Chapter 4: Chapter 4: The Room
Harry didn't dawdle any longer.
He had made his obligatory appearance to show Malfoy and his ilk that their nonsense hadn't affected him. Usually, Harry would have followed this up with action against them, but a new target offered itself during the feast.
Dolores Umbridge.
She might have a voice that was as appalling as a merman out of the water and had an equally disastrous fashion sense. Still, she was, after all, the new Defense professor. It was only fitting that, as a very dedicated student, Harry introduced himself to the new professor. See where she actually stood with Malfoy.
However, that was something to be done another day.
The first order of business was to sort out the sudden glaring issues he had with his contracts. More than that, Harry had to find out the right kind of enticement necessary to make the change acceptable. But he had no idea how to make that happen without taking a significant personal loss himself.
If it was simply a matter of gold, Harry wouldn't hesitate to make that sacrifice. He had accumulated plenty of that and could more than afford to take a smaller percentage.
The thing was, gold wasn't a problem with the clients that also acted as recruiters. They either had plenty in the first place to not care much about it, or with the few that didn't, they would use Harry to get access to something out of their reach instead of having gold.
After all, Harry had chosen them specifically for those reasons. If gold was attractive to them, it could easily cause issues Harry wanted no part of.
The solution here was obvious at first glance. All Harry needed to do was give them more of what they wanted.
His services.
However, there was a rather massive issue with that. It would take up all of Harry's time, and more importantly, it would make it so his time was for others to use at their leisure.
He loathed to even think of it, but it might be time to open up access to his treasured Room. It had been a secret Harry had guarded jealously for over a year, but what was the use of treasure if he didn't use it when necessary?
Harry comforted himself that he had only found it by chance in the first place. It was quite an embarrassing moment to remember, actually. Harry had been returning to the Slytherin common room after meeting a Gryffindor with quite the potential as an recruiter. However, Filch had decided that night to be the one to patrol the seventh-floor corridor.
Harry hadn't bothered to bring the invisibility cloak with him at the time, assuming it wouldn't be needed, so he had no choice but to dart away to a previously unvisited part of the corridor. After a rather comical attempt to escape Filch and his cat, Mrs. Norris, Harry was saved by a door that appeared out of nowhere.
That night, the Room had become a rather cramped closet, but it was enough to save Harry from getting discovered by Filch. He hadn't even thought much of it until he had returned to the Slytherin common room. If Harry hadn't grown curious about why there was a tiny closet with a hidden door on the seventh floor, he would have completely missed the true wonders of the Room.
The end result, after some experimentation, was Harry's discovery of a secret that he was sure nobody else in Hogwarts knew about. And more importantly, the hidden feature the Room had was worth magnitudes more than its ability to shift into what a user most desired.
A feature that was basically a lost and found, but exponentially better. Something Harry had started to call his treasure.
Harry hadn't known what to do with himself when he found that feature of the Room. After he stood there in stunned silence at the columns of books, broken trinkets, and magical oddities sprawled around the massive space, his first action was to pull out an expanding trunk and try to summon as much of what he saw into it.
Unfortunately, the summoning charm, or anything similar, refused to work on any of the items. It left Harry no choice but to manually shift through the mess.
That was the main reason why almost nothing had been moved out of the Room. There simply wasn't enough free time for Harry to deal with it.
At the very least, he could try and turn the tragedy of revealing the Room to others into something that would be somewhat beneficial to him. Unless he found a spell that worked in that marvelous lost and found, Harry knew there was little chance of taking everything out of there by the time he graduated. That was more than obvious since there must have been hundreds and hundreds of years of misplaced items accumulated in there.
Harry would have to form a new clause that would let him keep the majority of the control over his treasure, while also giving away enough to lure his most trusted recruiters into signing the more restrictive contract.
He was already forming a vague framework in his mind. Harry knew plenty of items in the Room would tempt even someone like Greengrass. It would cause him heartache, but letting some of them go as rewards seemed to be the only reasonable option.
He was about to take the stairs to the dungeons before changing his mind at the last second. Most students would be in the great hall for at least one more hour. This would be a perfect time to visit the Room.
Harry climbed the stairs leading to the seventh floor and walked to the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. With a look to either side to ensure there wasn't anyone else around, Harry paced back and forth three times while thinking of the room filled with lost items.
As soon as a door appeared, Harry looked around the corridor again before walking in.
He could never get tired of the sight. No matter how many times Harry had visited this version of the Room, he always gaped at the truly ridiculous amount of things sprawled across the floor.
More importantly, it was his. All of it.
Every single book, every unknown magical object, even the broken shards of glass. All of it was Harry's.
He looked at the closest pile to the door and saw that new objects had been added. Most of them seemed to be worthless trinkets, but even among them, there were some that caught his eye.
The most obvious being the Dirigible Plum earrings that conspicuously lay right on top. It wasn't anything exceptional, but it belonged to Luna Lovegood. Harry frowned for a moment before shaking his head.
He had forgotten the number of times he had tried to hint that he could fix her problems. Harry knew that Luna understood what he was trying to say, no matter how oblivious she acted. It was like she knew he had ulterior motives for offering his help.
Harry didn't think his motives were necessarily sinister, but whatever may be the case, it seemed Lovegood wanted no part of him.
Harry looked away from the earrings and put Lovegood out of his mind. She was still someone he wanted for her uncanny views about the world around her. Maybe the increased amount of bullying would push her into his clutches.
