{Edited} - The Chaotic Traveler: Chapter 15 (Patreon)

AN: Edited chapters do not count toward monthly quotas.

Merchant chapter in 1-2 hours. I got delayed by a family thing.

Beta'd by Plum.

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Chapter 15: Finders Keepers

“Mr. Fluff.”

Jin froze at the authoritative voice, turning away from the Black Lake to face the school's top authority, and snapped his arm up in a salute.

“Yes, ma’am?” Jin stood at attention.

"Put your hand down, young man. This is not the military." Professor McGonagall rolled her eyes and stepped up beside him. "Please explain to me why you have two of my Gryffindors running laps around the lake?"

The fact that one was Harry Potter was enough for the professor to stop and check in.

"They requested my assistance." Jin crossed his arms and nodded seriously. "It would be dishonorable to deny them."

“Your assistance with?” The older woman’s eye twitched when Ronald Weasley seemed to trip Harry to gain a lead. “What has gotten into those two?”

“Last one to finish does an extra lap.” Jin stated proudly, only to wince at the professor's glare. "They wanted to improve their physical fitness and asked me to help their progress."

“I see.” Professor McGonagall’s tone couldn’t be drier. “Did they say why?”

“Something about female attention and Quidditch?” Jin scratched the side of his head as if he was trying to remember. “Something like that.”

A huff left the older woman at the response, her gaze falling on Harry. "Perhaps more of his father is in him than I realized."

“Excuse me?” Jin asked.

“Nothing, Mr. Fluff.” Professor McGonagall looked away from the running boys. “I came to inform you that the visiting schools will be arriving tomorrow. I expect you to be present to begin your official duties.”

“Oh, already?” Jin nodded and gave the woman a confident thumbs-up. “I’m ready wherever you need me, ma’am.”

“Good answer.” Professor McGonagall turned to walk away. “Make sure my students get back to the castle in time for supper.”  

“Understood.” Jin watched her go, his eyes narrowing as he processed her words. ‘Good thing my elves will be done by tonight. I was hoping to deal with the RoR before everything started.’

He turned his head and noticed the boys were slowing down. “DON’T MAKE ME COME DOWN THERE AND RUN BEHIND YOU TWO AGAIN!”

Harry and Ron’s eyes widened as they took off.

In the distance, Professor McGonagall paused at the shout and nodded her head with a smile of approval.

0000

“That’s a lot of stuff.” Jin couldn’t help but whistle at the transformation that took hold of the Room of Lost Things.

"Yes, Sir." Gol nodded beside him, clipboard in hand and a mini construction helmet on his head. "We followed your instructions to remove the base materials from anything too broken."

The House Elf flipped through the pages.

“Your English has improved even further, Gol.” Jin complimented.

“Thank you, Sir.” A smile graced the elder House Elf’s face. “Sil is coming along nicely, as well. However, Bron is…”

"Bron! Get down from there!" Sil shouted up at Bron, who stood atop a mountain of unstable, broken scrap, a pirate hat from the eighteen hundreds on his head.

"This be my booty! I want to show Boss my booty!" Bron turned toward Jin and waved both hands above his head. "Boss! I did good!"

The House Elf got overexcited and fell backward with a yelp of surprise, completely missing Jin's silent thumbs up.

“Bron is a work in progress.” Gol finished.

“Can’t have everything.” Jin openly praised and looked around. “You three still did amazing work here.”

The once chaotic maze of a room had been torn apart harder than a troll trying to win Umbridge's affection.

‘Why did I have to put that in my brain?’ Jin shuddered and took in the results of the House Elves' plundering.

A massive pile of broken scraps took up a third of the Room, full of things that simply couldn't be repaired or had no valuable parts.

'Shame about the Reparo Charm only working when all the missing pieces are nearby. Would be nice to just fix a bunch of old shit and sell it off, but, well, it's not like it didn't work on everything.'

Jin's gaze turned to four smaller piles.

One was full of metals they had stripped from various things.

Another was full of furniture and other such pieces Jin was able to fix with the Reparo Charm.

A third was full of books and magically charged, enchanted, or cursed items held in crates.

The last was the smallest, with a pile of coins and small jewelry pieces.

“How much did you find in coins?” Jin pointed at the smallest pile and asked.

