Chương 16: The Room of Requirement

I was still lost in thoughts about Dumbledore and Snape during our free period. There didn't seem to be any issues with students being in the Hall outside of meal times, so most of the first-years stuck around; either chatting, playing games, or in Riley and my cases, working on the new homework. I noted Cordelia sending dirty looks at Luna. Similar to the one she had sent me after standing out at the Sorting Ceremony. Jealousy over other people being more unique than her? She had been very quiet during class.

Was she too intimidated by adults to act out? Envy over weirdos being confidently weird? Would she relax around me as I established myself as the studious bookworm type? Having already memorized the books, I found the assignment to be more of a test for writing skills and treated it as such; drafting out a rough copy on notebook paper. Parchment and calligraphy would be needed for the final version. Riley surprised me by taking the stance that we shouldn't work together, as that would be cheating.

I disagreed, but didn't argue too strongly. If she wanted an academic rival, I was fine serving as that challenge. An hour later, we left the Great Hall and found our way to Defense Against the Dark Arts. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Desks and chairs lay knocked over, occasionally broken; debris was thrown everywhere; table ornaments scattered across the floor. Near the teacher's desk was a cage with a bunch of small blue humanoid creatures with wings screeching in anger.

"Uhhh, this is the right room, right?"

"Definitely. It's on our schedules, classroom 3C."

"Do we have to fight those things?"

"They couldn't have caused all this," said a Gryffindor.

"They're just pixies. Professor Lockhart must have brought out something truly dangerous for the class before us; like a troll or something. No first-year could fight a troll."

"Harry fought a troll as a first-year!" Ginny added unnecessarily. I saw one of the other Gryffindor girls roll her eyes.

"So last class got trolls, we get pixies? We can take pixies, right?"

"Of course! No proper wizard would lose to a pixie."

"Where is Lockhart though?"

"Prepping our class no doubt," I cut in, "Come on, let's get the tables and chairs set up. I don't want to stand all day." The first-year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws listened to me, with only a minor bit of grumbling about how they could just wait for Lockhart to fix everything with a wave of his wand. I didn't bother telling them that—if my memories of the second-year's lesson were accurate—Lockhart's wand had been thrown out the window.

After we finished—as in literally seconds after—Lockhart burst out from the back office with a wide toothy smile.

"AH! Welcome! Welcome! I see you lot have taken the initiative and put the classroom back together, completely unnecessary—I could have done it all in a second, but good job. Five points each to Ravenclaw and Gryffindor.

"Now don't mind the rest of the mess, I was just showing some older students how to deal with the greatest threats they will likely ever face in their lives. Lets just cover this up real quick." He grabbed a discarded tablecloth and threw it over the pixies, while keeping a good distance from the cage.

"Right, I was thinking that since you are first-years, we would be focusing a bit more on the theory side of things, err, for the time being." It really was impressive how he could talk so coherently while maintaining a smile wide enough to show off all his teeth. He was disgustingly handsome. Perfect hair, robes tailored to accentuate his fit body, chiseled chin, a hint of something about the eyes that drew you in. He knew the value of image, how so many people don't look past the surface level. I took it all in.

Acknowledging his strengths. He may be bad at magic in general, but he was a monster all the same. It was vital not to underestimate a known dangerous enemy. Mind magic terrified me. An Obliviate could destroy most of who a person was, and Lockhart specialized in the spell. I doubted he would hesitate to use it on a student if he felt it would make his life easier. Whatever else happened this year, I would need to ensure Lockhart didn't view me as a threat.

At least the curse on the position would deal with him before long.

"Let's start with a little quiz. Just to see how much you remember from my books." Until then, I would take full advantage of his weaknesses. He passed out the papers and I reviewed the questions quickly; quill and ink not being friendly to mistakes. The questionnaire was large, but nothing looked too tricky. While keeping my eyes on the sheet in front of me, I focused on the movements of Mathis. He was already writing.

