Chapter 14 Animagus.

The secret of the girl with whom I danced during the test was not immediately revealed to me. Yes, I remembered the stories of some wizards who claimed that Magic has a personality and a will of its own. They were not even stories about the same kind of experience that I had, but just deep conviction, but not faith. They all spoke as if they knew it for sure. But at the same time, they did not argue their position in any way. I could understand why, or rather, I, too, like them, had no desire to tell anyone about their visions. It was just for me, sharing it with anyone seemed like something stupid, even disgusting. It is absolutely obvious that all such convinced people have experienced something similar, as I have.

But I still didn't understand how Magic could give someone tasks, set conditions, and endow them with gifts. There were suggestions, but thinking about it seemed useless to me. The main thing I understood the essence of this phenomenon, well, and the boundary conditions will not be able to determine due to the rarity of the phenomenon.

What I experienced was a banal childish outburst. Yes, at this age, a child's ejection is rare, but it happens. In addition, the release occurred under the influence of obscura activity, for the first time not on negative emotions. My desires were too vague, but my subconscious knew what to do, and so the image of a beautiful girl with vague features appeared. That I thought I was being led by magic in the dance was absolutely true, and it was. Except it wasn't Magic, it was my own magic that fulfilled my wish.

And the fact that I was very weak after the dance, it is easy to explain a slight magical exhaustion, I gave everything.

I didn't think about the girl-visions for long. I may be a magician, but I also have events in my life that cannot be explained, or that have no practical application. It was and was, and passed…

After the Chanticleer trial, I became somewhat famous, and there was something like respect for me in all three of the Charmbaton clubs. Carlos told me all the ulterior motives behind the trials. Caramboli was considered the surest way to test a person, it is to put him in a non-standard and dangerous situation, it is best to fight with the subject. In a fight, a person is not inclined to restrain himself. However, there is also a caveat: A student duel, this is not exactly the kind of fight that will reveal a person completely.

Chanticleer, due to their predispositions and character, believe that the most open person becomes in moments of unrestrained fun. For their verification, they place the subject in the appropriate environment. What is on the mind of a sober man is on the tongue of a drunken man.

About Florinela Cortez also spoke. Carlos, speaking about the Florizel test, argued that our method of testing is the most correct. It is impossible to deceive or make a mistake in our test, as it may happen in the case of Chanticleer or Carom. Our club is not tested by any one passion: by fun-by idleness, by anger-by fear; the Florizels test their candidate by the feelings that most distort him. It can be ambition, greed, arrogance, anything. But Florizelle was one major test — the test of power. Power is the greatest passion, which includes many others.

Carlos ' revelations made me believe that there would be no test from the Florizels, as I had already passed it.

All these tests reminded me of Dumbledore, how he arranged tests for Potter, or just started to arrange, raised a hero. Specifically, the Director of something sketched with clubs Sambacana. And perhaps the right information he learned from Flamel, who studied at the Sarbacane.

"Although, of course, it's a life — long ordeal," Carlos said. "A man and his passions are inseparable.

— When Arnas Durand, the former head of the Florizels, arranged a test for a candidate for his place in the club, I was given a big role. He said to me, "Carlos, it's up to you to do this." He gave me a love potion with her hair, " Carlos said. "Yes, yes, the test concerned a girl. Aya Saint-Pri, that was her name. I was in love with her without any potion. And she was nice to me, too, as I thought at the time. Her power over you must be absolute, "Durand had insisted," or the test will be ruined." Of course, I tried to object — "Carlos told his story —" I tried to find an excuse. In my heart, I probably knew that she would not pass the test and that her feelings for me were a fiction. But I didn't want to give it up, my feelings weren't fictitious… In the end, he convinced me, caught me weakly, " Cortez smiled, although there was sadness in his eyes. "If your feelings are real," Durand said, " the potion won't change anything. You're just afraid to find out the truth. After such arguments, I had no choice but to drink the damn potion, " Cortez said. "She bullied me," Cortez said bitterly. "Of course, she realized that someone had spiked my love potion, but she didn't do anything to fix it. She was wiping her feet on me. Then I brought it a little closer, gave it hope, so that later I could push it away more, make it hurt more. She showed me that I meant nothing to her, hugged and kissed others, and sometimes it seemed to me that she was only doing it to make me hurt even more. I thought I was going to die of grief. And a few days later, Arnas gave me the antidote, and I came to my senses, " Carlos said, not looking at me, still in the memories. "Aya Saint-Pri was declared unfit by the results of the inspection, and I was asked to take revenge on her by pouring the same love potion.

Carlos turned to me with a strange expectation in his eyes, as if trying to see something in me. I said nothing, and tried to remain perfectly calm. "I was given the opportunity to pour her a potion," Carlos said. - Believe me, a loner against an organized group, especially without expecting anything like this, will not stand. I just couldn't do it, couldn't pour her the potion, didn't want to. I returned the potion to Duran.