Gol looked over the clipboard and read off the numbers. "20,706 Knuts, 300 Sickles, and 19 Galleons. At 493 Knuts to a Galleon and 17 Sickles to a Galleon, it adds up to just under 80 Galleons.”

The elder House Elf’s mathematical ability was a welcome surprise, Gol had gone above and beyond Jin's order to learn English more fluently.

“Not a fortune, but a reasonable amount for money lost over the years.” Jin mused while puffing away at his pipe. “Most kids would probably carry Knuts, so it makes sense. What about the jewelry?”

“Hard to say, Sir.” Gol shrugged at the smaller pile of various necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings. “We don’t know the values for such things.”

“Understandable. I’ll see if I can get it appraised.” Jin scratched at his stubble.

‘I need to shave.’

Shaking off that thought, he turned to the pile of furniture. “What about that stuff?”

Gol flipped a page on his clipboard.

“Sir, like you asked, we salvaged what was whole enough for you to repair. Here is the list of goods.” He handed over the clipboard for Jin to see for himself.

Dozens of tables, chairs, mattresses, rugs, kitchen utensils, suitcases that may have held enchantments at one point, and various other usable housing or school supplies.

It was by far the most extensive list, and Jin could see why Gol didn't bother listing them all.

His House Elf did, however, mark which pieces of furniture looked the finest with expensive wood and plush fillings.

"Good, everything on that page is going into storage." Jin pointed his watch to the side and opened the doorway to his warehouse at max size.

"You can set the nicest stuff up where we marked off the area for rooms.” Jin had worked with Gol to section off the warehouse. “Pile everything that we don’t need in the corner for now; we can sell it later."

“Right away, Sir.”

Gol snapped his fingers to summon the other two, and the three joined together, levitating things through the doorway.

Jin had nothing to fear from showing his House Elves his secrets. They were literally unable to say anything he ordered them not to, not that they wanted to.

It took someone like Malfoy Senior to mistreat a House Elf enough to make it try to get around its orders to keep silent.

And even that was a significant challenge for Dobby.

'I should probably help them out.' Jin’s mind shifted hotkeys before he snapped his fingers and sent out orbs of light.

Once they made contact with an object, the Locomotion Charm, also known as the Bewitching Charm, took effect and sent the pieces where Jin intended.

Jin couldn't change the orders he gave after casting, but he could pull back on his mana to effectively cancel the spell midway through.

It was a fifth-year Charm that Jin specifically spent time on until he cracked the code for wandless magic.

‘It’s the most detailed form of Telekinesis I can get.’ Jin marveled at all the floating objects, seemingly moving on autopilot once his spell took effect. ‘I might have skipped over others in my rush to make it wandless, but it was worth it.’

The spell was a far lesser drain than using the Levitation Charm for such an action, as the Levitation Charm was essentially written in mathematical terms that translated to [Levitate the target where it stands].

For daily life purposes, it was an inefficient, wand-focused Charm that would require Jin to practically create a new spell to make it wandless.

Thankfully, the Locomotion Charm existed, and its equation was far friendlier for everyday tasks. And with Jin's redesigns, it was incredibly cost-efficient.

‘My mental plane takes more mana to use than half a dozen casts of the Locomotion Charm. But at the same time, the months of mental time I’ve spent would likely take years of real time for someone without my benefits.’

Within an hour, the second-biggest pile of goods from the RoR vanished into Jin’s warehouse, clearing up much of the space with the same satisfaction as spring cleaning.

Jin watched as Bron swept the coin and jewelry piles into comically stamped sacks with old-school money symbols held open by Sil and proceeded to carry them into the warehouse while whistling what he was pretty sure was a show tune.

‘Little dude’s a riot.’ Jin chuckled and turned to the last two piles.

"Dump the piles of raw materials into some of the trunks we found.” Jin directed. “There’s no need to be careful; just separate them by material and label them."

One of the most common items to find in the Room of Lost Things was spatially expanded trunks.

The cheaper ones weren’t built to last more than a few years and broke down, but the ones that survived were in decent condition.

"Yes, Master." Sil quickly pulled five trunks from the enchanted item pile and got to work while Jin turned to said enchanted pile of various things.

“Tell me about these, Gol.” Jin pointed his pipe at it.

"Of course, Sir."

Gol wiped his sweat with a handkerchief and flipped through the clipboard.

