Harry Potter : the next generation

chapter 14

For the next two weeks, they spent most of their free time looking for the room. Rose remembered from her parents' stories where they'd found it, on the seventh floor opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls how to dance ballet. But they couldn't find the tapestry; apparently, the Hogwarts décor had changed in the nineteen years since their parents had been at school.

So they tried to find patches of blank wall, walking up and down the corridors, going back and forth, thinking very hard of a place they could spend free time in, away from James, Rommy, Fabian, and Gideon.

"This must've been what it was like just after the war," Rose said. "When they went looking for it, and couldn't find it." She kicked at the wall. "Except that we know it's there."

"Think harder," Al urged her. "Think about exactly what we need."

"I know, I know." Rose paused. "You don't think someone's already in there right now, do you? If they were, we wouldn't be able to get in."

"We've been looking every night," Scorpius objected. "I don't think someone's in there all the time."

"Then we must be looking in the wrong place," said Al.

"We've been all over the seventh floor!"

"Specialis Revelio," Scorpius said, tapping at a random place on the wall with his wand. "Aparecium. Alohomora. Um..."

"It's not going to help," Rose told him. "The only way you get into the Room of Requirement is by thinking about it. You can't make it reveal itself if it doesn't want to be found. Otherwise, the D.A. would never have been able to survive there."

"We're never going to find it," Al said. He hesitated. "Maybe we don't need it enough. Maybe it doesn't want to be found."

"What? It wanted to be found when Teddy needed it for a party, but it doesn't want to give us a place to hang out together?" Rose snorted. "No. There's got to be another reason."

"We'll have to look another night," Scorpius said. "It's getting late, and I've still got to finish our Transfiguration essay. You've still got another six inches on it, don't you, Rose?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Finish? I haven't started," Al said at the same time, looking a little sheepish. "And I haven't done our History of Magic reading yet, either."

"That's going to take you a while," Rose said. "We'd better go do some work."

"We're never going to find it," Al said dejectedly.

"Al, you should ask Missy and Victoire about it the next time you see them," Rose decided.

"Why them?" Scorpius asked.

"Missy knows everything, and I think that Victoire went to the seventh-years' party. I mean, she's dating Teddy; I think he would've let her come."

"Yeah, probably," agreed Al. "But why don't you ask them?"

"You're in their House. You'll probably see them before I will." Rose rolled her eyes. "Besides, it's just Missy and Victoire we're talking about. It's not like they're intimidating. They'll tell you, if they know; I'm sure of it."

Al nodded. "And if they don't know?"

"We'll have to think of a new plan. I don't want to spend all our free time looking for somewhere to hang out – I'd rather just be hanging out together."

So Al went back to the Gryffindor common room, wishing that he could take Scorpius and Rose with him. Missy was the first of the two he saw: hanging out in a corner with two of her best friends, watching their chess game.