Having finalized his plans with Harry, Charlie returned to the Ravenclaw table.
Lunch was as spectacular as always. After quickly polishing off his meal, he bid Anthony and Hector farewell and headed upstairs.
He had plenty of time to kill before his afternoon visit to Hagrid's hut. First on the agenda: a trip to the Room of Requirement.
Based on his previous theories, the Room pulled from Hogwarts' vast, hidden reserves of discarded items to construct whatever the user needed.
Given centuries of accumulated magical rubbish, it stood to reason he might find some viable alchemical tools hidden within its walls.
Reaching the eighth floor, a slightly winded Charlie leaned heavily against the stone wall.
Honestly, he was starting to regret his Sorting. Aside from bagging Anthony and Hector as brilliant dormmates, Hufflepuff might have been the smarter choice.
At the very least, their common room was on the ground floor. The daily cardio at Hogwarts was brutal.
Of course, inhaling a massive lunch and practically sprinting up eight flights of stairs hadn't helped.
After catching his breath, Charlie paced the empty stretch of corridor.
I need a fully equipped Alchemy studio, he repeated in his mind.
After his third pass, a door materialized in the stone.
It wasn't particularly grand. Barely six feet tall with a rounded arch, the door was forged from heavy, blackened wood and fitted with a simple brass ring for a handle.
Compared to the ornate, ancient doors scattered throughout the rest of the castle, this one looked both ancient and aggressively primitive.
Looks like no one has opened this in at least two centuries, Charlie thought.
He pushed the door open. The rusted hinges let out an agonizing, ear-splitting shriek.
A heavy, overpowering scent of ancient dust wafted out. It wasn't the smell of a poorly ventilated room, but rather the distinct, lingering scent of incredibly old artifacts.
The room itself was slightly larger than a student dormitory, but smaller than a standard classroom.
To his left stood a row of heavy wooden cabinets, lined with various unidentified phials and jars. Directly opposite the door sat a long, sturdy desk, groaning under the weight of several massive stacks of books.
The books were caked in a thick layer of grey dust.
Charlie walked over. In the exact center of the desk lay two open volumes. The pages were yellowed and violently brittle; the ink had faded to illegible smudges.
Beside them sat an inkwell and a quill. The feather had long since petrified, and the ink inside the glass was nothing more than a dried, crusty stain.
Someone had definitely used this room for Alchemy before. But that was a very, very long time ago.
He turned his attention to the right side of the room. It was absolute chaos.
Brass scales, heavy iron cauldrons, stone mortars, and what looked suspiciously like a blacksmith's bellows.
There was a bizarre compass, several floating crystal pillars, and a highly complex array of magnifying lenses.
Scattered among the tools were raw chunks of unidentified metal, blocks of wood, unpolished gemstones, and... bones.
Clearly, some unknown student had spent a massive amount of time in here deeply engrossed in alchemical experimentation.
Could it have been Voldemort during his school days? Charlie wondered wildly.
He quickly dismissed the idea. If it had been Tom Riddle, he undoubtedly would have destroyed the books before leaving, especially if they contained restricted Dark Arts.
Still, the thought made him pause. He was suddenly far more wary of the random bones scattered across the workbench. Were they human?
Whatever. Doesn't matter, Charlie shook his head. Even if they are, it's not the end of the world. The castle is literally full of ghosts.
Given the very real possibility that a previous student had been conducting Dark alchemical rituals in here, Charlie decided to tread carefully.
He started with the books on the center desk.
The two open volumes were practically fossilized. When Charlie gently pushed them closed, the pages crunched loudly, sounding exactly like crushed crisps.
Secrets of High-End Alchemy, read the cover of the first book.
He moved on to the towering stacks.
Secrets of the Darkest Art. Curses and Counter-Curses. Curses and Alchemy. Alchemy Supreme: The Soul.
Just as he suspected. Whoever had been holed up in here wasn't exactly a beacon of light.
Then again, if they were studying standard curriculum, they wouldn't have needed to hide in the Room of Requirement.
Charlie dug deeper. The books at the very bottom of the stacks seemed to represent the student's earlier, slightly less unhinged days.
Potions and Alchemy. Exploring Ancient Alchemy: A Comparative Study of Egypt and Greece.
Those definitely looked worth a read.
Charlie's eyes lit up. As he pulled the next book free, his heart practically skipped a beat.
Encyclopedia of Common Material Properties: Botanical.
Beneath it lay the Mineral and Zoological volumes of the exact same series.
Absolute treasure! Charlie's heart hammered against his ribs.