"These were what we could salvage that had magic in them." The elf walked down the laid-out goods and pointed them out.

A self-organizing wardrobe that kept the clothing inside clean and free of dust.

A few dozen Magic Lanterns and crates of Everlasting Candles.

A Bewitched Tea Set that only made green tea, still in good condition.

Gol paused at a box filled with multiples of one item and scowled. “Self… cleaning… brooms.”

The nearby Sil and Bron gasped, greatly appalled.

“Sir.” Gol spoke up with uncharacteristic outrage. “I must advocate for burning these foul things.”

Jin sweatdropped at their reactions and cleaned out his pipe. "Feel free."

He might be able to get a few coins out of the brooms, but Jin figured it was a small price if it kept his most loyal followers happy.

"Thank you, Sir."

Gol bowed his head and turned to the side, sliding his finger across his neck in a sign to Sil, who popped over, grabbed the brooms with a disgusted expression, and popped away to where Bron was menacingly swinging a metal pipe.

“Nothing takes me work!” Bron smashed the first broom like the world’s smallest gangster.

‘Going to pretend I didn’t see that.’

Jin puffed out some smoke and gestured for Gol to continue.

"Sir, as you requested, we split the questionable items from the rest.” The House Elf went on as if there weren't a turf war happening in the background, reading down the list while pointing at each item. “For the safe items."

Two Mokeskin Pouches. Seven pairs of Omnioculars. Various vials of enchanted ink colors. Four Self-Inking Quills. A box of thirty unlabeled magic contract scrolls. Two older, if still functioning, flying brooms. Half a dozen Quidditch Bludgers.

And to Jin’s honest surprise, a still charged, if broken, Pensieve.

“Is this thing real?” Jin bent down beside the large bowl engraved with various runes.

“We believe so, Sir.” Gol summoned a book. “We have been following the enchanted item encyclopedia you gave us. The bowl matches the characteristics and retains its mana charge.”

Gol handed over the book for Jin to study. "Hmm, rather than being broken, I think this thing is one of those failed artifacts."

Through his rampant studies, Jin had discovered that enchanted objects could also be labeled as artifacts if their enchantments became permanent rather than temporary.

More often than not, failed ones missed their objective while still retaining permanence in effect.

Jin noticed the differences between how the book showed a Pensieve should look and how the one in front of him looked. “Maybe someone was trying to make a Pensieve, and this was a prototype?"

Jin blew smoke out of his nose and considered it. "The schools have been around for a thousand years. I'm sure there were many unknown geniuses throughout the ages. I’m just surprised this thing is still in here though."

Jin could see the writing on the wall.

The Room of Lost Things was far too small to be a thousand years of lost items.

'Every now and then, I'm sure someone had the same thought as me when they stumbled on this place and cleared it out of valuable stuff; maybe this one just never got noticed?'

Jin's expectations hadn't been that high initially, but he was glad to get what he did.

"Pack up all this stuff, Gol.” Jin shut the book and handed it back to the House Elf. “I want the valuable, enchanted items boxed up and stored on shelves in one area, clearly marked." He looked over the items and pointed. "And set up the candles in the warehouse; I'm tired of how dark it is in there."

The sight Jin first woke up to wasn't one he cherished.

The darkness inside the warehouse paired with the original unease he felt in those starting moments before he heard Zelretch’s message and got his feet underneath him.

"Right away, Sir."

Gol popped away with the enchanted lanterns and everlasting candles, and soon enough, his warehouse was lit with a magical feel similar to the Hogwarts Great Hall at night, if smaller and more metallic.

Jin smiled at the result and waited until Gol was back to continue. “What about the cursed stuff?”

"Over here, Sir." Gol pointed at an iron crate. “We put all the cursed things in here."

Jin popped the lid and looked within to see it was full of myriad items radiating vibes that raised the hair on the back of his neck.

“You didn’t touch any of them, right?” Jin asked to be sure.

“No, Sir. We took your warnings seriously.” Gol eyed the iron crate warily.

"Good." Jin’s eyes scanned the items and saw a few daggers that he hoped were made of Goblin Silver.

'I should see if Goblin blacksmiths are a thing here.'

Jin made a note of the idea and turned back to Gol.

"Seal this crate up tight. Make sure to mark the box before storing it." Jin could see many ways access to cursed items would help, especially for a few Spell Alteration ideas he had been thinking about. "What about the books?"

