Early the next morning he went into his workshop to begin implementing the ideas he had come up with over the holiday, as the students had a day off today he wouldn't be missed. Even without changing it he was quite proud of his workshop, even if at first glance it looked as if it hadn't changed much since he had first started using it, aside from the shelves now being filled with shiny objects of all sorts of colours.
The first change he made was to rip the old door out, he then delved deep into his own power and started summoning thin sheets of mithril to take the place of the door. By the time he had the general shape he was exhausted, so in order to conserve energy he used his backup mithril core to expand the door so that it was much thicker.
With the taxing part over Harry started shaping the door's ideologies to his will, first he told the door to draw its powers from the castle itself so that it would never run out of magic. He then started weaving the web of notice-nots that would stop the magic in the mithril being detected, he had gotten incredibly lucky by accidentally figuring it out during his first year.
But he then incorporated what he had learned from the mermaids which made it hard for Harry to even pay attention to the door. Next he applied a mix of glamorous and colour changing charms to make the mithril look like the regular door in the off chance somebody saw through the notice-nots.
He then shut the door and started throwing several destructive spells at it, each and every spell was stripped down to its most basic elements and absorbed into the mithril. Even his spear just bounced off the door and his sabre had taken several minutes to leave a mark.
In order to stop spirits and other incorporeal beings he had lined the walls and ceiling with mithril panels. Even though he had used a mithril generator to cover most of the walls, providing enough mithril to start the process had still been tiring. As the mithril spread Harry noticed the magic in the room was being drained just like Azkaban.
After some thought he solved the issue by imbedding several cores throughout the sheets and then telling the sheets to let ambient magic pass straight through. While this meant magic started passing into the room again the ambient magic had been touched by Harry's signature.
The echo of his signature meant Harry had some control over the magic before he even got close to it. This had allowed his senses to grow considerably inside the room, even when he stepped outside he could still feel a faint echo of the room in his subconscious.
He found he could control the air with barely a thought and his magic replenished significantly faster than normal. But while the power might be addictive it meant Harry had almost complete control of the room, after some time experimenting he found that by simply focusing on the mithril he could completely seal the room.
Further experimentation revealed that he could change the ideologies of the panels almost instantaneously, whether this was due to how the room was now permeated with his signature or his own growing power he didn't know.
He laughed out loud when he told the panels on the east wall to apply an expansion charm and move backwards into the magically created space, while he didn't yet trust the magically created space he didn't hesitate to double the size of the room.
By the time he left for dinner his workshop had gained an additional room where he had moved his finished projects which left him more room for his in progress projects, along with a new lounge area complete with a huge desk.
The new space was welcome as the mithril ward generator had taken up an entire corner and he and Bathsheda had to move it whenever they wanted to work on it, now it sat proudly in the middle of the main room with lots of room to move around it.
Harry was able to ignore the other students, their behaviour wasn't too dissimilar to how they normally acted so Harry was used to ignoring them.
He entered the defense room warily, after Lockhart's dreadful attempts at teaching and the complaints he heard against Quirrell, Harry wasn't sure what to expect.
He had mixed feelings when Lupin took them to the staffroom, it was one of the few areas of the school he hadn't been to often. When he realised Lupin intended to reveal their worst fears to the class he was tempted to walk out.
As it was he was curious about what his worst fear actually was, off the top of his head he couldn't think of anything he was truly afraid of. He guessed he was scared of Luna or Dumbledore dying but he didn't stay awake terrified about it.
Before Harry could think of his fear a line had formed, he fought his way near the back of the line so that he would have a bit more time to decide. If he wasn't feeling so anxious he would've enjoyed the atmosphere Lupin had set up, the music helped calm the students and the bright room lessened the impact of their fears.
Due to the atmosphere the line moved quickly with each student dispelling their boggart with ease, which meant Harry was pushed in front of the creature. The boggart started swirling, Harry thought he saw the cloak of a dementor briefly form before turning back into dust.
Eventually the boggart settled into… himself, Harry cocked his head to the side and looked at himself curiously. Boggart Harry copied his movement which gave Harry time to play spot the difference. The other Harry was slightly taller, his hair was shorter than he normally wore it letting the scar be easily seen.
He also seemed more muscled and confident, then Harry saw his eyes. The boggart's eyes were pure mithril silver, following the eyes the other Harry's veins were the same silver and Harry could feel the power radiating off the dementor.
"Is… is this meant to be scary?" Harry asked slowly, he could tell the class had gone silent behind him and even Lupin seemed on edge. The boggart didn't answer, Harry wasn't even sure it could talk, but he did grin creepily.
The other Harry withdrew a sword that looked similar to Godric Gryffindor's sword except Harry could tell he had made that sword himself. Harry prepared himself for the boggart to attack him, only for the boggart to turn the sword on itself.