I'd chosen to sit next to him as Riley wanted to get to know Fiona more after spending the whole morning with me, and the annoying split between the houses kept Gryffindors and Ravenclaws on opposite sides of the room. The most important thing about school was learning, the second was the grade. Since we weren't actually learning in this class, all that mattered was getting high marks.

I'd have to study magical methods of cheating and cheat detection for my other classes, but I doubted Lockhart was capable enough to employ any countermeasures. The first question was about Lockhart's favorite color. Mathis wrote yellow; which was incorrect. It was lilac. It looked like I'd be on my own this time around. Maybe I should've sat in a more centered position? But I liked having all the people in the room on one side of me. A bit after I'd finished, Lockhart stood.

"Time's up! Let's see how well you've done." Stolen story; please report. I let my mind wander a bit as he went over the tests. His voice grated on me as much as the constant self-aggrandizement.

"And Miss Lyra Parish seems to have earned full marks! Wonderful!" He looked around excitedly.

"Where is Miss Parish?" I 'eagerly' raised my hand, a vapid smile plastered to my face.

"That's me Professor!" I simpered, "Your books are amazing!" If it worked for Hermione, it would work for me. v^v^V^v^v After class finished, I stayed behind and got Lockhart to sign all my books. He loved doing it, and it was a simple way to increase their monetary value. A win-win. From there, I found an older student to direct me to 'A painting on the seventh floor of some guy trying to teach trolls ballet' and got to work.

Since this was the largest significant gap of free time I'd had since arriving at the castle, I was split between exploring the Room of Requirement and the Library. Ultimately, I decided the Room took priority as I knew less about it. Also, I just wasn't in the mood for book-based research. Divination was an entire subject that people spent years studying, and I knew it would take far more than a single evening to get the answers I needed.

Better to wait a week or so until I was better adjusted to my change in environment. My main goal in this first use of the Room was to figure out its strengths and limitations. All things had limitations, and knowing the capabilities of your tools is how you learn to make best use of them. Magic, and magic rooms, were no different. The first tangible limit I found was in the items the Room had access to.

It didn't have the ability to summon Vicky—my fox plush—from my dorm; it couldn't grab library books from the library; and I couldn't use it to steal Snape's potion supplies. How did items find their way to the Room? Dobby said it contained lost, forgotten, and hidden things from students and staff throughout Hogwarts's history, but what counted as lost or forgotten? How did the transfer occur? Pure magic, or were the house-elves manually using it as a storage room?

That item limitation wasn't to say the Room lacked a large and varied selection of items. I quickly picked out a shoulder bag with an expanded interior. Unfortunately not as large inside as what Hermione produced in the seventh book—let alone the farmhouse Newt Scamander had in his briefcase—but still about as much space as a bathtub. It was old-fashioned, made of leather, and had stitched-in floral designs. I asked the Room for more bags or trunks with the expansion charm, but it didn't give me anything.

I guessed they were usually too valuable to be forgotten. This sparked an interest in finding other items of particular worth. The wizard economy was still a bit confusing to me, so I tried asking for 'valuable things'. It didn't work. Another hypothesis: the Room needed a certain level of specificity to provide items. Testing that could be a chore, so I put it aside for now. I wanted more general theories before working out the minutiae.

I did remember broomsticks were valuable, and after requesting those, I found around a dozen. Flying didn't seem very hard from the descriptions in the book, so I tried them out. I was right, it wasn't hard, but it also wasn't enjoyable either. My first few flights were more stressful than anything else. Maybe these brooms just weren't as good as the ones Harry used, but they weren't responding to my thoughts or intentions. I even crashed twice into padded walls and flooring the Room summoned.

A couple vibrated so hard when I tried to mount them that I was concerned they'd explode between my legs. After testing each, I claimed the smallest. It could only move about as fast as I could jog, and was very basic-looking—just a branch of oak with wrapped straw at the end—but I primarily chose it because it fit into my new bag. Given its speed and near rigid stability, I had a feeling it was intended as a training broom for smaller children. I didn't particularly care.

