Chapter 8: The Room of Requirement
Two days passed. Two days in which Timothy's mind was consumed by a single and persistent thought: the conversation with Hermione. Not because of the flirtation or the drama of Harry's chase, but because of his frustration.
He saw her in Wednesday's Transfiguration class, a session shared again with the Gryffindors. Today's class was about trying to transform a beetle into a button. While the others struggled, their beetles barely changing color or developing a metallic sheen, Timothy achieved the transformation on his first try.
A perfect mother-of-pearl button lay on his desk. He felt no pride, only a vague boredom.
At the end of class, as the students gathered their things, he walked over to Hermione's table. She was still staring at her own beetle, which had turned into a slightly misshapen-looking button.
"You left this the other day," Timothy said quietly, placing the copy of Theory of Enchantments on his desk.
Hermione looked up, surprised. A faint blush appeared on his cheeks as he remembered the panic of flying class. "Oh. Thank you. I thought I had lost it."
"I took good care of him," he said with a small smile.
She looked at him, her academic frustration finally overcoming her embarrassment. "How do you do it?"
"Do what?" he asked, though he knew perfectly well what he meant.
"Everything," she snapped, her voice a passionate whisper. "The spells, the potions, the transformation... You make it seem so... easy. As if it didn't cost you any effort. I've read all the books, I've practiced for hours, and still..."
His gaze fell on his imperfect button, and then on the empty space where Timothy's had been.
Timothy leaned against his desk, his smile softening. "Your passion for rules is fascinating, Hermione. It really is."
"It's not a passion for the rules," she replied, offended. "It's respect for magic. It's a discipline."
"And there's the difference," he said. "You see a set of rules that you have to follow. I see a story that can be told in different ways."
"That doesn't answer my question," she insisted.
He shrugged, his expression becoming enigmatic. "I guess I have a talent for it."
The answer, so simple and so unsatisfactory, left her speechless. It was a wall, a polite end to the conversation. He realized that he was not going to get more from him.
Timothy nodded goodbye and left, leaving her with her frustration and her books.
But the conversation had ignited something in him. Hermione's frustration mirrored her own. I was surrounded by people, rules, limitations. Practicing in a crowded classroom was like trying to paint a masterpiece in the middle of a crowded market.
I needed a sanctuary.
The memory of his previous life, a fragment of a story read in a world without magic, returned to him. A room. A room that appeared when you needed it. The Room That Comes and Goes. It was too tempting a possibility to ignore.
That afternoon, after classes, he went to the seventh floor. The corridor was deserted, lit only by the dusty light that filtered through a window. He found the tapestry: the absurd and comical representation of Barnabas the Nutty trying to teach ballet to some trolls.
This was the place.
He closed his eyes. He didn't think of a spell, or a formula. He focused on his need. A need that had grown in him during fifteen years of a life without a single space truly his own. It was not a simple wish. It was a longing that hurt his soul.
'I need a place where I can study in peace,' he thought, his will focusing like a laser beam. 'A place just for me. A sanctuary. A laboratory. A home.'
He began to walk in front of the blank wall stretch, over and over again. Thrice. With each step, he poured his need into the ancient walls of the castle, calling upon the magic that slept within.
When he opened his eyes, he gasped.
On the stone wall, where there was nothing before, there was now a door. It was not a castle gate, big and heavy. It was a door of dark and polished wood, with a simple brass knob. It was elegant, discreet and promised a secret.
His heart pounded. The story was real.
With a trembling hand, he turned the knob and opened the door.
…..
Timothy pushed the door open and entered, closing it gently behind him. The gray, dusty hallway disappeared, replaced by... perfection.
It was not a great room. It was a cozy, circular room, lined with dark wood shelves that smelled of mahogany and beeswax.
A fire crackled merrily in a stone fireplace, and in front of it was a leather armchair so comfortable and worn that it seemed to have been custom-made for him.
The air smelled of old books, parchment, and a faint hint of jasmine tea. On a side table, a cup smoked, waiting for him. It was the exact sanctuary that his soul had asked for.
