Good or bad, does it matter?

"Why did you tell me all this?" the old man asked "Amon", having finally calmed his thoughts, "After all, you will make me swear that no one will ever know about this." 

"To give you an incentive to develop further, at first I thought of just answering some question and sending you away, but seeing you, I changed my mind," taking another sip, a rolled up red parchment appeared in his hand, which he threw and right in the air, it opened and hung in front of Dumbledore's face, "Sign."

Having glanced over the contents of the contract, in which in addition to non-disclosure of information, he was also obliged not to harm him and Snape in any way, the headmaster silently nodded and a quill appeared in his hand and slightly cutting his finger with a cutting spell, he signed it and the next moment the parchment burned and a symbol of flame appeared on the hand of the "Master".

"And now …" but before he could finish speaking, the image before his eyes was replaced by a view of a two-meter gate, and a slab landed next to him,... And the next moment he heard Amon's voice "I told you everything, if you want to help and survive, do not stop and continue to increase your strength, and maybe someday I will tell you even more …" 

"Become stronger ...?" Dumbledore muttered with a sour expression, remembering his busy schedule, and in the last decades he had not even thought about it, because of the piled up affairs related to school, Tom and the Wizengamot, he did not even have time to read anything, considering himself to be a powerful enough wizard, and the last time he fought with someone at full strength was in 1945, in his last clash with his former best friend, Grindelwald, and since then, his skills have hardly improved, and in some aspects they have even become dull, 'How long ago it was…' he thought with nostalgia, watching how bright rays of the sun gradually began to break through from behind the dark, thick clouds…

At the same time, Nagini appeared in the house, next to Severus , who had returned to his former appearance, silently staring at him, as if expecting explanations of what had just happened. 

"My little snake, I understand, of course, that you think I'm all-powerful, that I can tear all those creatures apart with one hand and drink tea with the other, but that's not true," he drawled with a hint of irony in his voice, looking into her eyes with a smile, "I simply won't be able to keep track of everything and I'll need assistants like that old man, but even if he decides not to accept my "offer", nothing will change anyway."

"You definitely didn't hit yourself on the head, right? or maybe you have a fever?" the snake asked worriedly, putting her tail to the forehead of the young man, whose eye twitched, "You've always done everything alone, and now you've admitted that you can't cope alone, that's why I'm worried."

"A joke repeated twice doesn't make it funnier," he grinned and poked her in the nose, "And I never considered myself omnipotent and I've told you that many times, and if I really did say something like that before, that I would deal with them alone, then consider that I changed my mind after weighing all the pros and cons." 

"I try not to do things I'm not sure about, the same goes for battles, if I can't retreat when fighting a stronger opponent, I'll never rush into trouble, but first I'll save up my strength and come up with a plan, and only then I'll start acting." he chuckled, responding to the almost unfounded accusations.

"Really?" with undisguised scepticism in her voice, the snake hissed, for which she received another poke in the nose, "Hey!"

"Okay, let's close this topic for now and the reason I chose Albus is because of his skills, as well as knowledge, I'm sure that give him time and in fifty years, if of course he takes it seriously, he will definitely be able to become much stronger ..."

'Maybe he can even reach the top of the "Master" rank, perhaps even that is not his limit, after all, wizards are not warriors, and old age has never affected us much, although the speed of core development has dropped a little, but not critically,' he mentally added, "I choose only those who will be useful and who have a chance to become stronger, among the second, of course, he is only partially included, but with his knowledge and talent, he can easily level out this disadvantage."

"Now I can breathe a sigh of relief at least a little."

"Hey! Of course, I said that I was not going to spread about this, but I will need those who can stand on the borders and, if anything, suddenly be able to stop weak creatures that try to break out, so that I can fully concentrate on the stronger ones."

"Oh, no, I can't, " the snake sighed wearily, realizing that she would hardly be able to dissuade him, although she understood that she was acting like a real egoist, but most of all she didn't want him to risk his life, "But I won't let you fight them alone!"

"Then you should become strong enough to prevent this, and not be lazy." the Prince chuckled disapprovingly, to which Nagini, with a bit of embarrassment, looked away, this sofa and TV beckoned her too much to itself.

"So, if you really want to fight side by side with me, then from now on every morning I will wait for you here with the others and, no matter how well I treat you, there will be no indulgences," he pronounced each word in a stern voice, and the maledictus, albeit with a second's hesitation, nevertheless nodded to him, "And I will not allow you, like last time, to train for a week, and then "forget" about it," and again she became embarrassed and looked away, which caused a smile on the face of the Severus , who was still amused by such childish behaviour of his companion.

Okay, let's go see how the training of our "Shadow Squad" is going, stroking her head, he said, throwing off his cloak and allowing Nagaina to climb on top of him...

---

And half an hour later, when Snape had already finished all the business on the territory of the house and they were going to move back to Hogwarts, because just an hour ago classes had ended and the clone was already in the room, the wizard suddenly froze, and then lowered his gaze and directed his palm down, creating a long staircase and after a few seconds they heard the sound of heels, which became louder with each second and from the semi-darkness, a young woman appeared on the stairs, who could hardly have been twenty-five: with long, wavy, dark hair, with an unnaturally pale complexion and lively, dark eyes, who looked at him with curiosity. 

She was wearing a white dress and black shoes with high heels, and besides that, she was wrapped in dark fabric up to her neck, but what was strangest was the aura surrounding her and the closer she got to them, the lower the temperature dropped, to the point that when there were two or three steps left to Severus , the wizard began to exhale steam. 

But the Severus almost did not react to this, but only smiled warmly at her. "Congratulations on your successful evolution, Eileen."

Nagini herself could not hide her surprise, because she still remembered how she looked before, before she looked 30 plus, and now she looked even younger than Bellatrix.

"Is it truly Eileen ...?"

"Yes, it is her." he nodded softly, curiously studying the woman standing in front of him, "Lich* at the beginning of the rank of "Master"... what does not appear in this world..." Liches, in the world from which Severus came, could only be zombie mages whose cores reached the rank of "Severus " or the "Severus s" themselves, resurrected by the necromancer, but another unique creature appeared in front of him, a Lich at the rank of "Master", which simply should not exist a priori, which confirmed some of the Slytherin's assumptions that the magical laws here were either changed or weakened, which allowed such a creature to be born, but of course, he could not exclude the simple factor of "luck", but even if it was only once, it was already happening for the second time, which is already very strange and makes you think of various points. 

Slowly raising her palm, she touched his cheek and gently began to stroke it and smile.

"You've grown so much…" her voice sounded very weak and strained, it was obvious that she was still not used to talking, but at the same time it was filled with warm emotions, "I'm so proud of you…"

""Grew?"" Nagini looked at him puzzled and worried, thinking that she could have lost her memory after months of absorbing pieces of Tom's soul or during this process, something happened. 

"She means in terms of magic," Severus answered calmly, studying the emotional plane and memory of the undead standing in front of him, 'Okay, no prejudices, but still, it's worth keeping an eye on her…' 

"Eileen, remove your aura, the house elf is cold." She tilted her head to the side in confusion, not understanding what he meant, until she finally noticed the steam coming from his mouth, and then she looked down at the trembling house elf. "Sorry... but how...?"

"I'll teach you," he touched her head with his palm and transferred a small part of the memories related to aura manipulation and similar types of magic. 

Eileen quickly absorbed the knowledge she had received and after a few seconds, the temperature in the room began to rise again...

.

.

.

.

Thank you for reading.