He started pacing back and forth. Charlie wasn't in a rush, quietly watching Anthony work.
The result was obvious: the Room of Requirement gave no response whatsoever.
Telling the Room of Requirement "I want my bedroom" reminded Charlie of movies where a heartbroken protagonist gets into a taxi and just says, "Home!"
And the taxi driver goes, "How the hell am I supposed to know where you live?"
The current situation was exactly like that.
If the Room of Requirement had a mouth, it probably would have said, "How the hell am I supposed to know what your bedroom looks like?"
Naturally, the failure didn't discourage Anthony and Hector.
Hector suggested, "Anthony, try visualizing that table we just saw. Remember it?
"Keep picturing your bedroom's layout, but heavily emphasize that specific table.
"Make it like you're explicitly telling the room you want that elegant long table, not just some random old furniture."
"Makes sense," Anthony nodded, before pacing back and forth in front of the blank wall again.
Moments later, a door appeared on the stone.
Pushing it open and stepping inside, they found the exact same bedroom layout as his previous attempt—except for the desk.
The desktop was dusty and bore two distinct handprints, left exactly where Hector had touched it in the storage room earlier.
"It worked!" Anthony cheered excitedly.
"It seems like it operates a bit like the Sorting Hat. It can read some of our internal thoughts, including the specific scenes we visualize."
Building on Anthony's thought, Hector added, "But it probably can only construct things using what's already in that massive storage room.
"If you asked it for a motorcar, I highly doubt it could conjure one out of thin air."
Listening to their analysis, Charlie fell into deep thought.
"Right, Charlie."
"Yeah?" Charlie looked up.
"Are you going to practice spells now? The two of us are going to head down for lunch."
"Are you coming back up afterwards?"
Anthony thought for a moment before shaking his head. "Nah. I think I'll head back to the common room this afternoon to write that letter to my parents."
"Yeah, that's definitely more important," Hector agreed with a nod.
"Alright then, you two head down. I'm going to practice some spells here for a bit and grab lunch later."
"No problem. Just don't lose track of time," Anthony nodded.
"I won't. Just going to warm up," Charlie smiled.
Shortly after, their figures disappeared around the corner of the corridor. Their footsteps slowly faded away into the empty hallway until there was total silence.
Charlie turned back and walked into Anthony's constructed bedroom. With a flip of his wrist, a piece of chocolate appeared in his hand.
He didn't plan on eating it. Instead, he simply placed it on the elegant wooden table, left the Room of Requirement, and waited for the wall to return to normal.
Once the blank wall reappeared, he began pacing.
"I need to go to that massive storage room."
After three passes, the heavy, colossal doors materialized.
He pushed them open and followed the narrow path he had taken earlier with Hector and Anthony, quickly locating the elegant table.
Only... where was his chocolate?
Just as he was puzzling over it, a rustling sound caught his attention.
It was coming from two incredibly ugly, disgusting little creatures.
They had humanoid shapes, but sported an extra pair of arms and legs. They were barely the size of a palm, with pointed ears, bodies covered in coarse black hair, and thick, beetle-like wings on their backs.
To the untrained eye, they might be mistaken for some sort of dark fairy.
But in reality, these common magical creatures—known as Doxies—were essentially the cockroaches and rats of the wizarding world.
Back in Diagon Alley, Charlie had noticed several shops heavily advertising Doxycide and repellents.
And right now, these two Doxies were viciously fighting over his piece of chocolate.
So the Room of Requirement hadn't erased it; these two little pests had simply nicked it.
Thinking it over, he shook his head and walked out of the massive storage room.
If he remembered correctly, one of Voldemort's Horcruxes was currently hidden somewhere in this exact room.
Naturally, he had absolutely no intention of going anywhere near it.
If the diadem possessed anything like the insidious nature of Tom Riddle's diary, it was best to stay as far away as possible. Even if it was the lost relic of Ravenclaw, it wasn't worth the risk.
Leaving the storage room, Charlie stood in the corridor, deep in thought as he waited for the giant doors to vanish.
If all the materials the Room of Requirement used to construct its various iterations were pulled straight from that massive, stadium-sized dump...
Then this place was clearly unsuited to serve as a permanent base of operations.
He simply couldn't trust leaving anything valuable in there.
