Pansy spent the first hour of the walk trying hard to spot someone among the students flashing here and there, but soon gave up, and when Daphne and I started talking about potions and the latest news from potion-making magazines, she even joined the discussion. These magazines, by the way, like many others, are usually left on the large table in our common room so that anyone can read the news that interests them. They say that Madam Sprout orders all the periodicals herself, and the prefects lay out the new ones, putting the outdated copies away in the faculty library. Gradually, one topic of conversation replaced another, and Pansy seemed to have even forgotten that she was walking arm in arm and talking with an "unworthy" wizard. Actually, just like Daphne. In general, I have noticed more than once or twice that Parkinson expresses her "fie" towards Muggle-borns only when it is necessary to sit on Malfoy's ears. Well, I noticed on the first day that she is one of Malfoy's "factors of ideological processing," so I am not surprised.
The shop of the best weekend outfits for wizards, if the name is to be believed, naturally attracted the attention of the young ladies, and only an hour later, we left it, having become the owners of a dark green beret for Pansy, a package with something unknown to me for Daphne, and winter gloves made of the skin of some magical crocodile for me—I really didn't have winter ones.
Standing on the threshold of this shop, which was almost at the end of the village, we looked around, looking for a direction for further walking, and the rest of the students, tired by lunchtime, were already walking around Hogsmeade much more sluggishly, and the size of the groups had decreased.
"To the side!" a distant and stern female voice reached us. "Into the building!"
Turning towards the voice, we saw a girl in a red robe running towards us, holding a wand. A familiar feeling made me literally lift my head to the sky. Two Dementors emerged from behind the roof of a clothing store and headed towards us at great speed, stretching out their bony arms like corpses in my direction, scaring me quite a bit. Yes, scaring me—such monsters will scare anyone, and a person would be lying if they claimed otherwise.
Sudden fear gives rise to one of two fundamental reactions in a person—fight or flight. As it turned out, I am a bad runner. The stick itself appeared in my hands. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw how the girls looked up after me, and a shadow of horror appeared on their faces.
"Expecto Patronum," I breathed out quietly, making the correct wave of the wand and purposefully pumping an abyss of uncontrolled neutral energy into it.
The back of my head felt a phantom pain from an imaginary slap on the back of the head, which would certainly fly at me from the teacher of the elven fragment along with an irremovable curse of infertility—there is no need for individuals who so thoughtlessly waste a sea of energy to reproduce.
But while the back of my head was reflecting from phantom sensations, amplified by both the influence of the Dementors and the flash of light at the tip of the wand in my hand, this very flash of light literally exploded in one powerful wave, pushing away and driving away the Dementors screaming in horror.
It is worth noting that the girls, although they pressed their backs closer to me, held the "circle" and had their sticks at the ready. Did someone teach them something more than they did at school? I'll have to find out.
"How are you?" A purple-haired girl in a red robe ran up to us. "Are you alive? Is everything okay?"
"I wonder," I grinned. "Dementors feed on positive emotions, happiness. Patronus is formed by positive emotions, happiness. Do they run away in fear of overeating?"
"I'm much more interested," the purple-haired girl didn't give her a second to think, "why did this couple specifically attack you? Maybe you were involved in their disappearance?"
"Disappearance?"
"Tonks!" a hoarse growl came from the side, and from around the corner of the house came a middle-aged, plump wizard in a cloak, with a prosthetic leg instead of one and a large staff in his hands. "You talk too much and work too little!"
The man came up to us, looked at us with his own eye, and the other one was replaced by a large artificial analogue, held on by straps in a special mount on the eye socket.
"Go get yourself to some dive bar for some hot chocolate, kids," the man said much more calmly, and I noticed the many scars on his face. "And I'll go see an old man and find out if his senility is so deep that he lets kids out right next to the Dementor security zone."
We silently watched the limping man leaning on a staff, who moved quite briskly and quickly.
"Come on, kids," the so-called Tonks nudged us from behind. "No need to stand here after that. Cool Patronus, by the way."
"I trained for almost two months," I answered, grabbing the girls, who were still in quiet shock and fear, by the arms. "This is the first time I've been so powerful. Out of fear, probably."
"Hee hee," Daphne laughed stupidly, obviously relieving stress. "Last time, you smashed the Boggart's closet, the Boggart, and half the staff room to smithereens out of fear."
"Hm?" Tonks, who was walking next to us and urging us on, was surprised. "And when you see a dragon, will you destroy Hogwarts?"
"It is possible."
Tonks led us to the Three Broomsticks and then headed home. It was one of the first places Hogwarts students came to, and was almost the closest of the village houses to the castle. It was much busier around here, and as we got closer, a crowd of Slytherins poured out, including Malfoy. They saw us, we saw them, and Pansy clearly couldn't explain the situation right away, and she had to explain.
"Oh, Mr. Malfoy, what a joy!" I immediately headed towards them. "You are the ones we were looking for. I am handing these ladies over to the reliable hands of my colleagues."
With a short gesture, I pushed the girls towards their faculty colleagues.
"Granger," Malfoy's satisfied face changed to a neutral-disdainful one.
"We saw two Dementors here. I think that young ladies will be completely safe in the company of talented pure-blood wizards. By the way. The Dementors are somewhere around here. Can you feel them, Mr. Malfoy? Have a nice day!"
Saluting in farewell, I hurried into the castle, catching up with a group of older Hufflepuffs.
"Hello, people, how was your day?"
"Oh, hi. Alone? We're on our way back," the seventh-year student replied.
"I've already had enough fun to last for two months."
"It happens," the guy nodded, and his two colleagues continued talking about their own. "It's from an excess of emotions."
We got to the castle quickly. By the time I got to the living room, changed, put away some purchases, practiced a little magic, it was time to go down to the festive dinner, because today is not only the first visit to Hogsmeade in a year, but also Halloween.
The closer I got to the Great Hall, the stronger the smell of pumpkin became. Entering the hall, I was amazed by the number of various Halloween-themed decorations, but what seemed even stranger to me was that it was a holiday for ordinary people, which is damned perverted in its true essence, and has no connection with magic at all. But this is no reason to refuse temptingly smelling food and cheerful company, and so I joined the dinner without any pangs of conscience.
But there was something… Something alarming. And the longer the dinner lasted, the more tense this feeling became. In the end, when, following at least some etiquette, it was possible to leave the party, I got up from the table, as did about twenty percent of the students from different faculties and courses, and hurried to the exit.
"Hector!" someone called to me at the door of the Great Hall, but I didn't pay any attention, almost breaking into a run, following my intuition.
Intuition is a strange thing. It can be silent your whole life, but at some particular moment, it can suddenly sound the alarm with such force that you are thrown into a panic out of habit. Not my case, but I followed this feeling desperately.
"Stop it!" they called me again. "Well…"