I turned my attention to my friends who had opened up the two chests and were looking at the contents with confusion. Within each chest was a bundle of various different types of alchemical objects that all shared a single common trait, they had some sort of illusion effect.
"Anyone else feeling ripped off?" Mike said with an annoyed expression.
"What even is this stuff anyways?" Terry asked as he picked up an amulet to look it over.
"That chaps, is your treasures." I said with a chuckle.
"Like hell it is! Whole lot of junk is what it is!" Mike complained.
I shook my head "No I mean all of that IS treasure. Alchemical treasure that is. As far as I can tell all of this stuff is enchanted with various illusion magics, something the creator of this little trial of ours was clearly obsessed with." I said frankly.
"No offense mate but still failing to see how that makes any of this treasure." Mike said flatly.
"You can't be blamed for that I suppose but to simplify it ALL alchemical objects are rather pricy so long as they aren't single use. Stable enchantments like this cost a pretty galleon to buy. So long as you can find someone to offload them these things could earn you enough money to pay for your entire Hogwarts supply list from first year to seventh several times over. Maybe more if there are particularly useful enchantments among the lot. I'd have to check the market and the things one by one to figure that out though." I explained patiently.
"You're kidding!" Terry exclaimed in disbelief and I shook my head.
"No, theres a reason the two most wealthy professions in the magical world are potions and alchemy. The latter especially since it can even make something like this castle." I said seriously.
"That's mad!" Mike said in shock.
"That's the way of things." I said as I shrugged.
"If that's true why doesn't everyone do it then?" Terry asked curiously.
"A few reasons. Resources, knowledge restrictions and difficulty to name a few." I said honestly.
"Sounds complicated." Mike said and I nodded vigorously.
"You have no bloody idea." I said with a shudder.
Complicated didn't even begin to cover it as once you really started to look into those fields as a profession you quickly discover a tangled web of politics, interests, resources and informational blockades to be dealt with.-
Don't look at the potions class as the be all end all of that field as the REALLY valuable stuff was squirrelled away in private to keep anyone trying to enter the field down for as long as possible. The fastest way to get around this was becoming an apprentice or straight up stealing the knowledge from those hoarding it, not easy when alchemists were involved. It was honestly a bit like how during the slavery era of America slaves weren't allowed to learn how to read or write because they might upset the status quo if they did since they'd get ideas of equality and freedom that stepped on toes.-
Obviously it wasn't even close to as bad in this case but the general idea of withholding information to keep the status quo was the same. Interestingly rituals were also banned almost globally for a similar reason. I had always though rituals as underutilized in the world of the books and movies and had naturally looked into why exactly that was. The excuse that rituals were dark magic was both accurate and incomplete at the same time.-
Accurate because all rituals involved sacrificing something to get something else. But that wasn't the whole story, it never was. The real reason they were banned was because it threatened order. If done right rituals could elevate even the most untalented of wizards to extremely high levels of power. For obvious reasons no governing body wanted something like that just sitting around for whoever wanted it to use. An example of one such VERY bad for everyone ritual is the one that creates Horcruxes. Immortality is tempting sure but for governing bodies it was a nightmare.-
Voldemort was a good example as even after being blasted apart on the night he tried to kill Harry he STILL wasn't gone for good, only delayed. So long as he had a single horcrux left he was also impossible to get rid of truly. Interestingly though horcruxes weren't the only soul stuffed in a thing form of magic either. Turned out liches were absolutely a thing and there had even been recorded lich hunts when any were spotted. You may be wondering what the difference between a lich and someone with a horcrux was and the answer was sensation.-
For a lich their body was just a puppet they controlled. The condition of their puppet was irrelevant for the sole reason that in exchange for their form of immortality liches gave up all their ability to sense things. Touch, taste, hearing, sight, smell it all went into the trash. They felt nothing and thus cared little for the condition of their vessels beyond function unless they were vain. The way they sensed the world around them was actually through an innate ability not unlike observation haki, just gray scaled apparently.-
By comparison horcruxes were clearly superior since you at least could still enjoy life after making one. Anyways the point was that information on advanced magics were hidden away to keep things nice and orderly. The few exceptional wizards or witches as a result tended to be of the pure or half blooded variety as a result.