outflewtheweb | The Room of Requirement (Reply)

Title: The Room of Requirement
Word Count: 1258
Rating: PG
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Fandom: Harry Potter, which I don't own.
Author's Notes: This is a bit odd, and I stand by my character assessments, really and truly.
Beta:

masterofmidgets

We knew from the first that there was no way we could leave Hogwarts when we died; it was our responsibility, as founders, to become it. Besides that, there wasn’t really any possibility of leaving since we’d bound ourselves together and then Rowena decided that the best way to keep the structural integrity of the school was to bind part of her soul into the foundation. A bright woman, Rowena, but sometimes she missed the blindingly obvious.

So we agreed that, when we died, we’d become the soul of Hogwarts, or add to the soul of Hogwarts that was present merely from inhabitation by our more human souls. A mass consciousness, yes, but we’d also have our own special domains. We’d become a place or a symbol within Hogwarts too.

Godric – I was not surprised when he became the Sorting Hat. He’d always been the one to insist on separating the students while the rest of us thought a rotating system based on interests would be more appropriate. Salazar, though, surprised me. A Healer of the first rank, he’d spent most of his life developing cures and other potions, and I thought he’d want to be done with that, to rest, maybe in that ridiculous chamber where he liked to brew potions with his pet basilisk, and yet he became the emblem of healing itself and really had the most interaction with our successors, the Headmasters, as the phoenix Fawkes (and many other names). Rowena of course embodied the library – she’d be hard put not to, and as the library, she was also the Librarian. Never a lower-case girl, Rowena, and she ensured that the Headmasters never figured out that she was an embodiment, not a staff member.

Such individuals. It’s hardly surprising that they chose to preserve themselves as things that could further test students, helping even as they challenged. That was how they believed students could best succeed. Salazar always came in at the last moment, the follow-up of the plots he and Godric made. Godric was the one that toyed and hinted, leading the students on until they surpassed themselves. And Rowena simply demanded the best their minds could give her, all the time, and ensured that one way or another she’d get it. It’s an essential part of education, I agree, but not all. Never all. They need a strong stem to support all that growth, don’t they? And sometimes a rest is all it takes.

That’s why I became the Room of Requirement. They asked; I’d answer. I’d give them a room that held what they needed for just a few hours, a few days, until they were strong enough to venture outside again and resume their challenges. They can’t take anything outside that they find inside; what goes in can be removed, but what was there, stays there, and that’s the hardest part of my embodiment. Sometimes I’d hear more than the surface of what they wanted, more than the direct request, if the little one visited me frequently. Sometimes they visited enough that I knew what they needed really, the heart of the matter, and that was a hard thing, because although, being half dead and half tied to reality, I could be a sort of conduit for spirits to visit, it was never a good plan because they couldn’t take anything out, and these children needed more than an echo of their dead or their parent’s love or trust. I’d hear whispers, later on, of what that child had done, and it made my spirit ache, because what could I do?

So when two boys came so frequently, I knew I’d soon be able to see what they really wanted, what would make them whole, and I hurt, because I knew I’d not be able to give it to them, and these little ones would end up the same way as all their predecessors. I held off for as long as I could. They asked for such simple things, starting in their first year when all they wanted was a warm place to cry, and then a place to sleep away from questions in their third year, and for the little dark one, a place to train his friends and learn in the fifth year. The fifth year… I had been looking in him since second year, then. I knew what he wanted – the Mirror of Erised, in second year, so he could see his family, and I couldn’t give it. Answers, the fourth year. The fifth year, he wanted the other one. That year he came to me for a place to write and throw things and sleep – or not sleep, but fortunately my consciousness was limited to precisely what I wanted to limit it to. I do not desire to be party to full knowledge of the lengths a teenage boy’s hormones can go to, although I found out more than enough through that obsessive journaling.

And the other one wanted him, had wanted him since their third year. He came in crying, that one, or white-faced and tense, breaking things until he fell asleep after their meetings. Sometimes they’d come at the same time, fifth year, and be there simultaneously, and I gave them the illusion of a room alone, when really they were in the same bed, crying. That fleeting warmth, the body they could swear was there to hold on to – they were there, just tangible enough to feel for a moment before vanishing. Vanishing.

Some days I argued with myself for hours. How could these children not know what they were feeling? How could each believe the other hated him? It was written in their bodies, the way they moved, the way the little lithe blond one would smile in his eyes when he thought of the dark one. Didn’t they see how carefully they touched each other in their anger? I saw their memories, scratched fiercely onto the page in blotched sharp strokes, and I could not believe that this was so hard for these two to discover.

So I watched, and I waited for the time when a stain of whisper regarding my little ones would come, a dark murmur telling me of horrible things that broken children do. It would be the same, of course, lost and hurting and finally hatred for everyone because they had things they didn’t even know to want. Again I would hear of this, and there was nothing – only there was something. This I could give my children. They were there; they needed something they couldn’t and wouldn’t ask for. I could give them this. I could give them what they needed, and maybe with that gift, they’d be able to give what I could not to others. If it turned out badly, they could simply say it was a dream, a hallucination, that their wanting had made it so, that the other wasn’t really there.

So the next time they fell asleep in my charge, I let the illusion of separate rooms slip. I let them wake up holding each other, and watched smiling as they jumped apart in shock and then decided that this had to be a dream, and therefore, they could do what they wanted. I watched as they decided to leave the room together, because each was convinced the other was the dream, and I smiled when they stood beside my room and laughed because it was not a dream, and that all they’d heard and all they’d said was real.