None of the brooms were of racing quality, and I suspected several were damaged given how poorly they functioned. A broom was a broom. From there, I was able to convince the Room to provide me with an endless ink-well, a pair of bunny-themed slippers enchanted to make no sound while walking (I'd asked for a way to silently move around the castle), a glow-orb that was probably redundant with Lumos, and finally a book called The Tools for a Thief.

The book contained a few useful spells like Alohomora, Nebulus (which summoned controllable fog), minor things like magic to hide footprints, and the Disillusionment Charm. I had been trying to get a set of magical lockpicks, but this was probably better. Hermione knew Alohomora, but I doubted the spell was taught in class.

I also tried to get a watch, but the options the Room provided all had problematic quirks—not having hands, not using the standard twelve-hour face, being too large, giving off a chill as if made of ice, one that seemed to just be a timer… I gave up looking after touching one that bit my finger hard enough to draw blood. I struck gold—literally—when I asked for money. Roughly twenty galleons worth of coin. There was more too—too much to reasonably count—but most of the supply was in knuts.

Even the weight-reducing property of my new bag wouldn't fully negate a pile of loose metal the size of a human. I'd have to slowly exchange the coins over the year. Despite how profitable exploring the Room's hidden items had already proven to be, I wanted to prioritize information today. So, I set my greed aside and moved on. The search for items led me to identify a few more limitations. Namely, that the Room could provide items, but they wouldn't necessarily be exactly what I wanted.

Also, the version of the Room I initially summoned, mattered. If I requested a place to study potions, the Room would only summon items related to studying potions; it wouldn't summon any of the broomsticks I had tested earlier, nor any books on other subjects. If I wanted access to other item sets, I had to leave and re-open the Room. The issue was largely solved by two variants I managed to create—or maybe just summon, depending on how the Room actually worked.

A 'Study Room', which would summon anything related to what I was trying to learn about, and a 'Reliquary Room' which had thousands of items displayed on tables and would try to move them around so what I wanted was nearer the entrance. I noted the Reliquary Room as a potential danger. If I entered it without thinking about a specific item or need, Ravenclaw's diadem always appeared near the door. I wasn't sure why that was the case.

Maybe the Room could pick up on one of my major goals being the death of Voldemort? Regardless, I had no way to destroy it at present, and I knew from the books that all the horcruxes had some form of mental intrusion abilities. Ginny was obsessed with the diary, even before being possessed. Harry carried the thing everywhere after finding it, even after concluding it was just a blank book. It wasn't until Riddle blamed Hagrid for opening the Chamber that Harry finally started leaving it in his dorm.

Dumbledore had put on the ring, and was horribly cursed because of it. Harry immediately suggested they all wear the locket once they took it from Umbridge's neck. Even after they realized it worsened their moods and actively interfered with their ability to cast defensive magic, they never once questioned—in all the months they had it—whether it might be smarter to stop wearing the thing. Not even after it caused Ron to abandon them. The diadem was simply too dangerous to be near until I figured out Occlumency.

The Study Room variant was functional for most things, and would be my primary way of interfacing with the retrieval system unless I was looking for something very specific. The next thing I deduced was that the Room didn't update itself with the rest of the castle. Asking for a toilet led to a room filled with chamber pots; no plumbing. I wasn't sure what use this would be, but it was a discovery. I guess I could use it as a hideaway from the basilisk? In terms of schoolwork, it was less helpful than I'd hoped.

Yes, it had additional resources—discarded homework assignments, books—and it was an amazing place to study… but from an, admittedly, very quick survey of books hidden here, they were mostly outdated, on restricted subjects, or way past my current skill level. The required reading list was simply better for learning, and contained most of the spells I wanted already. I suspected the Library had a greater selection.

So the Room was going to be a private place for me to study, a storehouse for hopefully useful or valuable enchanted items, and a good place where I could get away from the rest of the people to relax.