These three encyclopedias wouldn't just be massive assets for Alchemy; they were exactly what he needed for Potions.
As he had realized during his very first class, the standard Potions textbook was deeply flawed. It focused entirely on the step-by-step brewing process, entirely neglecting to explain the actual magical properties of the ingredients or how they chemically reacted with one another.
These encyclopedias perfectly filled that massive gap in his knowledge.
Absolutely brilliant.
He shoved the terrifying Dark Arts texts aside and carefully extracted the three heavy encyclopedias.
Some purists might have called him an idiot for ignoring the incredibly rare, highly restricted dark magic tomes.
But Charlie couldn't care less. He didn't care about "precious." He only cared about what was useful to him.
He knew exactly what he needed.
Because the encyclopedias had been buried at the very bottom of the stack, they were in remarkably good condition. The pages were stiff and smelled faintly of rot, but the text was perfectly legible.
There was no name written inside the covers. However, the author's foreword noted the date of publication: one hundred and thirty years ago.
Even better, the author explicitly thanked Nicolas Flamel for his assistance in proofreading and calibrating the encyclopedias.
Having Flamel's seal of approval instantly skyrocketed the books' credibility.
Charlie spent the rest of the afternoon locked inside the Room of Requirement.
Thankfully, the chaotic mess on the workbench didn't harbor any deadly curses. The bizarre ores and suspicious bones didn't violently explode when he moved them.
He spent some time analyzing the bizarre tools. The complex lens array was essentially a magical microscope, designed for incredibly fine, microscopic detail work.
Perfect for carving ancient runes onto something the size of a grain of rice, Charlie guessed.
He couldn't figure out the floating crystals or the bizarre compass, so he carefully shoved them into a corner.
It took him an hour and a half to fully organize the studio. He even used a Mending Charm to fix the rusted, shrieking hinges on the door.
Once the room was sorted, he sat down at the desk and eagerly cracked open the botanical encyclopedia.
It was formatted like a dictionary, sorted alphabetically. Using the Cure for Boils potion as a baseline, he looked up snake fangs, horned slugs, and porcupine quills.
As he read, he fell into a deep, focused trance, constantly analyzing the complex chemical relationships between the ingredients and the final brew.
When he finally snapped out of it, he had absolutely no idea how much time had passed.
He slammed the book shut, sprinted out of the Room of Requirement, and bolted down the stairs.
On the fifth floor, he nearly collided with Hermione.
"Hey, Hermione," Charlie waved hurriedly. "When did class end?"
"A while ago," Hermione noted. "Maybe ten, fifteen minutes? I stayed behind to ask Professor Flitwick a few questions. I'm heading to the library now."
"Oh, bloody hell!" Charlie slapped his forehead.
"Is something wrong?"
"Nothing," Charlie shook his head. "See you at dinner!"
He took the stairs two at a time.
Outside the Charms classroom, Harry was leaning against the stone wall, muttering quietly to himself.
"Harry!" Charlie jogged up, panting slightly, resting his hands on his knees. "Sorry, mate. Completely lost track of time."
"You really need to buy a watch," Harry laughed.
Charlie shrugged helplessly. "Logically, yes. But I'm notoriously cheap."
At the same time, he made a mental note to check if the Room of Requirement had any vintage pocket watches lying around. A pocket watch had serious style.
"I'm joking. But seriously, do you not own a watch at all? How do you even tell the time?"
"Why would I need to?" Charlie waved him off. "I wake up when the sun rises, and I go to bed when it sets. Simple as that."
"Wow. That sounds incredibly... free," Harry said, genuinely surprised.
"Come on, let's go find Hagrid. Honestly, I'm not even sure he'll be there. We usually only visit on the weekends."
"Right, let's go," Harry agreed. "By the way, do you know where Ron went?"
"Flitwick held him back after class. No idea why."
Charlie frowned, trying to remember if this was a plot point from the books, but came up empty.
"Alright, never mind then," Harry said as they headed toward the ground floor.
"You know, Charlie... you said you live by the sunrise and sunset. Are you from a wizarding family?"
Charlie looked at him, surprised. "What makes you say that?"
"You didn't mention a school bell. If you didn't own a watch and you grew up in the Muggle world, you would have just said, 'I know what time it is because the school bell rings.' That's how I always knew."
"That is a remarkably solid deduction," Charlie nodded approvingly. "You've got the makings of a proper detective, Harry."
"You're exaggerating," Harry muttered, clearly unused to direct praise.
