Chapter 25: Night Visit To The Come And Go Room
“Hmm…”
After passing the staircase entrance corner, Melvin’s gaze swept over the fourth-floor corridor. Fluffy’s room was a few corners away, so he saw nothing.
“Room of Requirement? You mean Hogwarts Castle has a hidden secret room that the four founders enchanted with concealment magic, which only reveals itself when someone truly needs it…”
“I tend to think it was created by Lady Hufflepuff.”
Dumbledore walked ahead, ascending the staircase with light footsteps: “She deeply understood the pleasures of life, often surprising students and leaving them gifts.”
“Surprises, gifts.” Melvin calmly withdrew his gaze, trailing half a step behind. “If it’s a gift, why not make it public or leave clues for students to discover.”
“I’m not sure either; that was a thousand years ago.”
“Does the Room of Requirement have what I want?”
“Perhaps. Whenever it appears, it’s always arranged to perfectly meet the seeker’s needs and resolve the dilemma they face.”
“How did you discover it.”
“Well…”
Dumbledore’s tone and footsteps were in sync, neither hurried nor slow, his voice clear in the passageway: “That was many years ago, when I was still a student at Hogwarts. I think it was the second half of fifth year. My friends and I were all busy preparing for the upcoming exams, our heads full of revision, feeling dizzy and desperate to use the toilet. I took a wrong turn, went around two corners, and found myself in a room I’d never seen before. It was beautifully furnished, filled with all sorts of exquisite, luxurious chamber pots.”
“Chamber pots…”
Melvin pursed his lips, unable to tell if the story was true or not, and didn’t want to ask for details.
It felt like a real experience of Dumbledore’s, but also unlikely to be true; it sounded like something made up on the spot to amuse a child.
Dumbledore didn’t find his own story false or clichéd at all; his tone was perfectly serious as he earnestly analyzed:
“After the Ordinary Wizarding Level Examinations ended, with some free time, I went back to investigate carefully but could never find the room again. No trace of it, as if it had completely vanished.
“When I returned for sixth year, I spent months experimenting and figured out some patterns.
“It could probably only be entered at five-thirty in the morning, or perhaps only under a half-moon, or maybe when someone desperate for the toilet had an especially full bladder.”
“…”
Melvin quickened his pace slightly to draw alongside him: “I’m not very interested in the first conditions; I’m only curious about that last conclusion. How many experiments did you conduct to reach it?”
“Er… I can’t remember.”
“In any case, that was the end of it. My student-era exploration of the mysterious room stopped there; I didn’t even know it was called the Room of Requirement back then.”
Dumbledore’s tone seemed much more cheerful: “The next time I encountered the Room of Requirement, I had become Transfiguration Professor. The caretaker at the time was Mr. Apollyon Pringle, far stricter than Filch, and much more aggressive in punishing students. To hide contraband from his routine searches, students needed a sufficiently concealed room. I noticed the Room of Requirement’s name starting to circulate among a very small group of students…
“Later, when I became Headmaster, the house-elves noticed I was investigating that mysterious room. This group, who knew Hogwarts Castle best among the staff, resolved my doubts. It’s a room with magic power, existing since the school’s founding. For nearly a thousand years, the house-elves used it as a cleaning supplies room, a midway rest lounge…
“By the way, students at the time were willing to trust me, their Transfiguration Professor, and temporarily store their contraband with me.”
“…”
Melvin stopped: “And what about Headmaster Dippet? He trusted you so much he was willing to hand over all of Hogwarts to you.”
“So after I became Headmaster, I stopped helping students hide contraband.”
“…”
Hogwarts Castle eighth floor, a heavily utilized level. A short way after turning right at the staircase entrance was the Fat Lady portrait, with the portrait hole behind it leading to the Gryffindor Common Room. Past the portrait hole, around one bend in the passage, was Professor Flitwick’s office.
Melvin couldn’t quite figure it out: why was the Ravenclaw Dean’s office next to the Gryffindor dormitory?
