Chapter 78: The Room of Requirement
After dinner, Regulus went to the library.
Madam Pince sat behind the desk at the entrance, polishing her spectacles with a square of flannel. When she saw him come in, she did nothing more than lift her eyelids slightly.
There were still very few people in the library. A handful of seventh years were searching for references in one corner, two Ravenclaw girls were bent together in a hushed discussion, and several Hufflepuffs were hurrying through their homework.
Regulus went to the Charms section and pulled out Common Spells and Their Variants.
The book was very old. The edges of the cover had worn pale, and the pages were yellow with age, yet it was clean and well kept, without a single crease.
He found a seat by the window and sat down, opening to the place where he had stopped before: an analysis of the incantation used for the Banishing Charm.
The spell itself was simple, and he had mastered it long ago, but other people's perspectives could still be useful. The book described a combined use of the Banishing Charm and the Impediment Jinx that could knock a target a remarkable distance.
Outside the window, the sky gradually darkened, and the lights of the castle came on one by one.
Regulus turned a page, but his mind drifted elsewhere.
Last term, he had entered the Restricted Section many times under an improved Disillusionment Charm, one designed to suppress light, heat, and most magical fluctuations as well.
At the time, he had thought it flawless. Enough to hide from Madam Pince. Enough to move without a sound.
Now, looking back, perhaps he had been a little too confident.
If Dumbledore really had been observing him since last term, then the moment he began paying attention, there was every chance he already knew about those late night visits to the Restricted Section.
Then again, if he had discovered it and still had not stopped him, that in itself was a kind of tacit permission.
Just then, a slight but severe cough rang through the library. Madam Pince, issuing a reminder.
Regulus looked up and realised only a few students remained.
He closed the book, returned it to the shelf, and followed the last of them out of the library.
The corridor lights were dim. Most of the portraits were asleep, and the few still awake were yawning or adjusting their collars inside their frames.
Regulus did not head straight back to the Slytherin common room.
Instead, he stopped at a corner on the second floor, looked both ways to make certain no one was there, and gave his wand a light flick.
A cold sensation spread across his body as the Disillusionment Charm took hold.
The outline of his figure blurred, its edges blending into the corridor around him.
This was his improved version. It did not merely deceive the eye. It also suppressed footsteps, breathing, scent, body heat, and magical fluctuations to the greatest extent he could presently manage.
But now that he thought about it, even that was not enough.
The principle of the Disillusionment Charm was to distort light with magic and produce a visual illusion.
The spell itself still created magical fluctuations, and a highly skilled wizard could sense those ripples.
The Potter family's Invisibility Cloak, said to be a treasure gifted by Death itself and one of the Deathly Hallows, could not escape Dumbledore's notice. In the original story, Harry roamed the castle beneath it, and Dumbledore could still call him out accurately time after time.
Severus Snape might be able to notice it as well. The adult Snape, at least. The younger version was not yet at that level.
Regulus moved down the empty corridor, his footsteps soundless.
He needed a more thorough form of concealment.
Simply bending light was not enough. He wanted light to pass straight through him.
Dampening sound was not enough either. He wanted to prevent sound from being produced at all, and even make his body temperature perfectly consistent with the surrounding environment.
That would mean changing his state of existence itself.
But he could not do that yet.
His knowledge was still insufficient, and his control of magic had not yet reached the necessary level of refinement.
When he reached the eighth floor, Regulus stopped.
Here, opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy being clubbed by trolls, the bare stretch of stone wall looked especially plain in the dim corridor.
He focused his mind and thought clearly.
I need a place to practise magic. Completely private. A place where no one will disturb me.
He repeated the thought three times.
Nothing happened.
As expected.
He wanted to test different methods. He had even wondered whether pacing three times was merely formal, and whether the true core lay in having a strong enough need for the room to sense.
It seemed now that the walking was still necessary.
So Regulus paced back and forth three times before the tapestry.
Then, in the next instant, a door appeared in the wall.
It was made of oak, with a polished brass handle and fine natural grain running through the wood.
It appeared without sound, without light, without ripple or distortion, as though it had always been there and he had simply failed to notice it before.
Regulus released all his senses.
His magic spread outward to catch the slightest abnormality in the air.
There was nothing.
