They agreed that every other week they would meet after divination, to discuss theory and magic, then the day after they would do a practical since the three of them all had lunch till midnight free. Once that had been decided, Harry was allowed to leave while Snape talked to Daphne about her occlumency. Soon Harry noticed Daphne had clearly finished as she was following him, so ducked into an empty classroom and sat on a desk. A few moments later Daphne cautiously walked in and glared at him.

"Why didn't Professor Snape try and test your defences?" She asked grumpily, rubbing her palm against her forehead.

"Because he already knows mine are impenetrable." Harry replied, unable to stop his pride leaking into his words, trying to work out why she had followed him.

Instead of replying, Daphne had pulled out her wand and fired Legilimens at him, clearly trying to catch him by surprise. As it was, she wasn't as fast as she imagined since Harry had more than enough time to dodge or shield, should he have needed to. Normally he would have let her metal attack shatter harmlessly against his head's mithrilium, however he found himself mad she had tried to attack him for no reason and so shamelessly tried to invade his privacy.

Deciding to try something new, he made his mental defences catch Daphne's spell and draw it into his mind inside a mithrilium bubble, causing the two of them to appear within his mindscape inside a simple mithril coated room.

"Clearly not that impenetrable." Daphne replied snottily, looking around contemptuously.

"Yeah? Try and pull up my memories." Harry challenged, knowing full well she couldn't penetrate the walls.

Although her avatar didn't move, Harry could feel her magic rebelling against the mithrilium, pushing against it softly but getting more powerful the longer the walls withstood her attack. Eventually her avatar drew her wand and began firing random spells at the walls, which simply absorbed her attacks.

"See, you were only able to enter my mind because I let you into my defences. As I said, even Snape can't penetrate my defences and you thought you could?"

Rather than reply Daphne turned her wand on him and began firing every spell she knew, only for each and every one to freeze in front of him. While it was considered impossible to freeze a spell in real life, within his mind world the laws of physics and magic were mere guidelines.

Seeing her spells simply stop mid-air freaked Daphne out even further, causing her to try and withdraw her consciousness, only to crash into the walls again. "Let me go." She growled, turning her wand on him again.

"Why? Can you not escape on your own?" Harry replied snottily, perfectly mimicking her tone from earlier.

In retaliation she fired a few more spells at him, which were also frozen, before gathering her magic and releasing it in a giant wave of power. Harry couldn't help being impressed with the raw power Daphne was giving off, even if it paled compared to his own power. Her wave of magic would've been enough to break most enchantments, allowing her to get free from his mind, if his mithril wasn't able to simply absorb the power to further increase its strength.

Exhausted, Daphne collapsed against the wall and settled for glaring at Harry silently.

"That's it then? You try to attack me, violate my privacy and fire off a few spells and a wave of magic then decide there isn't anything else you could possibly do?"

"Just let me go Potter, you've proven your defences are good." she replied sulkily. "And I wasn't going to invade your privacy, I was planning on stopping the moment I bypassed your defences… Please."

"That's all you had to say." Harry answered, easily opening his defences back into the real world and dumping her mind back into her body.

Seeing as she was still exhausted from trying to break out, Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a pepper-up potion. Uncorking it, he handed it over to her as he said "Here, it's a Pepper-Up potion, it will help with the magical exhaustion until you can eat something."

Begrudgingly taking it, Daphne drank it instantly then started her interrogation "What even was that? I've never met anyone with that sort of defence."

"Basically, when I was fighting the basilisk I had the misfortune of looking it in the eyes, but as the basilisk's magic tried to petrify my mind I used a magical item to defend against it. As you can tell, I was able to survive and it was only later that we realised the side-effect of a perfect mental defence."

"What object?" She asked eagerly, her previous frostiness gone.

"Can't tell you that, it's a secret." He replied instantly.

"I'd be willing to take an oath." Daphne promised, looking at him expectantly.

"The answer's still no, at least until I can have Snape there to witness your oath… So I assume there was a reason you followed me other than just to test my occlumency."

Huffing, Daphne fixed him with a stern look "I wanted to see if you were lying about your adventures, I still don't believe you fought a basilisk."

