Harry and his friends spent the next day exploring the house. They had Dobby pop over to Hogwarts and see if Winky wanted to come over for a few days and help clean. She agreed and she and Dobby were busy cleaning years of dust out of the house. The first thing the group explored was the hidden gardens and the greenhouse. Neville was almost giddy when he saw that the greenhouse was in stasis and not in disarray.
"I'll be able to take it out of stasis and work on the plants if you want me to," He offered to Harry. "I'm not sure I'll have time to get everything done before we head back to school though."
"Will it hurt it too much more to keep it in stasis until either Christmas break or next summer?" Harry asked, knowing very little about the preservation spells used.
"No, anything that wouldn't survive a long stasis would be dead already anyway so anything left will be fine for longer." Neville told him. "It is too bad you don't have anyone to tend the plants during the school year, it's driving me crazy wanting to open those doors!" They all laughed at their friend's obsession and went out to see how much of the garden was still accessible.
"This will be beautiful once it's trimmed up," Hermione said, voicing what they were all thinking.
"It's hard to imagine something this amazing being attached to such a dark house," Dudley said and they all agreed that the beauty outside was a stark contrast to the dim and dark inside.
They found that there was a basement to the house as well as two more upper floors that had been sealed off. There was a ballroom and music room on upper most floor. The ballroom had a huge balcony that overlooked the hidden gardens. The music room had a secret room attached to it that Hermione opened up like Mrs. Black's painting had said to. It was a prayer or shrine room and Hermione spend the rest of the day in there reading books about her religion and piecing together what her responsibilities would be. The boys left her alone knowing this was something she needed to discover for herself.
The other floor that opened up had a huge library on it which left all of them confused as they had seen the library on the floor below. After consulting with some portraits they learned that what they thought was the library was really just a study that had all the books the family had more than one copy of in it. The actual library was huge, almost the size of Hogwarts library and was an obviously magically expanded room otherwise it would not fit in the house.
The other main room on that floor was a dueling room that had a dueling platform as well as practice dummies and targets. There was a large sparing area as well with different types of weapons mounted to the wall. Harry grinned at his friends and he and Neville had a mock duel to show Dudley what one was supposed to look like. Then he and Harry showed Neville some of their martial arts moves. The three boys had a fun time in the practice room as Harry was calling it until it was time for lunch. They headed into Harry's bedroom and got food from the MRE as they had told the two house elves that they could find their own lunch and to focus on cleaning.
They found that a nursery had been hidden next to the master suite and an owlry on the roof before they headed down to explore the newly revealed basement. The basement was large and had a fully stocked potions lab, many different storage areas, a workshop that Harry knew would be perfect for practicing his magical craftsmanship and two jail cells. After inspecting the cells he determined they were reinforced with magic and very sturdy.
"We can fix one of these up real nice for Remus to use on full moons," Harry said and they agreed that it would be a safe place for their friend to transform. The house was protected and the cell would protect anyone from him if the potion for some reason didn't work. They would make it comfortable for the wolf.
