Here it is, the hundredth chapter. Thank you for reading me. I couldn't even imagine that so many people would like my work, despite the not so global problems (spelling is evil).
Thank you, I'm very happy.
*****
The next week, right up to the next conversation with the teacher, passed so quickly that I didn't even have time to look back when Saturday came again, which means one thing - another visit to the witch's domain.
The words spoken that day gave me not only a lot of food for thought, they gave me another goal - to find out what really happened in the icy wasteland, and who was behind it. One thing is clear: the teacher may be to blame for some of the events, but not for all of them. Flitwick was up to something. And what did he expect? If my secrecy is anything to go by, then he was right. After what happened, I would not willingly share information with the elves.
Small Ritual of Truth - its meaning lies in the name itself, to create conditions for a true conversation. As promised, I found a description of this ritual in the Hogwarts library. True, I played it safe and found exactly the same description in the Room of Help. What can I say - the teacher's words turned out to be pure truth. The description in the public library has not been mutilated or altered.
After reading the information about it, I was excited to use it for my own needs in the future, but two things came out. First, the ritual only works with mutual consent, or there must be a significant difference in magical and mental powers between the "curator" of the ritual and the other party.
Secondly, the ritual has the word "Truth" in its name for nothing. Each person has his own truth, so during the ritual everyone will speak the truth in which they believe.
The question arises, to what extent is the teacher's truth true? How much can I trust her? Although, judging by the information from the same book, the truth cannot be strictly the opposite of the truth. It turns out that I can only be sure of one thing - someone forcibly brought me out of the state of transformation after crossing the veil. The rest of the teacher's words are still in question.
Actually, that's not all I've been doing this week. Or rather, the opposite - I practically did not devote any time to this, with the exception of Saturday evening and the entire day of Sunday. Why? The answer is simple - at the moment I can't do anything about it, but still I set another goal.
While reading the books available to me on ritualistics, one thought came to me: "What if the answer lies in other books? The ones that are currently hidden from me? This thought did not cause me any rejection, especially since I had long been planning to study this branch of magical art. Therefore, a new school has appeared on my schedule, designed for development. Hmmm, there are too many of them.
Realizing the fact that I might not have enough strength, I came to the conclusion that it was not worth taking more schools to study. At least until I reach the rank of master in at least one of the chosen ones.
And no, everything is fine with theory, the problem lies in practice. Well, I don't have time to work through all this. I don't know how to fit all the schools into one week, but here I had to add another one. Such a strong dispersion can affect me in the future, so some schools are studied more diligently, and some, on the contrary, less zealously.
I also sent a letter to my parents on Sunday. In addition to the standard text during our communication (well, I'm alive and well, I eat well, and so on), I also asked for one request: to send me manuals on the latest research in medicine.
I didn't have to wait long for a response from my parents; literally on Saturday evening the package was delivered. But more on that later. Now it is worth mentioning one incident on Monday, namely the first DADA lesson, along with the well-known Gilderoy Lockhart.
*****
With a creak (why does the door to this office always creak? Should I use a spell or what?) the door leading to the DADA office opened, and the entire crowd, consisting of crows and badgers, entered the office.
The room itself has undergone quite a lot of changes. If in the first year it did not differ in anything remarkable from many other similar classes in the castle, now this office has changed quite dramatically.
The first thing that caught my eye were the portraits. Oh yes, there were actually quite a few of them here. I counted about eight pieces and these are only the large ones, but how many of the same portraits with Gilderoy were there, but smaller... At twenty I stopped counting.
In all these pictures the magician appeared before us with his eternal smile. In one painting he was armed with a wand, in another he was shaking hands with a figure, in a third he was holding his own book.
Looking at all this, only one thing comes to mind - this individual is not just a narcissist, it seems that he is the leader of narcissists.
True, once you look at this with the help of magical vision, everything becomes unclear. Each portrait was part of one system, most likely a surveillance system, control over which was in the hands of Gilderoy himself, more precisely in his ring.
It's true that it's not clear why there are so many portraits, but the advantages of this system are also incredible. It is impossible to hide from the gaze of portraits, from the word at all.
"Everyone take their places, the lesson begins," the magician himself burst into our classroom like a whirlwind from the adjacent room. Blue-eyed blond with aristocratic features, a blinding smile, smooth movements. In a word - a "killer" of the female population of the planet. And his outfit - a purple robe - even if it was too poisonous, it suited him incredibly well.
A minute later, all the children sat down, staring at the professor in anticipation. He looked around the class attentively and smiled charmingly, causing languid sighs from the female half of the class.
- Hi all. From this day on, I am your DADA teacher. My name: Gilderoy Lockhart. You can address me as Professor, or Professor Lockhart," he waved his wand and the inscription "Professor Lockhart" appeared on the board hanging behind him. "I don't see the point in saying anything else about myself." If you want, you will find it yourself. No, that means it didn't hurt and you wanted it, right? — he asked, smiling excitedly.
All the ladies stared at him indignantly, saying how can you not know at least something about HIM? For some reason, half of the guys lowered their heads guiltily. Hmmm, what's wrong with that? Just think, they were not interested in this magician. I don't see anything shameful.
— I see on your tables are all the books that needed to be bought. "Excellent," the professor continued, nodding slightly. Another wave of the wand and a piece of paper flies to each student. - Now we will conduct a small test, based on the results of which I will find out how many of you have read at least something in these books. You have fifteen minutes to do everything. You can start.
