The rest of the day passed in a comfortable blur, wrapped in the rhythms Ethan had come to expect of Hogwarts. He made it through his afternoon lessons without incident, exchanged nods with his peers in the common room, and spent the evening reviewing spells by the fire until most of the tower had gone quiet.
But as he lay in bed beneath the deep navy canopy of his four-poster, the shadows of his thoughts stretched long and restless. His mother's success, the stillness of the school, the Room of Requirement, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was coming, slow and inevitable. But tonight, rather than turning over those thoughts for the hundredth time, Ethan decided it was time to do something else.
To ask questions. Real ones.
He exhaled slowly, turned onto his back, and whispered into the silence of the dark dormitory,
"System. Return to the White Room."
There was no flash, no sound, but when he blinked, everything had turned white. The warmth of his sheets and the softness of the Hogwarts mattress gave way to something colder, quieter. A different comfort.
Sitting upright on the same pristine bed, perfectly white and square-cornered, beneath a ceiling the same hue as the walls and floor, the White Room.
It was exactly as he remembered from his first visit. It smelled like nothing. Felt like nothing. The edges of everything were so smooth and exact that his senses almost slid off them.
His eyes drifted toward the door at the far wall. The same doorway he had used to enter the Harry Potter reality. But something was different than before. The frame, which had once been as pure and white as the room itself, was… darker now. Not black, not even grey. More like a quiet saturation of color, bleeding outward from the door into the surrounding wall. Not just the frame. The floor around it. The walls. Almost like,
"Is that spreading?" Ethan asked aloud, standing.
There was a faint ding, and then the slightly transparent screen appeared in his vision.
[Affirmative. The visual phenomenon reflects ongoing connection stabilization between you and linked reality. The longer a connection remains active, the more of the immediate area becomes influenced by the connected reality's structure and properties.]
Ethan stepped closer to the door, narrowing his eyes at the soft change in texture along the floor near it. It looked like stone now. A hint of Hogwarts tile.
"So," he said, "it's like… a disease?"
[Metaphorically accurate. The connected reality's framework asserts mild influence over local White Room constructs. This is an expected phenomenon. No adverse effects detected.]
He blinked. "Is that something I should worry about?"
[Negative. Influence remains localized and reversible. Total encroachment is impossible.]
"Right," he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck.
He went and sat back down on the bed and stared at the door until he found his next question.
"What... what did I come here to do?"
"Can I... restart? Like, if I messed something up in the current Harry Potter reality. Could I just start over?"
[Affirmative. The System permits severance of current reality connections and initialization of new instances. Warning: All skills, magical abilities, personal relationships, and alterations acquired in severed realities will be lost.]
All that he had done, the Lockhart trial, saving Ginny from the diary, changing the flow of events, learning magic and being able to use it, would all vanish. As if it had never mattered.
He looked back at the bleeding edges around the doorframe. "You said this door is affected by a connection. Can I have multiple doors? Like... multiple realities running at once?"
[Affirmative. The System permits multiple active connections. However, duplicate realities are not permitted. Each connected reality must differ in configuration. Parallel versions of the same baseline are disallowed to prevent paradox events and interference errors.]
"So I can't have two Harry Potters realities running."
[Correct.]
"But I could have Harry Potter and, say… something else. Another book. Another world."
[Affirmative. Each reality will be saved as its own instance and retain continuity upon return, assuming connection is not severed.]
That opened more possibilities than he had thought could happen.
He looked around again. The room hadn't changed in the year he had been gone, not since he first came here during the moment of death, when his original body had gone cold, and whatever this was had pulled him in. A hub. A system. An anchor between places.
"What's the time ratio between this room and the other realities? Like, if I spend an hour here... how much time passes out there?"
[All active connections currently operate at a 1:1 time ratio. One minute here equals one minute in each connected reality.]
"So time flows the same. Can it be changed? Like i did with my role?"
[Affirmative. Time flow control protocols may be unlocked upon acquisition of time-altering abilities within one or more connected realities. The System does not natively alter temporal mechanics without support.]
"Meaning," Ethan said slowly, "if I learn time magic, I could slow or stop time in certain realities... or change how time works in here?"
[Affirmative. Time manipulation protocols require qualified integration.]
He exhaled.
There were systems behind systems here, doors behind doors. And he'd barely scratched the surface.
This wasn't just a second chance. It was... potentially endless. It was like a game.
He sat there for a few more minutes thinking if he had anything else to ask. Suddenly, he though of something he hadn't but should have been something he asked earlier.
"What happens to my body in that reality when I come here? Does it disappear?"
[Negative. Your body in that particular reality is to be inactive. Others will see it as a state of slumbering.]
He nodded to himself, but then his eyes widened.
If he had returned here at a different time than being in bed, his body would have just collapsed. That would be very hard to explain upon return.
"Alright then. Take me back to the Harry Potter reality."
[Acknowledged. Sending traveler to reality, "Harry Potter".]
And then he was in bed again, back in Ravenclaw Tower, beneath the covers as though he had never left.
He had been sitting on the side of the bed in the white room, but there was no strange discomfort when suddenly finding himself instantly laying down again.
The moonlight outside traced soft lines across the floor. The castle was still. Somewhere below, the lake breathed gently in the night.
Nothing had changed.
He lay still, his thoughts heavier than before. The White Room was less of a mystery, yet it was far from understood.
He closed his eyes, relaxing into the bed as he set to fall asleep.
Tomorrow, he'd go back to class. Back to his mother's lectures. Back to his life, but with more things to think about.
Like which reality to head for next or perhaps the best question, when?