Chapter 365

Leaning the parchment against the quartz crystal, I held it with a ring - the quartz crystal blinked, the parchment disappeared, but two more appeared next to the crystal. One of them smoothly flew off in an unknown direction, perhaps to some filing cabinet, and the second, apparently, is intended for me.

Taking the parchment and putting it in my bag, I hurried to leave the ministry — there was no time left. I got out much faster, and when there were ten minutes left to get back to Hogwarts, I was already standing on the street, looking at the night-lit sky over London. Apparation — and now I'm already on the border with Hogwarts. Concealment charms, maximum acceleration, and run, run. Well, under maximum acceleration, I can easily catch up with those who fly on the "Firebolt" - catch up and laugh, catch up and…

"Stress has a negative effect on your thought process."

Stress, in general, has a negative effect, though you can't do without it.

Three minutes before the right time, I ran into one of the empty dead-end corridors of the castle, took a statue of Skeeter out of my pocket, and returned her to human form. Before she could protest, I pointed my wand at her.

"Obliviate," I uttered the verbal formula of the spell, putting in a clear statement, "Erase the last month." Without any sampling.

Rita's eyes glazed over, but the process goes very quickly - a dozen seconds. I took her things out of my bag with my telekinesis, returned her wand in a special pocket, put the bag on my shoulder, and went to the headmaster's office under the spell of concealment.

I found myself in front of the gargoyle just as it moved aside, opening the passage to the staircase that Dumbledore was descending.

"I've done everything, Headmaster."

"Done what?" he looked at me questioningly. "You know, Mr. Knight, I'm in a hurry to the hospital wing. You might want to check on your friend."

If I hadn't noticed the sly glint in the headmaster's eyes a few seconds later, I would have thought that I had got somewhere wrong.

"What a joke..."

We went to the hospital wing, and on the way, unnoticed by a possible observer, I returned the Time-Turner to the headmaster. He also imperceptibly, as if he had been doing nothing but passing the shivs under the table all his life, accepted the trinket and hid it in the sleeve of his purple robe.

"Did you learn anything interesting?"

"Apart from the fact that nothing really bad happened, and Slytherin House is no longer satisfied with Malfoy as a leader? No."

"No wonder," the headmaster shook his head. "I'm talking about Mr. Malfoy. Given his character and abilities, it was only a matter of time, but, frankly, I assumed this only in the sixth year."

"Headmaster, may I ask you a question?"

Dumbledore nodded, and we walked out into the stairwells.

"Why aren't you using that thing?"

"That's your personal opinion, Mr. Knight," the Headmaster smiled, but a second later, his smile was gone. "The scariest thing about owning this thing is the overwhelming urge to try to fix something. For example, some tragedy happened half an hour ago, and you have this thing in your hands. It seems to you that it's only worth turning... just one turn. But the trouble is, it's already happened, so there's no point in turning it. Decided to turn — but failed, did not have time, or even turned out to be the culprit. If you didn't turn it — it seems as if it was you who allowed this tragedy. In any case, the burden of guilt itself gets on your shoulders. Once, twice, ten times. Possession of such an artifact is terrible torture because nothing can be changed. But in such cases as yours, as you can see for yourself, it has a certain benefit."

At the end of his speech, the headmaster smiled, and we reached the hospital wing. Once again, we had to walk through the rows of moaning wounded, the names of the special "figures" of whom I remembered, yes... I remembered well.

Having reached the curtained "shelter" of the three girls, Dumbledore coughed tactfully and asked if we could come in. Daphne had already calmed down and was lying quietly in bed, pulling the blanket over her head. Astoria and Hermione were playing dead calm, and it looked like potions were involved. Lady Greengrass was sitting in the chair beside Daphne's bed, holding her hand out from under the covers.

"Hermione..." I turned to the girl.

She shifted her gaze to me, smiling stupidly and almost imperceptibly.

"Ahh... Max..."

Dumbledore looked at everyone, noted faintly that it would be necessary to moderate Madam Pomfrey's ardor in doses of sedatives.

"Hermione. If anyone comes to you with complaints about what happened, feel free to send them all to me. Even if Merlin and Morgana come."

"No problem..." Hermione nodded and slowly shifted her surprised gaze to Astoria sitting next to her. "Can you imagine...? I just noded sooo hard..."

Astoria sat there, not reacting to anything, and after a couple of seconds, turned to Hermione.

"You're... a Cactus."

"Right..."

I looked at Delphine - she was adequate and thinking about something very important.

"If you go crusading on them, call me."

Delphine just nodded, continuing to think about her own thing, and I left this wonderful place. We need to develop a plan and strike already, undercutting the capabilities of the Dark Lord and his minions. Special attention should be paid to Nott. From the looks of it - he's a lunatic. That's a lot worse than Draco - at least he's just a fool.