Rather than reply, Harry pulled up the sleeve of his seemingly undamaged left arm and showed it to Daphne.

"And this proves what? Is there a scar or something" Daphne asked slowly, peering at his arm, before Harry tapped his mutatio watch and returned his arm to its natural appearance. His normal pale skin faded into a greyish tint while becoming drier and shrunk into his flesh, revealing his bloated dark grey veins.

"I like to keep it under a disguise, as you can see it isn't a pretty sight." He pointed to an angry red mark on the palm of his hand. "This is where the basilisk fang stabbed me."

"But… Basilisk venom is fatal…"

"Luckily, Phoenix tears can neutralise the venom before it can kill you, but unfortunately it can't undo the damage." Rolling up his sleeve to his shoulder, he then pointed to his upper arm which had several black marks under the skin. "This is where my bone got shattered after a werewolf threw me into a tree, which then got frozen by the army of dementors."

Before he could say anymore, he felt a tingle from his mutatio watch, telling him it was now lunch time.

"Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but it's lunch and I have places to be. Also, you should try and eat something before the potion runs out. Trust me, the crash you will get on an empty stomach is awful."

With that, Harry turned and left the room, only for Daphne to jump up and chase after him.

"What do you mean about eating? If I've exhausted my magic then why would eating change anything?"

"Okay, to start with you have to understand what your magical core is. Every single living creature has magic, but very few beings have an actual core. Even with muggles, their bodies need the magic to survive. Now, like witches and wizards, they make magic whenever they eat as well as taking in around half their magic from the world.

"Now, for magicals like ourselves, we have our cores which get filled from atmospheric magic and our bodies which generate magic for the core. Imagine your core as a bucket left out in the rain, if you leave it alone eventually it will fill and the water will leak over, then whenever you use magic you take a cup and remove a bit of water, while when eating you are actively filling the bucket.

"If you frantically pail the water then you are going to lose water quicker than you gain it, in which case you will need to wait for it to replenish. Some people have bigger buckets but the same amount of rain while others have smaller buckets but more rain."

"So, a bigger bucket means you can do more magic but it may take longer to recharge while if you have more rain you can recharge quicker but may be able to do less magic at once?"

"Exactly, then every so often you have someone with a big bucket and lots of rain. Now, your body still needs magic to function, but if you happen to use too much magic then there will be nothing for your body to draw from, which is what actually causes the feeling of magical exhaustion. That's also why eating conjured food is useless."

"Because, you are using magic to make the food, so the magic you will get from the food is less than the magic used to make it?"

"Yup, along with the risk of the food returning to its original state before you finish it. Also the fact you use up a bit of energy while digesting food, meaning even if you get back 100% of the energy used to create the food, which you don't, you are losing energy."

To emphasize his point, he discretely used the Philosopher's Stone to transmute the air into an apple.

"Take for example this apple, you could eat this without any problems. But, because I conjured it you'd get basically no magic out of it, since it wouldn't contain the natural magic it would've had if it had been made naturally. Physically you would feel like you had eaten an apple, but in reality you would still be just as hungry."

"Woah, you know a lot about magic."

"Well yeah, we live in a world of magic, why wouldn't you try and learn as much as possible?"

"Because I'm not a nerdy Ravenclaw?" Daphne replied sweetly, looking up at him innocently.

In response, Harry lightly threw the apple towards her, which she deftly caught. "Har-har. Well, unless you're going to follow me to the Ravenclaw table, I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

Bathsheda rather bemusedly followed Harry down an unassuming corridor, having been asked to follow him after lunch. As they walked, she couldn't help once again being impressed with how the boy had grown from a depressed, quiet little genius to a witty, incredibly powerful genius who was almost as tall as her. She considered it a privilege and an honour that Dumbledore had chosen her to watch over and help him, allowing her a first hand look at the new Merlin.

Soon enough they came to a stop in the middle of a corridor, when Harry turned to face her.

"So, my workshop is nearby, want to try and find it?"

"You know I'm rubbish at detecting your mithril." Bathsheda replied, rolling her eyes fondly. "I'll trust you've made it nearly impossible to find and leave it at that."

