A Web Of Magic

Magnus stood in front of the painting of Barnabas the Barmy teaching the trolls how to ballet. 'How crazy can wizards get? Never mind I'm going off-track. The trolls will show me the way huh? Is this what Newt was hinting at? A super-secret room that most don't know about. Well, he did attend Hogwarts here so there's no surprise that he knew about it. Why not just tell it to me straight?' Magnus lamented at old wizards and their penchant for mysteries.

He walked thrice in front of the empty space on the wall while thinking of books on mind arts and a safe place to read them. The house-elf Wosky told him about how to get into the room. The elves use it as a store room most of the time and even they can't get into the room their usual way by popping in. This is the only way for anyone to enter the room. Once his third round was done, a polished wooden door appeared on the wall. Magnus looked around for any signs of snooping and then entered the room. The door clicked behind him and unknown to him, it vanished from the wall on the outside.

[Impact Points+50]

Magnus found himself in a well-lit room with a bookshelf full of books on one side and a cozy looking armchair on the other side. There was also a study table with a regular wooden chair. Magnus's limited knowledge couldn't fathom how the room functioned so he decided to leave it for another time and just get on with his reading. According to the house-elves, the room can gather all the things that were lost within the castle walls ever since it was built. He looked over the book titles one by one. "A practical guide to counter Legilimency", "Choose your minds wisely", and the titles went so on and so forth. One trend he noticed among the books was that the books were all about Legilimency or Occlumency and not mind arts in general. He decided to start with the books costing the least amount of impact points for [Instant Read]. He pulled out a book that said "A Primer on Mind Arts" and hoped that it did what it said. He sat in the comfy armchair and was soon immersed in his reading.

When he finished the book, he closed his eyes for a few moments. The cost of [Instant Read] decreased from 50 to 20 now. He noticed this phenomenon recently. If he already read the book once, the cost for it goes down and is less burdensome on his mind when he used [Instant Read]. This made it easy to read the complex books. It might take more time this way, but he liked reading books anyway so that wasn't a problem. Moreover, the knowledge is retained much easily via this method. He then went to the bookshelf and placed back the book. He then picked a book called "The Mind: A History." Most of these books were old and none of the authors were famous in the present day. Some didn't even have the author's name. By the time he went through his third book, his stomach rumbled in hunger. He put the book down and decided to go for dinner. He tried to see if the room could send him back to the Ravenclaw Tower, but no dice. The room did have its own limitations after all. He joined with Roger and Noah on the way down to dinner. They were used to him disappearing for hours by now so they didn't ask much.

Whenever Magnus had free time, he went to the Room of Requirement to read. Sometimes he even brought his potions set-up to brew potions when he stayed over for long. But he couldn't brew any complex potions that required multiple days to brew as he would need to leave the cauldron overnight. He didn't want to chance it in the Room of Requirement. Who knew where everything went when there was no one in the room? So, he was back to his search for a suitable abandoned room where he could safely leave his cauldron brewing overnight. He thought of telling the twins about the room, but he gave up. They did enough mischief as it is without the room, who knew what they'd get up to once they know about the room? He didn't want them accidentally ruining any of the books in there. Besides, they had the Marauder's Map and were doing fine. They had their own lair and now he has his.

On one of his prowls to find his ideal room, Magnus found something very interesting in a part of the first floor he had never been to. In a dusty room filled with broken furniture was a storage cabinet. The design looked different from those he had at home, but there's no denying it. It was a Vanishing Cabinet. Discovering it even gave him 10 points. He cleaned up the dust with a quick charm and observed it from all angles. It was brown with intricate bronze designs while the one at his house was black with silver designs. 'Hmm, what is it doing here and where is the other cabinet? They usually come in pairs. Is this one still working?' his mind was full of doubts. Its placement in this dilapidated room indicates that either no one knows about it or that it isn't working. He opened the door to the cabinet but hesitated to enter or even place anything inside. Who knew what or who was on the other side? Is there even an other side? A quick [Identify] proved that his caution was justified.

[Vanishing Cabinet (Minor damage)]

'I should move this thing to the Room of Requirement. It should be safer there to experiment. Maybe I can fix this thing,' he decided. But it would raise some questions if people saw him levitating a cabinet around and he wasn't proficient at shrinking enchanted objects of this size. The Disillusion charm he learned from Tonks doesn't even cover his hand properly much less the cabinet. No surprise there as he didn't reach the appropriate level in Charms to cast it properly. There were also no secret passages nearby. 'Then the shrinking charm it is. I should first practice to shrink large enchanted objects. It's not just enough to shrink, I should also learn to return it back to normal. Doing all of that isn't a problem, but doing them without potentially affecting its function is. I heard vanishing cabinets are very delicate,' he mused. He decided to draw his inspiration from the luggage trunks that could be shrunk easily. Once he understood how they worked, he could probably apply that to the cabinet.

"Tela Operculum" he waved his wand all over the room and what looked like spider webs covered wherever he pointed his wand. By the time he was done, most of the room was covered in webs and he hoped this would keep away anyone from entering. He also locked the room with a Colloportus, but any student worth their salt could easily unlock it. He's yet to learn any of the higher-level concealing spells that last more than a few minutes so this would have to do for now.

Magnus discovered a cool trick with his repeated use of the Room of Requirement. Before entering the room, he could wish for what he wanted as usual and then assign it a name. In his case, he called it Magnus's Study. When he enters the room next time, as long as he has a clear image in his head, he can call upon Magnus's Study and it appears just as he had left it before. This saved him the headache of wishing for the same thing again and again. Magnus's Study now contained books on many topics not found in the library, a bed, an arm chair, a study table, a potion's station and a corner with dummies to practice his spells. The Room of Requirement doesn't bring him the books in the library and the restricted section unless there's a copy that has been lost. The room has a mixture of real and transfigured items. The books were real and could be brought out of the room, but the furniture was transfigured and couldn't be brought out, as if it were a part of the room. Any broken furniture he imagined though could be brought out, so they must be real. And it doesn't bring any food he imagines so it must uphold the laws of transfiguration. As a rule of thumb, he decided to only bring out the books, if he ever wanted to. He still didn't leave potions brewing overnight though.