Chapter 7 – The Gryffindor Legacy Part 3

I stepped into the room and immediately regretted it. I had to work hard not to throw up again. The room smelled like a mix of dog poop and hospital chemicals. The smell didn't seem to leave the doorway, but now that I was past its threshold, I got it full blast. I stumbled slightly and had to prop my hand on the wall. I still felt weak and tired from the whole "merging" process. 

"What's wrong my boy?" Grandpa Gryffindor asked in a concerned voice.

"What the hell is that god awful smell!" I yelled through my hands in a vain attempt to gain relief from it. 

"Smell...?" Gryffindor started, then seemed to understand. "Ah...stagnant health potion. Yes, I do remember that smelling quite bad. Head over to the healing font, we need to press the button and drain it. That should start to alleviate the smell."

Doing as Grandpa Gryffindor said, I made my way to the font. My eyes started tearing up the closer I got and I could tell that this wasn't the safest thing I have ever done...but then again, I did almost die to a book. Stagnant health potions shouldn't be THAT bad, right? The font was a stone half pillar of about 4 feet in height that had a semi-circular bowl in the middle. The pillar had carved battles imprinted on it in layers. They were intricate and featured men in what clearly looked like lion or eagle-like (griffin-like I realized) armor and features. The battles on the bottom of the pillar seemed to have taken place from ancient times, with furs and clubs. The following layers were small time skips and progressed away from leather to metal. The topmost layer was set in medieval times with knights wearing full plate metal armor with embossed lion or griffin pauldrons and chest pieces. Interestingly enough, I didn't see many wizards carved into the pillar, just a couple in the background of each layer. 

Ignoring the smell and curious of my observation, I asked, "Grandpa...why are there hardly any wizards on here? Aren't we an ancient and powerful wizarding family?"

I heard the journal sigh in my head. That is a sentence I never thought I would think...

"Jordan, the Gryffindors were a powerful warrior clan since ancient times. We had a few powerful wizards throughout our hundreds of years of history, but they were always overshadowed by their ferocious battle crazy brothers. When I was young, my family was no different, but our clan had suffered much in the wars over the last 100 years. The Gryffindors were all but wiped out after several bloody wars. We were targeted due to our strength and power on the battlefield, and our enemies wiped us out, family by family until my family was the last. The last of the great line, and the last of the battle crazy Gryffindors. At least, my father and three brothers were. My sister and I were magi, what they called wizards at that time, and while my sister could get away with it for being a woman and being considered useful for battle, a whole other level sexist bullshittery that we can discuss at another time, I was considered the trash of my family. I could hardly lift a sword when I was younger, and I was often sickly. I dedicated my life to the study of magic and found that I possed great prowess. After 10 years of study, I even started earning the respect of my father and brothers. I was able to blast huge holes in the battlefield taking out many soldiers...but alas, the era of the Lion & Eagle Warriors had finally ended..."

I waited for more...but Grandpa seemed to have ended his speech as he trailed off. I could feel the sadness and loss in his voice, possibly because of our minds merging. After a good two minutes of me waiting for more and nothing coming, I decided to just ask, The smell was less bothersome than before, since I had slightly gotten used to it, but it was still god awful and I wanted to get out of here as fast as possible. I could wait for Grandpa though.

"...What happened?" I asked tentatively 

"Hmm?" Grandpa mused distractedly and then seemed to come out of his sad stupor. "They died Jordan. Killed by the same spell I had created. An enemy magi bombarded our estate and when I returned, there was nothing but tinders, craters, and this old family healing font left. I found out later, that my sister escaped and married into a loving family, but the rest of them died that night."

"That...Jeez, Grandpa, I'm sorry."

"It is an old tale, Jordan. Sad, but not unlike many others of that time. The world has calmed down much since that period of uncertain history."

"You said that the wiz- I mean, magi used your own spell?"

