Once again, I'm struck by how powerful simple politeness and honesty can be as weapons. Phineas didn't try to be clever — he just said it would be good for me to meet mages from other countries and agree to a student exchange. Of course, Ariel — remembering her own time living in this far-from-wonderful country for magical beings — was strongly against it at first, especially since I still hadn't fully recovered. But somehow, he found the words to calm her down.
It's important to understand that, as my guardian, my teacher could have simply put his foot down — either his student goes, or he refuses to keep teaching me. Thankfully, Black didn't do that. Still, Mum managed to negotiate some perks — a reusable portkey for me, and the ability to visit home on weekends. And knowing this sly old fox, he probably planned to do that anyway. Of course, just attending classes and nothing else would defeat the whole point of the exchange.
Another big question was what to do with Dorothea. Should I take her with me? Too dangerous. She can't defend herself, and she still acts like what she is — an innocent, naive child. Not to mention, she's a girl and a veela, and she still doesn't fully know how to control her aura.
Sending her to Hogwarts — which even in peacetime treated veelas as second-class beings — would be a terrible idea. And now, with the war looming and so many heirs of pureblooded Gaunt followers around, it would be suicide. I'd have to fight half of Hogwarts on the spot. No, there will be problems wherever we go, but at least not on that scale — or so I hope.
On the other hand, only seeing my familiar two days a week during her active growth would be a disaster in the long run. Dorothea isn't my slave — she's more like my other half, thanks to our soul bond. Leaving her behind would be like abandoning my own daughter. Maybe it would work out, but probably not. Childhood wounds are the deepest — and last the longest.
My teacher solved the problem again when I told him about it.
"Honestly, Arthur, I've been thinking about this problem of yours too," he said, sitting in the living room. Despite the summer heat, it was cool and comfortable here — no ants, no mosquitoes, even with the door wide open. Modern magic is so convenient for things like this.
Phineas liked my idea with the replaceable stones, so he swapped his topaz for a large diamond. After a brief flash, a suitcase appeared next to him. "I was going to give this to you for your birthday, but what the hell — use it now!"
"A suitcase with an Undetectable Extension Charm? How many cubic meters?" I asked, taking it in my hands. I immediately noticed the switches for Muggle-Repelling and protective charms. The suitcase itself was made of dragon leather, soaked in potions, reinforced with metal inserts, and lightened with runes. Extension runes work best on magical items — which explains why it's not made entirely of metal.
"This isn't just a suitcase with an Undetectable Extension," Black smirked. "Using Sumerian knowledge your father passed on, I finally finished my masterpiece — something I've been working on for a decade. I created a separate bubble in space. Even if your suitcase is destroyed while you're inside, you'll still be able to get out, and the space won't collapse. There's an emergency exit in an old German shelter in the Norwegian mountains. I hid it under Fidelius — so no one will find it."
"Thank you so much, teacher," I couldn't help but hug the old man, grinning with joy.
"Oh, enough, enough, or you'll strangle me," Black said — but he was clearly pleased by my reaction. The gift really was magnificent.
"By the way," I let him go, "who's the Secret Keeper for the Fidelius?"
"A death row inmate, sentenced to die. I erased his memory after he wrote down the coordinates. You'll find the paper inside the suitcase — I didn't read it," he said. Even if he had, it didn't really matter. I won't be able to create a space like this myself anytime soon — it's not about magical power, but skill and experience. Messing with space is dangerous — my Apparition training taught me that well.
"So, Muggle-Repelling charm switch, stones with charms... And what's this?" Next to the handle was a multi-position switch with ratios: 1:10, 1:100, 1:1000, 1:1, 10:1, 100:1, 1000:1.
"Noticed? That's my idea, based on time magic theory. As you know, stasis chambers don't freeze things — they just slow time for them. Freezing time completely would use too much energy."
"That's why, if you put hot food in a stasis chamber, it stays hot, as if you just put it in. Potions and plants don't spoil — as if they were just brewed or picked," I nodded.
"Exactly. Then I thought, what if you could reverse the temporal distortion? You just swap two runes."
"So you can use the suitcase as a stasis chamber — or to speed up time?"
"The idea isn't new. Some herbologists, potioneers, and alchemists use them to speed up the growth of rare plants, brew long potions, or age artifacts. I just added the ability to switch modes. By the way, you can't change the ratio while the owner is inside. Will you do the blood binding now — or later?" he asked.
"Let's do it now." I dropped blood on the suitcase and on the stone from Black's ring. Instantly, I felt the volume of the suitcase's internal space. It was truly impressive — four huge zones with different climates: snowy northern mountains, a tropical island with jungles in the middle of the sea, a vast meadow with a lake and forest, and African savanna.
