Meanwhile, just as Snape was secretly slacking off in class, researching his own magic...
Deep within the Forbidden Forest, in the territory that originally belonged to the Acromantulas, the four Father-Troublers had gathered, looking as though they were about to pull off something monumental.
"Fudge is dead, Kyle shall rise, the year is..."
Year, your foot!
The four Father-Troublers had gathered here to wait for the arrival of a storm.
Cedric, George, and Fred were preparing to attempt their very first Animagus transformation today. As for Kyle, he had been dragged along by the other three to act as manual labor.
The three Father-Troublers had been preparing for this day for a very long time.
To successfully perform the Animagus transformation, the first thing one had to do was keep a single Mandrake leaf in their mouth for an entire month. Afterward, during a full moon, the Mandrake leaf would be removed and placed into a small crystal phial filled with saliva, submerging the leaf so it could receive pure moonlight.
The other three Father-Troublers had accidentally swallowed quite a few leaves; it wasn't until last week that Fred, the slowest of the bunch, finally completed this preparatory step. Following that, under the illumination of the moon, various supplementary ingredients had to be added to the phial.
These subsequent steps held no real difficulty for the well-prepared Father-Troublers.
The final step of the preliminary Animagus preparation was to place the small phial in a quiet, dark place, leaving it completely undisturbed and unseen until the next lightning-filled thunderstorm arrived.
For other wizards, waiting for a storm to come could take weeks, months, or even years. But for the Father-Troublers, it was a matter of minutes.
Standing in the center of the clearing, Kyle extended his hand and slammed his palm heavily against the ground in front of him. Countless black runes erupted from his palm, spreading out in all directions.
A massive six-winged bird covered in golden-yellow feathers burst forth from the array. With a howling gale, it instantly tore through the thick white smoke and soared straight into the sky.
The Thunderbird, Lan, flapped its massive wings as it flew up into the clouds, and a violent wind began to howl across the sky. Under the Thunderbird's guidance, the moisture in the air gradually condensed into clouds. As the moisture gathered, the color of the clouds slowly shifted from a flawless, pure white to a pitch-black, ink-like darkness.
The dark clouds quickly blocked the sun completely. In the blink of an eye, raindrops as large as beans poured down furiously from the cloud layers onto the ground.
Blinding streaks of lightning snaked through the clouds. The storm had arrived.
Kyle leisurely used his wand to conjure an invisible umbrella of magic, watching the other three Father-Troublers get thoroughly drenched like drowned rats in the rain.
At this moment, the other three Father-Troublers each held a small crystal phial. The sky-blue solution inside had completely transformed into a blood-red color.
The three of them exchanged glances and raised their wands in perfect unison, pointing the tips directly at their hearts.
"Amato Animo Animato Animagus."
Once the three of them downed the potion in a single gulp, Kyle could sense that the frequency of their magical fluctuations instantly became erratic, as if a completely different frequency was emerging.
In Kyle's perception, the two frequencies gradually overlapped, and the physical forms of the three Father-Troublers slowly began to alter.
George and Fred's mouths gradually elongated and protruded forward, leaving Kyle with a forehead full of black lines.
This... why does it look more and more like a dog's snout?
After a brief thought, Kyle instantly found it unsurprising. A wizard's Animagus form was inherently linked to their personality. Given the personalities of the Weasley twins, their Animagus forms were definitely Huskies, no doubt about it. Even if they weren't Huskies, they could only be the other two members of the "Three Sled Idiots"—the Alaskan Malamute or the Samoyed.
Black and white fur began to grow across the brothers' bodies, further confirming Kyle's suspicion.
Yep, it was definitely Huskies.
As for Cedric's Animagus form, Kyle wasn't curious in the slightest. Having fused with Hydra blood, what else could Cedric turn into besides a snake?
The only thing worth looking forward to was whether Cedric could become a magical Animagus after fusing with the Hydra blood. However, that was highly unlikely.
As everyone knew, an Animagus could not transform into a magical creature. If merely fusing with a magical beast's bloodline could break this limitation, it wouldn't have remained a riddle that plagued the wizarding world for thousands of years.
An ancestor of the Dumbledore family had once fused with the bloodline of a Phoenix. Even if the Phoenix bloodline had become incredibly diluted after so many generations of inheritance, didn't old Dumbledore still have one by his side?
Catch it fresh and slaughter it...
Apologies, re-fuse with it.
Re-fusing with the Phoenix bloodline to make the diluted blood thick once more—Kyle didn't believe Dumbledore lacked the ability to achieve that. Furthermore, given Dumbledore's level of Transfiguration mastery, the Animagus transformation would be child's play for him.
But Kyle had asked his own old man; even Dumbledore couldn't manage a Phoenix Animagus transformation, let alone a mere Cedric. Therefore, Kyle held absolutely no hope for Cedric turning into a miniature Hydra.
Clatter, clatter...
The wands of the three fell to the ground. With a wave of Kyle's hand, the three wands flew into his grasp.
Finally, after a transformation process that took quite some time, three animals appeared before Kyle—two Huskies with "wise" glints in their eyes, grinning like absolute idiots, alongside a highly venomous pit viper whose tongue hissed as it flicked, sporting complex patterns on its back...
Kyle's eyes were completely filled with disdain. They had been preparing since the very start of summer vacation, and this was the rubbish they ended up turning into. The value-to-effort ratio of this magic was simply too low.
Skreik!
A sudden gust of wind swept through the clearing of the Forbidden Forest. Lan, whose wingspan had already reached six meters, flapped its wings and slowly descended into the center of the open ground.
It curiously sized up the three creatures on the ground...
No, wait, two Huskies. As for the pit viper Cedric had turned into, it was too small, so Lan automatically ignored it.
Driven by curiosity, Lan extended a talon and gave a casual flick, sending one of the Huskies—who knows whether it was George or Fred—flying backward.
Kyle burst out laughing, and Cedric's serpentine body also shook violently with silent laughter.
But in the next moment, tragedy struck him. To an avian creature, an oversized earthworm was obviously far more appealing than a Husky.
The Thunderbird's sharp golden beak, gleaming with a cold light, clamped onto Cedric's body with absolute precision. It tilted its neck back, ready to swallow him whole, causing a panicked Kyle to rush forward and stop Lan.
"Hey, we don't eat people here! Your name is Lan, not Hannibal!"
After a chaotic mess, the three Father-Troublers began trying to revert back into their human forms.
Because this was their first full Animagus transformation, they hadn't yet mastered the ability to integrate their clothing into the transformation. This meant that if they changed back to their human forms, they would be stark naked.
Three fully grown guys exposing themselves to one another in an empty grove in the wild was bound to be quite an eyesore.
Although Kyle had inherited many things from Grindelwald, the Dark Lord's romantic preferences were definitely not among them.
Seeing that nothing was amiss with the three after they turned into Huskies and a snake, Kyle vaulted onto the Thunderbird's back, intending to beat a hasty retreat.
Otherwise, if he stayed any longer, he feared that upon witnessing that scene, his newly awakened One-Tomoe Sharingan would instantly burn through its visual prowess and go completely blind.
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