Halloween Petrification Incident (IV)

The stone sword shattered.

The knight statue was blasted straight through from chest to waist, leaving a huge hole. Stone fragments scattered everywhere like rain. The statue, which had stood for who knew how many years, crashed to the ground and broke into pieces.

But the statue had also drained much of the punch's force, and its speed visibly slowed.

Flitwick seized the chance. His wand flicked repeatedly, firing off a barrage of spells like a machine gun. "Impedimenta! Binding Coils! Force Drain!"

The three spells struck Filch almost simultaneously.

Filch's body jerked to a halt, and the dark green flames around him surged violently, forcibly knocking away most of Flitwick's spells. Yet Force Drain still seeped through—his limbs suddenly felt as heavy as lead, and his speed plummeted.

"Now!" McGonagall barked. With a sweep of her wand, the rubble on the ground instantly transformed into more than a dozen stone chains that coiled around Filch's arms and legs like snakes.

Filch roared and violently wrenched his arms apart—the chains creaked, cracks spreading across them like spiderwebs, but they did not break!

Professor McGonagall's mastery of Transfiguration was displayed to the fullest at that moment—she had turned every piece of rubble into chains as hard as refined steel, and the chains were interconnected, forming a complex mechanical structure that distributed Filch's strength across more than a dozen chains.

Filch struggled several times without breaking free, and the expression on his face became even more savage.

He abruptly lowered his head and glared at Professor McGonagall. His voice was hoarse, as though it had come from hell itself. "Minerva McGonagall... you think these things... can hold me?"

He drew a deep breath, his chest swelling violently like a balloon on the verge of bursting. The dark green flames around him began