The morning of the Slytherin versus Gryffindor Quidditch match dawned with a sharp, biting wind and a sky the color of bruised iron. The Great Hall was a chaotic mess of team colors, loud chanting, and nervous energy.
Orion sat calmly at his table, sipping tea and watching Draco practically vibrate out of his skin.
Draco's hands were shaking slightly as he reached for a piece of toast, missed, and grabbed a napkin instead. He looked like he was about to be sick or spontaneously combust.
Orion let out a quiet sigh.
"You know, Draco," Orion said smoothly, his voice cutting through his brother's panicked muttering. "All you actually have to do today is focus on the small, golden ball with wings. Instead of spending your entire match aggressively following Potter around the pitch like a lovesick Kneazle, you might find that the game is remarkably straightforward."
Draco scowled, his face flushing a brilliant pink. "I am not following him! I'm marking him! It's a tactical maneuver!"
"It's a tactical disaster," Orion corrected mildly. "Just find the Snitch."
"He's right, Draco," Pansy Parkinson chimed in, adjusting her green and silver scarf. "You have the Nimbus 2001. You're faster. Just ignore the Gryffindors and win. You can do it!"
Draco puffed his chest out slightly, bolstered by the encouragement. "Right. Focus on the Snitch. I can do that."
Orion stood up, smoothing the front of his dark robes. He had no intention of braving the freezing rain to watch fourteen teenagers hit each other with bludgers.
"Alright," Orion said, offering a polite nod. "Best of luck, Draco. See you tonight."
Daphne Greengrass, seated nearby, frowned. "You aren't coming to the match, Orion? But it's the first game of the season. And your brother is playing."
"I have a rather pressing study schedule to maintain, Daphne," Orion deflected flawlessly, adjusting his bag. "The match will be incredibly loud, and my presence in the stands will not alter the aerodynamic capabilities of Draco's broom. Enjoy the game, and the rain too."
He turned and walked out of the Great Hall, leaving the noise and the sports enthusiasm behind.
He headed straight for the Slytherin dungeons.
He entered the empty boys' dormitory. Draco's bed was still unmade.
Orion walked over to his own nightstand.
Robin the Niffler was not in his rock-burrow. He gave a look around, and of course. The creature was currently halfway inside Draco's partially opened trunk, his furry backside wiggling aggressively as he rummaged through the contents. A few silver sickles and a highly polished, silver-backed mirror were already piled neatly on the floor beside him.
"Sigh," Orion muttered, crossing the room and grabbing the Niffler by the scruff of his neck, hauling him out of the trunk.
"Hey! Was finding shiny! Shiny mirror!" Robin protested, his paws still making grasping motions toward the trunk.
"Robin," Orion scolded softly, though he was hiding a smirk. "While Draco's plight is undeniably amusing, he has to owl-order the exact same grooming supplies again and again because he cannot catch you, even if he knows you are the one stealing them. It is too much of a stress for poor Titan, who has to make the flying trips to Diagon Alley every few weeks just to replace a hairbrush."
"Owl is big," Robin squeaked stubbornly. "Owl can carry."
"Whatever," Orion sighed, stuffing the disgruntled Niffler into his expanded pocket.
He left the dungeons, navigating the deserted corridors of the castle. The distant, muffled roar of the crowd drifting from the Quidditch pitch confirmed that the entire student body and faculty were occupied.
He reached the seventh-floor corridor and stopped opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.
He paced three times, his mind focused entirely on the necessity of a place to hide things.
The blank stone wall rippled. The door materialized.
Orion stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind him and willing it to disappear from the corridor.
The Room of Requirement, in its 'Hidden Things' configuration, was an absolute, breathtaking nightmare of hoarding. It was a cavernous space, towering cathedral-high, filled with centuries' worth of discarded, broken, and hidden magical objects. Mountains of rickety furniture, crumbling statues, stacks of moldy books, and thousands of unrecognizable trinkets stretched out as far as the eye could see.
"Probably Rowena's creation," Orion murmured, staring up at a towering pile of rusted cauldrons. "A brilliant, chaotic repository."
He focused his magical core.
Reflection Clone.
The pulling sensation seized his chest, and his exact duplicate materialized beside him in the dusty aisle.
Orion reached into his pocket and pulled out Robin, setting the Niffler down on a relatively clear patch of floor. Robin immediately began sniffing a tarnished silver goblet.
"Alright," Orion turned to his clone. "I need you to—"
"Help you first find the Diadem," the clone completed the sentence smoothly, its blue eyes scanning the massive room. "And then spend the rest of the month searching this place for useful things, while also sorting them into manageable piles. Huh?"
"Yep," Orion nodded. "Since you are me, I don't have to worry about you not recognizing any object's true magical or historical value. Use Robin to sniff out the dense magical signatures. Also, you can call our newest helper elf, Kreacher, to assist in sorting the stuff so that you can focus entirely on items of immediate tactical or magical value, instead of wasting time digging through rubble and those things of only monetary value."
"Also," Orion continued. "Alongside this, You should also..."
"Try and research how the room itself works," the clone finished for him.
Orion nodded again, his eyes narrowing as he looked at the sheer volume of material.
"I have a theory that the room is somewhat sentient," Orion explained, stepping carefully over a broken chair. "At least, it has some kind of deep, magical connection to the entire castle's infrastructure. We know the house-elves bring abandoned objects here, but I have a strong feeling the room itself can also passively claim abandoned or lost objects throughout the school and teleport them here."
"A localized, continuous summoning ward," the clone deduced.
"Exactly," Orion agreed. "Alongside that, there is also the mechanism of how it creates rooms based entirely on our thoughts and needs. I want to know how we can utilize that. How far can we push the parameters?"
"I'll map the magical framework while I sort the junk," the clone promised.
"Excellent."
Orion reached into his inner pocket. "Inventory."
He pulled out the sleek, wire-rimmed Scrying Glasses. He unfolded the arms and slipped them onto his face, adjusting them on the bridge of his nose.
Instantly, the dark, dusty cavern transformed.
The room lit up with a chaotic, overwhelming array of floating, semi-transparent text boxes. Thousands of them. The sheer volume of latent, cursed, and active magic in the room was staggering.
He saw a cursed necklace glowing with a sickly purple light, labeled: [Opal Necklace: Strangling Curse (Lethal)].
He saw a pile of books radiating dark energy: [Tome: Compulsion Charm (Heavy)].
It was a visual overload.
"First things first," Orion said, his eyes scanning the horizon of junk, filtering out the minor curses and focusing his perception, looking for the densest, most ancient concentration of dark magic in the room.
He smirked, pushing his glasses up his nose.
"Let's search for the Diadem."