"You are, however, completely wrong," Charlie smiled.
"I wasn't raised in the magical world. I grew up in the ordinary world—and for the record, I refuse to use the word 'Muggle.' It sounds inherently demeaning.
"Magic has always been a part of my life, but until my Hogwarts letter arrived, I genuinely thought I just had superpowers.
"I lived alone in Cheshire. Paid the bills by doing cheap magic tricks on the street."
Harry stopped dead in his tracks. Initially, his mind had snagged on Charlie's defense of the ordinary world.
But the second half of the sentence violently derailed his train of thought.
"Wait..." Harry whipped his head around, staring wide-eyed at Charlie. "Charlie... did you just say you lived... alone?"
"Oh, bloody hell," Charlie laughed, shaking his head. "Right, you didn't know. I figured Hermione would have mentioned it."
"We aren't exactly close with Hermione," Harry replied, his eye twitching slightly. "Not that there's anything wrong with her, obviously."
Charlie nodded. He was so used to associating Harry and Hermione as an inseparable duo that he had entirely forgotten they were still just first-years. The troll incident hadn't happened yet; they weren't friends.
"Right. Well, Harry, the answer to your unspoken question is exactly what you think it is."
"You're an..." Harry swallowed hard, looking incredibly nervous. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "An or—"
"An orphan! Yes! Why are you acting like it's a dirty word?" Charlie laughed.
"It's not a big deal, Harry. We're the same in that regard. And honestly, I couldn't care less about it. Don't overthink it, mate.
"I appreciate the empathy, I really do. It's a great quality.
"Unfortunately, you're currently projecting it onto a deeply hardened, incredibly mature man of the world!
"A true man requires no pity!"
He was joking, obviously.
Charlie hated pretending to be mature. In fact, he actively despised the concept of "growing up too fast."
He just liked eating sweets. More importantly, he liked giving sweets to other people and watching the sheer, unadulterated joy light up their faces.
And if making people happy occasionally earned him a few Wish Points from his system, well, that was just a brilliant bonus.
Harry looked completely flustered. He stammered for a second, clearly catching on that Charlie was taking the piss.
He let out a long, heavy exhale and finally smiled.
"I... sorry, Charlie. It's just... this is the very first time I've ever met..."
"A kindred spirit?" Charlie offered.
"Exactly. Though your phrasing is incredibly dramatic."
"I try my best," Charlie nodded solemnly.
They stepped out of the castle's side doors. The Black Lake stretched out in the distance, shimmering in the late afternoon sun. Hagrid's hut sat further down the sloping grounds.
They walked in comfortable silence for a while before Harry spoke again, his voice careful.
"So... did you really live entirely on your own?"
"I had an older brother," Charlie said quietly. "He was the one who found me. But... he died when I was eight. Illness.
"That was actually the first time I ever performed accidental magic. You know about magical outbursts, right?"
Harry nodded quickly. "Yeah. I had them all the time."
"Right." Charlie's smile faded slightly as the memory resurfaced.
"We were living in this drafty, miserable little shack on the edge of town. He was lying in bed. He was so thin, Harry. Practically a skeleton.
"He couldn't even speak properly anymore. His mouth just sort of opened and closed. But I was sitting right next to him.
"I could read his lips.
"He just kept whispering... it hurts.
"And then, my magic just exploded. I reached up toward the leaky roof, and I literally pulled the sunlight out of the air. I mixed it with a piece of chocolate I'd been saving, and I tried to feed it to him.
"I told him, 'Eat this, and it won't hurt anymore.'
"He reached out with those bony fingers, and he snapped the chocolate right in half.
"Half for him. Half for me.
"We both ate it. And after he swallowed it... he looked so much better.
"He smiled at me and said, 'I ate it. I don't hurt anymore. You ate it too, so you can't hurt either.'"
"And then what happened?" Harry asked softly. "You used magic, so he must have..."
"And then he died," Charlie said bluntly. "It was just an accidental magical outburst. It couldn't cure him.
"But chocolate is a brilliant thing, isn't it? I really didn't feel much pain after that."
Charlie let out a quiet sigh, then forced a bright, genuine smile, instantly shattering the heavy, melancholic atmosphere.
"So, Harry. Back on the Hogwarts Express... when I gave you that piece of chocolate? Do you remember?
"I didn't give it to you because you were the famous Harry Potter. I didn't care about the Savior of the Wizarding World.
"I gave it to you for two reasons.
"One: because we're exactly the same.
"And two: because I firmly believe that chocolate is the absolute greatest thing in the entire world."