Room of Requirements (RoR)

After my confession to my head of house, I shortly visit Hagrid to introduce him to Anluan.

To summarize, he was so excited that he pet him for half a hour and gave him some treats.

Don't know if they belonged to Fang or Fluffy, but after getting my permission, Anluan chews happily on them. I told him about my conversation with McGonnagal and asked him if one hour before which time he prefers. He tells me, he feeds Fluffy, who resides in a shack on the outskirts of the forest, before he goes himself joins breakfast at the Great Hall and if I wanted to join him.

The idea of going in the Forbidden Forest is heavenly music in my ears and meeting Fluffy on top is a good bonus. Even if we are only in the periphery, I can have a first impression and maybe ask Hagrid some relevant information, like what animal resides in which habitat in the forest or if he met some unique beasts, without seeming to interested. I mean everybody wants to know of the place they going to, so an 11-year-old should be the same.

Now I can finally go to the part, I waited for the whole week. So after lunch, where I made some small talk with the two first year girls of my house about their first impressions on Hogwarts, I say goodbye after saying I'm going to explore. With some detours to not make my destination obvious, I arrive at the seventh floor of the astronomy wing. I search the tapestry, where Barnabas the Barmy tries to train trolls in the art of ballett, and hold in. I mean seriously, can't wizards have some common sense? After making sure nobody is around, I go three times up and down before the opposite wall, while thinking of my requirements¹.

Then an old, but nicely carved wooden door, appears on the stonewall.

I enter and close the door behind me. From the inside, I at first see a knob next to the door with a signage above: Concealment.

That should be the way to implement my first wish, so I turn it in the designated direction.

I feel something vanishing, but I couldn't point out what. Aside from that, the door disappeared and in its place a venezian mirror, so I can see the corridor outside, without them seeing me or the room to make it easier to leave. Just think about what would happen, if I leave and a student in the corridor sees me. Not my version of secret room.

Then I turn around and stand still from shock. The room is nearly as big as the Great Hall and divided in five areas. Two are for the kneazles. One a natural looking forest with small trees to climb and soft grass to play on top. The second looks more like a indoor playground in a mall where parents left their kids to shop. It has anything, from bridges, tunnels and balancing parcours to slides and a ball pit.

Anluan's area is also divided into two parts. Like I wished he has a parcour from horse hurdles and another with breaking balls out of softball material to make him dodge but doesn't hurt him if one lands on him.

I have something like a little arena with some training dummies and targets. Target are fixed in a place to accuracy hit the center and the rolling or walking dummies train movement prediction and entaglement skills.

Big windows with shades give light without desturbing vision and the walls aren't as visible as they show the scenery around Hogwarts. One wall gives an overlook over the Black Lake, while another displays the grounds and quidditch pit. The last two picture the Forbidden Forest with moving birds above. A sight to be seen, really.

With such a good training environment, I spend a couple of hours every afternoon or evening here.

If someone asked, I said I've found a quiet place to make my homework, even though I mostly did them in professor Binns classes. On weekends, I don't trainfor more than 3 hours each day and otherwise read in the library. I still need new knowledge on beasts, but had the new project, to look for information about the Forbidden Forest. Either by questioning Hagrid at our morning walk to Fluffy, whose fur was obviously what gave him his name, or by reading books, but I think most are kept in the forbidden part of the library, so I need to make a plan to get there in the future.

That was how the next two weeks flew by, till we reached the next month.

That meant: Flying lessons!

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1 see at the beginning of chapter Confession