Madam Pomfrey had discharged Harry and Hermione that evening because they only had minor injuries and were almost healed. Atlas, on the other hand, would need to spend a few more days there. The problem was that the tincture Madam Pomfrey had used only gave him something like an artificial skin to protect his otherwise raw flesh. But this type of skin was more brittle than Atlas liked. Every movement he made risked ripping the skin open again, which would delay the healing process. For this reason, Madam Pomfrey predicted that it would take at least three more days before he would stop waking up with a blood-smeared back. This type of healing was apparently necessary because fiendfire wasn’t just a hot flame but also carried more curses in it than any normal healing spell could counter.

Just before he wanted to sleep, Augusta Longbottom returned with Professor McGonagall. Atlas could hear Professor McGonagall trying to console the old woman, but Augusta seemed to reject any gesture of goodwill.

“I know you trust him, Minerva. I did too; I really did, but please understand me. I can't, not after what he did.” said the once-so-dignified woman with an unfathomable sadness in her voice.

Atlas tried to hear the rest of the conversation, but after they vanished behind the curtains, the enhancements silenced them. Ten minutes later, a black body bag levitated out of the curtains, followed by Augusta and McGonagall.

After that, Atlas was alone in the infirmary. Nervous about the possibility that Quirrell would try to steal the stone this night, he studied the marauder’s map. Luckily, Dumbledore was still in his office talking with Snape, who apparently had no serious injuries. Quirrel was also unmoving in his office, doing who knows what, and Ethan was with Leona and Amy. So, everything appeared peaceful.

After some time, Atlas noticed an irregularity. A lot of Slytherins were sending letters home. And by a lot, he meant almost thirty within an hour. Almost all of them were students he had already suspected of being from families that were allied with Voldemort, like the Malfoys or the Goyles.

That couldn’t mean something good, but it was something he couldn’t change, even if he was in his best condition.

Atlas almost suspected something was going to happen, but even after analyzing the map for hours, everything else appeared as usual, and all students and even teachers soon entered their beds.

When it was 3 a.m., Atlas finally decided that Voldemort wouldn’t do anything this night and decided to go to sleep. The artificial skin on his shoulder blades ripped open as he wanted to store the map in the bag Hermione had brought him. It was painful, and he could feel how his nightrobe started to stick to his skin because of the blood.

It was painful to slowly remove it, and he wished that Madam Pomfrey would have given him more painkillers like the night before.

The thought about painkillers gave him an idea. He transformed into his animagus form, and the pain vanished. He still felt a slight discomfort in his back, but the pain was gone. If he had a mirror at that time, he would have seen that his once healthy, thin, green bark looked like someone had scratched over a charred piece of wood that had survived a campfire.

The next morning, Madam Pomfrey woke him up with a hysteric screech, as she thought he had run away. He quickly transformed back to calm her down and explained to her what he had done.

After examining his back and commenting that while his transformation had slowed the general healing process a little, it had made up for it by not undoing the healing because his back remained, after the first wounds, undamaged.

Just as he was about to start his breakfast, Hermione stormed into the infirmary.

Before even greeting him, she placed the newspaper on his lap.

“It is as we predicted yesterday. They are blaming Dumbledore for the deaths of the attackers too. Apparently everyone had a family member or friend that gave an interview with a heartwarming story about them and how innocent they always had been.” She said before taking a deep breath and continuing, “Some stories sounded too perfect to be true. So I asked around, and guess what? The pub they had been in is known for hosting even the most wretched members of society. While I could imagine that they were just victims in that case, I refuse to believe that they were all good people. Not after Harry told me that he was sure the old grumpy wizard, the Oakwood guy, was smiling while attacking them. So I’m sure they are just trying to frame Dumbledore. Don’t they realize that Dumbledore is the only one that can protect us from You-Know-Who?”

Atlas tried to listen to her while also getting an overview of the article about them, but in the end he decided that what Hermione told him was probably true and it would be a waste of time to read three pages of some fictional sob stories about their attackers.