Frowning lightly, Harry walked over to a nearby painting and confidently said "Hallowed dream." Instantly a slight ripple spread across the canvas, revealing it was now safe to step through. Following Harry inside, she was surprised to step into a spiral staircase instead of the workshop she was expecting.

Going up the stairs, she noted there wasn't even enough room for the two of them to walk side by side. Stopping half way up, Harry turned to the inner column and placed his flat against a stone brick, which was briefly outlined by a pale green glow.

"Err… wait here for a second." Harry said, before stepping backwards into the outerwall and disappearing. Moments later he reappeared, now holding what looked like a mithril floppy disk, which Bathsheda recognised as the memory plate they had designed for his mithril crow.

"This is a bit confusing, but stick with me. I need you to focus your magic into your finger and press it to the circle, while thinking of a word. Then, when I put this back you will need to think of that word again while focusing magic in your hand when putting your hand against the column brick. If you only do one then the door won't open."

"So the word is like a password that's unique to me?"

"Exactly! You need to make it memorable but not easily guessable, just in case someone can mimic magical signatures."

She took a moment to come up with her word, before following Harry's instructions. Taking back the memory plate, Harry once again disappeared into the wall for a moment before returning.

"Right, you're all set up. Give it a try." He announced cheerfully, although she detected a touch of nervousness.

Placing her palm against the brick, she felt the feeling of static electricity. When she focused on her word and magic, she felt something attach itself to her palm right as the brick was briefly outlined in a light purple glow.

Checking her palm revealed nothing abnormal, but she could still feel something. When she turned around, she was shocked to see a purple outline on the outer wall, the exact size of a doorway. Glancing briefly at Harry, she cautiously stepped up to the outline before laying her hand against it, only for her hand to fall right through.

Taking a deep breath and trusting that Harry would've warned her if something had gone wrong, she stepped through the outline and into a broom cupboard. It was small enough that when Harry stepped into the room there was just barely enough room to move.

"Okay, so you should notice there's a fairly sharp knife on the shelf next to you, you need to cut your palm with that then place your palm against the wall to your left."

Doing as he instructed, the moment her bloodied hand made contact with the wall the stone bricks disintegrated into dust, revealing an archway. Stepping through she was amazed to see the room was easily twice the size of her classroom, not counting the arches leading to even more rooms.

The moment she cleared the archway she was struck by the high saturation of magic, somehow even stronger than it had been in the previous workshop. Right in the center of the room was the familiar table, which had been textured to look like it was made of wood. Over the years Harry had imprinted the image of what he assured them was an elder tree, which was surrounded by various animated crows.

A new addition was the chandelier hanging directly above the table, each candle lit with a soft bright blue flame. Not that the room needed lighting, since the large windows along the back wall filled the room with natural light. On the side wall Harry had placed floor to ceiling shelving, which had been made to look as if it had been built from oak.

Even from a distance she could feel the barrier of magic covering the shelves, protecting their items from everything. The first few rows had clearly been designated as book shelves, even if the empty space made it look ridiculously ambitious. Immediately above them were the shelves helpfully marked as 'completed projects', including several generations of flasks, his Sword of Gryffindor copy and another sword she didn't recognise.

The shelf above of his fleet of mithril ships was labelled 'work in progress', which was easily the biggest group of shelves. She knew these projects were mainly the projects Harry had either started and grown bored with, or made to eventually replace his current mithril tools. The most obvious of which was the Roman tower shield hanging on the side of the shelf, which had slightly stronger defences compared to his current circular shield but was unable to shrink to a discrete size.

Next to that was a pair of thick steam goggles, which were meant to allow the wearer to have Harry's type of magesight. Currently, they could only show all magic in monochrome, which was admittedly useful for finding areas of high magic. For someone without magesight it was amazing, even if Harry was unimpressed.

Her favourite of his personal in progress projects was his second gauntlet, which could be imbued with elemental magic. It had been started and shelved shortly after he made The Gauntlet, the theory being that one gauntlet would have the Philosopher's Stone and be used for defence and casting while the other would be for offense. The problem was the mithril had always become rigid after an hour or two without any mithraite crystal stabilizing it, making it almost impossible to wear.

