Chapter 102

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I quickly put on my shoes and robe, slung my bag over my shoulder, conjured up the disillusionment charm, and jogged through the castle. It was only on the stairs from the entrance to the common room that I stopped and thought with my head - I should not allow hormones and dementors to make hasty decisions. There is darkness around, Lumos cannot be used - the professors will notice. So? The Forbidden Section had a Cat's Eye charm. Except you put them on two drops of blood and drip them in your eyes. Recently banned as a subsection of blood magic and can only be used by a qualified person registered with the Ministry. In general, the Ministry registers all wizards who practice dangerous areas of magic. Dangerous in the first place for the wizard himself because no one wants to clean up the consequences of inept actions. Such practices are forbidden, but nowhere does it say that they require qualification and certification from the relevant guilds. It seems to me that this is where all the misunderstandings and "dark magic" come from. Forbidden means dark, and the rest are just minor nuances.

Returning to the common room and taking a pen from the table, I turned it into a needle and pricked my finger. A drop of blood began to swell at the tip. I pointed my wand and performed an exact sequence of swishes and images.

"Filis Noctis."

The droplet has acquired a characteristic yellow color and a soft dull glow - the correct enchantment. Raising my finger to my eye, I touched it with a drop. It is very strange and unusual not to have light and shadow sources in the field of view. It is not recommended to drip into the second eye if you do not want to go through with such vision for a couple of days, and Finite will not help.

Now I left the common room and walked briskly up the staircases and corridors, conjuring up Revelio and Homenum Revelio, looking for people and animals. Corridors, stairs, corridors, offices... I went around all the strategically important and at least somewhat necessary places for a fugitive, all the way to the kitchen. Sadly, I found only a couple of rats, which were almost immediately caught by the house-elves. Eventually, I got tired of it, so I decided to test an important theory.

I got to the owlery. The birds were awake. I took off my charms and grabbed the first owl I saw, which was obviously not happy about it, and summoned Timmy, the house-elf who was always helping us.

"The young wizard call..."

"Here, hold," I gave an owl to the confused house-elf, and she dutifully held out her hand. What a funny picture - the house-elf looks at the owl in surprise, receiving a symmetrical look in return.

"Do owls only carry letters, or do they also carry parcels?"

"Parcels too, young wizard," Timmy, who peeked out from behind the owl, nodded.

"Excellent. Can the owl find the Animagus? "

"Of course! Name magic, young wizard! Complicated magic."

The note would arouse suspicion, but the object was unlikely. Relentlessly, I ripped a piece of sleeve from my navy blue pajama suit, which I still can't get used to wearing, enchanted the fabric as a not-long-lasting beacon with a mental leash, and slipped it to the owl.

"Give it to Peter Pettigrew, also known as Wormtail. He could be in the shape of a rat. He's in this castle, so you'd better fly down the corridors."

The owl looked at me with displeasure.

"And if you do, then the best meat from the kitchen of the castle will be your reward."

Such a statement greatly intrigued the owl. The bird prepared to take off and looked at me as if to say: "Look, man, you promised." It flew up and disappeared into the corridors of the castle.

"Timmy, can you carry me around the castle?"

House-elf shook her head dejectedly, lowering her ears.

"Well, then, go to the kitchen and prepare the best piece of meat for the owl."

Timmy looked at me cheerfully, nodded, and with a snap of her fingers disappeared. Dumbledore will find out? The hell with him. He didn't seem to have shown himself badly here, though in case he turned out to be a bastard, I don't consider myself capable of uncovering the machinations of an experienced old man. Having raised my indicators to the maximum with hemomancy and again imposed a complex of hiding charms, I straightened the strap of my bag on my shoulder and rushed after the owl with great speed. I mentally felt the beacon on it like the back of my hand.

After wandering the halls, I caught up with the flying owl at the women's bathroom entrance. That's where the Chamber of Secrets is. The owl looked as if it had been staring into the wall the whole time, escorting its target. Now it sat on the sink and slowly accompanied the target I couldn't see into the wall, gradually lowering its gaze.

"I see, little birdie. We need to go down. Open-s-s-s-s-s-s..."

The owl jumped off the circle of sinks that had suddenly begun to spread apart, and as soon as the passage opened even slightly, the owl dived down into the darkness. So I followed - it wasn't the first time. A few seconds before the exit, the words echoed to me:

"Oh, what is it? Cloth? To me... Damn it!"

It was at that moment that I was thrown into the hall with bones. I cast a Protego in front of me, and with good reason, a powerful Stupefy beam struck the shield. I was in flight from the pipe to the floor of bones, and in the faint light, I recognized a fat little man in rags and with an astonishingly disgusting appearance, screaming that he was a rat. With a panicked look on his face, the man was pointing his wand in my direction, beyond the Protego film. I was losing my invisibility because of the spellcasting, but my perception was still fast. I conjured three Stupefy in a row as I flew, but the creepy freak surprisingly easily jumped aside, conjuring Protégo at the same time.

Finally landing on the floor of bones, I noticed, from the corner of my eye, a strange construction of what remained of a human skeleton, but it was incomplete. Curious, but not enough to ask. Wormtail was on one knee by then, looking frightened but determined. The film of his Protego was gone.

"Avada Kedavra!" shouted Wormtail hysterically, and a beam of spell burst from his wand with a bright flash.