Chapter 413

Crossing the border of anti-apparation charms, I moved to the country house of Lady Greengrass and walked briskly to the door. Like last time, soft yellow light was burning in the windows, and as soon as I went inside, I smelled warmth, some fresh pastries, and there was still a decorated Christmas tree in the corner by the fireplace. A house-elf in a clean pillowcase ran through the main hall, cheerfully tapping her heels on the floor, carrying a freshly cooked pie in her outstretched arms. The house-elf was in a hurry, and when she saw me out of the corner of her eye, she almost jumped in surprise and stopped, looking at me, then at the pie, then at me again. There was a kind of panic on the house-elf's face, and she didn't know exactly what to do. In the end, she just disappeared with the pie, immediately appearing next to me.

"Lady Delphine is waiting for you in the hall, yes. Where she was last time. Yes, yes," the house-elf nodded. "This house-elf will definitely punish herself, but there's no way she can see the guest off..."

"I'll walk myself, don't worry. Well done."

The house-elf straightened up and disappeared, and from the kitchen, which was far away in the right wing, there was a barely distinguishable noise - she went about her business.

After cleaning myself with magic, I headed along the route already known to me to the minus second basement level, where a passage was opened. Once again, in the clean and almost empty ritual hall, I noticed Delphine sitting in a chair against the wall, reading a book under the light of a Lumos. She turned her attention to me at once and, putting the book down on the armrest, stood toward me.

"You haven't changed your mind?"

"Not at all," I shook my head negatively and took the bag off my shoulder, handing it to Delphine. "Let it stay with you for now."

Lady Greengrass took the bag in one hand, and in the other, she suddenly had a bottle with a potion. It looked exactly the same as the last time.

"You already know the procedure."

I took the potion and stood in the center of the already prepared ritual scheme. After drinking the potion and throwing the bottle aside, I saw Delphine activate the circuit.

"Good luck," she nodded briefly, took the bag, and apparated.

The hum of my own pulse sounded in the ears again.

«A clear mental attitude has been formed,» Rowena informed me. «I think I can coordinate the actions of your personalities.»

I hope so.

Another rumbling sound of my heart and the noise of blood in my ears. The world once again seemed to explode in a multitude of shards, shattering like a mirror.

***

As soon as the ritual diagram in the middle of the closed stone hall went out, the tall blond man in a black suit and cloak, standing in the middle of the diagram, changed subtly. Looking for a few seconds with burning blue eyes somewhere beyond the walls surrounding him, he jerked his head a couple of times in extremely quick, jerky movements.

"Pesky little voice..." he said sparingly into nowhere. "The second one growls correctly. The threat to the nest must be eliminated."

The blond immediately disappeared into an apparition funnel, appearing at the very top of one of the tallest coniferous trees in the forest nearby. He stood on it as if he had no weight, and the top didn't even budge beneath him. The boy looked up to the sky, looking at the glowing half of the moon's disk. Reaching out to it, he covered the dark part of it.

"Only half..."

He disappeared again into the vortex of the apparition.

***

In the county of Wiltshire, on the edge of a fairly large flat clearing surrounded on all sides by a low forest, a tall young boy with blond hair appeared from the funnel of the apparition. He looked silently at the large old stone mansion, although it was hidden by all possible charms and except that Fidelius was not on it. It was in this mansion, in the middle of a high stone hall with rich decorations, engravings, and other design solutions designed to show the monumentality of the house and the prosperity of its owners, that the wizard, Voldemort, known to many, gathered his faithful and less faithful henchmen at a long wooden table for the umpteenth time. He was eager to find out what successes they could boast of and how well his errands were being carried out because the recent partial failure had caused many irreparable losses in his ranks.

No one could tell how the blond man, Max Knight, knew that the Dark Lord was in the building, but it wasn't important. Taking a step across the clearing in the direction of the house, he dragged behind him three limp bodies, some tramps he caught in Knockturn Alley before coming here. Werewolves, or just criminals? History is silent about this.

After taking only a couple of steps, Max jerked his head suddenly and elusively, looking at the mansion with blazing blue eyes.

"Wasting my energy on such garbage..."

With these words, the boy pulled the magic wand out of the holster on his forearm with one hand and set the other aside. At the same moment, one of the limp bodies of the tramps levitated into the hand set aside, and Max firmly took him by the neck, simultaneously pointing his wand at the Malfoy family mansion. The tramp twitched like having a seizure and bright red veins started to cover his body, drying up, and on the tip of Max's wand, in the blink of an eye, six complex rune schemes formed from blood, one after the other. They began to glow red, and the brighter they became, the more the tramp dried up…