HP: From Failed Art Student to Dark Artist of Hogwarts - 317

Chapter 317: 【Super-Tier Magic · Skyfall】!

Ethan swept his brush across the canvas. Great swathes of dark-blue pigment spread under his hand. In his ears were roars and explosions. Under his feet, the ground shook like an earthquake.

Every so often, flying rubble sprayed past and smashed down beside him, close enough to graze his coat. Flesh and blood splattered, smoke and dust rolled, and the turbulence tugged at his black hair. Yet it could not pry his focused, cobalt-blue gaze away from the painting.

A true battlefield painter.

Beneath his brush, a night sky began to take shape. Then Ethan’s hand stilled. His brows furrowed as he realized he had a serious problem.

He lacked the right extraordinary materials.

“Cold, shattered stars. A blazing, burning horizon…” he muttered, rummaging through his leather bag for supplies. “Octopus roe, no. Sage’s ear, that won’t do. Rotting grape eyeball, next time…”

“Gloomp,” came a soft, sulky sound, and an eyeball that looked like a rotten grape rolled back into the bag on its own.

Ethan frowned in solemn thought. “So I really have to make do, do I? Still, I'm a man with standards.”

While he considered it, he flicked his wand and sent back a bomb the Weasley twins had accidentally thrown his way. “Cheers, mate!” the twins shouted, spinning around and stuffing the bomb straight into a flesh-monster’s mouth.

Just as Ethan stared at the canvas, genuinely stumped for once, three hands suddenly thrust themselves into his line of sight at almost the same time.

Luna’s pale hand held a shard of stone that glowed with a ghostly blue light. She smiled softly. “I picked this up from an ancient site during the goblin war.” “If you grind it down, it should make a decent pigment, right?”

Queen Ariana bent down and scattered deep-red rose petals. She spoke with overwhelming shyness. 【I, I just can’t use them, that’s all… It’s not like I prepared them for you on purpose, Brother!】

Ethan fell silent for a beat. Was it the change in her outward form that nudged her personality a little, or had lifting the Obscurus-like curse given her confidence? He decided, cheerfully, not to think too hard about what Dumbledore would do when he saw this.

The third hand was Hermione’s. She did not bring an object, only a red face and a desperate burst of courage that came out as pure recitation. “According to research, the universe originated from an extremely dense, scorching singularity billions of years ago, and then atoms, galaxies, stars, and other structures formed…”

Ethan looked at the three of them. He accepted Luna’s ancient, magic-laced blue stone, plucked a rose petal from above his head, then gave Hermione a bright smile. Finally, as if concluding a meeting, he said, “You’re all such good people. Thank you so much.”

Hermione’s eyes went wide. She looked like she had just been hit with a Bludger. Even the two most oblivious boys she knew would not say something with the emotional intelligence of “drink more hot water.”

Luna tilted her head and asked gently, “Do you prefer a water burial, a fire burial, or an earth burial?” Ethan replied with perfect politeness, “I’d like to ascend to the heavens.”

Luna smiled with saintly patience and flicked him on the forehead, not hard, but with unmistakable judgment. Ariana, however, had no complaint at all. The fact that Ethan accepted her help was enough to make her cheeks flush red.

He was the one who had given her a second life. She had to protect him.

Ariana pressed her lips together, extended a finger, and swung her “Chop off their heads!” even harder.

With materials and knowledge in hand, the final hurdle on the path to the new painting was cleared. For the first time, Ethan truly felt what it meant to draw with everyone’s strength behind him, not just his own.

“In my last life, the moment I picked up a brush, people would scream and run.” “Some even rudely demanded I ‘paint something humans would paint’.” “Turns out, there are kindred spirits everywhere.” “All you have to do is move to a different world.”

He was deeply encouraged. His brush flew as if guided by a god.

Soon. The painting that could wipe Voldemort out in one stroke was almost finished.

Ethan kept his eyes locked on the work as it began to glow with a rising brilliance. Cold sharpness flashed in his gaze like a drawn blade.

“ROAR! You insignificant insects!” Voldemort bellowed, his tentacles lashing through the air and hurling several Aurors aside in an instant.

Now his enormous body was charred in patches, smoking like a slab of overcooked meat. Holes riddled him, like rotting cheese eaten through from the inside. The stench was revolting, like burning leather boots and singed hair.