Dumbledore couldn’t resolve his doubt; their destination this trip was to the left of the staircase entrance.
Walking straight along the corridor, after three or four corners, a white wall hung with a massive tapestry came into view.
The tapestry was tattered, its woolen weave faded, edges severely worn, some threads unraveling, its surface covered in gray dust and mildew spots.
The portrait background was a gloomy forest and a crooked castle tower, clearly not far from Hogwarts.
Several gray-brown mountain trolls lay snoring atop haystacks, dressed in oversized pink ballet tutus with lace trim, thick wooden clubs at hand.
The protagonist Barnabas leaned against a tree stump, resting.
“Barnabas was an Elective Professor four hundred years ago, teaching Care of Magical Creatures.”
Dumbledore paused to admire the tapestry, explaining to Melvin: “The Wizarding Council was drafting a definition of ‘person’ at the time, and trolls were the most controversial creatures. They look somewhat human: one head, five facial features, four limbs, walking upright…
“Some wizards thought trolls were distant kin to giants and should be classified as persons; others thought trolls just happened to look that way, but were essentially incommunicable beasts, not even as good as some cat and dog.
“The troll-related topic was popular for over a decade. The Headmaster at the time… I can’t remember which one… was researching troll language and got impeached for it. Barnabas, the Care of Magical Creatures Professor then, started a whimsical study: he tried to prove trolls’ brains weren’t for show by teaching them to dance ballet. As you see, it failed.
“To commemorate the event, students made this tapestry, which has hung here for centuries.”
Melvin was observing and analyzing the differences between the tapestry and other portraits in the castle.
Hogwarts had many magical portraits: past Headmasters in the Headmaster’s Office, famous alumni on corridor walls. These portraits could freely enter and exit other picture frames in the castle, even connecting to portraits of the same subjects elsewhere in the world.
Like Sir Cadogan and his pony, or Derwent lady who once served as both Headmaster and St Mungo’s Dean, able to shuttle back and forth because both the school and hospital had her portraits.
The portraits on the tapestry were entirely different; Barnabas and the trolls lacked wisdom and couldn’t communicate with the outside world, only reacting simply to stimuli.
They performed a fixed routine daily: mornings, Barnabas taught the trolls to dance ballet; afternoons, the trolls beat Barnabas; evenings, each rested.
Day after day, year after year.
This near-stage play performance, if lengthened, with added plot, changing backgrounds, and voice acting…
Melvin grew interested in the tapestry.
“Have you noticed something off about the tapestry too?” Dumbledore asked softly.
“Ah?” Melvin turned to look at him. “What’s off about it?”
“The tapestry started as just a student joke, representing harmless teasing. The scene inside was originally the whimsical study; Barnabas was still a respectable professor…”
Dumbledore stared at the portrait in the tapestry, his deep blue eyes profound: “At some point, Barnabas became silly Barnabas, and this tapestry became a cautionary case of failed teaching. There are always ill-intentioned wizards bringing up Professor Barnabas, claiming Muggle-born wizards are just another kind of troll, unable to grasp magic’s wonders, and one day they’ll swing wooden clubs at the pure-blood wizards who taught them.”
“…”
Melvin fell silent.
He hadn’t expected the tapestry to carry political metaphor.
This was so very Muggle.
“Let’s get back to the Room of Requirement.”
Dumbledore withdrew his gaze and turned: “See the wall opposite the tapestry? Focus your mind on envisioning the space you need, pass back and forth in front of that wall three times, and the Room of Requirement’s door will appear before you.”
Melvin pondered briefly, then decided to play along: “So what kind of room would help me?”
“The Room of Requirement creates two kinds of magical rooms: one completely false, where everything inside is magically fabricated from imagination, existing only within the room with no objective reality, following Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration, and unable to be taken out; the other half-true half-false, where the internal scene is false, but the provided items are real—some stored here by past teachers and students, some collected and stored by house-elves during cleaning.”
Melvin understood now: “So what I need is among the former contraband.”
Dumbledore nodded, a smile on his face.
