{Edited} The Chaotic Traveler - Chapter 9 (Patreon)

Chapter 9: Get In The Box

By the time night fell, and Jin was confident he wouldn't be bothered until the morning, he sat menacingly by a lit hearth.

He posed dramatically with Shadow in his lap. Stroking the feline with faux Dr. Evil vibes. "Gol."

The House Elf appeared by his side with dead eyes, wearing a pre-prepared Austin Powers Mini-Me outfit Jin had asked him to acquire in London a few days prior. "Yes, Sir?"

"Did you find the painting I asked for?" Jin drawled.

"Yes, Sir." Gol drawled back.

"Gooooooooodddd- ow." Shadow kicked him when Jin tried to stop petting her and steeple his hands. "Don't ruin my vibe, girl."

Shadow argued.

"Would you like to go now, Sir?" Gol inquired.

"Just a moment." Jin pulled on a full-face ski mask to fit the mood, then gave Shadow her own mini ski mask he'd spent precious time on so it wouldn't block her ears. "Ok, now we're ready."

Gol stared at him with a look that questioned his new master's sanity. "Of course, Sir."

The Elf snapped his fingers, and after a moment of severe discomfort, the three evil masterminds found themselves before the painting of trolls on the seventh floor.

The wards sensed him but did nothing to stop him, as McGonagall had tied him in earlier that day.

'I hate doing that.' Jin felt his dinner rise in his throat before he swallowed it back down. 'House Elf apparation is nauseating.'

Jin remembered when he first tried it, thinking he could abuse it to get around quickly, and ended up blowing chunks on Sil’s poor face.

The little dude never volunteered to apparate Jin after that day.

He finished dry heaving before noticing the dirty look Gol was shooting the painting. "Was it that hard to find the painting?"

Jin got a first-hand look at a disgruntled House Elf. "Sir, there are thousands of paintings in this school. Hundreds alone on this floor."

Jin felt a little bad about his vague request: {Find the painting of dancing trolls on the seventh floor of the castle}. "Right, you're getting a raise."

"I don't get paid, Sir."

"You can have more mana?"

"I am already full, Sir."

"You can have more off days."

The Elf stared blankly at him, and Jin sighed in defeat. "Whatever, you can get something later. I command you to think of something you want."

Gol sagged at the order. "Of course, Sir."

'I'll make you laugh someday, little butler.' Jin silently promised himself and looked up at the painting to admire it.

'I kinda want to steal it just to fuck with people. Imagine someone comes looking for the door and can't find it because the painting is missing.’ Jin sniggered. ‘It's not like there are any other landmarks up here.'

The hallway was barren aside from the carpet and painting; among dozens of similar hallways, not a single classroom in the area was in use.

From what Jin had learned, Hogwarts was too large for the current magical population, which had been cut down by the last two wars.

Magicals naturally lived longer than Muggles, and their reproduction rates weren't that high to begin with.

Jin shook his head. 'This place was made to serve thousands of students, yet it barely has a fraction of that.'

Over a hundred classrooms were spread across the seven above-ground floors and the two underground dungeon floors, most of them unused despite being outfitted with desks, carpets, banners, armor, paintings, and who knew what else.

'No wonder they accept any wayward House Elves.’ Jin looked at his House Elf with appreciation. ‘Cleaning this place would be a nightmare, even with magic.’

Focusing back on the painting, Jin's eyes shone with excitement as he walked back and forth three times, wishing for a quiet place to study.

The wall opposite the painting shifted as the door to the legendary Room of Requirement shimmered into place.

'It's really here!' Jin ran inside, excited to see... a quiet, comfy room with a blazing hearth, a reading chair, and a desk. ‘And this looks like my hut.’

Jin's excitement died abruptly. "Right, it takes requests literally.” He dramatically pointed at the door. “Once more into the breach, men!"

"Reow." Shadow chirped.

"And lady." Jin corrected.

Gol debated if it was too late to find a new master.

Thinking about what to ask for was harder than Jin expected. 'How about asking for lost money? I want money, I want money, I want money.'

The door formed again, and Jin rushed inside to see a desk with a brightly titled 'How To' book on how to open a successful business.

‘…Very funny.’ Jin slammed the door shut and tried again. ‘Just give me whatever valuables you have.’

This time, the room had expanded massively, and Jin's brow twitched at the sight of mountains of broken crap. "This isn't money."

Gol helpfully tuned in. "It's junk, Sir."

"Thank you, Gol.” Jin grunted. “I asked for valuables, not junk."

Gol shrugged unhelpfully.

After several back-and-forth attempts and a bit of raving while throwing junk into more junk, Jin tiredly sat down on a broken table.

