Treasure Hunting in the Room of Requirement

Loren had grown drowsy from chewing through Thick Books and no longer wanted to read. He planned to visit the Seventh Floor and see the mysterious Room of Requirement for himself.

The Seventh Floor corridor.

Loren examined the paintings one by one. One portrait, depicting a wizard teaching six Trolls to dance, caught his attention.

At first, the Trolls held their clubs and danced with some semblance of propriety. Before long, though, they grew impatient and began beating the wizard with their clubs without holding back. Loren almost laughed out loud at the amusing sight.

Loren paced back and forth before the wall opposite the painting, thinking, I need a clean, tidy private booth in an internet cafe, with a sofa and a 4090 graphics card.

A white door appeared in the wall. Loren exclaimed in admiration. He had come to the right place.

He opened the door and went inside. The computer, the sofa, and the bright lighting all perfectly matched Loren's expectations.

For a moment, Loren was dazed. He pressed the computer's power button, but nothing happened. He pressed it several more times with force, yet the result remained the same.

Of course it did not work. This room was merely an illusion magically constructed by the Room of Requirement according to Loren's conception. It had not truly produced a computer.

The magical principles involved were beyond Loren's imagination. It could read minds, use magic to give form to ideas, and even fill in details that the person themselves did not fully understand.

Loren suspected that its builder had been one of The Big Four. Not Slytherin; his Chamber of Secrets was not here. Gryffindor did not seem like the sort to build secret chambers. It was probably either Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff.

Now was not the time to investigate its creator. He left the room and began imagining, I need a room for hiding things. After repeating this several times, he pushed open the door and entered.

Before him lay mountains of books, heaps upon heaps of dilapidated furniture, broken metal vessels, armor, and all kinds of magical objects.

The magical objects around him emitted sparse lights of various colors in Loren's eyes. But at that moment, his gaze was seized by a brilliant blue glow. Even through several mountains of clutter, he could see the blue light shining from behind them.

Walking toward the source of the blue light, Loren circled around several piles of clutter and books before seeing a suit of armor with a Diadem on its head.

The Diadem was shaped like an eagle spreading its wings, its feathers studded with scattered blue gems. Beneath it was engraved a line of text: Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.

This was what Loren had been looking for: Ravenclaw's Diadem.

More than ten years ago, Voldemort had turned it into a Horcrux. After Voldemort applied for the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor position a second time and was rejected by Dumbledore, he had hidden it here.

The movie seemed to say only that it was destroyed in a fire, without explaining what it could do.

But compared to the mind-bewitching Diary, the venomous Gaunt's Ring, and the Locket guarded by Inferi and poison, Loren found it difficult to believe that this Diadem, personally hidden by Voldemort, had no tricks at all.

Loren was only a first-year wizard. His life came first, and he had no desire whatsoever to touch the Diadem. He silently memorized the location and decided that when the time was right, he would notify Dumbledore to come collect it.

Having made his decision, Loren began examining the other items in the room.

These were things hidden away by Hogwarts students and teachers over the past thousand years: junk, weapons, books, and Loren even spotted love letters.

Sneakoscopes and broomsticks lay scattered everywhere. Some had even broken in two, exposing weathered fractures.

Loren carefully avoided those magical objects. With the cautious attitude that his life came first, he did not touch any of them. Who knew what they could do?

He picked out a battered book. It looked extremely old. When Loren pulled it out from beneath a bench leg, its cover fell right off.

It was a mass-produced publication, already very old, and some of its text had become unclear. Still, Loren carefully made out some of its contents.

The printed text contained some basic spells. Some were correct, the same as what Loren was learning now. But others had long since been disproven and removed from all books as outdated errors.

Someone had circled those erroneous passages with a quill and written conjectures and questions beneath them. Loren guessed that this had been a Hogwarts textbook from long ago, and that a gifted student had begun revising teaching materials even then.

A passage on the final page also confirmed Loren's guess:

My family is like a mire; Hogwarts is my dawn.

I do not hate my numb mother or ignorant sister. I only hope that they...

The ink after that had already blurred. Only the signature at the end remained clear, and Loren knew it well—Miranda Goshawk, author of the Standard Spellbook series.

She had overturned hundreds of erroneous theories about magic. Her books had been translated into seventy-two languages, and she had compiled textbooks for nearly all magical schools. She had even appeared on a Chocolate Frog Card.

This was the handwriting of a legendary witch from decades ago, one who had displayed astonishing magical talent from childhood.

Loren flipped through the books scattered throughout the room. Some were old published works, while a large portion were handwritten copies. Loren had seen many of the authors' names in textbooks.

They had left these manuscripts behind while studying or teaching at Hogwarts. Some had been published, while others had not.

But they had one thing in common—Loren could barely understand any of them.

He was certain that treasures lay buried here: spells invented by countless gifted wizards over the past thousand years, unverified magical hypotheses, and deductions in Magical Theory.

But Loren was only a little wizard who had been enrolled for one week. He could not understand them no matter how hard he tried. The feeling of entering a treasure mountain and leaving empty-handed was truly frustrating.

What a headache. Better build a foundation first.

That afternoon, Loren practiced Transfiguration by the lake. He repeatedly tried to turn a fist-sized stone into a wooden lounge chair. By the time he felt unable to cast another spell, he had only managed to turn the stone into a stone slab.

Loren made do and lay on it, basking in the sun until sunset, until his whole body felt pleasantly lazy.

Ron returned to school before dinner. His family had never indulged him so much before. Even when he argued with Ginny, their mother had scolded Ginny rather than him. The pleasant weekend had restored the heart that Scabbers had tormented.

Harry slept until now. He swore that he had only intended to take a short nap before getting up to do his homework. Instead, it was suddenly evening. Still, even if he had to choose again, Harry would choose sleep over the Transfiguration Class homework that had only a title written on it. It had been far too comfortable.

Both of them were in high spirits and eager to talk. They chatted from the dining table all the way to the common room, then fought several intense rounds of Wizard's Chess. Although Ron utterly crushed Harry every time,

they both enjoyed themselves. Until bedtime, Harry was still asking whether he should have moved the Knight Chess Piece before being checkmated in the final game.

Loren casually asked, "Harry, have you finished your Transfiguration Class homework?"

Harry and Ron's expressions immediately turned horrified.

"Help!!!"