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"Welcome to your fourth-year class for applied charmwork," began Professor Flitwick, standing on a pile of books as he addressed the entire class. It was technically my very first class with him after coming to this world, and I was curious about just how skilled the teachers themselves were. And no, Potions didn't count, given that Snape did little more than hovering around like a bat and pointlessly intimidating Gryffindors.
Turns out, Flitwick was an undisputed Charms prodigy and master-duellist, and coveted by private institutions all over the world and spent almost as much time outside Hogwarts as he did inside the school. Apparently he was the Head of House Ravenclaw in name only, and that it was really Septima Vector — the Arithmancy professor — that was the go-to person for students when they really needed something.
"Now, Miss Wilkes," said Flitwick, and I just realised that we were having classes with Slytherins. "What is a charm?"
"Uh, it's um, a spell, used to,err, charm someone?"
"Of course," said Flitwick. "Good to know that the last three years have been useful. A spell used to charm someone. Any other volunteers?"
Hermione's hand shot up like a missile in the air.
"Anyone apart from Miss Granger," said Flitwick with a smile. "Sorry, Miss Granger, half my Ravenclaws seem to think I favour you over the others."
Hermione pouted.
"Ah, yes, Miss Davis?"
"It is a spell that adds or removes attributes from an otherwise complete object without destabilising the object's matrix."
"Very good," said Flitwick. "One point to Slytherin. I wouldn't exactly add the last bit about destabilisation since we have the vanishing charm, and several variations of the blasting hex that do exactly that, but let's not do much nitpicking this early in the term, shall we?"
Several people laughed.
"You will meet people who will tell you that Charms is a soft option; that unlike Transfiguration that is layered and meant to be learnt by following specific disciplines, Charms is more of a cluster of closely-related families of spells that fit into a proper equation format."
The diminutive professor met everyone's eyes.
"Those people are wrong. Now, who here can tell us what spells we covered back in first-year? Yes, Mister Nott?"
"Levitation, Illumination, basic kinetic jinxes and the bluebell flame spell."
"Correct. Take another point for Slytherin. Now, who can tell me what's the common factor between the spells Mr. Nott named for us?"
This time Hermione got the chance to answer.
"They work on the same swish-and-flick format you showed us in the very first-class."
Flitwick beamed. "Correct. Two points for Gryffindor."
Several students on the Slytherin side murmured something like 'biased', and Flitwick laughed. I just rolled my eyes.
"As Miss Granger said, the basic swish-and-flick is the foundation behind your first-year spells. Now, who among you have taken Ancient Runes and Arithmancy as your elective?"
Several students raised their hands. Hermione obviously had hers up first, followed by Daphne, and interestingly, Pansy Parkinson.
"Good, good," said Flitwick. Raising his wand, he cast an elaborate swish-and-flick motion in the air with the Flagrate spell, and let the movements superimpose each other. "What does that remind you of?"
Thurisaz. I breathed. I may be able to draw on complex runology from the horcrux and employ it in Necromancy, but there was always an underlying abstraction that prevented me from knowing how they truly worked. In essence, I knew that A and B would give the result C, but the mechanism behind it was hidden from me.
Guess that's the difference between a true master of the magical arts and someone drawing on their powers like a tool. If somebody was trying to tell me that despite my rising affinities, powerful perks, and having access to Voldemort's lifetime of knowledge, I had a long, long way to go before I could truly call myself a Master of the magical arts.
Might as well get the Resurrection Stone, put it inside Slytherin's Locket, and wear the Potter invisibility cloak around me, with the Elder Wand in hand. I could pull over a Harry-Potter version of Stephen Strange.
"Thurisaz," said Flitwick, pulling me out of my idle musings. "The rune that dictates a tendency towards change. Destruction, strength, aggression, and of course, protection. During your first-year, the spells we focussed on were, as Mr. Nott put it nicely, levitation, illumination, and kinetic hexes, which I suppose could be classified as basic aggression. That is why each and every one of those spells have wand movements based on the Thurisaz rune. In your second year, you focussed on animation and spatial charms — disarming, dancing feet, tickling, drinking, engorgement, and your spells had one common wand movement added to them."