"Alright, so the room can't magically divide all the lost junk into exactly what I ask for.” Jin listed out the results of his tests. “It can summon conjurations of anything inside, but they vanish when taken out of the room. It's all or nothing here, but at least the conjured books are readable."

In his testing, Jin found an old cookbook that was falling apart, and rather than take it out, he asked the room for that exact book and got a conjured copy.

The faded words and ripped pages weren't filled in, but the conjuration was easy to read.

So, in essence, he could study whatever he wanted inside the room as long as the book existed in the castle. 'Although my request for books in the Restricted Section came up empty, so maybe there are wards in place for that kind of stuff?'

Still, as useful as the studying applications were, Jin couldn't easily get free stuff to take home.

He kicked a can and sighed. "Well, so much for easy money. Gol."

His faithful House Elf, who watched him rave around while filing his nails, looked up. "Quite.”

Jin looked around the massive room of junk. "Exactly how busy are Sil and Bron in their stay here?"

Gol shrugged. "Not very. There be hundreds of elves here and cleaning spots are fought over. When students come, many elves spend time following silently to make sure no young ones get injured falling off a staircase."

"Good.” Jin hummed, rubbing his chin as a new idea formed. "I want you to tell those two to go through this stuff when they have nothing else to do. I'm looking for money, anything of value, or anything that still works.”

He snapped his fingers as he recalled something important. “Oh, and tell them not to touch anything that feels dangerous. In fact, tell them not to physically touch anything, just levitate stuff."

House Elf magic was similar, yet fundamentally different from Wizarding magic.

Without any educational instruction, Jin had seen Bron, a young elf, casually levitate and teleport things with barely any effort.

"Right away, Sir." Gol bowed his head.

The House Elf popped off to get the others while Jin watched Shadow play with a loose spring.

'I can salvage a lot of stuff in here. Sell valuable pieces of metal and grab anything that still works; it's basically a trash heap for magical stuff that never had anyone snooping around for treasure.’ Jin looked around, already seeing the junk being converted into hard cash.

‘Or maybe it did, and they've already taken all the good stuff? Either way, it all gets burned down in a few years, so no one would notice anything missing.' Jin shrugged at the room's future. 'Hm, I should at least deal with that Horcrux before anything else.'

Jin picked up Shadow and put her on his shoulder. "Come on, girl. We have a dark, broody dude's soul shard to find."

She meowed in acknowledgment and unleashed her mighty claws.

“Good girl.” He scratched behind her ears as the two enjoyed their walk.

The room wasn't silent, with constant old, enchanted items twitching, performing strange actions, or shifting from one form to another.

Jin had to walk under overhead arches made entirely of forgotten luggage and broken pieces of furniture, skip around jousting self-cleaning brooms, and dodge a chair with teeth. Still, within an hour, he found his target.

The room was only so big, and since he wasn't in a rush or worried about others, Jin just walked aisle to aisle from one side of the room to the other until he found a bust with a diadem.

A diadem radiating negative vibes like an evil Jamaican. ‘Evil Jamaicans aren’t real. They can’t hurt me.’

Just staring at it made Jin's skin prickle as something unpleasant washed over him.

And if that wasn't enough, the longer he stared, the louder a low-pitched growl echoed in his ears, pushing a desire to destroy into Jin's mind until he was forced to pull out his smoking pipe to keep calm.

'Is this thing probing my mind just like that? Damn, are all curses this powerful?’ Jin lit the pipe and took a calming breath. ‘I barely approached, and it tried to put me under a compulsion. If I ignore the feelings of aggravation, my inner animal's annoyance could be a pretty useful warning system.’

Even with the teething issues, Jin was glad he had it, as instinct could keep him alive when confronted with unexpected surprises.

Ravenclaw's Diadem wasn't very large for an item of myth.

It was a simple, U-shaped metallic band with a central diamond.

Jin stared at his reflection in the shiny rock. 'That’s still one big diamond, and I doubt that's normal metal.'

From what Jin had read so far, enchantments on items weren't usually permanent.

Either the mana they were fueled with kept an enchantment going until it ran out, or they had engraved runes that could be recharged from various sources. 'I wonder what it's draining to support itself right now?'

Too curious for his own good, Jin got closer to study it, confident the previous probe was the worst he’d have to deal with.

Yet as he studied it, an unseen corrupting purple gas began to bleed into his mind, slipping into his mental maze while broadcasting foreign thoughts, telling of great things Jin could accomplish if he only put the Diadem on.

But Jin’s mind wasn’t unguarded, and his weeks of effort came to the fore as he immediately noticed the foreign element the second it entered his maze.