The point is, it was a test not just for Aya, but for me, " Carlos finished.

I nodded, indicating that I understood the meaning of the story. But it turned out that this is not the end of the revelations.

— You're only here for two years, he said, so you will not be able to become the head Florinela. You don't need such a brutal test as I had. You've already passed the easier one!

— What are you talking about?" I asked, realizing that some kind of test from Florinela still was.

"Do you remember the purse of thirty galleons that you found and gave to the potions teacher, Monsieur Lafarge?" That was the test. At least we know you won't sell your friends for thirty galleons.

"Hmm," I said. "It sounds like a story about Jesus and Judas."

"Yeah," Carlos said, " but we thought it would be too petty, too frivolous, to use sickly."

In fact, the first thing I thought about when I found that wallet was the probability of verification. It was too comfortable, and no one found it before me, and no one near it. Thirty galleons, that's not enough money to get me out of trouble. Rather, if this is a test, they will provide me with problems.

My decision to give the wallet I found to the nearest teacher turned out to be correct.

It seemed that tradition meant as much at Charmbaton as it did at Hogwarts, maybe even more. But the direction of the traditions was quite different. At Hogwarts, it was the bloodline, the power of magic, and the amount of gold in the bank vault that mattered. At the French Academy of Magic, it all mattered, just as it did at Hogwarts, but personal qualities came first. You fail the test, and no one will listen to you, the nobility of the family, money, and even magic power will not help. In Hogwarts, the Muggle-born will have to get out of his own skin to get a chance to prove himself, to prove something. When a rich aristocrat can mess up many times, remaining in a high rating.

They didn't do any more checks for me. Although, later, I had to take part in the inspection of other students several times, or be a third-party witness to such inspections. The school administration was aware of this tradition, even encouraged it to some extent. There were no excesses, Madame Maxime always knew about the check in advance and could make adjustments if she did not like something.

"Thirty pieces of silver is not the money I need," I thought.

The problem was that I had nowhere to get the money. Finding a treasure is such a cool way to get rich, but I probably wasn't an expert in this topic in my previous life. Not a digger or a historian, not a museum worker or even just a fan, far from this topic. Look for treasures at "the seas and oceanum" is also great, but yet I will not let anyone. Stealing and robbing the loot, that's all I can do.

At the very beginning, as soon as my memory of my past life woke up, I rejected this possibility as too dangerous, but there is nothing else left.

Go to work?

If you want to get paid, you should find a job. But if you need money, you should do something else.

Robbing or stealing, it's not with my luck.

With luck… By luck? Hmm ... I think I know what I need. The cost of egg onevice and eggshells Occamy?

But for now, I have another task.

In my studies for this year, I had several tasks. Try out your knowledge of animagus, while secretly, without teachers and without registration. More in-depth and widely engage in potions. Magic fertilizers and the school curriculum are good, but not enough. As long as I'm not under Snape's eye, I can prove myself. Learn ballroom dancing. Here Sarbacane gave lessons are true masters in this discipline. I knew a few things, but the skill needed to be fixed, and I needed to practice. The rest as it turns out, that I will still have time.

I decided to start with potions, tactically this is true. I had a good reputation with Monsieur Antoine Lafarge when I gave him the purse I found. He was aware of this test, knew how I passed the test.

Potions were needed for two things at once: for the development of animagus and for the preparation of Felix Felicis.

It is believed that Felix Felicis can only be prepared by a potion master. In fact, this is not the case at all. Just if you prepare a potion of insufficient quality, it will change color, consistency, it will be seen that it is not a fountain. In addition, a low-quality potion in many cases simply acts weaker, for less time, or gives a side effect. In the case of Felix Felicis, with small violations in the preparation, no external changes can be noticed, but the side effect can be fatal. Therefore, "sold", only Felix Felicis prepared by masters, this is a guarantee of quality.

I had a little more than two hundred galleons left, which should have been enough for the ingredients for the luck potion. The potion itself is much more expensive: a thousand galleons per serving. After cooking, it will still be infused for six months, there will be time to develop a plan for enrichment.

But the first item I had was the animagus potion. I knew how to make it. Moreover, I knew a simplified version, without such a huge number of conditions and the necessary matches. You will still have to carry a mandrake leaf in your mouth, but not for a whole month, but only for a week. Instead of a bottle of snot, oh ... a crystal vial of saliva, I will use a specially prepared base, low-alcohol. It is not necessary to wait for a thunderstorm, although it is desirable, with moonlight the same nonsense. It is also advisable to take the potion either in a thunderstorm or during a full moon. The main thing for me is to transform for the first time, and then I can somehow manage on my own.

The transformation ritual itself was also slightly altered. There was no need for all sorts of incredible coincidences of natural and astronomical phenomena, it was enough to correctly apply the ritual figure and use special smoking mixtures. For some reason, the modified ritual was considered worse than the original one with all the nonsense with a bottle of snot. Maybe that's why there are so few animagi?