There was no blood but Harry could feel the echo of magic rapidly fade from the other Harry until there was nothing left, Harry found himself backing off. It had never occurred to him that he could lose his magic, but now that he had it thrust in his face it terrified him.
Harry tried to think of a way to make it funny but he drew a blank, with the loss of magic the mithril within the other Harry's body started vanishing making it look like his body was deflating. Thinking as fast as he could Harry threw a flame curse which forced the boggart to dive to the side, as it rolled it broke Harry out of his fear.
He knew he would rather die than lose his magic but this boggart was just a reflection of something he would never do, he still didn't know how he could make it funny, but he wouldn't let the boggart scare him. He stared at what was left of the boggart's eyes and tried his best to stare it down, the boggart ungainly stood up and started pointing his sword at him.
After barely a cursory glance at the sword he waved his hand dismissively which disarmed it, the sword vanished into dust after only a few feet. Harry felt he could feel a flicker of confusion from the boggart.
'If doing the smart thing doesn't work, try brute force' Harry thought dryly, he formed the Riddikulus spell and put as much power into it as possible. He then launched it at the boggart which seemed to rip its form to shreds and return it to it's dusty form.
"Well done Harry, very good indeed. Notice class, how if you can't think of a way to make you fear funny, raw power works just as well… Assuming you have the power to spare that is."
Harry appreciated Remus's comment, it made it look like Harry had known what he was doing. It also drew the classes attention back to the professor and boggart which gave time for Harry to compose himself.
"Harry, a word please" Lupin asked, Harry had been able to hide in the back of the room as the last few students defeated their boggart. The professor waited until the last students had left before leaning on a desk near Harry.
"Are you okay?" Lupin asked Harry softly "Sometimes we don't always want our fears to be shown, if you need to talk to anyone you can always talk to us teachers."
Harry wondered what Lupin was talking about before he realised that to anyone who didn't have magesight his boggart looked like he was terrified of killing himself. "Ohh, no I'm scared of losing my magic… not dying. I thought it might've been a dementor but while I found it frightening I know a way to deal with dementors."
"Ah, I get the feeling you're used to solving your problems with magic? Professor Dumbledore mentioned you've been using magic for a long time, it's understandable that you would fear losing your magic." Professor Lupin gave off the air of understanding although Harry suspected he couldn't comprehend just how important his magic was to him.
"Mr. Longbottom will be the death of me." Snape muttered angrily as he stormed into his office, having gotten used to his outbursts Harry took a leaf out of the professor's book and raised an eyebrow questioning.
"The boy was meant to make a finger nail reducing potion, by some stretch of logic us mortals can never hope to achieve he added salamander spines to the potion while it was on the fire."
"How did he even get them? You can't buy them without an adult present and he can't have gotten them from your private store." Salamander spines were extremely explosive, so much so that they would react the moment they reached 30 degrees Celsius. Despite this they were an integral part of strength and fire-repellent potions, when properly brewed into a potion.
"I have no idea, what I do know is that after I gathered what was left of his potion it would make the drinker's skin as tough as nails. Of course I needed to scrape this potion off the walls as the resulting explosion destroyed the cauldron and threw Mr. Longbottom into the potion behind him." Snape said bitterly
Harry grimaced and went back to his meditation, he needed to clear his mind before Snape tried to penetrate it before they would go onto whatever Snape had planned. After he had developed a good enough shield to consistently withhold Snape they had started devoting part of their lesson onto other areas of study.
So far he had been learning how to modify and create potions and spells, while Harry had already done his own variation of spell modification it took a lot of energy. Snape was teaching him how to modify existing spells to better serve him, without wasting magic.
"Right, very well then, prepare yourself Potter." Harry barely had time to react before he felt Snape's magic launch over the desk and into his eyes, but before the magic could hit his occlumency shields the magic just stopped.
"Impressive, you've made good progress in your shields over the summer… In fact I doubt even the dark lord has shields as strong." Snape sounded genuinely impressed which was a rare occasion for him, Harry would've been proud if it had actually been his shields that had stopped him.
"I'm sorry sir but your magic didn't hit my shields… I thought you just stopped the probe before it could reach me, I didn't feel a thing."
Snape lowered his eyebrows thoughtfully before sending a much stronger probe, like before it stopped just before it could reach Harry. After instruction Harry to move to the side he launched yet another probe which met the exact same fate.
"Very strange… Did anything happen to you, or more specifically your mind, since our last meeting?" Snape asked curiously, their last meeting had been before Harry had gone into the chamber so he had several weeks to go through.
"Well… Obviously there was the dementor, although now I think of it the dementor barely had any effect on me. There was the trip to Azkaban, the Caribbean sea creature, then the mermaids. I think the only other thing would be the chamber… Oh, I had to use mithrilium to protect myself from the Basilisk's stare. That's probably it!"
