When Harry and Ron, looking completely bewildered, followed Kyle to the Headmaster's office on the eighth floor of the castle and saw Sirius Black—who was actively wanted by the Ministry of Magic—a single thought instantly flashed through their minds.
It's over! We're cooked!
Kyle, that menace, is trying to get us killed!
Are we going to lose our lives right here today?
Fortunately, Dumbledore and Lupin followed closely behind them into the Headmaster's office, which finally brought some comfort to the trembling pair.
The two of them quickly hid behind Dumbledore.
"Harry," Sirius said, his voice raspy.
He took a few steps forward, his hand trembling as he reached out, wanting to touch Harry's face.
But when he saw the mixture of fear and hatred on Harry's face, he froze and pulled his hand back.
"Harry, there's a huge misunderstanding. I'm not the traitor who caused the deaths of your parents, like you think I am."
Hearing Sirius's words, Lupin's eyes suddenly widened. "You didn't tell me back then... you switched?"
Black stared intently at Lupin's face and nodded very slowly.
Harry and Ron listened to their cryptic conversation, completely baffled.
"So..." Lupin mused for a moment, "you broke out of Azkaban because you found his trace?"
A grim smile appeared on Sirius's face. He pointed at Ron behind Dumbledore—more accurately, at the pocket on Ron's chest.
"He's right there!"
Ron took two steps back in fear. "Me? What does this have to do with me?"
"Not you! Your rat!" Sirius hissed in a raspy, low voice.
The confusion on Ron and Harry's faces deepened.
"Sirius, calm down," Dumbledore stepped forward. "Let me explain briefly."
He slowly recounted the events of twelve years ago.
As Dumbledore finished speaking, a heavy silence fell over the office.
"Peter Pettigrew is an unregistered Animagus. He has been staying at your house in the form of a rat for twelve long years," Kyle added.
Hearing Kyle's words, Ron looked utterly dumbfounded, and Harry wore the exact same expression.
Kyle curled his finger, and Scabbers flew out of Ron's pocket, landing right in his hand.
Tossing it onto the ground with an expression of pure disgust, Kyle shot a chain made of shadow magic from his hand, binding Scabbers' limbs tightly so it couldn't move a muscle.
At the sight of the familiar rat, Black's face contorted violently. "I'm going to kill him with my own hands!"
He lunged toward Scabbers, but Lupin held him back tightly. "The most important thing right now is to clear your name!"
"We must have Peter Pettigrew face trial at the Ministry of Magic," Dumbledore said, raising his wand at the rat on the floor.
Scabbers' tiny body writhed frantically.
A white light burst from the tip of the wand.
Scabbers changed from a balding, four-toed rat into...
The appearance of another rat.
It was a real rat—a genuine rat with all its toes and fur intact, not an Animagus.
Someone had simply cast Transfiguration on it to disguise it as Peter Pettigrew's Animagus form.
Kyle squatted down and poked the rat with his finger.
A faint wisp of magical aura drifted from the rat's head, which Kyle, with his acute senses, immediately caught.
It was a trace of the Imperius Curse.
Simple-minded creatures like rats stood absolutely no chance against the power of the Imperius Curse. Once cast on them, the effect could last for months.
Judging by how much the curse's potency had degraded, Peter Pettigrew had likely pulled off a bait-and-switch to escape from Ron's side right after hearing the news of Sirius's prison break.
After listening to Kyle's explanation, everyone in the Headmaster's office looked incredibly grim.
Sirius slammed his fist onto a nearby desk in pure frustration.
The plan to capture Peter Pettigrew and clear Sirius's name had completely fallen through due to Pettigrew's escape.
Kyle pulled Ron out of the Headmaster's office, leaving the space for Harry, Sirius, and Lupin.
As Harry's godfather, Sirius undoubtedly had a lot to say to him.
And since Lupin and Sirius were best buds, they also had plenty of catching up to do after all these years.
On the way back to the Gryffindor common room from the Headmaster's office, Ron kept holding the swapped rat, wearing a completely blank expression.
In just ten short minutes in the Headmaster's office, Ron's brain had received way too much information.
He needed some time to process it all.
Thanks to Kyle's stern warning, the truth about Sirius and Peter Pettigrew didn't leak out through Ron's big mouth.
No matter how gossipy Ron usually was, he knew how serious this matter was and desperately restrained his urge to blab.
The next morning in the Great Hall, all the students were chattering excitedly about the upcoming two-week military training.
Of course, before that, students in their third year and above had another task to attend to—finalizing their elective courses for the school year.
Normally, course selections for the new term were submitted via owl a few days before school started.
However, because of the military training this year, formal classes were delayed by two weeks, so this matter had been pushed back until now.
Not that they were in any rush to start classes anyway.
The Heads of the four Houses were walking along their respective house tables, collecting parchment sheets.
Kyle only chose two classes—Care of Magical Creatures and Muggle Studies.
Hannah made the exact same choice as Kyle.
Aside from these two courses, the third-year electives also included Divination, Arithmancy, Alchemy, and the Study of Ancient Runes.
According to Grindelwald, Divination was something considered incredibly mystical even within the wizarding world; it was impossible to master just by taking a class.
This sort of thing relied entirely on talent. If you had the talent, you didn't need to study it; if you didn't, you couldn't learn it anyway.
His "Papa Gellert" possessed an extremely powerful gift for prophecy, but unfortunately, this talent didn't seem to have been passed down to Kyle.
As for Arithmancy, that stuff felt less like prophecy and more like Muggle advanced mathematics.
Predicting potential future events by building mathematical models was something Kyle had actually done in his past life when majoring in finance at university.
After learning about stock valuation, he had confidently selected a stock, gathered a massive amount of data, and built a model.
At the time, the stock's market price was thirty yuan per share, but Kyle's calculations showed its actual value should be fifty yuan per share.
Since the stock's current market price was undervalued and would likely rise to fifty yuan in the future, Kyle did something crazy.
He went completely all-in with his savings from over a year of living expenses—a grand total of fifteen thousand yuan.
Right after he bought it, the stock plummeted. His money was locked up for over a year, and by the time he pulled it out, only eight thousand was left.
So, facing this absolute scam of a subject like Arithmancy now, Kyle wouldn't touch it again even if his life depended on it.
Not to mention the remaining courses, Alchemy and Ancient Runes.
The study of Alchemy naturally involved the heavy application of Ancient Runes.
With the remote guidance of his never-before-seen mentor, Nicolas Flamel, Kyle didn't think he would learn much from these two elective courses at Hogwarts anyway.
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