acting.
" To... Today. "
Professor Quirrell's voice pulled Cassius's thoughts back.
" We are... going to have a prac... practical class. " Professor Quirrell stood behind the podium, his two hands gripping the edge—not for support, but because his hands were shaking. His stutter was worse than it had been at the start of the term.
In the center of the classroom stood a wardrobe.
It was an old-fashioned oak wardrobe. About the height of a person, with two doors, unpainted, and rough wood grain. The two brass handles of the wardrobe were locked together by an iron chain, and a rusty padlock hung from the chain.
The wardrobe was moving.
Not the kind of movement from falling—it was the kind of movement from hitting it from the inside out. Every few seconds, the wardrobe doors would " bang " outward, then snap back. The chains made a clattering sound. Something inside was desperately trying to get out.
Most of the students moved their chairs back a few centimeters.
" In... Inside here... " Professor Quirrell poked half his body out from behind the podium, " is locked a Boggart. Who... who can tell me what a Boggart is? "
Hermione's hand went up. She was sitting in the second row on the Gryffindor side, her hand raised straight, her fingertips almost poking the ceiling.
" Miss Granger. "
" A Boggart is a shapeshifting creature. It does not have a fixed form of its own. When it faces a person, it reads the deepest fear in that person's heart and then transforms into the concrete form of that fear. " Hermione's voice was fast and clear, like she was reciting a textbook. " The spell to deal with a Boggart is 'Riddikulus'—the principle of this spell is to use humor to dismantle the image of fear. Because a Boggart's greatest natural enemy is laughter. "
" Ve... Very good. Five... five points to Gryffindor. "
Professor Quirrell walked out from behind the podium. His legs were weak—but not because he was scared of the Boggart. When his gaze swept across the classroom, it stopped on Cassius for about half a second.
That half-second was not Professor Quirrell's will.
It was Lord Voldemort's.
The soul fragment squirmed under the turban. Its attention was drawn—not by the Boggart, but by Cassius.
This child of Malfoy Family.
Lord Voldemort's soul fragment had been observing him since the day school started. That day at the Sorting Ceremony, when Cassius passed the staff table, the soul fragment was less than eight meters away from him—that kind of pressure almost made the soul fragment instinctively want to flee its host. Not because of fear—Lord Voldemort did not fear anyone—but because of danger.
The magic pressure radiating from that first-year boy reminded Lord Voldemort of someone.
Dumbledore.
No.
Even more brutal than Dumbledore.
Dumbledore's magic was precise, elegant, and accurate to the molecular level like a scalpel—you could feel its power, but it wouldn't overflow for no reason.
Cassius Malfoy's magic was primitive, unrefined, like a living volcano churning beneath the earth's crust—it was suppressed, but you could feel it roaring beneath the suppression layer every moment.
Lord Voldemort needed to know one thing.
What this boy feared.
Everyone had fears. Dumbledore feared his loved ones getting hurt because of him. Harry Potter feared Dementors and death. Even the bravest Gryffindor would expose their inner weakness when facing a Boggart.
To know a person's fear was to know their weakness.
So Professor Quirrell—under Lord Voldemort's instruction—had specifically arranged this class as a Boggartpractical class.
And he would call on Cassius first.
" No... Now, " Professor Quirrell said, " I need someone to come up and demonstrate. "
His gaze turned to Cassius.
The whole class was silent for a second.
" Mal... Malfoy. Would you... would you like to try? "
The air in the classroom became very subtle. Everyone's gaze turned to Cassius. A few students on the Gryffindorside exchanged nervous glances—they had heard of Cassius's exploits. The Slytherin side was even quieter; even Zabini unconsciously moved his body two centimeters to the side.
Draco tugged at Cassius's sleeve.
It wasn't much force. But the way he tugged contained an unspoken meaning—you don't have to go up.
Cassius removed Draco's hand from his sleeve.
He pushed back his chair. The chair legs scraped across the stone floor, emitting a harsh screech.
He stood up.
He walked to the front of the wardrobe.
