The Room of Requirement
“What’s the matter, Lupin? Afraid of the big, bad Dementor?”
“Sod off, Rosier.”
“Don’t let the Dementors hear you talking like that. They don’t like foul language.”
“Because you’re such good friends with them, of course you’d know that.”
“Better keep that attitude of yours down. None of us wants to see you faint again.”
“Bugger off.”
“I wonder what could have been so bad that made you lose it like that… Maybe it was you realising you’ve got a filthy Muggle for a mother, or that your father-”
“Shut up!” Remus had been trying, unsuccessfully, for the past fifteen minutes to shake off Evan Rosier, a Slytherin third year and friend of Severus Snape. He had been right when he assumed that word would spread fast and reach the wrong ears sooner than he would have liked. The taunting generated primarily from the Slytherins, as he suspected, but he was also surprised to find a few ridiculers in the other houses, only it was mainly the older students. He had not come in close contact with any of the mockers until now, and he was on his last nerve.
“Are you going to hex me, Lupin?” Rosier laughed derisively, his eyes resting on Remus’s drawn wand.
Remus knew it was stupid to hex someone in the middle of the hallway where a teacher could walk by at any given moment, but he was too incensed to care. These people had no idea what they were talking about; they didn’t know what he had heard when the Dementor appeared. If they did… if they did he would be in a worse position than he was. No Slytherin would take pity on him because he heard his own screams as the werewolf in his head closed in. But he didn’t care about that at the moment; he just wanted to hurt Rosier.
“If you were going to hex me, you would’ve done it by now,” Rosier hissed.
“Get out of here,” Remus snarled. He had expected the Slytherin to laugh, and he did, but he had not expected him to actually listen. Remus could not pretend he was ungrateful. Rosier saw that he was not looking for a fight. Remus stared at the Slytherin’s back as it wove its way through the crowd of oncoming students. How many more encounters like that was he going to have before people grew tired of it? Ten minutes later he climbed through the portrait hole and spotted Sirius sitting by the fire, tossing a balled up sock.
“Where’re James and Peter?” he asked as he sat down.
“James is at Quidditch practise and Peter’s in detention,” Sirius replied lazily.
“Filch is finally getting payback for Peter hexing his cleaning supplies to clean him?”
Sirius nodded. “He’s enjoying it too; I think he has Pete cleaning the entire dungeon with a toothbrush. Actually, I think it’s Filch’s toothbrush.”
“Poor Peter.”
“Yeah, he’s going to be sore tomorrow, not to mention sick. Where were you?”
“Getting something for my headache.”
“But it’s not for a few days.”
Remus did not have to ask what it was referring to. “I know, but they haven’t been very good lately. I’ve been getting sick sooner.”
Sirius shoved the socks in his pocket. “D’you know why?”
“I thought over the summer it was just because I wasn’t getting a lot of sleep. Maybe it’s just part of getting older… I dunno.”
An awkward silence fell, in which Sirius tried to break, thinking of the most random topic he could. “You know… those records you three gave me for my birthday, am I ever going to get to listen to them?”
“Yes… you’ll just have to wait a bit more; we’ve almost got all the money.”
“Good, I was getting tired of just looking at black wheels that do nothing.”
“They’re not wheels. Honestly, you’re the one taking Muggle Studies.”
“Well, you’re the one who grew up with a Muggle for a mother and your grandmum’s a Muggle too.” Remus gave a jerk of the head, which Sirius took as a nod. Any mention of his friend’s grandparents, no matter what it was about, was not a smart move. “Err… how are they anyway, your grandparents?”
“Fine, they’re fine.” Remus stood up and hurried to the dormitory steps. “I have to go finish some homework. See you later.”
“Yeah, see you.” Sirius knew it was understandable for Remus to worry about his grandparents, even though they hadn’t tried until recently to be a part of his life. Sirius couldn’t imagine what it was like to actually have family members that would make him upset if something bad happened to them. He supposed it must feel nice, even if pain had to be endured. To have known someone for a long time, to get to know them, it would be sad to see them leave the world, but he would have memories. Good memories. He wondered that if any of his relatives were to die, would he be as upset as Remus would be when his grandparents finally passed on? There was his great uncle, Alphard. He was always nice to him; he supposed that he would be sad when his great uncle died.
