Warren was felt tired as he was welcomed into Madame Yuan's sitting room and sat down in chair by the fire. Madame Yuan brought out a beautiful tea tray with a hand-painted tea set and began pouring cups of tea for the both of them.
"How are you doing today?" Madame Yuan asked, settling down into her own chair.
"I'm very frustrated," Warren said. He was surprised with himself; he realized he didn't talk about his feelings very often. He took a sip of warm, soothing tea.
"What's wrong? Have a bad day?"
"Professor Sprout thinks that I'm 'harming my emotional stability.' A nice way of saying that I'm mad, and that I keep finding dead bodies everywhere," Warren said. Now that he had started, he knew it was all going to come out. There was something calming about it. Maybe Professor Sprout was right about something, at least.
"I don't think she thinks you’re mad," Madame Yuan said.
"You didn't hear her going on and on about what a weirdo I am."
"She's just concerned, I think. Trying to help. You shouldn't be too hard on her."
"I suppose you're right, but there are some things I just don't want to discuss with her."
"Do you discuss them with anyone?"
Madame Yuan was quick, and this conversation was starting to sound like the one he'd had with Sprout.
"I don't want to talk about this any more," Warren said, staring off into the fire. Madame Yuan nodded in understanding.
"You don't have to, Warren, but you always can if you want to," she said. "I told you all about my scary first husband, although maybe not everything. You talk when you want to talk. When you have to."
Warren thought about that. It was like Professor Sprout had said, of course. Do something before you have a nervous breakdown. He had no idea he had been causing such misplaced concern in others. He'd have to do something about that.
"We went to Hogsmeade today," Warren said, changing the subject.
"Did you buy many things?"
"Many," Warren said. "I began my Christmas shopping, and got some school supplies I didn't get in Diagon Alley. I now have three different birds in my possession, two of which I'm keeping in Ravenclaw tower. I bought Augustus an owl for Christmas."
"You two are getting along now?"
"No, no. I just thought it would be proper to get him something nice for Christmas, as I'm sure he's already planning to get me something, and I knew his other owl had an accident." Warren smiled as he thought about the tragic last descent of Augustus's owl.
"He still bothers you, then?"
"Yes. I'm sure I shouldn't let it bother me, but sometimes it more than I could stand," Warren said, and then realized he was saying too much. No wonder everyone thought he was crazy. "We bumped into him again in Hogsmeade, shopping with Delilah Booth. I didn't realize they were getting so friendly. I could tell he was trying to get me to tell him what I wanted for Christmas. Of course, I was doing the same thing."
"Why would you buy presents for people you don't like?" Madame Yuan asked.
With the question brought up so simply, Warren really had no idea how to answer it. Why was he buying Augustus a Christmas present when he couldn't stand him? Why did he associate with him at all, for that matter? What was wrong with him?
"Because....Because if I don't, Augustus will think I'm purposefully not getting him a gift because I'm being petty, especially since he's planning on getting me a gift," Warren tried to explain.
"You should tell him not to buy you gifts, and then you won't buy him gifts either."
"It's a little more complicated than that," Warren said, even though a part of him knew it wasn't really. "Augustus and I see each other socially, with the GSA and with Quidditch. He's in the same year, we have many things in common, and it's impossible to avoid each other."
"This is a problem."
"Let's talk about something else," Warren said, taking a larger swig from his tea.
"What else did you do in Hogsmeade?"
"Oh! I almost forgot. We talked to Ron Weasley at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, and found out about the mystery room mentioned in Harry Potter's biography. It's called the Room of Requirement and it's somewhere on the seventh floor, but none of us could figure out how to find it."
"Hmmm. Mr. Weasley says it's on the seventh floor but it's not?"
"I'm sure we just can't find it. There's probably a secret passage or something," Warren said. "Has Mr. Yuan ever mentioned finding the room?"
Madame Yuan thought for a moment, setting her tea down.
"What's in this room?" she asked.
"It sounds like the room has in it whatever you happen to need at the time you find it," Warren said.
"I don't think Mr. Yuan ever mentioned this."
"He may have found it by accident before and didn't even realize what it was," Warren said.
"Well, speaking of the seventh floor, I need some help with a tapestry this evening if you would like to help me," Madame Yuan said.
"Sure, what kind of help do you need?"
"I've finished repairing the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and I need help hanging back on the wall in it's home. If you could come with me, we could put the tapestry back and maybe have better luck finding your magic room."
"That sounds like a great idea," Warren said, smiling for the first time that evening.
Some time later, Warren and Madame Yuan were on the seventh floor corridor, holding the tapestry carefully between them. They soon came to a lighter rectangle of wall where the tapestry had always hung and came to a stop.
"Do you have a ladder?" Warren asked. Madame Yuan took the other end of the tapestry and carefully folded it back onto itself so she could hold it by herself.
"Yes, there should be one in the broom cupboard at the end of the hall," Madame Yuan said, pointing down the corridor. Warren headed down the hall towards the broom cupboard to get the ladder, when Madame Yuan spoke again. "Oh no, Warren. I think I left it in the empty classroom back the way we came after Mr. Yuan and I used it to remove the tapestry."
