"Justin, do you know where Su Er went?" Hermione caught Justin Finch-Fletchley as he was about to pass the Gryffindor table.
Justin shook his head. "He seems to have been busy lately. I don't know where he is right now either."
"All right, thank you."
Hermione let go, puffing out her cheeks. Since Gryffindor had been scheduled to have classes with Ravenclaw House that week, she hadn't spoken to Su Er in days.
"What spell did you say you wanted to learn?" In the Charms professor's office, Professor Flitwick's squeaky voice rang with disbelief.
"A spell that can knit scarves automatically..." Su Er answered quietly, standing before the desk.
At a normal pace, knitting a scarf entirely by hand would take at least a week. Su Er needed to knit at least four, which meant he would need a month.
And by then, Christmas would be long over.
Not to mention that, if he had enough unicorn hair left, Su Er wanted to make a pair of gloves too...
"I couldn't find any books in the library that described household spells like this... You were the only person I could think of who could teach me-the wizarding world's master of charms..."
Su Er buttered Professor Flitwick up a little.
Sure enough, Professor Flitwick beamed, lifting his chin slightly. "I do indeed know a spell that can accomplish that."
"Strictly speaking, household magic of this kind evolved from the everyday magic of house-elves."
By the time Su Er emerged from Professor Flitwick's office, dusk was approaching, and dinner at the castle was probably almost over.
He rubbed his stomach. Hmm... My stomach's full of knowledge. I'm not hungry at all.
That great man was right. Knowledge really is nourishment...
Just after coming down the ever-shifting staircases, Su Er ran into Hagrid at the castle entrance, dragging an enormous fir tree.
"Need a hand, Hagrid?"
"Oh, no need. Thank you, Su Er. I just have to put it in the little room over there. The house-elves will look after it until Christmas."
Huffing and puffing, Hagrid dragged the fir tree into the small room beside the Entrance Hall. Just before going inside, he seemed to remember something and turned to ask,
"I found some puffskein fur in the Forbidden Forest a few days ago. If you need any, you can come along with me and pick some up in a bit. If you don't want it, I'll just throw it in the fire."
"Puffskein?" Su Er, who had been heading back to his dormitory, stopped in his tracks. The image of the magical creature came to mind: round and covered in pale yellow fur.
He remembered seeing them for sale in a pet shop in Diagon Alley. He and Hermione had even played with them for a while.
"All right. Thank you, Mr. Hagrid."
"Just call me Hagrid, like Harry and the others do." Hagrid raised his large hand to scratch his enormous head, smiling.
"Right, let's get going."
Hermione Granger had just come out of the Great Hall when she saw a young wizard entering through the castle doors, carrying a wooden basket with a spring in his step. Then she took a closer look at his face.
Well, well. If it isn't young master Su Er, whom I haven't seen or spoken to in a whole week...
Returning with a full haul, Su Er failed to notice the small figure by the Great Hall doors watching him resentfully.
He carried his basket inside and turned straight toward the stairs.
Hermione parted her lips, then swallowed the call she had been about to make. Her large eyes darted about, and she quietly followed him.
"Hmph, being so secretive. Let's see what you've been doing behind my back."
Su Er was completely unaware that he had picked up a little shadow. Plenty of students were out walking after dinner to help digest their food, so it was hardly unusual for someone to be going the same way.
The Ravenclaw common room and the Gryffindor Common Room were both at the tops of the castle's two towers. Students from both houses had to take the stairs to the top of the castle before turning off toward their dormitories.
Once he reached the castle's Seventh Floor, however, he would no longer run into other young wizards.
Who would wander aimlessly down the corridor containing the Headmaster's Office with nothing better to do?
Hermione grew more cautious as she entered the Seventh Floor corridor, and her curiosity only deepened.
Su Er walked familiarly up to the tapestry depicting Barnabas the Barmy and paced back and forth three times, silently repeating, I need a room where I can knit scarves.
By the time Hermione peeked out from the nearby corridor, the door to the Room of Requirement had just vanished.
"Huh? Where did he go?" She blinked in confusion.
There was no way to determine how long the Room of Requirement had existed. It might even have dated back to before the Four Founders, and objects from every era could be found there.
A little-known fact: Hogwarts Castle was the site Slytherin had offered for the school. Long before Slytherin was born, the castle had already stood on a cliff in the Scottish Highlands, weathering a thousand years of storms, perhaps even longer.
(P.S. The real-life Hogwarts Castle certainly hasn't been around that long...)
The room the Room of Requirement provided for Su Er had a sofa and coffee table in the middle, along with balls of yarn and scarf-knitting tools of various thicknesses. Notably, those long, slender and thick needles were made of ivory.
The room was not large, but it was very cozy. The orange-yellow light did not make it feel dim; on the contrary, it was quite bright.
"Aguamenti..." Su Er took out his wand and cast the spell at a wooden basin beside the sofa. After giving the extra unicorn hair Hagrid had pressed on him a quick wash, he used the Floating Charm to immerse it in another basin filled with purple liquid.
As for the puffskein fur, it was already very soft and required no additional treatment. He only needed to wash it clean and dry it.
Hagrid's idea of "some" was probably rather different from most people's.
What he called "some" was practically a mountain to Su Er. By the time Su Er hung the washed clumps of puffskein fur on the rack before the fireplace, his stomach gave a timely rumble.
"I need some food," Su Er called up at the ceiling.
A steaming chicken pie immediately appeared on the room's only coffee table. The Room of Requirement had thoughtfully provided a glass of hot milk as well.
This was not the first time Su Er had taken care of a meal in the Room of Requirement.
After he ate his fill, the remnants on the coffee table vanished automatically.
"Now, let's try the Knitting Charm..." Su Er drew his wand and closed his eyes.
The key to this spell was having a clear image of the intended object in mind when casting it.
For instance, if you wanted to knit a scarf, you needed to picture a scarf while casting the spell. The spell's magic consumption was directly proportional to the scarf's complexity. The more elaborate it was, and the more patterns it had, the more magic it required.
With his current magical reserves as an eleven-year-old, Su Er could only make scarves with relatively simple designs, but that was enough.
Come to think of it, the spell's requirements were very similar to those of Transfiguration, though Transfiguration was a little more demanding.
Naturally, Su Er, whom Professor McGonagall considered a promising student, cast the Knitting Charm without the slightest effort.
He watched the knitting needles and yarn drift into the air and begin working together on their own.
A satisfied smile spread across his face. He could already imagine the smile on his little angel's face back home upon receiving this gift.
Magic really was a blessing for the lazy and the hopelessly clumsy.
{I spent ages going through the original books but couldn't find any description of a spell like this, so I invented one myself. It shouldn't interfere with your reading. This story will have more everyday-life scenes, along with some plotlines from the original books. Its main focus is pulling out some of the knives Rowling plunged into us and sending them back. There were far too many things I couldn't get over when reading Harry Potter.}
{Peter Pettigrew will face justice early, and Sirius will be rescued too. Remember Hermione's cat? It will be a hidden piece in the plan to expose Peter. Barring anything unexpected, that will begin in the second school year.}
{All right, that's it. COVID has been running rampant lately, so I hope everyone takes good care of themselves. Drink plenty of water, get plenty of rest, and stay safe.}
{Take care!}
Before you continue