Joseph Ben sighed wearily, steeling himself after yesterday’s student work reviews, which had prevented him from getting a proper night’s sleep.
He opened the door to one of the largest lecture halls at Humboldt University of Berlin.
The hall, besides being used for lectures, was often used for various meetings.
“Meetings that sometimes have nothing to do with education or science.”
He recalled one such gathering with displeasure, where active propaganda had been waged against the “red enemy behind the wall.” Not that he liked the Russians or the state of his hometown, but he hated politics even more.
Immersing himself in it was like sinking into a swamp.
Unpredictable, deceitful, where the more you struggled, the greater your chance of drowning and suffocating.
Placing his bag on the table, he turned to the stream of students who had his last class of the day and scanned them.
“Glad to see most of you are on time this time.
Apparently, the first time I locked latecomers out of the lecture hall taught you a lesson in respecting your professors.”
Taking a breath, Joseph paused, his gaze lingering on one student who seemed to be from a different year.
He frowned slightly and shook his head.
“Need to get some proper sleep.”
“Group leaders, leave your attendance lists on my desk during the break.
Now, let’s begin the lecture.
Today, we continue our exploration of thermodynamics, and this time we’ll cover the first law of thermodynamics.”
The first law of thermodynamics is a generalization of the law of conservation and transformation of energy for thermodynamic systems.
It is formulated as follows: the change in internal energy ∆U of a non-isolated thermodynamic system…
The room filled with the sound of chalk on the blackboard and the low whispers of students, which immediately died down when the professor looked their way.
Ben wouldn’t call himself the best teacher.
He wasn’t particularly patient, so he couldn’t calmly explain the same thing ten times over.
He couldn’t spice up his lectures with humorous examples, like a few of his colleagues in the philosophy department.
But despite that, he truly loved teaching.
Sharing knowledge about how the world worked, seeing the spark of understanding ignite in his students’ eyes as they grasped what he was saying.
When a student, hearing words like “adiabatic” or “inductance,” didn’t just put on a knowing face while understanding nothing, but actually asked clarifying questions.
Despite his impatience, Joseph always made time for those who sought knowledge, rather than sitting with blank stares, waiting for everything to be chewed up and delivered on a silver platter.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the class.
Writing down the last formula, the man put down the chalk.
“For a better understanding of today’s lecture, I recommend you check out the literature I recommended after the new year.
If you have questions, you can come see me now.
I won’t hold the rest of you.”
The murmur of students packing up filled the room, a sound the man had grown accustomed to over the years.
He picked up his lecture notes, which he’d long since memorized and carried mostly out of habit, and his attendance journal, placing them back in his bag.
Footsteps approached.
“Professor, I have a few questions about today’s lecture.”
Joseph looked at the blue-eyed blond who had approached him.
A real Aryan.
He blinked in surprise, frowning.
He hadn’t noticed this student before, even though he stood out among the others.
With a slight headache, he finally recalled the student’s name.
“Oh, Gilderoy, you’re going to hold me up for another half hour again?”
He muttered with a mix of amusement and annoyance.
The golden-haired blond laughed.
“Sorry, Professor, I’m just too curious.
As an apology, I’ll treat you to your favorite pastries.”
Blue eyes, full of mischief, met brown.
Admiring the evening city, I walked through the streets of West Berlin.
In one of my coat pockets, enchanted with space-expansion charms, lay a couple of notebooks I’d kept during my lectures at Humboldt University over the past month and a half.
I kept them mostly out of nostalgia, remembering my school days at Durmstrang and my time with my grandfather, Maximilian.
Thanks to my Occlumency, I remembered every lecture verbatim.
They’d helped me develop spells based on the “scientific language.” But what helped me more than the material itself was the thought process of the professors, which I “viewed” through Legilimency.
Growing up and living among wizards had shaped a worldview that made it hard to understand the Muggles’ natural sciences.
Too different a perspective and knowledge base.
Most Muggles, upon first encountering the magical world, considered wizards illogical and a bit “off.”