A growl rippled up from his throat as Jin focused inward on his central island. ‘Begone.’

Passive gravity intensified as Jin trapped the corrupting gas and prepared to eliminate it, but the moment he moved, a roar echoed from somewhere beneath his mental plane. A wave of force shot up, tearing the taint to shreds without mercy as a ghoulish echo screeched in his ears.

Jin dropped to a knee as he grasped his head in agony, blood dripping from his nose as his anger spiked past the effects of his calming herbs. 'My mind isn't healed enough for this stress.'

“Gol.” Jin’s voice was strained as he called for help.

The Elf appeared in a beat. "Yes, Sir?"

"Find me an iron box.” Jin pointed back the way he came, keeping his eyes closed as he took deep breaths to calm himself through his pain. “Quickly. I think I saw one about two rows that way."

"Certainly." Gol popped off without another word, and Jin was left kneeling there, hearing Sil and Bron in the distance, already at work shaking things down, Bron laughing diabolically atop a mountain of kitchen sinks.

"I's be the Head Elf now!" Bron threw his arms up at the apex.

‘I’m not sure that's how that works, buddy.’ Jin’s headache eased with the distraction of his adorable idiot.

A rubber tire shot at the back of Bron’s head and sent the Elf tumbling down in a loud crash, alongside his dreams of Head Elf-ship, before Gol appeared with a perfect poker face. "Found one, Sir.”

"Thank you." Jin ignored Bron's failed mutiny and took the box.

'Iron has properties that are used to contain cursed objects. Terrible for enchanting, but perfect for containment.' Jin recalled a passage he read.

He placed the box beside the pedestal and found an old broom to dislodge the Diadem, dropping it onto the edge of the box and missing by an inch, causing the mythical item to hit the ground. “Damn it.”

"…"

"…"

Ignoring the judgmental eyes of his pet cat and loyal House Elf, and likely making Rowena Ravenclaw churn in her grave, Jin did his best to try to shimmy the mythical object into the box by scraping it along the side using his stick. 'Just. Get. In. The. Box!'

It felt like even the horcrux's disembodied ectoplasmic head was giving him a deadpan stare.

Jin considered getting closer to use his shoe, but after the mental attack, he wasn’t taking chances getting that close again. "Fine, I'll get a shovel or something."

Too prideful to ask his Elf, Jin stomped off and found something to use, cycling through half a dozen items before finally using a discarded toilet seat and getting the cursed Diadem in the box.

“Ha!” Jin sealed it by slamming the cover down. “Take that, you little shit." He turned to his dutifully watching House Elf. “Gol. How long did that take?"

"Twenty-five minutes, Sir." Gol counted off perfectly.

Jin died a little on the inside.

He handed over the box. "Just… take the box and bury it like twenty feet under the floor of my cabin, alright? I’ll deal with it later when I’m more advanced in my studies.”

Every book on curses told Jin that burying iron-wrapped curses was a surefire way to contain them as long as they weren’t active.

Gol nodded and popped away with the box while Jin internally pouted. 'Right, this has been a fun night. Why is reality so mean?'

He knew he was being a dumbass, but it wasn’t fun if he took everything seriously. ‘I’ll just blame it on the common-sense debuff.’

Jin trudged back to the entrance with Shadow pawing his cheek in support.

Or because she wanted food.

Jin couldn't tell.

On the way over, Jin chose not to comment on how Bron seemed to have taken Jin's mighty toilet seat and used it as a crown as he and Sil levitated piles of junk, shaking them rapidly to knock out any loose change. "You're doing great, guys. Make sure to take a break if you get tired."

"Yes, Master." Sil bowed his head.

"Aye, Boss!" Bron saluted.

Shaking his head in amusement at how each Elf chose a different way to address him, Jin left the room to change his request, only realizing afterward that he had left his House Elves in the room when he made the change. 'Oops.'

He stepped inside but found no trace of them.

“…”

Feeling Shadow’s unimpressed stare, Jin chose to ignore the issue.

“I’m sure they’re fine.” He stepped inside the new room.

His new request was for books, specifically Charm-related books.

Jin had bought what he could with his limited funds, but it was barely a fraction of what Hogwarts could provide.

“Whoa.” He looked around and marveled at the free-standing shelves filled with hundreds of books, many of which looked theoretical in nature based on their titles. 'This is going to take a while.'

Cracking his neck, Jin set the alarm on his watch and got to work.

A year was plenty of time, but he had much to do if he wanted to survive his new reality.

Chapter End.

AN: Hope you enjoyed! As you can see, I'm running with shorter chapters so far here. I'll likely end up with larger scenes at some point, but I'm just flowing with it for now.