Chapter Summaries

Charles and the Hogwarts students learned the rules for a week-long Potion Championship that required teams to find ingredients in a dangerous competition ground. Dumbledore warned them that past contestants had all died in one such competition, leaving the team preparing for possible danger from rival schools.

• Joyce announced that teams could bring brewing tools but no ingredients, while expedition groups had to find supplies in the competition grounds and could bring only their wands.
• Charles asked about food and raised concerns about rival teams interfering; Cedric and Percy discussed guarding the brewers and managing the week-long schedule.
• The students began selecting expedition members, with Harry, Ron, Hermione's friends, Seamus, and other Gryffindors considered, while five upper-year candidates agreed to compete for places.
• Charles handed out tablecloths from the Dancing Grass Restaurant, but Dumbledore forbade using them to bring food or equipment into the grounds.
• Dumbledore explained that a past competition had killed every contestant and warned the students to stay alert, especially around rival teams.

Charles and the Hogwarts students studied the competition grounds, using Ruby and a Shanghai Doll to scout despite Koldostorets patrols. They chose a defensible cabin by the lake as their planned base and began preparing for the competition.

• Charles showed the Hogwarts students a map of the grounds, and they marked possible cabins and medicinal ingredient sites for further scouting.
• Charles prepared a meal for Ruby, which carried an invisible Shanghai Doll into the grounds to photograph the cabins.
• The Hogwarts students examined the photographs and concluded the cabins were likely contestant lodgings, then debated how they might be assigned.
• Charles proposed claiming the lake cabin for its water access and defensible approach, and Neville offered to reinforce it with plants.
• Charles suggested Apparition could help them reach the cabin first and said he would test returning expedition members with questions to guard against disguised spies.

The Potion Championship began, and the Hogwarts team quickly reached its cabin and organized its preparations. Charles guarded the cabin alone, thwarted two rival students who tried to approach in disguise, and left the other schools’ students unwilling to attack.

• Nikita explained the competition rules, including the camera broadcasts and public bonus round.
• The judges rejected the Koldostorets team’s solid-vodka cauldron, while the Hogwarts team passed inspection with its equipment packed in wicker baskets.
• At noon, the teams used magical transport methods to race to their cabins, and Joyce took the Hogwarts team to its target with a Portkey.
• Joyce assigned tasks at the cabin while Hermione prepared flying birch trees and Charles built a fire pit to guard the ground passage.
• Students from the other schools plotted to steal Hogwarts’ cauldrons, but Charles exposed and threw an Institute of Magic student and a Koldostorets student into the lake.
• The rival students abandoned their plan and dispersed after Charles stopped their attempts to approach the cabin.

Charles’s team gathered supplies, prepared dinner, and debated whether to trade ingredients with rival schools. The debate ended without a decision, and Charles collected birch sap while Joyce appeared to have something to tell him.

• Harry, Ron, and Hermione returned with food and supplies, and Charles warned them that the competition’s dangers and conflicts would grow.
• Charles cast a mist spell over Hogwarts’s base, then cooked stewed pheasant, vegetables, and soup for the team.
• Joyce reported that the team had gathered most of the ingredients needed for their potions, while Ashford worried some ingredients might be unavailable.
• Percy proposed trading with other schools, but Ashford, Cedric, and Cho Chang raised concerns, and the team reached no conclusion.
• Charles collected birch sap to make a drink for everyone, and Joyce joined him by the campfire as if she had something to say.

Charles stayed out of the potion-making team’s major decisions while supporting Joyce and the action team. After Percy proposed trading ingredients with the other schools, Hogwarts announced negotiations for noon, naming Percy Weasley and Charles Smith as its representatives.

• Charles explained his views on Percy, Cedric, Ashford, and Joyce’s leadership, then baked bacon rolls with a spell Joyce recognized as a difficult Compound Spell.
• The action team returned with few useful ingredients, and Neville reported that students from Koldostorets had given them unwanted supplies.
• Percy decided to pursue trading with the other schools and asked Charles to accompany him, while Joyce agreed to keep the action team ready in case of trouble.
• Percy presented a plan for approaching the other schools, and Charles and Joyce agreed it was feasible.
• After a peaceful night, Hogwarts announced in the sky that it would negotiate and trade supplies at noon, with Percy Weasley and Charles Smith as representatives.