Warren turned around and headed back down the corridor, heading for the empty classroom. Once there, he peered in the darkened room and saw nothing. He lit up his wand and looked around inside, but there was no ladder.
"It's not here," Warren said, coming back out of the classroom. Madame Yuan frowned, leaning against the wall under the weight of the tapestry.
"Someone must have put it back in the broom cupboard after all, then," she said apologetically. Warren nodded, and headed back down the corridor the other direction, determined to find that ladder in the broom cupboard. Suddenly, behind him, Madame Yuan gasped. He turned around and saw her pointing at the opposite wall. Warren turned to look. A door had materialized out of the wall where there had been nothing but wall before.
"What did you do?" Warren asked. Madame Yuan shook her head.
"I did nothing."
Warren went up to the door and looked inside. There was a large room beyond the doors, filled all the way across by ladders of all shapes and sizes. There were short stepladders, tall aluminum ladders, old wooden ladders, rope ladders, and any ladder anyone could ever think of, all filling up the room behind the doors. Warren backed out of the room.
"I think we've found the Room of Requirement!" Madame Yuan came over to him and looked into the room.
"Oh my goodness, so many ladders," she whispered. Warren grabbed the sturdiest looking ladder and took it over to the wall across for the Room of Requirement.
"It must have been me walking by it, thinking about ladders, that made it appear," Warren said, thinking to himself. "How many times did I walk by the wall where the door is?"
"Three times. Twice I sent you to the broom cupboard, and once to the classroom."
"That must be it. Walk by it three times thinking about what you need, and it appears," Warren said, smiling. "Thank you, Madame Yuan, without you I may have never figured it out!"
"I should lose things more often," Madame Yuan laughed.
Warren went back to the ladder and climbed up, then realized he had no idea how they were going to do this.
"How do you want to put the tapestry on the wall?" Warren asked.
"Sticking charm," she replied. "Some tapestries and portraits have permanent sticking charms and I can't take them down to repair them, but this one just had a standard one. Hold it up by the top corners so I can charm the back of the tapestry, then just stick it to the wall."
Warren did as he was told, holding the tapestry out from the top of the ladder as Madame Yuan waved her wand over the back surface. When she was finished, Warren slowly turned on the ladder and placed the tapestry on the wall along the edges of the lighter discolored area on the wall. The tapestry stuck, hanging down perfectly along the wall. Madame Yuan smiled.
"Very nice," she said. "A good night's work. Found magic room and put tapestry back up!"
"I can't wait to tell the others about finding the room," Warren said, climbing back down the ladder. He smiled as he returned the ladder to the Room of Requirement, closed the door, and watched it disappear again before his eyes.
The next day, Warren led Wilbur, Kendra, and Fuzz-Head up to the seventh floor, where they stopped in front of the tapestry. They were all excited about Warren's discovery, and quite ready to see it for themselves.
"What shall we make the room?" Wilbur asked.
"I think we should make it appear as the room of hidden things," Warren said. "That sounds like a treasure-trove of secrets."
"Yeah, if they're not all burnt to a crisp," Wilbur said. "Ron Weasley said something about it getting burned during the Battle of Hogwarts."
"We'll just have to see," Warren said. "We all need to walk up and down the corridor three times, thinking hard about the room where you hide things." They all nodded, and following Warren's lead walked up and down the corridor until the door appeared.
"That's amazing," Kendra said, walking up to the door and pushing on it gently. It swung open wide, revealing the room beyond.
The smell was the first thing that hit them, a smoky musty blast of nastiness. They stared in at the charred remains of the room. It had obviously been filled with items needing to be hidden over the centuries, all of which were burnt and broken. They stepped into the room, covering their noses with their sleeves to block the heavy burnt smell. Everything was covered with thick black soot. Kendra jumped as Fuzz-Head accidentally knocked over a tall blackened cage of some sort. They saw a few busts, black and broken amidst the debris on the floor.
"What do you think happened in here?" Fuzz-Head asked, looking around at the ruin. Warren shook his head. He had no idea what could have caused a fire this bad. He could see objects twisted and melted from the flames of long ago.
"I don't know. It wasn't mentioned in Harry Potter's biography, but it must have been bad," Warren said.
"What should we do?" Kendra asked.
"We should split up and see what we can find," Warren said. The room was huge. There must be something of interest left.
The others headed off into different directions while Warren climbed his way through the room, his hands blackening from the soot as he pushed things out of the way, or turned things over to see what was underneath. The smell became overwhelming the longer they stayed in the room, and it was making him a little light-headed. He found a number of burnt and useless books, their pages turned to ash and their leather covers melted beyond all recognition. There were the burnt remains of many large pieces of furniture, mostly ashes, but here and there a chair leg remained, or the metal fixtures were discovered in the ash and soot. Most of what remained was the things made out of metal. Warren discovered several large pieces of metal he suspected had once been part of a catapult of some sort, and he found twisted, misshapen blobs of different-colored glass that had most likely been bottles.
Warren had found several weapons, swords and battle axes with their handles burnt off, when he came across the first bones to be found in the debris.
