Astoria had originally thought Rhys would appear the next day, but she had miscalculated.
When the finals resumed the following day, Rhys was still nowhere to be seen.
And he was not the only one missing. Professors White and Areis had disappeared as well.
When Dumbledore learned that the two professors intended to leave and hunt down the remnants of the Society, he was somewhat opposed to the idea.
It was difficult to go from luxury back to simplicity. He had already grown accustomed to having those people guarding Hogwarts, so their sudden departure left him feeling strangely empty.
Still, he quickly returned to his familiar composure.
After calmly bidding farewell to the two professors, he turned and headed toward the Quidditch Pitch to oversee the tournament.
Although yesterday's matches had been interrupted halfway through, the results from the completed bouts were still valid.
Ekaterina had no desire to fight Hermione again either.
And so, the tournament continued.
Of Hogwarts' five contestants, two had already advanced.
The remaining three were Daphne, Cedric, and Neville.
No one was surprised that the first two had made it into the final sixteen.
Neville, however, making it this far had shocked almost everyone.
That gentle, round-faced boy with a poor memory seemed to have undergone extraordinary training in the alchemical world.
He had changed so much that it was almost as though he had been reborn.
If Neville at the start of term in September had been a textbook Hufflepuff student, then after being tempered by the tournament, he seemed much more like a Gryffindor.
His opponent was also interesting.
It was Pearl from Uagadou.
The two fought back and forth for quite some time before Neville finally won by a narrow margin.
However, in the eyes of many spectators, it was less that Neville was overwhelmingly strong and more that he was simply better at taking a beating.
In the end, he had quite literally outlasted his opponent.
Hermione, who was watching from the stands after already advancing, noticed several details in Neville's fighting.
It seemed he had also learned the Mana flow, the flow of magic.
That made Hermione genuinely happy for him.
She understood very clearly that in the current wizarding world, anyone who did not understand the flow of magic simply could not become a truly top-tier wizard.
The study of magic flow was much like mathematics among Muggles, except its status was even more important.
If your mathematics was poor, you could not become a scientist.
If your understanding of magic flow was lacking, you would ultimately never become a top-level wizard.
Neville did not even make it to the spectator stands afterward.
He and Pearl were both taken away by Madam Pomfrey for treatment.
After several more matches, another Hogwarts contestant was drawn.
This time, Cedric was matched against the independent contestant who claimed to come from Mount Longhu.
He was one of only two finalists who did not come from a mainstream magical school.
The other was a monk from Mahabodhi Temple, though he had already been eliminated in the Round of Sixteen by an Ilvermorny student.
Cedric did not rush to attack.
He was quite interested in his opponent, Qingyue Yang.
"You're from Mount Longhu? This is the first time I've ever heard of that place. Is it in Asia too, like Mahoutokoro?" Cedric asked curiously.
"More or less." Yang Qingyue shrugged.
After already being asked questions like whether Mahabodhi Temple was close to Mahoutokoro, he had completely given up on the geographical knowledge of British wizards.
Cedric nodded vaguely.
In truth, he could not even say exactly where Mahoutokoro was.
He only knew that it was somewhere far away in the East.
Seeing that Cedric had no intention of immediately starting the fight, Yang Qingyue simply began chatting with him.
"I'm actually not from Mount Longhu. I just thought Mount Longhu was more famous, so maybe you'd have heard of it. And if I got unlucky and was eliminated in the first round, I wouldn't embarrass my own sect."
"So you're not actually from Mount Longhu?!" Cedric was stunned.
There were people entering the tournament while pretending to be students from other schools?!
"Yes and no." Yang Qingyue shrugged. "It's complicated and hard to explain quickly. Put simply, my grandmaster came from Mount Longhu, but later left and established himself elsewhere."
Cedric immediately understood.
Wasn't that basically the Eastern version of Hogwarts and Ilvermorny?
"It feels like we hardly ever hear anything about your side of the magical world..." Cedric couldn't help remarking.
If not for this tournament, he might have gone his entire life without meeting these visitors from across the world.
"We are pretty low-key, and we don't like going out much."
"Huh? I remember a friend of mine once saying that the way you cast spells is quite different from ours?"
Halfway through the conversation, Cedric remembered something Rhys had once said about Eastern magic.
Yang Qingyue nodded.
During his more than half a year at Hogwarts, he had indeed noticed the difference between Western magic and his own Daoist techniques.
Being able to cast spells simply by waving a wand was honestly incredibly cool, and it had given him quite a lot of inspiration.
He had even imitated some wizarding spells and created several practical talismans based on them.
In a little while, Cedric would probably be in for a bit of a "surprise."
"Anyway, you're welcome to come visit us after the tournament!" Yang Qingyue was still in the mood to keep talking, but since they were standing in the middle of a competition arena, they obviously could not chat forever.
So he extended an invitation to Cedric, then politely indicated that it was probably time to begin the match.
"Definitely!" Cedric replied earnestly.
...
"So which one of them won?"
At the end-of-year feast, Dumbledore was giving a speech at the front while Rhys sat below, chatting with Daphne and Astoria.
On the final day of the school year, Rhys Lint, who had been missing for nearly half a term, finally returned to Hogwarts and once again sat at the Slytherin House table he had not seen in quite some time.
Daphne and Astoria were both overjoyed by his sudden appearance.
But once the initial excitement passed, they still could not resist asking what he had been doing all this time.
Rhys answered truthfully.
He really had gone away to recover from his injuries.
He had suffered severe wounds in the alchemical world and, with no other choice, had remained there to heal and recuperate.
Daphne believed him.
She merely complained that Rhys should have told them beforehand.
Astoria, however, looked thoughtful.
Injured in the alchemical world?
Then that natural disaster they had encountered earlier probably really did have something to do with Rhys.
But since Rhys clearly did not want to explain further, she had no intention of pressing him.
It was better for everyone to keep a little personal privacy.
After some brief small talk, the conversation naturally shifted toward the tournament.
Daphne quickly began telling Rhys everything she had seen during the finals, focusing in particular on that visitor.
"His spells were very... unique."
____
12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI