Chapter 78: The Room of Requirement
After dinner, Regulus walked into the library.
Madam Pince sat behind the desk at the entrance, polishing her spectacles with a velvet cloth. Seeing him enter, she lifted an eyelid but said nothing.
The library was still sparsely populated. A few seventh-years dug through references in a corner. Two Ravenclaw girls huddled together whispering. A handful of Hufflepuffs were catching up on homework.
Regulus headed for the Charms section and pulled out Common Charms and Their Variants.
An old copy — cover edges worn white, pages yellowed — yet clean and uncreased.
He found a window seat, opened to where he'd left off: the spell analysis of the Knockback Jinx.
Simple spell. He'd known it for ages. But other perspectives could still spark insight. The text described a combined application of the Knockback Jinx with the Impediment Jinx that could send a target flying a considerable distance.
Outside, the sky darkened by degrees. The castle's lamps kindled one by one.
Regulus turned a page, mind suddenly drifting elsewhere.
Last term he'd infiltrated the Restricted Section multiple times, wrapped in his improved Disillusionment Charm — blocking light, heat, and most magical fluctuation. At the time he'd thought it foolproof, capable of slipping past Madam Pince entirely. Looking back now — perhaps too naïve.
If Dumbledore really had been observing him since last term, then his late-night forays into the Restricted Section were, in all likelihood, known.
But on reflection: if no one had stopped him, that amounted to tacit permission.
A light but pointed cough cut through the library — Madam Pince's warning signal.
Regulus looked up. Barely a student remained.
He closed the book, returned it to the shelf, and filed out with the last stragglers.
The corridor was dimly lit. Most portraits were asleep; a few still awake yawned or straightened their collars inside their frames.
Regulus didn't head straight for the Slytherin common room. He stopped at the second-floor landing, glanced left and right, confirmed he was alone, and gave a gentle flick of his wand.
An icy tingle spread over his body. The Disillusionment Charm took hold.
His outline blurred; edges melded with the environment.
This was his improved version — not just visual camouflage, but footsteps, breathing sounds, scent, body heat, and magical fluctuation all suppressed to a minimum.
But now that he thought about it, even this wasn't enough.
The Disillusionment Charm's principle was bending light with magic — creating a visual illusion.
The charm itself emitted magical waves. A skilled wizard could sense them.
The Potter family's ancestral Invisibility Cloak — legendarily a gift from Death, one of the Deathly Hallows — even that caliber of artefact couldn't fool Dumbledore.
In the original story, Harry wandered the castle under the cloak, yet Dumbledore could always call out his name with unerring accuracy.
Even Snape might detect something — adult Snape, that is; the young Snape wasn't there yet.
Regulus moved through the empty corridor, footsteps silent.
He needed a more thorough method of concealment. Bending light wasn't sufficient — he wanted light to pass directly through.
Muffling sound wasn't sufficient — he wanted sound to simply not be generated. Even body heat should match the surrounding environment exactly.
That would likely involve altering one's state of existence itself.
But he couldn't do it yet. Insufficient knowledge, insufficient magical precision.
Reaching the eighth floor, Regulus halted.
Here: opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy being clubbed by trolls. The blank stretch of stone wall looked especially austere in the low light.
He focused and silently recited.
'I need a place to practice magic. Absolutely private. Where no one will disturb me.'
Three repetitions. The wall remained bare. As expected — just standing still didn't work.
He'd wanted to test whether a different approach might succeed — even wondered whether the three-pass walk was merely formality, the real mechanism being the perception of intense need.
But clearly, the walk was necessary.
Regulus paced three times before the stretch of wall opposite the tapestry. The next moment, a door appeared.
Oak. Fine wood-grain across the surface. Polished brass handle.
It simply materialized — no sound, no light, no spatial warp or ripple — as though it had always been there, simply unseen until now.
Regulus opened every sense wide. Magic radiated outward, scouring the air for the slightest anomaly.
But — nothing.
The door's appearance had triggered no change. Ambient magic was stable. Spatial structure seamless and continuous. Even the air currents flowed around the door as though it were part of the original architecture.
