There was almost nothing intact in the hall. The Death Eaters had done most of the damage, and if Harry had recently realized that there was a huge skill gap between him and those wizards, he was now beginning to roughly grasp its size. They didn’t just play with him and his squad — they didn’t even raise a wand against them, you might say!

Suddenly the stones, large and small, that had fallen from above onto Knight’s fall, moved, and in a moment, as if they were made of foam, moved aside, showing everyone unharmed, but in a slightly torn coat, a living Max.

“I’d forgotten I’d be tougher under the strengthening,” he said quietly, shaking the dust off his coat.

None of the Death Eaters were taking any action, but Harry noticed a shadow creeping swiftly up from behind Max. Could it be one of them? Harry saw that Max noticed it, too, but he only smiled.

“How about a magic trick?”

No one answered him, waiting. Only the rustle and creak of stone chips under his feet sounded in the hall.

“I’m gonna make,” Max pulled a second wand from his pocket, “this wand disappear.”

This movement of his provoked a shadow that had crept up almost close to him to attack sharply, rushing at Max clearly faster than a human could do. It was the Death Eater, holding a long knife. With an incredibly quick movement, Max managed to parry the lunge from his back, and with lightning speed, he plunged a second wand into his enemy’s eye.

“Ta-da-am!”

The Death Eater fell backwards to the floor, frozen with no sign of life, and the tip of the wand’s hilt sticking out of his eye, at an angle, as if going into his neck.

“It didn’t evaporate… Whoops.”

These words served as a trigger, and fast and powerful dark beams of spells flew toward Max, without further ado, but Max literally scattered in darkness, immediately settling to the floor. The spell beams exploded, burned, and reduced to ashes several cubic meters of stone where the blond man had just been. In the next second, a black silhouette rose from the floor behind Crouch Jr. It swung an equally black sword upward from below, cutting the wizard apart, disappearing again, but growing under the guys’ dome of protection.

“And now into a defensive position,” said the black silhouette in Max’s voice, immediately turning into the guy himself, who began to apply more and more protective charms with incredible speed, strengthening the dome of the Protego to absurd indicators — it was no longer just a gray translucent film interspersed with Hermione’s charms. It was already a nearly opaque, luminous shield, and the multiple beams of spells began to beat helplessly against it.

Wasting no time, Max began to examine the injured guys, waving a wand over them. No one dared to say anything, focusing on defense and preparing to restore something at any moment. As a result, the guys did not notice how white clumps of smoke burst into the hall, engaging in a fierce battle with the remnants of the Death Eaters. However, after a few seconds, the Death Eaters began to retreat.

“Where’s Potter?” Max asked the guys, and suddenly everyone looked at each other. “What? Where did that… That bastard…”

Max quickly stepped out of the field of protection, removing it, and the guys, still in a state of shock, bristled at Moody and Tonks with their wands.

” Calm down, folks,” Moody grinned. “Where’s Potter?”

“He was here a moment ago,” Hermione said, looking strangely in the direction Max was supposed to run off to. “Where are the Death Eaters?”

“Retreating,” Tonks hurried over to the students, who suddenly began to settle to the floor, hiding their eyes exhaustedly. “You all need to go to the hospital right away.”

Moody took something out of his pocket and began to say quickly but quietly that Potter had disappeared again.