Adalbert.
A bunch of overgrown idiots!
I sound like a grouchy old man, but I'm still furious about what's happening! Ha-a-a…
It's not the potential loss that angers me — I couldn't care less about Quidditch, not from the highest tower of Durmstrang; I'm not a Gryffon to have a heart attack over it. No, what infuriates me is how easily some brainless morons can ruin something I achieved with much more significant effort!
The consequences will affect my reputation, my authority, and the influence that comes with them. There's no one to dethrone me from my position, but there will still be plenty of people blaming me for the team's defeat. Some are too stupid, and some too young to understand that it's not my fault. That I have my own matters to attend to, and I can't oversee everything at once.
I'm not Caesar to handle all affairs simultaneously. Scheiße!
And yet, there will be whispers that I didn't supervise, didn't notice, didn't foresee… And I wouldn't care about these gossipers if they weren't the same people I'll have to deal with later! In moments like these, I irrationally hate the society I now live in. And it's irrational because I fully understand why and how this happens.
Grrr. A few more moments like this, and I'll hate these comrades as much as Uncle Volodya does.
I'm not as indifferent or impenetrable as Ivan. I'm a perfectly normal human being, and this… this kind of thing drives me up the wall.
Building something is so much harder than destroying it.
If anyone dares tell me right now that this is all nonsense and unimportant, without having any idea of the local situation, I'll hit them in the face with an Avada. And I'm definitely old enough for that spell, experienced enough with dark magic, and emotional enough to pull it off.
Fortunately, the most likely culprits who might blurt out something like that are currently sitting quieter than mice. And even killing off those nobodies would only further damage my reputation.
How irritating the absurdity of this situation is. Grrr.
Ha-a-a… Alright, I've had my rant; time to get a grip. Self-control is in order.
In the end, I had to rope in every free member of the House to search for the Quidditch team's stolen equipment. Again, this wasn't Hogwarts, with its endless secret passageways, so the chances of finding the stolen items weren't that slim. In Britain, I would've given up on this idea immediately and started plotting revenge instead… But now I had to put that on hold and wander around Durmstrang with the others.
Asking for help from the teachers was useless too; no such tracking spells even exist. And if they did, I would've at least heard of them. My certainty about this was bolstered by our Dean, who was clearly more experienced than all the other wizards here, and if he didn't know, then the other teachers wouldn't either. Accio wouldn't work either.
Where could they have hidden everything? It would have to be a large enough space to fit all the brooms and uniforms, including the spares. Burning them is unlikely, as tracking the use of magic would be much easier, and whoever's leading them isn't completely stupid.
Hmm… What hole in this castle could they have crawled into? I know it inside and out. I've explored it myself during my free time, or had someone else do it for me… and yet nothing comes to mind.
Wa-a-a-it. Stop!
The castle.
Why did I assume they could only hide within Durmstrang?
Well, first of all, because it's a safe place, and only a clueless idiot would venture elsewhere…
Ah, right…
Ha-a-a… And of course, no one monitors the space outside the castle grounds. None of the teachers believe there'd be fools crazy enough to venture outside the safe areas.
But no-o-o, you're wrong, dear adult wizards.
A bunch of overconfident idiots are just dumb enough to leave the castle grounds and try to hide our stuff out there...
After all, our equivalent of the Forbidden Forest is everything beyond the relatively small safe zone around the castle... If they go far enough, there are places out there so wild that even a professor wouldn't dare venture in unless absolutely necessary.
Exactly.
Those half-bloods whose introduction to the magical world only began here might not know this. After all, this is material not even taught in the final year. Like so many other things that simply don't fit into the school curriculum and are considered basic knowledge, passed down in childhood to every wizard.
Perfect. That's an option.
I immediately turned on my heel and briskly headed for another part of the castle, specifically to one of its exits. They weren't secret or hidden or anything like that... just abandoned. They were located in areas that Durmstrang's wizards typically didn't use, leading to places that were no longer relevant. These exits were built in the days when the flora and fauna around the school were far more dangerous. The builders had erred on the side of caution, just in case.
Now, here's something the supposed thieves wouldn't know… Most of them probably naively think that magical settlements and magical schools are located in the real world — just in remote areas, far from human habitation.
Not even close.
