Chương 28: ITW,H - Chapter 28 - (2) Sharing the ROR

(Word Count: 1, 466) Hermione gave him a curious look, before deciding to go along with it. She entered the room and gasped. Inside the room was a recreation of the school's library! But the study area, instead of large tables, included two desks facing each other with modern office chairs. Quills were a hassle to write with, so instead the desks were equipped with a set of pens. There was even a whiteboard with expo markers off to the side, just in case they wanted to draw things out for a more visual look.

Beyond the desks, was a roaring fireplace and a comfy couch and a fluffy rug in front of it. If they wanted to switch from studious note taking to casual reading and lounging, they could. To the right, past the bookshelves of the recreated library, Harry had the room create a large open space for spell practice.

"What is this place? I didn't know Hogwarts had a second library. And is that a whiteboard? I thought wizards were all horribly behind on things from the muggle world," Hermione wondered.

"Don't worry, they are. This room is the Room of Requirement. It's a room that creates anything you need. It can even reproduce any of the books here in Hogwarts. I had it create a whiteboard for writing and drawing things out."

"That… This is amazing, Harry! How'd you find out about this?"

"In one of my dreams. Apparently, in the future, we had a very terrible DADA professor, and so you put together a secret defense club for me to teach. School clubs were banned at the time, so we needed to find a secret location to meet, and one of the house elves led us here," Harry said. He hadn't really dreamt it, but being a known seer was a convenient excuse for foreknowledge.

"I organized a secret defense club? Against the school's wishes?" She blinked owlishly.

"What was I thinking? I could have gotten us expelled!" Harry couldn't help but laugh.

"That's not the worst of it."

"What could I possibly do that's worse than an unauthorized club?"

"Well… In our fourth year, you capture a news reporter for writing about you and blackmail her to stop. Next year you brew an illegal polyjuice potion so we could sneak into the Slytherin common room. You use a time turner to free two convicts. You set Snape on fire one time, then knock him out another time. We broke into Gringotts in our seventh year. You petrify Neville later this year. You punch Draco in the face—""Harry! James! Potter!" Hermione interrupted, smacking his arm with a book to punctuate each word.

She was red with embarrassment and had tears in her eyes.

"You make me sound like some kind of evil witch!" Harry laughed again. She gave a frustrated "Ugh!" And gave him another smack with her book.

"You're making all of this up, aren't you? I would never do any of those things!" He raised his hands in surrender.

"Alright! Alright, you caught me. None of those things will happen." Not anymore at least. A shame, really. She huffed, and went to sit down at one of the desks.

"So… this place can create anything? Can we get some snacks here? I kind of miss the muggle snacks."

"The room still has to follow the rules of transfiguration, so no food unfortunately." The two of them quickly settled down into their chairs and got to their studies. Any book that they wanted would come flying off of the nearby shelves to land on their desk. Before long, Harry stood up and stretched his limbs out.

"Alright, I think I've had enough studying for today." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Hermione looked up from the notes she was writing down.

"Already? It's not even lunch yet!"

"Yes, but I think I'm going to be moving on to the practical side of things. I need to feel my magic flowing. I've been reading about some interesting ways to use divination, and I want to try out this new spell I found."

"There are spells? I thought divination didn't use wands? From what I've read, it's all just interpreting whatever symbols you can make out via different mediums."

"That is the conventional teachings of divination," Harry agreed, "but I've been reading an interesting book in the restricted section—""The restricted section!" Hermione gasped.

"—and I've learned that divination isn't just trying to see the future, but also viewing the past and present," Harry finished, ignoring Hermione's gasp.

"Using these spells weren't exactly outlawed, but they were removed from the standard curriculum to discourage them from being learned about and used." Hermione thought about it for a second.

"Is it similar to Occlumency and Legilimency?" Harry nodded.

"Yes. It would be very inconvenient if other wixens could go around learning your secrets. So these methods were phased out of public education, and only taught privately, if at all." Divination. It wasn't just teacups and interpreting signs about the future. It was the magic of gathering information and discerning truth. Of course, some of these spells were still in circulation. They were just appropriated into other fields of magic.

An example of this would be some curse breaker's detection spells to detect magic and to identify what enchantments were being used. The revelio spell was a type of divination spell that had been moved into transfiguration for some reason. This is also why there was a surprising amount of overlap with the mind arts. One could say that reading thoughts was "divining" the truth about what someone was thinking. The spell he was going to try was the classic scrying bowl to try and scry something far away.

Harry had the room create a bowl of water by the fireplace. Hermione was curious and came over to watch. Harry took out his wand and carefully did the wand movements, "ostende mihi Sirius." The water rippled, turned hazy, then turned back to normal.

"Um… I don't think it worked."

"It did something though," Hermione commented.

"Let me try again." He repeated the wand movements, "ostende mihi Sirius Black." The same thing happened. The water rippled, turned hazy, then back to normal.

"It seems like the spell's functioning, but maybe it's failing to connect to Sirius?" Hermione suggested.

"It might be the wards at Grimmauld Place." Now that he thought about it, it seemed obvious now that wards could prevent scrying. No wonder these types of spells became unpopular. Everyone was living under wards nowadays.

"Whoops. I bet Arcturus isn't happy right now." ~~ ITW, H ~~ Meanwhile, Arcturus Black was storming out of his office to his floo, throwing on a coat. Someone had just made two attempts at breaking through the wards at Grimmauld Place. His ring told him that whoever they were, they failed. It wasn't a serious attack. They felt more like probes, lightly poking at the wards. This was either some would-be thieves trying to break in, or it was a provocation. Either way, someone was asking to die.

~~ ITW, H ~~"I should probably send him a letter, letting him know that was me," Harry said guiltily.

"Can you try someone else? Someone that isn't underneath some wards?" Hermione asked.

"I could try your parents?"

"Ooh! Yes, they should be at their practice right now." So, Harry repeated the process.

"Ostende mihi Emma Granger." This time the spell went through. The water rippled, turned hazy, then the image of Hermione's mother appeared in the water. The angle of the image was like they were watching through a floating observer above Emma, giving a clear view of the entire room she was in. She was sitting in an office, reviewing some paperwork.

"That's my mom's office! This is so fascinating! I didn't know magic like this was possible!" Hermione gushed. She would definitely need to read that book when Harry was done with it. Harry checked his status. This spell only required 15 points of Power, but it required a lot of Focus to keep the spell going. Far more than any other spell he had casted so far. In the bowl, they could see a nurse come in.

"Dr. Granger, your 11 O'clock is here."

"Thank you, Jenny," Emma said. She quickly put her paperwork away and made her way out of the office. The spell followed her out through the hallway into another room, where a mother and a young girl were waiting. Harry let the spell drop.

"Whew! That spell is more taxing than I thought it would be." The two of them stayed in the Room of Requirement until lunch before they made their way back down.

"Thank you for showing me this, Harry," Hermione said.

"Just be sure to remember: this stays between us, okay?"

"Of course."