Regulus stood rooted, staring at the door, and sank into thought.
The Room of Requirement answered a wizard's need.
But how?
If it were Transfiguration — wall becoming door, room behind it — there would be magical fluctuation.
If it were spatial magic — an opening cut into the wall — spatial structure would shift.
If it were illusion, his perception wouldn't return a total blank.
But there was nothing.
A notion bubbled up from somewhere deep — groundless, irrational, a bubble surfacing from the subconscious.
Perhaps the Room of Requirement was always here, existing in a superposition of 'is' and 'is not.'
When a wizard formed a definite need, the need was observed by some mechanism, and the state collapsed into definite existence.
The thought caught his breath.
If this were true — if the Lady Ravenclaw, in designing this room, had employed a concept touching the deepest-layer rules of the world...
Then her magical attainment far surpassed all later records, reaching a tier that bordered on myth.
Regulus tamped down his astonishment. He couldn't verify the conjecture.
He couldn't even grasp the Room of Requirement's basic principles, let alone its deeper design logic.
Some things in the wizarding world just were. They existed, they worked — and no one knew why.
He didn't understand it, but he was profoundly shaken.
Since he couldn't understand it, he'd set it aside for now.
Regulus gripped the handle and pushed the door open. Inside: a training hall.
The room was large — more than twenty meters on each side, ceiling roughly ten meters high. Ample space for most forms of magical practice.
Dark hardwood flooring with a slight give underfoot — cushioning a fall.
All four walls were smooth stone, surfaces inscribed with magic-absorbing runes to prevent spells from ricocheting or damaging the walls.
In one corner, several training dummies encased in heavy leather.
In another, a wooden table bearing a few books and practice implements.
Clearly, this place saw regular use.
Regulus scanned the room. No trace of other people — but the training dummies bore scorch marks from spell impacts; the floorboards showed wear; the table edges were polished smooth from long handling.
The Room of Requirement was secret, but not unknown.
In the original story, Harry Potter used it for D.A. meetings. Draco Malfoy used it to repair the Vanishing Cabinet. Dumbledore used it to find a bathroom. And there were the various students who stumbled in by chance.
Over centuries, the room had surely been discovered many times. He couldn't treat it as an exclusively private space.
Regulus walked to the center of the room and sat cross-legged.
Today's visit was only meant to confirm the location and familiarize himself with the environment. But since he was here, he might as well practice a bit.
There were spells he needed to test — ones unsuitable for the common room or dormitory. This was the right place.
Regulus fished a gold Galleon from his pocket.
It lay in his palm — a dark-gold sheen, edge serrations crisp, the Gringotts goblin portrait on the front, a serial number on the reverse.
He set the Galleon on the floor before him and stepped back three paces.
Spatial Warping.
He'd been practicing this continuously since Christmas — since that first success, shifting a brooch five centimeters. Every day, time was carved out for an attempt.
Progress was glacial — so slow it barely registered — but he had patience.
Magic was never built in a day.
Regulus closed his eyes. Perception fanned outward.
The Galleon's position. The spatial nodes — fine, stable.
Within three meters, the entire spatial structure rendered itself in his mind as a three-dimensional map: every node's position, every connection's strength.
The theory was simple: let space fold itself, bring two nodes together, then pass the object across.
Regulus concentrated. Magic surged from within, acting directly on space itself.
He watched the node where the Galleon lay and imagined it as a buoy on water, sliding down an invisible gradient toward a neighboring empty node.
Magic touched the spatial fabric. The node trembled faintly. The air around the Galleon rippled — invisible to the naked eye.
Regulus calibrated his output, following the spatial structure's natural tendency, finding the path of least resistance.
Intention locked on the Galleon. Magic extended along the structure's natural grain — will and magic in pure tandem.
The Galleon vanished from its spot. No in-between. One instant it was there; the next, it appeared on the floor two meters away.
Positional error — not the intended target point. Nearly half a meter off.
The Galleon lay face-up, the Gringotts goblin glinting under the training-hall lights.
Regulus walked over and picked it up.
The metal surface was faintly warm — residual friction from the spatial transit. Evidence of vast room for improvement.