A week later, the Room of Requirement reshaped itself into a long, bare chamber with stone walls and a high, arched ceiling. And in the centre were two identical Vanishing Cabinets. Restored and whole. Dark wood polished back to life, the cracks sealed so neatly they looked like part of the grain. The doors stood closed, facing one another.
Cassian circled the nearer one, eyes lit up in a way they only did when he found something ancient and clever.
"Brilliant. The way it compresses the space is unlike Portykeys and Apparition, that's why wards cannot track it." He muttered.
Bathsheda had already opened the back panel of the second cabinet. Thin sheets of carved wood lifted away under her charm, revealing the runic core beneath. She crouched, sleeves pushed up, fingers tracing the inlaid pattern.
"Oh, it works like this." She nodded.
Cassian looked up. "Did you figure it out?"
She nodded. He dropped into a crouch beside her. The runes weren't arranged without directional arrows or anchoring sequence the Portkeys had. Instead, the centre held a spiralled compression glyph, wrapped in a containment loop that bent back into itself.
"It's not folding distance," she said, tapping the inner ring. "It's connecting it."
Cassian leaned closer. "Show me."
She shifted slightly so he could see. "The two cabinets share a space."
He looked at the opposite cabinet across the room. "So when someone steps inside..."
She grinned. "They step into an artificial space that opens to two cabinets."
"So it isn't transport," he breathed. "It's a pocket."
He leaned closer, trying to think of some tidy bit of physics to make it make sense. Except this wasn't elegant physics. It was carpentry and stubborn magic.
Bathsheda tapped the inner loop. "Don't get carried away. It's not folding the universe. It's carving out a room between rooms."
He glanced at her. "A shed in the void is still cool."
"More like a corridor," she said. "A narrow one."
"And the reason wards can't track it," he said slowly, "is because you never leave your point of origin in the usual sense."
She nodded. "There's no external movement to trace. The castle doesn't see you cross a boundary. You step into the cabinet. From the castle's perspective, you came out of the cabinet that was always part of it."
He huffed. "Scary, but brilliant."
She ran her finger along the carved groove. "It's also unstable."
"Poor construction?" he asked.
"Poor refinement," she replied. "The internal space isn't well defined. It doesn't guide you. It barely holds shape."
He shifted his weight. "So when you step in..."
"The door closes," she said. "That's part of the guidance."
He blinked. "Guidance?"
"Yes. Once the door shuts, the only exit that aligns with the shared space is the paired cabinet. You feel your way toward it."
He frowned. "Feel? Like you touch the edges to find the exit?"
She looked up at him. "There's no floor in the usual sense. No walls you'd recognise. The space reacts to proximity. When you move toward the correct exit, it stabilises. Move away and it thins."
He stared at the cabinet across the room.
"So you're walking through a half-formed corridor that only behaves if you head the right way."
"Exactly."
He let out a short laugh. "That's mad."
"Yes."
He ran a hand through his hair. "And if someone decided to linger?"
"You could," she said. "In theory."
He looked at her with one brow up.
She chuckled. "The space exists as long as one cabinet remains intact and aligned. Step inside. Close the door. You're inside the interval between them. If you don't approach the far exit, you're suspended there."
He turned that over. "So someone could hide."
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"That depends on how stable the core remains. The longer you stay, the more strain it puts on the runes. It wasn't built for storage. It's a shortcut," she added. "A backdoor between fixed points. Not meant for comfort."
She straightened. "If the runes fall out of sync, the shared space destabilises."
He gave her a look. "Define destabilises."
Her mouth tilted slightly. "You don't want to be inside when that happens."
He snorted. "Right."
He walked between the two cabinets.
"You realise," he said, "this is better than most Ministry transport theory."
"That isn't a high bar."
He shot her a glance. "Fair."
He glanced at her. "You almost sound fond."
"I respect the craft," she said. "I don't approve of the intent."
He grinned faintly. "That's our brand."
She ignored that and stepped back toward the open panel. "The alignment's stable now. I've tightened the loop. Reinforced the compression ring."
"So no one's getting shredded between endpoints."
"Not unless you tamper with it."
"You know," he said, "if we stripped the murder potential out of this, it'd be brilliant for research."
She gave him a look. "You're not tempering with Murder Cabinet that can shred us to nothing."
"I'm serious," he said. "A shared internal volume. You could study transitional states. Test spatial theory. Play with layered environments."
She raised an eyebrow. "What are you thinking?"
He shrugged. "Nothing."
She looked at him for a long second. "Cass."
Cassian's mouth twitched. "What if we created this corridor without cabinets? With a spell, not long but short burst corridor to skip the space?"
"You want a free-standing shared volume," she said. "No anchors or physical housing."
"I want two points," he replied, stepping between the cabinets. "Marked, defined, held for... seconds. You step through. Doorless."
She crossed her arms. "That mad way of saying we punch a hole between two spaces with nothing but spell structure holding it open."
"Temporarily," he said. "Five seconds. Ten. Enough to cross a room. Or a wall."
She watched him pace between the cabinets.
"You'd need synchronised endpoints," she said. "A defined volume. If they drift even slightly..."
