[1989 Pt.6]

[Hufflepuff Dorm, Hogwarts.]

[September 2, 1989.]

Nathan woke up very early in the morning due to an alarm charm he had put up before going to sleep at night so that it would wake him up close to Dawn.

He could hear three of the other occupants in his room snoring as they slept.

Nathan took out his wand from below his pillow before pointing it away from himself and whispered, "Tempus."

A golden mist erupted out of his wand before coalescing into an hourglass which seemed to be filled just slightly below a quarter. It was roughly five in the morning.

He slowly sat up in his bed and willed the curtains on his bed to be pushed aside.

'Well, the coast is clear.'- Nathan decided before he moved out of his bed to get himself ready and to change into his Hogwarts Robes after a bath.

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It was roughly twenty minutes later that a well-groomed Nathan walked out of the common room of his house to start his journey towards a place he absolutely needed to go.

So Nathan started walking towards what he presumed was the destination he wanted to reach.

It took him some time, along with roughly a dozen point-me charms when he finally found the label he had been looking for.

It read: Argus Filch's office.

No sane person would actually go looking for the office of the caretaker of the castle in the early hours of the morning, at least not willingly.

It spoke of Nathan's desperation that he was willing to come here.

'The map is paramount to my plans.' The marauder's map was something he could use to keep track of people throughout the castle and something which could be used to keep track of himself by others. It was a very useful tool and one that would take months of dedicated effort to recreate and that too only if he could find himself another rat animagus to cast the charms in every known part of the castle. After all places like Dumbledore's Office would be impossible to get access to normally.

No, the map was simply too valuable a tool to let slip through his fingers.

So here he was, on the first day of school, already breaking a dozen rules.

'Good lords, if I get caught and lose points on the first day. Jones will hang me upside down from the common room's wooden stairway.'

Even so, he cast an unlocking charm with a whisper on the door of the office and it clicked open.

Nathan slowly pulled on the handle and the door swung open, he immediately entered the office before closing the door behind himself.

The office had many parchments laying around on a table. In the corner of the office were roughly a dozen wooden mops. And finally, Nathans's eyes landed on the cabinet with a label that read- 'Confiscated and Highly Dangerous.'

"Accio Marauder's Map."- The summoning charm was a spell that he had learned recently for the very purpose of finding the map since Nathan had been focusing on the variations of the Protego charm and trying to master the shape-changing spell to the best of his ability. Though he would have to hold the latter at hold until he could find someone to keep him company after all transfiguration was a dangerous branch of magic.

There was a response to his spell as an old piece of parchment flew out of the cabinet towards him before falling to the ground, reflecting Nathan's mastery of the spell as the parchment failed to reach his hand despite the item not being two meters away from him.

Nathan recast the charm with a whisper and grabbed the map that was dragged towards himself by his magic. He couldn't care less whether his spell had failed or not as he put the folded piece of parchment in his pockets before leaving the office in a hurry towards the entrance hall of Hogwarts so that he could get out into the open grounds around Hogwarts until the time breakfast began.

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Nathan had walked out of the castle and towards one of the many cliffs surrounding the Black Lake and the hill atop where the castle itself was located.

He was sitting on a cliff on the bank of the massive Black Lake before he used a Tempus to find out the time.

'About an hour.'- That was how much time Nathan concluded he had from the golden hourglass before the Elves would start giving out food for breakfast.

Nathan had been looking for a place to take control of in the castle for personal use. He had originally planned on making use of the room of requirements but he had to discard it due to the many problems the room brought with its existence.

For one, it was the place where a Horcrux of Riddle rested. Secondly, the room's existence was known to both the elves and any students who might have stumbled upon it. Thirdly and most importantly, even making a base for himself could be treated as an exercise and practice for himself since Nathan could add more enchantments and protections to his hideout. It would allow him to enhance his warding skills.

And finally, and most importantly, Nathan thought, 'What kind of wizard doesn't have his personal secret lair?'