Another article, on the other hand, was far more interesting for him. Augusta Longbottom has publicly announced that she will try to remove Dumbledore from the position of headmaster at Hogwarts. The article specifically cited two of her statements. “I have put my whole trust in Dumbledore’s ability to protect our children, and yet the death of my grandson was a direct result of his oversight.” and “If he really wanted to protect us from dark wizards, he would be out there fighting them.”

While the article emphasized the more dramatic parts, Atlas had to admit that this article had the potential to really damage Dumbledore's reputation. The part about Augusta announcing that she would form a task force to hunt down the one responsible for the attack and dared Dumbledore to support her if he had any backbone left was only mentioned as a side topic.

The developments that had taken place in the last few days had shown him one thing for sure: He needed to finish his mission as soon as possible, or he would lose his most potent tool. His knowledge about the future. With how dramatic the changes seemed to become, it would be a miracle if even the next year would be able to resemble the original story. He had to take the initiative if he wanted even his current plan to work. He had to send a letter to Voldemort and force him to get the stone within the next week. He should probably wait a day or two more so that he can even reach the mirror of erised before dying of blood loss.

The problem was how he would inform Ethan and the rest about it, and he also had to make Hermione his horcrux in that timeframe, which meant he needed to stealthily kill someone. Ideally, without Hermione knowing about it, as she would surely end their relationship the moment she learned that he killed someone in cold blood.

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The limited options he had actually made it simpler for him to focus on plans that might actually work. The easiest plan, Plan A, was to offer everyone a potion, like a strength potion or something similar, and mix the potion with the draught of living death, which would put the whole group into an eternal slumber. He would then have enough time to kill one of his friends to create a horcrux and kill Ethan immediately after. The problem with this plan was what he should do in case he failed. If, for example, Ethan is immune to the potion, it would be almost impossible to fight him after everyone else falls unconscious. So the right timing would be the deciding factor for that plan.

Plan B wasn’t much better, as it required his friends to give him the benefit of the doubt. He would knock Hermione and someone else out with the excuse that he doesn’t want them to get hurt or that they are too weak to contribute anything to their mission and would only endanger everyone. He would then have to carry them away and create a horcrux. The problem was that if the others attacked him because he attacked two people in their group, it would also be over. Another risk was that Voldemort surprised them on an earlier trial.

Plan C would require him to kidnap Hermione and an additional person before going past Fluffy to create the Horcrux beforehand, and then use Voldemort to kill Ethan. He could even try Plan A after creating the horcrux. The only major point against that plan would be that he was absolutely sure that Dumbledore had a way to sense if a student was killed or was in mortal danger, which could destroy his whole plan. He was sure that Dumbledore would be willing to sacrifice a student if it helped Harry’s development, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t care about his students' well-being at all. Dumbledore’s reaction to a student’s death would make him a wild card, so the plan was Atlas' least favorite one.

Plan D was to use the imperius curse to hex someone to sell Ron the potions from Plan A and let Ron take the blame in case it failed, and then use a variation of Plan B in case that didn’t work. It just needed to be someone that Ron trusted. Someone like his brother Percy. He could also use the imperius on Ron directly, but the problem was that he had taught everyone in their group occlumency, which made them highly resistant to the imperius curse. Their resistance, paired with his lack of training in the spell, posed a great risk for him, so it would only work on other people. Getting his hands on Percy, on the other hand, would be far less risky, but he would still need to find an excuse why Percy would give Ron a lot of potions, then he would need to find a way to stop Ron from trying one beforehand, and after all this, it was still possible that the potions wouldn’t work on Ethan. So all in all, this plan also had its weaknesses.

Plan E was even more dangerous as it would involve preparing another trap inside the trials to kill Ethan. It is based on the assumption that Ethan would be a bit careless because he knows what awaits them. But even if one ignored the danger of getting cached by the professors, he was unsure if he could build a trap that would guarantee a kill. It wasn’t like he could simply get a few tons of black powder and just blow up the whole castle or create a room full of mirrors with basilisk eyes in the middle. The resources he would need for plans that would surely be effective were outside of his ability to acquire within Hogwarts.

So in the end, he decided that he would prepare for Plan A and B, as they had the same chances of success as the others and were the easiest to prepare, and the first step to that was to send a letter to Quirrell, which he would do tonight.

