Chapter 8
"It's cold... so cold," Draco Malfoy complained mentally, for whom time seemed to slow down.
"Why is this happening... it's cold... I just wanted to joke."
"Let me go!" He was terrified, because of the thick layer of ice that was pressing on him, not allowing him to move and seemed to burn with its cold, with every moment he felt how his mind was getting closer to plunging into darkness, and scenes from the past began to fly before his eyes.
His entire life was the literal definition of luxury. The finest delicacies from around the world, any magical toys and entertainment he wanted, even the most expensive ones. And most importantly, the understanding instilled in him from birth that as a pure-blooded wizard of the ancient Malfoy line, he stood at the very pinnacle of magical England. And even when he learned that his mother wanted to take care of his cousins, he was only a little jealous because in this case he might get less attention from his mother, who had recently begun to act strangely, something he would never voluntarily admit.
"When did it all go wrong?" he wondered, and all the times he tried to pick on his cousins came flooding back to him. To insult them or just to throw them off balance.
"I don't want to die…" he thought on the verge of losing consciousness.
- Finish Incantatem . - A soft girl's voice rang out, and the next moment the thick layer of ice simply dissipated, releasing the Slytherin, who, falling to his knees, immediately began to gasp for air, trying to catch his breath, while shivering because of his wet clothes.
- Sicacio - the next spell sounded, and all his clothes instantly dried.
"You won't get away with this!" Pansy Parkinson screamed hysterically . But no one paid attention to her.
- Do you still want to be enemies with us, Malfoy? - we asked. Regulus lifted Malfoy's head by the chin with the tip of his wand, and we saw the blond's tear-stained, terrified face. He couldn't utter a word, simply shaking his head.
- And you will complain about us because of this incident? - Andromeda asked and immediately Regulus spoke after her .
- You should take into account that since you were not injured, we will not be excluded.
- N-no... I won't. - the boy squeezed out, shaking from pure horror.
- That's great, - we smiled good-naturedly and Regulus helped him up.
- Good luck to you, cousin. - We wished through Andromeda, clearly seeing how the Slytherins' faces were distorted by the way Draco was acting now. Still, they do not understand how terrible the situation was for their classmate, and we, frankly speaking, can only guess, and apparently, it is very good that we decided to dispel the ice after only half a minute and at the same time learned to control how low the temperature would be. After all, if we kept him in the ice even longer, it would have come to frostbite. However, we still have a long way to go before we can instantly freeze enemies to death.
And while we were lost in thought, pleased that our first use of ice magic on a living opponent had been so fruitful, the Gryffindors surrounded us, extremely excited by such a clear demonstration of our capabilities.
"That was amazing!" Ron jumped up to us. "I bet he won't dare look at you or act tough for at least a week after that."
- Ha, she'll know how to hurt ours! - shouted a black girl named Kela and it's embarrassing to admit, but she's such a background character that we remembered her existence in the canon only after seeing her in person and now she's surrounded us with all her praise, just like the others.
And out of our entire Gryffindor group, only one girl stood out, who was not impressed and rather looked at us with reproach. It seemed that only she understood how dangerous a trick we had pulled off. After all, if we had lowered the temperature of the ice below -15 degrees Celsius, in those 30 seconds he could have gotten first-degree frostbite. And if we had used the maximum temperature available to us at the moment of -50, then it would have been enough to simply touch such ice with an open area of skin to get frostbite in a second, and in 30 seconds, he would most likely have already died, or received extremely life-threatening injuries.
Soon Madam Hooch returned and although Malfoy himself did not complain to the professor about us, Pansy Parkinson did it for him, because of which we lost our first 20 points, which, however, against the background of what we had received since the beginning of the school year, these were not particularly noticeable losses.
And when dinner came and we finally met Harry, the first divergence in the canon as we knew it occurred. Because we had intimidated Malfoy, he did not approach Harry with the offer of a duel at midnight, as a result of which the chosen one would not know about the three-headed dog, and certainly Hermione would not say that he was guarding some passage. We even wondered if this butterfly effect would be enough to completely break the plot of the first book?
Don't we want to appropriate the philosopher's stone as befits all-powerful time travelers?
The answer is extremely simple – no.
There are many factors that make such an attempt simply stupid. Even if we put aside the fact that although we are confident in our superiority over our peers, we still strongly doubt that we can cope with an adult dark wizard, like Quirrell with Voldemort in his head, the same Potter was just incredibly lucky that at the end of the first part, something seemed to have clicked in Quirrell's brain since he did not use magic. And if we move on to more objective reasons, then the main purpose of the philosopher's stone is to create gold and the elixir of life. But we already have enough money, and in the future we will get even more with the appearance of access to the main repository of the Blacks . And the elixir of life is a pretty useless thing. Yes, it prolongs life, but at the same time the body continues to age, we are not interested in this option of immortality.
Now we were sitting in the library and reading books on runes and witchcraft , which were perhaps the only subjects we planned to study for which the materials did not necessarily have to be found in the forbidden section, at least until a certain point.
The only thing that prevented us from reading in peace was Hermione's intense gaze, which seemed to be intent on burning a hole in us.