About two meters from the wardrobe. This distance was the standard Boggart confrontation distance—too close and the Boggart would pounce on your face when it came out, too far and your spell might miss.
The wardrobe shook crazily in front of him. The door panels bulged outward again and again. The chains were pulled taut. The thing inside had sensed a new target.
Cassius stood there. Both hands hung at his sides. He didn't draw his wand.
In fact, he did have a wand. Ollivander had finally customized one for him—using not conventional materials, but a piece of iron birch wood for the shaft and a dragon heartstring for the core. This wand was in the inside pocket of his school robe, but he hadn't used it even once since school started.
" Open. " Cassius said.
Professor Quirrell nodded from behind the podium. He raised his wand, pointing it at the iron chain on the wardrobe.
" Alohomora. "
The chain was released. The padlock fell to the ground with a " click ".
The two doors of the wardrobe flew open.
A mass of black stuff surged out from inside.
Not smoke. Not mist. It was more like a mass of thick, semi-liquid, self-aware ink. It tumbled out of the wardrobe, twisting and deforming in the air, attempting to combine into a concrete form.
The Boggart's standard operating procedure: read the target's inner fear → lock onto the concrete form of the fear → transform → use the image of fear to scare the target.
The black mist swirled in front of Cassius.
It was reading.
Flashing image fragments began to appear on the surface of the black mist—like a broken television jumping crazily between different channels. Cassius saw some lingering images: an aged face—Dumbledore's. A pair of red eyes—Lord Voldemort's. A giant snake. A closed door.
But these images shattered in less than half a second.
The Boggart got stuck.
Its transformation program suffered a systemic failure in front of Cassius.
The reason was simple—the existence of the Dual-Soul Furnace.
The Boggart's method of reading fear was through telepathic perception. It needed to penetrate the target's psychological defenses and reach the deepest subconscious. But the outer layer of Cassius's consciousness was wrapped airtight by the magic field of the Dual-Soul Furnace. From an external perception standpoint, his brain was like a solid wall with no doors or windows—the Boggart's sensory tentacles touched it, but couldn't even penetrate the first layer.
It couldn't read into it.
Chapter 54: The Boggart's Funeral
The Boggart had never encountered a situation like this before.
It floated before Cassius, its black mist repeatedly twisting, contracting, expanding, and twisting again—like an overloaded computer desperately calculating an unsolvable equation.
The classroom was very quiet. Everyone was watching this scene.
Hermione's mouth opened slightly. She had read all the literature on Boggarts—there was no record showing a Boggart failing to transform when facing a target.
A Boggart could turn into a spider, a snake, a ghost, a corpse, or even a zero-mark report card—it could turn into anything.
But it couldn't transform.
Because it couldn't find the raw material.
Three seconds passed.
The Boggart gave up on precise transformation. Its instinct drove it to take a final measure—when a Boggart could not read a target's fear, it would turn into a pure form of threat. Not targeting any specific fear, just simply turning into a mass of aggression.
The black mist suddenly contracted. Then it erupted.
It transformed into a mass of violent black flames—the temperature was extremely high, tongues of fire curling in the air, approaching Cassius's face. The temperature of the entire classroom rose by several degrees in an instant. The students in the front row screamed and retreated.
Quirrell stared nervously at the scene from behind the podium. His fingers were trembling—not from his own will, but because the remnant soul was forcing him to concentrate—he wanted to see how Cassius would handle it.
The black flames lunged at Cassius.
Cassius did not chant "Riddikulus".
He did not raise his wand.
He did not use any formed defensive magic.
He simply raised his right hand.
Palm facing forward. Fingers pressed together.
Then he swung that hand sharply to the right—a crisp, clean action without any superfluous movement, completed purely by the swing of his arm.
A slap.
Cassius's palm was wrapped in a layer of extremely compressed magic—unlike the pulse tested on the Black Lake yesterday, this layer of magic was not cut into fragments by high frequency. It was a single block. Whole. Dense. Like a steel plate.
And this steel plate, at an extremely fast speed—
Slapped onto that mass of black flames.
"Snap."
The sound was extremely loud.