Family was never something Sirius understood. He doubted he would very soon, and he often wondered if he ever would.
Animagus training was proving to be unachievable, so far out of their reach that it appeared an almost impossible feat. They could not practise just anywhere. They couldn’t risk getting caught. What they were doing was illegal. There would be no point in them even trying if they were going to have the professors catch them. It would be pointless. They need to find a room that no one knew about. The Shrieking Shack was out of the question, they knew this already. Even though the Shack was off limits, Peter suggested using the tunnel leading to it, which Remus shot down just as quickly as he had the tunnel’s destination. Their predicament was frustrating on many levels, though none more than when Remus departed for his first full moon of the year and they could not be there with him.
The full moon fell on Wednesday, the twelfth of September. It seemed that Remus was right when he said that his transformations would get worse as he got older. During his second year, the only truly terrible transformation he had was when he and his friends were not speaking. This time, however, he was fighting with nobody. True, he was still a little agitated by the snide remarks the Slytherins were throwing at him, but that was nothing. James, Sirius nor Peter could wake him up, not even after Sirius got it into his head to flip Remus’s mattress over while he was still on it. He slept on soundly on the floor until they picked him up and fixed his bed. From what they could see, Remus appeared to be extremely warm and was covered in sweat as he continued to sleep, oblivious to whatever was going on around him.
Finally, after spending the better part of fifteen minutes attempting, the boys left Remus to his sleep and went on to class. They knew they were going to have to start training soon. They would all be maturing in a matter of time and it would have a worse toll on their friend than it would on them. If they could accompany him it wouldn’t be so bad. He wouldn’t have to hurt himself the way he did. But they couldn’t think of where to train. This was all that was preventing them from starting. They couldn’t use a spare classroom. There was too much of a risk that they would be caught by a professor. James had once suggested using the Forbidden Forest, but Peter quickly dismissed that notion. He didn’t fancy being at the mercy of the forest creatures.
Their predicament was frustrating on many scales. They didn’t want to see their friend hurt anymore, but they were doing nothing except stressing themselves out over finding the perfect training spot. They combed the castle while Remus was away, searching every potential area. They had uncovered the kitchens the previous year, why could they not find another secret? True, the castle was expansive; it would be near impossible, or at least very difficult, to come upon another unknown passage again. The professors would get suspicious if they saw the boys repeatedly at random parts of the castle. Where could they work?
Late afternoon on Thursday, after bringing a recovering Remus some chocolate they had nicked from the kitchens, James, Sirius and Peter continued their still fruitless search. Their search brought them up on one end of the seventh floor, near the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy.
“This is hopeless,” Peter moaned as they walked back and forth before the painting, bickering about whether to head back to the common room or not.
“It is not, Peter,” Sirius said warningly, glaring sideways at his friend. If Peter had a problem with it, he should have gone back.
Peter seemed to notice Sirius’s agitation. “I mean, where are we not looking? We’ve gone through almost the entire castle.”
“I doubt that,” James said as they wheeled around and walked the same path. “This castle is so huge; I bet there are places Dumbledore doesn’t even know about.”
“Like that?” Sirius said, stopping short. James and Peter turned to what Sirius was pointing at. It was a large wooden door that had not been there while they had been pacing back and forth.
“Where did that come from?” James wondered, running his hand along the wood as if it might disappear if he didn’t.
“It just… came out of nowhere.” Sirius jerked his head at James, signaling for him to open it and see what was inside.
Hesitating only slightly, James turned the knob and pushed the door open. Inside was what very much resembled the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, yet there were no desks, nor was there any sign of Professor Handlin. For a moment, the boys thought they had stumbled on another entrance to a classroom. There was a large clearing in the centre and at the edges were comfortable cushions. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled to the maximum capacity with books whose titles they could not see from their distance. There were a number of cauldrons stored at the back, with almost all of the ingredients they could fathom.
“We’ve struck Galleons,” James said, leading the way into the room.
“So, what exactly is this place?”
“We told you, it’s our place for Animagus training.”
“And it just appeared out of nowhere, a door just came out of the wall?”
“You say that like it’s so unbelievable, Remus. A pear laughed just because Peter leaned against it and it became the kitchens. A door come out of nowhere isn’t so strange.”