He drew an Uruz rune, which automatically superimposed over the Thurisaz.
What? I might be drawing on Voldemort's memories, but I also have Hermione's Library of Knowledge perk. Anything I learn, I can instantly recollect.
"Uruz, standing for freedom, energy, action, strength, tenacity, understanding," said Flitwick. "Quite naturally, it fitted the spells to a tee."
"Uh, professor?" asked an anxious Parvati Patil. "Will we need to uh, study runes for fourth-year charms?"
Flitwick chuckled. "That's an interesting question. And the answer is yes, and no, Miss Patil. It is entirely possible to not study even the basics of runes and still perform adequately in Charms for your fourth and fifth-years. Perhaps even score an EE in your Charms OWL. But no further. And I don't accept anything short of Outstanding for my NEWT classes."
"Why not?" asked Lavender Brown.
"Because NEWT-level charms require you to move beyond the established paradigms of established charm work. But don't get disheartened. You only need an EE in Charms OWL if you want to apply for the Ministry. Even the Hit-wizard recruitment lists an Outstanding in Defence Against The Dark Arts NEWT but only an EE in Charms and Transfiguration OWLs. You could even move into duelling circles if you would choose, but the true beauties of charmwork would stay beyond your reach."
"Why?" asked Finnegan.
"The answer to that lies in an entire term's worth of material. If you are interested, I teach a fast-paced course on runescripts relevant to OWL and NEWT-level charms work with Professor Babbling. But I only accept thirteen students every year, and none of them are allowed to be slackers. Alternatively, you can also take up Runes as your elective, or simply be content with an EE in your Charms OWL."
I pursed my lips. Despite my affinities, I still had a lot of material to actually pick up to become someone capable of fighting magical titans at their fullest power. And this year was going to give me a horde of opportunities to do just that.
Might as well get started on it immediately. My Incubus powers were developing at their own pace, and it was time to elevate my other magical affinities to their fullest.
"Well then," said Flitwick, grinning at a thoughtful class. "Let's get started on your fourth-year charmwork, shall we?"
At the witching hour, when the rest of Hogwarts was sleeping, I found myself tiptoeing down corridors like a common miscreant. My invisibility cloak, my most faithful accomplice, fluttered around me as I made my covert way to the Room of Requirement. According to the books, the Room should appear the moment one walked past the statue of Barnabas the Barmy thrice, thinking about it.
To my unbridled relief, the door materialized. It seemed that, for once, the universe was sticking to the script. A rare treat in the life of Harry Potter. But as I reached for the handle, a voice sliced through the silence, freezing me in my underhanded tracks.
"I'm surprised you'd leave me out of this adventure, Harry."
Hermione Granger, rule-abiding student extraordinaire, had somehow managed to sneak up on me, the king of sneaking around. I spun around, nearly tangling myself in my cloak. There she stood, arms crossed, wearing an expression that managed to blend disappointment with a dash of exasperation.
I was caught. Caught in a way that no invisibility cloak could mask. "Hermione, it's... well, it might be dangerous," I stammered, which, frankly, was a rather rich understatement. This was a horcrux hunt—'dangerous' was an optimistic description.
She raised an eyebrow, her stance unwavering. "Since when do you undertake dangers all by yourself?"
A valid point, painfully valid. But involving Hermione could complicate things, especially given her recent brushes with Voldemort's necromantic energies. How much could I trust her condition? How deep had Voldemort's taint seeped into her? These weren't exactly sentiments one could voice without sounding a few cauldrons short of a potion shop.
"I just thought—"
"You thought wrong," she cut in, decisively. There was no arguing with Hermione when she got that look in her eyes—the one that said she'd sooner hex you than let you go into potential peril alone.