The magical world isn't called a world for no reason — it's literally a different World. A separate one. Not parallel, like the one I came from, or rather, was reborn from, but a world with its own continents, oceans... and its own flora and fauna.
In some places, it "overlaps" with the ordinary world. This overlap isn't a crack in reality, a passageway, or a portal… It's something different, something not well understood even by modern wizards. This crossing appears so natural and almost imperceptible, even to magical eyes. It's nearly impossible to tell when you've crossed this invisible boundary and entered the magical world.
At Hogwarts, for example, students cross it by train, completely unaware that they've arrived in the magical world. At Durmstrang, the ship takes on the role of the train. The lake may not seem very large visually, but due to the spatial distortions that always accompany the border between worlds, it's much bigger than it looks.
So, with the thirty meters around Durmstrang being almost perfectly flat — only occasionally broken up by hills, greenhouses, and a small garden — they would have to run to the forest, which has receded quite a bit over the centuries.
Magical creatures can't get close to Durmstrang or the surrounding area thanks to a complex network of protective and repelling spells, but those spells don't extend to the forest. Plenty of creatures roam freely there.
As I stepped outside, I squinted at the sudden burst of sunlight. Taking a deep breath of air, untainted by progress and civilization — air you can hardly find anywhere on Earth, even in the cleanest nature reserves — I headed briskly toward the forest.
I wasn't about to make the same mistake as those half-blood idiots by entering the forest unprepared, so I cast every protective spell I knew on myself as I walked.
Even so, going in there wasn't particularly appealing, but from up close, it would be easier to spot the stolen items — or the remains of those fools. I simply couldn't believe they'd be able to hide the stolen goods and survive in there… A fully trained adult wizard, maybe. Someone as exceptional as myself, possibly. But those idiots? Especially since they're probably from the lower years. We keep a closer eye on the upper-year Non-Aligned, and they wouldn't have been able to pull off something like this unnoticed.
If not us, then the other Houses or even the professors would've caught them.
A faint, distant scream snapped me out of my thoughts for a moment, causing me to freeze before doubling my pace.
Found them.
My assumption turned out to be correct. It's still hard to believe, though it's clearly not an auditory hallucination.
What's strange, though, is that… they're still alive. Yes, the theft happened recently, but this forest is far from a resort... Whatever creature caused the panic — judging by the tone of the new screams — would've devoured them all by now. Especially if they've ventured this deep into the forest. The source of the sound is still quite far ahead…
Ah, they were told at the beginning of their first year not to stray so far from Durmstrang if they wanted to stay alive.
Sigh… Human stupidity is eternal. And in this case, their age is no excuse. The warning not to enter the forest was neither ambiguous nor veiled. It was very clear and direct. I'd really like to know what kind of rationale these idiots used to justify their stupidity to themselves.
Yes, I'll never get tired of calling idiots idiots. Never.
Back to the dangerous creature... Oh, poor, poor equipment. It's probably been damaged by that creature during its hunt... Just as long as it didn't touch the brooms. Please, don't let it have touched the brooms.
I can't even bring myself to blame the creature, because I fully understand that it's within its rights to attack these idiots who wandered straight into its hunting grounds. It's the law of nature, for goodness' sake.
That's it. I'm absolutely certain now. I'm only going to save the equipment. Forget those fools. They knew how dangerous it is here… And they're responsible for the sheer idiocy of stealing from my House, of all places. That's beyond what I can tolerate.
I'm not exactly the most patient or fair-minded person to consider every little detail, especially now when I'm silently furious at the absurdity of this whole situation.
Still, their sacrifice won't be in vain. Maybe, just maybe, their, uh, "colleagues" will learn something from this. The professors will eventually notice their absence and comb through the forest. And once the remains are found, they'll announce who and where died. Durmstrang doesn't sugarcoat things, there'll be no beating around the bush, no nonsense about leaving school or transferring to another institution or anything like that.
So there won't be much fuss, especially since it's not the kind of people anyone here is going to lose sleep over. Even Karkaroff, despite his boss's politics — not the old one, but the current one — won't take much interest. Maybe Turina will... But she values rules, and the rules are very clear: stay out of the forest. She'll sigh, wave her hand, and understand perfectly well that nothing can be done about it anymore.
...If only, if only I had known back then what this event would foreshadow — this absurdly bold yet otherwise ordinary act by a bunch of morons... Sigh...