The clapping of palms was the signal to begin the test. Behind the professor, right on the teaching table, a sandbox clock appeared, counting down the time. The test has started.
What can I say about this test? It was done quite interestingly. At first glance, all the questions only emphasized the narcissistic nature of the professor, but on the other hand...
For example, the question: "How exactly did the defensive Gilderoy kill the werewolf in the book Monster Hunt?" or "What is Lockhart's favorite color?" Of the two questions, the second is aimed at "distraction." The first one reveals quite interesting information about werewolves.
Or what do you think about Gilderoy's favorite clothes? It's clear that the guys didn't even think about it. However, in the book, the professor mentioned that his favorite clothing is the Magic brand. And only after digging around, you can find out that this company sews clothes for mercenaries, arvorat and the department of secrets.
And there were many such questions. I wonder why he needs this?
- Time is over. It's time to collect your answers," as soon as his voice sounded, the sheets evaporated from our tables, appearing on the professor's desk. - Let's check how much you remember.
The next fifteen minutes turned into a farce. Gilderoy laughed, criticized the answers, and put on a sad face. In general, the actor played in front of the audience. Only a self-writing pen wrote something down on paper as soon as he read something interesting.
- OK. I see at least some of you have deigned to read my books. This is at least something. That means we don't need this anymore," Lockhart took the test results and scattered them into dust with a wave of his wand. "Now let's move on to the topic of our lesson," with a metallic clink, a rather voluminous steel cage appeared on his table, covered with some kind of blanket.
All the students stared at the professor and the cage in anticipation. He seemed to expect a different reaction and just shook his head.
"Now," the man began in a frightening voice. "You will encounter something terrible." With something that can cause genuine horror in your heads. Behold.
Silence again.
- Pixie. More precisely, their subspecies is the Cornish pixie.
The class was silent. There were no screams of horror, no mocking laughter. Apparently the professor certainly did not expect such a reaction. As far as I remember, in the canon, schoolchildren made fun of these creatures. In retaliation for this, the man released the squeaks, leaving the children to deal with this problem themselves.
Pixies are melike humanoid creatures, no more than ten centimeters in height. They have a blue skin tone, large, completely black eyes, and some kind of horns on their heads.
Now, Gilderoy was more than pleased with his emotions. None of us expressed any objection. Everyone was focused and listening attentively.
Nodding again, the professor waved his wand and opened the cage and released one of the creatures. Swaddled with a spell, the man showed this creature up close to each of the students.
You look at him now and the question arises: where is that idiot from the book? Now we have a professor who knows his subject very well. Capable of not only talking about different creatures, as well as their habits, but also showing in practice everything that he had previously told.
The rest of the lesson was quite lively and fun. The students were happy with the professor, and he was happy with us. Perhaps this year will be much more interesting than the previous one.
*****
This was how I got to know the teacher. It was very different from the book version, or so I thought. However, the next day, rumors spread in the castle that he had set the pixies against the Lions and Snakes, and had fled in fear.
And what does it mean? Why does he need this performance? After all, on Wednesday, already in our classes, he was the same as before - collected and knowing his job. Interesting.
I don't know why, but no one talked about the fact that Gilderoy leads couples differently. Also quite an interesting fact.
Let's return to the letter from the parents. Having received the treasured information, I plunged into its study. And as soon as I finished with this, I fell into a kind of stupor.
In one of the studies conducted more than fifty years ago, but they were published only now (secret information, all matters), experiments were carried out with human muscle fibers.
I thought about not reading this, but something pushed me to read it anyway. And guess what? All that information about pink fibers is bullshit. The human body is an incredibly complex machine in which different types of fibers interact in different ways. In one case, an explosive reaction is needed, in the other, "endurance." And with my crooked arms I got into places where I shouldn't.
It took me two evenings to fix everything I had screwed up. First we had to roll back the changes. But during this process I had a question: Why did I become stronger if I did everything so clumsily? The answer came after I returned everything back.
My prana took over part of the muscle work. It was she who gave me that strengthening. You can say: this is good, constant strengthening, without my leadership. However, this enhancement wasted so much prana that I was left in a precipitate. I'll explain now.
A person spends somewhere around fifty percent of this energy on normal muscle work. For me, it took forty to maintain this system! Percent. Can you imagine how much this is? Yes, with such a breakthrough of energy, I can consciously strengthen my body not only to the previous levels, but even exceed it by twenty percent. This is incredible! I just blew away one-fifth of my body's capacity. If I had not bothered to read the research data, I would have been able to correct this much later. After all, the master metamorph completely reassembles his body.
Hmmm, that's the kind of punch I got on the nose. This is what it means to climb with your crooked hands into places where you know nothing.
Of course, I also rebuilt my muscular frame. I borrowed some of the muscles from the troll. Some of it was simply strengthened due to a better supply of nutrients, as well as oxygen.
As a result of the experiment, without replenishment, I reached the level of fifty percent of the previous norm, and with the pumping of prana, my body is twice as strong as it is in this state (well, flattery with the same enhancement).
Also this week I kept an eye on the Moon. She still became the best (probably because the only) friend with Astoria. At first, our faculty accepted her distantly, but noticing that she communicated with Astoia (an aristocrat), as well as with me (let me remind you, I am in good standing with my faculty), they somehow accepted her. But I still look out for her.
Nothing else happened to me. Now it's Saturday, so I'm going to see the teacher once again. It is necessary to dot the i's at least in some questions.