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Hogwarts
–Damian Hawthorne–
With that frankly absurd interaction done, he moved on to his original goal for coming here, which was a run with weights on his body, covered from head to toe. He has basically procured every single body part weight he could find in the market and also in the Gym magazine that he perused through one day when he had scooped up all the magazines a stall had, just for shits and giggles.
Ah, he already missed the freedom he had to do shenanigans like that on a dime without having to worry about anything. Not even a day in, and he was already debating breaking out. Shaking his head, he continued to run, feeling the light sweat that was starting to gather on his forehead as the cold breeze made him feel quite comfortable.
He could feel the magic of the castle extending over the Great Lake as well, which meant that to avoid the wards, he would either have to stay out of the Castle Gates, or straight up just go to Hogsmeade since that was a village settlement out of bounds for the Hogwarts magical entity.
Also, really close if he just needed to pop back inside, to sell the illusion of him never leaving the School. Wouldn't escape Hoggy's eyes, as the Elf called her, but it remains to be seen whether Dumbledore, legendary wizard or not, could wrestle total and utter control over something as intricate and arcane as Hogwarts to get information on every single thing that happens inside Hogwarts.
Sure, if he tried to get targeted information, then he could see that happening, which was all the more reason he remained under the radar. It might seem contradictory, what with him being the only person running around the Great Lake as the sun rose up, with a ton of weight on his body, but he just couldn't do nothing. It was either this run, or using his magic inside the castle.
Exposure to something as wonderful as magic and his ability to constantly improve upon it for his personal use had made him somewhat of a magical addict, as he found himself constantly reaching for the next use of his magic, be it in the form of enchanting, warding, or just plain spells to work on that last little bit of efficiency in the spells.
When he felt that it was enough time spent outside, he stopped running and began stretching his legs. Apparently, his body could compensate for a lot of bad habits that one might make during exercise, but it helped all the same if he did everything properly, including the after run stretch. Especially in this case, since he was doing what was essentially a full body workout.
Still, it was nothing compared to the exhaustion he experienced when undergoing training in his very own personal training chamber. Magic really was a cheat code here, allowing him to bypass all the limitations that would have arisen if he had tried to do the same using technology.
Shaking his head, he raised his fingers, about to snap them, only to pause mid way, the decision to use magic to shake all the sweat off his body was aborted as he sighed and used the napkin he'd brought beforehand to clean the sweat off his face and neck, like a peasant.
Trudging back to the Castle, it was as that weird Elf had told him. He found the way to the Ravenclaw dorms rather easily this time. Hoggy really wanted him to get his beauty sleep. How would he go about explaining to her that he really did not need that long to get to a well rested state? Hell, if he wanted to, he could just go days without sleep, albeit with proportionally declining mental and magical decision speeds after the second day.
Man, that was not a fun experiment as he couldn't even do much magical stuff, because of the risk of one misstep blowing something or him up, so he had to do mundane stuff for 5 days before he called it quits as he found himself stumbling around in his Lair, delirious and on the verge of passing out.
That was partly because in the spirit of running the experiment properly, he had chosen to run through his daily routine, without fail, even though most stuff he did magically ended up going to waste anyway, resulting in five consecutive days of training till exhaustion, magic usage till exhaustion, wracking his brain for more magical ideas, some light magical experiments and then cleaning the aforementioned experiments.
All in all, he considered the experiment a success, giving him two full days of high intensity activity before he had to sleep for small amounts. He had been too afraid to test out the theory of how far he could go with just micro sleeps or with intermittent rest instead of one full 3-4 hour sleep cycle. Man, if he, being a wizard and an enhanced one at that, could go through such severe withdrawal after being deprived of sleep, he shuddered to think of what normal, non magical people go through if they make it a habit of partial sleep deprivation.
In front of the door leading to his Dorm, he knocked on it for the riddle that he knew was coming. Within seconds of him doing that, a voice came from the door itself, clear but without depth, nothing like what he expected from a clearly magical door.
"Divide thirty by half and add ten. What do you get?"
