After suffering the disapproving almost glare of The Beard, and more importantly, filling the bottomless pit with as much of bland tasteless cooking as I could manage. Seriously, what's up with this place? The British never heard of spices? Anyway, after eating and sending Paddy to my temporary abode I set out for the next destination for the day, the Room of Requirements! Obviously I'd have to get to it as soon as possible, the sooner I got my hook into it the sooner I could begin to abuse the numerous likely uses one could get out of it. How much use it would be would depend on how many theories, my own and others from back home, turned out to be true, and to what extent. I had high hopes for it all around. I was also excited because of all the places in Hogwarts the Room was the place that I was the most impressed with when it came to all the various imaginative places that Rowling had come up with.
Of course, I couldn't just go straight there. That would be suspicious as hell. I had to be circumspect – work my way there gradually, all sneaky like. I had to make a show of exploring and shit. Do some rubbernecking, poke into corners, talk a bit with the art, who were likely spying on my prepubescent ass, and just generally act like your average tourist. But I'd refrain from annoying the locals in stupid and vaguely insulting ways. I know it was traditional, but I never could manage to get my IQ to drop that low, even when boozed up. It was a personal failing. Thus began my slow meandering about the castle, pacing back and forward down one hall and into the next, sticking my nose into any unlocked room I happened to came across, or just jumping into and hiding between classes so the magic brats wouldn't run into me.
I'd have to deal with them sooner or later, wouldn't I? If I went to school here. God, I'd be the weird kid, again! It sucked the first time around, I wasn't eager to relive that part of my life. Then again, there was magic this time. Yeah, that would flip things around. I damn well should be able to out study some snot-nosed brats that were too busy either sticking their fingers into light sockets or just into any compatible orifice when they got a bit older. God, that reminded me that date-rape drugs were sold in shops around here. I wonder if I should try to find an old timey food-tester or I'd risk being snared by some stupid teen with a crush and some spare cash. I still remember how Molly caught Arthur. Fuck, she might be around right now!
How hard could it be to fly under the radar long enough to get enough magic under my belt to deal with my classmates? The Room would undoubtedly help if it worked like I hope it did. Dealing with the upper years would be more difficult as they had several years on me. I just had to hope they left me alone long enough for me to catch up. Maybe I could find some way to intimidate them... The average wizard didn't seem too bright in the books, or the movies; maybe I could trick them somehow?
I pondered that question as I slowly worked my way up, floor by floor, pacing back and forth along various corridors, looking at paintings and poking my head into anything odd I might run across, which, considering this is Hogwarts, was pretty much anything and everything. Word of advice, don't mess with the enchanted armors, they are slappy! It would almost have been boring if I didn't keep running into weird mindbending crap pretty much every time I opened a door. Apparently, in Hogwarts, empty rooms had a bit of a different meaning than anywhere else, rooms' not currently in use and filled with outlandish crap would likely be a better descriptor.
I have no idea why there was a room filled with floating left socks. I don't know how I knew they were only the left ones!
Of course, it wasn't as weird as the room filled with oblong-shaped buzzing things. I did not want to think about it.
I shuddered. "The buzzing. It will haunt my dreams, yes…"
I wasn't entirely sure exactly where the Room was. I only remember the seventh floor, left corridor (highly useless as there are lots of left corridors) opposite a painting of dancing ballet trolls. That last one was the relevant one, along with the first one of course. But that begged the question. But which seventh floor? Hogwarts was a damn big place, with lots of buildings that went beyond seven floors; the big honking tower in the middle of it had almost three times that!
Consequently, I'd been at it for a while. I even had to return to the kitchen for another snack. I really wish I could just have asked the damn elves. But I think The Beard is angry with me. Better not antagonize the guy. I don't need house-elf pee in my drink, or worse!
I came to another door and pulled it open.
"▅▅▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"
I closed the door.
"Fan I helvete!" I cried out. "Moving on!"
Man this place is weird, dangerous weird, strange weird and just weird! Couldn't stop though. Nope. Stopping meant thinking, and thinking was bad right now. Thank fucking god I was almost there. Seventh floor. Now I just needed to find a painting of some dancing trolls and I'd be done with another step in my grand plan. After another couple of minutes of wandering around, I finally located the painting. The painting that so happened to be a tapestry as it turns out. It was mesmerizing! It was like watching one of those Russian Dashcam videos on youtube. The guy, the wizard, would attempt to get the six trolls he was with to dance in a line, the trolls would try, fail, get frustrated and then beat the wizard with their clubs. It was morbidly fascinating and questionably hilarious to watch. Since it reset to the beginning once they were done the whole thing gained an almost masochistic overtone. And considering Hagrid, that was not as crazy as it might seem at first blush. Some wizards were freaky.