So there we stood, outside the fabled Room of Requirement, my plans of a solitary, heroic escapade dashed by the stubborn loyalty of my best friend. I couldn't tell her the full breadth of my concerns, not yet. The less she knew about the necromancy taint, the better.
"So, where does this door lead to? I don't think I've ever seen this here before."
I exhaled, and swung the door open, with the reluctant grace of a secret being coaxed into the open, I turned to Hermione, who was eyeing the expanding space with a blend of curiosity and skepticism.
"Welcome to Hogwarts' most temperamental classroom," I announced, striding into the Room of Requirement with a dramatic flourish of my arm, inviting Hermione to follow. "Also known as the Room of 'you really should have been more specific.'"
Hermione's eyes roved across the chaotic interior—a mishmash that mirrored the complexity of a teenager's bedroom but on a grand, institutional scale. The room, generally a beacon of pinpoint wish-fulfillment, today seemed more like a hoarder's paradise. A half-built suit of armor cozied up next to a teetering pile of chairs, while a table burdened with an array of potion ingredients sat oddly beside a string-deficient harp. It looked less like a room designed with purpose and more like a yard sale after a natural disaster.
"And... this is what you wished for?" Hermione asked, one eyebrow arched in elegant skepticism.
"Seems the Room's as confused as I am," I quipped, the chaos before us making as much sense as socks on a rooster. "Your turn—give it a whirl."
Hermione closed her eyes, her expression a concentrated frown that might as well have been trying to solve quantum physics. I watched, almost detached, as the piles began to shift. It was like witnessing a ballet where the dancers were piles of junk gracefully sorting themselves into something resembling order. The clutter receded, and in its place, a perfect replica of a school library materialized, right down to the smell of musty books and the lemony tang of furniture polish—an olfactory nostalgia trip.
"It's just like I remembered," Hermione murmured, her voice a mix of nostalgia and disbelief so thick you could cut it with a knife. She wandered through the aisles with the reverence usually reserved for sacred sites, stopping before a specific shelf to pull out a book, worn and familiar. "Look, even this torn page," she said, showing me a book with a missing piece as if it were a war medal. "Happened during a scuffle over who would get to take it home. It's uncanny."
"It's impressive," I admitted, peering at the book. "But we haven't time-traveled, Hermione. It's all a top-notch illusion crafted from your head. The Room doesn't just recreate—it pulls blueprints from our grey matter."
"So, it's not just reflecting our desires, but also dredging up our memories, our regrets," Hermione mused, her finger tracing the jagged edge of the missing page like a detective following a lead.
"Exactly," I confirmed. "It's like walking through a living, breathing diary."
That thought stopped me cold. A living diary. Here was the Room, throwing up a perfect reenactment of Hermione's Muggle school library right down to a torn page from a forgotten squabble—how deep did it dig to pull out such specifics? It reminded me uncomfortably of another item that manipulated memories- Tom Riddle's Diary. That diary took memory manipulation and kicked it up into a full-blown personality with malice aforethought. How much of that diary's magic was the horcrux, and how much was it tapping into something ancient, like the Room's capabilities?
The thought was chilling, but I kept these dark musings to myself. Hermione, lost in the rows of books, didn't need my mental detour into the potential overlaps in enchantment methodologies.
"So, this room... it just appears?" she asked, turning her analytical gaze on me. "How exactly?"
"It's more than wood and stone; think of it as Hogwarts' subconscious," I explained, my tone half lecturer, half conspiracy theorist. "It picks up on the undercurrents of our desires, sifts through our thoughts, and—voilà—it manifests our mental shopping list."
Hermione, ever the scholar, touched the spines of the books, her brow furrowed. "Does it use a form of Legilimency, or is it more like it's tuned to our emotional frequencies? How precise is its accuracy? Does it replicate reality, or just our perception of it? What if you imagined something completely new? Would it focus on your true memory or entertain your fiction?"
I laughed. Trust Hermione to dissect the Room's magical mechanics rather than just marvel at its wonders.
"What are we looking for, again?"