Charles and Percy proposed that the four schools exchange surplus potion ingredients so they could focus on the Potion Championship, while revealing that Hogwarts had uncovered the Institute of Magic’s eavesdropping. The other schools left to discuss the proposal, and Charles predicted that one school’s agreement would pressure the others to join.

• Charles and Percy set up a tea table and reassured the other schools that Hogwarts’s team members had stayed at their cabin.
• Percy proposed that the schools exchange ingredients and set aside the competition’s other events to focus on potion-making.
• Charles named ingredients the Institute of Magic lacked and exposed that Hogwarts had discovered its representatives were spying.
• Percy asked the representatives to discuss the proposal and return with ingredient lists at four in the afternoon.
• The Koldostorets and Vagadu representatives agreed to consider the proposal, while the Institute of Magic representatives departed using a fiery double.
• After the other schools left, Charles told Percy that Koldostorets seemed likely to agree and that its decision could pressure the others to follow.

After the teams stopped searching for ingredients, the principals discussed making the Potion Championship more academic and adding a school Quidditch tournament. Meanwhile, Charles put Harry and the others to work preparing venison and promised Harry a ticket to the Quidditch World Cup final in exchange for a reflection on Percy’s performance.

• After the schools exchanged potion ingredients, their teams stayed at their bases, leaving spectators and organizers disappointed.
• Nikita, Tadao Takashima, Dumbledore, and the other principals discussed increasing points for innovation and adding poison-and-antidote challenges to the Potion Championship.
• Dumbledore proposed a Quidditch championship, and the principals agreed in principle while rejecting Nikita’s suggestion to let schools use their traditional flying equipment.
• The principal of Ilvermorny proposed a cooking competition after spectators watched Charles prepare a deer, while Harry, Ron, Neville, and Seamus helped with the meal.
• Charles told Harry to write a three-page reflection on Percy’s performance and offered him a ticket to the Quidditch World Cup final, making Harry work more eagerly.

Charles and his companions defended their lakeside camp from Big-headed Hairy Monsters with two Snapping Cabbages. After the creatures were driven off, a mysterious smoke-like beast appeared and confronted Charles.

• Charles and Joyce discussed her potion work and plans to travel the world after graduating.
• Charles spotted Big-headed Hairy Monsters approaching the camp and asked Neville to bring out two Snapping Cabbages.
• The Snapping Cabbages attacked the monsters, killing most of them while a few escaped.
• A dark, smoke-like creature arrived and began eating the monsters' corpses.
• Charles sent Joyce and Neville into the cabin, then sensed the creature appear behind him and heard it ask what it looked like to him.

Charles accidentally gave Cuihua, a Yellow Weasel, a human form with conspicuous ears and nine tails, ruining her plans to become an actress. After Cuihua left, Charles hid the truth from the Hogwarts group, and Hermione figured out what he had done.

• Cuihua told Charles how she had come seeking a foreign human form so she could become an actress, but learned she could not change it except by turning back into an animal.
• Charles suggested Cuihua become a singer and offered to help her, while she complained about the difficulties her ears and tails would cause.
• Cuihua used a frightening illusion that alarmed the people inside the cabin, then revealed how to find her family near Qiqihar and burrowed away as a Yellow Weasel.
• Charles told the Hogwarts group that Cuihua was a Chinese witch who had gotten lost, and Neville said she had looked terrifying.
• Hermione stayed behind, recognized that Charles had helped a magical weasel become human, stamped on his foot, and returned to the cabin.

On the final day of the competition, Charles moved the Hogwarts team’s cabin to evade intruders while the team prepared to submit its potions. A staged attack was exposed on the giant screen, and Dumbledore prompted Rita Skeeter to spread the story to Japan.

• Joyce and the others packed their potions and supplies, then planned to leave early after two unannounced visitors fell into the lake.
• Charles moved the cabin into Mirror Space and sent it toward the competition grounds’ exit while the intruders searched the empty site.
• Charles freed the camera owl from a spell, revealing a group of students attacking others with transformed paper slips.
• Tadao Takashima, Nikita, and visiting school heads condemned the attack, while Aginbad claimed the students had acted on their own.
• Percy explained that the attackers were trying to frame the Institute of Magic, and Dumbledore quietly encouraged Rita Skeeter to involve a Japanese newspaper.

Charles and the Institute of Magic students exposed and punished Vagadu’s students, while Charles learned that Vagadu’s deception was tied to efforts to replace Dumbledore with the conservative Aginbad. Hogwarts placed third in the potion scores, leaving its chance to win dependent on the playoff.