The appearance of the door had caused no detectable change. The magic in the corridor was as stable as before. The spatial structure remained complete and continuous. Even the airflow simply curved around the door as though it had always occupied that place.
Regulus stood motionless, staring at it.
A thought rose in his mind. It had no proof behind it, and no logical foundation. It simply surfaced from somewhere deeper.
Perhaps the Room of Requirement had always existed here, suspended between being and not being.
And when a wizard formed a clear enough need, and that need was somehow observed, the state collapsed into definite existence.
The thought made his breathing catch.
If that were truly the case, if Lady Ravenclaw had used a concept touching the deepest laws of the world when designing this room...
Then her magical attainment had long surpassed everything later generations recorded. It would have reached something almost mythic.
Regulus pressed the shock back down.
He had no way to verify the idea.
He did not even understand the basic operating principle of the Room of Requirement, let alone the deeper logic of its design.
Some things in the magical world were simply like that. They existed. They could be used. Yet no one could say why they functioned.
He could not understand it, but the sheer fact of it left him deeply shaken.
Since he could not solve it, he set it aside for now.
Regulus gripped the handle and pushed the door open.
Inside was a training room.
It was large, more than twenty metres in both length and width, with a ceiling around ten metres high, enough space for most magical practice.
The floor was laid with dark wooden boards that had a slight spring to them, soft enough to cushion a fall.
The four walls were smooth stone, carved with runes designed to absorb magic so that spells would not rebound or damage the room itself.
In one corner stood several training dummies wrapped in thick leather.
In another sat a wooden table, with a few books and practice tools neatly arranged on top.
This room was clearly in regular use.
Regulus scanned the space and found no sign of anyone present, yet the leather dummies bore scorch marks, the floorboards showed scrapes, and the edge of the table had the sheen that came from long use.
The Room of Requirement might be hidden, but quite a few people clearly knew about it.
In the original story, Harry Potter used it for Dumbledore's Army. Draco Malfoy used it to repair the Vanishing Cabinet. Dumbledore once found a bathroom there. And beyond them, there must have been countless students over the centuries who discovered it by chance.
It could not be treated as a private room belonging to him alone.
Regulus walked to the middle of the chamber and sat down cross legged.
Tonight was mainly for confirming the location and familiarising himself with the environment.
Still, since he was already here, he might as well practise for a while.
There were certain kinds of magic he could not conveniently test in the common room or the dormitory. This place was ideal.
He took a Galleon from his pocket.
It gleamed dully in his palm, the serrated edge sharp and neat. On one face was the head of a Gringotts goblin, and on the other the serial number.
He set the coin on the floor before him and stepped back three paces.
Spatial Warp.
He had been practising it constantly. Ever since the day he managed to shift the brooch five centimetres over Christmas, he had found time to work on it every day.
The progress was painfully slow, so slow that it was almost impossible to feel.
But he had patience.
Magic was never something achieved overnight.
Regulus closed his eyes and let his perception spread.
Where the Galleon rested, the spatial nodes were dense and stable.
Within a radius of three metres, the structure of space appeared in his mind as a three dimensional image. Every node. Every connection. Every variation in strength.
The theory was simple.
Let space fold of its own accord. Bring two nodes together. Then pass the object through.
Regulus concentrated.
Magic surged up within him and acted directly on space itself.
He fixed his attention on the node occupied by the Galleon and imagined it as a buoy floating on water, sliding along an invisible slope toward a nearby vacant node.
Magic touched the structure of space.
The node trembled slightly.
Around the Galleon, the air rippled in waves too fine for ordinary sight.
Regulus adjusted the output of his magic, following the natural tendency of the spatial structure and searching for the path of least resistance.
His will was fixed on the coin. His magic extended along the natural grain of space itself. A pure joining of will and magic.
The Galleon vanished.
There was no visible transition. One moment it lay where he had set it. The next, it had appeared on the floor two metres away.
The position was off.
It had not arrived at the intended target point, but nearly half a metre from it.
The Galleon landed face up, the goblin head from Gringotts reflecting the training room light.
Regulus walked over and picked it up.
The metal was slightly warm to the touch.
Residual friction from the distortion of space.
Which meant there was still an immense amount of room left for improvement.
.....
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