Despite that, he had managed to get the second gauntlet to work as intended, even if it proved redundant since he had later learned the Gauntlet was already capable of far stronger elemental magic. The final piece of interest was the full suit of plate armour standing next to the shelves, although it was only the chest plate which looked finished.

Seeing Harry waiting impatiently at the door, she sighed and asked "Okay then, because I know you are waiting for it, how did you do all of this?"

Beaming brightly, Harry launched into his lecture. "So, the doorway from the stairwell into the broom cupboard. I was able to use a conditional enchantment, which will only allow you to pass through the doorway if you have a specific immaterial disc on your palm. The glowing outline is alchemical chalk, which only becomes visible when charged, but only to the person that powered it.

"When you push your magic into the stone brick you are actually making a very basic spell, which is then checked against the spell stored in your memory plate. If it says it's correct then it tells the mithril behind the stone to summon a disc from the storage and stick it onto your palm, while also sending a pulse of magic from your memory plate to the chalk. The beauty with that is, even if somebody had a tool to mimic your signature and learned your password, I'm hoping they won't be able to see the chalk."

"But won't they be able to walk through anyway if they have the disc on their palm?" Bathsheda pointed out

"Yeah, but they'd have to know where to walk. There's a notice-not spread across the entire stairwell, which makes it impossible to see where somebody walks into the wall. Plus, the disc leaves after a minute or two, or if it notices any detection magic being cast. Of course, even then they'd be stuck inside the broom cupboard, since there can only ever be one person inside meaning they can't just copy what you do.

"Even if they do get through, they are stuck since when you spread your blood over the wall you are signing a contract which prevents you from doing deliberate harm to people or objects without due cause inside the workshop. It also prevents you from revealing the way out of the broom cupboard, so they wouldn't be able to sneak anyone else in."

"And you didn't think to warn me about this contract?"

"There was the risk we could've been overheard, which would've ruined the point. Nicolas helped me with writing the contract by the way, so it's not like you were in any danger."

"I'll want to see that contract, just to double check. Although, assuming you haven't tampered with it, I doubt Mr Flamel would get it wrong. So, how did you get the windows to work? Since by my reckoning they should be pointing towards the staircase… Actually, I'm fairly sure this room expands into the staircase even with expansion charms."

"The windows are basically my attempt at the fake windows in the ministry and Saint Mungos, except this one takes the weather based on sensors I placed on the windowsills of the old workshop. The only reason they look so good is because I was able to tether them to a central processing unit, which also tethers the walls.

"With the old workshop, I was able to get the walls to expand to this size, but I would constantly have to think about them maintaining that size the entire time. If I didn't then they would go back to their original size… rather violently. The central processing cube is able to keep them at this size without compressing, meaning more space and even more rooms."

"Hold up, what 'central processing cube'?"

Grinning, Harry drew her over to a flat space of wall, which silently unfurled to form another archway. Inside she recognised their mithril ward generator, preventing their entrance until Harry waved his hand towards it and deactivated the ward. With the ward gone she could now see a box easily big enough to hold a quaffle, which was connected to the walls with thick mithril cables. What peaked her interest was the tiny bright green crystals which studded the front of the cube, forming the rune Mannaz.

"Is that -"

"Mithraite? Yeah! Over the summer after the World Cup riots me and Nicolas were just discussing what I could do when I have mithraite and he asked why I didn't do anything with the small granules of crystals inside the gauntlet, you know, the ones that formed after I fought the dementors. So we very carefully pried them out of the veins and started experimenting.

"Unfortunately, they can't hold runes, even if you can somehow scratch a rune into the surface it just refuses to work. Which also means they are a highly limited supply and I only had five granules left, which I needed for the weather sensor for the windows. Unfortunately, while I can't make any more, they can be used up if you don't give them a power supply, since they don't produce their own magic."

"Hence the huge cube right? I assume that's a reactor?"

"Nah, it seems the mithril recognises the mithraite as itself, so when you make it big enough it will produce enough magic to stabilize both. Technically, I could've made this far smaller since the walls gather enough magic to feed them, but I wanted it to be portable when needed."

