Good or bad, does it matter?

After that conversation with Orion Black, two fairly calm weeks passed, both in the life of Severus and in the country as a whole, of course, there were small skirmishes between the three sides, but none of them affected the peaceful part of the population of Magical Britain, from which people could at least take a little rest. 

At Hogwarts, classes were held in their normal mode, except that Rubeus HaSeverus was never discharged from St. Mungo's, and due to the intervention of the Parents' Committee, the Forbidden Forest became an even more closed territory and even acquired a very high fence, and the detention in the form of sending children with the forester into the forest was removed from the list of "Disciplinary Punishments".

With Bella's uncle, they also signed all the papers a week ago and by the end of November, the books will hit the shelves of three countries: Germany, France and Belgium. 

Of course, the man made attempts to agree on potions, but after showing the mark of the magical contract, they stopped, but still he hinted that he could help a little with his niece, telling some "information" for future recipes, but the wizard politely refused, after all, he had Regulus, and his brother definitely knew much more about his cousin, and finally it became clear who the heir of the Black family took after. 

With Bellatrix herself, after that day, the relationship became much warmer and she began to look at this arrogant half-breed with a completely different look, after all, she still went to her aunt, but to eavesdrop on the conversation, she did not use the house elf, but an artifact that was hidden in a vase, so the young woman heard the entire conversation between the two men. 

And his words touched the most sensitive strings in her soul. 

Although she was quite stingy with such emotions, when you are treated all your life as a bargaining chip or a thoroughbred filly and are prepared to give to another family in order to receive a certain benefit, such moments are the most valuable in life. 

But still, it was hard to call Bella a "princess in trouble," especially with the cold character of the witch; it is unlikely that she would simply allow herself to be touched; the woman would rather torture Lestrange if he dared to do this without her permission. 

But for the first time in her life, someone fought for her, which is why it affected her so much.

 And the weekly dates themselves became much more pleasant and fun, because Bellatrix began to behave more relaxed and openly, and not fenced off with a high wall, and besides this, she finally began to truly accept his feelings and respond to them, and this was already a huge step forward and because of this, Tom's influence has weakened even more, but it is still not enough to completely get rid of the consequences of wearing that artifact, but if everything continues at the same pace, it will take no more than a year. 

After that evening, he also made peace with Nagini and the two spent the entire Sunday together, visiting a wide variety of places in the Muggle and magical worlds, although she pretended to be offended for a couple of days, the negative feelings completely disappeared...

***

And Monday came again, which, unlike other days, promised to be quite entertaining, because after almost six months of searching, the house elf, whom he ordered at night to explore every millimetre in the Ravenclaw living room, was able to find something interesting.

In the closet of one of the rooms, in the corner, in very small print, he found strange symbols reminiscent of the runes that Severus had once shown him and, having completely copied them, the elf brought them to Snape and Snape himself had to do a lot of work because the work turned out to be much more complex than he expected, because not just one type of rune was used, but as many as ten, and the problem was that for one of their types, the symbol could have several meanings, so this "easy" work dragged on for ten hours, which he stretched it out over two days, since there were as many as eight hundred and ten signs and fifty of them simply could not be determined with the exact meaning, but still, only thanks to the Grimoire, he was able to finish so quickly and without it, it most likely would have taken no less than four days. 

Although even after finishing this, he was still unsure about the translation of several of them.

 In the end, it turned out to be a message addressed to the young Ravenclaw, who was able to find it and even translate it, but he was only sixty percent sure that Rowena herself wrote it.

And the remaining sixty percent came from the fact that those symbols were definitely almost eight hundred years old, just at the time when the founder left this world, but something like that could be faked, so Severus could not completely trust the message.

In addition to praise, there were also moral teachings: that one should read more and strive to expand one's horizons; there are no impossible goals or hopeless situations; teachers will always help... In general, Severus wanted to kill one old woman or the one who wrote all this, because he spent so much time deciphering this nonsense and received a ton of moralising, but Severus did not despair and continued analyzing the letter. 

Snape felt that he was definitely missing something, because it couldn't be that simple. 

And two more days later, the Prince was finally "able" to solve this riddle, and the solution turned out to be simple to the point of banality, you just had to remove those same runes that had several meanings and all similar words from the text, and he did this with the help of Nagaina, who drew attention to the word repeated five times. 

After this, Severus had never felt so embarrassed, and even Tom in the Grimoire completely agreed with him. 

After all, they both thought that there was some kind of impossible code, but the fact that they just had to remove these words was a real shock for them.

And only later did he remember one phrase from the letter:"... life can be difficult and harsh, but you have to think more simply and a solution will always be found..."

The solution was really on the surface, and they themselves were complicating everything, thinking up more and more. 

As soon as these words were removed, the text acquired a completely different meaning, in addition to praise for intelligence and unconventional thinking, the following place appeared in the message, also in the form of a small riddle, which was already much simpler, he only needed two words "knowledge storage" to understand that this is a library, and he had already climbed it up and down, but still could not find the message. 

But the young man was not going to give up so easily, so all the house elves had to work hard and check every millimeter, the wizard himself did not stand aside and helped in this difficult matter.

And another day later, when he decided to look at the paintings that were kept not far from the caretaker's closet out of curiosity and to find clues, having previously agreed with him for the inspection of Miss Norris, Snape discovered something very interesting, an image of Rowena Ravenclaw against the background of the library, the painting was dated 1109 and the shelves on which the books lay stood in the same place and in the same order, he understood this from the numbering on them, which led to one interesting thought.

Previously, Severus had not touched them only because they were protected by very strong charms, and their deactivation would take a lot of time.

But as soon as he did this, having spent about thirty minutes on the shelf number one, he found a rune under it and he simply could not hold back a smile, but as soon as the Slytherin looked up at the ninety-odd more located throughout the library, the smile slowly faded...

***

 And in such torment two more weeks passed, because: "old hag"; "grump"; "harpy", as he "affectionately" referred to the founder of Ravenclaw every time, did not stop at the library, there were also: the Room of Requirement and the Astronomy Tower, in which the Slytherin received the last answer: "... wait for the full moon at the intersection of lines ...", and this place turned out to be a corridor on the fifth floor. 

And only one thing made the wizard happy in this situation, the full moon would be in two days and he would not have to wait another whole month until the next one. 

Of course, the half-blood tried to understand what was hidden there and would only be revealed during the full moon, but to his surprise, he could not find anything using a variety of methods and therefore, he decided to just wait and heal his nerves, but if it still turned out to be someone's joke, Snape was going to spit on his principles and personally strangle that person, even if he was already dead, after all, it was not for nothing that he studied necromancy in the "Magistrate" ...

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Thank you for reading, please comment out on anything you would like to, it would help me