HP: From Failed Art Student to Dark Artist of Hogwarts - 316

Chapter 316: Total Melee! Is This Still Harry Potter?!

Ethan, for all his insanity, did have a sense of fair play. His painting magic was already beyond ridiculous, but even so, there had to be a process.

“First, to paint a piece, you need inspiration,” Ethan thought, swinging the heavy warhammer wreathed in golden radiance. With a thunderous crash, he smashed the incoming tentacle into mush. He wiped his face and continued calmly, “Second, painting takes time.”

“Even if painting on the spot won’t take days or months… I still need someone to help me stall this colossal thing.” He narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. “Right. What else can I use?”

For reasons unknown, Voldemort suddenly shuddered. He glared at Ethan with heightened suspicion, as if something filthy had fixed its gaze on him.

“How troubled and helpless you look,” Voldemort mocked maliciously, his face stretching like rubber, his grin splitting wider and wider until it nearly reached his ears. Shredded tentacles fell to the ground with wet splats, wriggling like fat worms, then rising and merging into new humanoid monsters.

“More of them? Haven’t seen anything this tenacious since the war!” Mad-Eye Moody barked, his magical eye spinning in its socket. He raised his wand, and jets of orange-red flame burst from the tip. “Fire. They’re afraid of fire!” Then he roared, “Incendio!”

Fire swept across the ground in a roaring tide, swallowing the flesh-monsters as they screamed.

“Hmph. Still alive?” Voldemort sneered with contempt, “but you’re all barely keeping yourselves alive.” This battle had cost him a huge portion of his Death Eaters, but with this kind of power, he no longer needed those useless scraps.

“Ethan Vincent!” Voldemort’s voice rose again, cruel and triumphant. “Now you stand alone. Who’s left to help you?” His many eyeballs rolled greedily, staring past the maze to Hogwarts, that towering castle perched on the cliff like a treasure vault calling to him.

“Corrode it. Take it. I’ll mount Ethan’s head on the highest tower and admire it every day.” His eyes turned blood-red, and in his mind, there was only a predator’s hunger.

That was when Ethan’s gaze flicked sideways, catching movement deeper in the maze. The corner of his mouth lifted. He called out brightly, “Oh? I’m alone, am I?” “Looks like all those eyes you’ve got are just for decoration!”

A silver-white moon-glow erupted, like a galaxy being poured down from the heavens. In that dazzling river of starlight, a massive full moon descended lightly and struck Voldemort’s body.

Boom!

A tremendous silver shockwave exploded outward from Voldemort, blasting a gap the size of nearly a third of his swollen flesh-mountain. Voldemort howled in agony, twisting violently as blood poured like rain and splattered the ground.

The maze itself parted, making way. “Mad girl” Luna Lovegood stepped forward with a wand in hand, long blond hair streaming behind her, her whole body surging with starlike magic. Her blue eyes fixed on the blood-red flesh-mountain, then lifted to Ethan hovering above. She puffed out her cheeks and complained, “You’re playing again without me.”

Then she laughed, light as birdsong. “But this time, I’m the one who came to find you.”

Ethan looked down at her, warmth spreading through him despite himself. He smiled helplessly. “So there really is no stopping you.”

They shared a smile, and for a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath. Voldemort, supposedly the one standing alone: ‘…’ Seeing it was worse than being stabbed.

“How pathetic!” Voldemort hissed, half in pain, half in fury. “Fools, rushing to your deaths like moths to a flame!” He lashed out with tentacles, trying to skewer them like meat on a spit.

“And us!” voices shouted. Figures burst out from behind Luna, wands raised, faces tense but movements organised as they cast in rhythm, intercepting the tentacles’ strikes.

The Aurors gaped. “Have these students lost their minds? Didn’t the professors seal off the maze?” Moody smacked his lips and muttered with satisfaction, “Not bad. As expected of my students. Brave.” The Aurors looked at him as if they had been slapped smeared with troll snot, because clearly the problem started at the top.

One Auror even laughed despite himself. “Hogwarts now is a bit more… aggressive than in my day.” People said Dumbledore had grown more conservative with age, but right now, perhaps “aggressive” was exactly what Hogwarts needed.

In the midst of the battle, Voldemort felt humiliated. Students daring to resist him? “Ethan Vincent! These are your reinforcements? Worthless insects!”

Before he could finish, a towering figure rose from the earth, nearly as massive as Voldemort’s flesh-mountain. A golden sceptre slammed into the ground with a deafening clang, and a young yet commanding voice rolled across the maze.

“This is my territory. Aren’t you being far too insolent?” “I’ll chop your heads off!”

It was the Queen of Hearts, Ariana.

Brambles erupted violently, twisting into jagged guillotine blades that hacked at Voldemort from every direction. Blood sprayed everywhere.

【The Rose-Thorn Maze Curse has been activated!】
【When any hostile creature is within the maze’s range, the Queen of Hearts has the authority to carry out “Execution”.】

Ethan raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised. Even he, the creator, had never triggered this effect. The Queen of Hearts Ariana, like the Death Bird, was an independent individual, with a real soul and real memories, which was why she ranked as a highest-tier purple epic.

That she could exert this much influence was beyond what even Ethan had expected. He laughed. “Dumbledore’s sister really is something else. Absolutely savage.”

Voldemort trembled in agony, truly being carved apart alive. He stared at the towering Queen, feeling both his body and mind being crushed. Damn it. How many hidden moves did Ethan still have? Was he some kind of magical-beast trainer?

"I! Will! Kill! You! All!" Voldemort bellowed.

Blood, spells, and brambles crashed together. Luna’s spectral blue reindeer charged like a bulldozer, antlers like bayonets and muscles like iron, ploughing through the flesh-monsters. Flames rose, and roses bloomed in massive, vivid clusters on brambles fat with stolen nourishment. And then there was the Weasley twins’ contraband “wahoo, lift-off” fireworks-and-bombs extravaganza, turning the whole battlefield into chaos.

A total melee.

“In chaos, it’s my perfect moment to slip in a bit of mischief,” Ethan murmured, eyes lighting up. While the brain-devolving Voldemort was fighting himself into a frenzy, Ethan quietly retreated behind the others.

The Aurors and the students flicked Ethan a look, then stepped up in perfect unspoken coordination, shielding him. Hearts playing-card soldiers stacked together in front of him, forming a solid wall. In a battlefield this brutal, they carved out a patch of clean ground for Ethan by force.

I’ll show them an even greater artistic miracle, Ethan vowed.

As for inspiration, it had come the moment he saw Luna. Like the moon falling from the sky into the mortal world.

“I’ll paint… 【Skyfall】.”

With a sweep of his hand, Ethan raised a blank canvas amid the booming tremors of battle. “Just hearing the name, it already sounds beautiful,” he said softly, almost fondly.