And that made sense.
Take the perception of the material and spiritual.
For ordinary people with no connection to the magical world, everything boiled down to the mundane: work, car, family, food.
Things that were immutable, whose capabilities they understood.
For instance, if you drop a spoon, it falls due to gravity.
If you light a match and throw it on kindling, it catches fire through an oxidation-reduction chemical reaction.
If you stew cabbage and potatoes, they don’t suddenly come to life in your mouth.
Ordinary people might not understand the underlying processes, but they know what will happen because they’ve seen it before or because “smart” and “authoritative” people explained it to them.
For Muggles, the world is entirely material.
Everything spiritual is reduced to pretty words in poems, Sunday sermons, and various “miracles”: events scientists couldn’t explain.
Even for many believers who don’t deny the “paranormal,” it’s something that only happens after death, when they pass into the “other world.”
You’d think wizards would be the same.
There’s a traditional society with its laws and social institutions.
There are spells learned from ancestors.
Potions gradually perfected by Potioneers.
It all seems to follow the script written in thick tomes centuries ago.
Everything boils down to the mundane, where you know what’s coming because it’s been that way for ten years.
It could have been, if magic worked like science: a set amount of energy for a sequence of actions leading to a predictable result.
But unfortunately for many Muggle-borns who want to systematize magic into a science, magic itself “loves pranks.” The principle of “once a year, even a stick shoots” is no joke for magic.
What children do with their accidental magic can sometimes baffle even ten Masters of Magic.
And chaos is change and uncertainty.
Wizards have no clear boundary between the spiritual and the material.
For them, they’re often inseparable.
That’s why Masters of Ritualistics are so respected in the magical world, but the ICW restricts public access to knowledge about ritualistics.
Considering the factor of uncertainty, for wizards, Masters of Ritualistics are like sappers for Muggles.
A respected profession, but what if it blows up?
Shaking my head, I breathed in the cool air.
Three months had passed since the ball celebrating the founding of the German Ministry of Magic.
It was now mid-February 1986.
The hysteria over the bloody ball had died down, but the power struggle in the German Ministry was just heating up, likely under the deft “behind-the-scenes” management of Lord Vinter, who might become Minister of Magic here much earlier than in my past.
As for the Muggle world, everything was tense as usual.
The USA and the USSR were measuring their “aggregates,” other developed countries were choosing sides, and underdeveloped countries rich in natural resources were becoming “testing grounds” for the first two to prove who was right and whose “aggregate” was longer and bigger.
Business as usual.
A projectile flying toward me was deflected by the passive protective charms around me.
My wand was instantly in my hand, aimed at my attacker.
Two boys playing in the snow looked at me in confusion.
I noticed a few passersby flinch at my sudden movement.
I stared seriously at the nearest kid.
“BOO!”
With a pop, a bouquet of flowers appeared from the tip of my wand.
The startled boy stumbled backward and fell into a snowdrift.
“Hans.
Haha, pfft.”
The second boy, whose snowball had been meant for me, started laughing until he got a snowball in the face and fell into the snow.
I walked on, strengthening my Concealment Charms, while behind me, the shouts of kids and the laughter of a few adults faded.
My hand, still holding the wand that could have just unleashed a Blasting Curse, trembled slightly.
I suppressed my emotions with Occlumency and pulled out the notebook enchanted with Protean Charms for communication with my hired wizards.
Flipping through it, I read today’s report.
Nothing.
The tribe of Jotuns I needed still hadn’t been found.
I needed to return to England in a month to submit my recently finished third book to the publisher.
More importantly, I needed to check on my network of informants and sell a batch of artifacts I’d made through Coffin.
Still, I wouldn’t call the past three months wasted.
Systematic training, several strengthening rituals, knowledge from the mathematics and natural sciences faculty that gave me ideas for new spells, and a few new acquaintances in the German Ministry of Magic who could provide “interesting” information in the future were all very useful.
