I looked at the now headless dummy. Unlike a person, it was firmly attached to the floor and didn't fly back a couple of meters. Soon, it would restore itself thanks to the enchantments placed upon its creation, each splinter slowly rising and settling back into place, like a rewind. Just as my memory should return… in splinters…
The ritual might not have restored my memory whole and at once. But it returned threads, and they should pull out everything else. Like a thread pulling an entire tangled ball, until the ball is completely unraveled and follows the thread.
With each day, I understood this more and more: constant dreams, déjà vu, fragments popping up here and there at the most unexpected moments… Master Vincenzo was almost certain that in the coming days or weeks, a so-called memory collapse could occur, and everything, or rather, not everything, but large chunks of memory — would return in one surge. And they would, in time, restore the rest… probably… no one could give guarantees…
Except perhaps a Magister(Grand Master) Mentalist in that narrow field, who could not only give guarantees but essentially manually retrieve the entire memory. But a Magister Mentalist is a very rare beast. For perspective: there are only a handful of Master Mentalists in the entire world… maybe a couple hundred at most, and Magisters — you can count them on one hand.
Honestly, in more common magical disciplines, there are more Magisters than Master Mentalists. For example, in Transfiguration alone, there are more Master Transfigurers in Britain than Master Mentalists in the entire world. Though a footnote is needed here: Transfiguration is strongly emphasized in Britain, but let's be honest, our country doesn't have that many wizards compared to, say, China.
Anyway, Master Vincenzo, before his departure, said the ritual had been very helpful. That's why he rated the chance of me fully recovering my memory so highly.
He hadn't expected such results himself. He merely suggested that perhaps I myself, right before the memory erasure, managed to do something. Maybe left some mental anchor, well-hidden, or something else, but coupled with the ritual's effect, associative chains had emerged.
It already seemed as if this mental magic memory projection was like a recycle bin on a Muggle computer: when you delete everything from memory, it's still stored there, but to retrieve it all, you need access points, anchors in the form of memory fragments. And it seemed I was getting more and more of these fragments, and as soon as a truly vivid, crystal-clear anchor memory was found, the memory would obligingly restore itself from this projection. Like magic.
Though who knows… The case in my head is so unique, complex, and tangled that no mentalist in the world could accurately predict the final outcome if they knew the internal situation.
Specifically, that fragmented frame that flashed before my eyes… if it was real, it still wasn't enough to immediately pull a large chunk of memory. But everything in its own time. I would just try to shorten that time by constantly revisiting the moment of the execution, trying to delve deeper into it.
The mentalist advised me to stay home or under supervision until the first such memory collapse occurred. It could range from emotions and a headache to a powerful mental backlash. In short, he strongly recommended postponing school slightly if nothing had returned by then.
I couldn't stop mentally thanking my ancestors for the knowledge they left us in the library. Dozens and hundreds of outstanding minds left a legacy far more important than any gold or temporal power.
Although if I really did help my present self by doing something in that critical moment, the fragments could have returned anyway… someday… spontaneously. But that "someday" was the greatest danger, because the more time passed, the fainter, dimmer, and more partial the memory in the mental projection would become, until it vanished completely.
Ironically, what amused me most in this situation were, of course, the déjà vu experiences, which in my case weren't just tricks of the mind, but part of what I experienced during those three damned days — echoes coming from behind the veil of oblivion.
How I berated myself for failing to preserve the most valuable thing I had… my memory. My own history… Perhaps I relaxed too much in Provence. And everywhere, honestly; I was always calm. When you're almost invulnerable in the minds of people who fear crossing your family in the shadows, and it's nearly impossible to jail you through the law, you inevitably start feeling invulnerable. But as it turned out, that's extremely detrimental, and I need to train harder. I'll focus more on wandless magic — I need to be strong even with empty hands. Especially with empty hands.
And in a few days, I must definitely go to Ollivander's for a new wand. Father did give me a temporary wand with a dragon heartstring core, considering that. It was even good, but far from ideal, and I wanted one more suited to me. I likely could never fully replace my first, most native wand, but efficiency would be higher, for sure.
Though they wouldn't let me go anywhere alone anymore. At minimum, with a guard, which isn't irritating at all. I should have thought about security long ago. After this incident, Father became more cautious and thoroughly revised the issue of our personal safety.