“Are you even listening?” said Hermione, a little annoyed.

“Sorry, I just drifted off a bit. I guess the painkillers make me a bit dizzy.” lied Atlas a bit embarrassed.

This silenced Hermione, and a look of guilt appeared on her face.

“Hey, don’t worry. It will heal, it’s not your fault.”

“I know, but still. You got hurt because of me, if I had reacted a little sooner, then maybe...”

“It doesn’t matter, Mione; it’s not your fault, and if I had to choose again, I would do it again. Besides, Madam Pomfrey is taking good care of me. There's no need to worry about it. So if you really want to thank me, give me a kiss and repeat what you said before. “

After giving him a small peck on his lips, still looking a bit guilty, she began to tell him that she assumed that the daily prophet was under the influence of You-Know-Who and his followers. She reasoned that the focus of the newspaper was on denouncing Dumbledore instead of trying to punish the true culprit of the attack, and apparently this article wasn’t the first to do so. There have been numerous articles since New Year that just had a weird focus on Dumbledore. It hadn’t been as apparent as in the recent edition, but after realizing it, Hermione checked the older ones and was sure that someone was manipulating the newspaper. It would mean that HE has far more influence than she had thought before and that maybe they should warn the other professors, like Professor McGonagall, if Dumbledore just ignores the problem. She also thought about informing the ministry, but they would need absolute proof if they wanted the ministry to believe them that the Dark Lord had returned.

Her deduction was probably correct, and if he had to be, he would say that Quirrell and Lucius Malfoy had discussed the topic in the diagon alley when he saw them there at Christmas. Or at least it might have been one of the topics.

The last part was more of a question from her, as she knew that he had some kind of proof that Voldemort was alive and wanted to know if they could just hand the problem to the Ministry.

"No, Hermione, unless it's absolutely necessary, I can’t give them the proof. The proof is related to Voldemort’s survival, and it will be a big problem if he knows that we know about it. Otherwise, Dumbledore would have made it public months ago. But if you want, you can talk to Professor McGonagall, but I doubt that she didn’t consider it already after talking to Snape and Scamander after the battle in the forest.” He tried to reason.

In the end, Hermione still wanted to talk to Professor McGonagall. Atlas sighed a bit, but he knew that Hermione needed to do it for herself and not necessarily because she believed the solution to their problem. She still had faith that if someone broke the rules or laws, then teachers or other authorities like the ministry should and would do something about it. It was a naive thought of hers, but probably also the reason why she became minister of magic in the original story. Her convictions and ideals were one thing he liked about her, even though he knew that it would make it even harder for her if he managed to save her.

The rest of the day was eventless, with the exception of Professor McGonagall informing him that several reporters had officially requested an interview with him. She had told him that she had sent them away until he was fully recovered, and she also promised him that she would keep them away even after that if he didn’t want to meet them.

When the night finally came, he was ready to send the letter. It took him some time to write it because he had a problem finding a reason for Voldemort to accelerate his plan. In the end, he decided to taunt him a little and say that his little stunt in the forest had caused some unwelcome turbulences and that Nicolas Flamel is trying to cash in on a 500 year-old betting dept to get a minor immortality technique from him because Dumbledore had made the request to destroy the philosopher's stone. He also told Voldemort that he would only be able to delay answering for five days because immortals took debts and favors quite seriously, and the reputation of not keeping your word would follow you for centuries if you didn’t. Something that Voldemort would have to learn too if he wanted to get accepted into the small circle of immortals. He then wrote that one of his agents would lead Harry and Ethan to the mirror where the stone is in four days from this night on, and that Voldemort should accelerate his plan to match that.

The letter had the usual style and, like always, the promise of immortality that Voldemort was after, but it was still too obvious for his taste that he was a little too eager to get Ethan killed, and he also had to admit that he had “agents” in Hogwarts, which could lead Voldemort to him. But in the end, the risk was slim, as it was information that should have been obvious, as Quirrell could easily find out that the letters were sent by the school owls. On the other hand, with this message, he had taken a little control from Voldemort.

After writing the letter, Atlas transformed into his animagus form and carried the far too large letter over his bowtruckle head through the castle.