He started pacing back and forth. Charlie was not in a hurry, quietly watching Anthony operate.
The result was obvious. The Room of Requirement gave no response whatsoever.
Asking the Room of Requirement, "I want my bedroom," was a bit too vague. The demand reminded Charlie of those dramatic Muggle movies where a heartbroken protagonist jumps into a taxi. The driver asks where to, and they tragically whisper, "Home!"
Naturally, the driver's immediate thought is: How the bloody 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 would probably shout back, How the bloody hell am I supposed to know what your bedroom looks like?
Of course, the initial failure did not discourage Anthony and Hector.
Hector suggested a different approach. "Anthony, try picturing that specific table we just saw. Remember it? Keep visualizing the layout of your bedroom, but focus heavily on that exact table. It is like telling the room you want that specific elegant long table, not just some random old furniture."
"Makes sense," Anthony nodded, then began pacing in front of the blank wall once more.
A moment later, a wooden door materialized on the white stone.
Pushing it open and stepping inside, they found the layout identical to their previous attempt, except for the table. The surface was coated in dust and featured two distinct handprints. Those were the exact marks Hector had left when he carelessly leaned on it in the massive clutter room earlier.
"It worked!" Anthony cheered. "It seems it acts a bit like the Sorting Hat. It can read our surface thoughts and the specific scenes we picture in our minds."
Hector chimed in, "But it looks like it can only construct things using whatever is stored in that massive junk room. If you wanted a brand new motorcar, I doubt it could pull one out of thin air."
Listening to their analysis, Charlie fell into deep thought.
"Right then, Charlie."
"What is it?" Charlie looked up.
"Are you going to practice your spells now? We were thinking of heading down for lunch."
"Are you coming back up afterward?"
Anthony thought for a second and shook his head. "No, I think I will head back to the Ravenclaw common room this afternoon to write a letter to my parents."
"Exactly, priorities," Hector agreed with a nod.
"Alright, you two go on ahead. I am going to practice a few incantations here and grab lunch a bit later."
"No problem. Just do not lose track of time," Anthony warned.
"I will not. Just a quick warm-up," Charlie smiled.
Shortly after, the two boys disappeared around the corner of the corridor. Their footsteps echoed faintly in the empty passageways until total silence fell.
Charlie turned back into Anthony's dusty replica bedroom. With a flick of his wrist, a piece of chocolate appeared in his hand. He had no intention of eating it. Instead, he placed it squarely on the elegant, dusty table, exited the Room of Requirement, and waited for the door to melt back into plain white stone.
Once the wall was blank, he began pacing again.
I need the place where everything is hidden.
After three passes, a heavy, massive door appeared. He pushed it open and followed the same narrow path he had taken earlier with Hector and Anthony. He quickly located the elegant table.
However, his chocolate was gone.
Just as he was starting to feel confused, a rustling noise caught his attention. Two rather ugly, repulsive little creatures were scuffling nearby.
They had human-like forms but sported an extra pair of arms and legs. They were no bigger than the palm of a hand, with pointed ears, bodies covered in coarse black hair, and thick, curved wings resembling those of a beetle. To the uninitiated, they might look like some sort of bizarre fairy.
In reality, these were Doxies, also known as Biting Fairies. In the wizarding world, they were essentially the magical equivalent of cockroaches. Charlie had seen shops in Diagon Alley doing a roaring trade in Doxycide.
Right now, the two Doxies were viciously fighting over his chocolate. So, the Room of Requirement had not erased his candy. These little pests had simply nicked it.
Thinking it over, he shook his head and walked out of the cathedral-sized junk room.
If his memory served him correctly, one of Voldemort's Horcruxes was currently hidden somewhere in this very labyrinth. Naturally, he had zero intention of touching the thing. If the lost Diadem of Ravenclaw was anything like Riddle's diary, it was best to stay as far away from it as mathematically possible. No historical relic was worth that kind of risk.
Back in the corridor, waiting for the massive door to vanish, Charlie pondered his options. If the Room of Requirement built its various rooms using the discarded items from that stadium-sized storage space, then this was clearly not a viable base of operations. He simply could not trust the room to keep anything safe.