"Amazing, teacher. Is this all an illusion?"
"Yes and no. The sky and sun are illusions — though the sunlight is identical to the real thing. But the earth, air, and water were copied from real places."
"Copied? I'm completely lost."
"These places are real, and they exist in the real world. The ritual for creating a spatial bubble takes a copy of that space — and moves it somewhere outside the world. Right now, it's all a solid illusion, indistinguishable from reality. But over time, as it feeds on your magic and the world's magic, it will fully materialize and become a separate world. Still, it can't exist without a connection to ours."
"How much energy will that take?" I stared at him.
"A lot — maybe more than you and I could produce in our entire lives. But the Sumerians were geniuses at using natural laws. The world itself — the universe itself — will feed your spatial bubble. The more time passes, the more stable it becomes. You can speed up the process by bringing in real soil, animals, and plants. The suitcase can unfold multiple times — so you could even fit a whole house inside. The ring stone on your finger can summon it anywhere, even from Hogwarts — though I should warn you, the castle's alarms will go off." Black had done titanic work while I was training with Hayato.
"Incredible! Can you put Fidelius on the suitcase itself?"
"Unfortunately, no. Fidelius needs a fixed location — which the suitcase doesn't have. Otherwise, wizards would just hide all their most important artifacts with it. But the suitcase has a camouflage mode — it floats behind you at two meters, invisible, silent, and scentless. If you lose it or want to make a new one, I left the schematics inside."
I couldn't wait to try it out.
"So what are you waiting for?" he grinned. "Go on."
I pulled the handle and wished to open the entrance. The suitcase opened and stood upright, growing in size. I felt I could enter any zone directly — or go into a connecting anteroom, or even stretch the entrance into huge gates. I chose the anteroom — and found myself in a copy of our house.
I realized I could expand this space and rebuild it however I wanted — add rooms, change the furniture — but all that would take energy. Even entering used a tiny bit, but it was barely noticeable. In astral vision, everything looked unreal — like cardboard and artificial — for now.
I walked to the kitchen door, which usually led to the garden, and saw high mountains through the window — like the Alps. The wind howled, lifting piles of snow into the air. On the south side, the window showed the sea and a beautiful sunset beach. To the west — a lush green meadow, a lake, and a taiga forest in the distance. To the east — endless African prairies with a thin river winding through them.
Naturally, I stepped out onto the tropical beach. The sun wasn't so harsh anymore — waves of pure seawater rolled onto the white sand and back again. On the horizon, the setting sun's rays lit up another island — the space was truly vast.
Turning around, I saw coconut palms, and beyond them, the jungle began. In the distance, a green mountain rose above the island. I hoped Phineas hadn't brought a volcano here. The only unpleasant thing was the absence of life — no fish, no buzzing wasps, no birds singing.
But that's easy to fix — I can settle whatever animals and insects I want here. I definitely won't bring in mosquitoes. Better some harmless beetles and spiders — so the birds have something to eat. But all that will have to wait until the earth here becomes real. Otherwise, everything would die. Even the palms, as real as they looked, were still illusions.
The main thing is, now I can leave Dorothea in the little house and visit her every day. I'll bring her some soil and flowers — let her have fun. After looking around, I went back inside through a wooden door standing right on the beach. It was actually a portal — the door was just for show.
I decided to explore the whole house and realized the layout had changed. Mum's room had become an artifact workshop, and one of the guest rooms was now a potions lab. The tools and furnishings there were real — not illusions. Another gift from Black. Apparently, he wanted me not just to keep my promise, but to really try.
Still, both he and I know the dead don't need gifts. If I have to choose between my life, Dorothea's, Ariel's — or the entire Black family — I'll always choose the first. The ritual room in the basement had become a storage for the main obsidian anchor, covered in runes. Magical energy flowed into it from outside.
In the workshop, I found a paper with the emergency exit address, artifact schematics, setup instructions, and four portkeys to the places the spaces were copied from. I flipped through them and realized the power came directly from the intersection of three dragon veins — hence the odd location for the emergency exit.
The funniest thing was the pantry on the first floor. Behind a pile of junk, there was a small hatch in the floor — the emergency exit. If I weren't the artifact's owner, I'd never have noticed it.
"This is really amazing," I said, stepping out of the suitcase. "But honestly, it seems a bit much — even for saving your family."
"You're smart, Arthur, but still too young. I'm exiled from the family, I have no heir, and all my knowledge, experience, and money will just vanish when I die. I want to continue my life — at least through my student, the son I always dreamed of." I couldn't hold back. Something stung my eyes.
