Chapter 16: New Base and Secret Basement(Edited)

[Rohan POV]

The next day I was on a bus going to the new house that I bought. The renovations were supposed to start today.

Yesterday, after I was done with all the paperwork for the building, I called Olivia and told her to get a construction team to repair the house. I decided that I would use this time to go and investigate the previous owners of the house first, so I asked Olivia for help and she happily agreed. She called me this morning and told me that work had already started, so I decided to go and see the work in progress.

I was sitting on the bus thinking about what I found. Now, I would have been happy if I had found something, but I was disappointed. There was nothing special about the house. After reading old documents, all I found out was that an American businessman bought the place in the 1920s. The house was then gifted to his wife. After he died, as they had no family, his wife donated all the wealth and moved to live in London until her death. Later, as there were no relatives, the house was under bureaucratic hell for years until the house was finally put up for sale. It went through different hands until it fell on mine. It might have been just a coincidence that they bought the same place as the Sanctum Santorum. That's when the bus stopped breaking me out of my thoughts. I got down and walked for a few minutes until I was standing in front of the building.

The three-story building looked dilapidated from the outside. The dark green paint was chipping away and there was moss growing in the corners. The windows were dark due to dirt buildup. The wood looked black and rotting. Plants were growing on the concert entrance ground.

The estate agent told me that the price was so low because the house was thought to be too damaged to be repaired, and it would be good to just build a new one in its place. So they were practically selling me just the land's worth. I could not be happier.

With the help of magic. This building could be easily repaired, saving me a lot of money. Once I was inside, I was amazed to see that there were a lot of house elves running about. In the middle of the room, I saw Olivia standing, and with her, there was a man instructing the house elfs. They were talking to each other when they noticed me and looked at me. I walked up to them and greeted them.

"Hello Olivia, sorry for being late."

"no no, you are just in time. We just started here. They are still cleaning this place up." Olivia said gleefully, then pointed at the man next to her, "let me introduce you to Mr. Harrison, He is from the construction company, and he will be overseeing the renovation work, if you have anything in your mind, you can tell him."

I looked at the man. He was a short man with round glasses who looked to be in his 40s. His job was to oversee the entire repair work.

"Mr. Harrison, it's nice to meet you. Olivia must have told you about me?" I introduced myself.

"so, you are Mr. Rohan? I have to say, I was not expecting someone so young." Harrison looked at me, studying me while fixing his glasses.

"Ah Yes, I hear that a lot." I just laughed it off. I was actually frustrated at this point.

"Anyways Mr. Rohan as Miss Olivia has said, I was put in charge of your house, so if you have anything in mind you can tell me and we will make it accordingly. "

I interrupted him and asked "On that note, how is the house doing? "

Mr. Harrison looked at some papers in his hand and said "well, the house was in a very bad condition when we first came here. The main pillars are barely standing and the floors need a lot of work. In summary, this house was barely standing when we came here."

"But it can be repaired, right?" I asked worryingly

He looked at me and laughed "Ha, you don't need to worry, we have repaired worse. You can count on us. You will not believe how many old buildings we need to fix each year.

The cleaning is almost done and we will start repairs soon. You can look around the house if you want. If you want to change anything, you can come and tell me, and we will do it, of course, it will cost extra, but we can come to an agreement. "

I said my goodbyes and went to check out the rooms. The place already looked better. One good thing about magical cleaning was that there was no use of chemicals at all. This meant that there was no bleaching or chemical smell at all. The walls and the floors were clean and looked no different from any old lived-in house. The floor was really brittle, so I had to walk carefully so as not to step my foot in the floor.

I looked around each floor. The ground floor was something like storage; it had old wooden furniture that was damaged and rotting so I told the house elfs to get rid of all such furniture. On the first floor, I found a bedroom and kitchen. These two rooms were in much better condition, so this must have been the place that was most used. The furniture here was also more expensive and well preserved. They could be sold for a good price. On the second floor, the rooms were mostly kept empty. They seemed to have never been used before.

I went back to Mr. Harrison after looking around and discussed all the changes I would like to make. I wanted to change the color scheme of the house to a brighter one. All the dark color wallpapers along with the dark windows gave the house a Gothic feeling. yes I know black is cool, but we are not in Gotham and I wanted to make this place more welcoming. Next, I wanted there to be a big hall room on the ground floor. This was for the students to practice magic. The hall will have all the necessary things to practice magic, such as dummies and a dualing arena, much like the room of requirements in the movies. This was the only room that would have a space expansion enchantment. It was not because it was too expensive; it was because this enchantment needed maintenance every few years. If it was left as is, the space would destabilize and morph into the actual building. This is why the Diagon Alley buildings are all bent and curved. The owners just did not pay for the maintenance as little space distortion was harmless. I did not want to pay them every few years for this. In a few years, I should be able to make my own space enchantments for this place. And until then, only one big room will have to do.

The first floor was going to be the living quarters for any employee to live in if they wanted. The rooms were small so I decided to share some modern small room modular design ideas with Mr. Harrison and he seems to like them. Finally, the second floor was going to be the main working area.

