HP: The Wizard Who Paints with Magic

Chapter 313 - 314: Ethan: Kneel, Voldemort!!

When Ethan stepped out from the shattered mirror fragments and the towering plume of dust, he was already back in his original form.

Black hair swept in the wind, eyes blazing like torches. He stood upright in the chaos, steady as an anchor, and the entire situation seemed to stabilise in an instant.

"Ethan!" Harry cried, joy bursting through the fear.

He stared at the president of the Morning Star Club, the wizarding world's new Saviour, and his heart finally slammed back into place.

"Yeah. I'm here." Ethan turned his head and smiled, his handsome face lit by that golden surge of magic.

For a moment, he looked every bit like the righteous hero who always arrived at the last second to turn the tide.

Then Harry watched, completely speechless, as ghostly blue witchfire crawled up half of Ethan's face.

Flesh dissolved. Skin peeled away. In the blink of an eye, it became a terrifying mask of white bone. Behind him, a pair of torn, broken wings ripped into existence as if forced out from his back.

"Hee hee. I'll make sure none of them leave alive!" Ethan's grin stretched wide, excitement twisting his expression into something almost unrecognisable.

In an instant, he had switched sides at the table. The Dark wizard table.

Harry had no words.

A Death Eater stared and blurted, baffled, "Wait, that kid was one of ours all along? Charging straight into enemy territory, bloody brilliant!"

Yeah. That was the right vibe. Far too right.

Looking at a face that could no longer be neatly filed under "human", Harry let out a helpless laugh and sighed. He tightened his grip on his wand, steadied himself, and forced his courage back into place.

With Ethan leading, they were not going to lose.

"Ethan Vincent!" Voldemort roared from above, his voice a furious hiss that scraped at the air.

He had suddenly been dragged to Hogwarts, and Aurors had already been waiting. How could he not understand what this meant? From beginning to end, his so called "resurrection ritual" had been arranged down to the last detail by that damned Ethan Vincent!

Voldemort could not even imagine the mockery Ethan must have been enjoying in his heart, back when he had disguised himself as "Mr Lamp" and crept close, smiling along while Voldemort basked in fantasies of success and world domination.

"But you never would have guessed it," Voldemort snarled, "that I would receive the help of fate, that this new body would grant me power beyond anything I've ever held!"

With a thunderous boom, blood red tentacles surged like living roots and, in the blink of an eye, drilled into the Death Eaters' bodies.

"Tch. What's that cursed rubbish doing?" Moody clicked his tongue, eyeing the tentacles.

He barked orders for the Aurors to raise their defences, then advanced in a disciplined line, firing spells with steady, practiced precision. These were elite Aurors stationed in the maze on Dumbledore's orders, and even though they had been told Voldemort was about to return, seeing this with their own eyes still made Moody recoil.

This was completely wrong. When did the wizarding world end up in some eldritch horror storyline?

Still, the Death Eaters had committed atrocities beyond counting. The Aurors shook off their shock and met them head on without hesitation.

"Hah. So much for retirement," Moody sneered. "Don't waste spells on the tentacles—that isn't our target!"

He stared hard at the black haired boy rising into the air and shouted, "Do not waste spells on the tentacles. That isn't our target!"

"Focus fire. Bring down the Death Eaters!"

Spells flashed through the dim maze of thorny walls, bursting like fireworks as they slammed into cloaked figures. Yet instead of dropping, the Death Eaters screamed.

"So painful! It hurts, it hurts!"

"Master, please, no! We're your loyal followers!"

The cries overlapped in waves. Every Death Eater pierced by those tentacles had their features twisted with agony, faces contorted as if their bones were being crushed from the inside.

Goyle Sr, broad and thickset, felt only regret. Total, endless regret.

His eyes bulged. It felt like his organs were being squeezed and shoved out of place, like a serrated blade sawing through his nerves again and again, delivering a bizarre pain that threatened to grind his very soul into dust.

Lucius Malfoy, whose family had always been close to his, had not come.

"The times have changed," Lucius had once said with a grave expression. "Now is the era of the humanoid stars shining."

Back then, Goyle Sr had thought Lucius had finally lost his mind. In his heart, he had even mocked him, convinced Malfoy was just a coward.

Now, it was clear who the real fool was.

"Gregory…" In the final fragments of his consciousness, Goyle Sr whispered the name of his son, still attending Slytherin.

Strangely enough, even with his hands stained by the blood of countless "sons" and "fathers", when it became his turn, fear still arrived. Cold and unstoppable.

