After sending Grindelwald on his way, Tom turned back to the Crown of the Blazing Sun magical circuit.
He had a feeling it would pair beautifully with the Phoenix Bloodline he'd earned from the trials. Combined, the two should amplify his fire-based magic to a significantly higher level.
Speaking of the trials, Dumbledore had been flying all over the world lately, which meant Tom's sparring sessions with Fawkes had become considerably less frequent. Not that it mattered much. He still couldn't win, so those sessions were little more than recreation anyway, a way to keep his hand in while giving Fawkes an excuse to stretch his wings.
The finish line for their little race had long since moved past Istanbul. Damascus now. Tehran. Places even further east than that.
By Tom's estimation, the moment he could sustain ten simultaneous units of spiritual energy, he would have a genuine shot at beating Fawkes under the right conditions.
...
Friday morning, Tom arrived at Defence Against the Dark Arts wearing an expression that could only be described as profoundly unbothered by the concept of being awake.
"What were you doing last night?" Hermione asked, eyeing him with mild concern. Tom was practically a machine when it came to energy levels. Seeing him sluggish was unusual, and while he fell asleep in class often enough, that was always out of deliberate boredom rather than actual exhaustion. "Did Daphne keep you up asking for a story again?"
"Hermione, don't go around accusing innocent people!"
Daphne, who had been slumped face-down on her desk in a matching state of semi-consciousness, somehow found the strength to lift her head and wave a small indignant fist in her own defence. "I went to sleep with Astoria last night, I'll have you know."
"Then why are you just as tired?"
"We started a pillow fight and completely lost track of time. It was nearly dawn by the time we actually went to sleep."
Hermione stared at the small golden-haired girl who had already collapsed back onto her desk, and shook her head slowly. She failed to notice that several Slytherin girls nearby were wearing expressions of barely concealed misery.
The reason for their suffering was simple. Daphne and Astoria had been in their dormitory running their pillow war, and the two young ladies had enjoyed themselves thoroughly while everyone else in the room had been kept awake, enduring it until nearly dawn.
Astoria, for her part, had a purpose. Keeping her exhausting sister happily occupied and well away from Tom when he was trying to focus was practically a public service. Daphne, on the other hand, operated entirely on instinct. Growing up with every comfort attended to made it genuinely difficult to develop an awareness of other people's suffering.
"I was working on a new piece of magic last night," Tom said into the surface of his desk. "Didn't sleep at all. Being tired is completely normal. A few lessons of napping and I'll be fine."
Which was, technically, not normal in the slightest. With his constitution and the density of his spiritual energy, he could go two or three days without sleep without any meaningful difficulty.
The truth was simpler. Tom had done it to himself.
In a single night, he had roughed out the Crown of the Blazing Sun magical circuit within his own body. Naturally, once he had a new enhancement, he needed to test it somewhere. The results were satisfying. The temperature of his fire magic had climbed by several significant tiers, and with further refinement of the circuit, it had every reason to become one of his most powerful trump cards.
And then his extremely clever brain had presented him with a thought.
Fire and ice working simultaneously. Why not?
He tried it.
That was where things had gone sideways.
Two completely opposing energies generating at once had nearly gone out of control inside his body. Fortunately his reactions were fast enough. He threw himself into Thought Acceleration immediately, kept his mind in a state of absolute stillness, and spent a gruelling stretch of time carefully guiding both forces into sequential bursts rather than letting them collide.
The energy expenditure had been catastrophic. By the time the crisis resolved itself, he felt exactly like someone who had stayed awake for several nights running, completely unable to summon even the most basic alertness.
At that moment, Lupin stepped through the classroom door right as the bell rang. Hermione barely suppressed a laugh, catching herself just in time. It was fortunate Lupin didn't hear.
What she had noticed, and not for the first time, was that Lupin looked considerably worse than Tom did. This had become a pattern since term began. Every month without fail, Lupin took several days off.
And...
The young witch had formed a suspicion. She just wasn't confident enough yet to say it aloud.
"Put your textbooks away," Lupin said, apparently unaware that Hermione had already arrived at a rather accurate conclusion about him. Despite his haggard appearance, his smile was as warm as it always was.
The students complied without hesitation, whisking their books away with practised ease. All of them except Tom and Daphne, both of whom remained exactly where they were, asleep.
Lupin didn't bother with them. Those two didn't require his concern.
"Last semester, Professor Wilkinson held a public duelling class. That was genuinely a good idea."
Every eye in the room brightened at once. Was Lupin about to revive that?
The duelling class had been, without question, the single most popular event in recent school memory. Yes, there was the actual duelling. But the real draw was the drama. Every session had served as a stage for some ongoing student conflict or another to reach its spectacular conclusion, and the student body had loved every moment of it. Cheating boyfriends, cheating girlfriends, stolen partners, love triangles of every imaginable configuration, nothing had been too outlandish, and everything had eventually found its way onto that stage.
Sensing the collective wave of anticipation, Lupin gave an apologetic smile.
"I'm sorry to say that my energy won't stretch to organising a full school-wide event. That's genuinely beyond me."
The brightness in the room deflated visibly.
"However..." Lupin's tone shifted. "As your Defence professor, I do have an obligation to help you develop your duelling skills. Especially given how unsettled things have become out there lately."
The Order of the Phoenix had been reassembled. Lupin was among its members, and what he had seen and heard through those meetings had left him with no desire to leave his students unprepared.
"I've decided to set aside occasional lessons as guidance sessions. You're welcome to challenge me freely, and after each duel I'll share your weaknesses and suggest ways to improve."
He paused, and then allowed himself a rare moment of dry humour. "Only one at a time, though."
Enough people laughed that the mood lifted considerably.
"The first demonstration session will be next week. This classroom certainly isn't large enough for what I have in mind."
With that settled, Lupin moved into the actual lesson and dragged forward the rattling crate that held a Grindylow.