Chapter 17
The only time I took a break was when the owls brought letters. We went shopping in London, for everything we needed could have been found in Hogsmeade, but we had to deal with the girl's status. I, as an adult, promptly became her guardian for a fee of a hundred galleons, and the smiling and understanding official earned a whole bunch of curses. Salazar was not only a true master of multi-component poisons and a great potion maker, he was also a master and innovator of maleficism.
So the civil servant will live, but hardly love. And he'll die in agony in five years unless he performs rituals, of course. After the service we sat in a cafe, first in a muggle cafe, celebrated my little sister's birthday, then we had ice cream in Diagon Alley. I bought her a broomstick so she could fly, it was a sport. I got one for myself too, in case it comes in handy.
Long live nonsense! To get to school we had to go to London, praise the portal-key to the platform, then get on the train, and somehow I completely forgot that I was also the headman. All in all, I lost a day and the will to work. I even checked to see if I was cursed. No, I'm fine, praise the magic. In fact, just before school I had made an interesting plan to protect myself and my sister with a magical contract and a bunch of mutual vows.
This made it difficult for anyone to find out about my affairs and harm us in any way. Amulets and charms, ordered from catalogs and delivered by parcel at breakfast on the first day of school, cost a considerable sum, but they were worth it. In addition, I made jewelry for the little one, which was rewarded with squeals and hugs. Of course, such unusual behavior did not hide from the attention of girlfriends, and they arranged an interrogation with passion, but achieved little. The purebloods who understood what was going on nodded respectfully, enlightened the less knowledgeable and began to speculate. They generally had a good time.
The last year of study at Hogwarts was a Ministerial Examination, and a very serious one at that. So people studied as hard as they could. It was much easier for me, I looked at the booklets with last year's questions on the subjects, smiled, it was nothing. Emma had turned down Head Girl badge, poor thing, mostly because of Snape. Her dream of becoming a wizard had hit a brick wall in the form of a grim Potions Master.
So, in addition to my duties of driving the freshmen and organizing group lessons, I volunteered to help her as much as I could. When, on the third Practical Lesson in an abandoned classroom, I saw not one girl, but six and a couple of boys, I was not surprised. I spent my weekends working on the house and grounds, casting spells, drawing runes, and generally strengthening myself as best I could. I continued to train hard in mental magic in general and occlumency in particular. Little by little, I worked on artifacts. I looked at the HECC occasionally, as I had research journals to fill out. The hydroponic method of growing mandrake didn't require replanting, just changing compounds, fantastic. No worries, no hassle, just add potions in vials with stasis and expansion charms and fill the fertilizer tanks. And the yields are amazing, just wow.
I'm doing too many things at the same time, what can I do, I haven't been able to clearly establish the process, so I'm just trying to deal with it. Of course there were objective reasons. The main one is lack of information.
February has been snowy and blizzardy, and I'm moping. I'd like to smoke now, but that's bad for a wizard, terribly bad. So I sit on the windowsill, tapping my foot and watching the swirl of snowflakes. Somehow, I don't want to leave the school, somehow, I've gotten used to it. I like practicing with the little ones. In fact, I think I should try my hand at teaching.
Money, artifacts and everything else is still interesting, but there is no fire and excitement. Except for the creation of the manor. I'm bored, I'm tired, I should just rest and sleep. I'll take the little one to a resort this summer. Yes, I'll do that. I'm going to sleep now.
The winter moping ended with the first warm days of March and a snowball that flew into my chest, aptly launched by Anna's hand. "Wait a minute!" — I mimed an anxious scream and ran after the laughing little one. Ha, how could it be otherwise, a bunch of sophomores, supported by freshmen, gave me a shower of snowballs. I would have died like that, ignominiously covered in melted snow, had it not been for the help of the boys who stood up for their favorite handman.
The snowball fight began to gain momentum, drawing in all the people who met and crossed our paths, and eventually turned into a two-day entertainment. By the afternoon, four ice fortresses stood tall in the castle courtyard, their faculty banners flying proudly above them. The brave Gryffindors attacked the Slytherin stronghold without fear or doubt. They even managed to take the first wall, but the cunning snakes erected a second, and as a result, the lion cubs who broke through were literally drowned in the snowballs of the opponents who occupied the dominant position.
The ravens, amidst the noise, tried to seize the stronghold of the golden ones without defenders, but the wedge of badgers, led by me, struck in the flank, allowing the few defenders to defend the fortress. A sea of squealing, joy, fun, hundreds of snowballs flying simultaneously, students flushed from running. All in all, we had a great time. Of course, half the school had to be drugged with a pepper potion to keep them from getting sick, but that was nothing.
Spring, which had started perfectly, made me realize that it was time to settle down. Every weekend since September I have been putting on protection. There is no end to the work, and in general there is no limit to perfection, but something really different and effective cannot be applied without camouflage, and it cannot be used without batteries. To fortify walls for the third time or, conditionally speaking, to fire complexes for the fifth time with the next layer of camouflage and disgusting is senseless.
Because each new one is half as effective as the previous one. So it's better to at least do some decorating and furnishing. Not to spend the summer in a rented room when you have your own house. I spent a few weekends visiting London, looking at furniture and interiors. Still, it's easier for me to repeat some of what I've seen, even if in a highly modified form, than to come up with a design from scratch. Somehow nature has robbed me of my artistic taste. Honestly, I tried to keep everything in the same style, at least at the level of the floors, it even seemed pretty good. Well, let my sister judge it, she has a good sense of beauty and I, if anything, I can always redo it.