"Oh please don't be human," Warren pleaded out loud as he spotted the first charred bone and pulled it out from under piles of cinders and ash. It appeared to be a long leg bone that couldn't have been human. Warren sighed in relief. He dug into the mess and uncovered several more bones that all appeared to be long leg bones of some animal. He wondered if all the legs belonged to the same animal or to different ones. He began stacking them into a pile when he heard Kendra shout out to his left.
"Warren! You're not going to believe this!"
Warren looked up and scanned the blackened piles looking for Kendra. She was hunched down deep into a mess of ash and soot, waving her soot-streaked arm in the air. Warren began moving towards her, pulling burnt material of all sorts out of his way. Kendra had soot all over her face as well, and she didn't look happy.
"What is it?" Warren asked, stumbling through the mess closer to her. She shook her head.
"I think we found dead body number three," Kendra said, staring down into the hole she'd dug in the ash and soot. Warren cursed under his breath and leaned forward. There in the hole were the blackened and broken remains of some unfortunate who had been caught in the fire.
"This isn't good," Warren said, looking down at the large black skull. "Why does this keep happening? Professor Sprout is going to kill me! We can't tell anyone about this one!"
"Warren, are you crazy? Somebody died in here, and they were never found!" Kendra said. "We have to tell someone."
"Who could it possibly be?" Warren asked, frantically grasping at straws. "It was probably a death-eater!"
"It could have been one of the bodies never recovered after the Battle," Kendra said quietly, looking down into the ash.
"Kendra, we have already drawn quite a bit of unwanted attention to ourselves for finding the other two bodies, and I can't even begin to imagine what the reactions would be to this one," Warren said, kneeling down in the muck. "Why don't we give it some time? You could look up the people who were missing after the Battle of Hogwarts, and we can make a better informed decision later."
"Alright," Kendra said, nodding. "As long as we tell them eventually I don't really see the harm."
Warren breathed another sigh of relief. At last she sees reason. He extended a dirty hand and helped her out of the pile she was sunk in just as they heard a shout from Fuzz-Head.
"Hey guys! I've found something over here!" Fuzz-Head called, standing up and waving his arms from the other side of the room. Warren and Kendra made their way over towards Fuzz-Head, and were soon joined by Wilbur. They could see Fuzz-Head held a book up in his hand. Warren wondered how a book survived the fire.
"What is it?" Wilbur asked, hurrying ahead.
"It's some sort of a journal, I think," Fuzz-Head said. "It was in a small metal box; probably how it survived the fire. But look! Look what it says on the cover!"
They peered down at the cover of the book and saw the initials H. H. printed grandly in the bottom corner in flaking gold foil.
"Oh my God, does that mean what I think it means?" Kendra said.
"I don't know. I haven't opened it yet. I wanted you guys to be here," Fuzz-Head said.
"If that is really Helga Hufflepuff's diary that would be an amazing find," Warren said, excitement rising inside of him.
Kendra opened the book and began turning the pages. She frowned as she read, becoming lost in thought.
"Well?" Wilbur asked. "Is it Helga Hufflepuff's?"
"No, it's not," Kendra said, and everyone sighed in disappointment. "But it is the diary of someone named Hephaestus Harrison, who appears to have been a professor here at Hogwarts in 1534."
"What did he teach?" Warren asked. Kendra flicked through the pages, scanning the words.
"It looks like he taught Potions, and the reason for this diary is because he has some sort of secrets he wished to confess," Kendra said. Warren's waning excitement came back to him fully at the mention of 'secrets.'
"What kind of secrets?" Warren asked. Kendra shook her head.
"I don't know. We'll have to read the diary. It's rather complicated and detailed."
"I think you should read it first," Warren said. "You can tell us the details as you come to them."
"I can do that," Kendra said, tucking the diary into her robes. "Oooh. I have to go; I have a meeting with that portrait on the second floor Sir Cadogan told me about. I figured Sunday would be the best day to do it, since we had Hogsmeade yesterday and Quidditch try-outs tomorrow."
"Oh my, that's right," Warren groaned.
"I did remind you," Wilbur said. "You're the captain this year, and we have to decide on who the new Chaser and Beater are going to be."
"Yes, yes, I remember, I just have other things I'd rather be attending to," Warren said. "It's alright. We'll get a good night's sleep tonight, and be up early in the morning ready for quidditch."
"After I get done talking to that portrait, the first thing I'm going to need is a bath," Kendra said, trying to wipe soot off her robes and just making it worse. "I can start reading the diary while I'm in the bath, but I too need to get to bed early. I'm determined to become the new Hufflepuff Chaser tomorrow."
"I wish you luck," Warren said, smiling.
"I'll get back with you after the quidditch tryouts about what I found out from the portrait," Kendra said.
"Can we leave too?" Fuzz-Head asked the others. "I'm starting to feel sick from the smell in here."
"Yes," Warren said, "Let's call it day. We can always come back later.
The Astronomy Tower by Moon110581
Chapter Notes: Warren goes to see Madam Yuan and discovers more than he expected.