A sword
Came crashing down!
It tore through the darkness.
Like dawn arriving, like the first light breaking.
Light flooded the world!
His psychic field controlled the entire Astronomy Tower.
Hoffa broke through layer upon layer of consciousness and returned to reality.
Everything around him was as before, save for Miranda lying on the ground.
A mass of black vapor barely stood before her. Miller and her psychic field had been completely split in two.
Under Hoffa's psychic field, it could barely keep itself upright.
"Wh-what kind of magic was that?" Miller shrieked in terror.
Hoffa tilted his head and said softly, "That wasn't magic."
With that, he raised his hand and clenched his fist.
Bang!
The psychic field scattered Miller with a single blow.
The black vapor dispersed.
On the observatory platform, Miranda clutched her chest as she lay on the ground, staggering backward and staring fixedly at Hoffa.
As though she were looking at something she utterly could not understand.
Hoffa calmly looked at Miranda before him.
He put away his wand and strode toward her.
"Don't come over! Don't come over!" Miranda looked at Hoffa in terror.
Hoffa walked up to her and dropped to one knee, looking Miranda in the eye. Then he held her face in his hands and gazed directly into her brown eyes. "I understand now. You should have told me long ago."
"What good would telling you do? Could you even understand?" Miranda said sharply. "We've had different lives. You can't understand any of it."
Hoffa said, "I'm not particularly clever. Among Ravenclaw students, I'm just an ordinary person. But I can feel your pain."
"You can't, Hoffa Bach!" Miranda shook her head fiercely, kicking herself backward. "You don't understand anything. All you care about is yourself."
She shook her head, trying