Melvin narrowed his eyes at him: “After decades, these things are still confiscated. Your former trusting students were truly mistaken.”
“…”
Dumbledore’s smile faltered, seeming somewhat ashamed.
Melvin refrained from further striking at the Headmaster’s conscience and turned to face the wall, envisioning the scene he needed:
A secret room storing many contraband items, sufficiently hidden, undiscovered…
Pacing back and forth three times, with the final step, a ring of dust rippled across the rough stone brick wall like spreading waves, and a smooth, ordinary, dark-colored wooden door quietly appeared.
“Let us enter the secret room and seek out those dangerous and thrilling treasures.”
Ignoring Dumbledore’s peculiar whisper, Melvin grasped the spherical handle, twisting it with no resistance.
With a slight push, he entered.
The room inside was vast beyond imagination—less an unassuming secret storeroom, more a boundless warehouse.
The dome had glass skylights smeared with stains and dust congealed into near-mud, blocking all external light. Gems embedded in the dome and pillars emitted dim glows, mingling with faint light from piled unidentified items around, not illuminating the room but distorting and scattering pupil focus, making vision even dimmer.
Fortunately, no mold or moss; the air held only the musty scent of aged parchment, barely tolerable.
【Lumos】
Soft silver light bloomed, suffusing the room.
Coming into view were mountains of miscellaneous items: rickety furniture stacked and interlocked into scaffolds, various metal vessels, armor, and magical items as the main bodies, old yellowed parchment books filling gaps, piled into continuous hills of clutter.
《Seventeenth-century great wizard》, a Golden Snitch and Bludger drained of magic, a round table from Carpenter Furniture Emporium 1774 edition, worm-eaten oak cauldron, dust-covered knight statue…
Indeed, some objects emanated a cursed aura, but the magic was faint, like residual lamps out of fuel, extinguishable by a breeze.
Melvin surveyed the clutter, somewhat disappointed: “I don’t think there’s anything here that can help me.”
“Treasure hunting adventures require ample patience…”
Dumbledore led the way deeper into the room, crossing several clutter piles, navigating the maze-like paths to an unremarkable corner where the jumble nearly formed alleys.
He pointed at a black lump: “Look at this.”
It was a bizarre square contraption, at least several dozen feet tall—nearly reaching the ceiling in an ordinary classroom—with a base support below, like a wardrobe but not as thick.
Only on closer inspection was it a mirror.
The side frames were dust-covered, original appearance unclear, but faint gold revealed brass material. The main mirror surface seemed simply wiped in the center, with ornate inscription revealed at the top.
“Erised Stra…”
Melvin read two words and immediately realized, reciting backward softly: “I do not show your face, but reveal your heart’s deepest desire.”
Looking at the mirror’s center, it didn’t reflect his face but a similarly dim room where he lounged on a sofa, pressing a remote control—not at a slim LCD television, but a massive cathode-ray tube television.
Curled beside the sofa was a thick silver snake with horns on its forehead.
Melvin wore an “as expected” expression; those deep soul memories were his secret, unseen by the Sorting Hat or the Mirror of Erised.
The television in the reflection played 《The Simpsons》 with decent picture quality. He squinted closely for a moment, shifting his gaze only when Dumbledore approached.
“What do you see?”
“Personal privacy; I must decline to say.”
Dumbledore paused, then realized, chuckling and shaking his head: “Very well.”
“What does the Headmaster see in the mirror?”
“Sorry, I’m keeping that secret for now too.” Dumbledore stared at the mirror a while, then continued, “This was found during the pre-term big cleanup. This mirror has magic power and is too huge to conveniently Transfigure and move. I plan to relocate it after students leave for Christmas Holiday, make it a classroom teaching aid; perhaps it can serve its purpose.”
“…”
Tutoring Potter, huh?
Melvin glanced at the inscription above, his gaze shifting upward.
In view appeared the towering dust-covered knight statues, dull metal armor, and the ornaments placed atop them.
Lances, face helms, diadems, and the like.