"Yes." Grandpa said with another sigh, "When I realized I was talented in magic, around 16 years old, I opened a small school of my own to teach people in the neighboring villages. 'Gryffindor's Magical School Of Battle' I called it. I taught nothing but powerful battle spells that could be used to great effect on the battlefield. I hoped it would help them protect their families. Little did I know that one of my students was the son of a family with a blood feud against mine. He pretended to be someone else, of course, but he was 12 and didn't know any magic to alter his appearance. I thought he looked familiar but didn't think anything past that. Just some vague resemblance to someone, not important to research, right? Anyway, after that night I took up the sword and promised to carry on some semblance of my family's legacy. I created a new era for Gryffindors and had many sons and daughters to pass it on and expand it. I was a great wizard, Jordan, but I was most proud of being a great warrior. For honoring my family. Our family. I often think back to what could have been if I was more cautious or just kept my knowledge to myself...but that has never been my way. I have always wanted to empower the younger generation and teach them. That is just who I am...or was, I suppose."

"I haven't known you long, but I think you are a good person Grandpa. You can't force bad people to be good. I know that much...So this font is a relic of your old legacy of warriors?" I asked, trying to turn the conversation back towards the smelly health font. 

"Thank you, Jordan my boy! And yes, this is one of the last relics of the Lion & Eagle Warriors. Since this is one of my training castles for Elite Knights, I put it here to help inspire and heal them. It can create a pool of ancient healing water once every day. It is enough to heal even severed limbs but only lasts one day outside of this font."

"Awesome! Say...it doesn't usually smell bad right?" I ask with some trepidation.

"Not from my memory, it just smells like a healing potion..." Grandpa said.

I finally looked at the liquid. I am not sure why, but I just felt a seriously bad vibe coming from it and didn't want to look at it. The bowl had a border of about 5cm (2 inches) made of marble and on the right side were three jeweled buttons. One was a ruby, one was an emerald, and one was black onyx. Looking at the liquid, or where the liquid should have been rather, was a thin layer of red....carpet? on top. Out of the carpet grew 7 mushrooms with black stocks, purple heads, and a red polka dot patterns at the tip of the head. 

"Mushrooms growing out of red moss!" I realized with a smile. I reached to pick one of the mushrooms when...

"STOP!" Grandpa Gryffindor yelled in my head. It caused small ripples of that pain I felt before to course through me and I yelped and fell back on my butt rubbing my temples.

"What?" I said a little indignantly, "You told me to check out the font! is it supposed to grow mushrooms?"

"No Jordan. A healing font is not supposed to grow mushrooms." I can practically hear his eye roll. "I stopped you for that very reason. Those mushrooms are called 'Death's Partner' and, as the name implies, are incredibly poisonous. If you had touched it, it would have set off a chain reaction that melted your entire body to goo in less than a minute."

"Grandpa?"

"Yes, Jordan?"

"Why are their death mushrooms in the healing font?"

"A very good question! I imagine it is due to a few different factors. First, the font was likely used many times the night of the attack. People are supposed to wash before they reach in or drink from it, but in this situation, I very much doubt they did. This most likely left a very small amount of dirt, blood, and other things in the pure healing water. I mentioned to you that the healing water from the font lasts 24 hours outside of the bowl, but that is not exactly true. The healing water doesn't immediately go bad or disappear, but rather it loses its potency the longer it remains. I have never had reason to test the water still in the font, but it looks like it loses its potency as well, just much slower. I think that this combination of life-giving water, particles mixed into it, and time left undisturbed lead to the formation of that blood-red moss you see. The moss then leads to the formation of those mushrooms...or something like that. I have never seen that moss before, but it is probably poisonous like those mushrooms. I would venture both are equally deadly!"

"Great..." I say and sigh at Grandpa's excited tone, "So I just press one of these jeweled buttons here and get rid of it all?"

"By the Gods! Why would you want to do that?" Gryffindor all but shouts.

"Because...You told me I need to get healed before I can leave...and there are death mushrooms and blood-red moss in the healing font I need to use?..." 

"Just leave these for now and head over to the cabinets behind the desk. One of those mushrooms is worth more than this castle."

"What!? How can a mushroom that melts flesh be worth more than a castle?" I ask, baffled at his response. 

