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George and Lia walked in the corridors of West Manor.
"I'm a bit worried about him," said George.
"Why? What did he do now?" asked Lia, the twenty-seven-year-old, who looked to be in her early twenties.
"He's barely at home these days. He goes out in the morning to the gym of his; I'm already gone by the time he returns for breakfast. Then Rosey tells me that he goes out again soon after that only to return in time for supper."
"Does he say where he goes?"
"He names places, towns, cities, seaside ports; he has named almost every portion of the country. But that isn't much to go with."
"I'm sure he's just going to the Greengrass' place," Lia grinned, looping her arm with her grandfather.
George hummed.
"So, any idea what he's going to show us today?" she asked.
George shook his head. "Just that it's not something new. Or that what's he told Elliot."
"Then I hope it's something we already sell," sighed the person in charge of every subsidiary built for her brother's inventions. "Opening a new company every year's bothersome work, not to mention looking for the correct people to lead those companies. There are so many people with their top bunks empty."
"You can always pass one of them to Elliot."
"No, that won't be necessary," said Lia in firm refusal. She was trying to build a reputation in the West businesses that didn't have anything to do with her family name. She was secure enough to delegate responsibility to her subordinates, but passing on the companies assigned to her, which involved her baby brother's inventions, wasn't something she was going to do anytime soon. "Uncle Elliot oversees more than twice number companies than I do. He already makes it like I'm wet behind the ear; I don't want to make further fun of myself.
"Good," said George, satisfied, "if you accepted, I would've been disappointed." He didn't oversee any of the companies, but when he was working under his own father, he oversaw thrice as many companies as Lia and expected her to reach that level someday.
"Oh, we're here." Lia removed her arm from George's as the door to the room where they were going to spend the upcoming time came into view. "Let's see what he for us today."
Lia opened the door with George peering from above her head. They stared at a door standing in the middle of the room, and from behind the door, Quinn's face peaked out with a white sketch marker clenched between his teeth.
Quinn opened his mouth to speak, letting the maker fall, but it began to float up immediately after being let go. "Excellent time, both of you. I just finished putting the last touches on the product today; please gather around so that we can start this year's QWASPP."
"Now, what this might be?" asked Lia, moving around the cerulean blue door standing in its frame.
"It's a door," said Quinn, puffing his chest as he crossed his arms.
George brushed his hand against the door pane. "This is.. . not a good wood, neither is the craftsmanship. What is this made from?"
"Common Oak," said Quinn. "As for the craftsmanship, it's made like that purposefully."
"What does it do?" asked Lia excitedly as she wrapped an arm around Quinn's shoulder.
"Well, you might actually recognize it without me telling you," Quinn took out a skeletal key hanging from a thin chain from his pocket, and the moment George saw the gold glint of the metal, his eyes widened.
"Is that an Abate key?" George asked, taking the key into his hand.
"No," said Quinn chuckling, "while I would love to have a key that could access the Abate network, I don't have it." He smiled at the key, "Though, this key in your hand does work something like Abates."
Lia looked at the door, "You mean.. ."
"Grandfather, would you like to do the honors," said Quinn.
George nodded. He took the key to the door and used it to open the door with a click. He grabbed the doorknob above the keyhole and twisted it for the door to open to a back alley street.
"It's really like the Abate network," said George as he stepped out into the deserted street with Quinn and Lia following after him.
"Ah, so we are in North Yorkshire," said Quinn looking around.
Lia frowned, "Why do you say it like that?" Even George noticed how Quinn worded his sentence.
"Well, this is a QWASPP, so I'm going for something that we can sell," said Quinn. "Britain already has the floo network, and while walking through a door would be much better jumping into a fireplace, I don't think if we can take floo out of Britain.. . well, maybe we can, but that's not what I made this for."
"Then what?" asked Lia.
Quinn looked at George. "Grandfather, do you know what a Vanishing Cabinet is?"
George's eyes widen with realization. He looked at the door, then at the desolate street, then back at Quinn, who smiled.
"It's the best time to sell something like this," said Quinn.
"Uhm, what are we talking about here?" asked Lia.
"Vanishing Cabinets — are a pair of cabinets connected to each through the means of spatial magic that allow an object or person to enter one cabinet and exit through the other. They have been a popular household item to have during wars — they were especially favored here in Britain during the last war to escape using them when the Dark Lord and Death Eaters stuck."
"That doesn't make sense," said Lia, recalling one of her readings on the war, "didn't Death Eaters attacked people in their homes," she looked at the door, "if they had these.. . then why?"
".. . Because Vanishing Cabinets weren't commonplace," said George with somber tenor. "It requires considerable skill to craft a pair of working Vanishing Cabinets; not anyone can make those; as such, only a select few were able to get their hands on them."
Quinn added, "Moreover, Vanishing Cabinets weren't popular items outside wartime. They were much more common during Grindlewald's conquest that spanned more than two decades, but after in the time of peace, the market fell, and the craftsman stopped making them, and with time, they became rare, and so did the people who could build them.
"When the Dark Lord struck, there were only a few people who could build them, and even those could only produce at a limited rate, forget about training others. So only those with the gold and connections could get one built, and the rest were left without one. Peace was achieved again, but the Vanishing Cabinet went away with it as it did before.
