Harry Potter : Chapter 16: Base III
"Will you tell us why you dragged us out in the night?" Tom finally asked, "I'd say we've been far more than simply accomodating. The promise of not regretting this will carry you only so far."
"I agree."
At the words of Minerva, I sighed in defeat: "I wanted this to be a surprise of sorts, but Riddle hates riddles, and you're as curious as a cat, aren't you Minerva?"
...
We turned left into yet another deserted hallway and I came to a stop. On my left, the wall of the long corridor sported a wide succession of leaded windows that pointed south-west, showing us the moon as she began her descent towards the horizon.
The sight the windows allowed us included a large stretch of the Hogwarts grounds, with the Forbidden Forest north-side and one stretch of the Black Lake just beyond a small hill where I supposed one day would host a certain Whomping Willow.
Suddenly I stopped, and opened the tall double doors on my right, revealing a quite large room that rested under an inch of dust: "I want us to raise walls on the opposite sides of this corridor, and turn this whole thing in a private Common Room of sorts."
The room that I showed them was half as large as the Great Hall, and I had discovered it by chance a couple of months prior, hiding behind a tapestry that Pix the Poltergeist, of all people, had once hung in front of the doors, eventually forgetting completely about it.
"That's why you've been levitating those boulders from the Black Lake?" Tom pointed at the tall pile of stones that I had taken from the depths of the Lake during the Winter Hols.
At the end of November, I had declined the option of returning home for the Winter Break, unwilling to expose myself to weeks with Hagrid's father, and so, while everybody but the muggle-borns had returned home.
I was left sharing Slythering with only Tom Riddle, and the rest of the school with the only people, aside from the staff, aware that there was a war going on in the wider world. I had obviously exploited the situation as much as I could.
"Why would you want to do this?" Minerva's tired sigh clued me in to the fact that she didn't see the appeal of having such a private space where she could do what the hell she wanted, only having to keep track of me and Tom.
"First: to see if we could. Second: because in this way we don't have to wrap up our project anytime we leave the Library. Third: you'd have a space where you can become an Animagus before your O.W.L.s, so you can dazzle the world being the youngest witch to ever achieve the transformation."
Because this will make it easy for me to coast on your brilliance, leaving your notes available to me once you leave Hogwarts. I smiled smartly at the two talented mages that eyed me shrewdly.
"And because this way you can observe us modify the hall and apply those changes to your own room." Riddle insightfully pointed out, making me scratch the back of my head bashfully.
"Your own room?" Minerva distractedly inquired, her mind likely still focused on the possibility of becoming an Animagus at 15 years of age. If Pettigrew mangad it, there is little doubt that she can too. And in the meantime I'll learn human transfiguration ahead of the program.
"Yeah, you gryffs may be okay with sleeping in the same dormitory, but Slytherin encourages everyone to make up their own sleeping arrangements, from the first to the seventh year."
I snorted dismissively. If I had to share a room with eleven years old children I would have murdered them and pinned it on Riddle. Then I blinked as the thought crossed my mind. That was actually a good plan.
"So your plan was to levitate and transfigure the boulders in order to wall off the two extremities of the corridor?" Riddle brought us back on track, his eyes gleaming greedily at the idea of building his own private room in Hogwarts.
"I've prepared a potion..."
"Obviously." quipped Minerva con a sigh, earning herself a glare from me.
"Don't diss potions, they can do everything a wizard does with a wand, only without being taxing in the slightest." I reprimanded the witch that sniffed disdainfully.
"You don't really need to transfigure the rocks, only stack them together after spreading a few drops of this beauty between one and another."
As I spoke, I fished out a rucksack filled with vials, revealing them to my two companions.
"Such a muggle method." Riddle's voice expressed disinterest, but his eyes studied curiously the dull green grow that escaped the potion that I was showing them.
"I don't recall saying that I would be on board with this foolishness." Minerva tilted her head upwards slightly, attempting to stare us down, reprimanding us with a glare that resulted quite ineffective, since she was barely 1,60 meters tall, reaching just beneath my shoulder.
"You would have already gone away if you didn't want to be here. You simply want us to accept your objection so that the fault will be ours if we're discovered." Riddle spoke softly while his eyes tried to pry the secrets from my potions, "Venomous Tentacula?" he inquired, tilting his head towards me.
"Just a little, then some Devil's Snare." I explained, easily recalling the story behind the potion I had brewed to act as lime to string together the boulders: "Vines to bind, you see, and these rocks were deep down in the lake, where light doesn't reach, they'll remember the quiet, the cold, and the dark."