"You shear," he finished. "Or scatter."
She gave him a flat look.
"I'm not saying we try it in a corridor full of first-years," he added.
"You're thinking field application."
"I'm just thinking," he said. "And yes, field application. Imagine bypassing anti-Apparition wards without dragging a wardrobe around."
"These work because the wood stabilises the runes. The frame absorbs strain. Without that, the compression loop will ripple."
He crouched beside her. "What if we replace the cabinet with a dual-cast structure? Two casters. One at each end."
Her eyes shifted.
"Linked intent?" she asked.
"Shared construct," he said. "You build half. I build half. The spell completes in the middle."
She considered it. "You'd have to match definition perfectly. Volume, orientation, boundary."
"I can picture a room," he said.
"I'm not worried about you picturing a room. I'm worried about the middle tearing if one of us wavers." She gave a hum. "In theory? Maybe. In practice? Air slips. It doesn't grip runes the way wood or stone does. Space is worse. Already dangerous. And you're talking about sending people through it. One stray gust, and it'll kill whoever's inside."
He tapped the air, thinking. Then raised his hands. "Fine. Fine. Got it. Let's start small."
Bathsheda didn't relax. "Define small."
"Static test," he said. "We don't send anyone through. We don't even step in. We build the shared volume and hold it. That's it."
She watched him. "In open air."
"In open air," he agreed. "Between two marked points. Two chairs, say. Five feet apart. Nothing dangerous."
She gave him a look that said she'd heard that line before. Her brow lifted.
"If they're identical, they'll compete," he said. "We want them to complete each other."
She considered that. "You're thinking paired halves of the compression spiral."
"Yes. Split the core. One half here. One half there. They only form a full structure when we cast together."
She crouched and began sketching with her wand-tip. Pale lines etched into the stone.
He dropped into a crouch opposite her and started marking the second circle. His lines were messier, less ornate. Function first.
"We don't step inside," she said.
"Agreed."
"We don't extend beyond three seconds."
"Five," he said.
She stared at him.
"Three," he amended.
She drew the outer ring thicker. "And we abort if the core flickers."
"Obviously."
She rose to her feet and brushed stone dust from her hands. The two circles faced each other across a short stretch of bare floor. Between them, nothing.
"That's the target space," she said.
He stepped into his circle. The runes glowed faint blue beneath his boots.
She moved into hers. Gold light answered her magic.
"For the record," she said, "if this tears, I'm blaming you."
"Obviously."
They raised their wands.
He glanced at her. "On three?"
"On three."
He took a few quick breaths, picturing a narrow corridor, no walls, only boundary. A room suspended between two points.
"One."
The runes brightened.
"Two."
The air between them tightened, faint ripples moving through.
"Three."
They cast.
Light leapt from both circles at once. A thin, curved shimmer that met in the centre. For a heartbeat, the air cracked. The space between them darkened slightly, as if someone had sketched a doorway in pencil and forgotten to ink it.
Cassian felt the shape forming. The shimmer trembled. The torches guttered. For a split second, the shadows bent the wrong way.
Bathsheda's jaw tightened. "It's unstable."
"Hold," he said.
Edges started wavering. A jagged fracture split the shimmer from top to bottom.
"Drop," she said.
They cut the spell.
The shape collapsed inward with a soft implosion. The air cracked like a whip against the stone.
Cassian lowered his wand slowly. "Well."
She stepped out of her circle, eyes still on the space where the pocket had formed. "It formed."
"Briefly."
"It held for an instant."
He grinned and walked to the centre, legs still shaking, and waved his hand through the air. Nothing resisted him now. It's just air.
He let out a laugh. "We did it."
She huffed, hands shaking. "We nearly tore it."
"Nearly," he echoed. "But we didn't."
She glanced at the circles on the floor. "The compression halves weren't aligned perfectly. Yours pulled harder."
He slid an arm round her waist, pulling her in close.
"Honestly," he said, taking deep breaths, "I was half worried this could be twisted into something vile. Curiosity got the better of me so I wanted to test it. But now that we've actually tried it, I'm... relieved."
She looked up at him, then leaned in until her forehead rested against his.
"Did you feel it?" she asked quietly.
He huffed a laugh. "Felt like holding a door against a storm."
"It fought us," she said. "It took all of my strength to hold it."
"And it took both of us to keep it from tearing."
She nodded. "Two people who understand each other's magic. Who can match intent without speaking. That's the only reason it formed at all."
"This isn't something two random fools could throw together after tea."
"Even two skilled ones," she added. "If they're out of sync by a breath, it collapses."
"It's nowhere near finished," he said. "The compression's crude. The centre buckled too fast."
"But we held it," she replied. "For a small moment."
He gave a nod. "Long enough to prove it's possible."
She pulled back to look at him. "And long enough to know it's dangerous."
He smiled faintly. "It's always dangerous."
Her hand slid from his waist to his chest, palm flat over his heart. "We refine it. Slowly. Or we leave it."
"We refine it," he said, without hesitation. "Carefully."
(Check Here)
A: Anything to declare?
R: Nothing but my silence.
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