I shook my head. No! Must resist! Don't get sucked in!
Okay, turn away, turn away. I have a mission! Got to finish the mission! Watching torture porn is not part of the mission. Missing youtube is not an excuse!
I gathered myself and then started to pace back and forth in front of the tapestry, focusing on the shape I wanted the room to take. And after the third pass, I saw a large door melt out of the stone wall in the corner of my eye. I stopped and made a show of slowly turning towards it. I then stood there for a few moments just staring at it.
"Sure, magically appearing doors. This place has hit every other branch on the cliché tree, why not this." I made a point of muttering out loud for the paintings to hear. I looked up at one of the nearby paintings, who was of an aristocratic-looking Victorian dude, who was, of course, watching me in return. "So, what's the chance there is a treasure inside? And is there a grotesque monster guarding it?" That got me an amused smile, but he refrained from commenting. He didn't look at me in suspicion though, so I was totally owning the whole "innocent tourist" thing I had going on. I rock! I took that as a good sign and proceeded to open the door. "Here goes nothing."
The room beyond wasn't much of a room, it was, in fact, an intersection between two corridors. I smiled, the feeling of triumph welling up in me. I closed the door behind me. "I fucking knew it!"
See, I have a theory going back pretty much to the point where I first found out about the room, years ago. I had the thought that a room that could, by all evidence, bend space-time might have more than one entrance. And I'd been right! Hah! Okay, so it might not be such a big deal unless one of these doors happened to lead to something really interesting. Writers liked to use the Hogwart's library for the path to ultimate power, stupid as that was. I mean, it was the one place in the castle that was guaranteed to have seen EVERY student that had passed through her for the last thousand years, which was pretty much every magical in Britain. Any unique magical do-dad that might have been hidden there would have been found a long time ago. Because seriously, kids get into everything, especially the stuff they really shouldn't be touching. You can't tell me that literally thousands upon thousands of bored kids wandering around this place wouldn't have found all the supposedly hidden stuff just by accident.
In my mind, the Room was a far more logical place to find something like that. I highly doubted that it was the case, but it was far more plausible than the damn library!
I decided to check the left door first. Opening it I was hit with a chilly dank puff of air that smelled faintly of wet stone and stale air and a quick look around confirmed that I was likely somewhere in the dungeons. Considering the grime everywhere, an unused part of the dungeons. The door was located at the very end of a long unadorned corridor. I couldn't see the end of it due to it being unlit. I did see two doors on either side. I briefly considered exploring them but decided that I was more curious about the other doors. I could get back to this place later. Besides, it gave me the heebie-jeebies. I'm not normally afraid of the dark, but around here there might actually be monsters hiding unseen out in that darkness. I didn't pay to be incautious this early in the game.
The center door, directly opposite the one I'd come in from led into a small unadorned room with a high ceiling. A large class window provided ample light. The door to the room was directly opposite the exit of the Room of Requirement. There was another smaller door right to the left as well. This place seemed a lot friendlier than the dungeon so I took off my jacket and used it to prop the door to the Room open before I went to see where that other doors went.
The smaller door led to an equally small bathroom, with a toilet, sink and a lion-footed bathtub right out from an old period drama. No shower. This was encouraging. This was obviously supposed to be someone's quarters, and I'd already decided that that someone was going to be me. The second door led to a small railed of landing overlooking a large well lit room, likely a classroom. A small staircase wound around the landing, leading down to the classroom floor. I was immediately reminded of the classroom that Gilderoy Lockheart had used in the second movie, only the landing was much higher up and the windows were located above the landing facing the entrance to the classroom.
I recognized it too. I'd run across it during my little tour of the castle. It was on the fourth floor of the big tower, fairly close to the place with the moving staircases. Very convenient. I had a thought but shelved it in favor of finding out where the last door went.
As it turned out it led outside. The doorway was located not far from a set of greenhouses that I was sure I was going to become intimately acquainted within the coming years. Not immediately useful, but might be a good way to get outside in a pinch.
Well, this had been productive. Now I just had my afternoon meeting with the mindreading headmaster to get through and I was done for the day.
I can't wait!