"And what about the runes? What made you choose Mannaz?"

"That's because while I could give ideologies to each crystal, I struggled to link them together with a shared purpose, but individually each crystal was too weak to do what I wanted. We found that when we arranged them into a rune it made it easier to form a link, while the cube handles most of the data transfer."

"So, by putting them in the rune for mind and memory, rational thought and development of the intellect they were encouraged to act that way? Allowing them to act as a lesser part of the whole?"

"Yup. Of course, they aren't doing anything that complex, just keeping the room at whatever size I leave it, keeping the windows realistic and activating the defences."

"Defences?"

"Oh yeah, I never told you. So did you see the statue at the bottom of the stairs? Well it's got a twin at the top and whenever you enter the stairwell the statue at the bottom increments a counter and whenever you leave it the statue at the top decreases the counter. Then, if the CPC detects someone trying to attack the doorway then it activates the two statues and points them towards the attacker. Ideally I would get that to also come alive but I don't have the processing power." Harry explained, pointing to the suit of armour by his shelves.

"CPC? Also, how come you can get the statues outside to work if you don't have the processing power?"

"CPC is my shorthand name for the central processing cube. Anyway, the CPC only activates the magic already within the statues, since Hogwarts can activate them at any time to defend the school. All the CPC does is activate just those two and then tell them what the threat is, it isn't actually handling the animation."

"How do you know all of this? This doesn't seem like something that would be public knowledge, especially since I didn't even know the statues could come alive and I've worked here for years."

"It… it's in Hogwarts: A history… along with a list of a few secret passageways and some of the wards the castle has." Harry said slowly, unsure if Bathsheda was being serious.

"Oh… I should probably get around to reading that book."

That night, Harry barely had time to shut his eyes before he was dragged into another dream conference with Tom.

"Well, you'll be pleased to know you are the heir apparent to at least two lines, including our mutual ancestral family and heir presumptive to one other." Tom began, not even waiting to acknowledge Harry's presence.

"And hello to you too." Harry replied wryly, sitting down in what was becoming his customary chair. "Do I even want to know how you found this out?"

"Oh, it was easy. The Daily Prophet office has a policy to archive every newspaper edition, which includes the research and references related to each edition. For example, if a famous Lord from a renown family decided to marry a muggleborn, then the reporter might decide to do a little digging into the family tree of the Lord. Then all it takes is for me to go back a few thousand editions until another big marriage happens to find an older family tree going back even further."

"And that's just lying around?"

"Well, no. I can only tell you this much because of how vague I'm being and because it involves your family. If I tried to even hint at any family record other than what is directly yours then I would be breaking my oath of employment and would be made mute for the rest of my life. Of course, all it took to obtain this oath was walking in off the street and proving I was good with levitation charms, so you could argue it isn't as well guarded as you think."

"So, does revealing the names of these families break your oath?"

"As I have said, so long as it pertains to you I have more leeway. Obviously you are the heir apparent to the Potter line, being the last Potter alive. You then heir presumptive to the Black line, due to technical reasons. Your great-great-grandmother was Dorea Black, granddaughter of Phineas Nigellus Black who was Headmaster at Hogwarts and Head of House Black. Then when Sirius Black was named your godfather you were considered his heir presumptive due to your Black blood.

"However, from what I can gather Sirius was banished by his mother, but his grandfather and House Lord, Arcturus Black, never confirmed her actions. Technically, his brother Regulus was now the heir to House Black, until Sirius had a son which would transfer the heirship to that son. Normally, due to you only being the godson to Sirius, Regulus would have a higher claim. However, Regulus died before Arcturus without an heir.

"Then, a few years ago Arcturus died but due to Sirius being in Azkaban there was nobody to take over the line, which from what I know of family magic would've bumped you up in precedence. With Sirius somehow breaking out last year he now has the option to have a son and overturn your claim, unless you claim lordship before he has an heir… Of course he'd probably try to kill you to give his son the lordship but I'm fairly sure you can handle him."

"Okay, first off, Sirius isn't going to kill me, he was falsely accused and I met him a few months ago at Hogwarts."

