Kapitel 55: Secret No More?

"This is not how I expected to spend my Saturday night." Remus muttered to himself as he looked around the medical wing.

Harry, Ron and Hermione were sitting on one side of the room, and Danil, Jamie and Gabriel were on the opposite. Snape circled the Golden Trio, extracting every drop of information about the incident from them. Each of the teenagers looked rumpled, but already dry. Pomfrey had no tolerance for those who contaminated a sterile environment.

The section in which the impromptu interrogation was carried out was fenced off from the rest of the room by a long screen, eliminating the chance to peek at what was happening.

Speaking of Madam Pomfrey, she came just a couple of minutes ago, and was now wrapping up the countless wounds that remained on Danil's body.

"How many times could I have told you that you should be more careful! You will have to stay here for a few days while Severus prepares the healing paste for you."

Danil hissed as the Mediwitch tightened the bandage around the wound on his arm. 'Bless all living things for the existence of disinfectant spells, because without them the boy would have been much worse off.' She thought.

"But he'll be fine, right?" Jamie asked, fidgeting in her seat.

"Of course, this boy heals faster than a dog. If he came into my wing even less often, it would be much better. Oh, just let me tell you, how utterly ridiculous his injuries are! Once he even showed up with a sword in his shoulder, can you imagine?!" Pomfrey ranted and raved.

Hermione, who had been eavesdropping on their conversation with interest, shrank into her chair. She didn't know what to think after everything that happened.

"–ran into the bathroom because he said I needed to use the water against him. I thought that by surrounding myself with water, I could stop his pursuit long enough for him to calm down." Harry said, looking anywhere but at Professor Snape.

The green-eyed boy's chest was bandaged under his robes. The last blow from Danil had cracked a couple of his ribs, so a spell from Pomfrey would get him back on his feet, but his wounds weren't all that life-threatening, so he was left for later.

"And your only idea was to blow up the pipes?" Snape raised an eyebrow, as if surprised at how stupid a human could be. "How arrogant do you have to be to think you could get away with–?"

"Severus." Remus interrupted with a frown on his face. "Yes, he could have made better choices, but that's already in the past. Don't pretend we haven't fixed everything with a few spells."

Snape sneered at Remus, but didn't deny his words.

"Well, let's assume he didn't disrupt anything particularly important in the castle's internal systems. We're still left with an obvious problem."

Taking a step towards Harry's bed, Snape loomed over the three friends like a harbinger of death. His robes reached down to the ground and his broad shoulders cast a shadow over the teenager's face.

"Why were snooping around in his room? What idiotic idea are you using as an excuse for your actions this time?"

Remus's frown deepened, but he didn't interrupt this time. The question was valid, even if he didn't like that Snape had been hostile from the start.

"... it was my fault." Hermione said quietly, turning the Professor's ire towards herself. "I– I noticed something was going on in the castle since the day of the Acromantula attack and started investigating. I asked Harry and Ron to help me search his room."

"Still don't hear the reason, Granger." Snape crossed his arms over his chest. Of course, he had questions about how exactly their research was conducted, but he would leave that to McGonagall. He was sure that the know-it-all was still using the Time Turner, and that she probably used it to see something that she should've seen.

"I was shaken by the Basilisk attack later in the year." She continued just as quietly. "The Aurors didn't find anyone in the castle who could control undead of that size, so I thought: who could be the culprit?"

"And your choice fell on Khromov?" Remus asked.

"... If that's his name, then yes. He was an unknown factor. All the Professors refused to talk to us about his existence. I thought that he was somehow able to deceive everyone and hide behind the protection of authority to avoid punishment."

Snape didn't need to use legilimensy to know that the girl was lying. He saw how her body trembled, how she flinched every time her eyes fell on Khromov's body. She was scared and this fear fueled her obsession.

He didn't really care why the girl decided to make Danil into her personal monster, but he couldn't let his source of ingredients disappear because of the girl's ravings.

"And you didn't think that his existence could have been hidden for a completely different reason?" Remus said with a hint of disbelief in his voice.

Hermione and Harry both looked at Ron, but he just shrugged, refusing to say anything.

"I see…" The werewolf said slowly, lost in thought.

There was a brief silence in the room, broken only by Danil's quiet curses in Russian and Pomfrey's voice scolding him for his choice of words.

"Professor?" Ron finally broke the silence. "Who is he anyway? Why does water… erm, melts him?"

Snape snorted and walked to the other side of the medical wing, leaving Remus to answer their questions.

"This is something you should ask Mr. Khromov himself." Remus nodded towards his bed. "It's his secret and I doubt he'll be too pleased if I tell it to you without permission."

"But–" Harry's protest died on his lips, interrupted by someone opening the door to the medical bay. That someone walked inside the room, and then stopped, calling for the mediwitch.

"I'll check what's going on there." Madam Pomfrey quickly reached the screen and disappeared behind it, talking in low voices with the newcomer.

