The evening carried that particular charge of unfinished business. Nobody left the Great Hall right after dinner. They lingered, watching Kevin, debating what he was about to attempt.
Dumbledore noted it immediately. He sighed — the boy was nothing but creative headaches — and stood to dismiss them. "Feast is over, everyone. Return to your common rooms with your prefects. Submissions are open at any time before Thursday."
He gave the age restriction some weight, then flicked his wand. A white line traced itself around the Goblet of Fire — the Age Line, clean and luminous.
The students still didn't move. Every eye had gone to Kevin.
Kevin stood, raised his wand, and a deep red flame shot up just outside the Age Line — not a burst of fire, but something else. Thick. Dense. The colour of cooling magma you could almost touch the texture of. A second flick, and it drew itself together into a wall: three metres high, curving all the way around the Goblet.
The heat hit the back rows like walking too close to a forge. Students in the front flinched and stepped back without meaning to.
Dumbledore's eyebrows rose. He'd felt that spell. When had the boy developed lava-class flame control? The precision alone—
Kevin cast an Isolation Charm from outside the ring. The radiant heat faded. He turned to face the hall.
"A friendly note. The Isolation Charm is just to prevent accidents. If you want to try breaking through, do it with a professor watching." He paused. "This barrier only applies to Hogwarts students. Students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang — it will open for you automatically. Your submissions are unaffected."
He was handing fake Moody a clear window to get Harry's name through. Intentional.
Karkaroff and Madame Maxime studied this underage student with considerably more seriousness than they'd given him before the meal. Impressive raw power, yes. The control to make that fire discriminate between friend and foe — that was a different category entirely.
Job done, Kevin left with Hermione. The Gryffindors cheered and fell in behind them. Students who'd planned to block his exit quietly moved aside.
A Beauxbatons girl stepped up to the wall after Kevin had gone. As promised, the fire parted for her.
A Hogwarts seventh-year tried next. The wall didn't move.
Even students who knew Kevin personally couldn't push it. The fire simply remained.
This was what Hephaestus's Command actually did. It followed the caster's intent precisely — not a general blaze but a directed one, capable of distinguishing exactly who it was meant to stop. Unlike Fiendfyre, which burned without caring.
Kevin had sunk all ten free talent points from his Year Three system rewards into Spellcasting, which had brought his total to thirty-eight. Eight times the average wizard. And talent didn't accumulate the way knowledge did — you couldn't grind toward it. Only the naturally talented broke through the hard ceilings, and Kevin had long since left most ceilings behind.
He'd added one specific weakness to the barrier deliberately. Everything had an opposite. Only someone who understood the underlying theory of Hephaestus's Command could exploit it — and virtually no one did.
Back in the Gryffindor common room, the mood was celebratory. Even the upperclassmen weren't bitter; they'd spent the evening watching Kevin take on the Ministry, two foreign schools, and his own headmaster, and they were impressed in spite of themselves.
"Kevin, that was incredible," Ron said, dropping onto the sofa beside him with the grin of someone who'd just watched a very satisfying fight. "You should have seen the other schools' faces when the spell went up. They were cocky about it. Then they weren't."
Even Krum had held back after one look.
"Ron," Kevin said, slinging an arm around his shoulder, "let me show you a couple of things. Go ruin their evening properly."
He murmured the counter-spell steps into Ron's ear. Ron's eyes went wide. Then wider.
"Kevin," Ron said, pulling back and staring at him with dead seriousness, "you are my best mate. Officially."
He grabbed Kevin's shoulder to underscore it. "If Hermione hadn't already claimed you, I would have set you up with Ginny."
Harry stared.
Hermione stared.
"Shut it," Kevin said, removing Ron's hand before the sentence could get worse. "You're going to annoy half the school."
Hermione had no idea what they'd planned — but she pinched Kevin anyway. Classic.
Ron bolted, vibrating with excitement, no destination announced.
By the next morning, Ron was famous.
The reason was simple: everyone — Hogwarts students, Beauxbatons girls, Durmstrang boys — had been trying and failing to touch Kevin's lava wall. Then Ron strolled up, waved his wand once, and dropped the wall to half a metre. It snapped back to three metres in seconds — but those seconds, compared to everyone else managing exactly nothing, were extraordinary.
Students clustered around him immediately, begging for the secret.
Ron just shrugged. "No secret. Just skill." Then he walked away.
He'd stolen the entire show.
Kevin had only given him the basics of the counter-principle — enough to nudge the wall or punch a small hole through it. He'd assumed that would be impressive enough.
Ron had gone further. He'd actually suppressed it. The boy had genuine talent. He simply spent so much of his time not applying it that most people forgot. When he put in the work — really committed — he was formidable.
Kevin had added the weakness deliberately. Every defensive spell had an opposite. Only one. An opponent who didn't know it couldn't touch Hephaestus's Command — but someone who understood the counter could shut it down entirely. Worst case: the spell collapsed and was neutralised. That was the theoretical floor, and Kevin was comfortable with it.