BBS - Chapter 10 : A Filler! (Patreon)

The Bat, The Billionaire & The Shenanigans [10]

Disclaimer - I don’t own anything. Disney does, Warner Bro does, and Rowling does.

Hogwarts

–Tony Stark–

He whistled innocently and walked towards the library, a picture-perfect innocent student who just wanted to get a look at the real treasure of the school, which was the books, only to be rebuffed by the great demon librarian who jealously guarded this treasure.

“Nope.”

“But why? I am not even going to look at the Restricted Section. I thought the library was open to all students. See, it is written right over there!” He pointed at a plaque that said open to all students.

Librarian Prince, a prickly lady who did not want him inside the library, looked down on him from her throne of haughtiness, lowered her glasses for that extra douchebag effect, and said condescendingly, “But Mr.Stark, I don’t think you are a student yet. One has to go through the sorting ceremony before they can officially be declared a student. As you are now, you are a refugee at best. Now, walk along before I have the Elves give you a lift.”

“Fine,” He grumbled and walked forward, not to his room, though. He had had enough of the huge room he was given for the duration of his stay here, with all the tasty food he could ever want, and in humongous, artery choking quantities. Any of the people back in his hometown would cry rivers of joy if they saw the abundance and, more importantly, the taste of food available here.

So, why was he grumbling about something like that? Well, it was because he was, once again, bored. Apparently, he was not allowed to use his wand until he went through the sorting ceremony, as there was no one around who could supervise him. And there was only so much reading he could do before the elementary stuff got so boring.

Hence, his gambit to get inside the library. Alas, the woman refused to let him go inside. He was pretty sure she was one of those wizards who had some kind of vendetta against muggleborn wizards like him. Either way, the library was a dud; hence his daily activity of exploring the humongous castle, which was expanded spatially on top of that.

It was safe to say that he could spend the entire month he had until the Sorting Ceremony just exploring the castle and all its intricacies, something that he was allowed to do because Hogwarts itself did the supervision there. Apparently, the Castle was alive.

Sure, why not. There was magic, Unicorns, magical spiders, crocodiles, and more in this world. Why not a sentient castle?

Either way, the castle being sentient meant that he could apparently walk around the entire length of the castle and wander around abandoned classrooms and labs, all without ever risking his life in any manner, as the castle itself would either nudge him away from dangerous areas or, in case he did get injured, inform someone about his injury.

On top of all this, the Headmaster was connected to the castle in some way, and as such, could teleport instantly to his location if he managed to injure him. These people really underestimated him, thinking that he could get injured so easily.

Or maybe because of magic being involved, natural durability did not matter much? So, maybe he had to find out things that could be used to increase his magical durability as well.

Either way, he was in a magical school now, here to learn magic. As if his life could get even crazier. It was just a stark contrast to his previous life; sometimes, he still wondered just how and why he was brought here.

With his hands behind his head, he whistled a tune to himself as he turned around a corner and stopped both walking and whistling immediately, as in front of him was a gaping void with only floating stairs, and as fate would have it, a stair was not in front of him. So, either there were invisible stairs waiting for him to put his foot down on them, or the talk of the castle itself taking care of him and making sure he did not venture into dangerous areas was bull crap. Either way, he resumed his whistling and promptly turned around, on his way back to his dwelling.

They were the guest rooms of the castle, and as he was told repeatedly by McGonagall, they were far fancier than student accommodations. They had heated bathtubs, with a view of the Great Lake just outside the castle, so he could definitely imagine that being true. So, he should have been just enjoying that place, as it was definitely the most luxurious place he had ever been in, in this new life of his.

Hopefully, he would get to enjoy even better things in the future, after he had this whole magic thing under control. Until then, all he could do was train his extra perception sense, which gave him sensory information of the area around him, and his body reinforcement as well.

The only problem with that was that he was simply not allowed to do any of that. When he’d told McGonagall of how he had trained his body to match the physique of an adult wizard, she had just looked at him in horror and promptly forbade him from doing anything like that.

Which is why he didn’t even have access to the gym section of the castle.

All he could do in terms of exercise was run circles around the Great Lake as fast as he could, and enjoy the wind on his face. He was also told not to jump into the Lake for swimming purposes, due to the Squid, which was apparently larger than anything the rest of the world had ever seen, which just told him that the Great Lake was very deep.

Either way, he could see that he was being deliberately stifled here, not because they did not want him to learn or they did not want to teach him, but they were simply too busy to do so.