I managed to brew the necessary potion only by the beginning of winter. Well, how else? So far, I have proved to the teacher that I can cook at a good level, so far I have begun to trust myself to take different magical components, until the control weakens a little. Then I had to wait until I was trusted to brew potions without supervision.

But by winter, I had a bottle of blood-red animagus potion. As I said before, I did not prepare the potion according to the classic vile scheme, but according to a simplified one. Therefore, the potion was less demanding to all sorts of conventions and did not require special storage, only from direct sunlight to store, otherwise it would be hopelessly spoiled in half an hour.

For Felix, Felicis ordered everything necessary, something that could not be taken from the general stock, expensive, they would notice the loss. The cooking time was already approaching, I would like the potion to be ready for the summer. I'm sure I can somehow get a few days off without supervision.

I had to ask Cortez to cover for me. For the transformation ritual, I needed a free audience where no one would see me. I had to explain why and promise that there would be no harm to the school. I also promised to register, but not immediately, but before I leave France. Carlos realized that it was more convenient for me to register in France myself. The ministries of France and Britain cooperate with each other, but not to the extent that they give each other reports. In Britain, no one will know that I have become an animagus, and the law will be respected.

"All right," Carlos agreed to my pleas — " but you'll owe me."

"That's settled," I said.

Carlos found an empty classroom. He gave me cover. But not everything was perfect, the time of the ritual did not fall on the full moon. It's a good thing that at least at night he was able to provide me with a free room.

The ritual figure was the simplest: a circle with a triangle inscribed in it. Drawing such a figure is a pleasure. The placemarks are obtained as multiples of the radius of the circle. Hexagon and triangle are the simplest shapes, and it is almost impossible to make a mistake when drawing.

Placing the braziers of incense at the corners of the triangle, I sat in the center of the figure and drank the potion. The thick, clotted liquid passed heavily down the esophagus. There was no unpleasant taste, but the associations born from the sight of the liquid were unpleasant, so it was hard to swallow. I tossed the empty container back against the wall of the room and waited.

It was a long wait. The incense was already completely burned out, and the fire under the braziers was extinguished, but the spirit of the beast still did not appear. The muscles were stiff, and the joints, especially the knees, were aching, requiring movement. I already thought that the spirit would not appear, probably made a mistake with the potion. It was a shame, because then Felix Felicis better not to use there and die easy. The most common side effect of an improperly prepared potion of good luck is a terrible bad luck for, probably, twelve hours. It's just that no one could survive twelve hours of total bad luck, so "probably".

I was finally convinced of the failure and decided to finish. Straightening my legs a little, experiencing an incomparable sensation of a mixture of pain and pleasure from the newly resumed normal circulation, I began to rise. But before I could get up, a large black shadow leaped at me, snarling angrily and spitting saliva, knocking me off my feet. Standing on all fours, I prepared to fight back, waiting for a second jump, but there was no one and nothing nearby. The room was still empty. And when I looked at my "hands", I realized that I had turned into a dog.

I thought, a little disappointed.

I wanted a cat-like animal, or a bird. The bird is probably even better. Birds can fly, it would be a convenient way to travel without spending, without witnesses, over long distances.

In principle, the experience was over, and it was possible to return to human form. But I still ran around the room a little bit trying to catch all the nuances of the changes that had occurred and feel my essence as best as possible.

What struck me was my inner darkness. Being in the form of a dog, I did not feel it. All my power was uniform and indivisible. It was not possible to distinguish between the desires and emotions of the obscura. All my instincts and desires were mine.

After running around for a while, feeling my condition as much as possible, I decided to return to the image of a person. To do this, it was necessary to present yourself in the image of a person in as much detail as possible. By visualizing myself as a person, I achieved what I wanted.

"Great, no problem," I thought, looking around to see if I still had a tail.

When I left the room, Carlos was already losing patience, it was late, or rather early, everyone was still asleep.

- Well, did it work out? "What is it?" he asked.

"It worked, — I said, unable to help but smile.

— How could you even do that?" Carlos asked in disbelief. — Do you know what an animagus potion is made of and how?" What am I talking about?! Of course you do!

"Oh, no, I made the potion with an alternative recipe," I continued, smiling, " the original recipe has too many conventions with a thunderstorm and a full moon. My version of the potion is a bit more expensive, but much easier to prepare.

- Easier? Carlos asked, surprised.

"Well, yes. And without collecting drool.

"You can share the recipe," Carlos said.

— I can, but then I won't owe you anything." All right?"

"You'll also back me up," Cortez haggled, " like I did for you today."

"It's a little more," I said, looking at Carlos, " than you gave me, but I agree.

We've already arrived, so we've postponed all other conversations until later. I needed to get some sleep.