HP: Spirit Talker

Just 'lying down' within the ritual affected the Lestrange's very much, both physically and magically. I decided to keep both brothers as healthy as possible and to continue their recovery more actively. Bellatrix, on the other hand, got more out of the ritual than even I had hoped for. The only thing the movie says about her is that she went completely off the rails, but it doesn't say why, so it's a lie to believe Sirius that the blacks are all like that.

I couldn't study her mind on the spot — magic of two kinds at once (I was almost shocked by this discovery) had erected a powerful shield against mind-affecting magic (strange again), so I'd have to wait a while with her. I'll need a strong mentalist to break through the shield, and then I'll be fine on my own.

But we didn't waste any time either; as soon as I was back in my room with everyone except the Malfoys (Rachel was now Draco's authorized consort) and Megan, who was left to look after her niece, I went after the Lestranges, and when I saw the results, I decided to act immediately.

My decision was not swayed by the fact that the ritual had removed the mark from all of its wearers, albeit rather cruelly and painfully: the flesh with the mark peeled away as if it had been exposed to radiation. It looks horrible, of course, but now the members of the clans should be enlightened in their minds, because they have been pressured by the clan magic, coming into conflict with the master's magic (Riddle), plus violations of the clan codes, crimes against magical laws, and so on. We've treated everyone's wounds — magic can heal more than that.

Rudolphus and Rabastan are already suitable for minimal work with magic, I'm not talking about fighting, throwing "avadas" and so on. With a group of mages, we traveled to the coordinates we'd received from the Lestranges and ended up at a high wrought-iron fence, only with different coats of arms and a slightly different pattern of forging.

There were some unfamiliar markings on the gate, which I immediately told them about. I couldn't make out the handwriting, but it wasn't the DMLE or the Aurorat that had cast those tracers/signs. Handwriting and magic samples were taken. Outside the gate was a large, expensive palace in dark, somber colors. I won't describe what and how, but three hours later we left Lestrange Manor, which Rudolphus had closed under siege.

The Lord had managed to break the magical marriage by paying the Black family the agreed viru, but to get their money the Blacks had to have an official head of the family and appeal to the head of the Lestrange family.

To make a long story short, the money stayed where it was. I, on the other hand, had received Rudolphus' magically authenticated grants for the two vaults in Gringotts that had previously belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange; the Dowry Vault still belonged to her, but I had the right to dispose of it as well, as Rudolphus had done before.

When we returned to my house, it was time to attend to other matters. First, I listened to the report of what had happened: the arrival of the official authorities, Dumbledore, the Irish tyrant. It lifted his already high spirits, so the "inseparable trio, as Lizzie, who knew them well, called them, got a small raise, and Seamus an even bigger one.

I also got a flashback of the episode and watched it a little later, saving it as a memento. After letting the Skillful Hands fighters go, I got busy with household chores. For Christmas, I invited quite a few people to my home, including the entire group that my mother arrived in Britain with, until the time of their departure.

However, in order to comfortably accommodate the guests, present and future, I had to immediately set about adding space to some of the rooms, good thing all the necessary preparations had been completed. In one sleepless night, I managed to turn two rooms into a spacious multi-room apartment.

Momo strolled around contentedly, assessing the results and nodding with artificial seriousness, although I could feel the house-elf's emotions: joy and contentment were literally pouring out of her, as well as a thirst for action. I had so much energy after the ritual that it seemed I'd burst if I didn't spend it, and the magic was replenishing itself at an amazing rate.

I wanted to start with the third room, because I had finished the second room at six in the morning, but I remembered that I had already had all the elements ready for a week and a half to start turning the house into a full-fledged magical castle in the Japanese style, although the house itself is a hybrid of the oriental traditional style and the reliable universal modern style, with large windows, elements of shiny metal, lots of electronics (in the future, just an abundance of magically protected wiring).

With Momo and Keene as assistants, we quickly set up special underground crypts in which we hid the granite cubes I had prepared — anchors for the inner ring of protection. I used magic to saw symbols and hieroglyphs, melted and poured metal into the recesses to keep the lines clear.

