[HP] 62: The Gold Mine Inside the Room of Requirement

For the next few days, aside from attending regular classes, Louis spent all his free time trying to practice Qi Magic.

"Practice," in this case, really meant studying. Qi Magic wasn’t a level-based, step-by-step cultivation system. Instead, it was something that improved through knowledge and experience.

The more you knew, the more you experienced, the more powerful your Qi Magic became.

That said, the process of learning Qi Magic… was hard to explain without sounding crazy. To avoid earning a reputation like “that kid’s got some kind of mental issue,” Louis decided to first look for the Room of Requirement, so he could study in peace without interruptions.

The Room of Requirement was located on the eighth floor of the castle, along a rarely used corridor. Its activation conditions were so specific that very few people ever discovered it.

But not nobody. Several professors had been in there before—and even Filch had stumbled across it while looking for cleaning tools.

Still, for a transmigrator like Louis, finding it was no big deal.

It was the weekend, so there were no classes. Most students, having played around all week, had flocked to the library to catch up on homework—leaving it so packed it was practically overflowing.

This didn’t bother Louis in the slightest. What did bother him, though, was the fact that Hermione hadn’t come looking for him lately. When they bumped into each other, she seemed to be actively avoiding him.

Is she mad at me? But why?

No matter how he puzzled it over, Louis couldn’t figure it out. In the end, he could only assume that Hermione was just in a bad mood.

“Surely it’s not because she suddenly realized she’s into me and now feels too shy?” he joked to himself, thinking back on their interactions.

They hadn’t spent that much time together, and nothing particularly over-the-top had happened… right?

Shaking off the thought, Louis pushed it out of his mind. He had more important things to focus on—he had just found the entrance to the Room of Requirement.

The Tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy Being Beaten by Trolls.

It depicted eight trolls in pink tutus, holding giant clubs and mercilessly beating a wizard who was clearly regretting his life choices.

Legend had it that the wizard, Barnabas, had once attempted to teach a group of trolls how to dance ballet.

What exactly had to go wrong in one’s life to come up with an idea like that… Louis didn’t know.

Tearing his eyes away from the nightmare-fuel tapestry, he looked at the blank stretch of wall opposite it.

Nothing looked out of place. Without foreknowledge of the story, Louis never would’ve guessed that behind this wall lay a room that could transform into anything the user needed.

He extended his spiritual energy, attempting to probe through the wall.

But it was useless.

Even after using three doses of his Concentrated Spirit-Form Mutagen—boosting his mental range to over 500 meters and strength over 500 pounds—he couldn’t see through the wall.

Yep… this wall’s definitely enchanted to hell and back.

To enter the room, one simply had to walk past the wall three times while focusing on what they needed.

It sounded easy, but was surprisingly hard to do by accident.

If Louis wanted a space for Qi Magic practice, he could just think: “A place suitable for potion brewing,” since Qi Magic rituals were similar to potion-making in many ways.

But Louis figuredsince I’m already here, why not go big and settle everything at once?

So, in his heart, he repeated: “A secret room for hiding things.”

After walking past the tapestry three times while focusing on that thought, a door slowly materialized on the previously blank wall.

At the same time, the system popped up a new notification:

> [You have discovered the “Room of Requirement.”]

> [You have activated Challenge Quest: “Fool the Room of Requirement.”]

> [Quest Objective: Cause the Room of Requirement to generate an error.]

> [Quest Reward: Unlock Perfect-Tier Lottery Draw.]

Louis blinked in surprise, delighted by the reward—but also slightly annoyed.

To Louis’s delight, he had finally discovered the third-tier draw—Perfect Tier, ranked between Premium and Legendary.

But what annoyed him was that he had no idea how to “fool” a room.

“Let’s put that aside for now. Fooling the Room of Requirement… I’ll need to think carefully about that one.”

He pushed open the smooth door and stepped into the “secret room for hiding things.”

The interior was enormous—almost larger than the Great Hall itself. It was hard to believe such a vast space could exist within the castle.

“This must be… the Undetectable Extension Charm,” Louis muttered, sweeping his gaze across the towering piles of junk and then at the surrounding walls.

The Undetectable Extension Charm—one of the most broken spells in the Harry Potter world.

It allowed a tiny space, like a suitcase, to contain massive, self-contained environments—big enough to house animals, simulate weather, or even serve as a vacation resort.

And the absurd part? The object’s weight remained unchanged, meaning you could just carry your own private world around with you.

In theory, the charm was exactly what it said: limitless extension. Meaning this “secret room” for hiding things could never actually fill up.

“So… how many people over the years have actually discovered the Room of Requirement? Or did they all just treat it like a random hidden stash room without knowing its full potential?”

Louis walked through the labyrinth of junk piled to the ceiling. In his enhanced sight, some of the items showed faint, broken illusory threads.

Those threads were connections—links between the items and their original owners. These objects had long been left to gather dust, and most of their owners were likely already gone.

One of the compensations Louis had requested from Dumbledore—commonly known as “scavenging rights”—was granted precisely for this room.

These items might look old and broken, like actual trash, but among them were rare treasures that couldn’t be found anywhere else. And buried under heaps of true garbage, there could easily be untouched artifacts worth a fortune.

Sure, Louis’s family had money, but constantly converting British pounds into Galleons was getting old. He planned to earn some wizarding gold right from this Room of Requirement.

This place was basically an untapped gold mine, yet no one had ever realized its worth. Later on, it had even been burned to ashes by Fiendfyre—what a waste.

Not everything in here was ownerless either. Some items still belonged to people—people who weren’t quite dead yet. They might still care about those items and be willing to pay handsomely to get them back.

Like, say… a certain Dark Lord’s Horcrux.

“The Diadem of Ravenclaw.”

Louis’s gaze fell upon the exquisite silver crown perched atop the statue of Rowena Ravenclaw, and he softly whispered the name.

The legendary artifact said to grant wisdom to its wearer—later corrupted by Voldemort into a Horcrux.

“Though boosting intelligence is probably subjective… I mean, even Voldemort wasn’t swayed by that effect,” Louis muttered as he slowly approached the diadem, careful not to touch it.

This was Voldemort’s Horcrux, after all. Who knew what kind of dark curses or malicious magic it might carry? Louis wasn’t the kind of brave (and brainless) “Chosen One” to rush in and grab it with bare hands.

His life was far too valuable for that.

He didn’t trust even his spiritual power or the power of the Magic Hand to safely retrieve it. So instead, he picked up a tattered rag from nearby—who knows how many years old—and wrapped it around the diadem before lifting it carefully.

“There. Foolproof.” Louis grinned triumphantly.

***