"That's disappointing… Although that would explain why I was unable to find him."

"Quite. So, what about our 'mutual ancestral family'?"

"To start, a brief history of my own family. You already know of my muggle family, but you may not know my mother's family was the Gaunt family, a pale shadow to the once great Gauntus family line. Decades of inbreeding weakened their capacity for magic such that what remained of the family was barely strong enough to maintain the shack they lived in.

"The Gauntus line merged with a minor line of House Peverell, who in turn had merged with the Slytherin line generation prior to that merger. Now, the main line of Peverell merged into the de Topfer line, who would go on to become the Potter family. In case it wasn't clear, our mutual family is the Prestigious and Most Archaic House of Peverell."

Harry knew all this through Dumbledore's notes from his first year, but he was glad to hear Tom wasn't trying to lie to him.

"What do you mean by 'Prestigious and Most Archaic'? I thought a House could only be 'Noble and Most Ancient'."

"If a House is called the Noble and Most Ancient House, then it means they were one of the families involved with the formation of the magical Kingdom of Great Britain. Most confuse them with the Sacred Twenty-Eight, but very few of the Sacred Twenty-Eight are actually Noble and Most Ancient Houses. Now, a Prestigious and Most Archaic House is one that was involved with the formation of the Enchanted Roman Republic, over two millennia ago."

"Technically, the Peverell House is both Noble and Prestigious, since it was involved with forming both Rome and Britain, but in this case Prestigious takes priority. Some families, like House Lycaon and House Flamel have just the title of Prestigious because they only helped form Rome. There's a theory that in return for forming the Enchanted Roman Republic, every Prestigious House was given a magical boon.

"House Flamel have always been skilled alchemists, culminating in Nicholas creating the fabled Philosopher's Stone. House Lycaon were the first werewolves and are easily twice as powerful as a regular werewolf, maintaining their human mind in wolf form and wolf resistance in human mode. House Clawell had been a source of knowledge, until Helena and Rowena Ravenclaw's deaths ended the line."

"And House Peverell? Also, why did they get a magical boon for just making a republic?"

"House Peverell's boon is necromancy. House Peverell has been a huge source of mediums and exorcists, it's said their family magic was able to interact with the dead in a way nobody else can. As for the boon, that is due to the power of belief, which I hope you know?" Tom prompted

"That's the idea that when enough witches and wizards believe in something, their magic makes it real right?"

"Exactly. During the times of the republic, it's estimated that over 60% of the Earth's magical population lived within Rome, most of whom were suggestible half-bloods, which were all taught roughly the same beliefs. I suspect the families that formed the magical republic all had their own specifications and areas of study, then when their status became widely known and believed in magic herself rewarded them."

"That makes sense, so does that mean I have necromancy powers if I'm descended from the Peverells?"

"Considering you have to ask, I'd say the answer is 'Not yet'. I imagine you need to wait until Lord Peverell confirms you are worthy of the House magic, which won't happen seeing as the last Lord Peverell died over 120 years ago and nobody took the title since. The goblins would know for sure, but hopefully you can get named Lord Peverell when you reach maturity, where you can name you and me as worthy.

"Besides, family magic always manifests differently. For all we know you could just be very good at removing or sensing ghosts. Not like it matters, seeing as we won't know until you can gain the lordship when you reach your maturity. Unfortunately, from what I can find the Prophet has never managed to find out how you ascend to a lordship. I would normally have found out when I claimed the Gaunt lordship… except apparently framing the previous lord for murder and getting him sent to Azkaban makes you ineligible for the title."

"Well it's a good thing I'm not a monster." Harry replied drily. "Plus… you know, the lords for my families are either dead or wanted criminals…"

"Indeed."

So, in the middle of writing this chapter I had two close family members pass away, which meant I had basically no time/motivation to polish this chapter. On the plus side 90% had already been written before then, however it may be that I don't release a chapter next fortnight, depending on how much time I get to write.

Things I think I need to explain:

- Daphne: I am intentionally writing her to be curious to the point of being nosy, hence why she felt it was worth it to test Harry's defences when he said his were unbeatable.