7 Chapter 6: Room of Requirement

It's finally time to explore the Room of Requirement. I made my way to the seventh floor. There were many corridors, but after some time I found a moth eaten tapestry depicting a troll clubbing a person.

'This must be it, Barnabas the Barmy foolishly trying to train trolls for ballet. These wizards were some weird guys. What was the point of training them It? Anyways, it should be opposite this tapestry

Opposite the tapestry I saw a blank stretch of the wall, which looked quite unusual as Hogwarts walls are covered in tapestries, paintings and ornaments like suits of armor every few meters or less. But this wall was plain blank.

I couldn't go in the ROR yet because there were still some people passing by from the corridor. ' I should wait for the classes to start again and then try' I thought, so I just roamed in the corridor studying different tapestries and paintings. All of these were actually quite interesting and funny. A lot them were depicting stupid actions done by witches and wizards and how they ended up paying the price in some comic way.

Just then, I caught something from the corner of my eyes that got heart racing a bit – a flash of glowing white hair, walking towards my direction, Dumbledore. 'I forgot that Headmaster's Office is somewhere nearby.'

I tried to calm down and decided to act like I'm too engrossed in the painting in front of me to notice him. He will just pass me by, after all I'm just a first year.

But that didn't happen as I felt him stand behind me. I forcibly calmed myself down and turned with a surprised look on my face. I decided to keep my eyes on his beard. I know I'm acting too paranoid because of some the fanfics, but better be safe than sorry.

"Headmaster Dumbledore!" I exclaimed. "G..Good Evening", I said with my act as a child on full blast.

"And Good Evening to you Mr. Haven, if I'm not wrong", said Dumbledore kindly smiling down at me.

He continued after I acted surprised that he knows my name ,"There are hardly three hundred students studying in Hogwarts, it's the least I can do as Headmaster to try to remember every name. I so rarely get to interact with first years. So, Mr. Haven, how are you finding Hogwarts and magical side of things in general?"

"It's so different but amazing, magic is so amazing, like these paintings that can move and even talk. I was just exploring after the classes ended but this castle is so large and full of mysteries, I don't know if I will be able know all of it by my seventh year", I answered with a face full of wonder.

Dumbledore chuckled, " Even I won't dare to say that I know every secret of this castle, after spending better part of my life here, it continues to surprise me."

" These initial years are extraordinary Mr. Haven, every day exploring and gaining something new. But I did notice you are exploring alone, everything would be much more enjoyable with company. I know it's only the first day but try to make friends, as bonds you make here will remain with you forever. Well Mr. Haven, I will have to take my leave now, I very much enjoyed our chat and I will leave you to your exploration, but remember to be back in your house before curfew", said Dumbledore kindly before departing.

(AN: Now, I know Dumbledore won't just randomly talk with a first year because he didn't even talk with Hermione and Ron without Harry's presence ever. But from his view point, he found a curious first year muggleborn orphan and because he had a few minutes to spare he decided to have a small talk to make the young child feel more comfortable and welcome at Hogwarts.)

I took a sigh of relief as soon as he was out of sight, 'Am I being too paranoid with him, maybe he is actually good or maybe he has ulterior motive for everything he does. I have no reason to believe he knows I'm special as I have done nothing noteworthy to garner his or anyone's attention for that matter. Maybe he just talked to me because he had sometime. I really don't know what to think about this incident.'

I turned my attention to the ROR since there was no around the corridor except me.

'What should I try first?', in the end I decided to go with this-

'I want some place to practice mind magic and different spells and where no will enter while I'm in there and it looks like broom cupboard when I come out', I thought hard while walking past the wall three times. I added the last part because I don't have the Marauder's Map like Harry and in case when I come out and someone is in the corridor, they will see me come out of a broom cupboard, then I can make an excuse that someone shoved me inside. Even if the broom cupboard disappeared, it's not like they know how to open it again and they won't care about it much since it's just a broom cupboard.