He closed the door, and the sound of the outside world completely faded away. He was alone. Really alone, for the first time in his two lives.
He walked over to the teacup and took a sip. It was perfect. Strong, bitter, with just a hint of sugar. Exactly how he liked it.
A slow, genuine smile flashed across his face. This was not a simple hiding place. This was magic on a whole different level.
It was a magic that read the intention and turned it into reality. It was fascinating.
The experiment had to continue. Was this a fixed room? Or could it change?
He left the room, closing the door, which vanished back into the cold stone. He stood in the empty hallway for a moment, his heart pounding.
He refocused. He walked the required three times, but this time with a different request. "I need a place to sleep. A comfortable and safe place."
The same polished oak door appeared. He opened it.
The library had disappeared. Instead, there was an exact replica of his bedroom in Ravenclaw Tower, but a thousand times better.
The bed had Egyptian thread sheets, the window was larger, offering a view of the moonlit mountains, and the silence was absolute.
An excited laugh escaped his lips. It had no limits! He came out again, his mind now racing, the possibilities unfolding before him like a star map.
"I need a state-of-the-art potions lab."
Entered. The room was a laboratory of stainless steel and stone, with silver cauldrons that stirred on their own and rows of rare, perfectly labeled ingredients. It would have made Snape cry with envy.
Left. "I need an alchemy workshop."
He went back in. The room was now old, made of stone, with a transmutation furnace in the center, twisted glass stills, and diagrams of philosophical circles covering the walls.
It was becoming addictive. The power of instant creation. He decided to push it to the limit. What happened to abstract concepts?
He came out one last time, his heart beating mischievously. "I need a place to... a romantic date."
He opened the door. Her breath got stuck in her throat. I was in a fancy little French bistro. A table for two, lit candles floating in the air and a window that looked out onto a nighttime and rainy version of the lake.
Timothy laughed out loud in the empty room. It was perfect. The Room of Requirement was not just a room. It was a conceptual tool.
It was the most powerful tool he had ever found.
He understood that he had been playing on a small scale. I could ask for anything. And he, more than anything else in the world, had a very specific need, a hunger that consumed him.
He left the bistro, closed the door, and prepared for the final request.
…..
Timothy walked out of the romantic Parisian bistro and the door vanished behind him. He stood in the seventh-floor hallway, his heart pounding with an emotion that was almost overwhelming.
He had found the ultimate tool. The perfect laboratory. The ideal hiding place.
But those were all just places. The Room could have been more. His mind raced, connecting the pieces. If the Hall could provide a potions lab, it had to have access to the ingredients. If he could create a bedroom, he had access to furniture.
What if I could create a library? Did he have access to the books?
The hunger for knowledge, his central obsession, took hold of him with a force that left him almost breathless. He no longer needed to sneak into the main library. I didn't need to spend hours searching the shelves. He could bring the library to him.
He stood in front of the blank wall stretch one last time. His heart was pounding with the anticipation of a conqueror about to claim his true prize.
He closed his eyes and concentrated with an intensity he hadn't used since he arrived. He did not ask for a reading room. He asked for the contents.
"I need a place," he thought, pouring all his will into the ancient stones, "where I can read each and every one of the books in the Hogwarts library. All of them. At the same time."
He walked the required three times and the polished oak door appeared again. This time, it seemed heavier, more... Significant.
He opened the door.
Her breath got stuck in her throat. The Chamber had exceeded all their expectations. A near-perfect replica of Hogwarts' main library stretched out before him, but better. It was a vast circular room, with multiple levels of dark wood bookshelves that rose to a glass dome that displayed an ever-moving star map.
She was beautiful. It was perfect. And it was all his.
His first instinct was not to pick up the nearest book. It was verifying. With his heart pounding, he walked, almost ran, to the back of the room, to the place he longed for most.
And there it was: the Restricted Section. In the main library, it was closed by an iron gate and a magic lock. Here, the gate was open. Dark, forbidden books, bound in dragon skin and weathered metal, awaited him.