"Mithrilium?" Snape raised an eyebrow at the unfamiliar name which reminded Harry he hadn't been meaning to tell Snape his secret.
"Err, yeah. It's this type of metal I can summon that can do almost anything I can think of, in the chamber I was desperate and made the mithril form inside my head and luckily it remained liquid rather than go solid." Harry said sheepishly
"So it's this 'mithril' that's protecting you? That is certainly a unique approach to protecting your mind, but as I've never even heard of anything like this I have no way of penetrating it. Congratulations Mr. Potter, it seems that you've accidentally made the perfect mental defense." Harry could see Snape was thinking and he didn't have to wait long to find out what.
"So this mithril, I assume Professor Babbling is helping you use it? If you wouldn't mind, I think I would like to join in, while I can see why a runes teacher would be useful in this. However this power doesn't seem to be limited to what runes are capable of, if your mithrilium can protect your mind perhaps it can also improve your mind."
Harry spent the rest of their meeting filling in Snape on what his mithril was capable of, he also showed off several of his gadgets although he kept the gauntlet a secret.
"You have left me much to think about… but before you go I have something for you to think on. It is time you started work on harder potions, such as Wolfsbane. As I am required to brew Wolfsbane this year so you will have plenty of samples to work with, your task will be to see if you can enhance the potion. This can either be by improving the taste of the potion, increasing it's duration or even preventing the transformation entirely."
That night Harry had snuck into the restricted section and retrieved several books on werewolves and wolfsbane, he then went back to his improved workshop where he wouldn't be disturbed.
He settled into the lounge area and spread out the books over the desk, he quickly found the recipe for the Wolfsbane potion. He remembered talking to Hermione about the potion but had never bothered to look up how to actually make it.
Unsurprisingly aconite, or wolfsbane, was the main component of the potion with most of the other ingredients simply neutralising the poison. Possibly the most dangerous but crucial element was the dementor's ash, when too many dementors stayed somewhere for a long stretch of time they sometimes managed to freeze the air around them into an ash-like substance.
Direct exposure to dementor's ash gave off an effect similar to that of a dementor, which was one of the reasons it was a highly controlled substance. In the wolfsbane potion the ash channeled the idea of aconite straight to the werewolf's mind, it was theorized this scared the wolf part so much it refused to take control of the body.
It was also the ash which made the potion give off the blue smoke and attributed to the terrible taste, sweeteners like sugar negated the effect of the ash making the potion useless. The problem was the potion needed to be drunk everyday for the week leading up to full moon, even missing a dosage for a single day would leave the ash too weak to properly affect the wolf.
The ash also had a negative effect on the body, which would make the werewolf weak and sickly during the course of the week as their body tried to repel the ash and aconite combination. This was in direct contrast to feral werewolves who actually grew stronger during the run up to the full moon.
Idly running through possible combinations of ingredients that might enhance the potion, Harry started reading through various attempts to modify the potion. As the potion had such extreme ingredients anyway attempts to add lesser ingredients either did nothing of note or upset the balance and made the potion deadly.
For a laugh he wondered what would happen if he added the salamander spines Neville had added to his own potion, at first he assumed it would just explode the potion but then realised if they added powdered spines and dementor's ash together in a 1-to-1 ratio the cold of the ash would prevent the spines exploding.
As salamander spines were extremely reactive they would make the potion much more potent. It would also make the potion almost impossible to buy as while salamander spines weren't a controlled substance like dementor's ash, they were still very expensive.
After making sure he had recorded his ideas he made a note to visit Snape in the morning before crawling into bed in the hope that when he awoke the next day the students would go back to normal
Over here in England we just had an exceptionally hot week, which at least where I live is nearly unheard of. Turns out writing is much harder when all you can think of is the heat.
I feel I should say Harry's workshop isn't going to be a replacement for the room of requirement, in a sense he is cheating by using his mithril. Unlike the room Harry's workshop is limited to what he starts with, he can expand the room to be bigger and add extra 'rooms' that way but he can't make the workshop lead to another part of the castle.
Now, personally I really dislike having to explain stuff like this when it should be in the story, which is why I often try to include the explanations at a future point. With a professional published book often the entire story will be finished with several people having read over it to make sure it makes sense.
In fanfiction however you are often limited to releasing individual chapters and while I like making you readers ask questions I also don't want to cause any confusion. The compromise I make is when I feel I have properly answered a question in a future chapter I go back and edit the notes so that any new reader gets to read the answer in the context of the story and not by me straight up explaining it.
As such it means people reading this while I'm still writing don't get the 'full experience', however they do get to influence the story and provide motivation.
Finally in unrelated news the Google Doc I use to write this story had now reached 150713 words, which means it can get extremely laggy at times which is great, I dread to think how slow it will be by the time I finish unless I start writing on a second doc.