Harry walked the winding path, wandering further into the room, and observed the items stacked on either side get noticeably older. There was an order to the chaos here.
The closer to the entrance, the newer the items in the room would be. That obviously meant that the age of the objects Harry would see would quickly reach triple digits if he walked far enough. It also told him how lax the security must have been hundreds of years ago.
The number of dark artifacts Harry could find was honestly ridiculous. This far into the Room, there was no such thing as casually touching an object unless Harry wished to be cursed into oblivion. Of course, that meant there were also gems hidden here that Harry could only see but not touch.
Harry stopped next to a rotting bookshelf and looked at the topmost shelf. Other objects might be more valuable in most people's opinions, but for Harry, this was it.
It was hard, stupidly so, to find any decent books on the mind arts. The most Harry could hope for could teach him the rudimentary foundations. Even that cost him a great deal of gold to acquire.
As for anything more than that?
There was no hope without a master teaching him.
Call him crazy, but Harry wasn't keen on letting someone into his mind to teach him. It seemed a little counterproductive to have his thoughts stripped bare in order to protect them. And more importantly, there wasn't a soul in this world that Harry trusted enough to enter his mind.
That book on the top shelf was the solution.
Harry had heard of the rare copies of it that some families had in their possession. Of a book with no title that only a select few could have access to. The few privileged that didn't need to gamble on a master of mind arts and hope their sanity wouldn't be ravaged by the end.
Harry tried to get his hands on that damned book for as long as he knew it existed, but he was rebuffed no matter what he offered in return. Quite rudely sometimes at that. Of course, Harry was referring to Greengrass cackling at his request.
Thank Merlin his treasure was able to save him from more embarrassment. There was an issue, though.
Harry hadn't been able to make the book budge even an inch. There was a reason it hadn't been taken away by him.
The damned thing had a blood lock on it. Only the owner or a descendant would be able to handle the book, and Harry certainly didn't qualify. However, all was not lost.
A blood lock wasn't unbreakable. In fact, Harry knew there were plenty of curse breakers that would be able to deal with it, but he couldn't exactly invite them to Hogwarts and reveal the Room to them.
So Harry started the slow, painstaking process of having to learn how to do it himself. He still wasn't anywhere close to accomplishing it. All Harry could do was occasionally come to the Room and stare at the book greedily, just like he was doing right now.
There was a reason he was so desperate to get it. Harry's whole business depended on his ability in the mind arts. He could deal with students from the old families when they were younger, but it would be a different story as they got closer to graduation.
Most competent pureblood children with access to the book would have occlumency shields that would run circles around his legilimency. Harry would have to give up any hopes of making contracts with them at that point. He couldn't exactly put his hopes on having them be willing to bring down their shields for him.
"Soon, you'll be in my hands," Harry muttered to himself before turning away and walking back to the entrance.
He gave his treasure one last look before exiting. If he gaped at what was inside any longer, the feast would have ended, and the chance of someone catching him leaving the Room would have exponentially increased.
Harry smoothed out his robes and made to leave the seventh corridor. Unfortunately, he had forgotten that the Prefects would usually lead the firsties to their common room before the official end of the feast.
"There will be plenty of time to stare at the paintings later. Don't fall behind!"
Harry raised an eyebrow at the sight of Granger walking backward as she kept a close eye on the new Gryffindors.
"Remember to watch the stairs carefully when you use them. They like to trick you at times and send you to the wrong floor."
"You'd know all about that, wouldn't you, Granger?"
Harry's lips twitched into a small smile when he saw Granger yelp in shock before twisting around to look at him with wide eyes.
"Harry! What are you doing up here?"
Hearing people call him by his first name was a little jarring. It was an unspoken rule that it just does not happen in Slytherin unless there was a deep relationship between people. Hell, Harry was even used to it from students in other houses except for the rare exceptions.
Longbottom was one, for reasons that escaped Harry, and Granger was obviously another. The latter was slightly more understandable since she was the first one Harry had spoken to on the train before his first year.
It was almost like Granger was subtly apologizing for ignoring him after being sorted into Slytherin. Harry didn't blame her, of course, but that didn't mean he would tell her that. If the top student in their class felt guilt toward him, it would only be good for Harry.
"Just wanted to say congratulations, Granger. On getting the Prefect position."
"Oh!" Hermione's cheeks flushed, "Thank you. I had hoped you would get it too."
"Please," Harry waved her off, "With Professor Snape deciding who to fill the positions? I would have a better chance getting along with Malfoy."
Hermione giggled at that thought. She knew that Harry might despise Malfoy even more than Ron, as hard as that sounds.
"Speaking of Prefects, how on earth did Weasley get the position? I would have thought Longbottom was a shoo-in."
"Ron's not that bad!" Hermione retorted, "He might not be the best student, but he can be a good role model!"
Harry stared at Hermione incredulously before looking away to pointedly glance at the fidgeting first years waiting for them to finish their conversation.
"Why isn't he here with you, then? A good role model wouldn't leave you alone on the first day, right?"
Hermione's lips parted slightly before closing without her saying anything. She knew that Harry was right but couldn't admit it in front of the students she was leading.
"Well, I suppose you would know him better. I'll leave you to it, Granger," Harry said airily before walking past her. "Ah, wait, one more thing. Is it true you're dating Longbottom?"
"What!" Hermione almost shrieked, "No! Why would you think that!"
"I guess I was mistaken. The way he looks at you made me think otherwise."
Harry left a speechless Granger and a gaggle of confused first years behind as he cheerily walked to the Slytherin common room.
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