It was not the dull "boom" sound when magic spells collided—that sound was the pressure wave generated by magic colliding with magic in space.
This sound was a "snap." Crisp, sharp, an explosive sound like a giant hand snapping its fingers in the air.
Because this was not a magical confrontation.
This was a physical strike.
The magic layer on Cassius's palm was not meant to counteract the Boggart's black flames—but to transmit kinetic energy. It concentrated all the kinetic energy produced by the swing of Cassius's arm, plus the extra impulse generated by magic acceleration, onto an area the size of a palm, and at a speed exceeding the speed of sound, it struck solidly.
A Boggart is a magical creature. Its form is composed of magic. Theoretically, physical attacks are ineffective against it—if you punch a cloud of mist, your fist will only pass through.
But those are ordinary fists.
There was a layer of high-density magical medium on Cassius's palm. The density of this layer was high enough to interact physically with solid matter—it would not pass through the Boggart's form, but would collide solidly with the Boggart's magical structure.
The result of the collision was devastating.
The Boggart's black flame form disintegrated under this slap.
Not dissipated. Not dispelled. It disintegrated.
Its magical structure was shattered into fragments by the impact of this blow. Just like a glass ball hit by a hammer—not cracked, but shattered into powder.
The black fragments exploded in the air. It was as if someone had smashed a bottle of black ink in the center of the classroom—tiny, dust-like black particles splashed in all directions, rapidly losing their magic in flight, turning into inert gray powder, and falling to the floor in a flurry.
The Boggart let out a scream.
Not a threatening roar. It was that kind of—dying, uncontrollable, only emitted when torn from the very foundation of existence—scream.
A normal Boggart would flee back into a wardrobe after being repelled by "Riddikulus". It would not die. Because "Riddikulus" only dissolves its fear form with laughter, it does not harm its main body.
Cassius's slap injured the main body.
The Boggart's core—that mass of magical condensation maintaining its life and consciousness—shattered under the direct effect of the palm's shockwave.
Shattered into two halves.
The two halves turned into quarters.
The quarters turned into powder.
The powder turned into ash.
The ash fell onto the floor. By Cassius's feet, on the stone slabs in the middle of the classroom, it spread evenly in a thin layer. It looked like someone had burned a piece of black paper.
There was not a sound in the classroom.
A Ravenclaw girl in the front row covered her mouth, her eyes wide as if they were about to pop out. Her desk-mate grabbed her arm, fingernails digging into her skin, but neither of them realized it.
Zabini on the Slytherin side dropped the quill in his hand onto the desk. Ink bled into a large black blot on the parchment. He did not look down.
Harry and Ron were sitting in the second-to-last row of Gryffindor. A flesh-colored plaster was stuck on Ron's nose—the injury from being hit by Draco hadn't fully healed yet—at this moment, he had even forgotten to breathe. Harry's hand rested loosely on the desk, his green eyes staring at Cassius without blinking.
Hermione was sitting in the second row. Her brain had turned into a high-speed machine at this moment.
A Boggart is a B-class magical creature. Not particularly dangerous, but definitely not something an ordinary first-year student should be able to make direct contact with. The only method to deal with a Boggart in the textbooks is the "Riddikulus" charm—a defensive spell that on average requires third-year students to master.
Cassius did not use "Riddikulus".
He used a slap.
He slapped a Boggart to death.
Dead in the physical sense.
Hermione's notebook was spread open on the desk. Her right hand held a quill. She wanted to record it. But her hand wouldn't obey—not because it was shaking, but because she didn't know how to translate what she had just seen into words.
There was no entry in the textbook for "slapping a Boggartto death".
Behind the podium, Professor Quirrell's jaw hung at an extremely undignified angle. His mouth was wide open, both hands still maintaining the posture of clutching the podium.
Under the turban on the back of his head, Lord Voldemort's remnant soul was contracting violently.
It had seen the speed at which Cassius raised his hand.
It had seen the density of magic attached to that slap.
It made a quick calculation.
If that slap hadn't hit a Boggart, but himself—this weak, parasitic, pitiful remnant soul that couldn't even materialize—
He would die.
