Staring at the nine flattened cat pancakes on the floor, Viktor didn't hesitate. He stepped forward, scooped them all up in one hand, and started kneading them together like dough.
A quick, practiced shake later—and poof—a brand-new, pristine Tom soul materialized in his palm.
Viktor flicked his wand without missing a beat.
"Accio Tom's body!"
With a series of sharp crack-crack-crack sounds, a black-and-white cartoon-style cat body appeared before them—eyes squeezed shut, mouth gaping wide, completely still and unnaturally pale.
The body wasn't breathing. It was ice-cold.
Viktor didn't panic in the slightest.
He just reached down, pried that already-wide mouth open even further with casual brutality, glanced at the smirking soul hovering at his elbow, kneaded that one into a ball too, and unceremoniously stuffed it straight down the throat of the prone body.
Still deathly pale.
Viktor snapped the jaw shut with a click, then gave two firm presses to the chest.
"Haaah!"
With a dramatic gasp, the white cat bolted upright.
Colour flooded back in rapid brushstrokes—blue-grey fur returning in a whoosh.
Still dazed, Tom instinctively reached behind him with one paw.
And pulled out a massive, fizzing black cartoon bomb.
The instant it appeared, every face in the room changed colour.
Viktor. Dumbledore. McGonagall. Kettleburn (who had just arrived, panting). And especially Peeves, who had already shrunk behind Dumbledore's back and was peeking out in terror.
Tom finally seemed to register the situation.
He glanced at Dumbledore (now holding the Elder Wand very casually in front of Peeves), McGonagall (wand already raised), then sneaked a guilty sideways look at Viktor—who was now holding a comically oversized flyswatter and whose face had gone full thundercloud.
The second their eyes met, Tom shuddered violently from whiskers to tail.
He frantically pinched out the fuse, shoved the bomb back into… wherever it came from (his backside fluff, presumably), and stood there grinning up at Viktor with the most innocent, toothy, pleading smile imaginable.
"Tom," Viktor said, voice dangerously flat as he waved the flyswatter. "Did you forget what I told you? Hmm~?"
At that single "hmm~", Tom's entire soul quivered. He shook his head frantically—then immediately nodded yes just as frantically.
But Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Kettleburn weren't focused on the scolding.
All three of them had tilted their heads in perfect unison, staring at the spot behind Tom where the enormous fizzing bomb had just… vanished.
Where the hell did a bomb that size go?
And earlier—what exactly had that kneading-and-stuffing soul revival been? Some brand-new resurrection ritual? How did you just… shove a soul back in like that and boom, cat's alive again?
No one had answers, though.
Because the star of this farce was currently wrapped around Viktor's leg, bawling his eyes out and occasionally pointing an accusing paw at the cowering Peeves.
"Waaah waaah waaah~!!"
Through the flood of tears and dramatic gestures, Viktor pieced together the story.
Roughly: After Viktor left, Tom decided to go exploring the castle in full explorer gear. Ran into Peeves. Then "this and that happened" and "it's all that hatted little clown ghost's fault, I'm an innocent cat, Your Honour!"
Of course Viktor knew this was the heavily edited, Tom-approved director's cut.
The real version was probably closer to:
Tom, left unsupervised, immediately went feral with joy and started poking around every corner of Hogwarts.
Peeves—bored out of his spectral mind during the summer holidays with no students to prank—spotted a blue-grey cat standing upright in explorer clothes, snooping around like he owned the place.
Peeves, being Peeves, couldn't resist.
He draped himself in stolen white bedsheets from the laundry, splashed on some tomato sauce for "blood", and went full horror-ghost mode.
Tom—who, despite travelling the world with Viktor and knowing ghosts exist—still has a pathological fear of spooky stuff.
One look at the "terrifying spectre" and Tom went rigid. Eyes bugged out. Mouth open in a perfect O. Clang clang clang—he keeled over like a cartoon plank.
Then—nine panicked Tom souls shot straight out of his gaping mouth.
Peeves, not expecting that, got jump-scared right back.
Before he could recover, the nine stampeding cat souls slammed into him full-force.
Cat-ghost collision.
Both sides froze for a second.
Tom: "Wait… I can actually touch him?!"
Peeves: "Wait… I just got caught mid-prank?!"
And that was it. War declared.
Tom—as the conceptual god of "cat who chases mouse"—is basically omnipotent except when Jerry's involved.
Now multiplied by nine? Absolute overkill.
Peeves—as the living (well, unliving) embodiment of a thousand years of Hogwarts students' pent-up rebellion against rules and authority—was no pushover either.
At his peak he once forced the entire school to close for three days by warring openly with the Headmaster and staff.
Concept vs. concept.
Peerless rivals. Worthy opponents.
And so began the battle of the century.
In the end, ninefold cartoon-physics Tom won.
100-ton hammers raining down. Peeves getting bonked so hard he couldn't tell his head from his rear.
But in his frenzy, Tom never noticed that every hammer strike was making the entire castle bounce like it was on a trampoline.
After listening to the tearful (and very selective) confession, Viktor slowly turned his gaze toward Peeves, who was still hiding behind Dumbledore.
The moment their eyes met, Peeves jolted like he'd been electrocuted.
He remembered Viktor all too well—from the days when this Hufflepuff dropout used to lead the badgers in absolutely flattening Slytherin, ruling the school like an unstoppable force.
And now here was that same Viktor, casually domesticating the monster cat who had just hammered him (Peeves) across half the castle.
A very bad feeling crawled up Peeves's spine.