With the spirit of earth and fire, such work is easy and quick, so we completed this part of the work without complications, the longest being marking the perimeter around the master's house and outbuildings with a garden, and then activating the anchors. Then Kin collected the stone, hastily formed it into "chests", we put the anchor inside, the spirit fused the stone and sunk it into the ground to a depth of two meters.

The center of all the magic of the house must be reliable, which is understandable and logical, so many people tie all the functionality of the magical dwelling to the ancestral altar, if there is one. Those who don't have one will make a semblance of an altar, perform a bunch of rituals over it, drink blood, some even sacrifice sane people to get something-there's more and better. It is like making a stake for the future.

I have to admit that this method has been tried for millennia by many generations of mages, and the end result is good, sometimes excellent, if the technology is followed. Unfortunately or fortunately, this is not my case, because I do not want to tie the ancestral altar to a particular place and house. Suddenly something will happen and I will have to sit proudly in a siege instead of packing up the altar and running away with it. Oh, and other difficulties are caused by my somewhat unconventional case, so I have another way.

It is not for nothing that historical chronicles and scientific writings speak much about the love of the Greeks and Egyptians for mathematics, for it was there that they once developed systems for the precise calculation of magical variables. I will not go into the history too much, what is important at this point is that first in Alexandria and then in Athens the conceptual "ritual concentrations" were developed.

A scholar from Alexandria was working with pyramidal figures, and when he got to the hexagonal version and then made a complete model in gold, the conceptual ritual altar exploded and killed the magician as well. The Egyptian did not take into account the fact that the hexagonal pyramid is not the best variant for internal focusing of large amounts of magic, especially made of gold, because only specially prepared metal acquires the necessary structure of molecules.... I guess I haven't fully understood all the nuances yet, and I haven't done the necessary experiments.

 The Greek took up the idea, spent an enormous amount of time and effort on calculations, and invented the first calculator in the history of mankind, which later sank with the ship. As a result, the scientist received a tetragonal bipyramid (two tetrahedral pyramids formed by bases) made of rock crystal.

The prototype was completely justified in all respects, except for one: such a ritual focuser, or simply an altar, turned out to be very inconvenient for offering sacrifices on, which was a normal practice in those times, and even now many people sacrifice reasonable and unreasonable beings on clan, clan, or tribal altars.

No, maybe they would have figured out how to put enemy warriors on top of such a thing, still few people care about the ritual sacrifice, but the thing is that such a focuser does not lie on the ground like a normal altar slab, but floats in the air at some height.

This fact and feature is what most people are afraid of. From what I have had time to study, it is said that such altars have been created only a few times in history, because even druids perform bloody rituals with sacrifices, let alone others. For me, this development is the most favorable choice, because I decided to make a separate altar for the house, on which I will bind the whole household.

After studying the available texts, I realized that the efficiency and speed of such an altar depends not only on the material, but also on the complexity of the form — this part was scientifically substantiated and experimentally proven by a Greek. Since I, unlike the magicians of the past, have great capabilities for complex calculations, I chose a hexaoctahedron (imagine a sphere to which six octahedral pyramids are attached by bases).

The calculations were done for me at a London institute, which was not very long and not very expensive. The problems began when I decided to grow a crystal in the shape of a hexaoctahedron — this was a laborious task, because the sphere is far from being a computer, and it is very difficult to set the task description correctly. I sent my people to the same institute three more times until I got this miracle, and by then I had already figured out how to improve the Sphere to grow rubies.

So I ended up with a dark red ruby the size of a woman's fist. I'll be honest: I wanted to put it under my pillow at night, but during the day it was hard to let it out of my hands. Heavy, beautiful, perfect, attractive. I think if I didn't have important things to do and shocks to deal with, I might have gone crazy, but, thanks to the spirits, I didn't, and I felt a little better... at least my hands stopped shaking and my breath stopped coming in.

That stone was the center of all the magic in my house. In a hidden underground room, which could only be accessed by going through Momo's room and activating the disguised "locks", my ruby floated in the air between two dihexagonal pyramids — crystals on the floor and ceiling, with their tops facing each other.

The red stone was rigidly fixed in the center of the pyramids. Immediately, the house charms imposed by the magicians of "Skillful Hands", the set protective circuit, as well as a set of house keys — a set of rings and bracelets with the help of which it will be possible to control/change the house charms, were connected.