As class ended, every young wizard held a puppet with only an empty shell and no core in their arms.
Kayson held two... with cores.
The puppet brother, born just yesterday, welcomed his puppet brother today.
He returned to his third-floor office and resumed studying his half-finished elemental distillation machine.
A vast quantity of various elemental crystals and some blocks were placed into the distillation apparatus, eventually distilled into elemental liquid that flowed through pipes into jars.
That was where the little bottles of elemental liquid he had handed out to the young wizards during class had come from.
He was now building the final packaging assembly line. Only after pulling the lever and seeing the entire machine begin operating silently and precisely did he let out a sigh of relief and start sealing it in glass.
The time that followed was, as always, time to loaf around. There were only five classes a week; no matter how busy he was, there was only so much he could do.
...Go pick a fight! Pick a fight with Lockhart!
A week later, a campus legend somehow suddenly emerged among the Hogwarts students.
It said that the positions of Alchemy professor and Defense Against the Dark Arts professor had both been cursed, and the two professors could never coexist peacefully.
As the saying went, when two tigers fought, one was bound to be hurt. That was exactly how it was between the Alchemy professor and the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor.
The two professors would duel at Hogwarts, competing until the end of term to determine a winner. The victor would remain at Hogwarts to teach.
If the loser was lucky, they would leave the school injured. If not, they would die outright.
This was what the lower-year young wizards had