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RoR, Hogwarts
–Damian Hawthorne–
"Hmm," He hummed to himself, sitting down on a chair that was more throne than chair at this point, adorned with just tons of jewelry he somehow found lying inside the Room.
Mimicking some degenerate royal drinking wine/blood, he took a swig of water from the gold flask that he found and cleaned before using, in this place, and then whispered to himself, "Ah! This is life."
It was ridiculous. The number of things that people just lost and never bothered to recover. The Elves probably dumped it all in this room, and it was now accessible to him. Not that he needed the money, but it was nice to know he had something to fall back on. Out of respect for Hogwarts, he might just take a little instead of all of it.
It was not like the students here could not just take a little initiative, call upon one of the many House Elves ready to serve any of the students, and have them look for their lost stuff, or even report it to their Head of House, who could then, in turn, ask the House Elves to look for it. With Hogwarts' connection to the House Elves and her all encompassing presence, any House Elf should be able to easily find most lost stuff on the Castle Grounds, at the very least.
Sighing, he got off from the throne that was somehow made up partly of gold pure enough that it could fetch a pretty penny on the black market, not that he intended to go that route anymore.
After all, after a certain point, it got really hard to continue with the sunken treasures being found excuse and honestly, after a certain point, if one wanted to move literal tons of gold, and do so quickly and get money in a reliable manner, instead of waiting for the black market to digest all that gold and get the payment in staggered terms, the only option that was left was either the Government directly or the Federal Reserve. Both options were always looking for gold and ran equal risks of either being a dud in the form of the Military looking for you or becoming the last paycheck you could ever need in the form of a tax free check from the Fed.
Either way, not something he was looking to get into right now. He had far safer ways of getting money if he needed it. Even before the goldmine in this place, he didn't need any additional money for at least his entire term at Hogwarts, as he planned to be mostly a model student and get out from under Dumbledore's nose.
Getting out of the room, he walked back and forth in front of the Tapestry three more times, imagining an entirely different thing this time, as the door revealed itself to him. Opening it, he closed his eyes to skip the white flash that he was assaulted by, whenever he entered this room.
Opening them, a room that could only be described as an introvert reader's dream was revealed to him. The room, reading his intent and his mental image correctly, created a veritable treasure trove for him.
Rows upon rows of books all placed in a seemingly never ending line of shelves, with a comfortable chair and an ambience that would not be out of place in a book cafe.
Perking up as he felt multiple Dark Magic auras assaulting his senses, he lightly jogged to their source, and his nose wrinkled as he found yet another series of books, made up of skin of some sort. Hopefully, not human, but he would not hold his breath for that, judging by the series of forbidden tomes he managed to liberate from the Black Market in Paris, notorious for possessing and trading in human or humanoid parts, magical and muggle both.
It was not like the material within could not be written on normal parchment or even high quality ones that used magical fibers or even enchanted normal books. The material on which it was printed had no effect on the magical knowledge inside, even if some of it was clearly enchanted to the brim, likely written with a magical pen of some sort.
He had come across a tome like that in one of his raids in Ireland. He opened it once, and now it sat in a metal quarantine box, one of the standard issue ones that he built to house and isolate magical artifacts, and was sitting inside a volcano, siphoning energy from the volcano around it to continuously keep it suspended to prevent decay and also to prevent anyone from reaching it.
Shaking his head, he took out his mini pouch, took out the small box he'd built for exactly this kind of situation, and dumped the Dark Magic tomes inside. He was surprised that Hogwarts, or Hoggy as the House Elves liked to call her, even allowed him to see stuff that was clearly dangerous.
After all, according to her, being out in the Castle late at night was dangerous enough for her to intervene and send him on a spiraling path that led straight to his dorms. Now, the only reason he had escaped the fate of walking in circles was that he met Tommy early on and made an impression of some sort, so much so that Tommy came to him whenever he called for just a random House Elf, instead of Tommy specifically.
