The early Sunday morning found Hogwarts in a state of blissful silence. Arcturus Malfoy strode along the eighth floor, his footsteps the only sound breaking the profound silence of the ancient corridors. He wasn't in any particular hurry, enjoying the emptiness of the halls and the absence of noise. The special atmosphere of Hogwarts in such moments lent the castle its true grandeur. His path led to a specific section of bare wall next to the tapestry depicting trolls being taught ballet by a hapless wizard. This no longer surprised him — he must have gotten used to it.
Stopping, he froze for a moment, listening to the silence. It seemed as if at that moment he noticed someone, but no. Then, unhurriedly, he drew his wand. A quiet Revelio washed over the space, revealing nothing. He added a couple more diagnostic spells scanning the area, just in case. Who knew, maybe someone was lurking under an invisibility or disguise charm. Only after assuring himself that not a soul was around did he touch the leather bag slung over his shoulder. Inside, among the textbooks, in a specially designated pocket, lay a rolled-up piece of old parchment. But that was just for the uninitiated.
What he pulled out was not just parchment, but the Marauder's Map. He didn't want to be caught entering the Room of Requirement. Leaning his back against the cold stone wall, he glanced around one last time to ensure there were no blind spots, and only then unrolled the map.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," Arcturus whispered, touching the map with the tip of his wand.
Ink spread across the parchment, revealing the floor plan. He quickly ran his eyes over the corridors and nooks. Everything was perfect, for NO ONE was nearby.
Rolling up the map and putting it away, he made three deliberate passes along the wall, clearly holding his desire in his mind. In the wall, a smooth, inconspicuous door of dark wood appeared. He pushed it and entered.
However, despite all his precautions, someone had indeed been following him right up to the entrance of the Room of Requirement. But Arcturus had no way of detecting them, for, according to the tales, even Death could not have found them.
***
In the morning, I came as usual to train. Though, after the kidnapping, I've remained somewhat the same in some ways, and in others, I've become paranoid. So only upon entering the Room of Requirement did I calmly exhale. Here, I always felt safe, which is why I tried by all means to protect this place from outsiders. I even used the Map — though during normal school life, in broad daylight, that's stupid, and I try not to do it. The risk of being caught by students, professors, and, worst of all, Dumbledore is too high!
So I only use the Map in unusual situations or in the company of my most trusted people, who don't stick their noses into others' business! The rest of the time — only in the dormitory or here, in the Room of Requirement.
Though, the situation where I might be caught with the Map seemed less dangerous to me than being caught entering the Room itself. So my precautions had solid reasons.
The room the Room had created before summer was familiar to me inside and out. It was my personal training hall, which I had created so that no outsider could possibly get in here. After all, this wonder-room had a principle: for similar desires, it didn't create new rooms but simply opened existing templates. And that was bad — it didn't suit me. I had to struggle for a long time back then to get a unique room for my needs, as similar requests throughout the school's history were apparently numerous.
In the room I'd created, there was a vast space, large enough to move around freely, and everything was clearly zoned.
To the right stretched an extensive empty field for maneuvers and experiments with powerful spells. Against the wall of this space stood rows of self-repairing targets and dummies, exactly like those in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, though slightly inferior to the ones we had in the Manor's training hall.
The left side was divided into two conditional zones. The one farther from the entrance was cluttered with various items: starting from things like weights and barbells, ending with smaller objects for practicing telekinesis. Besides, I hadn't forgotten the cherished pull-up bar and various things like racks and benches. Everything comes in handy!
Right in the center of the vast hall was a special zone: a circular platform with a radius of five meters, with dummies placed every meter along its circumference. Not wooden ones, but partially metal, also self-repairing, and fixed on special mechanisms. Thanks to this, when hit by repelling spells, for example, the dummies would fall and not get damaged as much as in a static version, and after one or two seconds, the enchanted spring mechanism would lift them again.
The right part of my training hall was a zone with randomly placed stone partitions. These were thin, easily destructible walls, perfect for practicing shooting from different angles, maneuvers, testing destructive spells, and, most importantly, for calming nerves and venting anger. Against the far wall on the right side were shelves with books on topics I needed and a few armchairs, but I didn't use this part much, as I had another room in the Room of Requirement for that.
