The house-elves began clamouring over one another with their accounts, but all of them agreed on the essential point — the description of an enormous room crammed with miscellaneous rubbish. It was plain enough that this was the Room of Requirement. That it offered more than simply a training hall had always been obvious, but that among its configurations there was a vast storage space for junk — that was genuinely new information. I thought I ought to go and have a look.
— Thank you for your accounts, — I released a generous measure of magic around myself, and the house-elves were plainly pleased.
I was just preparing to leave when one of the younger house-elves presented me with a tray bearing a dozen small pasties, or something of that sort. Noticing my questioning look, the elf explained that it had taken note of my appreciation of the Durmstrang visitors' menu the previous year. This particular elf had decided that learning as many recipes from as many countries as possible was the right approach, since everyone loved good food — and perhaps one day, someone would take it on in their household. In short, either this house-elf had decided to run an experiment and test its skills, or — well, there were many possibilities.
— Go on, then, — I tried one of the pasties.
Excellent, light pastry — soft — and the filling of meat, mushrooms and a modest but well-chosen blend of spices was precisely right.
— There are different kinds, — the house-elf had clearly read the satisfaction on my face.
— Splendid. These are for me?
— Yes.
— Thank you, — I accepted the food, Transfigured a lidded container for it, and put it in my bag.
I of course rewarded the house-elf with a portion of magic and an approving pat on the head — they were simple creatures, and that kind of treatment they valued greatly. One had to express approval or disapproval of their actions with perfect clarity. If a house-elf received a reprimand regardless of what it did, the contradictions could genuinely unhinge it. For instance: the elf polishes the shoes and is scolded for it. Next time in the same situation it doesn't polish them — and is scolded again. Their logic is simple, the situation self-contradictory, and the result is conflict. Too many such conflicts, and you ended up with an unhinged house-elf.
Leaving the kitchen, I headed up to the eighth floor, conjuring little spiders along the way directly in my pocket — I had grown so practised at it that I scarcely needed anything at all. Though it was extraordinarily complex compound magic, and if one attempted it solely with a wand, following every sequence and rune and so forth in order, one would go quite mad, frankly. But if every nuance, every step, every curl or magical gesture was stored in the mind in complete detail — and if one could conceive of all of it together, as a single composition, and above all simultaneously — then even the most intricate magical operations became available with practically a snap of the fingers. With the attendant risk of a stroke from overload, or some other injury of the variety that could dispatch one to the next world in a rather expedient manner.
Reaching the eighth floor — exchanging a few words with several students along the way — I checked the surrounding area with magic for any observers. There were none invisible. On the wall hung the same old painting of a hapless wizard being thrashed by trolls in pink tutus wielding clubs or enormous white bones, with a theatrical, balletic quality to the violence. It was near this painting that I began to pace, trying different intentions and mental images.
Having tried several without result, I settled on the obvious and straightforward: I urgently need a place to hide something safely.
This particular intention produced a double door in the wall. I opened it boldly and stepped inside, finding myself in a vast, gloomy space, faintly illuminated by a sourceless blue-white moonlight that played in intricate patterns across the motionless dusty haze. Mountains of junk — that was precisely how it looked. The room seemed boundless; the ceiling was lost in darkness, and those very mountains occasionally disappeared upward into it. There was an extraordinary quantity of rubbish here, and how one was supposed to find anything — that was entirely unclear.
Taking a handful of spiders from my pocket, I dropped them on the floor and sent them off to scout. I drew my wand, gave it a wave—
— Accio, diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw.
Nothing happened. Foolish to have expected otherwise, but not to try would have been equally foolish. An artefact of that kind was almost certainly protected against Summoning Charms by its very creator — to say nothing of what the Dark Lord might have added. It was a trivially simple thing to do with charms, and simpler still with runes. My own creations, for instance, were protected against such things by embedding the appropriate rune into the overall schema. Yes, it had to be accounted for and calculated in advance — but set against the general complexity of my artefact calculations, that particular addition was on the level of basic arithmetic.
Well then. Time to start sorting through this rubbish.
The rubbish…
The rubbish…
This was a boundless repository of rubbish.
— Bloody tip, — I actually said it aloud.
Yes, I got rather absorbed — it did that to you. The time-check charms showed it was already approaching eleven, and I, as a responsible prefect, had not yet reported for duty on the night patrol. Were there any results? If mountains of assorted furniture, useless wardrobes, old heaps of parchment nobody wanted any more — or secret correspondence of the Montague-and-Capulet variety, forbidden love in the old style — someone's cache of beer that had been dead for a hundred years, a weed that had sprouted through a pile of chairs... If that constituted results, then yes, there were results, and plenty of them.
The correspondence, incidentally, I read. Quite old — some three hundred years by the style of writing, the various other details, and the names mentioned, which I had encountered in materials about old families. And it was not without reason that I had compared it to the most sorrowful tale in the world — here too was passionate love between two young talents from families that were, shall we say, rather less than friendly. Even the girl's age was the same, or thereabouts — third year, thirteen-and-something. The boy was younger than Romeo, though not by much — sixteen. Ah, what times, what customs.