• Charles and Rita Skeeter questioned Institute of Magic students, stirring their anger toward Vagadu as their professor tried to calm them.
• Institute of Magic students ambushed Vagadu’s students at the temporary restrooms, where a beetle’s gas sent them rushing into toilets that were blasted into the cesspit.
• Charles, Kytov, and Louis Mantz discussed how Vagadu’s scheme could have sparked conflict and how Aginbad’s conservative politics challenged Dumbledore.
• Charles asked Mantz to help find French werewolf volunteers for the Werewolf Antidote research.
• Nikita announced the scores: the Institute of Magic came first, Koldostorets second, Hogwarts third, and Vagadu fourth.

Percy and the Hogwarts team tried to recover from their third-place standing as they prepared for a playoff requiring them to brew a tasty poison. With time running short, Joyce used her substitution privilege to put Smith in Zhang's place and make Weasley responsible for brewing it, accepting the consequences herself.

• Cedric reminded the Hogwarts team that they were less than a point behind Koldostorets and could still win the playoff.
• Charles distributed Red Claw drinks to calm the team and help them stay alert.
• Karkaroff proposed that the playoff teams brew a poison that tasted good, and the judges accepted the subject.
• Percy revealed a poison formula that required a spell to accelerate its brewing, while Charles offered a similar cooking spell.
• Joyce used her substitution privilege to replace Zhang with Smith and assigned Weasley to brew the potion, taking responsibility for the outcome.

Percy and the Hogwarts team brewed a poison for the playoff, surviving a cauldron failure before submitting their potion for testing. Hogwarts edged out Koldostorets by 0.032 points and took the lead in the competition.

• Charles, Percy, Cedric, Ashford, and Joyce prepared poisons from seven venomous creatures and brewed them in two cauldrons.
• Percy’s warning proved crucial when one cauldron burst; the team transferred the remaining potion to a replacement cauldron with cracks and completed the brew.
• Percy submitted the Hogwarts potion, which appeared harmless to a mouse until Karkaroff cast a spell on it, triggering its lethal effects.
• Karkaroff praised the Hogwarts potion’s flavor, and the team reached a total of 106.546 points.
• The Institute of Magic scored 106.447 points, while Koldostorets finished with 106.514, leaving Hogwarts ahead by 0.032 points.

After Percy helped Hogwarts win the Potion Championship, he and Charles traveled with Dumbledore to an International Confederation of Wizards conference in Verona. Charles told Percy that he would deliver a speech on the Werewolf Antidote, leaving Percy excited to make an impression on the Ministry of Magic.

• The Daily Prophet praised Percy’s performance, while Fred and George planned a welcome ceremony before Percy returned with Dumbledore and Charles.
• Harry and Hermione learned from Dean, Lavender, and Parvati that they had assignments to make up, while Ron left to visit Ginny.
• Ron told Ginny that Dumbledore had taken Percy and Charles to the International Confederation of Wizards conference, and Ginny said Percy was making something of himself.
• Charles explained Verona’s Romeo and Juliet attraction to Percy and told him that the conference would address the Werewolf Antidote and proposals to eradicate werewolves.
• Charles said he and Percy should use the conference to advance their own interests, then asked Percy to prepare and deliver a speech focused on a bright future rather than practical details.

Charles skipped the International Confederation of Wizards’ assembly to enjoy Italian food while Percy gave the British delegation’s speech. Afterward, Dumbledore explained that Fudge was trying to recruit Percy into his faction, revealed that Voldemort had returned and that he planned to reassemble the Phoenix Society, and left Percy to decide what to believe and whom to support.

• Dumbledore brought Charles and Percy to the International Confederation of Wizards’ assembly, where Fudge praised Percy and arranged to treat him to dinner.
• Charles skipped the meeting and ate with Italian witches, then told Fudge he had lost track of time chatting with them.
• Percy worried that he had made mistakes in his speech, and Dumbledore reassured him that he had performed well.
• Charles explained that Fudge was trying to draw Percy into his faction because he feared Dumbledore might take his position.
• Dumbledore told Percy about the Phoenix Society, his uncles Fabian and Gideon Prewett, Voldemort’s return, and his plan to reassemble the group.
• Charles told Percy that joining the Phoenix Society was his own decision.

