Harry Potter : Chapter 36: Turning Point I

The sun shone through the circular stained glass window into the Rùnda, the secret room that Rubeus decided to build from an unused corridor of the castle of Hogwarts, illuminating in a beam of multi-colored light several desks covered in pieces of parchment more or less organized.

In the quiet of the room, the usual bustling of the castle was muted, leaving only the familiar scratching of a quill over paper, with an occasional tinkling sound when the quill was dipped into a glass inkpot.

Under the large stained glass window, there was an area willingly let bare of desks, chairs, and whatnot.

Free to be turned in whatever the occupants of the room wanted it to be, but besides that, the room looked like a far too large section of the Library with not enough books to justify its existence.

Yet, it was enough for those that had created it: the mere freedom of leaving their notes around with no risk of them either being displaced or taken by other students made possible for Riddle, McGonagall, and Hagrid, to take a break whenever they wished, and to return to their personal projects at any time.

Sure, the delight of having some form of insight into the work of the other two brilliant students was something that each of the creators of the room enjoyed in the privacy of their thoughts, nevermind the occasional opportunity of 'butting in' and testing one's own original ideas in a new context.

Minerva McGonagall stretched backward from her seated position while she set down the quill as she finished jotting down her notes about her last piece of independent research: 'Enchanting the Transfigured'.

"It looks quite fascinating." the smooth voice of Tom Riddle caused the witch to tilt her head in his direction, blinking in surprise for an instant as she realized that he must have been looking over her shoulder for a whle."

"Tom," she greeted him with a quick smile, "I didn't hear you enter."

"You were quite enthralled." he replied diplomatically while he tapped his wand over the last stack of papers to make an appearance over Minerva's desk, a frown appearing on his face while he focused, the familiar spell he was attempting still fighting against him as he refused to speak it out loud.

Overachieving Slytherins. The Gryffindor witch smothered a smile while she slid her chair back, her expression clearing up in one of open respect when the small stack of her notes became two.

Immediately, she noticed that the one Riddle had made looked a bit... fainter than the original, the ink just a shade less dark than her own, the thickness of the sheets of parchment not quite the same, and not perfectly even.

"That is rather advanced, even for you, and that is without mentioning your insistence over non-verbal casting."

Riddle's lips pursed in quiet acceptance of her not-quite condescending tone, recognizing just as easily as her how much his copy of her notes differed from the original. Leafing through the first couple of pages, he clicked his tongue in distaste before he answered.

"I haven't heard Hagrid say an incantation since his first year."

That's your reason? Minerva swept her eyes over the rest of the secret room, stopping briefly to consider the few knuts sitting innocuously over the desk that Riddle had just risen from: "And they call me competitive." she teased him lightly, receiving a smirk in exchange.

"The words on the first page are one and the same," he replied while he kept studying the results of his last attempt at a piece of Transfiguration that was without a doubt advanced NEWT material.

"apparently, I have difficulties with the first half of the spell."

The Gryffindor witch shook her head minutely while she walked a bit, stretching her legs after the length of time she spent sitting.

"Conjuring is not exactly the most simple of matters, never mind of something that you don't know inside out."

"Yes," he deadpanned while the results of his failed Transfiguration burst into flame with another tap of his wand.

"surprisingly enough, I am aware of that."

Minerva didn't bother suppressing her smile at the rise she managed to get out of the wizard that was always so proper and in control.

"It is still outrageous that both you and Rubeus manage to follow the theory, if you succeeded perfectly also in the practical aspect... well, what need there would be for Hogwarts in that case?"

"The enchanting of a Transfigured element would leverage the true nature of the object without breaking the change in Shape?" the Slytherin changed topic, unwilling to speak of something he wasn't a master of for any longer than necessary.

"It is a curiously niche topic to catch your interest... do you have a new project?"

"If done correctly, the enchanting would 'pin in place' the Transfiguration, making it harder to unravel." Minerva replied as she finished walking around the room in order to return to her desk, her notes sitting exactly how she had left them.

Since the 'birth' of the Rùnda, which saw a collaboration between the branches of Potions, Transfiguration, and a vast subsect of Charms known as Warding, the room had become more than what Minerva ever thought possible.

Her eyes slid briefly over the large cabinet with glass doors that contained a selection of potions that Rubeus insisted were 'contemplation aids', and she had to forcefully turn away from the potential fun that those harmless-looking ampoules contained.

"Given what we accomplished together, is it any wonder that I'd be looking into other things that can be accomplished by using more than one discipline at the same time?" she continued as her wand found its way in her hand.

Carefully, focusing her mind with the expertise born of years of practice, she dragged the length of wood over the stack of papers, almost trailing its borders while she pictured it in her mind: "Gemino."

The incantation left her lips while her wand lifted from the notes and pointed at an empty spot on her desk, almost as if she was pouring water out of her length of wood.

And almost like water falling through the air, there was a ripple above the wood of her desk, which quickly disappeared under a perfect copy of her notes.

From the color of the ink, to the thickness of the pages, to, she fancied, even the weight they had as she lifted them and handed them to Tom, who accepted them with a grateful nod, his expression blank as usual.

Her eyes trailed the few specks of dust that danced in the colored light that the window offered, looking almost like faeries hovering over the tables arrayed more or less chaotically in the center of the room. 

For all the usefulness of this room, it's still somewhat bare...

"You can thank me with a round at chess." the smile the witch gifted to the Slytherin made him almost grimace, his eyes darting from the stack of notes in his hands to her face in a conflicted manner.

On one hand, he enjoyed winning at just about everything, on the other he would have liked to focus on the new knowledge that Minerva had freshly made available to him.

Then again, the Gryffindor witch was hardly an easy opponent on the chessboard: for all of her competitiveness and occasionally too daring moves, she instinctively knew how to sharpen her enthusiasm into a focus few things could sustain without revealing all that they were.

It was one of the reasons why she was so capable when it came to academic research, never mind Transfiguration or Quidditch.

"Very well." Riddle relented as he walked over an area willingly left bare under the large, stained glass window, summoning a couple of comfortable armchairs from the other side of the room while Minerva picked a familiar chessboard from one of the shelves that still hadn't been filled with books or stacks of bound notes regarding this or that topic.

A wooden stool was distractedly transfigured into a coffee table and placed between the two armchairs Tom had set facing each other, and while she busied herself setting the pieces, the Slytherin casually opened the piece of furniture holding the brews that Rubeus left for their peruse.

The eyes of the witch followed the form of the wizard almost languidly moving his right hand from an ampoule to the next, his eyes quickly scanning the pieces of parchment that described each brew until he found something he deemed suitable.

"I still find difficult to believe that we willingly drink anything that Hagrid brewed for recreational purposes..."

Minerva smiled as the Slytherin walked back to the impromptu chess match, a pear-shaped flask the size of a quaffle held in his left while he read the recipe he held in his right.

"I'm unsurprised he decided to add his successful experiments to the room," she commented while sitting down, the wand once more in her hand as she prepared the next bit of transfiguration.

"I still don't know where he found the furniture, and from the way you dedicated yourself to restoring everything that looked even remotely unkempt or worn out, I'm guessing that even you ignore it."

The dark eyes of Tom Riddle found hers while he sat, settling the pear-shaped glass flask beside the chessboard as he did so, only to return to studying the recipe in his hand.

"Why would you think I ignore it? There are a few empty classrooms here and there, and there had been Clubs that no longer needed the furniture."

=========================

if you want to read ahead of the public release, you can join my p atreon :

p atreon.com/Darkness013