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The guys waited about a minute while I made a semblance of a toga out of my robes, hanging my broken arm on it. I need to learn to conjure with my left hand too. Also, without hands and wandlessly - a clear example of this harsh necessity is now pressed to the chest, which, by the way, seems to have a broken rib. Overcoming adversity in the form of dark halls, corridors, mud, slime, and other underground caves' delights, we heard the sound of moving stones in the distance. Walking on it, we got to the blockage. Ron did a great job with his hands, clearing the top of one-third of a man's height. Now we can get through there.
"Ginny!" Ron shouted joyfully, helping the girl to be the first to crawl through this opening to the other side. "You're alive! I can't believe my eyes! What happened to you?"
Ron tried to hug her, but Ginny pulled away, sobbing.
"You're okay, sis, this is the main thing!"
Fawkes was next, forcing Ron to retreat a half step.
"What's that?" exclaimed the guy, but Harry, who had climbed in after, was already explaining to him. Now I got out too.
"Wow, what an amazing sword!" admired Ron, looking at the blade in Harry's hands.
"Wow!" Now Ron was looking at me and at my awkward bandaging of the arm. "Everything is fine?"
"Yes, a couple of abrasions, fractures, nothing out of the ordinary."
"Ron, let's get out," Harry interrupted his friend, "and I'll tell you everything."
"Tell me at least a little..."
"Not now. Where is Lockhart?"
"He is there," Ron nodded with a grin. "He is not doing well. Let's go, you'll see..."
A couple of minutes later, under the light of the phoenix's wings, we reached that very hall with a cemetery made of bones and a pipe - the exit point. Or the entrance depends on the point of view. Lockhart chilled out here with a look of dashing, silly and happy, muttering something under his breath.
"His spell hit him," Ron explained to us. "He now has no idea, neither who he is, nor where, nor who we are. He's dangerous for himself. I told him to go and wait for us at the exit."
Lockhart looked at us happily.
"Hello! A strange place, isn't it? Do you live here?"
"No."
I stopped listening to them, contemplating what had happened. Pondering, pondering, and ... And nothing. There is such a state when you want to think about something, or you just need to think about it, but instead of thinking in your head, just the phrase: "I think, think, think." Now I was in a similar situation.
"Max! Are you here?" Harry waved his hand in front of my face, pulling me out of this strange state.
"Oh, yes. What?"
"Fawkes can't lift everyone," the guy's voice was filled with genuine sympathy. "Come on, you go first ..."
"No, no, Harry. It will not work. My arm is broken, my leg, possibly ribs, and it is not yet known what else. Maybe you first, and then it will come back for me? Did you want to stay instead of me?
"Well, yes…"
"Not worth it. I myself can't grab onto anyone, and you can't really grab me with my injuries. And if I'll fly alone, then with my left hand, I will calmly hold on to the phoenix."
"Max is right," nodded Ron.
They grabbed each other, and Fawkes carried them into the sky. And I was waiting. A minute later, the bird went downstairs. And it looked at me with its head bowed.
"Maybe it would be easier for you to just apparate with me?"
Instead of answering, the phoenix turned his back, offering to grab the tail, as Harry had done before.
"Well, as you know."
Grabbing the tail, I did not notice how easily Fawkes flew forward and up the pipe. A short flight, and here I am again, standing in the abandoned toilet of Moaning Myrtle. All the others are standing nearby, waiting. Ginny is crying softly, her face down to the floor.
"Go to the staff room, and I'll go to the hospital wing."
"But Max! We must quickly tell what happened to the professors!" Ron was indignant.
"It's not their mental balance that worries me more, but my broken limbs."
"Ah, well ... Yes," the redhead was embarrassed. "Then it's really better to do so. Will you come by yourself?"
"I won't know if I don't try."
"And Max... Thank you," Ron said embarrassedly. "For ... Well, you understand."
"Yes, I understand, I understand," I patted the guy on the shoulder with my uninjured hand. "Go, or professors will do something else."
We parted almost immediately. Left alone with the dark corridors of Hogwarts, I suddenly felt fear, cold, and pain. It was so irresponsible and insane that ... Although, why the hell am I surprised ?! The hat will not be so stupid to make mistakes and, apparently, has discerned in me a Gryffindor. But if I hadn't had hemomancy and a sword, I wouldn't have climbed there, right? Wouldn't I?
I got to the hospital wing quickly, or not quite - for some reason, the feeling of time has disappeared completely. I walked slowly, sometimes leaning against the walls and taking a break. Unaccustomed fatigue and weakness literally captured the whole body. Once again, pushing off the wall, I entered abruptly into the doors of the hospital wing, barely standing on my feet.
"What happened?!" Madam Pomfrey said indignantly. It seems that was the name of this witch. She just looked at me in surprise for just a moment, holding in her hands a large bottle of potion and a smaller test tube. It seems that she was pouring something into such test tubes, and I distracted her.
"Oh, what condition are you in..." Madam Pomfrey put the test tubes on the table and hurriedly walked towards me, but my legs stopped holding me, and I began to fall forward into the darkness ...