Voldemort's breath rasped like a beast. Flesh spread over the Death Eaters' bodies, swallowing them up, turning them into walking corpses, humanoid monsters.

The wands that had once chosen their masters clattered to the ground.

With a savage roar, they lunged at the Aurors.

Ethan tilted his head, about to move.

A sudden gust tore past his ear.

Bang.

A blood red tentacle, shaped like a spear of living meat, slammed into Ethan's protective barrier with tremendous force. The impact drove Ethan backwards through the air by several metres.

Ethan lifted his gaze and met Voldemort's vicious grin.

"Your opponent is me, boy," Voldemort said slowly, his eyes thick with malice.

A low, guttural laugh escaped him, but it was laced with desperation.

"You think you've won? You think this is over? You stole my ritual, my magic, my very life! Everything I was meant to reclaim—my power, my body, my return—gone! You took it all, twisted it, and left me with nothing!"

His voice cracked, rising to a snarl.

"I should be reborn! I should be invincible! But you… you meddling fool, you arrogant upstart—you have left me a monster, a shadow, a slave to your whims! Even my Horcruxes cannot save me now! If not for Death itself granting me this wretched new form, I would be dust once more!"

He spat the words, each one heavy with venom and disbelief.

"I will not only kill you. I will kill everyone at Hogwarts! I will burn this castle to the ground, and I will make you watch as everything you love turns to ash!"

Including Dumbledore.

Right now, Voldemort felt invincible.

The flesh mountain began to writhe and surge forward, waving tentacles tipped with staring eyeballs, rolling over the thorn hedges like a natural disaster. It pushed through the maze and advanced toward the castle.

Voldemort's laughter shook the air. "I'm going to make you watch, with your own eyes, as your friends and your teachers die miserably in despair!"

"You do love the sound of your own voice," Ethan said quietly.

He raised his left hand. Crimson lightning condensed into a forked lance, crackling into existence in his grip.

In his right hand, a silver-white warhammer formed, gleaming with holy radiance.

Red and gold wove together in his hands, as if he held darkness and light at once.

Armour inlaid with black dragon scales wrapped over Ethan layer by layer, unbreakable, wreathed in rolling black mist. It carried a cursed power that devoured energy itself.

At the same time, the entire thorn maze moved.

Massive tangles of brambles rose like ropes and climbed over Voldemort's body, driving barbs into the flesh. They drank greedily, and, blooming after bloom opened, vivid red roses slick with stolen life.

[Wings of the Death Bird]. [Black Dragon's Curse-Death Thunder Spear]. [Cursed Dragon-Scale Armour].

Every spell pushed to its limit.

This was the potion's effect.

"Ah," Ethan murmured, "I feel stronger than ever. This is the accumulation of everything I have built, stroke by stroke."

His cobalt blue eyes locked onto the roaring abomination of bone, blood, and tentacles that Voldemort had become. He raised his weapons and shouted, voice like a verdict.

"You foolish pawn played by a higher being. Since you fear death, then I, Ethan Vincent, will grant you your fated death!"

"Kneel, Voldemort!"

"In your dreams!" Voldemort screamed.

Gold and crimson collided with a deafening boom, like two meteors smashing together. The shockwave ripped open the heavy cloud cover in an instant, revealing a lightless night sky.

That violent pulse of magic swept across the entire maze, surging all the way to the spectator stands.

"What was that?!"

"Is that some surprise finale Ethan prepared for the task?"

"What sort of surprise finale is a new boss fight… Oh. The organiser is Ethan. Right, fair enough."

Most of the students stared into the distance with excitement and curiosity, eyes fixed on the "red mountain" towering in the maze.

Only a small number sensed something was terribly wrong.

"T-that thing… what is it?" Hermione lowered her binoculars, her face pale with fear.

Through the lenses, she had seen it clearly. That blood red flesh mountain was nothing like Ethan's "beautiful" but grotesque artworks.

This was a creation of pure malice. An evil thing, crawling closer and closer.

"The Cup is a Portkey, and Headmaster Dumbledore even erased the viewing water screen… and now this monster appears out of nowhere!" Hermione's voice shook.

Even though she could not make out every detail at that distance, she felt it in her bones. The figure fighting the flesh mountain had to be Ethan.

"What… what's happening?" Hermione trembled, lost and helpless.

Then, in the corner of her eye, she saw movement near the Ravenclaw section.

A lone figure pushed against the flow of the crowd and started down from the stands without a moment's hesitation.

"Luna?"