It seemed as if I had just blinked, and it was already morning. The fact that I simply cannot exercise, run, or do any other physical workout has become incredibly disgusting, completely unbearable, horrible to me, and that using magic in large quantities provokes severe nerve pain throughout my entire body. It’s a disgusting feeling when a habit I’ve been doing for years becomes impossible to perform. It’s like some itch that can’t be quelled.

Up until breakfast in the Great Hall, which you didn’t have to attend during the holidays, I was disturbed by a nagging feeling of wrongness, somewhere on the edge of consciousness, because of a missed workout. However, as soon as I crossed glances with the nearly full complement of Slytherins, the mood rose slightly uphill — they turned pale, rubbed their cutlery, and did everything they could to avoid looking at me. Although, some of them sometimes looked. Girls mostly. Malfoy, on the other hand, could hardly keep his face.

In general, breakfast brought me a good mood not only with delicious food, but also with a wild mixture of emotions and actions from the few informed ones who were aware of the fight with Voldemort. However, Potter also looked at me with a completely shocked look, and the scar on his forehead for once began to heal slowly, and it immediately caught my eye.

As I indifferently ate something meaty and then dessert, I thought about the remaining Horcruxes. Would it make sense to hunt for them or direct someone? I think I should tell Dumbledore or someone about them. However, judging by Potter’s scar, they’ve gone completely into some sort of passive phase where they can’t do anything. It’s even possible that in the absence of a major soul in this world, they might vanish altogether, and that would require diagnosing the guy. After all, no matter how you look at it, magic, at least part of which is based on the will and the image, and the creation of a Horcrux is such by forty percent, is quite capable of ceasing to work when these conditions are violated. What meaning is put into the process of creating a Horcrux? A fragment of the soul that will be separated and sealed in a material carrier in order to allow the soul to remain in this world after death. There is no soul in the world. The conditions are violated. Goodbye, Horcrux.

But the idea of a Horcrux in itself is not as bad as it seems to me, although there is some incompleteness in it. And the good thing about it is that I don’t know of any way to forcibly send a soul away from the world. Well, except for my unique opportunity to work with souls through the Sword.

After finishing my breakfast, I noticed the absence of the Headmaster and Snape. Did they go somewhere to deal with something? Quite possibly. If we assume that Potter could see our fight through his connection with Voldemort, then he probably told the Headmaster about it – more than once or twice, the boy had been scolded for not seeking help in such difficult matters from more competent wizards.

After breakfast, I turned to Hermione at the very exit of the Great Hall:

“What are your plans? I’m going to the library. There’s not much left of the restricted section.”

“Me too,” the girl nodded. “However, I’ve already finished my half.”

“Yeah?” I smiled, adjusting the strap of the bag on my shoulder. “I have one more shelf left in the closet.”

“And I wanted to do some calculations on the project.”

Maneuvering between the students scurrying back and forth, we walked to the library.

“You already calculated the phase inversion when you created your «laser»…”

“Based on your calculations.”

“No, no,” the girl shook her head. “It would take me two months to do such voluminous and comprehensive calculations. I’ll create the basis of the theory and give it to you to model. Okay?”

“Agreed. By the way, we will need to contact the mentor and decide on the articles for publication. There’s no time to waste.”

And we really didn’t waste any time plunging right into the work. Of course, I tried to keep track of the rumors floating around Hogwarts, but I didn’t hear any interesting specifics. My murder of Voldemort remained information for the privileged, small circles and didn’t go beyond them.

This continued until the very beginning of school, and only on the first day of school, when the few students who left for the winter holidays returned, I had to adjust my plans a little — the Headmaster and Snape returned. But, as it turned out, Umbridge was also missing somewhere, and when she returned for the second semester, she looked depressed, hiding it behind her favorite sugary smile.

The first lesson of the new semester turned out to be transfiguration, before which Professor McGonagall informed me that the Headmaster would like to see me after class. Well, nothing surprising.

“Do you think,” said Hermione, sitting next to me, “it’s because of your «crusade»?”

“I’m sure it is.”

“What do you expect from this conversation?”

“I have no idea…”

“I’ll ask,” McGonagall looked sternly in our direction, “to leave conversations that are not related to the topic of today’s class, Mr. Knight.”

«Maybe you should have asked for some kind of exemption from transfiguration classes? Master, after all.»

Come on, what if there’s something new?

After the double transfiguration classes, it was time for Herbology, where we got dirty again, dodging brazen predatory sprouts of unknown origin. Although, Neville was just happy to mess around with this, causing sincere incomprehension on the part of many classmates. Plants are not for everyone.

After despite the experience gained over the years, we were in the mud up to our ears and looked at sometimes disgusting plants, we had to go to lunch and then to the Charms class. It was very rare for any course in a semester to have Transfiguration and Charms on the same day, and even double. But it sometimes happens, mostly in the fifth and seventh years.. Why? According to the students, this is done so that nothing remains of our brains before the upcoming exams.