"It will make the walls highly capable of holding wards." my fellow Slytherin idly commented, his fingers twitching as if he was barely restraining himself from getting to work.
"What about the doors?" Minerva inquired, finally dropping her reluctant act.
I simply pointed at the two largest boulders I had found, each measuring roughly around 4x3x2 meters^3: "If we place them at the center of the wall, then you can transfigure a door on the surface, and a lock of some sort... But that's more something that you need to work out with Riddle."
"Why me?" the Heir of Slytherin arched an eyebrow, knowingly setting himself up to be recognized as the best with wards.
"Because of reasons that everybody already knows, Tom." Minerva rolled her eyes, "It seems to me that Rubeus is going to do very little to help."
"Hey, I did the grunt work and the planning." I protested whipping out my wand in order to cast a Lumos that shone forcefully in the room, revealing a cluster of furnishings that I had lifted from the Room of Requirement on every weekend that Riddle spent in Hogsmeade.
"And I've set up a bathroom in the next room of the corridor. Bath, toilets, showers, even a sauna... I'm planning to add a colorful leaded window, but I haven't had the time to learn how to make one."
"Why do you know how to set up a toilet?" Riddle blurted out in surprise, eyeing me like I had two heads.
So that when I go gallivanting around the world I don't have to shit in bushes. "Because I was curious about how plumbing and magic interacted." And a bathroom in which I'm sure a basilisk cannot pop out from a toilet sounded like a good idea.
"It's more likely that you've picked the wrong book from the Library, but didn't want to look like a fool by not using it." Minerva outright laughed at me, but her expression was actually interested now. I guess the idea of a personal bath is enough to completely sway her.
"It's nothing glamorous for now, the bath takes 6 hours in order to be filled with water, and I still have to enchant the taps, I'll probably prepare a coating in order to keep the tiles bright, or I'll outright plan out a mosaic with some runes on it." I shook my hands in the direction of my companions.
"How do we avoid being spotted by the prefects or the professors?" Riddle, apparently sold on my plan of stealing for ourselves this unused section of the castle, started to tilt one vial of my potion this and that way, studying how the light of our Lumos seemed to disappear into it.
"Luckily, tonight is Slughorn's turn..."
"Professor Slughorn." Minerva interrupted me, making me frown.
"Sluggy." I stated firmly, just to tweak her nose, "Tonight is Sluggy's turn to be the professor walking around, and the prefects' rounds have washed over this area just after curfew."
"Tomorrow is a Saturday, people will sleep in, nobody will notice if we're not around." Riddle nodded thoughtfully, "We should set up the walls and the notice-me-not before morning, then we can build upon them..."
"No blood." I wiggled my index at him.
"Once we're gone from Hogwarts, it would be great if this room could pass to the next brightest wizard or witch in the castle."
"And our heirs." he countered.
"If our 'heirs' are not capable of distinguishing themselves magically, then they don't deserve whatever we manage to leave behind." Minerva returned from her inspection of the closest stack of boulders.
"And I feel that I need to point out that your ambition is going out of control. You're not the Founders."
"Only because we haven't founded anything yet." Riddle's charming smile was infectious, and for a second, I imagined how I would go about founding my own school.
Something like a university for magic? No, a whole village in which only the brightest are admitted? I banished the thought from my mind before it could spiral out of control.
"Let's start small, shall we? Namely, with the walls."
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I don't want to write down lesson upon lesson. I don't want to be repetitive showing different potions, and I don't want Hagrid to become the next Merlin less than one year into his schooling, so there is a lot of skipping between a relevant interaction and another.
Since I'm not using the 'magical core' route for this fic, I felt that it didn't make sense to have transfigurations fade on their own.
Still, as I've hinted in the third chapter, there must be a difference between a real parrot and a transfigured one, otherwise, people would actually simply eat what they conjure or transfigure.
Multiplying food is okay, making it out of nowhere isn't.
So, I'm bringing forth the implications of the first lesson with Dumbledore: Transfiguration only changes the Shape. And all things transfigured are 'lesser' than their equivalent (otherwise people would transfigure gold and fuck the goblins, don't get me started on the fictions in which 'for some magical reason' (= read author's convenience) some shit can't happen).
Even so, talking to you about how Hagrid set up a toilet using magic seems kind of boring.
Really, there are pipes in the castle, how difficult can it be to use magic to add to them? I preferred showing off a part of the magic of understanding-symbolism with the MC playing with fire, I found it more meaningful.
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