Voldemort panted, trembling from the pain. Ever since he had been granted that “supreme” power, he had never imagined he could still end up this battered. When did Hogwarts become such a fortress? Was this still a school?

Confusion twisted into a creeping fear. If he were killed by Ethan before gaining power, and still killed by Ethan after gaining power, then what was the point of resurrecting at all?

“No. I can’t fail.” “Today I will kill the Saviour and unify the wizarding world!” He howled incoherently and forced his bulk forward with all his strength.

Then his body rolled over the last thorn wall. The guillotine-like brambles stopped behind him, and the Queen of Hearts’ furious shout carried from the maze.

Voldemort turned his head and saw Aurors collapsed all over the ground. Mad-Eye Moody was gasping, barely holding himself up, wand raised, but only just managing to shield the students.

Voldemort went silent for two seconds. Then his mouth slowly spread into a grin.

“Heh. Hehehe… hehehe!”

He won. It was his victory.

“Ethan Vincent!” he rasped. “Go on, hide like a turtle in its shell.” “You can’t stop me!”

He stared at Hogwarts Castle ahead. A hunger and desire rooted deep inside him clenched around his entire being. He would become the ruler of the world, and Hogwarts would be the first step of conquest.

Then Voldemort’s gaze halted. He looked down and spotted two tiny humans standing in his way. He drew out his words, slow and poisonous.

“…Well, look who it is.” “My most ‘loyal’ follower, Severus Snape.”

Snape paused. Then he curled his lip into a sneer. “Maybe I decided that the boy has a brighter future.”

His left arm, where the Dark Mark was carved into his skin, burned like it had been pressed to a flame. Snape exchanged a glance with Dumbledore. The weight in both their eyes turned grim.

To be honest, even though they had prepared themselves, they had not expected Voldemort to actually reach this point. Did that mean… Ethan had failed. How could that be possible?

Dumbledore spoke evenly. “No matter what, this is as far as you will go, Tom Riddle.”

Voldemort erupted in rage. “Don’t call me that name!” His tentacles whipped and hammered the barrier Dumbledore and Snape had already set.

Dumbledore lifted his gaze. Through the half-moon lenses, his old eyes studied Voldemort’s barely-human shape, and he sighed.

“This is the greatest difference between you and Ethan.” “To pursue supreme power, you willingly abandoned human conscience and became no better than a beast.” “But what Ethan has pursued was never conquest or domination.” “That child, from the beginning to the end, only wanted to climb the highest stair of art.”

In Dumbledore’s mind, a quiet addendum followed: and reshape the world a bit, on the side.

“And one more thing,” Dumbledore added, as if it were a casual thought. “Next term, I plan to have Ethan serve as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.”

Voldemort and Snape both froze.

“Shut up, you ignorant fool!” Voldemort’s face twisted with fury. “You’d let that madman be a professor, but you refused my request back then!” “Doesn’t my very presence here prove the truth!”

In an instant, countless tentacles and arms spread wide, blocking the moonlight. Like a towering, joyless mountain of flesh, Voldemort loomed over Dumbledore and Snape, his voice shaking the air.

“Ethan Vincent is dead…”

Before he could finish, enormous golden magic circles snapped into existence across his body, one after another. A clear chiming rang out again and again. The rings climbed from bottom to top like a heavenly staircase, stretching up toward the night itself.

Even Snape, who could face the former Dark Lord without blinking, stared with wide eyes. “What is that?” he blurted. “Is that Voldemort’s power?!”

“Those are… magic circles,” Dumbledore said, and for once his expression shifted. Through the blazing gold, what filled his vision were countless complex runes mounted within each wheel. They looked like a harmonious, magnificent symphony of magic. Yet the only music they would produce was cold and merciless, a world-ending requiem.

Just standing before it, Dumbledore could feel overwhelming pressure bearing down. So Voldemort had obtained this kind of power after all. Even fate itself…

“Severus,” Dumbledore said softly, “go to the castle.” “Take the students and run.” “Please.”

Snape’s pupils shrank. Then he clenched his jaw and nodded heavily. “Understood.”

He started to turn, then his gaze flicked, and he caught the look on Voldemort’s face. It was a shock so real it nearly had weight.

Snape paused. Something was wrong.

In the next second, a clear, bright voice rang down from the sky.

“【Super-Tier Magic · Skyfall】.”