Exploration Plan for the Room of Requirement

Astronomy class only takes place on Wednesday nights, and no homework is assigned on the first day of school. Therefore, after finishing their afternoon classes, the first-year students found themselves with nothing to do.

Avada naturally wouldn't let this precious window of time go to waste—the location of the Room of Requirement, the most mysterious and versatile room in Hogwarts, was currently stored in his mind. Once he successfully entered the Room of Requirement, it would mean his plan had taken a giant step forward: the Ravenclaw Diadem, the damaged Vanishing Cabinet, and a secret research space all his own...

Not only that, but the magical principles of the Room of Requirement, the magical structures of the Ravenclaw Diadem and the Vanishing Cabinet, Voldemort's soul fragments, and other such miraculous items—if he could fully analyze them with his Magic Sense and use that to develop related spells...

Avada would bet his life that any treasure in the wizarding world would pale in value compared to that Room of Requirement!

So, after leaving the Transfiguration classroom, he hurried toward the Great Hall along with the other Hufflepuffs, intending to head to the eighth floor as soon as he finished dinner.

As a Hufflepuff, one simply could not delay a meal.

"Hey, K!"

Avada followed the voice and saw Baron emerging alone from the opposite corridor, waving at him.

"We meet again."

He greeted his Hufflepuff classmates, stepped out of the group for a moment, and walked side-by-side with Baron: "How was your first day of classes?"

"Not bad." Baron's lips curled slightly upward: "Although most of it was stuff my parents had already taught me, casting spells with a wand in person is truly a brand-new experience. How about you?"

"Pretty good too. I'd basically looked over most of the spells during the summer, so they weren't hard to pick up. Although Professor Binns's voice in History of Magic is a bit hypnotic, the history itself is quite interesting."

"You think History of Magic is interesting too?"

Baron felt the joy of finding a kindred spirit: "I just came from History of Magic, and you wouldn't believe it—I was the only person awake in the entire classroom! Even those guys who usually do well in class were dozing off!"

"I don't even have to imagine it." Avada shook his head with a laugh: "It was the same on my end. I suspect Professor Binns has some kind of talent for hypnotic magic; he'd barely spoken a few sentences before the whole class was snoring, even though the content he was teaching was actually quite fascinating."

"Yeah."

Baron sighed: "Since I was little, my parents told me that the glory of our bloodline is hidden within history, and everything we enjoy now comes from the gifts of the past. As a pure-blood wizard, remembering history and guarding the truth is our responsibility. Moreover, we must not only remember the honors but also the misdeeds that tarnished that honor, so we can reflect on them and avoid them. Only in this way can glory endure through the bloodline and remain evergreen."

"That's truly admirable..." Avada was about to follow up on Baron's words with some praise and chat more about history, but he suddenly frowned and reached out to stop Baron from walking forward.

"What's wrong?"

"There's a little trap ahead." Within a few seconds, Avada had seen through the structure of the magic, his brow smoothed out, and he even felt a bit like laughing.

"Finite Incantatem."

He drew his wand and gave it a light flick. A white light spread out and swept across the corridor ahead. One section of the floor, after being swept, turned into a small patch of mud, only to squirm a few times under the effect of the Finite Incantatem before turning back into ordinary floor tiles. He then stylishly put away his wand and turned his gaze toward the corner with a playful look: "You two seniors, stop hiding. Come out."

As his voice fell, two red-headed boys who looked almost identical walked out, looking dejected.

Baron's pupils constricted as he recalled the legend of the Gryffindors that the Slytherin seniors had solemnly warned him about last night.

"Merlin's beard, what a failure."

One of them grumbled miserably: "The mobile swamp we spent half a semester researching was broken by a little kid who just learned the Levitation Charm!"

"How did you do that?"

Avada looked amusedly at the twins, who were scratching their heads in confusion, and lied: "Unfortunately, I've studied a wide range of things on my own, and that just happens to include identifying and disarming traps from Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"I presume you two are the Gryffindor troublemakers, the Prank Magi, Fred Weasley and George Weasley? Hufflepuff, K, nice to meet you."

"Oh, so it's you, the one whose name cannot be mentioned!"

The twins shouted excitedly, then turned to look at Baron: "Then you must be his 'Eater of Meals'!"

"Slytherin, Baron Shafiq, it's an honor to meet the two 'Prank Magi'." Baron rolled his eyes and retorted mercilessly.

"Prank Magi?"

The twins froze simultaneously, looked at each other, and their eyes filled with wild joy.

"Why didn't we think of that title before?!"

"Haha, the highest achievement of pranking, a 'Prank Magus' to match 'Animagus' and 'Metamorphmagus'!"

"As expected of a Slytherin who can make friends with a Hufflepuff, your naming skills are top-notch!"

They then ran off in a flurry, though it was unclear if they were fleeing the scene of the crime or going to loudly proclaim their new title.

Baron's temple throbbed, and he said bitterly: "That title is derogatory! Derogatory! I should have called them Deduction Magi!"

"They'd probably be even happier with that."

Avada laughed: "Let's just wait for the title to spread, and then let Professor McGonagall, a real Animagus, deal with them. We have 'Eater of Meals' duties to attend to now."

"I finally understand why the seniors had that expression when they mentioned those two yesterday. Using hidden traps on first-years, openly admitting to being Prank Magi, and trying to compare themselves to Professor McGonagall..."

"Is this how Gryffindor courage is supposed to be used?"

Even until he was almost finished with his meal, Baron was still feeling indignant, the force with which he bit into his chicken leg noticeably increased.

After parting ways with Baron, Avada waited for a moment when there were few people around, snuck up to the eighth floor, and arrived opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy. He casually swept a glance with his Magic Sense at the wall hiding the entrance to the Room of Requirement.

Hmm, can't read it.

Better go in and get the Horcrux first.

"The Room of Requirement only opens for those who truly need it..."

"What a joke, no one needs the Room of Requirement more than I do. Only I know how important the things inside are."

Avada muttered to himself, "I need a place to hide things, I need a place to hide things...", as he paced back and forth three times in front of that stretch of wall. Suddenly, the magical structure within the wall interlocked with his own overflowing mental energy, triggering an incredibly complex and bizarre transformation. This change caused a door to appear out of thin air on the wall, leading to a vast and hidden space that had manifested behind it.

Avada pushed the door open and stepped into an immensely spacious, brightly lit room. Yet, even though the room was so vast, countless piles of miscellaneous clutter had filled nearly every corner of the space. Flames burning underwater, books turning their own pages, what appeared to be a half-finished handmade Golden Snitch...

Countless complex and unfamiliar magical structures flooded Avada's Magic Sense, giving him a headache while simultaneously making him lament that he had actually forgotten another value of the Room of Requirement—

Throughout the thousand-year history of Hogwarts, countless students had hidden their prized creations or contraband acquired from who knows where inside this room, causing magical items to pile up like mountains!

Moreover, most of their principles were not particularly complex, at least far simpler and clearer than Horcruxes or this miraculous room itself. This meant that Avada would possess an endless supply of research and experimental material; with the aid of his Magic Sense, his rate of progress would reach a level unimaginable to others.

"I'm rich, I'm rich..."

He subconsciously wiped the corner of his mouth, enjoying himself as he fully perceived the magical structures around him that he could barely comprehend, letting countless inspirations burst forth in his mind.

At this moment, he only hated that his memory was merely mediocre, unable to record every single one of those structures and the fleeting inspirations!