"But you could take a youth potion, then use prana return?"
"Alas, I'm too old. Too many errors have built up in my body code — as you call it, DNA — and the potion's effect would be weak. Plus, my prana is tied to my body and would try to return it to its old state. That's why the only known recipe for immortality is to infuse yourself with the prana of the young." Hmm, so that's why old people don't just drink the potion by the gallon — despite the side effects. My ear trick only works while I'm young.
Ariel hasn't drunk the potion yet — it might draw prana from her children instead, which would be awful. But Ludwig was studying prana return and trying to increase the conversion rate. Otherwise, he spends all his mana and only gets a little life energy back.
Finally, I made up my mind. Ariel and Ludwig weren't home — they'd gone shopping — but I double-checked to be sure. I activated the secrecy canopy and several other anti-eavesdropping spells, then blocked my connection with Dorothea, took my bag, and pulled out copies of records I'd never shown anyone — not even my mother.
"Teacher, I never told you, but there's another ritual you haven't read about. I know I'm being an ungrateful bastard, but swear a Sumerian magical oath right now — that you'll never tell anyone, even at the cost of your life, about what you read in these. And you won't use it on anyone but yourself without my permission."
"I don't understand, Arthur, what — "
"Swear," I said, on edge. "Or I'll change my mind."
"All right..." Phineas began the word-magic spell. After a short red flash, he said, "I swear I won't tell or hint by word, action, or inaction about the ritual in the records Arthur gave me — and I won't use it on anyone but myself without his permission."
"So, will you tell me why all the precautions?" After another, now white, flash, Phineas asked, breathing heavily. He didn't really doubt me — he knows me well enough to understand I wouldn't ask for this without a reason.
In response, I silently handed him the papers. As he read, he grew paler by the second. Then he handed them back — after all, he's a Legilimens and Occlumens with years of experience, so he didn't complain about memory.
"Now I understand why you act older than your age. Does Ariel know?"
"No, and I hope she never does. She has a new husband, children — she doesn't need another burden on her heart. That's why I never showed this ritual to anyone else. It's dangerous in the wrong hands. Now do you see why I kept it secret until the last moment — and only showed it after the oath?"
"I understand. In fact, you shouldn't have given in to emotion and given this old man a chance. I don't think I could take the life of a future child," he said.
"There's no need to take anyone's life if you do everything from the very beginning — before the fourth shell forms."
"Hm." He thought for a long time, his deep wrinkles making his face look like an old tree. "Yes, now I see how you became a veela but stayed a man. You interfered with the soul formation process."
"Let's leave that topic," I said, since that moment and decision were painful for me. "So, if you die unexpectedly — where should I look for you?"
"I haven't decided yet... But if anything, I'll leave word." Yeah, right. I knew better. The older people get, the more they cling to life. Old folks will fight tooth and nail for a few more years of health.
Was I taking a risk by revealing the ritual? Maybe. But if you don't use knowledge to save those you love — what's the point? And the oath can only be removed from Black by a god or archdemon — and even then, not without consequences for the soul. He wouldn't risk it, knowing what this knowledge could do if it spread — children would stop being born in the magical world, only old people would reincarnate.
But asking me to perform the Lerach ritual, or give permission to use it on someone else — that's a different matter.
"Stock up on more soul restoration potions if you decide to go through with it," I grimaced, remembering all the consequences of the ritual.
"By the way, how's your recovery?"
"It's better, but I need tim — Wait! That's it!" I exclaimed.
"Finally figured it out. Yes, you can set the suitcase so that one day in reality is a thousand days inside. But the energy won't last long at that rate — so it's better to use a ratio of a hundred or ten. Oh, and I brought you a dozen newborn salamanders. Are you going to tell me what you need them for?" Phineas asked.
"Probably not anymore. I was going to absorb their souls to recover, since they're basically elemental spirits in pseudo-material form — weak and stupid enough not to affect my mind, but nutritious enough, especially for my second form."
"I don't see why you can't use both. You need to recover, but also get used to your increased reserves and restore your form. Going to England in less than top shape would be foolish. So here's the plan — I'll go to the Medicis for a supply of potions, and you get ready for at least two months living in the suitcase with your familiar." Without wasting a second, Black spun on the spot and Disapparated. I went to look for restless Dorothea.
The poor girl would have to work hard today — pouring her mana into the doppelganger creation circle. There was a lot to do, and I couldn't handle it alone.
***
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Thank you for the help with the power stones!!!