Chapter 18: Night Visit to the Room of Requirement

Tom shook his head vigorously.

"You don't need to worry about this; I'm going to find out what's going on tonight."

"Your behavior is just like a Gryffindor!" Hermione slammed the table. She was so angry that her cheeks puffed up like a pufferfish, but in the end, she reluctantly gave in, like a deflated balloon. She realized that she probably couldn't stop this guy. The only way to stop him might be to wake up the Head of House, but she didn't want to do that.

If she did something like that, Tom would definitely face severe punishment, and their friendship would probably come to an end.

So, after some internal struggle, Hermione compromised: "You can go, but you have to take me with you. I'll supervise you to prevent you from making more mistakes!"

With that, she put on a stern face and tried to look imposing.

Even though she appeared stern, the atmosphere between the two of them relaxed. Tom agreed to Hermione's request. However, he just stood there without moving.

"Why aren't you going yet?"

"Are you planning to wander around the castle with me in slippers?" Tom pointed helplessly at Hermione's shoes under the chair. "At least put on some proper shoes."

Hermione glanced at him and jumped off the chair. Then, she ran back to the dormitory hastily. She had anticipated this, but she was worried that Tom might try to sneak away while she was changing her shoes. She returned to the common room, hurriedly put on a pair of brown snow boots, and rushed back outside, not even changing her nightgown, just draping a wizard's robe over it.

Fortunately, Tom was still staying obediently in the common room.

"I thought you'd sneak away right away."

"If you want, you can go back and change your clothes again. I promise to sneak away by myself."

Both of them opened the door to the common room and sneaked out quietly.

Luckily, the Ravenclaws lived in a tower not far from the eighth floor, so Tom and Hermione found their way to the eighth floor relatively quickly after searching for the stairs for a while. If they lived in the dungeons and basements like the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs, they probably wouldn't have found their way to the eighth floor tonight.

After wandering around on the eighth floor for a while, Tom and Hermione finally found their destination for the night: the Room of Requirement.

Tom knew that this room was located on the eighth floor of the castle, across from a tapestry of a giant club beating a giant named Barnabas. Even with a clear clue, it took him nearly half an hour to find it. He stood in front of the empty wall, concentrating on the thought that he needed to solve a puzzle. As he walked back and forth in front of the wall for the third time, a very smooth door suddenly appeared on the wall.

"Hermione, I'm going in," Tom informed Hermione and opened the door to the Room of Requirement. As he entered, the task for the third stage of his Dusty Wanderer mission was also completed.

What appeared in front of Tom at this moment was a spacious room, over a hundred meters long and wide. In the center of the room stood five pillars, each over ten meters high, with several marks on each pillar. In front of each pillar were five stones, arranged in the same pattern as the pillars.

Hermione curiously walked up to one of the pillars and looked at them.

"What is this?" she asked Tom.

"I don't know," Tom shook his head. He stepped on one of the stones, and it sank into the ground, making a crisp sound. Excited, Hermione shouted, "I understand!"

By now, she was completely drawn to the puzzle, completely forgetting about rules and regulations. She pulled Tom over to the pillars and pointed at the markings on them, saying, "You see, these marks correspond to numbers one to five, I think this is the order, and these stones and pillars have a one-to-one relationship, which means as long as we step on the stones corresponding to the numbers in the marks in order, we can solve the puzzle!"

Saying this, Hermione enthusiastically started solving the puzzle. She stepped on the stones in the order indicated on the pillars, and each stone made a crisp sound when stepped on. However, after she had stepped on all five stones, there was no reaction, and the pillars and stones remained inanimate.

Hermione thought for a moment, feeling that maybe she had stepped on one of the stones when they first entered, which might have messed up the result. So she repeated the process, but still, there was no response.

Tom stood by and watched Hermione struggle to solve the puzzle time and time again. In the end, Hermione gave up, admitting that her approach was flawed. She stood in front of the pillars, her brows furrowed, not saying a word, and tapped her foot on the ground.

Tom walked to the edge of the room and circled the walls slowly. His actions caught Hermione's attention, and she called out, "Did you find something?"

"Not yet... wait, Hermione, come here!" Tom found something interesting in a corner of the wall and quickly beckoned Hermione over.

"Look!" he pointed at five shallow protrusions on the wall. "I think this is the key to breaking the puzzle."

He pressed his hand on one of the protrusions, and the ground in front of him suddenly sank with a loud rumble. A pit appeared in front of Tom and Hermione. The pit's walls were made of rock, with three graduated lines on them and a handle at the bottom. Above the pit on the wall, two rough taps appeared.

"This should correspond to the fifth pillar!" Hermione discovered the clue. She hurriedly ran along the wall and quickly found four other stone pits at the other four corners and the midpoint of one wall.

She tried turning the taps and found that one tap could release water, while the other could suck it in. Despite having been installed for many years, the water that flowed out was still crystal clear.

But Hermione was stuck. She had found all the stone pits but didn't know how they related to the pillars.

Tom opened one tap and let it continuously pour water into the pit. When it reached the first graduation line, the pit suddenly made a slightly deep sound.

"I understand!" Tom suddenly realized. "It's like this!"

"What's like this?" Hermione felt like she had a vague answer in her mind, but she couldn't quite grasp it at the moment.

"Earlier, when you stepped on the stones, they made a sound, and I remember that one of the stone's sounds was very similar to the sound from the water pit just now."

"You go step on the first stone again, and I'll go to water pit number one," Tom assigned a task to Hermione.

Sure enough, the sound from the first stone matched the sound that water pit number one made when its water level reached the second graduation line. The puzzle was solved.

The two of them followed the same pattern for the remaining four water pits, filling each with the right amount of water.

"There's still no reaction. Did we mishear something?" Hermione was getting nervous.

Tom shook his head and looked at the five pillars. He stepped on the stones again in the correct order. This time, after stepping on all of them, the entire room suddenly filled with ancient but pleasant music, making them feel as if they were in the midst of a relic.

After the music finished, the ground in the middle of the five pillars split open, revealing a treasure chest in front of Tom and Hermione.

(End of this chapter)