Not beaten back into a non-corporeal state. Dead.
The kind of death that even a Horcrux couldn't pull back from. Because a Horcrux saves soul fragments—if a soul fragment is subjected to a dual physical and magical impact exceeding the fragment's own strength before it is destroyed, the fragment itself will inversely affect the copy in the Horcrux according to the damage transmission principle.
Lord Voldemort's remnant soul made a decision.
Before Cassius Malfoy graduates, do not have any direct conflict with him.
Not even one.
At the front of the classroom, Cassius stood in the middle of that pile of gray powder. He put his right hand behind his back—the temperature of his palm was a little high, similar to the feeling after the test at the Black Lakeyesterday—then turned and walked back to his seat.
Leather shoes stepped over the ashes on the floor. Tap. Tap. Tap. Each step was clearly audible.
He sat down next to Draco. Pulled out the chair, sat down, picked up the quill on the desk, and opened his notebook.
As if nothing had just happened.
Draco sat next to him. His Adam's apple slid up and down—a swallowing motion—then he also lowered his head and picked up his own pen.
His fingers were still trembling slightly. Not from fear. It was that he was thinking about one thing—if Cassiusslapped his face with that kind of force, he would probably fly directly from the third floor of the Castle into the Black Lake.
He decided to add another hour to today's dungeon special training.
It took about fifteen seconds for sound to return to the classroom. The first to speak was not Quirrell—Quirrellwas still dazed—but a Gryffindor boy sitting in the last row. He whispered a sentence to the person next to him.
The voice wasn't loud. But in the quiet classroom, everyone heard it.
"Did he just... slap a Boggart to death?"
No one answered him.
Because everyone was thinking about the same question. But no one knew what kind of expression to use to face this answer.
Quirrell coughed. His throat felt like it had been smoked dry by garlic. "Um... students... today's practical class... because the teaching material has been... consumed... we are ending class early."
The whole class stood up. Packed their bags. Left the classroom.
Everyone walked around the pile of ashes in the center of the classroom as they left.
No one stepped on it.
As if afraid to disturb the deceased.
Chapter 55: Halloween Eve
The incident with the Boggart had spread throughout all four houses before dinner that day.
The speed of the rumor mill was faster than Cassius had anticipated. He had underestimated the efficiency of gossip circulation within this Castle of Hogwarts—after all, while there were no mobile phones or internet here, there were portraits, ghosts, and a crowd of teenagers aged eleven to seventeen.
At dinner time, the atmosphere in the Great Hall was not quite the same as usual.
The Slytherin table, however, was normal. Or rather, ever since Cassius had pinned Flint to the ground in the common room, a tacit understanding had formed within Slytherin—do not discuss Cassius. It wasn't that they didn't want to discuss him; it was that they dared not. Discussing him meant judging him, and judging him meant you thought you were qualified to evaluate him. And in Slytherin, pointing fingers at someone you couldn't beat was a very dangerous behavior.
Therefore, the Slytherin table was very quiet.
What was not quiet were the other three tables.
The Gryffindor table was the liveliest. Seamus Finniganstood on a bench, gesturing wildly to those around him: "Just like that—snap! The Boggart shattered! Like breaking an egg! No, even more brittle than an egg!"
"You weren't even there." Dean Thomas tugged on his robe, "You heard it from someone in Ravenclaw."
"Padma from Ravenclaw saw it with her own eyes! Her sister Parvati was there too!" Seamus jumped off the bench, lowering his voice, though the volume was still audible to the entire table, "He didn't even draw his wand. He used his hand. One slap. The Boggart died. It wasn't driven back into the wardrobe—it died. It turned to ash."
"Boggarts cannot be killed." Percy Weasley, sitting in the prefect's seat, corrected him in a tone attempting to maintain authority, "A Boggart is a Class B magical creature; physical attacks are ineffective against it. The standard method of handling one is—"
"Percy," Fred Weasley leaned over from the opposite side, "Do you want to go ask that pile of ash if it thinks it died or not?"
George added a final blow from the side: "Yeah, perhaps the ash could even debate the taxonomy of Boggarts with you."