In his admittedly limited time here, he had learned that this huge castle, the size of which was amplified using spatial magic, was all manned by less than two dozen people. Hogwarts apparently had fewer than twenty people who were all full-time faculty. His flabbers were gasted at first, at the thought of this massive building having just that many people, but then he thought about it critically.

This place was magic. As such, would it be too far-fetched to think that they had stuff that could automatically handle menial tasks, such as cleaning, organising, security, and maybe even food prep, without involving a single human? After all, wizards were already in the minority on the planet, and as such, they probably had a manpower issue. So, they must use magic for day to day use, and reserve the actual wizards for really important tasks, like admin and teaching.

He was right, but only partially so. So, the faculty were here only to teach and do minor admin tasks, which they did alongside their teaching. There was no dedicated staff to handle the paperwork this place must generate.

The rest of the tasks? The upkeep of the castle, the food preparation, the laundry, and more? All of it was handled by an entire species whose job seemingly was just to serve the wizards. It was basically slavery packaged in a different format. Over a hundred House Elves worked tirelessly in Hogwarts to run it properly. They were responsible for cleaning, cooking, maintenance, and many more duties he had no idea of.

They were the real faculty of this place, but they were not even acknowledged as such. It was one of those topics he'd wanted to research in the damned library he couldn't even access right now. Stupid librarian and her stupid policies!

His point was that the faculty was super busy right now, and he was sure that had that not been the case, they would have been more than happy to just supervise him so that he could not just learn magic, but also run around, do some weights, show them how he had developed a dangerous form of magic that is taboo everywhere, in McGonagall's own words. Apparently, wizards here were the glass cannon variety.

Above average human durability, but capable of spells that could warp reality in a localised area. Some extreme examples included summoning enough water to fill up a small pond, or enough fire to burn down an entire house. It was all written in the starter books he had access to.

Never before in this life had he wanted to be stupid rich more than the time he had been in that bookstore and did not have enough money to buy the books with the juicy titles. McGonagall, understandably, was not willing to loan him some money, as he could just read the books in Hogwarts, especially since he had no credit. Except he did not have access to the library!

He couldn't even complain about that to McGonagall, because he could see just how rushed she was every time they crossed paths. So, he–

“What are you doing roaming around, brat?”

Stopping in his place, he continued whistling, knowing full well that it irritated the old man to no end, and raised his eyebrow in question after turning around to meet Argus Filch, a bitter old man who was Hogwarts’ caretaker. So far, the man had just hounded him to keep himself in that guest room and not set foot in the rest of the castle, despite multiple faculty members as well as the Headmaster himself telling him that he was free to explore the castle, as long as he obeyed the faculty whenever they told him not to go to some place.

Case in point, the Librarian.

Instead of answering the caretaker’s question, he just stood in place and continued whistling while maintaining eye contact, like the little shit that he proudly was. It barely took Argus 10 seconds before he got irritated, scowled, and just wandered off into the darkness, knowing full well that bullying did not work in this particular case.

After that, he continued wandering around until he got tired of walking around with no end in sight, so he just got into his guest room, and after sitting down at the dining table, said out loud, “Food, please.”

Like the good boy that he was, he waited for a few minutes after saying that, and as expected, with a subtle pop sound, multiple plates of food appeared in front of him. 

“Thank you,” he said to the House Elf responsible for the food, and as if in appreciation of the thank you, a sweet pudding appeared next to his food. Grinning at the extra treat, he repeated his gratitude before digging into the food.

The best thing so far of his brief stay here was the food, with the bathtub being a close second. The magical soap certainly helped.

Which is why, after he was done with dinner, he thanked the Elves once more before heading to the bathtub. Being in a magical castle meant that this place had unlimited everything, really. Unlimited hot water, unlimited water, unlimited food, unlimited light, and if they ever get around to it, probably unlimited electricity as well.

As he got into the bathtub, the hot water hitting just right, he sighed in relief. Looking up at the starry ceiling, with the view of the Great Lake out of the window. If one looked at the right angle, as the sky was extremely clear, the moon’s reflection in the Great Lake created the illusion of there being two moons.

With no books to read, no more exploration since he was on a strict curfew, no magic since he had no wand to use unsupervised, no exercise since he did not have access to the gym, all he could do was stare at the beautiful view and hope that this whole always on body reinforcement thing he did with his magic was not giving him some kind of super disease or something equally awful.