"Something well-hidden," I replied, steering us back to the task at hand. "Voldemort hid the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw here, among other lost and forgotten things."
"But the Diadem is… uh, lost."
"Like Gryffindor's blade you mean?"
Hermione frowned, conceding to my point. "So, he found it, and hid it here. Hidden among the hidden." She mused, catching on. "So we need to envision that specific place—a room filled with everything students didn't want found."
"Right," I nodded. "Close your eyes. Picture a vast expanse crammed with the detritus of Hogwarts' past. Imagine an endless labyrinth of lost treasures and regrets."
We both closed our eyes, our thoughts merging with the magical essence of the Room. I envisioned it as described in tales and whispers—cluttered, crowded, filled with the echoes of secrets and the weight of forgotten things.
After a moment suspended between anticipation and an impending magic trick, I opened my eyes. The transformation was jarring—like switching from a thrift store to an Amazon warehouse overnight. The sprawling expanse was a jungle of forgotten knick-knacks, each aisle a winding path through a historian's fever dream. The air was a buffet of dust particles and ancient secrets, each breath a chapter from an unpublished novel.
Hermione's eyes snapped open, taking in the warehouse-sized Room of Requirement. "It's incredible," she whispered, the awe in her voice might as well have had its own echo. "It's just as you described, only... more."
I nodded, feeling a bit like a tour guide at a museum of organized chaos. "It's more than a glorified closet; it's a tribute to centuries of hoarding. It's not just about what it can conjure but the memories it's hoarded. It's like the room soaks up bits of everything it hides, turning into a living, breathing archive of Hogwarts' lost and found department."
"So, where exactly is the Diadem?" she asked, scanning the endless clutter.
I frowned, diving into the mental archives for a memory I hoped was still filed correctly. "The diadem perches like a tiara atop a warlock's bust. Last I checked, there was a dusty, forgotten vanishing cabinet next to it."
"A vanishing cabinet?" Her interest was piqued.
"You get in one and pop out of the other. They come in pairs, like salt and pepper shakers, but far less reliable." I shrugged. "They fell out of vogue. Turns out people prefer Portkeys—they don't malfunction and strand you in limbo."
"So… what happened to its twin?"
"Borgin and Burkes," I replied with a casual air. "Had a friend buy it just in case we ever needed an inconspicuous delivery system from here to there. Magic bureaucracy doesn't cover furniture transport, apparently."
"So why aren't we just using that route?"
"Damaged," I said with a dry chuckle. "Which means a DIY repair job is in our immediate future. Then maybe we can spirit it away to somewhere less... cobwebby." I paused, then couldn't resist, "Accio Diadem of Ravenclaw."
Nothing stirred, except perhaps a dislodged dust bunny.
Hermione raised an eyebrow.
I shrugged. "Worth a shot. Would've been quite the punchline if it had worked."
Grabbing my mokeskin pouch, I pulled out my Firebolt. I'll admit that between finding myself in this world and everything else happening over the summer, I hadn't exactly gotten the time or the inclination to go out flying. Plus, Excelsior was in a muggle neighbourhood and the last thing I wanted was the Ministry on my trail for breaking the Statute of Secrecy.
But here inside the Room of Hidden Things, soaring sounded infinitely more appealing than slogging through mountains of Hogwarts detritus—I surveyed the Room of Hidden Things. It was the magical equivalent of an attic, if attics were designed by pack rats with a penchant for historical hoarding. I was seeking the Diadem of Ravenclaw, but one glance at the chaos made me think finding a needle in a haystack would be child's play by comparison.
Below me, Hermione had transfigured her school robes into what looked like Muggle athletic wear, which seemed remarkably sensible unless you counted the claws. At that moment, as her fingers morphed into sharp points, she looked more like a character out of a particularly aggressive fairy tale. Catching my gaze, the lascivious witch grinned.
"You're not the only one that's got a handy trick or two this summer, Harry Potter."
Well, I'll be damned. I had always thought that being a werewolf meant staying normal all-year-round except for the full-moon nights. But seeing Hermione partially transfigure herself like this made me question my own knowledge of things.
"I've shifted into the beast and retained my senses, Harry. A partial self-transformation like this is child's play," she said. "Anyway, let the hunt begin."
As I flew, dodging a dangerously low-hanging chandelier that seemed intent on becoming acquainted with my head, Hermione leaped and climbed like some sort of academic panther, her movements a blur of efficiency and grace. Every so often, her voice would float up to me, muffled by piles of ancient textbooks and tarnished trophies, "Harry, try not to knock anything over with that broom!"
My response was a grin and a thumbs-up, which she definitely didn't see. "Will do!" I called back, though we both knew there was a fair chance of me causing a minor avalanche. Hogwarts did seem to have an infinite supply of things no one needed until you buried them under a collapsed pile of everything else.
The search continued with me weaving through the air, feeling slightly absurd on a broomstick indoors. It wasn't often you got to fly past a tower of broken quills and a heap of what looked suspiciously like confiscated Ever-Bashing Boomerangs. Meanwhile, Hermione had taken to her new form with unsettling enthusiasm. Watching her navigate the clutter with feline agility was both impressive and a tad unnerving. She scaled a mound of discarded potion vials and leapt across to a stack of battered trunks with the kind of flair that suggested she might have missed her calling as a stunt double in a werewolf movie.
"Find anything?" I shouted, after narrowly avoiding a collision with a flying carpet that apparently still held a grudge.
"Just an old sneaker and a teapot that tried to bite me," she shouted back, her voice tinged with annoyance. I couldn't see her from my current position, but I could imagine the scowl.
The Room of Hidden Things wasn't just a storage space; it was a museum of the mundane, an archive of the absurd. Every item had a story, probably a boring one about how it was left behind after a particularly hectic end-of-term packing disaster. Yet here we were, two teenagers searching for a legendary artifact among the accumulated debris of generations of Hogwarts students. The irony wasn't lost on me.
As the search dragged on, I began to wonder if the Diadem was even here. The Room was supposed to manifest what you needed, but it seemed to be taking a rather literal approach to the 'hidden' part of its name. Every so often, I'd dip down to skim the piles, my broomstick's tail inches from knocking over a precarious stack of what I hoped were empty jars and not pixie containers.
"Harry, careful!" Hermione's voice cut through my musings as I executed a hasty maneuver to avoid an errant bludger—apparently still bitter about its retirement. "Maybe keep an eye out for a tiara instead of relics of Quidditch past?"
"Right, the tiara," I muttered to myself, refocusing my efforts. This was not just a search; it was a test of patience and attention to detail, two qualities I didn't list highly on my resume.
The search went on, a blend of aerial dodges and ground-level gymnastics, in what was possibly the most bizarre method ever employed in the hunt for a historical artifact. If there was one thing I'd learned at Hogwarts, it was that the extraordinary was often hidden in plain sight, just waiting for a pair of determined, if somewhat unconventional, treasure hunters to unearth it.
For the better part of an hour, Hermione and I continued our search through the Room of Hidden Things, with her darting between shadows and debris on the ground and me zooming above, my Firebolt making me feel more like a spectator at a Quidditch match than a participant in a treasure hunt. The Room, vast and cluttered, seemed to mock us with its sheer volume of forgotten things. Every corner we turned, every pile we explored, seemed only to unveil more layers of Hogwarts' collective memory, but not the one memory we needed- the Diadem of Ravenclaw.
As the minutes ticked by, the Room seemed less like a helpful, magical space and more like a labyrinth designed by a particularly sadistic puzzle master. We found plenty, of course—if one were in the market for broken wands, moth-eaten robes, or the occasional sentient, mildly aggressive chess piece. At one point, Hermione unearthed a stack of what appeared to be every lost homework assignment from the past century, each paper fluttering to the floor like the world's most academic snowstorm.
"Anything?" I called down to her after yet another fruitless loop around a mountain of discarded potion bottles that glinted under the dim light like a dragon's hoard, minus the dragon and the actual treasure.