- Haaaah ... What do you want? - we sighed heavily, putting our books aside.
"You almost killed him," the girl complained.
Regulus shrugged .
"And they didn't even do any harm," Andromeda added.
Pince's gaze in our direction . - He probably has a mental trauma.
- Shh, keep it down, - we said quickly. We didn't want to be kicked out because of the noise.
Hermione quickly realized the reason for our words and hastily apologized to Madam Pince and switched to a whisper. - And still, you went too far.
- Hermione, when it comes to bullies or even enemies, you have to be tough. I'm sure that now Malfoy will not soon gather the courage to provoke us. - Regulus expressed our position .
"Okay," Hermione nodded reluctantly before looking at Andromeda again.
If you think about it, from the very beginning she was looking at her, we just didn't realize it right away, being used to thinking of ourselves as a single whole without division. Perhaps we offended her somehow through Andromeda?
- What is it? - Andromeda asked.
"You promised to teach me cosmetic charms," she said with a hint of slight resentment in her voice. And for a moment it even seemed to us that this was the main reason why she was staring at us now, and the incident with Malfoy was just an excuse.
- I thought you had already found this charm in the library yourself. - We tried to justify ourselves through Andromeda. To be honest, we had forgotten about it. After all, even with the so-called eidetic memory, although we can at any moment quote everything we saw or heard down to the smallest detail, this does not mean that we remember everything at once. In order to remember something, you need to think about it. So, at the moments when we remembered about it, we were usually busy with something else. In the mornings, for example, when we used cosmetic charms and remembered about it along an associative chain, we were primarily busy getting ready and preparing for classes, so it turned out that in the end we put it off until she herself asked.
- I wasn't given a book with these charms, - the girl pouted, which made her look a little like a cute chipmunk, especially in combination with her front teeth, which were a little big. - Madam Pince said that such charms are only allowed to be given out in the third year, since independent study can help to be dangerous.
- Well, that's probably true, - we admitted, remembering how we had practiced these spells on mannequins in accordance with Kreacher's advice. And during the first attempts, wooden teeth, instead of simply being cleaned, would lose about a millimeter of the surface layer, and the wig, although combed, would lose a whole clump of hair, and, apparently, for a person this would be quite painful. So we risked using them on ourselves only after we were completely sure that we had fully mastered these spells. And then they became almost second nature. We told her about these moments.
- Seriously?! - the girl jumped up and whispered, before quickly pulling herself together and sitting back down.
"I probably wouldn't have thought of trying spells on a dummy first," Hermione admitted with slight shame.
- Okay. Now we'll finish these books and show you one place, but... - we looked sternly at the girl, pausing.
- But?
- You must promise that without our knowledge, except in critical situations, you will not tell anyone where we train. - As soon as we finished speaking, her face literally lit up with joy. After all, the fact that we were ready to trust her with our secret was extremely important for a girl who had no friends before us.
- Of course! I promise. - She confirmed happily, not holding back her voice, which caused Madam Pince's warning cough to reach us.
As promised, we quickly leafed through the books we had taken under the envious gaze of the girl, who, although she has an incredibly good memory, still needs to carefully read the text to remember. And then we headed to the corridor of the 8th floor, until we finally found ourselves near the wall opposite which there was a painting depicting a strange wizard who was trying to teach trolls to dance ballet.
"Why did we stop?" Hermione asked curiously.
- You'll see now. - We grinned and Regulus began to walk from side to side next to the wall, thinking about the room for training magic with mannequins.
When he passed by for the third time, a door appeared where there had just been a bare wall. We didn't wait long and went inside.
- Welcome to the Room of Requirement, Hogwarts' top cheat. - We said through Regulas , spreading our arms out to the sides . Standing right in the middle of the large hall, which had dueling tracks, dozens of different mannequins, and even a small rest area in blue and bronze colors, hinting at who this creation belonged to.
- Cheat? - Hermione looked at him in bewilderment.
- To put it simply, it's a deception. An easy way to surpass the others. - Andromeda explained.
- But how can a hidden training room help with this?
- The thing is that the rescue room is not a training room first and foremost, - we said, smiling expectantly .
- Help out a room that changes depending on the user's wishes, for example, you can ask it to take the form of a restricted section and then you will be able to read copies of books from there without having to struggle to get a pass. Or, you can ask for a specific book, and if it has ever been in Hogwarts, you can get a copy. - Andromeda said.
- That is, this room is an ideal information storage, containing a huge amount of magical knowledge. The real treasure of Hogwarts. - we proudly finished, as if we were responsible for the creation of this masterpiece.
- This is amazing, - the girl said in admiration, becoming more and more aware of how amazing this room was. And then her eyes began to shine slightly from the feelings that had washed over her. - And you shared such a secret with me...
- We believe that you will be a good friend who will not betray.
"Thank you," Hermione said quietly, brushing away a tear that had trickled from the corner of her eye.
Since we didn't know how to behave with a girl who was moved to tears, we decided to divert her attention to something else.
- So, you wanted to learn cosmetic charms, right?