"Simple. In magic, everything has its opposites. Spells always have counterspells, great weapons of good always must contend with great weapons of evil, and the deadliest of creatures and plants can be used to save the most lives. This mushroom is a great example of that! If cut and prepared right, it can be added to a potion with an effect much the same as the font. They are called Full Recovery Potions and can do almost anything from curing diseases to regrowing limbs. Very powerful and very expensive. I never had to buy any, due to the font, but they were potions only kings and leaders of major cities could afford...and now we might have a way to grow them! We are rich, boy!...well Richer!"

"Great, because money has solved all of my problems before now..." I sigh and rolled my eyes.

"That just means you haven't been using it right!" Gryffindor says with a laugh. "I have so much to teach you! We can do so much good for this world! Helping out struggling magical communities, building villas and homes all across the world, expanding our house's influence, power, and worth for future generations, saving the weak and helpless from tyrants, and...let's be honest, ladies love a rich handsome man! You are gonna be a king among men Jordan, mark my words! A king among men!" He finished with another loud laugh.

"Great." I say with mock enthusiasm. The smell was giving me a headache and I just wanted to leave, go home, and sleep in my bed. All the stuff Grandpa said was great and all, and I was actually excited to learn, but the idea of becoming more popular with women was a major bummer. I didn't mind women finding me attractive, but I wanted to live my new life at Hogwarts normally and not be chased after or pressured into autographs or lunch dates. I don't want women I never knew to kiss me on my cheeks and lips without my approval. I don't want fathers and brothers to try and force their daughters or sisters' phone numbers on me. And I REALLY don't want the look of hatred that came from men whose girlfriends were all over me while they stood and watched. Pre-teen Twitter or Instagram models are some of the scariest people I have ever met. I was only 10, 11 in a few days, and I know the times have changed and people have become more open about love, relationships, sexuality, and much more, but I am just tired of it all affecting me and my life. I just want to be normal, dammit! 

I fling the cupboard's door open with this statement in mind...or at least I try to, but it remains firmly shut. Without asking Grandpa, I try what worked before. 

"Open" I say while placing my hand on it. Unceremoniously, the cupboard doors swing open and I am greeted to a room filled wall to wall with potions. Potions of all kinds, shapes, and sizes line the walls of this cupboard room...I look at the wall above the cupboard that is facing the outside of the castle, then look at the 15 meters by 5 meters room in front of me.

"How...?" I start but am quickly interrupted by Grandpa Gryffindor.

"Magic, my boy! Enchanted personally by Helga Hufflepuff for longevity and space! She was a legend of preservation magic. Her 9th circle "Time Stop" spell was renowned for its capture of the dark wizard Raggoth, mid curse if you can believe it, as well as the permanent preservation of thousands of drops of the Dew of Hope, an alchemy ingredient that is only potent for 1 minute on the 5th day of the 5th month on a 5th year. These cabinets are truly a greater treasure than all the other treasures they contain!" He says with a laugh. "I paid her to do this for all of my storage items...had to give her a baby liger cub too..."

I walk inside and see that there is a small break in the shelves that line the wall. A tiled...shower? Stands to the left of the doorway. It is open-air, but the floor, that was otherwise wood, is tiled for a meter or so. The walls in that corner are also tiled as is the ceiling. It is an odd sight to see. 

"Ok step into the cleaning station and push the green and blue buttons." Grandpa Gryffindor instructs me.

I shrug, finding nothing strange about all this after what that I have seen today, I do as instructed. The buttons are on the right wall of the room inside the tiled "Cleaning Station" and I see that there are ruby, emerald, sapphire, and onyx buttons. 

'These seem similar to the healing fonts buttons. Are the colors specific to something?' I wonder as I press the green, emerald button.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, I am soaking wet. The water was warm, but now my clothes are wet and only slightly less smelly. I look down at the blood and vomit stained hoodie I was wearing and was surprised when I saw no staining at all. It was as if they just went through the wash...which I guess is the point. I reach a sopping wet hand out and press the blue, sapphire button. 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaanad, Now I am flying. Floating? Hovering? The point is I am lifted into the air by a gust of wind. My clothes are no longer wet and they even smell good! Like fresh flowers of some sort. I am gently placed down onto the now dry tiles and step out of the cleaning station. 