"Nothing!" Hermione shouted back, her voice laced with frustration as she clambered over a heap that looked suspiciously like it might contain every confiscated item from Filch's storied career. She paused, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, her transformed claws momentarily catching the light.
I sighed and pulled back on the handle of my broom, bringing it to a gentle hover. The fun of flying was wearing thin, especially as it became increasingly clear that the Diadem was either incredibly well hidden or enjoying a laugh at our expense.
"We might need to think about this differently," I suggested, descending slowly to join Hermione on more stable ground. "Maybe it's not about finding the Diadem in a pile."
Hermione looked thoughtful, her frustration giving way to the analytical calm that usually preceded her best ideas. "You mean… we stop trying to find the Diadem directly?" Her eyes scanned the horizon of historical debris. "What if we systematically eliminate what we know isn't the Diadem?"
I raised my eyebrows, intrigued by the shift in strategy. "You mean, sort of declutter the Room by dismissing what we don't need?"
"Exactly," Hermione nodded with determination. "We can command the Room to remove items based on certain categories—things we know aren't part of what we're looking for."
I considered the idea, the gears in my mind turning. "We could start broad, then get more specific. For instance, we could eliminate all furniture first, then books, then—"
"—then anything that isn't a Ravenclaw relic," Hermione finished, already moving toward the center of the Room where the magic felt strongest.
We stood together, and Hermione took a deep breath. "Room of Requirement, remove all the furniture."
As she spoke, the piles around us began to shift. Chairs, desks, and tables—some teetering dangerously high—began to dissolve into nothing, as if sinking into an invisible floor.
Encouraged, I took the next command. "Remove all books and papers."
The fluttering of pages filled the air like a flock of birds taking flight for the first time, the books vanishing before they ever touched the ground.
"Get rid of the brooms, the clothes…"
"And the pests. I was attacked by a doxy swarm somewhere," growled Hermione.
"Quidditch equipment."
"Potion ingredients, cauldrons…"
"Seasonal, decorative items."
"Personal… no, that's vague. Old school projects, perhaps?"
"Yes."
As Hermione and I continued our methodical elimination, the clutter in the Room of Hidden Things visibly shrank, yet the Diadem of Ravenclaw remained elusive. Each command we issued seemed to be obeyed instantly by the Room, reducing the sea of detritus to a mere pond. Yet, no matter how specific our demands or how focused our intent, the Diadem itself never appeared.
"Something's not right," Hermione murmured, her brow furrowed in concentration. We stood in a significantly emptier Room, yet the absence of the Diadem was palpable.
I nodded, sharing her frustration. "It's as if it knows we're looking for it."
"That might be exactly it," Hermione said slowly, a new realization dawning in her voice. "Harry, this… Diadem. Just what is it?"
I frowned. "Remember Tom Riddle's diary? The Diadem is like that. Inside it is a piece of Vol… of You-Know-Who himself."
There was no saying if the Diadem would react to saying Voldemort's name out loud.
"So it could be thinking, maybe even... influencing the Room?"
The idea settled between us with a chilling weight. The Diadem wasn't merely hidden; it was hiding.
"If that's true," I started, pacing slightly, "then it could be manipulating the Room to obey its desire to remain hidden, counteracting our commands."
Hermione bit her lip, thinking. "So every time we try to exclude items not related to it, the Diadem could be convincing the Room that it's not here at all—effectively erasing its presence from our searches."
Or maybe," I continued. "It simply asked to exist in a room where we aren't."
"Which means," said Hermione, "no matter how much we narrow it down, we won't find it because the Room is under its influence too. It's like asking the Room to find something that it's been convinced doesn't exist."
We shared a look of mixed awe and horror at the cunning nature of the horcrux.
"We have homework," said Hermione at last. "Lots of homework. Find a way to counter the magic of the Founders, establish a connection to this diadem, and then find it. Preferably before it makes things even more difficult."
I scowled.