Actually, there are several purposes of this trip, and the sex education of some teenagers is only one of them, but not the main one. Time, as they say, does not stand still, and there are not many months left until my seventeenth birthday, about four months, which is very little.
That's why we shouldn't put off things that could have been solved yesterday. The Dunois are going to help me with one of the most important things, for mutual benefit, so to speak.
In fact, I went to them at once, for the officials, officially Lucy and Ludovic, have a short vacation in honor of the holiday, and they are accordingly at home. Letters are good, but not everything can be put on paper. And just to check in on this family, I would have stopped by anyway, even if I didn't have these things to do.
So, after some warm greetings and friendly jokes from Paul, and not so friendly ones from Angelique, there were four of us in one of the living rooms: Lucy, Ludovic, Paul and myself. It seems that the heir of the family is being brought up to date. At the moment, we are sitting around a low table, sipping tea.
— I can guess why you, Sora, decided to pay us a personal visit despite your numerous affairs, so I don't want to waste your time. — Lucy said in a calm tone, and the house-elf placed a swollen folder of papers in front of me.
I looked at the woman incomprehensively, trying to figure out why this was said in the first place. Everything seemed normal, and the emotional background was even... right, even. Amulets, or artifacts. But why? I did not rush to touch the folder, but looked at Lucy, who did not express any emotions, feelings or thoughts at all, on her face settled a polite friendliness, with which I saw the woman for the first time.
— I don't quite understand what you mean. — In turn, a polite Japanese "poker face" formed.
— Oh, I'm not implying anything. — the woman smiled.
And in the emotional background, which I tried to listen to, I heard a strange clicking, barely perceptible, the background itself remained "flat". Definitely some kind of amulets or even artifacts I haven't encountered yet.
It was not only unpleasant that my trump card had been discovered, but also that there was an effective countermeasure I had never heard of. Lucy's friendly expression didn't even falter, but Paul frowned slightly, almost imperceptibly, but I caught it.
Okay, I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I really don't like this whole situation. Wearing a new version of the gloves, still the same, snow-white with silver embroidery of an intricate pattern on the back, I took the folder in my hands. There were no signals to immediately detect charms or potions, nor did I get any after opening the folder.
There are just various interesting schemes of action, tricks, like cunning potions that can be impregnated into paper/parchment, or there is another practice: in everything that is opened, an envelope, a book, a box, and so on, special charms are set, charged with some fast-acting potion, which is sprayed into the face when the trap is opened.
And for this case I have protection — a simple "saucer" "Protego", which is "sewn" into the gloves and impenetrable by potions. But I didn't find it, and I hadn't expected anything like this... or I had hoped it wouldn't happen... or had I hoped it wouldn't?
The folder contained the case files of the Mene family. Not all of them, of course, I'm sure it was a third, if not a quarter, but it was enough to get my attention. The dry, clerical lines, the official tone, and the numbers gradually came together into a comprehensible picture. It began, I think, with the fact that the deputy director for cultural and social development had been brought in as one of the main coordinators.
Adele Delacroix, wife of the head of the magical Delacroix family, who in some "shaggy" years was given the title of Count for unspecified "services" to the crown. According to the brief excerpt, there was no land or money attached to the title, but the founder of the family, Jeanne Suzanne Delacroix, managed to lay an excellent "foundation" for the development of the family during her lifetime, and at the moment the counts are very respected, strong and rich.
Why such people would make such a mess in their own home was not immediately clear to me. However, it was not specifically mentioned later, although I was surprised that it was at least revealed to me.
Pierre Didier Delacroix, a member of most of the higher families, including the royal family, and a member of the government, had helped push through a decree authorizing the founding of a new magical settlement near the city of Bordeaux.
Why exactly there, so close to the Muggle economic center and power plant, was not explained. It seemed that there was a high magical background there. Well, the settlement was organized according to all current laws, taxes are collected, the village does not attract the attention of wizards, so everyone forgot about it. It's out of sight and out of mind.
Adele Delacroix had a nice network of assistants, agents, and snitches in and out of the school. The system was well thought out, fine-tuned, and worked smoothly as follows: when foreigners entered Beauxbatons, each foreign student was followed to find out a lot, from the possibility of kidnapping the student to the discovery of spies (who were found, but only a small fraction were turned over to the official authorities, the rest were used or blackmailed, and again I don't know why I was told this).
Some foreigners, solvent, coming from "barbaric" countries, were given a whole list of services that Delacroix and her people could provide. Often they didn't even have to do anything, just avert their eyes to the right people at the right moment, clean up their tracks, destroy statements or denunciations in time, and so on. In general, this gang was covered, interrogated, the whole network and details of their activities revealed, and a week ago, the Delacroix couple died during an alchemical experiment, the explosion also destroyed the ancestral castle where most of the family had gathered.
Only the youngest had stayed at the magic school for the holidays — they had suddenly fallen ill, thus preserving the family's blood. Similar cases swept across magical France, causing a wave of panic among the common people, and anger that fell on the vile cultists of the Dark Gods, which was pointed out by miraculously discovered evidence, and the cultists themselves were found in that very village.
It was they, natives of Islamic countries, who deceived the friendly French people and misled them with a pretense of being law-abiding.
In fact, these scoundrels set up channels for the importation of various smuggled goods, organized several gangs, but worst of all, they kidnapped French people, not only magicians, and took them abroad as slaves or organized cruel sacrifices in the same village.
According to experts, the Arabs lacked a few months to complete the "consecration" of these places to their gods. If this had happened, the battle would have been very bloody, because the gods can seriously strengthen their priests, it is quite possible that the French could not cope with their own forces.
And so the storming of this village killed more than three dozen local Aurors, because the population of the village not only turned out to be much more numerous than reported, but everyone fought, even children rushed the Aurors. Seven professional fighters were killed without expecting a blow from a child.
And there were some dangerous creatures. However, hotbeds of evil were found in other cities, and when the village was printed in official publications, the subsequent cleanup was done in the strictest secrecy. In short, it turned out that no one went unpunished.... on paper. In fact, something was obviously being withheld, and Lucy was the one in charge of the case, because her position required it.
After I had finished this part, which was full of the names and families of the dead Arabs and their accomplices, I went on to the part describing what was due to me according to the contract and the law of Vira.
And I was entitled to ridiculously little, because, as the official wording said, the guilty were severely punished, but all the citizens of magical France involved in the case were part of their own kind, that is, the material and cultural values did not belong to these people.
What could be called "personal belongings" died with their owners in the accidents. However, France admits that each of the perpetrators had a small personal bank account; to facilitate the work, these accounts were combined into one, and it amounted to a little over fifty thousand gold galleons.
Non-citizens of magical France had no such funds and accounts, nor real estate, and all personal artifacts, amulets and magical weapons were recognized as dangerous products of the darkest magic, seized by a special department of the local ministry, and destroyed.....