".. . But as we know, the Dark Lord's recently ended his vacation and is back in the office, so.. ."
"It's the best time to sell," said Lia, repeating Quinn's words.
"Yes," said Quinn, grabbing the doorknob of the door, "this takes inspiration from the Abate network that it is indeed a network of doors. For the last week, I went around the country and built a limited network.
"How this work is that when a person opens a door, it connects to a random door on the network, which as you might have noticed," Quinn pointed around him, "are in deserted places, all covered by anti-non-magical wards, which eliminates the Vanishing Cabinet's weakness — that is, if you find the cabinet outside the house, opens you up to an ambush, but with random doors, you don't have that problem."
"What if someone finds all the doors in the network?" asked Lia.
"Doesn't matter," said Quinn, "if we add enough doors, it doesn't matter if you find them all if you don't have enough man to cover every one of them." He raised the key, "It wouldn't take a key to exit the house, just a secret password — but if you want to go back home — it will take the key held by the people who would be pre-connected to it and would require another secret password."
"You said something about the door being crafted the way it was?" asked George.
"Ah yes, that was for a showcase that any door could be on the network. It could be anything, anywhere, and one wouldn't know unless they used the door. Similarly, it could be any door in the house — a bathroom door, bedroom door, or even a door to the basement — it could also be a secret door hidden in any random wall."
The West exited the back alley and back to their house, closing the door behind them, after which Quinn showcased the randomized feature of the door, opening the door to a couple more places around the country that Quinn had visited via apparition and found the deserted places by flying while being invisible.
"I have a question," asked Lia, "how does this interact with the wards. What is stopping a person from using these doors to bypass the wards and arrive inside a house?"
"Good question," Quinn said, appreciating the question. "These doors can be tied into the wards. You can set the doors so that no one can come into the house using one of the outside doors — so only outgoing would be available. In fact, it's the recommended setting. If you get out of your house during danger, then don't return to the house for a while, and go somewhere else."
"The idea is good," said George, walking around the door. He stopped and opened the door, and without a key, it was just a normal door. "If we can construct a wide enough network, we would be able to turn it into something that would be very attractive to everyone."
"Yeah, about that.. . there is one teeny problem with this," said Quinn.
"What is it?" asked Lia, snapping out of her thoughts that went to how to set up a business around the door network.
"Only I'm able to build these doors," said Quinn.
The magic behind the connected doors came from four sources — spatial magic books, the Vanishing Cabinet technology, the Abate network, and finally, from the entrance tunnel of the Aquatic Vault.
He had started with studying spatial magic to solve the entrance tunnel in the Great Lake guarded by the Kraken, which would somehow switch going down to up. And after years of irregular research, Quinn was able to figure out how the entrance worked. During the progress of that research, Quinn came across the Abate network, and after dealing with Dolion, Quinn had spent a portion of his remaining time in Italy studying the Abate doors while he was alone with Aksel Thorn. The Vanishing Cabinet technology was easy to get his hands by paying for the manuals, and while he never went to the Vanishing Cabinet in Hogwarts, he knew everything about them.
The problem was that Quinn's approach was sophisticated because Quinn valued stability and the range of the door, which made it very difficult for a person to learn how to do it. It would require a magical with considerable skill to learn the method created by the sources, which is even individually challenging to learn, and to train someone in his technique would require money and a lot of time.
"I can make ten a day," said Quinn. He could make more, but only ten in the time he was willing to set aside for the venture. "Which isn't bad as in little more than three months, we can have a thousand doors across the country, which I think are more than enough for the initial stage.
"After that, we can take orders from the customers, and I can continue to make ten a day that would be installed inside the customer's home. If we started early, by the same time next year, we would have covered a lot of people all around Britain."
George stayed silent for a while before saying, "The fact that you have presented to us, it means that you require something from us, or you would've done it on your own."
Quinn nodded.
"What do you require from us?" asked Lia.
"I don't want this to be connected to the Wests or even me and want the manufacturer to be a mystery, and for that to happen, I would require the family's help." Quinn didn't want to involve his family in the war, but it would prevent multiple people from becoming victims of the upcoming raids if this was implemented.
George held his hands behind his back, staring at the door for a good while. ".. . It is easy enough to do," he said, "I can make it so that West wouldn't be connected to your doors. Even if someone tried to dig out the truth, they would only find themselves in a labyrinth. However, I have a condition."
"Please say so. If it's something I can do, I'll do it," said Quinn.
George turned to his grandson and spoke in his serious-business voice. "You're to give me a promise that I can call in later."
Quinn tilted his head. That's it? He was absolutely fine with that. "I accept your condition," he said.
"Then the deal is made," George said. "You make these doors, and I personally will make sure that a secret operation is ready for you to spread this product."
In the future, a mysterious group would start to sell their escape services. The secretive group and their network of doors would infamously be known by a common name — The Labyrinth.
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Quinn West - MC - I'm always working on the old projects.
George West - Grandfather - Now has a promise from his grandson.
Lia West - Elder Sister - Handles all of the businesses that sell Quinn's products.
FictionOnlyReader - Author - The reason why Quinn accepted was that it was asked by his grandfather. He doesn't mistrust George at all. Quinn would have rejected if some asked him; he would have put it down if they asked him of a promise, essentially a blank cheque.
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