As they say, smart thoughts don't come to mind immediately. This is, of course, a somewhat distorted phrase, but the general message remains true.
The problem surfaced where it wasn't expected—Christmas gifts. Subconsciously, I stumble over this generally accepted ritual, as I never liked receiving or giving gifts myself—I was just wrong like that. But now I would like to meet the expectations of loved ones or simply people I care about in this small way. But it turned out to be not easy to get rid of such a habit, and even an excellent memory doesn't help in this matter, because the information stored in it is not in consciousness all at once—you need to access it first for the necessary information.
Just like that, at an ordinary dinner in the Great Hall, on Saturday the twenty-fourth, right after the conversation with Romanova and Kuragina on the observation deck of the Astronomy Tower, I was eating calmly, listening with half an ear to the conversations of students anticipating tomorrow's event, and simultaneously processing acoustic information from the spy spider dropped there on the tower.
Yes, the girls had an interesting conversation, and I learned a lot from it. Sigh, the brain really jams when you start thinking about such things as morality, relationships, and so on. How great it would be to have only knowledge and skills for various situations, and not all this stuff. Seems like a leaky sieve, not full-fledged shard memories, but the imprint on the personality is oh-ho-ho what! If I were a teenager—I would go all out, with my capabilities, without looking back at the consequences, as an average teenager my age is supposed to do. But no, I hung a bunch of moral and mental restrictions on myself, and now I rejoice. Although, can one complain about this? Various restrictions are exactly what make us social beings, and searching for a path to achieve a goal bypassing moral and other problems is our movement forward.
In general, over dinner I came to the conclusion that the horizontal plane of relationships is, of course, fascinating, but it doesn't seem particularly interesting to me. Now if I relax my brain, "let go" of consciousness... but I won't do that.
But then conversation at the table turned to Christmas Gifts, and I realized that I had completely overlooked this issue. And gifts should be with everyone who needs them by tomorrow morning. So after dinner I went straight outside, fortunately curfew hadn't come yet. Conjuring myself a winter coat out of thin air, a scarf, and a hat, I fixed the transfiguration and, wrapping myself in magic, making myself invisible and inaudible to everyone, simply ran to Hogsmeade. And no, I didn't expect to find even one shop open at this time, but there, in the village, the protective charms of the castle, or whatever those global magical influences around Hogwarts are, aren't felt.
As I thought, the vast majority of shops were closed, but the pub, stationery shop, and post office were working. A little further, on the hill, lights burned in the "Hog's Head" pub. There they don't ask questions like: "Where are you going? Why? Shouldn't you go back to Hogwarts?". Although even the dimmest student can guess that on the territory of Hogwarts and its surroundings there isn't and cannot be an establishment uncontrolled by Dumbledore—it's simply senility to keep such a thing close to oneself and children. But, on the other hand, if you don't do or intend to do some blatant crap, then no one will care that you go by Floo from the Hog's Head wherever you need to, and return after midnight.
Of course, I can try to Apparate, since I accurately remembered Cedric's manipulations during the execution of this entertaining method of movement in space, only one needs to be a clinical idiot to try to learn something so dangerous for oneself without any instruction from a more experienced wizard. Which means, Hog's Head.
Quickly reaching the pub, I opened the door and went inside, shedding invisibility, but leaving a magical field around my head, powered by the image of blurriness for another's gaze, the impossibility of fixing this gaze on me.
The pub looked unpresentable, as if abandoned, but it wasn't. At one of the tables sat some suspicious individuals hiding their faces in hoods. They were clearly talking about something under privacy charms, simultaneously sipping something from glass bottles. Behind the counter stood a massive middle-aged man. His graying hair was tied in a low ponytail at the back of his head, and a neat but long beard with vertical streaks of gray created an impression of the seriousness and importance of the man. Nodding to him, I received the same nod and headed to the fireplace. Above the stand with Floo powder hung a sign—five Knuts. Rip-off. Only I don't have Knuts in principle, so I put a Sickle in the cup with coins.