Charles explained how he had used the International Confederation of Wizards meeting to promote his restaurant and company, while Dumbledore advised Percy to learn from his practical approach. Back at Hogwarts, Charles learned that Pheobe’s summer plans to visit the Veela’s hidden realm had been postponed, and Professor Delacour revealed a prophecy tied to its secret.

• Dumbledore questioned Charles for skipping the meeting, and Charles admitted he had spent his time befriending ministers’ wives and advertising his restaurant and company.
• Dumbledore told Percy to learn from Charles, who explained that people had to weigh what they could give up against what they stood to gain.
• Professor Delacour gave Charles Pheobe’s letter and told him she had been selected for Beauxbatons summer remedial classes.
• Professor Delacour told Charles that a Veela prophecy foretold a half-Veela born when the final leaf fell would unlock the hidden realm’s secret, a magic capable of changing the world.
• Charles read Pheobe’s letter and learned their visit to the Veela’s hidden realm had to be postponed.

Charles tried to give Professor McGonagall VIP tickets to the Quidditch World Cup final, but she refused them on principle. A week later Dumbledore passed the tickets to her as a gift from Aberforth, while Charles secretly monitored their conversation and learned that Dumbledore suspected Grindelwald was plotting something.

• Professor McGonagall warned Fred and George that exam invigilators would pay special attention to the twins, and they promised not to cheat.
• Charles offered Professor McGonagall VIP tickets for the Quidditch World Cup final, but she refused to accept an expensive gift from a student.
• Dumbledore later gave Professor McGonagall the tickets, claiming Aberforth had passed them to him, and she accepted them.
• Professor McGonagall asked Dumbledore about preparations for the next school year, and he said Remus would recommend students for special summer training with an old friend.
• Dumbledore revealed that he suspected Grindelwald was plotting something and intended to keep watch on him.
• Charles listened from the corridor above using a Secrecy Sensor, then breathed a sigh of relief as Dumbledore left.

After the exams, Charles arranged his summer plans and addressed Hermione’s Time-Turner while Harry received a ticket to the Quidditch World Cup final. Charles then coordinated with Dobby to prepare Dancing Grass Restaurant for the World Cup crowds, leaving Dobby with instructions to summon Malfoy.

• Harry worried about Charles’s assessment of his essay on Percy’s proposal, then received a ticket to the Quidditch World Cup final.
• Charles told Harry and Hermione about his summer workload and asked Hermione whether she had returned the dangerous object, prompting Ron to joke about her weight.
• Charles went to Dancing Grass Restaurant to plan for the Quidditch World Cup and discussed staffing with Dobby, who had arranged to hire Hogwarts’s House-elves with Dumbledore’s approval.
• Dobby told Charles that Axel Prewett would supply Muggle food from a cold-storage warehouse, and Charles told Dobby to call young master Malfoy.

Draco Malfoy hosted a lavish feast at Dancing Grass Restaurant, then agreed to help Charles exchange Galleons for Muggle currency in return for payment. After Malfoy left, Jack told Charles he would teach him magic for dealing with Horcruxes, alarming Voldemort and Harry.

• Draco Malfoy treated Slytherin students to a dragon feast and packed up the leftovers to take home.
• Dobby summoned Malfoy to Charles, who offered him five hundred Galleons to arrange the exchange of fifty thousand Galleons for Muggle currency.
• Malfoy accepted Charles's check and account details after securing a promise that the arrangement would remain secret.
• Grindelwald asked Charles whether he trusted Malfoy, and Charles dismissed Malfoy as a small-time scoundrel.
• Jack told Charles that he would teach him magic for dealing with Horcruxes, making Voldemort and Harry feel alarmed.

Charles reunited with Marlene in Berlin and began learning German singing magic, which could affect listeners’ souls and influence their emotions or decisions. After practicing a basic sound spell, he continued his lessons as Marlene offered to train his tongue the way she had trained Erika.

• Charles discovered that Marlene was the teacher Jack had arranged to teach him magic, and Marlene brought him and Erika to Erika’s house.
• Marlene explained that singing magic acted directly on the soul and that the Old Man intended to use it to attack Voldemort through the links between his Horcruxes.
• Marlene described how the magic could influence people through singing, speeches, or conversation, though its effect depended on the listener’s willpower.
• Marlene demonstrated a wandless sound spell that stunned a bird, then taught Charles its tongue movements and casting technique.
• Charles practiced for over an hour until his face and tongue ached, and Marlene teased him by offering to train his tongue as she had trained Erika’s.