It wasn't that he was worried about thieves—if Voldemort felt safe hiding a piece of his soul here, Charlie didn't have much to fear on that front.
However, if Charlie wanted to use the Room of Requirement to build himself a proper candy-making workshop, that idea was completely dead in the water.
He couldn't exactly leave his food-production equipment in a massive room infested with Doxies.
Of course, as a hidden, safe spell-practice room, it was still absolutely perfect.
Once the storage room doors vanished, Charlie summoned the spell-practice room again and got to work.
Even though he didn't have a watch, he had another way of keeping time.
Namely, a highly specific, time-limited piece of chocolate.
He popped a piece of moon-lightning chocolate into his mouth. The goal now was to test if the moon-lightning blend could actively assist in spellcasting.
Pure moonlight chocolate couldn't do that; it was strictly a stamina-recovery item.
Three minutes later, a loud explosion echoed through the practice room.
Bang!
Did his control over the spell drop? Charlie waved his hand, fanning away the foul-smelling smoke billowing in front of him.
He had just cast the Softening Charm. While he hadn't mastered it to absolute perfection yet, managing to trigger an explosion this severe was something he hadn't even done on his very first attempt.
"So the difficulty of casting spiked because my brain entered the Overload state, but my physical wand movements failed to match the new rhythm?"
Calming his mind, he tried again. He treated it like he was a complete beginner, maintaining absolute focus and caution.
While recalibrating his casting rhythm on the fly was difficult, he just barely managed it.
Five minutes later, a flawless Softening Charm struck the training dummy.
The instant the spell hit, the dummy completely collapsed into a limp, rubbery puddle.
Without a doubt, this was a level of potency that Charlie couldn't achieve without the chocolate.
The difficulty of casting spiked, but so did the raw power.
High risk, high reward. A dangerous but beautiful flash of lightning indeed.
He practiced relentlessly until the chocolate's effects began to fade, finally putting his wand away.
Perhaps because he was simultaneously straining his brain with the Overload state and actively burning through his magical stamina, the physical backlash of the moon-lightning chocolate hit much harder this time.
Still, he could handle it for now.
Leaving the Room of Requirement, he headed down to the Great Hall for lunch.
Anthony and Hector were nowhere to be seen; they had likely already returned to the common room.
After eating, Charlie made his way back to Ravenclaw Tower.
Sure enough, his two roommates were in the dorm, furiously scribbling away at their desks. Not wanting to disturb them, Charlie pulled out a piece of parchment.
He needed to write a shopping list—well, not really a list, just a bulk order for raw chocolate.
"Let's test the quality from Diagon Alley first," he muttered.
Once his order was drafted, he tackled his Potions and Herbology homework.
The afternoon flew by. Before heading down to the Great Hall for dinner, the three boys took a trip up to the Owlery to send off their respective letters.
"I wonder how long it takes to fly all the way to London. Honestly, if I had the choice, I'd rather just use the telephone," Hector muttered, watching his owl disappear out the window.
Charlie silently agreed. If he had the choice, he'd much rather just use an e-commerce app than write a bloody letter.
Leaving the Owlery, they strolled across the grounds. The sky was already a deep, bruised purple; it wouldn't be long before it was pitch black.
"Gets dark incredibly fast," Hector noted. "What time is it?"
Anthony checked his watch. "Six o'clock."
"Makes sense. We're in the Scottish Highlands. The latitude is pretty high," Charlie said.
"What's latitude?" Anthony asked.
"It's, er... where we are on the globe," Hector offered, struggling to explain.
"Sort of get it. But what does being high up have to do with it getting dark fast?"
"It's a bit complicated to explain," Charlie waved it off. "Let's just drop it."
"No worries. Once we switch to winter time, it won't feel like it's getting dark so early anyway."
"That's literally just tricking yourself by changing the clocks," Hector laughed helplessly.
The whole of the UK changed their clocks twice a year specifically to deal with the miserable winter daylight hours.
On their way back toward the castle, they spotted two familiar figures walking ahead of them. Catching sight of the trio, one of them waved.
"Hey, Charlie."
Hearing the voice, Charlie instantly knew who it was—Harry Potter. Meaning the shadow trailing beside him was his best mate, Ron Weasley.
Hector and Anthony weren't familiar with Harry; they hadn't even exchanged a single word with him yet.
