The holiday was over, though not truly over.
The students sat in the Great Hall, talking about where they had travelled during the holidays and what they had experienced.
Only after sharing everything they wanted to say did the holiday truly come to an end.
Malfoy looked at the freshly made potato cakes and asked curiously, "Did the kitchens change their recipes?"
"I think so," Blaise replied.
He ate one potato cake after another, full of praise for the new preparation.
"My whole family spent Christmas in Norway," Goyle said cheerfully to his friends. "The wizards there were all very friendly."
This sparked a wave of competitive storytelling among the other Slytherins, each talking about how exciting and enjoyable their holidays had been.
The Constellation Society's table, however, was unusually quiet.
Anyone with eyes could tell that Malfoy's silence stemmed from the failure of his holiday, yet someone still failed to notice.
Crabbe was that person with a screw loose. Seeing Malfoy quieter than usual, he asked, "Draco, you went to France, right? What was interesting there?"
Malfoy and Astoria both fell silent.
John glanced at the couple. They had gone to romantic Paris together, only to suffer a disastrous defeat.
Malfoy let out a gloomy sigh and said resentfully, "I got robbed."
Crabbe looked confused. "What?"
"I said I got my money stolen, you idiot!" Malfoy snapped.
Romantic Paris? The moment Malfoy arrived, he was given a harsh welcome.
Getting his money stolen would have been bad enough, but then someone posing as a kind stranger offered to guide him to his hotel.
Unfamiliar with Paris, Malfoy believed them.
Not only did the directions lead them into a dead end, but somehow a flying broom snatched Astoria's handbag. Malfoy ended up sprinting three thousand metres and using his Star Spirit to knock the thief off the broom before giving them a beating.
Yet the Galleons inside had already vanished.
The young couple had come dangerously close to ending up homeless in Paris.
Even John could not help but feel sympathetic after hearing their story.
"How did you get back?" Crabbe asked, astonished.
How had Malfoy returned?
Naturally, he sought out the only contact he had in France. Heinrich had not thought much of it, but Kim Jin Ledislay had nearly died laughing.
If he had been able to win, Malfoy swore he would have beaten Kim to a pulp.
In the end, the two spent an unforgettable holiday in Paris.
John had originally thought Daphne would be delighted to hear how miserable Malfoy's trip had been, but Daphne remained expressionless, as though even Malfoy's suffering could no longer move her.
"Daphne, what about you?" Pansy, the second person to ask the wrong question, joined in.
Daphne put down her fork and said flatly, "I went to a Muggle restaurant in Chelsea to study cooking."
The moment she heard that answer, Pansy felt a sense of impending doom.
Daphne? Studying cooking at a Muggle restaurant?
"I just remembered I have something to do," Pansy said. "Theo, let's go."
Theodore nodded, but when Pansy tried to stand up, she couldn't move.
Daphne's hand was gripping her right hand. The tremendous strength behind it made cold sweat break out on Pansy's forehead.
"The head chef at that restaurant was very famous," Daphne said in the tone of a machine. "His cooking was excellent."
"When Chef Ramsay heard I wanted to learn from him, he was very happy." Daphne continued calmly. "At first."
What followed was a story even more tragic than Malfoy's.
Chef Ramsay had thought a beautiful young girl who loved cooking and admired him had come to learn. Naturally, he gave her special attention.
Then...
"Are you an idiot sandwitch? Get that disgusting thing away from me!"
"I've realised you're a natural-born chef, because you can treat a pile of rubbish as if it's delicious without a shred of hesitation!"
"Do you even have taste buds? Huh? I guarantee that anything made by a random grandmother in Mexico using her toes would taste better than this!"
"Take it away! Take it away! Don't put that thing in front of me!"
"Oh, heavens, why don't you just kill me?"
"If I have to eat this, I'd rather cut out my own tongue!"
"Please, please spare me. I'll give you the restaurant."
At first, Ramsay's impression of Daphne had been:
A beautiful girl who loved cooking. A little inexperienced, perhaps, but with excellent knife skills.
Later, his impression became:
A beautiful girl who harboured pure malice toward kitchens. Heaven has sent her to punish me. If I have sinned, send me to hell, not this hellish pile of rubbish.
He could not even bring himself to call it food anymore.
He begged Daphne to spare him.
