Supreme Wizard Alliance Remnants

The next two days were the weekend.

Yet the common room lacked its usual relaxed atmosphere. Instead, tension hung everywhere—most students were racing against time to make their final preparations for Monday's Potions exam, with parchment, textbooks, and cauldron notes piled across the tables.

Skylar, however, remained as busy as ever.

His time had been carved into conflicting fragments: on one side were the orderly exams and classes at school; on the other, the increasingly imminent wizarding war and the undercurrents of its schemes. The two rhythms pulled at him simultaneously, bringing a constant, piercing sense of being torn apart.

He had grown tired of this life. Once the school year ended, he would graduate early.

News came from the Ministry of Magic that Grindelwald had awakened. However, irreversible damage from the Dark Arts had left him completely bereft of magic. He would never cast another spell for the rest of his life—he had become the very thing he despised most: a Muggle.

It could be said that he had received the most terrible punishment.

Without magic, Grindelwald could no longer stir up any trouble. At the strong insistence of Amelia's faction and with Dumbledore's firm guarantee, Grindelwald, who had little time left to live, was originally meant to be released and allowed to spend his remaining years in peace. But the International Confederation of Wizards chose this moment to intervene forcefully—the final outcome was that Grindelwald would be escorted to Nurmengard and then tried by the International Wizard Court.

Interestingly, at this sensitive juncture, someone took enormous risks to contact Skylar through covert means—

Matilda Eisenkreuz, the famed Austrian fugitive witch known as the "Iron-Blooded Hand."

Skylar had heard of her name. She had once attempted to assassinate Austria's Minister for Magic, and twice escaped Austrian Aurors' manhunts. Skilled