Scooping up a little Floo powder, threw it into the fireplace—the flame lit up green, which means I can enter. Funny system, by the way. I bet such a preliminary "throw-in" of powder, activation, prevents someone from appearing in the fireplace when you enter it yourself. Would be a notable embarrassment.
I flew away, naturally, to the Leaky Cauldron, and from there, ignoring the barman's displeasure, went out to Diagon Alley. Why here? Well, firstly, where else can you buy something interesting as a gift, and also connected with magic? And secondly—the signs with the operating hours of each local establishment were perfectly imprinted in memory, and now they should be open, because far from everyone buys something in advance, and tomorrow is Christmas. Local wizards, like all normal people, often do something at the last moment, and there's no getting away from it.
The shopping street of magical London was decorated brightly, colorfully for Christmas, as it should be at this time of year. Here and there wizards walked, but not hurriedly, as usually happens in summer, but measuredly, sometimes even in pairs, going to neighboring streets, behind Gringotts, where local goblins rule the ball, for whom exterminatus is crying. Never mind, these dangerous predators that love to feast on human flesh will still be overtaken by genocide.
I went through the shops quickly and without long hesitation. Bought various interesting and rare trinkets in accordance with the interests of the guys from Hogwarts, bought a large book on very complex but safe for the wizard and others charms for Hermione, bought a set of new sweets for Daphne and a unique book on runes, true, in Old Germanic, but such books are better read in the original and consulted with an expert—runes do not tolerate crooked interpretation due to incorrect translation.
I didn't forget about my beloved self either, buying a spare wand at Jimmy Kiddell's shop. The seller, a middle-aged man, was not as obsessed with selecting wands by trial and error as Ollivander, but he had his own method—measurements and body diagnostics. Ten minutes of diagnostics, five minutes of search, and here I became the owner of almost the same wand that was bought from Ollivander—acacia and unicorn hair. They say you can't cast Dark Magic with such a wand. Haven't tried, can't say anything specific.
And only now did I allow myself to go back through the Leaky Cauldron to the Hog's Head, and from there—back to Hogwarts. Dark, cold, snow underfoot, but this wasn't a problem, but even on the contrary, I liked it. Well, on the whole, the road caused no problems, and I managed to penetrate the castle literally a minute before curfew, so I had to return to the common room under full concealment from all possible means of observation.
While moving through the corridors, an interesting thought visited me—need to create a complex of spiders, or some other golems, so that they create a kind of reconnaissance squad around me. Why not? Convenient—you go somewhere in the same castle, and spiders conduct reconnaissance in front of you, control the flank and rear, otherwise who knows what local hereditary wizards with a hypertrophied sense of their own grandeur and lack of real understanding that without labor and training you can't even pull a fish out of a pond, and generally... It will be bad, in general.
To deliver gifts to the addressees, I had to run to the Hogwarts kitchen, where working elves met me. These small parasites, although if we call things by their proper names, then symbiotes, reached out to me as a source of magic, hoping to receive some valuable instructions to immediately start executing them.
"Does the young wizard want something?" they said in different ways.
Now if for a second you fix in your consciousness that they are drawn to you as a source of food, strange, scary, small and intrusive, muttering something... It becomes scary. They are really scary, and the behavior is associated with zombies, only instead of "brains" they say: "Work...". Creepy.
Laying out the gifts, I began to transfigure the packaging, and put a plate on the finished gift—for whom. Even found out from the house-elves if they can read—almost all except the youngest can. While I was conjuring, I couldn't help noticing how the house-elves joyfully circled around, imitating extremely useful activity and simultaneously absorbing excess magic, of which there was quite a lot when using the local school of magic.
In general, only by twelve o'clock did I finally deal with the gifts and organize their delivery to my friends and comrades. Only after that, having had a snack of food offered by the house-elves, went to sleep—tomorrow will be a difficult day.
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