He was not exactly worried about thieves. If Voldemort felt safe hiding a piece of his soul here, Charlie was not overly paranoid about standard security. However, if he wanted to use the Room of Requirement to build a secret candy-making workshop, that idea was utterly dead in the water. He was not about to leave his delicate sugar-crafting equipment in a room infested with Doxies.
Still, as a highly secret and perfectly safe spell-practice room, it was flawless.
Once the door to the Room of Hidden Things vanished, Charlie summoned the spell practice room again and got to work.
He did not have a watch, but he had another method of tracking time: a special chocolate with a very strict duration.
He popped a piece of Lunar-Lightning Chocolate into his mouth. The goal today was to test if this specific candy could enhance his spellcasting. His pure Moon-Light Chocolate could not do that, as it functioned solely as a stamina-recovery item.
Three minutes later, a deafening explosion echoed through the practice room.
BANG!
Did my control over the spell drop? Charlie waved his hand, coughing as he tried to clear the foul-smelling smoke from his face.
He had just attempted a Softening Charm. While he was not a master of it yet, causing such a catastrophic backfire was something he had never managed to do, even as a complete beginner.
The difficulty of casting increased because my brain entered an overloaded state, but my wand rhythm did not adjust to match it.
He calmed his breathing and tried again. He approached the spell like a total novice, full of absolute caution and focus. Adjusting his casting rhythm on the fly was tricky, but he managed to pull it off.
Five minutes later, a flawless Softening Charm hit the practice dummy. The moment the spell connected, the entire dummy slumped into a puddle of mush.
Without a doubt, this level of power was something a completely sober, non-candy-fueled Charlie could never achieve. Increased casting difficulty paired with massively increased spell intensity. Risk and reward wrapped in one package.
It truly was a dangerous but beautiful bolt of lightning.
Charlie continued practicing until the chocolate's effects completely faded, finally putting his wand away. Perhaps because he was simultaneously overloading his brain and draining his magical core, the side effects of the Lunar-Lightning Chocolate hit him much harder this time. Fortunately, he could still endure it.
Leaving the Room of Requirement, he headed down to the Great Hall for a late lunch. Anthony and Hector were nowhere to be seen, likely having already returned to their dormitory.
After eating, Charlie made his way back as well. Sure enough, he found them furiously scribbling away in their room. Not wanting to interrupt, Charlie pulled out a roll of parchment to draft a shopping list. Well, less of a list and more of an order form for various chocolates.
"Let us see how the quality in Diagon Alley holds up," Charlie muttered to himself.
With his mail-order form finished, he tackled his Potions and Herbology essays. The afternoon slipped away quickly. Before heading back to the Great Hall for dinner, the trio made a trip to the Owlery to send off their respective letters.
"I wonder how long it takes a bird to fly all the way to London. Honestly, if it were possible, I would much rather just use a telephone," Hector grumbled, watching his owl shrink into a dot against the sky.
Charlie silently agreed. If it were up to him, he would be using an online shopping app with next-day delivery, not tying parchment to a bird's leg.
Leaving the Owlery, they strolled across the grounds. The sky was already taking on a deep, bruised purple hue, and total darkness was fast approaching.
"It gets dark incredibly fast here," Hector noted. "What time is it?"
Anthony checked his wrist. "Six o'clock."
"It cannot be helped. The latitude up here in the Scottish Highlands is quite high," Charlie explained.
"What on earth is latitude?" Anthony asked.
"It means we are higher up on the globe," Hector offered, struggling to find a better explanation.
"I sort of get that, but what does us being high up have to do with the sun disappearing?"
"It is a bit much to explain right now," Charlie waved the topic away. "Let us drop it."
"No worries. Once they switch over to winter time, it will not feel like it is getting dark quite so early."
"That is literally just us changing the clocks," Hector said with a helpless laugh. The entire country shifted its clocks twice a year just to pretend the sun was behaving normally.
As they neared the castle doors, two familiar figures were heading in the same direction. Seeing the trio, one of them waved enthusiastically.
"Hey, Charlie!"
Charlie recognized the voice instantly. It was Harry Potter, and the ginger shadow trailing beside him was inevitably his best mate, Ron Weasley.
Hector and Anthony were not well-acquainted with Harry, having barely exchanged a word with him before. However, they were undeniably curious about the famous Boy Who Lived.
"Good evening, Harry Potter," Anthony greeted politely.