"Diaries, Sir." Gol pointed to a stack of leather journals of various sizes, with a few hardcover books mixed in. "Most House Elves know to take lost school books to the library, but diaries end up here."

"Oh?" Jin reached for the one at the top of the stack and cracked it open, only for his face to twitch within seconds as he shut it with a snap. “This is a young woman's love journal. A remarkably disturbed one at that.”

The front page had a very detailed image of male genitals on it with descriptions of what she wanted to do to it.

Jin tossed it to Bron, who was burning the remains of the self-cleaning brooms over a fire. "Burn that too."

"Aye, aye, Boss!" Bron picked it up, and Jin’s growing physical senses caught the elf muttering. "Boss wants me to burn the book. Burn it, I will. What's in it?" The curious House Elf cracked it open. "MY EYES!"

Jin ignored the background noise and pointed at the stack of books. "Remove the love journals from the book pile, please."

Gol raised a brow and looked at the stack. “How do I know which is which, Sir?”

Jin looked back at the writhing Bron just as the young House Elf accidentally looked into the book he was supposed to burn a second time and repeated his painful trauma.

Jin nodded at the little guy's fortitude for going back for seconds. “Have Bron test read them.”

“Understood, Sir.” Gol responded without missing a beat.

The two shared an understanding nod and continued.

"How about the questionable stuff?" Jin pointed at the remaining few enchanted items.

"We kept them apart due to their nature." Gol snapped his fingers and levitated over a trio of head-sized iron boxes, a rectangular iron box, and a wardrobe. "Following your orders, Sir, we kept anything magically dangerous in iron for containment."

“I don’t know why this room had so many iron boxes in it, but good job.” Jin’s gaze traveled to the wardrobe. “Oh, you found that thing?”

Jin idly recalled a memory fragment and made sure to ask Gol to keep an eye out for it. “It is the Vanishing Cabinet, correct?”

"We believe so, Sir." Gol held up the encyclopedia book again. "It's listed by the correct maker."

The House Elf pointed to a carved signature in the wood.

“Good, I want to eventually acquire the paired one in Knockturn Alley, but for now, keep this somewhere secure where it can never be opened.” Jin considered how to do it. “Bury it or something. I don’t want only one side of this thing in my warehouse.”

Jin didn’t know if someone could use the other half to enter his warehouse, and he didn’t want to find out.

But if he could get the other half, he could study the enchantments to better understand spatial magic.

'It's rare to see a permanent spatial enchantment that can be used on living creatures.’ Jin rubbed his chin. ‘It doesn't surprise me that the creator went out of business after making a minimal number of them. They either had no idea what they were doing and lucked out or were killed off to hide the information.'

Magical society was seemingly just as, if not more, ruthless than Muggle society when it came to business competitors or government security issues.

“What about the rest?” He asked.

Gol pointed to the rectangular iron box first. “We found two Wizarding Tents that still retain their charges, but we believe them to be unstable. Anything put inside on a string didn’t come back out.”

Jin crouched down to look at them and nodded in approval at the creative testing method. “Are they fragile?”

"No, Sir. Bron discovered them by accident, and his actions did not damage them." Gol ensured with a knowing look.

“Understood.” Jin chuckled and stood up. “Store them along with the Vanishing Cabinet.”

Sil popped in, took the items, and popped out to bury them.

With that taken care of, Gol turned to the trio of iron boxes.

"The first is an odd Crystal Ball and Tarot Card set. We are confident there is no curse, but it… unsettles us."

Jin looked inside with curiosity and felt what Gol was talking about.

While it didn't give off the same vibe as the cursed items, the box's contents felt otherworldly.

'Maybe I should see if Luna feels a connection to that stuff?’ Jin mused. ‘Could be some divination mumbo jumbo.'

Jin nodded to his House Elf. "Good call. Seal it and store it somewhere near my cabin."

He didn't feel comfortable keeping it near his soul.

Gol directed the returning Sil to handle it, then pointed to the second box. “Again, while not cursed, this book bothers us.”

Jin read the title. "Druidic Rituals Vol. 3?"

The script was in a language that only faintly resembled English, and the longer Jin stared at it, the more he heard faint chanting in a language that made him shudder.

"Right. Keep that sealed.” He shook his head. “Put it in an extra box and bury it near wherever you put the Diadem.”