I stopped near a café, realizing that besides breakfast and a couple of pastries from the batch I’d bought for Joseph Ben as an apology for “using” his head, I hadn’t eaten anything today.
A Master of Ritualistics, meticulously performing multi-day rituals where a moment’s hesitation could ruin everything, but forgetting to eat on time when not required?
Yes, I can do that.
I smiled self-deprecatingly and opened the café door.
The familiar smells of tobacco smoke and nuts hit my nose.
“So, you’re telling me you don’t have ice cream?”
“Sorry, but we don’t stock ice cream in the winter.”
The red-haired man in a white coat and black bowler hat, who had been arguing with the saleswoman, flinched sharply and turned his head toward me.
…the sound of a gunshot and a woman’s scream rang out.
A body hit the floor.
I froze, taking in the scene.
Smoke rose from the barrel of a gleaming, magically charged Colt, clenched in the hand of a red-haired man with a smirk on his face…
I tilted my head slightly, examining Roman Torchwick.
I thought my late lunch could wait.
“Shit.”
Roman Torchwick, a descendant of Russian immigrants who had fled the burning fires of the Russian Revolution in the early twentieth century, had been having a good day.
He’d managed to close a couple of decent deals with shadowy “entrepreneurs,” which should have completely covered the financial losses he’d suffered in Czechoslovakia.
The dead thugs were replaced with new thugs, equally un-brilliant and just as poor at understanding his wonderful, good-natured humor.
The only thing standing between him and some well-deserved hedonism, involving high-proof drinks and not-so-cheap cigars, was a certain lady’s demand for ice cream.
Five kilograms of it.
If not for that, today would have been a good day.
Until he met the eyes of a familiar British gentleman.
Not a very good acquaintance.
“Shit.”
His cane caught the nearby table and, under an Engorgio charm, flipped it over.
It grew several times larger, blocking the Brit’s path and view under the shocked cries of the Muggles.
Turning, Roman practically kicked down the door to the storage room and sprinted toward the back exit.
The locked back door was no obstacle for the healthy man who just kicked it open.
He ran outside, turned a corner, and with a pop of Apparition, vanished.
Feeling the familiar disorienting sensation of being yanked through a pipe, Roman Torchwick found himself a few meters above the surface of a lake.
The ice in the center had already melted.
A moment before his body was supposed to take an “ice bath,” he enveloped himself in the dark mist of Battle Apparition.
The leader of the Gray Dealers flew toward the shore, leaving a quickly dissipating trail of black mist.
Near the shore, he narrowly dodged a curse beam from behind and looked back.
A figure, appearing in the air near the water’s edge, transformed into a yellow magical bolt that shot toward him.
Torchwick quickly determined the blond using Battle Apparition was twice as fast as him.
Without hesitation, he dropped his Apparition behind a tree and, with a spin, Apparated again, appearing near the entrance to a tavern in one of Germany’s magical villages.
Adjusting his hat, he ran inside, nearly knocking over exiting patrons.
“Hey, watch where you’re going, jerk!”
Ignoring the shouts behind him, Torchwick threw a few Knuts into the saucer on the bar, nearly knocking it over, and grabbed a handful of emerald powder.
“Old Roy’s Shop.”
He muttered quietly, throwing the powder into the fireplace at his feet. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
As he vanished into the green flames, he saw a golden-haired blond with bright blue eyes step through the tavern door.
After a few blurred images flickering before his eyes, Roman Torchwick found himself back in Berlin, in the magical part of the city, in a junk shop.
The old owner leaned against the counter with a bored look.
“Good day, Old Roy!”
“Drop dead, you ginger bastard.”
“I’m glad to see you too.”
Quickly looking around, the redhead immediately spotted a half-giant, two and a half meters tall, picking his nose with a focused expression.
“Kid, take this thing and hit the next person who comes out of that fireplace.”
Pulling a claymore that had somehow ended up in a barrel full of various items, Roman shoved the heavy two-handed sword into the half-giant’s hands.