"Evening, guys," Harry nodded. He then reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like a palm-sized, severely dehydrated, dark brown boulder.
"Have you lot eaten yet? Want a biscuit?" Harry offered generously.
"Yeah, fancy a biscuit? Hagrid made them himself," Ron chimed in.
"Well, how could I refuse?" Anthony smiled, reaching out to accept the treat.
Charlie watched with amusement as Anthony's hand visibly dipped toward the grass the moment the biscuit made contact. The boy clearly had not expected baked goods to possess the density of a cannonball.
Anthony's polite smile froze instantly, but he recovered with admirable speed. "Wow, this is quite large. On second thought, maybe I will save it for a late-night snack? It is just about time for dinner in the Great Hall anyway."
"Fair enough, good point," Harry and Ron nodded. Whether Anthony ate it or used it to hammer nails was beside the point; they had successfully offloaded it.
"I heard Snape gave you a remarkably hard time this morning," Anthony said, striking up a conversation as they walked inside.
"Hard time is the understatement of the century," Harry groaned. He had been interrogated on a dozen things, none of which had anything to do with the potion they were actually brewing.
"You mean the Cure for Boils, right?" Hector asked.
"Whatever it was, we used dried nettles," Ron said, clearly uncaring about the academic specifics.
"I seriously think he hates me," Harry shook his head in frustration. "Speaking of which, Charlie."
Charlie looked over, raising an eyebrow.
"I heard a rumor from some of the others that you and Snape actually got into a physical fight during your class."
"?"
Charlie's face scrunched up in utter bewilderment. What kind of ridiculous gossip was this? Him throwing punches at Severus Snape?
"Who on earth started that rumor? I am genuinely curious what kind of brain damage is required to come up with something so astoundingly stupid," Charlie said, thoroughly annoyed.
"I do not know, but half the school is saying you and Snape went at it."
"We just exchanged a few sharp words, that is all," Charlie sighed, rubbing his temples.
"That is still brilliant," Ron stared at Charlie with sheer awe. "Someone actually dared to talk back to Snape? Just looking at his greasy face is enough to terrify most normal people."
"You are exaggerating," Charlie chuckled. "Look, he is a heavily biased teacher, and I am not exactly the most docile student. Me giving him a bit of cheek is perfectly reasonable, is it not?"
He paused, making sure he had their attention. "But please do not misunderstand. I did not let my personal annoyance ruin the lesson itself. I have to admit, purely based on our first class, you can actually learn proper magic in Snape's dungeon. As an instructor, he is miles ahead of Professor Quirrell or Professor Binns."
"Really?" Ron looked highly skeptical. "Professor Binns is so dedicated to teaching that he literally forgot to stop when he died! Does a greasy bat like Snape even deserve to be compared to him?"
Snap!
Charlie clicked his fingers and held up three digits. He smiled at the redhead. "Mate, talking about teaching quality and talking about a teacher's moral character are two completely different things. And beyond that, whether or not we actually like the man is a third, entirely separate thing."
He pointed a finger at Ron. "If you cannot separate those three things, then the price for your hatred of Snape will be paid by your Potions grades! You are perfectly entitled to dislike the man, but refusing to learn Potions because of it is just shooting yourself in the foot."
Charlie lowered his hand. "If you can separate them, you reach a much healthier conclusion: I absolutely loathe that greasy git, but I will still pay attention in his class and absorb his knowledge. Simultaneously, I still think he is a terribly unfair bully with zero professional ethics!"
"That sounds incredibly difficult," Ron muttered, though he looked thoughtful. "But I suppose you might have a tiny bit of a point."
Charlie just smiled and let the topic drop. For an eleven-year-old, mastering emotional detachment was a massive ask. And for a notoriously hot-headed Gryffindor, it bordered on the impossible.
Hot-headed... emotional...
Charlie's mind began to wander freely again. Based on his memories of the original books from his past life, Gryffindor House seemed to produce an absurd number of top-tier duelists and fighters. And it was a well-known magical fact that spells required emotion as a primary driving force.
Was there a direct correlation there?
It looked like he had a few more theories to add to that parchment he was preparing for Professor McGonagall. He walked in thoughtful silence until the comforting, savory aroma of the Great Hall's feast finally snapped him back to reality.