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Epilogue
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Still with the ring on, you creep back around the Hall and take your place next to the other Hedgehog students. Then you remove the ring, put it in your pocket and pretend that you were sitting there all along.
"Where's he gone, that disgusting talking spider?" shouts a boy called Snako from Snakefang house, standing to his feet.
"Yes what's happened to him?"
"Where did he go?"
The insect army, no longer under Azog's powerful enchantment, start milling about like normal insects. Sensing their confusion the students leap to their feet and start squashing insects left right and centre. The arthropod survivors flee into cracks and are gone.
You find Kensley in the crowd.
"Slumblebore couldn't stop them!" she says. "When we got to the dungeon door the insects overpowered him, it was horrible. But where did you come from Arthur? And what has happened to the spider king?"
You shrug your shoulders, give her an enigmatic smile and say nothing.
In not much more than half an hour order is restored: the teachers are cut down and the flattened carcass of the Great Azog - all that remained after you trod on him - has been scraped off the stage floor.
Slumblebore raises his hands for silence and addresses the students in a slightly shaky voice.
"Students! It appears that my warnings were prescient - there was indeed a terrible doom brewing in the school dungeon. Even now I am not sure how our doom was averted. But be that as it may, everything is now back to normal. So back to your beds, get a good night's rest, and never speak of this again. Particularly not to your parents. Goodnight!"
You take Kensley by the arm and walk companionably back to the Hedgehog House Tower, then up onto the hillside and into your Hogger Hole.
"Goodnight Kensley!" you say.
"Goodnight Arthur!" she replies.
Then you step through the front door of your cosy Hogger Hole and look around you. Everything is exactly as you left it: comfortable varnished chairs, stout walking stick by the door, umbrella in the umbrella stand. You take the magic golden ring out of your pocket, flick it up into the air happily and catch it as it falls.
You let out a large, contented sigh. Yes, everything is back to normal.
CONGRATULATIONS YOU HAVE ACHIEVED THE EVERYTHING IS BACK TO NORMAL ENDING!
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