“Hey, what do you think you’re doing with my assistant?”
“Old man, if you can hold up the blond who comes out of that fireplace, I’ll forgive your two-hundred-Galleon debt.
If you kill him, I’ll pay you the same.”
The skinny old man narrowed his eyes and looked at the fireplace.
“Who’s the bastard that needs killing?”
“Scary as a Hungarian Horntail in mating season.
I recommend using your favorite ‘breakers.'”
Roman said, opening the front door.
At that moment, a golden-haired blond emerged from the green flames in the fireplace.
“AAAARGH!”
The half-giant, Gron, screamed and swung the claymore at the wizard.
With a loud crack, the sword embedded itself in the floorboards.
The wizard stepped back and aimed his wand at Gron’s face.
With a flash of red light, the half-giant’s heavy body collapsed, knocking over a shelf of old books.
“Damn dragon shit!”
Cursing loudly, the junk dealer aimed a cocked crossbow at the uninvited guest.
A magically charged bolt, known as a “mage-killer,” capable of piercing most known magical shields, was already in the groove.
At the same time he pulled the trigger, the wizard waved his wand.
The bolt clattered away, deflected by the claymore that had suddenly appeared in its path.
A moment later, the sword embedded itself in the wall, centimeters from the old man’s head.
Swallowing hard, the dealer slid down the wall, staring ahead.
The golden-haired wizard silently left the shop.
Meanwhile, Roman Torchwick, having changed his hair color with an illusion and Transfigured his clothes, tried to blend in.
Quickly turning into an alley, he took a shortcut to one of his safe houses.
After a few turns, he met the blue eyes again.
A flat voice came.
“Roman Torchwick.”
“Never heard of him.”
Trying to walk past the persistent Brit, Roman saw him block the way.
A magically glowing blue Colt was pulled from his coat.
A shot rang out.
Instead of falling and bleeding, the Brit’s silhouette dissolved into golden dust, and a voice came from behind.
“Somnium.”
Feeling his vision darken, the redhead tried to aim the pistol at the blond, but the weapon had already fallen from the hands of the sleeping leader of the Gray Dealers.
Waking with a splitting headache, like he’d been celebrating New Year’s nonstop for the past month and a half, Roman Torchwick opened his eyes.
He saw a damp basement and a wizard sitting on a chair in front of him, whose name he just remembered.
Gilderoy Lockhart closed the book he’d been reading with a snap and looked at him.
“Good evening, Mr.
Torchwick.”
Tugging at his hands tied behind the chair, the redhead clicked his tongue and puffed out his chest.
“I’m not saying anything for free!”
“Everything I need, I already know.”
Roman fell silent.
After a few seconds of awkward silence, looking at his interlocutor’s expressionless face, he asked:
“Um, so we’re skipping the torture and extraction stage?”
“Yes.
And I’m offering you a chance to serve me.”
Blinking a few times, Roman surveyed the basement and tugged at the ropes around his hands.
“You know, you have a pretty original strategy for hiring employees.”
“You’ll be a servant, not an employee.
As for the strategy, you didn’t give me a choice.”
“Sorry, but running away from someone who just tried to turn me into grilled chicken is just common sense.”
Torchwick almost bit his tongue as the magical pressure from the wizard sitting across from him intensified.
His throat tightened, and his vision blurred.
The golden-haired wizard’s eyes glowed like sapphires as he spoke.
“I can incinerate your body at any moment and trap your soul in that nearby stone, which I will then throw into the Spree.
At the bottom of the river, your soul will suffer until someone destroys the stone or the world ends.
Do you understand me?”
Through the voice that seemed to come from underwater, the redhead nodded hesitantly.
The magical pressure vanished, and Roman could breathe again.
“Haha.
Fine, fine, I’ll be your servant.
When do I need to bring you slippers in my teeth?”
“As a reward, I will heal Neapolitan.”
Roman Torchwick froze.
His green eyes narrowed.
“Now let’s talk about that in more detail.”