But there was no denying that both boys were deeply intrigued by the famous Savior of the Wizarding World.
"Evening, Harry Potter," Anthony greeted.
"Evening, mates," Harry nodded.
Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a palm-sized, deeply cracked, dark brown rock.
"Have you lot eaten yet? Want a biscuit?" Harry offered.
"Yeah, fancy a biscuit? Homemade," the red-haired Ron chimed in.
"Well, it'd be rude to say no," Anthony smiled, reaching out to take it.
Charlie noticed Anthony's hand visibly drop under the weight of the biscuit, clearly caught off guard by its sheer density.
The second the rock cake hit his palm, Anthony's expression violently shifted.
But he recovered quickly. "Wow, this is massive. Actually, on second thought, mind if I save this for a late-night snack? It's about time to head to the Great Hall for dinner anyway."
"Fair enough, good point," Harry and Ron nodded.
Whether Anthony actually ate it or not was irrelevant; they were just happy to have successfully offloaded one. They clearly couldn't care less about the former.
"I heard Snape gave you an absolute nightmare of a time this morning," Anthony said, striking up a conversation.
"Nightmare doesn't even begin to cover it." Harry had been stood up and grilled with a barrage of questions, none of which had anything to do with the Nettle Potion.
"You mean the Cure for Boils, right?" Hector corrected.
"Same difference. It's got nettles in it, hasn't it?" Ron dismissed the minor detail.
"I genuinely think he just hates me," Harry sighed helplessly, shaking his head. "Speaking of which, Charlie."
Charlie looked at Harry, slightly confused.
"I heard from a few people that you and Snape actually got into a physical fight during class."
"?"
Charlie's face scrunched up in absolute disbelief. What kind of insane rumor was that? Him, fighting Snape?
"Who on earth started that rumor? I'm genuinely curious what kind of smooth-brained idiot could come up with something so monumentally stupid," Charlie said, thoroughly annoyed.
"No idea, but everyone is saying you two went at it."
"We just traded a few verbal jabs, that's it." Charlie dragged a hand down his face in exasperation.
"That's still incredibly brilliant," Ron said, staring at Charlie in awe.
"Someone actually dared to talk back to Snape? Just looking at his face is enough to terrify a normal person."
"It really isn't that deep," Charlie laughed.
"He's a biased teacher, and I'm a cheeky student. Me talking back to him is just the natural order of things, isn't it?
"Besides, don't get it twisted. I don't let that personal annoyance bleed into the actual class.
"I have to say, based purely on that first lesson, you can actually learn real, practical magic in Snape's classroom. As a teacher, he is miles better than Quirrell or Professor Binns."
"Are you joking?" Ron clearly strongly disagreed.
"Professor Binns literally died and came back as a ghost just so he wouldn't miss a class. How can a teacher like Snape even compare to that?"
Snap! Charlie snapped his fingers, holding up three digits.
He smiled. "Mate, discussing teaching quality and discussing professional ethics are two entirely different things.
"And separate from both of those is whether or not we actually like the bloke.
"If you can't separate those three things, the price of your hatred for Snape is going to be paid entirely by your Potions grades!
"You can hate Snape, but the actual Potions curriculum is solid.
"If you can separate them, you end up like me: I absolutely loathe the bloke, but I'll still pay strict attention in his class and absorb every ounce of knowledge he drops—while simultaneously acknowledging that he possesses zero professional ethics!"
"That sounds insanely difficult to actually do," Ron muttered, his lip curling slightly. "But I suppose I admit you've got a point."
Charlie just smiled, choosing not to push the issue.
For an eleven-year-old kid, it truly wasn't an easy mental hurdle to clear.
And for a Gryffindor—historically the most emotionally driven of all the Houses—it was likely even harder.
Emotionally driven...
Charlie's wandering mind began to drift again.
Judging by his memories of the original story, Gryffindor seemed to mass-produce exceptional duelists and brawlers.
And it was a known fact that spells required intense emotion as a driving force.
Was there a direct correlation there?
It seemed he had a few more theories to add to that essay he was handing in to Professor McGonagall.
He walked in silence, lost in his own thoughts.
It wasn't until the rich, savory smell of food wafting from the Great Hall hit his nose that he was finally snapped back to reality.