Atlas and his teammates found themselves immersed in the library during most of their spare time, tackling the overwhelming pile of homework that had landed upon them. Even after enchanting a feather to assist with simpler questions, the workload seemed never-ending, leaving little room for Atlas to delve into the forbidden library and explore the books on souls. Help arrived in the form of Ethan’s group, led by Leona, which automatically boosted their productivity. Apparently, Leona had spent the last few weeks researching the topic and was confident enough to give it a try. Atlas had to answer a few questions she still had, which only further slowed him down.

While studying, Atlas noted that Ethan looked a bit pale and distracted. As far as he knew Ethan, he was someone who had an almost magical focus when studying, and the speed at which he read was inhuman, but after watching him for some time, he noticed that he hadn’t flipped the page in a long time, which was a bit strange.

Atlas even tried to ask him something, but Ethan remained unresponsive until he repeated the question a few times. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t receive a clear answer to Ethan’s untypical behavior, but Atlas was sure something had happened. The only thing Atlas was sure about was that it had nothing to do with him or any of the girls surrounding Ethan, as he ignored them the same way.

It was a topic he spent more than a few minutes thinking about because he thought that if Ethan was the hero, then something that caused him to be so distracted had to be something significant. To Atlas' dismay, he definitely lacked the necessary information to get behind the reason. When he lay in his bed, he thought about how he should proceed with his plan, as he had to complete the exchange with Voldemort soon, find out the hero’s identity, inform Harry about Voldemort and start to properly train him, find a solution to save Hermione, and eventually a few others, all while also doing all the schoolwork regularly required of him.

The only thing he was sure about was that the promised date with Voldemort was only two days away, and he was sure Voldemort would try to do something again to catch him. He had a sudden thought that it was stupid to just take the attempts and do nothing, so he decided that he would send Voldemort a message too. Even if he still didn’t trust that Voldemort would just behave and give up his knowledge without resistance, So while he would take the books, he would treat them like a horcrux or any other cursed object, not touch them, and use a self-writing feather to copy the books.

To give Voldemort a sense of threat so that he wouldn’t go overboard until he knew his identity, he wrote him another letter.

Dear Tom,

I have observed your diligent efforts to fulfill our agreement, which I commend. However, your unexpected visit was rather impolite. Nonetheless, I understand your curiosity, and I graciously choose to forgive this transgression without imposing any consequences. I must emphasize, though, that you should refrain from such actions in the future or tampering with the books I have assigned you to write. Unless, of course, you would like me to establish a betting station to wager on whether Dumbledore can successfully infiltrate the Lestrange Vault in Gringotts without detection. To demonstrate your goodwill, it would be appreciated if you could remove the laughable student patrols stationed outside the room. They would be better served focusing on their studies if you wish to cultivate useful followers in the future.

Once our current agreement is fulfilled, I have two additional tasks for you. The details of the next task will be delivered by Owl within the coming months, with a deadline set for completion by year's end. In exchange for your successful execution, your horcrux will be returned to you. The third exchange is an act of goodwill and will be executed at a later stage, once you have regained your power. It is entirely optional, but I propose the offering of Harry Potter's or Dumbledore's head. I disclose this information in advance to demonstrate my intentions for amicable cooperation, as we may become true allies in due course. Therefore, I implore you to act in your own best interest and not play with your immortality, as I don’t get new fellows often.

Yours sincerely,

Chrom

P.S.: During a fishing excursion several years ago in a cave infested with Inferi, I managed to catch a little thief who happened to possess a lovely locket. I believe it would suit you quite well.

Most of the letter was pure nonsense to distract Voldemort, and Atlas was sure it would induce enough confusion that Voldemort wouldn’t try any obvious tricks first and would hopefully slow down his plans so that he could find a solution for Hermione and identify the hero. In the worst case, he would need to ask Voldemort to kill two people, but the chances of success would be higher if there was only one target.

He once again borrowed Harry’s invisibility cloak without asking and placed the letter at the entrance of the Room of Requirements. He hadn’t even entered the room and just sent the letter flying through the open door.