They were not bonded or anything like that, but it was clear that Tommy was pretty high up in the House Elf hierarchy. A hierarchy that was apparently recognised by Hogwarts as well, so he was very curious about that, but it was still too soon to ask about something that could be very intimate to Tommy.
No need to scare away the quirky and literally one of a kind House Elf. After all, he had over a year to do the same.
As he finished loading up the clearly Dark oriented books into his quarantine boxes and loaded them up into his carry-on bag that he then intended to store in his luggage back in his dorm, he had an idea. An unhinged idea that had no chance of succeeding, but he was ready to try it anyway. After all, what could happen?
Excitedly getting out of the room, he took a deep breath, imagined the result he wanted, and walked back and forth three times. Gingerly opening his eyes, his breath quickened as he found a door in front of him. Not wanting to kill himself accidentally, he took out a magical drone from his bag that he kept on hand just in case he wanted to explore something remotely and safely, and after opening the door, threw it and took a step back.
Looking down at the screen, he slumped as he realised there was no magical transmission coming from inside the room, and since Hogwarts did not really allow for electronics to survive, he had not bothered to build a radio or Wifi powered data stream, all because magic was the best and worked flawlessly in all the situations he had tried it in.
Yes, even the underground base built underneath the village that Wakanda showed to the rest of the world. Even when he had almost died by a disintegration curse that chewed through his enchanted clothing as if it were fried chicken and the curse was him on a hungry Saturday night, his satellites had had access to his suit. He had the exact timestamp where the entire magical suite he always had on his person whenever he went out to explore just went kaput and stopped responding.
Shaking his head, he decided to take the risk, trusting Hogwarts, and stepped in, expecting to feel something, but nope, it was the same.
He looked around the room, which was completely spartan when compared to the outlandish stuff that the room had given him whenever asked. Hell, the room, for some reason, had multiple high quality Chandeliers, partially broken with their chains shattered.
Right now, though? It had nothing. Just a white ceiling, a white floor, in a room that must not be more than 200 sq. ft.
Knowing that his fantasy of this being a time dilation chamber could only be confirmed after getting out of here after two or so hours, he just sat down, cursing himself for not picturing a comfortable bed with the time dilation room, but he was just so excited to see if it could actually be true that he forgot the creature comforts.
Oh, well, it was not like his back would break itself if he slept on the floor for some time. After all, he was not thirty yet.
___xx___
Getting out, he was both excited and wary of being true as he took the small watch he had kept outside, and seeing the time, he slumped. Two hours had passed inside, and looking out, he realised that he had run out of time.
It was time for his daily morning run, something that had become part of his routine here, and he did not want to deviate too much from something that had become familiar to his Head of House and also probably to Dumbledore, just in case it drew more attention to him.
Hefting his bag on his shoulder, he went on his merry way back to the dorms, to safely store these books that could only be called as Crimes Against Humanity even without going through the entire books. Just reading through the index was enough for him to feel slightly sick.
Let's just say that once he secured the sword of Gryffindor or the Basilisk poison, these books, the ones he had back home, some stored in unreachable places on the planet, were next, right after the Horcruxes.
Of which, he had two now.
The Ring from the Gaunt Shack and the Diadem.
Too bad the Diadem was gone now, the enchantments being used as fuel by the parasitic Horcrux to sustain its existence. It would have been nice to experiment with the Calm Mind enchantment and the ones that were undoubtedly here on the Diadem before it was twisted by Tommy boy, the ones that supposedly doubled intelligence.
How does one make that happen, he wondered? Was increasing the speed of synapses enough? Was the reaction of new Neurons and new neural networks necessary?
All questions that would remain unanswered because someone couldn't keep their calm about Death and then had to go around defecating on awesome people's legacies to make himself feel slightly more important than the ant on the ground.
If you would like to read ahead 12 chapters ahead, you can head to my P*treon.