The wall trembled slightly, then more strongly, as if the air were hot, the outline of a door that seemed to float up from the masonry: there it was, and then it was gone, and there it was, forming, coming into focus, and you were looking at a door that had not been planned. Heavy even in appearance, solid, fastened with strips of metal, a door like those seen in historical films. It is not for nothing that they say, "It is not the place that colors the man, but the man the place," oh, not for nothing.
No matter how many people live in Hogwarts, the locals are still the same disorganized, careless and overconfident people, and the castle is so run down that I really feel sorry for it. But I am a true son of my parents, not only the present ones, but the first ones as well. Why should I work hard for people who don't want to do anything themselves? Why should I do something they won't even thank me for?
There are plenty of mages in Britain, and plenty of money, so why don't they all organize themselves and fix the castle? Don't want to? Or can't get organized? I don't really care, and I don't even think about doing any repair or restoration work for "nothing". If there will be a profit for me, then — quite, and so — not my problems.
The door, despite its size, opened very easily, giving me a view of the respectable piles of things and garbage. Here, another example of a fool and a prayer: the locals have such a helper for a lazy man — house elves, like many things in the world of mages, are half-crazy creatures with very twisted logic.
Not wanting to lift a finger, the school's administration has been dumping most of the internal affairs on these mutant parasites for the past few generations, and they, with their small minds and, I repeat, twisted logic, often get too carried away, and the result is this.
I was standing at one of the mountains of things, examining everything it was made of, while the pearly "sun" of the "Lumos" modification shone above my head. There is a lot of wood in the form of various broken pieces of furniture, most of which show signs of magic. No, it's clear that remanufacturing is our everything, but what's to stop us from simply replacing the door on that chest of drawers over there, or the legs on that table, or taking a part from another piece of furniture? No, if you can't repair a repaired piece, it's all for the landfill!
Yes, many of the wooden things you see in this pile are only good for firewood, so why keep them, let them go straight to the stove and that's it! But there are quite a few interesting and beautiful things in there that can be repaired and either sold for a profit or kept. And that's just the wood. Wizards, damn it.
Well, I close my eyes to better visualize the zone of effect of the charms, while at the same time using a magic wand to roughly outline it, then just as roughly outline the area on which I will cast the spell of increased attraction.
— Accio, silver! — I waved the wand in my right hand and immediately unfolded the protego with my left, but without words — trained charms and spells do not need a verbal formula, especially for those who understand the principle of non-verbal magic.
When the magic of the charms "flashed and illuminated" the demarcated area, there was a rustling, crackling and other sounds of numerous moving objects, piled with various junk and not only. I didn't get a stream of treasure, but my shield came in handy, and in the zone of high attraction charms there was a kilogram and a half of various small things, either not magical at all, or with traces/remains of old charms.
Just out of interest, which is why I was doing this now, I went through my trophies and found nothing special or noteworthy, although a couple of tarnished rings looked very nice, and one was clearly a woman's ring with a pink stone and still glistening with perfect polish.
The magic on it was still "remnants" of some very old spells, but they were "remnants" that were very easy to remove, and only then did I take the jewelry in my hands. For a few minutes my attention was completely taken by the amazing purity of the stone, shaped by a master of his craft.
On the inside of the ring was an inscription in a language I am not familiar with. The ring went into an inner pocket, and I continued the inspection, but there was nothing else interesting there — a simple scrap of gold, which, just in case, was cleaned from the "remnants" of old charms, collected in a leather pouch, and then sealed in one of the rings.
Well, I can dig up the treasures of the mad "pirates" later, I didn't come here today for that, or rather not for those treasures. The wand returns to its holster in my sleeve, I close my eyes again, fall into the spiritual world, spread my arms wide (so it's easier to "feel") and start searching, taking small and slow steps forward. Through the spiritual world, the surrounding space looks like a huge funnel in the midst of deep blackness, and inside the funnel, consisting of frequent and powerful spiral rings, there is a fine-meshed network filled with magic and as if slightly vibrating.
Matter was seen as dark gray, vague clouds of smoke, among which there were rarely either remnants of old charms that had already lost their original appearance, or still whole magical objects glowing. Yes, I'm interested in them, yes, I'll definitely dig around here later, but that's all for later. Right now I'm looking for something that would be of interest to anyone who could find out where it is, whether it's the relic of a prominent woman or the weakness of a self-proclaimed Dark Lord.
Several times in these mountains I found not only bright "stars", but also small lumps of "darkness" — dark amulets and artifacts, and once again I marveled at the carelessness of the local mages: well, HOW can you lose THESE things? HOW? And house elves only bring really lost things here, so the owners of these artifacts and amulets are idiots. Otherwise, I can't explain the appearance of these items in the Wish Room.
The search took me over two hours, and I was beginning to tire of the level of concentration when I felt something dark but alive at the edge of my perception. Adjusting my movement, I moved there, went around another pile of debris, and carefully "inspected" the object of my search. In spiritual vision, the tiara looked like a clump of impenetrable darkness, a huge black canvas of rippling oil, from which numerous tentacles protruded, in constant motion-searching.
A shudder ran through my body — it was rare to see such open creepiness. I wondered if Tommy had brought the soul to such a state with his experiments with black and dark magic, or if it was the result of the creation of a chorkrusa (an extracted piece of spirit shell with the imprint of the soul's core). Or was he the one who made such a mess of it by putting protection on a mental artifact?
I didn't even think about going near that creepy thing without protection, so I approached the box with powerful multidimensional protection, represented by several horizontal rings of circling and glowing shades of blue, yellow and pearl talismans. The box containing the tiara did not stand out in normal vision, and was covered with a layer of dust and cobwebs like the other objects near it.
Open it and see a Ravenclaw tiara? Pfft! Within seconds, the box was covered in a thick layer of protective and sealing amulets, and then it went into a small casket that Afiri had prepared especially for her, covered in intricate patterns and symbols of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Unfortunately, it was extremely dangerous to seal such things for many reasons, so the casket was placed in a dragon skin pouch and clutched under her armpit.
I looked around the wreckage once more, and suppressing my thirst for treasure, I went out — I had other things to do today, namely a good night's sleep and a hot bath.