The next few days were far less stressful, as he didn’t have any extra homework, and he even managed to read the first few books on souls. To say the books were underwhelming would be nice, as he could tell that they were wrong even with the limited knowledge he had. The first book he read had the theory that the soul and the body were inseparable, as the soul would die without a body and the body would die without a soul. Which had to be wrong, as horcruxes made the survival of the soul possible without a body. Another one thought of the soul as an energy source that was responsible for giving life, which might not be entirely wrong, but then again, people who got their soul sucked out by a dementor were technically still alive. At least their bodies were intact. After flipping through the sixth book, Atlas became frustrated. While he was glad that the books didn’t talk about religious gibberish and at least tried to create hypotheses based on evidence, they seemed to only scratch the surface. The only thing that he could at least confirm from his own experience was that souls contained memories, and the personality or his case would be unexplainable. The models people came up with were quite diverse, going from the image of an onion that had many different layers, each representing a part of your personality and memories, to a model where the soul was described as having a structure like an atom. The only thing that the more modern books had in common was that the soul looked like a small ball of light. The scientific community was in agreement with this after a few scientists watched a dementor suck the soul out of a prisoner in Askaban. The sad thing was that even if some of the theories were accurate, they missed the things he needed to know.

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The thing he need to know was how a universe imprinted the soul and how to remove that imprint as well as how to store and transport a soul. He knew from Adam that his soul was special as it didn’t have an imprint from a universe, which enabled him to enter different ones without getting attacked by the universe and most probably leave as well. So if he wanted to have a chance to save someone and didn’t want them to stay in Adams' limbo-like room for eternity, he needed to remove that or at least hide it.

The next day, the day of Voldemort’s deadline, Professor Ward changed their training once again. Instead of fighting team vs. team, they were fighting in groups of three teams vs. another group of three teams. Professor Ward explained that wars in general were usually on a larger scale, and they needed to work with other teams together even if they wouldn’t learn any new formations.

The first round was the first their team had actually lost, as the other teams in their group were a bit weaker than the enemy groups they were facing, and the breaker of a team they weren’t even fighting hit them with an Orbis jinx, which caused Ron to accidentally hit Atlas in the back while he got sucked into the ground.

After that his team feel one after another. The loss left them in a bad mood even after they got their revenge in the next round. It also caused some tension in the team as they started to blame each other for things that had gone wrong. If it weren’t for their overwhelming skill they would have lost the second round too as their team wasn’t working as well as before.

It also made the next few hours they needed to spend together quite unpleasant. It had been Neville who started to apologize first the next day, as he didn’t want them to fight each other. After that, his team felt one after another. The loss left them in a bad mood even after they got their revenge in the next round. It also caused some tension in the team as they started to blame each other for things that had gone wrong. If it weren’t for their overwhelming skill, they would have lost the second round too, as their team wasn’t working as well as before. other. In Atlas' opinion, Neville had done nothing wrong, and he first wanted to argue against that, but quickly calmed down, as it would only create more trouble. After Neville's apology, they talked everything out, and in the end, everyone apologized while also talking about the things that indeed had gone wrong and could be improved. The end result was that the next day they coordinated even better than before, and the group realized that this might have been the reason why they needed to stay together as a team even after the lessons ended. Yes, the fight wasn’t pleasant, but blaming each other had covered up a lot of their weaknesses, and because they had to stay together, they were forced to reconcile and learn from that. At least they thought that this might be the reason, and not just a requirement from Professor Ward to annoy them.

As Atlas hadn’t been able to stalk Quirrell on the map, he didn’t know yet if he had delivered in time, but studying the map a few times, he at least noted that he hadn’t seen any Slytherins near the room, so he probably had gotten his message. He still wanted to wait one more day to take the books, as he didn’t want to risk getting hurt in any way and not be able to take part in the last lesson from Professor Ward as his absence could expose him.