“With pleasure, Sir.” Gol snapped his fingers, and Sil took care of it.

'I'm going to need to get my hands on an anti-magic containment vault or something if I want to keep stuff like this in my warehouse.’

Jin could only shake his head and laugh.

‘At this rate, the ground beneath my cabin is going to sprout some world-ending eldritch flower from all the shit I keep putting down there.'

Jin turned to the final box, and his heart skipped a beat. "Is that?"

Gol opened his book and read off the page. “A Time Turner, Sir. Sadly broken, though.”

Jin’s hopes dimmed. “Why is it in an iron box then?”

"The enchantment is still active." Gol pointed to a few glowing runes. "However, the glass is cracked and leaking the dust inside its container. We found it in a desk and have stored all the dust we could along with the item."

Jin looked inside and saw what Gol meant.

A silver, powder-like dust twinkled in the corner.

"Oh. That sucks." Jin shrugged. “At least it’s more research material, and probably valuable too. Good job, guys. Store it.”

While not nearly close enough to start messing with time magic shenanigans, it did make Jin happy to have a way to study it.

"Right away, Sir."

Gol personally carried in that last box, leaving Jin to admire the far cleaner Room of Lost Things with nothing but the giant mountain of useless scrap.

'This turned out better than I hoped.'

Jin blew out some smoke and considered it.

'I wasn't expecting much when I saw all the junk. I could probably double or triple my funds if I sell off all the raw materials and useless furniture I don't want to keep. And that's not counting the jewelry; I'm pretty sure many of those looked like real jewels, although I'm not exactly an expert on real and fake gems.'

Jin playfully blew some smoke rings.

With the place emptied, its only remaining value was its ability to conjure books to study from, as well as targets and various environments for him to train.

Jin had discovered the Room's remarkable ability to create lifelike environmental biomes when he jokingly asked to read to the sound of ocean waves.

Rather than change the Room's walls, it opened a spatial pocket connected to a doorway with a chair and desk on a beach.

A beach Jin could not distinguish from reality.

Its size was limited, and it couldn't conjure interactive targets to fight. Still, it was a remarkably impressive conjuration.

'I can only assume the Room directly connects to the leylines under the school. Otherwise, there's no way it could power that kind of thing so casually.'

Some people say Ravenclaw's Diadem was her Magnum Opus, but Jin wasn’t so sure.

'No one actually wore the Diadem besides Rowena and her daughter. I've not found any written record of what it did. Everyone just seemed to assume it was her greatest work alongside Godric's Sword, Slytherin's Locket, and Hufflepuff's Cup. I've seen the Diadem, and it's nothing compared to this Room.'

To be fair, Jin hadn't done a deep examination of the Diadem, since it currently housed a piece of Voldemort's soul, but each time he entered one of the conjured biomes in the Room, he could only marvel as his senses told him everything around him was real.

'I wish I could take this place with me. It would be my very own training simulator.'

The thought of trying to recreate it did come to him.

‘I’ve only been in this world for two months. I’m still a long way off from finishing all the Charm theory work, let alone whatever branches are needed for this masterpiece.’

Shaking off those wild thoughts, Jin turned to the giant pile of scrap that made up the majority of the Room's contents and thought of a devious idea.

'Just because I know all the good stuff's gone doesn't mean other people would.'

"Guys." Jin clapped his hands to get his House Elves' attention. "Let's organize the Room a bit. And Gol."

“Yes, Sir?”

Gol readied his clipboard.

Jin grinned deviously. “Find me the bust of a woman from that pile, a tiara from the cursed jewelry we collected, and some parchment to write on.”

“Of course, Sir.”

Gol proceeded without question while Jin stood there rubbing his hands together.

Someone was going to be in for a very bad time in a year or two, but Jin unfortunately wouldn't be there to see it.

He took the parchment passed to him and began to write.

“Dear Mr. Riddle, I regret to inform you that your car’s extended…”

Cleaning the room caused a lot of pain, and pain was only real if it was shared.

Chapter End.

AN: Hope you enjoyed!

Professor McG silently approves of Jin’s methods.

Jin swipes the RoR for shiny.

Not all House Elves are the same.

Bron is a special child.

A few unique items are added to the loot pile.

And Jin extends multi-national rage baiting across enemy lines.

See you next time!