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The silence of the cold November night was a balm to my ears, and the star-studded sky, so unfamiliar to city dwellers, added a touch of mysticism to the destruction of the Selwyn mansion. Well, the destruction itself hadn't started yet, but it was about to.
"Couldn't we," I spoke up as soon as Delphine transfigured Selwyn himself into a small iron ball, "to somehow... Rob or something?"
" We don't know, "Delphine replied, packing up the golems that had returned to the state of dark clots, "whether the alarm has been triggered. We may have a minimum of time, we can't take anything ourselves, and we won't give it to others."
"And if there was no alarm?"
"You want to risk it? For what? The best is the enemy of the good," Delphine pointed her wand toward the mansion and made a couple of small gestures.
The house shuddered, then again. And after a couple of seconds, it began to crease toward its center - to where there was a hall with a trap on us. It looked like there was a Black Hole, and invisible hands were literally crumpling the walls of the house into that point. After a couple of seconds, only a flat pit remained from the mansion, in the shape of which the foundation with basement rooms was guessed.
"What was that?" I looked at Delphine with sincere curiosity.
"You might say it was a complex ritual for quickly demolishing old buildings. Staged with the help of golems."
Delphine held out her hand to me, and as soon as I took it, she immediately apparated to a place unknown to me among the rocks, and the surf was roaring behind. I turned around at the very edge of the cliff and saw the sea surface, in which the light of the full moon was reflected in a multitude of reflections.
Lady Greengrass approached the steep cliff in front of which we stood, and touching certain parts of it with her wand, whispering something in passing, opened a passage whose mechanisms were similar to those that led to the Diagon Alley.
As soon as the passage opened, Delphine waved her hand at me, and she threw a Lumos from a wand into the passage, which hovered there, under the low arch of the walls. Well, relatively low. Stepping after Delphine into this passage with a triangular arch of walls, I heard the entrance close behind us, and now only the Lumos illuminated a long stone corridor. Running my fingertips along the sloping wall, I felt a slight matte coating, and the treatment was clearly very smooth, not of a natural type. Although, what's surprising about that?
" I didn't make them too smooth so that there was no mirror effect," Lady Greengrass anticipated all my questions without looking at me. "I prepared this place specifically for practical training in Healing magic."
"Specially?"
"Yes."
We were still walking along the corridor in the rock, and there were weak and incomprehensible currents of magic around us.
"As I said, there's not much to understand without practice in this area. You can get it in the hospitals where your mentor works, in the guild, by paying a certain amount, and in other official ways that impose either costs or obligations, or both. In our case, we can take the more practical and convenient route since the Dark Lord, and his minions are beginning to be active, and there will soon be even more material."
"Quite a tough approach."
We stopped. It appeared that the corridor had come to an end. Delphine put her hand against the wall, and a blue triangle with three circles at the tops glowed at the point of contact. A new passageway formed in the wall, beyond which was a completely empty hall. As soon as we stepped inside, the light in the hall came on, and I was able to look around. The room was indeed large, in the shape of a hexagon, the vaulted ceiling of which consisted of successive triangles - it was they who emitted a soft bluish light, but its total volume was enough for very good lighting, bright, but not blinding at all. In the wall opposite the entrance was another passageway, and in the two on the left and right were ledges, as if for consoles or shelves for tools.
"Over there," Delphine pointed to the walls on the left and right. "Workplaces. I'll explain later. Let's go to the freezer."
Following Delphine crossing the hall, I entered the only passage other than the entrance and found myself in the hall, the light in which was also blue, illuminating the rows of small round platforms. Only two of them were occupied, and above them, steel balls were levitating in an almost invisible blue column of light.
"Stasis platforms," Delphine explained and walked over to one of the unoccupied artifacts, taking a steel ball out from under the hem of her robe, tossing it over the platform. "Autonomous and work on the crumbs of magic from a transfigured magical being placed in the area of influence."
"Even in this form?" I pointed to the ball hanging above the platform.
"Of course. Don't you, when you transfigure yourself, retain the ability to do magic? It's the same here, just in a smaller amount, but enough to maintain the charms."
"And everything else?"
"A little from here, a little from the wizards present within the premises. An absolute minimum, but enough."
"I see."
"You won't get in here yourself, so I'll be picking you up for classes myself."
"Portkey?"
"Excluded for security reasons. Only self-destructive, only under my control."
Delphine turned and headed for the exit of the freezer, and I followed her.
"There's too much magic applied here," she continued as we crossed the hexagonal hall, "that I'm not allowed to apply. Of course, things like the portkey, and even if it had the most unpredictable word-activator, can still bring undesirable personalities here."
We left this makeshift secret bunker, and Delphine apparated us near Hogwarts, and after saying goodbye to me, she apparated back to her business. There was only one thing left for me — to return to the castle.