Ch. 15 The room of requirements

The next day, I repeated the same schedule. The classes that day were very boring. We were just made to revise what we had covered the previous day as well as checking whether we had completed the assignments given to us. The schedule went like 2 hours of potion in the morning in which we brewed the same cure for boils potion again. We would be doing so till he feels us dunderheads are competent in it. It was followed by two hours of herbology mostly theory again with a few practical's on how to determine the safety of the equipment and watering the plants type of stuff. I had not seen any dangerous or new looking magical plants yet.

Last lecture of the day was one hour of charms followed by one hour of flying to wrap things up. Everyone was pretty excited with the concept of flying. I was very interested in the brooms as well like could the broom enchantments be put on any object and what type of different enchantments do they use to speed up the broom. Not even knowing how to read enchantments yet, I couldn't do much with them. I had gotten a sturdy looking broom. I enjoyed flying, we obviously didn't fly much just hovered around close to the ground but I liked the feeling of floating on air. It didn't even feel like we were sitting on a broom more like a car seat. Cushioning charm maybe enchanted into it? Either way I couldn't help but look forward to my next class of flying in a week.

We didn't get much homework today since it was just repetition of last class. Meaning I had 6 hours of free time left before the curfew of today. I finally decided to go to the Room of Requirements (ROR). I obviously had many theories regarding how would it be, what would its functions be. Reading so much about it, I had to clear out the facts from the fiction. After ditching my friends on the premise that I would be exploring the castle on my own. I decided to go into the general direction of which I knew the room was in. After 15 or so minutes of navigating the school. I reached the 7th floor near the painting I think the room was in. All I knew about the room was it showed for those who needed it and you had to be exact in thinking in what you would want the room to have or do.

Without much delay after thinking for a bit I had a clear idea in mind walking across three times across the 7th floor I thought 'I need a place to practice and learn the basics of magic and occlumency and I want no one to be able to access the place when I'm using it.' After doing this a couple of times no change happened, I was about to change my thinking when the door appeared in front of me. When I entered the room, the door behind me closed. What I had in front of me was a simple desk with a comfortable chair with two shelves of books behind it and a large space empty to practice my magic maybe, curbing my desire to lunge on the books I decided to test whether the room would be able to change while I'm in it. 'I need dummies to train my magic aim' I thought and boom they appeared. It looked like some sort of transfiguration. Next thing I did was obviously lunge into the books I had a good 5 and a half hours before curfew and I didn't plan on going anywhere.

The books available in the basics of magic section were Foundation of magic, magic for beginners and understanding magic for dummies. There were so many books, I looked through some were total garbage, more fictitious then anyone could imagine and some were totally irrelevant talking about things which were not related to magic itself. Some books were beyond me as well the level of the knowledge in them was something I couldn't know or make out if it was true. I decided to test the limits of the room again and thought 'please show me the books that you find the most relevant for me now.' No change. Looks like individual thinking is out of the window or maybe not everything would be given to me on a silver spoon it looks like. Either way I had books to go through and time running out I put everything else behind me and resume to look through the books.

Time flew by, I didn't even realize until it was almost 9:30. I had been inside the room for 5 hours already. The gains from this one day of the room alone could be counted on par with the rest of the time I had spent in this life. I first realized that I had half an hour before curfew and I had missed dinner. I decided to test the room again and was surprised to find out that it could lead to certain place in the castle. Like I could use it to go to empty places near the kitchen or any of the common rooms or the common hall, which was a blessing but I couldn't navigate to anywhere in the castle but the few designate spots.

I made my way to the kitchen near the Hufflepuff common room by tickling in the pear in the painting which turned into a doorknob. After going inside the kitchen, I saw nothing except four long tables just like the replicas of the common hall. Then suddenly a house elf appeared out of nowhere asking what it could do for little master. I said I had missed the dinner could they please arrange it for me. As if shocked by the polite tone used the elf became very happy asked me to sit down and It would arrange it immediately. Sitting down the food appeared in front of me wolfing down, I asked the elf a couple of questions like whether they provided the food during the lunch and dinner timings. He happily said that they worked on everything in the castle. I also asked certain other questions like why no other house elves appeared it looked like a good house elf appears only when needed and it was impolite to be seen. Looks like they really were meant to help out the students. I put forth my first request whether they could change the pumpkin juice during the lunch and dinner time to orange and having eggs for breakfast to which he happily agreed. Looking at the short creature with large ears and eyes I couldn't help but be thankful, bidding him goodbye. To which he said it is the duty of the house elves to serve their masters and a few take care polite young master later I made my way to the dorm just in time for the curfew. I also learned the elf's name, apparently it was Nooby.

Roger was waiting for me asking me where I was. A few questions later he decided to agree that I was exploring the castle and lost track of time. I decided to sit on my bed and go over the gains of today. The room had no broken cheats that I knew of yet. The books formed in the room had to remain there they couldn't be taken out of the room. So, until I could learn how to duplicate the books, if they could be duplicated all my studying time would be spent there. I also decided not to go into the room of missing things since I didn't even know how to detect whether an object was somehow cursed it would be extremely stupid to do so before knowing that or knowing a way to protect myself. I also learned that my aim sucked. I could barely even get close to hitting the dummies. I could barely produce a blob of water with the water making charm 'Aguamenti' and barely a few little candle lights worth of fire from the fire making charm 'Incendio' looks like there will be no flying phoenixes or basilisks anytime soon.

The most improvement I had was in the sector of mind arts and in my understanding of magic no doubt. Not getting deep into the books they had already helped me out a lot. I was on the correct track with occlumency the next step after getting access to my inner mind was to get used to it so that you can gain access to it whenever you wanted and after that you would try and change things in your inner mind. Since it's your own place inside your mind you could form it however you wanted. Apparently, it did say so but I was barely able to make a ripple inside the mind space. I'll just have to patiently keep on trying. Figuring out that I was on the right track with occlumency was a great relief.

The next area where I had many of my doubts cleared was foundation of magic. Apparently in the was common for experienced wizards to have a gauge on their magic. Like the instinctively knew how much they had left. I was not close to that point yet but I could at least feel when my magic was being used. The books also said that the control on magic could simply be practiced by pouring different amount of magic into simple spells and by observing their timings. Like the Lumos spell you can easily gauge the amount of magic you put into it by the glow up to a certain extent after which the spell reaches its limit, after which the spell would have to be upgraded to a better version of the spell like solem, duo or maxima versions. Some of which were just more focused versions of the spell. Like an omni directional ball of light to a one directional flashlight. I was nowhere near using the modified versions of the spell yet so testing with just lumous would help me gauge the amount of magic it looked like and having better control.

There were other interesting things relating to the magic core but I had no idea of how and where to go about it yet. So, I decided to leave it alone. After experiencing the ROR I don't think I would be going back to the library, it was just way too inefficient. It might seem odd to the people I hang out with but they will come to adjust with it, since no one wants to spend their whole day with each other at least I didn't. They would just have to come to accept it. I loved magic and seeing the growth I had today, I would undoubtedly choose magic over anything else maybe if I was a normal teenager, I would choose to hang out with friends and take things slowly but I couldn't. I couldn't stand being mediocre when I could improve myself that day to be better. It was just who I was.

After meditating going over the things I did today one final time I headed to bed at nearly 11:30 Pm. It was time to improve myself and learn lots of things with that I closed my eyes in anticipation of my growth and the new things I would learn.