Usually, I'd simply open the map, make sure no one was around, exit, and re-enter, mentally sending the image of another room I needed.
I tossed my robe onto one of the chairs. For a warm-up, with a lazy but precise movement, I hurled a Sectumsempra at the nearest partition wall to me. The battle-cutting spell sliced through the air and bit into the stone, leaving a considerable groove. Satisfied and smiling in anticipation, I headed straight for the center of the training circle.
I love my training sessions; my mood is always good — both before and after. From my shoulder holster, I drew my ebony wand. Then I took out the second, spare one from my belt sheath. I closed my eyes for a second and concentrated.
And as soon as my eyes opened, my dance began.
I didn't utter a single incantation, and these weren't spells. Instead, from the tips of both wands, almost simultaneously, erupted clusters of pure magic — an adaptation of Flipendo, created by precise magic manipulation. Two powerful impact-thrusts lashed at two opposite dummies, hurling them backward, straight onto the floor.
I sprang into motion. Turning and entering a kind of lethal dance. My body spun, and the two wands seemed to move independently, tracing short, sharp arcs in the air. Clusters of repelling spells flew in all directions, toppling dummies one after another. The silence of the hall was broken only by the sound of magic flying at considerable speed and the dry crack of falling wood and the clang of spring mechanisms trying to lift them.
I accelerated. At first, the dummies managed to rise before I could knock them down. Then they barely managed to get up before it was their turn to be hit.
Soon, a continuous cycle formed: a dummy fell, the mechanism triggered, but as soon as the figure lifted halfway off the floor, a new blow hammered it back down. Twelve targets and six spells from each wand per cycle.
This continued for a long time; minutes passed, approaching ten, and I just kept going. The excellent physical shape I had diligently built for myself was paying off. Over the last month and a half since I started a special course of strengthening potions, my body had become noticeably more resilient and stronger.
Looking in the mirror now, I could see muscle definition, a low body fat percentage clearly under 15%, and I wasn't an ectomorph. I had broad shoulders, a V-shaped torso, fairly broad bones for my age, more or less developed muscles… of course, not a bodybuilder, but I wasn't aiming for that. I needed a toned and strong body that kept improving, both in appearance and function, partly thanks to calisthenics — a system of exercises using only body weight. I needed to be strong, enduring, and agile. The higher my physical indicators, the better.
At some point, I even had to make push-ups more difficult. After all, the plank plus push-ups took up a lot of time: now, depending on the day, I do the exercise with a wide grip or a diamond (triangle) grip, and now I'm learning to do proper one-arm push-ups. This way, I managed to reduce my morning warm-up to ten minutes instead of the previous fifteen to twenty at peak loads. The main problem remains the plank.
For example, with squats, I started using additional weight, but I had to leave the plank for endurance. At least now I can hold it for about eight minutes… Okay, let's say seven. But that's still great!
Plus, we mustn't forget that I'm constantly developing fine and gross motor skills. There's no point even talking about reaction time and excellent flexibility.
The last points are at an excellent level for me, not so much due to targeted physical training as from wand-waving, duels, and sparring. I'd even say — mostly because of those factors.
Things were even better with magic. My magical reserve, the throughput capacity of my magical channels, and other parameters of my magical body, thanks to daily grueling training, rituals, talent, and high magical potential, were growing like crazy.
And even so, after about ten minutes of this two-handed wand-waving, my breathing quickened, and sweat began to bead on my forehead. But the movements! The movements didn't lose their precision. Inside, atop the adrenaline and concentration, a cold analytical part of my mind was working. It clearly saw the results.
Speed increases, but not twofold, I noted once again. At most by thirty percent. The left hand lags behind the right, no matter how hard I try. Despite the fact that since I was eleven, I've diligently tried to cast spells with both hands and even learned to write decently with my left, there's still a lack of synchronization. It's not enough just to cast from two hands — the consciousness needs to split perfectly, not switch from one target to another. And the hands sometimes got in each other's way, and my feet got tangled. And this is considering that I've had this circle since the start of this school year. Ahhh... and it's already October. Weak, weak… need to try harder!