At the beginning of the last lesson on Friday evening, Professor Ward explained that Professor Quirrell would take over this class again after the weekend, and he would only be their magical theory teacher again. That didn’t prevent him from giving them all one last assignment. The last lesson was not to fight but to watch. He had invited the seventh-year students to do some matches, and they had to write an analysis of what they could do to fight these students.

The seventh-year's matches were quite different than anything they had done up until now. First of all, the area they had to fight on was half the size of a Quidditch field, which should have been far larger than necessary, but after seeing one student create a three-meter-tall, seven-meter-wide, and one-meter-thick earth wall to block something that looked like a giant water shark the size of a bus, it was clear that the size of the arena was necessary. Surprisingly, the damaged earth wall was transfigured into something that looked like an attempt to create a big dog that started to hobble at the enemy team while fletching his teeth.

Atlas was greatly surprised by the tactics the teams were employing after realizing the dog was a trap. The team that was attacked by the dog used the bombada charm to blow up the dog, only to get the debris blasted at them with full force as the other team had cast multiple depulso charms on the debris.

The fight ended shortly after, as one student was unable to defend against the projectiles in time, and the team was one member down then.

Still, they had put up an amazing fight, and he was sure that he wouldn’t be able to beat them. It was somewhat of an eye-opener to see other students wield magic like that, and he was sure that they shouldn’t be that good normally. It was probably a combination of Quirrell’s and Ward’s teachings that led to a drastic increase in fighting strength for these students.

On their way to the great hall, the fight had been topic number one for most first-year students, but Atlas noted something else. Daphne was still sitting with them, discussing a possible way one could attempt to win against such a team with Hermione and even Ron and Harry.

As they left the library, Atlas noticed the sadness in Daphne's expression, recalling how she had seemed lonely at the Slytherin table. He hesitated to bring up the fact that she didn't have to sit with them anymore, but Daphne eventually broached the topic herself.

"So this is the end, isn't it?" she said, her gaze fixed on the ground.

"What do you mean?" asked Ron, puzzled.

"Yeah, what do you mean?" added Neville, curious.

An awkward silence enveloped them until Atlas spoke up. "She's in Slytherin," he stated, not elaborating further.

Harry was the first to respond. "Does that really matter? Daphne isn't like the rest of them. She doesn't terrorize others for fun like Malfoy does. So what's the problem?"

"Yeah, she isn't like them. Daphne, we won't treat you any differently just because we don't have to sit together," Neville reassured her.

"You're our friend. Who cares what house you're from?" Hermione chimed in.

However, Ron seemed to grasp the underlying issue after Atlas had mentioned Daphne's house. "So it is the end," he whispered softly, to which Daphne sadly nodded.

Confused, Harry asked, "What? Why? I don't get it. What's the problem?"

Ron explained, "It's not about us accepting her or her wanting to stay with us. The problem is that she can't do that without risking becoming an outcast in Slytherin. Even though the Greengrass family isn't known for being hardliners, they wouldn't want her associating with us as it could affect her standing within the pureblood community. It's as impossible for her to be friends with us as it is for me to be friends with Malfoy. My father would probably disinherit me if he found out."

Daphne nodded slowly, a tear glistening in her eye that she fought to hold back. Neville was outraged, but he could somewhat understand, knowing how certain families deeply rooted in Slytherin could easily ruin his grandmother's mood just by being mentioned.

The realization spread among their group, and a somber mood settled over them. It was the kind of moment when Atlas's dad would have suggested a group hug to lift their spirits, but they simply stood there, feeling depressed.

Finally, Daphne spoke up, "Thanks for the last two weeks. I really had fun with you all, and I grew to like you. But I have to leave now, and I have a warning for you. I overheard my parents arguing on Christmas, and there's a storm brewing behind the scenes. Whole families are being threatened to participate in something sinister. I don't know what it is, but it must be significant for my parents to be so worried. They even considered sending my sister and me to a school in America because they thought it might be safer. So take care of yourselves." With that, she turned around and quickly ran away.