His eyebrows rose as he looked around, trying to see if the door was joking with him or not. That was clearly not a riddle. That was a math problem and a pretty easy one at that, as long as you did not rush things and knew that the door was meant to ask a riddle and not an elementary math problem. Seeing that it was not a prank of some sort after checking for any magical presences around him, he answered.
"70."
There was a magical ping in the door before it swung open, revealing the common room to him. It looked like the wet dream of an indoor person who was just absolutely obsessed with reading and dreamt of having their own library and a reading corner someday. He could definitely see the appeal of reading something in that corner when it was raining outside. If he was alone, though. He couldn't see himself enjoying reading if he was crammed in that place with a dozen other people, that too strangers.
For now though, he enjoyed the faint sunlight shimmering through the glasses and falling on the sofas as well as the shelves of books for a moment before heading upstairs. No one was even up yet, and that suited him just fine.
Entering his room, he noted the lack of any locks on the doors themselves, magical or otherwise, and after opening his cabin luggage bag, took out the clothes he wanted to wear, which was the Hogwarts uniform, and sighed, as the dreaded common bathroom experience was about to rear its ugly head.
Hoping that this being a magical school would improve the common bathroom experience, he marched on and, to his pleasant surprise, it was clean, supremely so. Like, not just clean but clean room clean, with not a speck of dust to speak of, not even stains of dried soap, shampoo or anything of that sort.
He supposed the Elves here take it as a personal offense on their existence if their primary work was not executed properly and the ones who had to clean this place clearly knew what they were doing.
Ignoring the provided common toiletries, he instead took out his own remote bath kit, which was not something he saw himself building, but necessity made him do it. In an ideal world, he would always be just a teleportation away from his lair, from his own comfortable bathroom, bedroom, with everything aligned just the way he wanted it to be, but this was not an ideal world.
Ignoring the fact that he was living in an almost ideal dwelling just a day ago, he took out an ordinary looking bottle of shampoo, but instead of it having a single tone liquid. It had four of them, full of different color fluids, one for each purpose.
Facewash. Bodywash. Shampoo. Conditioner.
Now, owing to his self imposed no magical artifact until he could confirm some stuff, the bottle was made of completely mundane stuff. No speck of magic present inside it. It might have been made with magic, but as of now, it was completely normal. Just an extremely durable partition, with very low chances of leakage as well as a small opening for the four different fluids, with containers full of extras in his luggage container, if need be.
Could he have just brought with him two or three bottles at once, depending on his use case that day? Certainly, but where was the fun in that? Some whimsy and clearly nonsensical stuff should be done once in a while, provided it was truly harmless.
Letting his senses expand a bit, he noted the presence of magic all around him, as he realised every surface in this place was temperature controlled. By whom or what? He didn't know yet, but he could tell the surface, which should have been cold, was instead pleasantly warm.
The water too, was just that, pleasantly warm, instead of scalding hot. As he stepped out of the washroom, he looked back to see the water steaming away, the floor having gone super hot for some reason, as within seconds, the floor was completely dry and ready for the next occupant.
Done with his business, he went back to his dorm, noting that he still had an hour and half until his first lecture today, which was Transfiguration with McGonnall. After making sure that his luggage container was stored safely and closed properly with the anti theft measures, toned down for students instead of being lethal, were active, he left for the Great Hall, to have breakfast.
Take that, American Tourister!
He was trying to take it easy, at least for the first few days, so no going looking for the Room of Requirement, no searching for the Diadem, no sneaking into the Restricted Section of the Library, and most importantly, no converting some of the empty classrooms into his personal gym and/or labs.
The absence of Quirell at last night's dinner had roused his curiosity for a bit, but he just figured the man got sick of having Voldemort's shade in his head, so was out at the time. Unlikely since Tommy boy would have wanted to look at his so called Vanquisher, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility.
He wondered if he had just butterflied his existence away before shaking his head as he pushed the doors to the Great Lake wide open, smiling as he saw it being completely empty.
As he sat down on his house's table, he blinked as a small spike of magic in front of him had plates full of extremely buttery and heavy food appearing in front of him.
"Hopefully, it's good." And it was good, not because of the taste, though it was tasty but something about the entire experience was different. Maybe because magic was involved in every step of the way? He couldn't tell just yet, but just like a litany of other things, he intended to find out.
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