This concerned all aspects: if before, upon an alarm signal, two "stars" of combat wizards would Apparate to us within five minutes, now a single combat star was constantly on duty near the manor, in a specially designated room, around the clock. And another would appear in case of an alarm. A "star" in the magical world denoted a group of five wizards. This division system was used in almost every force structure, from Aurors to private security agencies.
Of course, our manor was already heavily protected from external attacks with multi-layered charms and ancient runic defenses, but Father's fear was absolutely correct. Such a measure should have always been in place.
I don't think maintaining a star of experienced fighters on constant readiness, who also do patrols, would overly burden our family's budget. It's a minimal price for safety.
Moreover, many other security measures were taken: Father now didn't allow any family member to leave the manor without at least one guard, preferably two. And I considered this a correct and intelligent approach, because who knows what else these kidnappers or anyone else who might think they can profit from the Malfoys and get away with it might do. And our family had enemies in abundance.
I think regarding letters and owls, he also took some measures, but I wasn't aware of them. I should suggest he change something about the Apparition defenses and house-elves. Regarding house-elves… Dobby's behavior, which in my after-knowledge was… unique, was too worrying!
He literally betrayed my family! Just up and betrayed… Damned creature. Maybe eliminate the dangerous element before…
Wait, what's this malice? Strange, why am I getting angry? I always remembered and knew about this, so why this reaction? I even felt like going to kill a loyal servant… must be teenage hormones…
Anyway, even if you torture a house-elf with the Cruciatus, they wouldn't even dare think of freeing themselves or hindering you if you're the master, of course. And Father, though he sometimes hit Dobby, the master cannot be wrong. If Father didn't hit him, the house-elf would torture himself. Such is their nature. Though I always tried to treat loyal servants well.
Dobby himself often made mistakes due to stupidity, or rather inexperience, owing to his young age by their standards. Father, knowing this, often simply vented his anger on him.
He was generally on edge after my return, and it seems not without reason. My kidnappers still hadn't been found. This was evidenced by the dozens of Aurors, DMLE officers, private investigators, and fighters scouring all of Britain. And, I think, soon other families would join the search.
We urgently needed to find and punish these bastards, punish them cruelly and demonstratively. Otherwise, if people stop believing in the inviolability of our family and the severe, inevitable punishment for violating that inviolability, such cases would become more frequent, and many societal scum (and not only them) would start thinking these noble families aren't so special after all. And this concerned not just the Malfoys, but the entire established order and reputation of all noble families. This must be stopped, otherwise tremors would start, and tremors are bad — you could fall. And falling hurts.
Oh right, I need to do the cleansing ritual today. I always do it on Sunday. Wait… is today definitely Sunday… I hate this!
That damned Obliviate still caused confusion in spatiotemporal perception. Though it's mostly gone now, it still happened sometimes…
By the way, about the ritual. The fact that I performed a ritual every two weeks also hindered the search for me; namely, no particle could be found at home to use for tracking, let alone blood tracking… That's why now, in special boxes protected by runic magic, my blood was stored. Such vials prevented anything from destroying the contents, including various rituals. We now had blood samples from everyone at home. Even Draco's.
I was actually very touched by Draco visiting me. According to Mother, he was very worried and his eyes even got wet when he learned I'd been kidnapped. He was also angry they couldn't find me.
So, I managed to bond with my younger brother. Despite him looking up to me before, two years ago his attitude was definitely colder than now. Family is family, and I had plans for Draco. So this was good.
No one thought to spare the child with lies; after all, in high society, one needs to perceive the world correctly, and without lies hiding bitter truths, it's impossible. And my brother is already ten, and I wasn't gutted — no need to hide it from a delicate child's psyche.
Next year, he'll start at Hogwarts, and I've been trying all along to ensure he goes without the flaws from my after-knowledge, while keeping all the useful Slytherin traits. It's a pity that this summer, for obvious reasons, I distanced myself from him and didn't influence him.
But I was interested to know something else: if I really blew up one of the kidnappers' heads, as that flash showed, then there must have been many of them? Well, since I ultimately didn't succeed. Or was I too weak and passed out afterward?