"What does the Ruby and Onyx gems do?" I ask Grandpa Gryffindor curiously.

"First, they are not real gemstones. Even though I wouldn't have normally minded the added flair, gemstones suck up magic so we can't use them as activators, otherwise, they would eat the activation magic and nothing would happen. They are only styled to look like gemstones...which in hindsight, is kind of silly since everyone knows gemstones cannot work as activators. Just one of the weird things we old wizards did I guess...Anyway, The red button is a termination activation. If anything goes wrong, it is pressed to reset the magical circuit and start from the neutral state without any activators. Most just call it the Reset or 'Oh Shit' button. The black button is a simple cleaning button for both the magic and physical parts of the item. On the magical side, it clears out the system and ensures that there are no blockages in the circuit, and from the physical...it cleans the object. Now enough about these, we will cover them later, go to the third shelf on the right wall, labeled 'Stamina Recovery', and take one of the small potions on the lefthand side of the shelf."

I walked down the wooden room with shelves set on the walls and the 2 dividers that acted like aisles. I passed all types of potions in fantastic colors and strange bottles. Some were clearly decorative while others were used to house the odd volume of liquid needed for the potion to work. I stared hard at a huge glass container about 1/2 a meter tall and a meter wide that sat on a table at the back of the room. The glass was in the shape of a sleeping dragon coiled around a tower. The potion was golden with tinges of red and seemed to be contained in the tower part of the container. There was a spigot at the bottom of the tower, where a door might have otherwise been and the plaque in front of that on the table read, "Dragon's Virility." I wasn't sure why, but I felt my cheeks burn slightly looking at the potion. Just as I was going to look away, one of the dragon's glass eyes opened and focused on me. 

I was stunned silly! A potion vial that was alive!?! What the hell was this? ...Magic, dumbass. It's magic. I need to calm down...

The dragon gave me an appraising look up and down, snorted a cloud of steam, and settled back on its claws closing its eye again.

"Ah...you won't be needing that potion for a long time.." Grandpa Gryffindor said with an awkward cough. "But know that the glass dragon construct protects both the potion as well as this cupboard! Pretty cool right?"

"What does the potion do Grandpa?" I ask innocently. Based on context clues I figured it was probably something sexual. You don't work in the movies long and remain innocent. The industry does a fairly good job of corrupting everything it touches. But hey, maybe I am just biased. 

"Um...well, when you are ready to start a family..." Gryffindor starts slowly, stops, and then continues. "That is not important right now. Get your stamina potion and we can be out of this smelly room. That is what you wanted, right?"

Agreeing 100%, I quickly did as he told me. I find the shelf, drink a small potion, and deposit the glass into a trash container below the shelf. Grandpa says that they would usually be cleaned and refilled or melted down and reused, but with the state of things, we will need to worry about that later. The potion tastes a bit like mint and is green-tinted. After ingesting it I feel a surge of energy like I just drank a big coffee. I leave the cupboard and close the doors and quickly make my way out of the room and into the hallway feeling much better than before.

"So get the wand and then leave?" I ask Grandpa.

"Almost, we need to stop off to the Treasury first and get you some money...I am not sure what wizards use nowadays, but I hope my gold is still worth something! After that, we will, very carefully, move into the throne room and retrieve my wooden wand." He says, making sure to annunciate the important instructions clearly. "Head to the end of the hall, where we were before, and go to the left side wall where it meets with the back wall. It will be the wall that is formed from the staircase rising up to the next floor."

I follow his instructions and head to that corner.

"So is there a secret passageway to get to this treasury?" I ask as excitement floods me once again. I was going to explore a secret treasury! How cool was that!

"Yes, you just need to say the secret password!" Grandpa says

"OK, what is the secret password!?" I shout, excitement clear in my tone.

"Gryffi-Gold!" My Grandpa says matching my excitement.

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"Gryffi-Gold...?"