The boys were filling Remus in on their recent discovery. After searching out the room and making sure that it was definitely not a mirage, the boys hightailed it back to Gryffindor Tower to fill their friend in on everything. Remus was annoyingly sceptical at first, repeating over and over that it was insane they had not found this room sooner. Yet he was slowly coming around. They sat, piled on Remus’s bed, flipping noisily through the pages in Remus’s Animagus book.
“When are we going to start?” Remus asked eagerly. Now that they had a place, what was stopping them?
“Whenever you get better,” Peter replied, running his finger along the sentence he was reading.
“I’ll be fine by tomorrow.” This was not entirely true. His transformation the night before had been terrible and Madam Pomfrey was stressing that he remain in bed for another day at the least.
“We can wait another day, Remus,” James insisted. He did not want his friend prolonging his recovery just because he refused to listen to the nurse.
“You can start without me.”
“What’s the point in that?” Sirius said. “You’re the one who’s going to tell us what to do.”
“You don’t really need me for that.”
James scoffed. “You think we’re going to actually read it?”
Sirius shook his head. “No way, mate. We need your brain for this.”
Remus rolled his eyes, exasperated. “Fine… I’ll be better by tomorrow.”
The following day the boys headed for the portrait of Barnabas the Barmy and stood before the wall across from it. The door had gone. Remus gave them a look that clearly asked where the alleged door was, and they had no answer for it. They were not mental. There was no way the three of them could have had the same hallucination. Or could they have? After all, they were at Hogwarts, the place where painted pears laughed and portraits purposely tried to get students lost. Was it possible that they had only imagined the room? It just seemed so unlikely.
“You dragged me out for this?” Remus asked, folding his arms across his chest and staring at his pacing friends.
“Hey, we didn’t drag you out, you came willingly,” Sirius corrected. Remus was still not looking well, the bruises on his white face stood out exceptionally and he was having a difficult time walking. But he had gotten out of his bed on his own accord and went with them to find the room after classes.
“I swear there was a door right there.” James pointed an irritated finger at the wall as he passed by it.
“Well it seems to have gotten up and walked away,” Remus told him, heading back towards Gryffindor Tower.
“Wait! Remus, get back here!” Sirius was gaping at the wall.
“What?” Remus turned to see what Sirius was staring at. Clearly the boys had not been having delusions. There stood the door that James, Sirius and Peter had stumbled on the day before. They were still not sure of how it was there one moment and gone the next, but they didn’t waste their time dwelling on it. It was time to start training. The room was arranged the same as it had been the previous day. The same books were in the same spots on the same shelves, the chairs and desks had not moved. They knew they had found their destination.
The boys dropped their bags on one of the armchairs, while Remus knelt down and fished through his bag for the book. He found it crushed under his Transfiguration and Potions books and placed it on the table, flipping open to the first helpful page. He quickly read what had to be done and noticed that these instructions seemed oddly informative to his Dementor problem. It was even mentioned in the book that Patronus Charms were generally used to repel Dementors. He had to find a happy thought, the most joy-inspiring memory he could conjure. It wouldn’t hurt if he tried this along with his friends; he never wanted to experience the repercussions of an encounter with a Dementor again.
“Okay,” he said finally, looking up at the three. “You know what to do with the Patronuses, don’t you?”
James nodded. “We haven’t actually tried yet, since we couldn’t do magic at my house.” He pulled his wand out and cleared his throat, concentrating all his thoughts onto the day he met his three best friends. “Expecto Patronum!” Nothing happened. “Bloody hell.”
“Let me try.” Sirius raised his wand, focusing his mind on getting Sorted into Gryffindor. “Expecto Patronum!” The same thing happened that had with James “ nothing.
“You’re not concentrating hard enough,” Remus said, watching them from his seat. “You give it a try, Pete.”
Peter stayed where he was. If James and Sirius couldn’t get it, what made Remus think that he, Peter, could? Still, he had to give it a shot. He knew his memory, successfully accomplishing Transfiguration, was not the happiest recollection he had. He just couldn’t think of anything else. “Expecto Patronum!” Once again, nothing happened.
“It’s supposed to be really hard,” Remus told them encouragingly. “It’d be amazing if you got even a little bit of sparks.”
“You do it, Remus,” Sirius said suddenly.