I was only going to ward off the first two floors and leave the top free as the magic would disrupt the electronics. I was discussing the extra cost with Mr. Harrison when a house elf appeared in front of us.

"Mr Harrison Sir, we found something"

Mr. Harrison looked at the elf and narrowed his eyes "what is it? better no be something trivial" he said

The house elf did not mind and said "We found an underground basement behind a wardrobe."

"what did you say? a secret basement? " I spoke aloud, surprised to hear it "where is it? Take me there now" I continued speaking, completely ignoring the others in the room.

The elf started walking and I excitedly followed. Olivia and Mr. Harrison were also behind me.

Olivia asked me with curiosity in her eyes "why are you so excited? do you know what's inside? tell me"

I kept on walking and said, without looking at her, "I don't know. But if it was hidden, then there must be something worth hiding in it "

We walked into an empty room; the elf must have cleared everything before. There was only a broken wardrobe; next to it was a wooden door. The door was open, revealing a staircase leading down into darkness. I turned around and looked at Mr. Harrison, then at the elf, and asked "How did you find it? "

The house elf said "As you requested, we were removing the old broken furniture in the rooms. We then found this door when we moved the wardrobe over there. Once we opened the door, there were stairs leading down"

"Did anyone go in ?"

"no sir"

Then I turned to Mr. Harrison "I will be going in with Olivia, I want this to be kept between us"

Mr. Harrison was not much bothered by it as he was not interested in what was inside a broken muggle building. He agreed "As you wish. Please be quick, we still have a lot of things to discuss." He then walked away with the house elf discussing something.

I turned to Olivia. She was looking at me "well, what are you waiting for Miss Olivia, Please go ahead"

"why me? why don't you go down first? Don't you know men should take charge in these situations? " Olivia crossed her arms and asked to which I blankly replied sarcastically "well, I am just a little boy who is afraid of the dark and ghosts, on the other hand, You can practically blow this whole building up if you want and on top of that you have practically lived with ghosts for seven years, so you are more qualified for this"

Olivia did not say anything and just pulled out her wand and walked forward, pouting. I tried not to laugh.

Olivia was the first to enter. I followed shortly after. She had already cast a Lumos spell that cast a bright light from the tip of her wand. The walls and stairs were made of stone and I could hear water flowing from the walls. After walking down about 30 feet we found a door. The interesting thing about the door was that it was made of metal and looked more like a vault door. There was no handle or lock, just a combination dial.

But Olivia did not mind it at all. She just pointed her wand at the door and chanted 'Alohomora' the unlocking charm. I could hear the gears turning by themselves inside the door, and soon the door opened by itself. Magic truly was a wonderful thing. This same work would have taken me hours.

Once we stepped inside, I found a light switch. Soon a warm yellow light brightened the place. The room was bigger than I expected. It was about the size of the entire land the building was on. The walls and ceiling were made of stones. In the room, there were rows of shelves full of boxes.

We walked to a nearby shelf and opened some boxes. Olivia was excited, thinking we had found some kind of valuable treasure or something. But she was disappointed as the boxes were full of vinyl records. The records were kept nicely in well-maintained packs.

Olivia was disgruntled, "what is this, I thought that there would be something valuable, not this. Who would ever want to hide music like this?" We opened more boxes and all we could find were vinyl records.

"What does this mean? Who would want to keep these things behind a safe? " Olivia was very disappointed.

I said to her knowingly "They should have something important recorded on them"

Olivia was surprised "is that it? let's play one record and see" Olivia then took out her bottomless bag and brought out a record player.

"wait, you seriously carry a record player with you?" I asked

Olivia blushed and looked away, " I-I like to go on picnics alone so I always carry my music with me. And you know that muggle tools don't work in the magical world so this is the only option"

"well, let's get back to the topic, now play the record already"

"ok," Olivia said, happily changing the subject.

The record soon started playing and what reached our ears was a buzzing, static noise. she quickly stopped it. It was a very irritating noise. "Maybe it's broken? let's try another." We tried 20 more and all of them were the same. Olivia was disappointed and annoyed. She was going to crush the last record, but I stopped her. I needed to first find out what this was before doing anything to them.

Olivia did not want to be here anymore. So we decide to leave the room, but while leaving I noticed something on the last shelf. It was a small wooden box. what caught my attention was that it was the only other thing here that was not a record.

I opened it and found that it was a phonograph, not just any model, but the really old kind sold by Edison himself when records were first invented that used wax cylinders. The mechanisms were rusted and in bad condition; luckily the cylindrical record was still intact in a box. I showed it to Olivia but she was not patient enough to listen to it, so I decided to bring it with me to the hotel.

After leaving the basement, I finalized with Mr. Harrison as the House elfs renovated the house. He said the house would take three days to be completely built and another day for completing the warding.

At night, I returned to the hotel. After dinner, I took out the phonograph. I was now free for the next three days to figure this mystery out.