Harry felt as though his head were about to split open.
Just a few seconds earlier, Malfoy had been standing across from him, speaking those taunting words in a strange, unfamiliar tone.
"Your dancing is pathetic! You look like an ugly troll!"
Under normal circumstances, Harry would have treated it as just another piece of garbage spilling out of Malfoy’s foul mouth. At most, he would have snapped back at him or ignored it altogether.
But this time, it was completely different.
The moment Malfoy’s voice entered his ears, Harry felt his heart suddenly clench. An uncontrollable, irrational fury erupted from his chest and rushed straight to his head. Along with it came a sharp, stabbing pain in his mind, like a barrage of needles.
Below the stage, a group of Slytherins who were always trailing behind Malfoy burst into laughter. At that instant, Harry’s scar flared with pain.
It was as if that pain had resonated with something. Harry suddenly looked up, past Malfoy’s shoulder and the wand raised high in his hand, and saw a pair of brown eyes and a head of bright red hair.
Ginny Weasley.
She was squeezed into a corner beneath the stage, clutching a black notebook in her arms, staring directly at him.
And on that young but delicate face, there appeared an eerie smile.
The smile vanished in an instant. Ginny’s face was blocked again by the body of a tall Hufflepuff boy standing in front of her, and Harry could no longer see her.
The stabbing pain in his head disappeared just as suddenly, but that fury was now roaring inside him like a flame about to burst free.
Vaguely, a hoarse voice drifted through his ears:
Give in to the emotions in your heart. Release your magic.
His eyes locked onto Malfoy’s pale gray ones, and Harry said in a cold, cutting voice:
"Shut up."
It was a strange sensation. His words seemed to become magic themselves, striking at Malfoy in some invisible way.
Whoomph!
A mass of dark green fire exploded into life all over Malfoy’s body!
"Ahhh!"
Malfoy’s wand clattered to the floor. In terror, he slapped frantically at the eerie dark green flames engulfing him.
But these flames were nothing like ordinary magical fire. They seemed almost alive. Not only did his blows fail to put them out, they spread upward along his robes instead.
"Draco!"
Snape, now fully recovered, seemed to appear from nowhere and leaped onto the stage.
With a snap of his wand, he shouted, "Aguamenti!"
A jet of water burst from his wand and drenched Malfoy.
But the moment the water struck the dark green flames, it hissed like cold water splashed onto hot oil. The fire did not go out. Instead, it flared up even more fiercely, and even the steam rising from it was tinged with a sinister green.
Snape’s face darkened further. He shot Harry a cold glance, then said sharply:
"Finite Incantatem!"
As the white light of the spell struck Malfoy, the green flames clinging to him like a cursed parasite finally flickered a few last reluctant times before dying away, leaving only a trail of black smoke.
By now, Malfoy looked utterly miserable.
He had collapsed onto the floor. Most of his expensive wizard’s robes had been burned away, and though his exposed skin was not actually charred, it was flushed red from the heat.
"Dark... Dark magic! Potter knows Dark magic!"
Half-supported by Snape as he struggled back to his feet, Malfoy pointed at Harry and shouted in terror.
Harry was stunned too.
He stood there, chest heaving, the rage draining out of him as soon as the flames burst forth, leaving behind only deep exhaustion and confusion.
He stared down at his own hands, at a complete loss.
"I... I didn’t mean..."
He could hear the uneasy whispering of the students around him.
Lynn stepped onto the stage at that moment and rested a hand on Harry’s shoulder.
"There’s no need to panic. This isn’t Dark magic. You simply lost control of the force a little."
Then he turned to the shaken students around them and clapped his hands.
"That’s enough for tonight’s Dueling Club. Prefects, lead the students out in an orderly fashion!"
The crowd immediately began pouring toward the exits, but every student who passed the stage could not help turning back to steal one more look at Harry before hurrying away faster.
Harry was pulled along by Ron and Hermione, swept along with the crowd.
"Blimey, Harry!" Ron’s voice was still shaking. He lowered it as he spoke. "How did you do that just now? That green fire was incredible! Terrifying, but incredible! You almost roasted Malfoy alive!"
"I don’t know, Ron." Harry shook his head irritably. "I was just... just really angry."
Without thinking, he glanced back toward the corner where Ginny had been standing.
It was empty now.
...
Late that night, the Gryffindor boys’ dormitory.
Wind and sleet howled outside the window. Inside, the room was filled with the steady breathing of Neville and Ron.
But Harry could not sleep at all.
He lay in his four-poster bed, staring at the dark red curtains, replaying the earlier scene over and over in his mind.
That irrational fury that had made him want to tear everything apart.
Ginny’s face, flashing through the crowd for only an instant, and that strange smile on her lips. Harry could not even tell whether it had been real or just some hallucination.
And that voice whispering in his ear:
Give in to the emotions in your heart...
This was not the first time he had heard voices that no one else could hear. The last time had been in Professor Gray’s office.
Ever since then, strange things had kept happening to him.
The Magic Missile during the Quidditch match that had turned dark green. That powerful fire spell he had unleashed tonight.
And the feat written on his Adventurer Profile:
[Parselmouth]
He remembered what Ron and Hermione had said when he had told them about it before.
Ron had said, "Parselmouth isn’t some ordinary skill, Harry."
Hermione had said, "Talking to snakes was Salazar Slytherin’s famous gift. That’s why Slytherin House has a snake for its symbol."
"And if you happened to be his great-great-great-grandson or something... well, it’s hard to rule that out. Slytherin lived over a thousand years ago."
Harry raised his right hand and looked at it in the moonlight coming through the window.
He remembered how, during the Sorting in first year, the Hat had nearly put him in Slytherin.
Could I really be descended from Salazar Slytherin? After all, he knew almost nothing about his father’s side of the family.
"Professor Gray..."
Harry thought of Lynn’s calm eyes on the stage. He had not seemed surprised at all. He had even reassured him.
Tomorrow morning, Harry decided, turning over and closing his eyes. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to Professor Gray. If anyone knows what’s happening to me, it’ll be him.
...
Lynn sat alone behind the desk in his office, his brow furrowed.
Of course he knew what spell Harry had unleashed on that stage.
It was the 1st-level Warlock spell, Hellish Rebuke.
When attacked, the caster could channel magic into an immediate counterattack, dealing fire damage to the attacker.
By now, Lynn was almost certain that Harry possessed both Sorcerer and Warlock abilities at the same time. But because he had never received any systematic instruction in the latter, he had no real control over it.
It seemed Lynn would have to write a proper book specifically for Harry on the Warlock class.
The reason Lynn had removed Warlock entirely before was precisely because a Warlock’s power came from a patron. He had been afraid that teaching it to students, especially to some of the more extreme-minded Slytherins, might lead them into forming pacts with malevolent beings.
But since Harry had already stepped onto that path in a way that could no longer be avoided, then systematically teaching him how to control that power was clearly the best choice.
Lynn picked up his quill, recalled the knowledge in his mind, and wrote a title across the parchment:
Warlock: Mastering the Power Granted by Your Pact.
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