Meanwhile, Danil fell powerlessly on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Now that the veil of rage had been lifted from his eyes, he remembered everything that had happened during the chase. Jamie covered him with a blanket and patted his good shoulder with pity in her eyes.

'Those Hufflepuffs definitely saw me.' He thought bitterly.

A couple of moments later, Madam Pomfrey returned, leading Professor McGonagall behind her. The trio of friends instinctively cowered at the sight of the woman, she looked absolutely apocalyptic, all she needed was smoke from her nostrils to complete her look.

"Can someone explain to me why half the students in the castle are talking about another monster chasing mister Potter?" She said immediately, without even looking around, her eyes immediately found Harry.

The Gryffindor boy shifted in his bed, but to his relief, someone started speaking before him.

"I know I'm not your usual Prince Charming, but a monster from the get-go? Really?" Danil muttered in displeasure, not even trying to sit up on the bed. "I have feelings too, just so you know."

McGonagall turned towards the boy's monster and pursed her lips. "Well, Mr. Khromov, if you want, you can make your feelings known at dinner today, because by then everyone in the castle and their parents will know about you."

Danil, Gabriel and Jamie looked unhappy hearing her words. The secret of Enderman's existence inside the school didn't even last a year! Well, Jamie was more unhappy that she could no longer consider herself one of the holders of another Hogwarts secret, but who'll call her out on that?

"I doubt Madam will let me go until I grow some new flesh, Professor." Danil deadpanned. "And I wasn't really planning on moving, to be honest. Some of my muscles are missing from my body at the moment."

"New flesh…?" McGonagall muttered in horror, but immediately forced herself to calm down and turn towards her colleagues. "Remus, Severus, I could use the details of the incident right now."

After a short retelling of events with the addition of information from the participants in the catfight themselves, the Transfiguration Professor finally had a complete picture of the events. The woman wasn't sure who she was more disappointed in, her Gryffindors for breaking into someone else's room, or at Danil for telling Harry to use the water against him.

"I'm disappointed in you three." She said looking at her students with conflict in her eyes. "But we will talk about your poor decisions later. First, I must discuss with Mr. Khromov his possible future."

Madam Pomfrey, realizing that they would need privacy, waved her wand and the partition split in two, this time surrounding only Danil's bed. Gabriel and Jamie were quickly kicked out of the room because, unlike everyone else present, these two didn't even receive a scratch.

Remus and Severus also left the Medical Wing, leaving the golden trio in the care of Madam Pomfrey.

Left alone with McGonagall, Danil, now with some real bandages around his eyes, asked the main question.

"How bad is it?"

Taking a deep breath, Minerva sat down on the chair next to his bed. The woman knew the boy quite well; after all, they spent hours together discussing how exactly his special magic worked with transfiguration.

"Right now, everyone is confused – no one knows what exactly happened because witnesses only saw you for a couple of moments. Students are speculating that another strange creature has chased Potter, this is not such an unusual incident in this castle–"

"Which means the professors can give their version of events as the truth." He commented thoughtfully. "There's still a chance to maintain my anonymity."

"I wasn't done." McGonagall said sternly. "Among those witnesses was one Colin Creevey. One of my students who is extremely interested in photographs. He is developing a magical photograph in which he captured you chasing mister Potter as we speak."

"And you can't confiscate his personal property without reason." Danil finished her thought.

Magic photographs were not much different from ordinary ones. Apart from the fact that they moved and had limited response to stimulation from the outside world, they weren't all that special.

"Quite."

"Shit."

"Language, mister Khromov."

Danil slowly rose up on the bed to sit up again and waved off the worried sound from Minerva, who didn't want him to move in his condition. The fact that there was a Gryffindor hiding among the Hufflepuffs wasn't so surprising. What was that the little shit had a camera and was fast enough to take his picture!

'What are the chances?' He mused. 'He was in the right place at the right time. Is this the Wanderer's doing or is it my fate?'

His comfortable and calm way of living began to crack again. Damn nosy teenagers, what kind of bee stung them in the ass so that they began to investigate its existence? Why couldn't they just leave him alone?

Unfortunately, he didn't have answers to these questions. So, the boy could only work with what life threw at him. He was good at rolling with his punches at this point.

"How long does it take to develop a magical photograph?" He asked.

"On average, from thirty minutes to an hour. Most likely, every Gryffindor has already seen this particular picture."

"And that means we'll have to tell at least part of the truth." A clawed hand rose from under the blanket, allowing Minerva and Danil to look at the bandages that bound the boy's body.

Some of the bandages were already blackened by his special type of blood, but the dimples in his flesh were still clearly visible through them. The water wasn't just acid to the monster boy, it was like burning napalm on his body, devouring his flesh while it had the chance.

"My legs are in the worse condition. Lord knows, I walked to this place on my own two feet only thanks to adrenaline. I can't appear in person. " He began to think out loud, ignoring the shocked gasp from Minerva. "Or can I...?"

Scratching his chin, Danil finally turned to the woman, his eyes burning, hidden from the whole world behind the bandage. "How quickly can Dumbledore get me a few bars of gold?"