It was even better, the cliff was the perfect location within the Hogwarts wards where Nathan had a view of the castle, Hagrid's hut, the forbidden forest and the quidditch pitch.

'Damn, isn't this the location where Riddle destroyed the rudimentary charms used by Flitwick and the others during the final battle in the movies?'

Nathan looked below the cliff and could see the deep murky water of the Black Lake. The place was the perfect location when it came to leading an assault on the castle.

And Nathan decided he should fortify it long before the war even began. After all, despite how powerful the castle was, it was not infallible to sabotage like what Snape had probably done with the war wards to get close to the snake one last time during the final battle.

"The question is how do I fortify this place?"- The castle was defended by ancient walls that were so seeped in the magic of protective nature that Nathan didn't think anything other than the strongest of magical beings could damage them.

The castle walls were enchanted with spells that made them unbreakable and resistant to most lower charms and to most transfigurations. And the massive amounts of magic around Hogwarts, thanks to both the forbidden forest and hundreds of magical beings living within the grounds themselves only strengthened and nurtured the ancient walls of the castle even further.

"Truly a legacy that could last a thousand years and even then it only fell because of an army along with a barebones defence."--- Nathan was pretty sure that if even half the magic in the castle was being used by the enchantments to defend the place, then the place would have been practically impossible to invade successfully.

This was also the reason that Nathan was sure that Snape had sabotaged the castle's defences when he had run away from the school during the final battle. Nathan could also guess the angle leading to the decision and if his guess was even remotely accurate then Nathan was sure that Severus Snape was not an enemy he wanted against himself.

Nathan shook his head to clear his thoughts of distractions and brought his attention to his present work.

"Let's see what all spells this place will need--- A spell for creating an artificial boundary to which I can link the protective enchantments, a spell for resisting magical charms and physical attacks like Protego Horibillis or Protego Totallum, an illusionary enchantment to make it seem like the area is covered in a bunch of trees, an enchantment to make people uninterested in the area, a compulsion to turn away from the place."--- The spell combinations would probably deter everybody but the most powerful and determined of people.

"Hmmm… Quirrell will be roaming in the forest in the next two years and will probably take a root close to here, so maybe I need to put up several more empathetic enchantments. Only a single Horribilis might be enough for a skirmish but for a full-scale battle, it would be better to use several layers of Horribilis and Totalums. Maybe I should start enchanting a ballista that can be used to take down flying targets after all who knows whether Voldy will only teach Snape flying or if I will have to see all kinds of dark wankers flying around."

Nathan looked down the cliff and had an interesting idea-- Maybe he should create a spatially expanded cave at the side of the cliff which could only be accessed through brooms and connected with the surface through a tunnel.

"An idea to look into. After all, I still need a place where I can practice dark magic and more destructive spells in."

He had plans on learning to use spells that rivalled Fiendfyre and he was not comfortable with doing so in a castle full of young children. Some people might think he was being overly cautious but his last few years in this world had taught him that such powerful magic could very easily turn upon its caster and Nathan preferred his chances in the cave he made himself rather than the ROR of which he knew frighteningly little about.

'Though that place will be a perfect substitute for the Library of Hogwarts.'

Nathan decided that in the coming weeks, he would begin enchanting the area but until he finished, he would have to spend his time in the Room of Requirements.

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[A|N]:

I have always felt that the ROR is way too OP in most fics so I will try to set hard limits and restrictions on how it functions so that it doesn't become a solution to all of Nathan's problems. I mean the ROR is used very often by elves AND probably students purposefully or by happenstance- It simply does not make sense for only one character to successfully hoard it for themselves all the time. If they did hoard it, they would promptly discovered by the elves if nothing else.

The Tempus charm is another pain in my neck, it showing a solid format like 05:23 seems a bit too weird since wizards still use watches (Molly giving Harry a watch on his Birthday), so I decided to make it show an hourglass that a wizard can use to get approximate time of day seems far more accurate.

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