A smile of pure and absolute triumph was drawn on his face. The Hall had given him the key to the kingdom.
He began to walk through the corridors of the Restricted Section, his fingers brushing against the spines of grimoires that contained centuries-old secrets. Her Archival Magic vibrated under her skin, eager to begin.
However, as he explored, he noticed something. There were gaps. Empty spaces on the shelves where there should clearly be books. He stopped, his mind analyzing the anomaly.
Specific texts were missing. He could sense the absence of certain knowledge, like a missing note in a symphony. They were books about the darkest forms of soul magic, texts about the creation of Horcruxes, and other fundamentally profane rituals.
He was not disappointed. In fact, he felt a kind of... respect.
'Personal stamps', he intuited. 'The magic of Dumbledore. Stronger than that of the Chamber.'
The castle offered him everything it had, but it could not override the direct will of its director.
Timothy shrugged. He didn't care. That magic was dirty, inefficient. Their goal was not immortality through mutilation. Its goal was understanding. And he had thousands of other books waiting for him.
…..
Timothy stood there, on the threshold of the now-open Restricted Section, for a moment that seemed like an eternity.
The silence of the library of the Room enveloped him, thick and reverent. The smell of ancient parchment and latent magic was overwhelming, more intoxicating than any potion or perfume I had ever known.
It was not a smile of triumph. It was one of pure, absolute, and devout reverence.
He was a pilgrim who had just found his holy land. An addict who had just been handed over the keys to the distillery.
He walked slowly to the nearest bookshelf. His fingers trembled slightly as he brushed against the spine of a book bound in basilisk skin: Ancient Spells of the Nile. He did not feel afraid. He felt hungry.
He ignored the comfortable armchair that the Hall had conjured for him near a crackling fireplace. That was a place for relaxation. This was work. This was worship.
He sat down on the floor, right there in the dusty hallway, crossed his legs, and opened the first volume.
The words jumped off the page. It wasn't like reading. It was like drinking water after a lifetime of thirst.
His mind, a unique fusion of a first-time magician's obsession and the structure of a mature consciousness, simply absorbed the information.
Every rune diagram, every intricate instruction for an incantation, wasn't something I memorized. It was something I understood. I saw the internal logic, the story that the spell was telling reality.
He lost track of time. The light from the star map on the ceiling changed, turning from a deep blue to a soft gold, indicating dawn. He didn't notice.
He finished the book, closed it reverently, and moved on to the next one. And the next.
When he finally left the Hall hours later, his mind buzzed with a power and knowledge that made him feel like a god.
The castle felt different. Smaller.
Breakfast in the Great Hall was a blur. The faces of his fellow Ravenclaws, arguing about the duties of Enchantments, seemed to him those of children talking about trivial games.
He attended his classes that day in a trance-like state. His body was there, sitting in Herbology class, transplanting a self-fertilizing shrub. But his mind... his mind was still in the depths of the Restricted Section.
I was analyzing the theory behind a werewolf's blood curse while Professor Sprout explained the properties of Bubotuber pus.
Hermione looked at him in frustration in Transfiguration. His match turned into a perfect silver needle on the first try, but his gaze was lost, absent.
"You're wasting your time," a voice whispered in his head. "You could be reading."
That night, he established the routine that would define his life at Hogwarts.
He slept four hours. He ate in the Great Hall, socializing just enough to maintain his mask of "normal and eccentric boy". I went to class and made the absolute minimum effort to get an "Acceptable" or "Exceeds Expectations."
And every spare second—the breaks between classes, the hours after dinner, the depths of the night—was spent in his sanctuary.
He sat on the floor of his private library, surrounded by stacks of books. Read. Page after page, word for word. His rhythm was voracious. A book every ten or fifteen minutes. He devoured them.
He didn't feel tired. How could it be? This was not work. It was ecstasy. It was the purpose he had been looking for all his life.
The rest of Hogwarts could have their house points, their Quidditch, and their teen dramas. He had this. He had knowledge of the world at his fingertips.
And he was determined to take it all.