Though adult, experienced wizards… I'm overestimating myself. Maybe I just caught one off guard, seizing the moment, because it's unlikely I, wandless, could have done anything substantial against several prepared adult wizards. And in that condition…
After an hour of wandless training, I proceeded with the ritual, because it was indeed Sunday. I had already started, but… Wait, was I already injured then?
If I last performed the ritual two weeks ago, that is, when I was with the Malfoys… and they told me I was seriously injured and lost a lot of blood, then there might be a small chance some remained there.
And then I had an idea: if you can find a person through a body part, could you, having the body, find your own blood? Of course, unlikely and sounds absurd, but what if such a ritual existed? Or if not, maybe it could be created. I hadn't heard of such a thing, but still… there were thoughts…
I admit, there was a temptation to perform the cleansing ritual, in case the kidnappers also decided to cast a blood curse, but as I now understood, there were ways to preserve blood from rituals with simple runic vials, so that wouldn't help me now.
By the way, such vials are extremely expensive due to the complexity of manufacture. Such runic, essentially passive artifact items are extremely difficult to create, and the material for them is expensive, as is the manual labor of the producer.
Anyway, as soon as the idea came, I went to Mother to find out and explain everything. It took just a couple of hours of searching to… not find such a ritual or even a mention of anything similar. However, even I, a novice in rituals, during the search came up with an idea of how such a ritual could be performed. More precisely, how to modify a standard blood-seeking ritual; it all came down to the principle of the search.
The ritual essentially took a blood sample and sought the greatest concentration of that blood. The key was the magic factor, because while a wizard's blood might not differ physically from others', it was magically unique. Or rather, it had a unique magical signature.
And here, thinking about runic vials, I arrived at a superficial, as it seemed to me, idea. An idea of how to modify the ritual for my task.
It was enough to simply hide my body from the ritual magic in any possible way. That is, to hide the greatest amount of blood from the blood search, thereby forcing the ritual to find my lost blood… where I was injured, and that could lead to the kidnappers.
Of course, there was the idea to search the archives better for the right ritual, because if a blood search could find the greatest concentration, what was the problem finding the second greatest without hiding… but it turned out that would disrupt the search method itself.
According to Mother's explanation, put very simply and with a bucketful of nonsense, the ritual simply sought the "source," and the source couldn't be more than one blood concentration. That's a very crude and crooked explanation, but for novices like me and even skilled practitioners like Mother, it was hard to explain better.
To understand the full depth of this ritual, invented so many times by so many people it's uncountable, you needed to be at least a Master Ritualist. And even that's not certain, because the ritual existed since ancient times, and even then it's not certain the creators themselves understood how complex in its simplicity, yet effective, their method was.
Of course, with a huge probability, the place where I was injured was already cleaned of blood, or dried blood might not register for the ritual. And over a week and a half had passed, so I didn't have high hopes. And there were many more "ifs," but what did I have to lose?
When I proposed my solution instead of hiring a ritualist, Mother and I took on the task together. Moreover, the method of hiding from the ritual turned out to be surprisingly simple: it was enough to define the ritual's search zone so that it didn't "see" inside itself — that is, didn't perceive the blood inside the ritual circle. I had to perform the ritual myself, of course, but Mother prepared all the complex parts.
Soon, I stood in the center of the ritual circle. The blood-seeking ritual was extremely powerful conceptually. Of course, it's not that you can't hide a person from the ritual — there are many ways to hide from such searches. It's just that the principle was potent.
By the way, it's possible even the place we're trying to find via the ritual is protected by similar magic, but what if the protection had already faded… This was a chance to find the place where my blood was spilled. And a lot was spilled there, if even half of what was in my diagnosis was true. Setting an additional block to define the ritual's area wasn't difficult; such modifications for different types of rituals were known to any competent Ritualist. To make it easier, the restriction was placed on the area of the ritual circle where I had to be during the ritual. Now the principle forcing magic to always point to its source — myself — should, in theory, not point to me. Because of this, I had to become both the conductor and the blind spot in my own ritual.
I concentrated, cutting off everything extraneous and distracting. In my hands was a bowl of water. A few drops of fresh blood stained the water crimson, and I began to utter the ancient activation words of an equally ancient ritual.