In any case, there had been no reason to hope for quick results. Good thing I hadn't. But the sheer difficulty of finding anything in these mountains of rubbish was only half the problem. This room had a somewhat adverse effect on my magical workings. Something crude and wand-driven in the local style was barely affected, but delicate wandless operations requiring precise control — those dispersed with distance from me. It had no effect on artefacts — I checked that immediately upon noticing. So I could not simply cast out a web of finest magical threads to scan for what I needed, as I had done on more than one occasion in the library. Which left purely physical searching. And it was not at all certain the diadem was here in the first place.
Leaving the spiders to continue their survey, I left the Room of Requirement and headed straight to the night patrol of the castle corridors. The lights had been extinguished everywhere except in the Entrance Hall and along the direct route to the Great Hall, so one needed either a Lumos charm or night-vision enhancement to navigate. Fortunately, corridors with no windows were relatively few, and there was at least some light somewhere in the castle.
I walked. Wandered. Looked for anyone out of bounds, though I already knew the positions of the few who were risking detention and lines. Nobody was doing anything criminal — some were simply engaged in harmless nonsense, others in the Hogwarts variety of romance. Except for one group of Slytherins who had set up an ambush in the dungeons. Not quite the dungeons proper — at the entrance to the basement level, the junction from which one could go either toward our common room, the kitchens and the various offices in that direction, or toward the Slytherin common room, the potions domain, and the dungeons proper, which stretched without apparent end, most of them sealed completely shut — no getting through.
Worth investigating. They had gone about it rather seriously. Six of them, from three directions, under simple Invisibility Cloaks or concealment charms, keeping silent, wands at the ready. A proper ambush, as ambushes go. Waiting for someone significant. Someone capable. Perhaps even for me.
Drawing my wand — so that in the event of a fight I would be seen to use only Protego or other purely defensive spells — I walked confidently down the stairs of the main tower, even conjuring a Lumos above my head so they could see me coming clearly. Beyond having a couple of spells ready in mind, and being prepared to throw wandless magic at a moment's notice, I could also see these enthusiasts perfectly clearly — them and their reactions — via the spiders.
Descending to the T-junction at basement level, the spiders showed me the Slytherins tensing and preparing as I appeared. I took two steps toward the common room — and spells came from every direction, spoken aloud: Stupefy, various Jelly-Legs variants, Disarming Charms, and even a rather dark bone-shattering curse.
Was I ready to repel an attack of that kind? In such conditions I could have repelled something considerably more dangerous. The attack was not synchronised, so I simply drew my wand in a winding arc around myself, the tip catching each spell in turn and deflecting them in bright silver flashes of Protego Reflecto — while the bone-shattering curse, given its darker nature, had to be redirected via spatial distortion, essentially sent back with the wand.
A few moments, and around me lay the casualties of their own magical efforts, while those who had sent the harmless spells found themselves on the receiving end of my Silencio and Expelliarmus. Collecting their wands and pulling them together with a sweep of wandless magic, I waited. The only one I had not silenced was the enthusiast who had used the bone-shattering curse — a budding Dark wizard, first among equals, apparently. Sixth year, by the look of it — a big lad. His spell had done rather thorough work on him in return, shattering the bones in his arms, legs and fingers. He now lay there, whimpering and moaning, making no attempt whatsoever to move. Those were the only sounds audible in the silence of the stone corridors.
What was I waiting for? Simply this: the lad had an open fracture, and the appearance of blood on the castle walls summoned the duty professor.
— I trust, — came a voice from behind me, — you have an explanation for what has occurred here.
The duty professor was, naturally, Professor Snape. In the darkness of the corridor and the blue light that reflected not at all from his black clothing, it appeared that the corridor simply contained a disembodied and displeased face. His arrival was no surprise — I had sensed him. I turned to face him calmly, while the professor was already attending to the only student who had actually been injured.
— Assault on a prefect, Professor. I have taken no administrative action — these are your students; you can decide what, how, and with what degree of force to address it.
— The wands, — he extended his hand, having already finished resetting the bones with one painful spell and stopped what little bleeding there was.
I silently handed the wands over and watched as the professor used Prior Incantato to establish who had cast what on whom. My own spells were, naturally, entirely defensive in nature — I had not directly harmed anyone.
— I see. You may go, Mr Granger.
Snape returned my wand, un-petrified his half-finished casualties and marched them off — practically by the scruff of their necks — toward their common room. The expressions on their faces were ones of profound doom.
I could, of course, have made a point of arguing about their conduct, docking points and the rest of it. But I had always regarded every administrative sanction available to a prefect as essentially useless — the house points system included — and there was nothing further to say on the matter. And having studied Snape well enough by now, I could say with certainty that all of that was equally pointless. Had the duty professor been someone else, there might have been something worth arguing over — the appropriate punishments for these particular students, at least — but in the broader scheme, all such punishments were laughable. I sometimes thought Dumbledore had been wrong to abolish corporal punishment — some individuals urgently needed to be birched, the switches soaked in salt water, delivered with absolute inevitability and the undeniable authority of the wizard carrying out the sentence.
As for the assault itself — we would see. If they decided to try something again, I would cure them of that inclination to do harm to their fellow man.
Returning to the common room to find it completely empty, I went to bed with a clear conscience. I would need to put time in the schedule for searching for the diadem. And once I found it — I would point Potter in the right direction via Dobby, as before. Keep my own visible involvement in all of it to a minimum.
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