Opening a shop wasn't some grand daydream George and Fred had sketched; it was part of Loren's own plan.
Long ago, using smartphones from his previous life as reference, Loren had set about creating a magical-world "phone"—the Magic Notepad like the one he'd given Neville. By now, every feature was complete except one: true networking. At present he could only link a handful of Notepads over a local area; the design for a global wireless network was already finished, just missing a few components to implement it.
Once the Magic Notepad existed, it had to be sold; to sell worldwide, he needed distribution channels. The rings provided the perfect product to open those channels. After that, the network problem would be nearly solved, and the Notepads could roll out.
He wasn't building the magical smartphone to make money. Through the Notepad, he meant to weave together the wizarding world's resources—making life convenient and, quietly, shaping a version of magical civilization. A network lets minds collide; enough collisions spark inspiration. On a network fully under his control, Loren could watch each spark, read every bit of knowledge left behind.
Watching the twins' figures recede, Loren gathered himself and continued toward the Room of Requirement to retrieve Ravenclaw's Diadem.
At the door he used his permissions to open the "room of hidden things," but did not step in at once. As the door swung wide, a wave of dust billowed out, making the mildly fastidious Loren pause with a frown. When it settled, mountains of forgotten objects came into view.
Back when he gamed in his past life, he hoarded even the most "useless" materials. Faced with this vast pile of unclaimed stuff, he couldn't stop his hands from itching. He drew out the box that housed his alchemy workshop; with a flick of his wand the box opened by itself, and the room's debris surged like a flood straight into it. He carefully throttled his magic so items that inherently carried strong magic wouldn't be affected.
Satisfied, he nodded and sent a message into the box for Peter Pettigrew to sort the haul. With free labor like Wormtail, Loren didn't need to worry about the details. Then he cast a series of cleaning charms to clear the dust before stepping inside to examine the remaining powerful items.
He glanced at five scattered pieces and walked to the nearest. He raised a hand, unfolded an anti-magic field, and picked up a book. It was an advanced work of Dark magic, the spine stamped with Hogwarts Library's mark. Some alumnus had likely pilfered it from the Restricted Section and stashed it here. Using his Reader's Gift he skimmed it in moments; most of the content he'd already seen in Peter's materials. The only useful bit was a method for summoning Fiendfyre.
He dropped the book into a box reserved for books and moved on. The next item was a wooden cabinet—the Vanishing Cabinet from the original story. Loren swept it into his personal storage.
The third was a basin-like object that once held a liquid; a notch at the bottom had drained it dry. Even so, his magical sight showed it still glowed with strong arcane light—the function seemed intact despite the leak. From its shape, he judged it a Pensieve. The damage had ruined its memory-storage, but the reading function seemed to remain. Worth keeping.
After stowing the damaged Pensieve, he stopped before the target of this trip: Ravenclaw's Diadem. He opened his magical sight: blue and black auras coiled and tangled across the circlet, but there was no external warding. Voldemort must have thought that hiding a Horcrux in a room only he knew inside Hogwarts—the safest place—made further protection unnecessary.
Loren closed his sight and laid a counter-field over the diadem before daring to reach for it. Up close, it matched the film's look: a gemstone-studded tiara, gleaming; along the lower rim ran Ravenclaw's famed motto: "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure."
After a last look, he drew out a box and set the diadem inside, closing the lid. He wouldn't toss Ravenclaw's Diadem loose into storage; who knew what traps Voldemort—or Ravenclaw herself—had left on it.
With the diadem secured, he approached the last item: a palm-sized stone tablet etched with old characters—ancient runes. Fluent in all tongues, he read it at a glance: "Othala," one of the Elder Futhark runes[1], standing for family, inheritance, and property. Hogwarts had been built atop Salazar Slytherin's family castle; this room of hidden things was likely once a Slytherin hoard, which explained relics like this.
Staring at the now-emptying chamber, a thought flashed through him: this room would make a perfect place to house the root servers for the Magic Notepad network. A brilliant idea. With Ravenclaw's Diadem in hand, once he stripped out Voldemort's remnant soul he could claim Ravenclaw's permissions. Come summer he'd handle business at Gringotts—and while he was at it, pull Hufflepuff's Cup. With those, he'd control over half of Hogwarts' founder permissions. Quietly locking down this room under those permissions would make it secure. Then he'd fetch Slytherin's Locket from the Black family home. With the founders' authorities, he could bypass the Headmaster's permissions entirely and the servers would never be discovered.
In his current semi-etheric body, he could even survive in space with ease. He could hand-build a satellite, drop it into Earth orbit, and—there—the network backbone would be ready.
Excited, he pulled out another box. With time to spare, he would deal with the diadem now—separate Voldemort's remnant soul and take the permissions Ravenclaw had left inside.
He set the box holding the diadem onto a machine. Built long ago for exactly this purpose, it projected fields to safely study dangerous artifacts. With the machine's anti-magic field up, he gingerly opened the box. Magical sight bloomed; he tracked the interlaced blue and black lights, searching for a place to break the weave. The auras were fused—"you in me and I in you." A clean, proper solution was impossible.
Fine—if he couldn't solve the problem, he'd solve the one who caused it. He tuned the machine to confine every part of the diadem except a black-lit segment, then leveled his wand and began memory extraction—a fusion of Legilimency and the technique he used to pull his own memories for a Pensieve. The spell could rip memories from a target that couldn't resist. If they could resist, he'd still get something, but it would be tangled junk.
Memory requires a vessel; during extraction, the spell draws off a fragment of soul to carry it.
An hour later, bottles containing shards of Voldemort's remnant-soul memories lined the table, and the black aura on the circlet had thinned to almost nothing. He tucked the memory-vials into personal storage, then re-checked the diadem with every method he had. Only when he was sure the remnant was gone did he shut down the anti-magic field and cautiously reach out one finger to touch Ravenclaw's Diadem.
//Check out my P@tre0n for 20 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810
[1] The Elder Futhark is the oldest of the runic alphabets, a writing system used by the germanic tribes