Night Visit to the Black Lake

Compared to the hectic days of rushing from place to place some time ago, these past few days back at Hogwarts had been far more comfortable, even if Amosta still had no chance to rest.

Amosta now had an additional task each day: inspecting the mail sent to Hogwarts for students and professors. He did not open the packages to examine them. For a great wizard with immense spiritual power and keen intuition, determining whether something was dangerous took no more than a glance.

Even so, it took up an hour of Amosta's time before breakfast every day, because there were simply too many things being sent to Hogwarts.

And he had indeed found results. Almost every day, he could pick out something unsuitable for a school. Most of it came from Slytherin. Students from that House sometimes could not accurately distinguish between prank products and dangerous Dark Magic items.

Without Professor Breen, physical education class was less than half as fun. That was the consensus among all the students taking it.

After his return, the exercise they had previously practiced—escaping from an encirclement—began again. Most people performed no differently than before, which was hardly surprising. This was training that required them to find experience through countless failures. Even Amosta himself had little useful experience to teach them; they could only figure it out on their own.

Hermione, however, performed more brilliantly than before.

To help her resist the curse's erosion, the magic he and Dumbledore had left within Hermione's body remained there for some time. Of course, a wizard could never easily absorb another wizard's magic because of such a condition, but his and Dumbledore's magic had been too powerful. Some faint traces of magic had inevitably "eroded" her body.

Moreover, remaining at the limit of magical exhaustion for