"What you need to do," Ramsay said later, having attained a state of complete spiritual detachment, "is forget everything you've ever learned."
He believed this was a trial, a challenge imposed by fate upon a hero.
"Daphne," Ramsay said earnestly, "your cooking does not belong here. It does not belong in this world."
Daphne asked in confusion, "But this is traditional Eastern cuisine."
"No!" Ramsay roared. "No traditional cuisine mixes pearls and chocolate!"
Realising he had lost his composure, Chef Ramsay took several deep breaths to calm his explosive temper.
"Miss Greengrass, please, look at things from a normal person's perspective."
He brought over a freshly prepared Jamaican jerk chicken and pointed at it.
"This," he said, "is called food."
Then he brought out Daphne's plate of Thunderclap and said, "This... this is called... excuse my language, but this is bloody gut fucker!"
The roaring Chef Ramsay finally made Daphne realise her own level of culinary skill.
The trip to Chelsea had benefited her greatly.
Cold sweat continued to drip down Pansy's face. Her right hand had turned purple from the lack of blood circulation.
She wanted to run too, but Daphne's grip was so strong that, as a weak young woman, she could not break free.
Even John fell silent after hearing the tragic story.
Malfoy said with satisfaction, "Looks like you've finally realised that what you make is a pile of rubbish."
Pansy let out a cry of pain. She felt like her hand was about to break.
But one person's sorrow was another person's joy, and Malfoy was still unleashing his full mocking potential.
"If you ask me, you should never have studied cooking. It doesn't suit you. You should become a curse-breaker instead. After all, your dishes are more terrifying than curses. Hahaha."
After that day...
Malfoy could no longer remember much.
He only remembered that it was probably the closest he had ever come to death.
In his dazed state, he saw his ancestor, Amanda Malfoy, the one who had come to Britain alongside William the Conqueror.
According to incomplete Slytherin statistics, Daphne had used at least ten different jinxes and hexes, including but not limited to the Wasp Hex, the Hair-Growth Hex, and the Big Toe Hex.
Rumour had it that when Madam Pomfrey saw Malfoy, she thought someone had delivered a newly discovered magical creature to the Hospital Wing by mistake.
Malfoy spent an entire day and night unconscious in the hospital wing. When he woke up, he was still suffering from intermittent spasms and convulsions.
As for that, not a single person in Hogwarts felt any sympathy for him.
Well, perhaps Astoria felt a little.
Malfoy's ability to ragebait had reached an entirely new level.
Although Daphne had unleashed a barrage of attacks in her rage, she had still held back.
The jinxes and hexes took effect, but none of them lasted very long.
Nor had she used any truly harmful dark curses.
However, after the Chelsea trip, Daphne's visits to the kitchen became far less frequent.
"Neville, what's wrong, Neville?!"
Hannah's scream rang out, and John saw Neville being carried away by several people.
At first, he thought Neville had been poisoned.
Hannah said through her tears, "I tried making one of the recipes from the cookbook."
John walked over and looked at the lunchbox.
Ah, an old friend.
Wasn't this chocolate rice noodle rolls?
Apparently, not everyone could master such dishes.
John shook his head slightly. Neville was still too young.
...
In the Constellation Society.
John prepared the remaining materials needed for the treatment.
What he had to deal with could be the third or even fourth stage triggered by the second-stage outbreak.
Before the actual treatment, even John did not know how many stages of the curse Astoria carried.
The soul potion was prepared, and there was more than enough restorative solution.
John planned to perform the treatment on the first Sunday after the holidays.
Before that, he closed the two books in front of him.
Recently, he had been reading two books at once.
The contents of both were incredibly complex, especially Ravenclaw's book.
Although it was not filled with malice and curses like the others, its contents were as vast as an ocean, the crystallisation of Ravenclaw's knowledge.
It covered everything from charms to celestial movements, and even time and prophecy.
Compared to time, curses, and souls, it was far broader and more complicated.
Walking out of the plains chamber, John decided to take a break.
Thinking intensely for long periods also put a strain on the body.
Leaving the Constellation Society, John appeared in the corridor on the ground floor.
A figure passed through the corridor, causing John to pause.
"Harry?"
When he saw who it was, John was surprised.
From the direction Harry was heading, it looked like he was about to leave the castle.
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