A highly polished door appeared on the wall and I entered it and closed the door behind me. A large white room greeted me lit with torches, with shelves filled with books lined against the wall. A few cushions were strewn across the floor. There was also a dummy holding a wand with a target on it. 'Now this is what I'm talking about,' I started going through the book titles. There were many books of advanced magic and basic magic.

I finally found the book on Occlumency. The title read- Occlumency: How to build your mind, I sat on one of the cushions and began to read it. According to it first step is to clear your mind and not get easily distracted. The best method to achieve this is trying to meditate in places with a lots of distraction while keeping your mind completely blank. This will not be easy and will only come with practice. So it will not be effective to practice Occlumency in ROR where there are no distractions, I will try this in Great hall.

I also found the book on Legimency but it was not my priority right now. There were other books on advanced mind magic like telekinesis, moving things with just your mind, It is different from wandless magic which replaces wand as the point of focus with hands or finger. I think it's a forgotten art, since Levitation charm which is relatively easy and basically does the same thing. The prerequisites on telekinesis is to have extremely strong Occlumency and passive legimency. I will definitely try this after I master Occlumency and legimency, I think it will be very helpful in doing advanced wandless magic.

A book on hypnosis with eyes, it's also advanced mind magic. The strength of hypnosis will depend on how much stronger user's mind and magic is to the one he cast hypnosis on.

I found a book with basic dueling spells with moving pictures showing exactly how to cast them.

'I think it's time for some practice, I've read enough reading', I decided to start with expelliarmus. I remembered exactly how the picture did it in the book and went to stand in front of the dummy.

I readied myself and said to the wand in my arm, " Are you ready buddy?", I don't know why I said it, I don't know if it understood me or not but I began to feel the familiar warmth intensify in my finger. I casted, "Expelliarmus"

The dummy's wand blew away from its grasp. It was a success as expected, of Harry can do it in his first try then I can too. But I'm not done yet, I want to be so good at it that I can do it without the wand motion and instantly. I don't just want it to disarm my opponent but also blow them away if I want to.

I turned to the dummy and was surprised to see that wand was back in its hand. ' So, it's a regenerating dummy, that's the best case scenario, so even if I destroy it, I won't have to go out and back in to practice on it again', I thought as I readied again and started practicing to increase power of the spell.

According to the book on magical theory, I know that magic output depends on two things, first is will and second is emotion. Increasing magic output is easier with second option. When you are feeling an emotion like anger your magic output automatically increases. After many experiments with multiple test subjects, it has been concluded that in wizards above the age of 11, anger is the best emotion to increase power, but inconclusive evidence have been found that panic is the culprit behind accidental magic of children below 11. The evidence is inconclusive because these observations made naturally and can't be experimental artificially on children due to humane reasons.

Increasing the power with will is harder, it is basically how much you want your spell to work and concentrate hard on it. It takes years to hone the will to give the same magic output at the level that comes from an emotion like anger. The older you are, the more your mind is developed and the better your will. Usually, older people have stronger will than younger people.

(AN: Here, will is taken in the same context as intent.)

I think I have better will then my peers because I have the same mind as a college student in a 11 year old's body, that's why I was able to increase the power of lumos almost effortlessly in the Hogwarts express.

By the end of the practice, I was quite sweaty and exhausted. I managed to blow off the whole arm off the dummy but still can't do it without the wand motion. I will have to study more on that, because point casting is a thing and I want to achieve it.

When I finally came out of the ROR, there was no one in the corridor fortunately, but it was dark outside already, 'I couldn't have missed the curfew, right? Because that would be troublesome', I thought as I ran to the great hall. Fortunately, dinner was still going on.

I shoved food into my mouth as fast as I could, I didn't realize I was this hungry in all that practice. After dinner I went straight to the dorm, took a bath and fell on the bed and asleep in a few seconds, I was so exhausted. There was so much to learn, It's going to take a lot of hardworking along with my talent to achieve what I want, which I'm happy to do.