Percy's face flushed red. He opened his mouth but could not come up with a rebuttal, because he also didn't know how to explain the matter of "a first-year student slapping a Boggart to death with his bare hands."
Harry sat in the middle section of the long table. He did not participate in the discussion.
He was thinking about something.
A Boggart will turn into what you fear most. This was what Hermione had answered in class. Everyone has fears, and a Boggart will find it and then turn into it.
But in front of Cassius, the Boggart had not turned into anything.
It had gotten stuck.
Harry did not know what this meant. Was it that Cassiusfeared nothing? Or was his fear too deep, so deep that even a Boggart could not dig it out?
Or—
Harry thought of a possibility that sent a chill down his spine.
Perhaps the Boggart wasn't unable to read Cassius's fear. Perhaps, in the process of reading it, the Boggart had encountered something even more terrifying than fear.
He remembered that scene on the train. The way Cassiushad looked at him. There was no malice in those eyes, no hostility, not even any emotion.
It was just empty.
Like looking at a stone.
Harry lowered his head and poked at the mashed potatoes on his plate with his fork. He suddenly felt not very hungry.
Ron sat beside him, the plaster on his nose still not removed. He kept sneaking glances toward the Slytherintable. Every time he took a glance, he quickly withdrew his gaze, as if afraid of being discovered.
"Stop looking." Harry said in a low voice.
"I'm not looking." Ron buried his face into his pumpkin juice goblet and mumbled, "I'm just... confirming he's still sitting over there. Not suddenly appearing behind me or something."
Harry did not respond.
Hermione sat three seats ahead of them. She had a book spread out in front of her, but her eyes were not on the book.
She was looking at her own notebook.
The notebook was densely filled with writing. Ever since meeting Cassius in the library yesterday, she had been writing constantly. The content was varied—there were theoretical derivations regarding Wandless Magic, mathematical models regarding magical conduction efficiency, and definitions and analyses of the concept of "pre-cast wind-up."
But the Boggart incident this afternoon had turned everything she had written before into scrap paper.
Because her previous analytical framework had been built upon a basic assumption: magic is magic, and physics is physics. There was a clear boundary between the two. Wands and spells were the bridges connecting them.
What Cassius did today had torn that assumption to shreds.
He had used physical means—a single slap—to destroy a magical creature.
This should not be possible. A Boggart's form is composed of magic. Physical attacks are ineffective against entities composed of pure magic—this was the clear statement in Chapter 3, Section 7 of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
But it was possible.
Hermione wrote a line of text in the margin of her notebook:
"If magic can be compressed to a sufficiently high density, can it exist as a physical medium?"
She stared at this line of text for a long time.
If the answer to this question was "yes," then the foundation of all modern magical theory—the binary separation model of magic and matter—would need to be re-examined.
Hermione closed her notebook.
She did not have the answer. But she knew someone who did.
She glanced toward the Slytherin table. Cassius was cutting a piece of steak. The movements were slow and steady, the angle of the knife and fork as precise as if he were conducting an experiment.
Hermione withdrew her gaze.
She would not ask him. At least not now. The conversation in the library last time had made her realize that Cassiuswas not a person who would patiently answer questions. He would give you a direction, but he would not give you a map.
She had to find the answer herself.
The discussion at the Ravenclaw table was more academic, but essentially it was also out of shock. Several older Ravenclaw students were arguing intensely about whether the Boggart's death conformed to the fundamental laws of magical biology. A sixth-year girl slammed the table and said it violated the third rule of Gamp's Law, while the boy next to her retorted that Gamp's Law only applied to situations within the conventional range of magical output.
The Hufflepuff table was the quietest. They were not discussing the Boggart. They were simply moving their chairs about ten centimeters away from the direction of Slytherin while they ate.
At the staff table, Dumbledore was eating a lemon sherbet. His expression was calm, but his gaze lingered on Cassius for two seconds longer than usual.
Snape sat in the third seat to Dumbledore's right. He was not eating. He was drinking a cup of black coffee. His gaze was not directed at Cassius—he was looking at Quirrell.