The dummies continued to bounce furiously and fall under the hail of my magic. In this whirlwind, I honed my mastery of two wands simultaneously, as well as speed and accuracy. I was literally polishing my body control, especially my footwork.
Many underestimate the importance of legs, but even in something like boxing, footwork is sometimes, often even, more important than handwork. Although, you'd think… it's the hands that strike.
Every dummy knocked down was a step toward being ready the next time I was attacked. So that my speed, my strength, my control would become as insurmountable a barrier as the ancient walls of my family manor.
After fifteen minutes of the grueling "dance," I finally finished with the circle and moved on to practicing spells. The targets and dummies in the left zone, standing almost flush against the wall, were convenient — stepping left and right, I always had a whole target in front of me.
Honestly, this part would be better replaced by just the hall wall, but I'm not yet tired of wood splinters flying everywhere. And they were enchanted with whole combinations of charms to be more durable than ordinary wooden dummies, fire-resistant, cold-resistant, and so on. But it didn't help much against the powerful repelling spells I enhanced with the "Tria" modification.
Actually, these modifications, or meta-spells used to enhance incantations, weren't as simple as they might seem. Now I fully understood this, as the last month I got really fired up about all this, to the point of almost forgetting about my desire to achieve an Animagus form. But now, it seems, I've almost prepared everything for that long ritual. Just need to buy the last couple of things to start, and then I can proceed. With these thoughts, I didn't stop casting.
I was still continuing my training, which over the years had only become longer. Now even a full hour of training in the morning didn't cause the tremor, weakness, and state of near-exhaustion it used to.
And that was bad. Because I needed to develop at an inhuman pace, and in such training, the main thing is to push yourself to that very state where you understand that just a dozen more light spells, and you'll start to feel slight exhaustion. In general, I wouldn't need to chase development speed so much if I had an ordinary potential. Then, at an acceptable pace, I would have already reached my limit or been close to it. But as it is, my reserve still has room to grow and grow, as does the durability and throughput of my magical channels.
In short, I decided to work like a dog this year. By the most modest estimates, I spend up to three hours a day, minimum, just on magical training. At maximum, this number on weekends could reach monstrous proportions. That is, I usually have two training sessions — morning and evening, at least an hour each. Then sparring with Cassius and Blackmore — at least three times a week for an hour and a half or more. Besides, Saturdays were reserved for the Duelling Club meetings, and I also just dueled on other days. Well, sparring, but seriously.
I simply found myself a perfect sparring partner with whom… or rather, with whom I feel the thrill of battle. And I'm not talking about Nymphadora, with whom I still haven't managed to establish such a friendly contact, but about a Slytherin girl straight from the seventh year. Too bad she's busy today.
Besides duels and sparring, I also constantly practiced telekinesis — controlled small objects, maintained a spell during lessons, conversations, basically all the time. Here, I trained with weight and the number of objects simultaneously.
The finale of the day was always mental magic training… right before sleep, and from now on, literally constantly. Mother told me a lot about the family curse, and it wasn't good news. Fortunately, the House of Black had devised many countermeasures, and I had to actively apply them. Starting from calming potions and ending with special breathing techniques, Occlumentative practices, and the like.
"Bombarda!"
After a dozen practiced spells, which I was still polishing to perfection, the time finally came to practice the basic explosive spell. The dummy was literally torn to splinters. Thankfully, I always managed to create a shield dome with my left hand in time.
After about a dozen such explosions, I finally finished my training, and only because I was running short on time. Of course, there were no classes today, and I'd really like to come back here earlier than evening. But today I had to go to Hogsmeade, and we loved to linger there, especially after our meetings, which we held early in the morning right after breakfast.
On top of all this, one specific matter was added today, also there: a meeting in Hogsmeade with an important Ravenclaw, among the prefects.
It's generally convenient that we now have legal access to Hogsmeade. It's just a shame that the illegal passage never came in handy, and now not only my advisors but also the most trusted third-years know about it. They also know what I'll do to them if they get caught, so they don't use that loophole without my instruction.