“What? Why me?”
“Because you could probably do it. Come on, just one try.”
Remus got to his feet, pulling his wand out of his back pocket. He bit his bottom lip; he was not at all prepared to give an attempt. But this would help him. He wouldn’t have to fear Dementors if he could produce a Patronus. Maybe Sirius knew this and that was why he wanted him to try. He knew the happiest memory of his life; it had come weeks after his friends had abandoned him. It was the moment they truly accepted him for what he was. They had announced that they did not think of him as a monster. He focused every bit of himself on that moment, the exact words of his friends. He could feel the joyful sensation erupting in the pit of his stomach.
“Expecto Patronum!” A jet of silver fell out of his wand, vaguely taking the form of a wolf before it vanished. James, Sirius and Peter stood in astonishment, staring, mesmerized at the spot where the Patronus had just been. Remus was staring as well, his expression very much resembling that of his friends’.
“How did you do that?” Peter asked, amazed.
Remus shook his head. “I don’t know.” How had he managed to produce a Patronus, even the quickest of ones? James and Sirius, who were better wizards than he, did not get it. He hadn’t even thought he would get it; he was just trying to see if he could.
“That has to be the fastest anyone has ever gotten the spell,” James marveled. “You’ve always been good at Defence Against the Dark Arts.”
“Yeah, but not that good,” Remus contradicted, his eyes still resting on the now gone Patronus.
“If you can do it… help us,” Peter begged.
“I don’t know how I did it, how could I help you?”
Peter had no answer for this. Despite their failed first attempts, the boys did not give up. Remus offered whatever advice he could, making most of it up. He hadn’t the foggiest idea of how he had done it on his first try. He was convinced that it was luck. Sirius told him that it couldn’t possibly be luck. Luck had no bearing when it came to magical ability, it was either you knew it or you didn’t. They kept at it for another hour and a half, neglecting the fact that they had a rather ominous pile of homework awaiting them when they returned to the common room. Remus had brought his along and was getting sentences into his essays when he wasn’t helping his friends.
Sometime during this hour and a half, James yelled out, “I got something!” startling Sirius and Peter and awaking a sleeping Remus. A wisp of silver fell out of James’s wand, disappearing before any of the boys could even witness it. “It’s gone, but I swear there was something.”
“That’s b-brilliant, J-James,” Remus said through a yawn.
James beamed at his accomplishment. It had not been a true Patronus, he could distinguish no form. But it had been something.
“Why don’t you go back to the common room, Remus?” Sirius was saying as James basked in the glory of his achievement. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m just tired,” Remus replied, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “I want to help.”
“You’ve been sleeping for the past half hour. How are you going to help? Snore at us?”
“I don’t snore.”
“Yes you do. You broke Peter’s concentration and mine. Come on, just go get some rest.”
“I have homework.”
“That you aren’t doing.” Sirius stooped down, picked up Remus’s bag, and shoved it into his friend’s chest. “Go get some sleep now, before I go and break all your bloody records and dance on the pieces.”
Remus blinked. “What?”
“Just go to sleep before he starts sounding dumber,” James said as Sirius opened his mouth again.
Remus knew there was no point in arguing, especially since he really did want to go to sleep. His head was pounding and he knew the best thing to do was to sleep it off; he would feel better the next morning. He slung his bag over his shoulder and trudged out of the room, leaving his friends to finish their training.
When he was sure that Remus was gone, Sirius turned to James and Peter. “You see, that’s exactly why we need to get this. James, you managed to get a bit of the Patronus, but that’s not enough.”
“I know it’s not,” James said reassuringly. “We’ll get it. It just takes time, he knows that.”
“You don’t get it, James. Neither of you do. You’ve never seen him right after it happens, I have. It’s something I never want to see again and I don’t want him to have to go through it again. You should have seen what it was like at his house. It hurts his parents. They can’t do anything about it. They’re not going to become Animagi; the thought has probably never crossed their minds. If they can’t help him, we have to.”
“That’s exactly why we’re doing this, Sirius,” Peter reminded him. “We don’t like it either. We may have not seen him right after he’s back to normal, but we know it’s bad.”
“I just… don’t want it to take forever to get.”
James nodded; he understood just what Sirius meant. “We don’t either, mate.”