"Alright, back to the compartment," William said, gesturing for Hermione and Neville to follow.
He had no interest in picking fights with these first-years.
Neville clutched the phoenix, grinning, as he walked back onto the train. But suddenly, his face fell. "My toad! Trevor! He's gone again!"
Setting the phoenix on the ground, Neville checked his pockets, even patting some rather private areas, but Trevor was nowhere to be found.
He hunched down and started searching frantically.
William sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Neville was as forgetful as ever.
Just then, Draco Malfoy, who hadn't gone far, started laughing loudly.
"Look at him! He acts like an idiot, doesn't he?"
The Slytherin students around Malfoy joined in, snickering.
"Shut it, Malfoy," said Judith Crouch sharply. "Stop causing trouble."
Judith had seen William's power firsthand in Professor Tywin's class, and she wasn't eager to provoke him or his friends.
"Oh? Standing up for Longbottom?" sneered Pansy Parkinson, stepping forward.
Pansy was a rather unattractive girl with a pug-like face. She hovered close to Malfoy, giggling.
"Didn't know you had a thing for chubby little idiots, Crouch. Guess you could do worse, but I'd never go for that…"
She shot a sideways glance at Malfoy, clearly hoping for his approval, but he wasn't even looking at her. Instead, he yelled, "Look what I found!"
He rushed forward, grabbing something from the floor.
"Look, it's Longbottom's toad!"
"Honestly, who still has a toad as a pet these days?" Pansy sneered. "That's so out of style."
Meanwhile, on a sunny island in America, Nicholas Flamel sneezed loudly.
He was out wearing giant toad-shaped sunglasses, sunbathing shirtless with a water gun.
"Hmm, did Perenelle find out?" he murmured, scratching his head. After a moment, he shrugged it off and waded back into the crowd with a laugh.
A young man named Leonardo gazed enviously at Flamel, wishing he too could lounge around with beautiful women and a water gun.
Back on the Hogwarts Express, Draco Malfoy held the toad aloft, laughing as it croaked in the sunlight.
"Hand it over, Malfoy," Neville said, trembling, but managing to summon a brave growl from somewhere deep in his throat.
Everyone went quiet, turning to watch the standoff.
Malfoy took a step back, momentarily startled by the expression on Neville's face. Embarrassed, he forced a smirk.
"Give it back? That's boring. I think I'll find it a new home…"
He paused, his eyes gleaming. "I saw a boy with a venomous spider earlier. Bet that spider would love a tasty toad snack."
"Hand it over!" Hermione shouted. "Or I'll tell the professor!"
But Malfoy only laughed and started backing away.
Hermione gripped William's arm tightly as if she were ready to charge forward and help him pummel Malfoy into the ground.
William's eye twitched. Ever since the incident at Gringotts, Hermione seemed to have awakened some hidden aggressive quality he hadn't noticed before.
With a sigh, William pulled out his wand and muttered a spell. A beam of light shot out and hit the toad in Malfoy's hand.
"Engorgio."
Instantly, the toad began to expand.
The train was soon filled with screams, and not the excited kind.
"Draco, the toad…!" Pansy screeched.
Malfoy stopped, looking down at the steadily growing toad in his hand. Shivering, he let out a terrified yelp and flung it away.
In seconds, the toad grew to over a meter in size, swelling up in the aisle with bulging eyes and bloated cheeks.
Students on either side of the aisle, frozen in shock, screamed and stumbled back.
Malfoy scrambled toward a compartment, desperate for an escape.
But few had ever studied the speed of a toad's tongue, and fewer still would have anticipated what happened next.
Trevor opened his mouth, and with a barely perceptible flick of his tongue, he wrapped it around Malfoy's ankle, yanking him back and slamming him to the floor. Then, like a predator with its prey, Trevor dragged him forward.
"No, please!!" Malfoy's voice reached a high, terrified pitch, as though he were about to be eaten alive by a giant toad.
Curious students gathered at the compartment doors to watch.
"Wow, nice tongue," William mused, a glint of admiration in his eyes. Trevor's tongue was easily the most impressive he'd ever seen. Suddenly, a spark of inspiration flickered in his mind.
Meanwhile, poor Malfoy was getting more than he'd bargained for. Trevor seemed unwilling to swallow him but instead gave him an intense, squishy facial massage with his sticky, gigantic tongue.
Malfoy choked, unable to even scream for help.
Seeing it was going a bit too far, William quickly cast a spell to shrink Trevor back to his original size.
Malfoy collapsed to the ground, foaming at the mouth, his eyes unfocused and dazed from shock.
Pansy ran over and threw herself down beside him. "Are you alright, Draco?!"
Hermione approached, adopting an expert tone. "He seems to have fainted. My dad's a dentist, and in situations like this, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is recommended."
Pansy blinked in confusion.
Hermione explained with a straight face, "You know… you breathe air into his mouth."
"Oh." Pansy's cheeks flushed pink.
Without thinking twice, she lowered her head toward Malfoy, seemingly oblivious to the remnants of Trevor's slime on his face.
In his dazed state, Malfoy could only vaguely feel something soft and warm pressing against his mouth. The sensation was strange, almost stifling, with an acidic taste filling his throat.
Sure enough, within seconds, Malfoy was wide awake.
But the moment he saw Pansy's pug-like face looming over him, he promptly fainted again.
The crowd erupted into cheers and applause.
"Alright, make way. What's going on here?" came a voice from the crowd.
"Excuse me, prefect coming through!"
Percy strode in, chest puffed out, his prefect badge gleaming on his chest as he wore an expression of absolute authority.
"So, what's happened here? As a prefect, it's my duty to ensure order!" He took a deep breath, preparing to deliver a lecture, but suddenly froze, as if choked.
Seeing the scene before him, Percy drew in a sharp breath, and then, a look of unmistakable anger filled his face.
"Unbelievable. First-years and even publicly… No! I mean, this is absurd! This is a public place! If you want to be all lovey-dovey, go somewhere private and stop disrupting everyone else!"
William raised an eyebrow, sensing a faint edge of jealousy in Percy's tone.
It was almost as if Percy were thinking: 'You lot are only first-years, and you're already making out in public! I'm a fifth-year prefect and haven't even held hands with a girl!'
It looked like Percy's inner jealousy was about to combust.
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