.
Chapter Six
The Room
Updated 4/18/2015
-o=o-
"Where is this place?" Harry asked.
"It is the Room of Requirement, sir," Dobby answered immediately.
"What's that?" Ron wondered. "I've never heard of that room, Fred and George never mentioned it."
"Neither have I," Sirius added. "And we put every place we could find in Hogwarts on the Marauders Map. Dobby, what's this 'Room of Requirement' supposed to be?"
"It is a room known to all house-elves," Dobby answered. "It is also known to house-elves as the Come and Go Room."
"Why is it called that?" Illyana asked.
"Because it comes and it goes," Dobby answered, in all seriousness.
"Well, duh," Illyana snarked.
"She means," Harry translated, "why do you say it comes and goes? Why is it called the Room of Requirement? What does that mean?"
"Ah!" Dobby nodded understanding, his long ears flapping. "It is a room a person can only enter when they have a real need of it. Sometimes it is there, and sometimes it is not, but when it appears, it is always equipped for the seeker's needs." The house-elf fidgeted guiltily. "Dobby has used it, sir, when Winky has been very drunk — he has hidden her in the Room and he has found antidotes to butterbeer there, and a nice elf-sized bed for her to sleep it off on, sir. Dobby knows Mr. Filch has found extra cleaning materials there when he has run short, sir, and—"
"And if you really needed a bathroom," said Harry, suddenly remembering the story Dumbledore had told him at the Yule Ball the previous Christmas, "would it fill itself with chamber pots? That's what happened to Professor Dumbledore."
"Dobby expects so, sir," said Dobby, nodding earnestly. "It is a most amazing room, sir."
Harry looked around at the others. "What do you think?"
"It sounds brilliant," Ron said, looking convinced.
"It does," Hermione agreed.
"If it will let us in," Sirius sounded more dubious.
"How many people know about it?" Harry asked Dobby.
"Very few, sir. Mostly people stumbles across it when they needs it, sir, but often they never finds it again, for they do not know that it is always there waiting to be called into service, sir."
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Illyana said impatiently. "Let's go check it out!"
"Will you show us where it is?" Harry asked Dobby.
"Of course, Harry Potter!" Dobby started off down the corridor, away from the common room. "Follow Dobby!" Harry and the others fell in step behind him.
-o=o-
"I will rule the world," Voldemort told the tall, red-skinned man imperiously, "once I have made my escape from this pitiful excuse of a prison."
Sinestro smiled contemptuously. "I think not. You no longer have the stick you need to focus your mystical energies. Don't look so surprised, human," he added, when Voldemort reacted to that statement. "I have learned much of your kind in the past few hours, and much of you in the few seconds I have been here.
"You think yourself the most powerful wizard on this planet," Sinestro continued, floating down to stand on the floor in front of the Dark Lord. "Yet I subdued over a dozen wizards in mere seconds with the help of this ring." He held up his yellow Power Ring for Voldemort to see.
"You know nothing of me," Voldemort said coldly.
"Oh no? I know your true name is Tom Marvolo Riddle," Sinestro declared. Voldemort's red eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed to slits. "I know you were born to a non-magical human named Tom Riddle and a witch named Merope Gaunt, who used a love potion on your father to bind him to herself. That she stopped giving the potion to him in the deluded hope he would love her for herself and for the child she was to bear him. But instead he rejected her and threw her out. That she died giving birth to you, after naming you for her husband's father and for hers. That you grew up alone in an orphanage in London. That you learned you could do strange things, like make animals do as you willed. You could make people hurt just by thinking at them. That you could make objects move without touching them. That you learned when you were 11 that you were a wizard, and began attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Shall I go on?"
Voldemort said nothing to this at first. This — being — seemed able to plumb his deepest thoughts at will, even without direct eye contact. He had no wand, but he did seem to wield the yellow ring on his hand, just as Potter had somehow obtained a green ring and bested him and his Death Eaters. "You learned all this with your ring?" he asked.
"All that and more," Sinestro nodded. "This ring is the most powerful weapon in this or any other universe. The rings of green power, which you were just thinking of, have a weakness against the color yellow. That is why this ring is superior to them."
"What do you offer me, then?" Voldemort wondered. "Do you have another of these rings?"
"I do," Sinestro nodded. "I offer them to you and your followers IF you will swear allegiance to me and my cause."
"And what is your cause?"
"The destruction of all the Green Lanterns in the universe."
-o=o-
"Here is the place, Harry Potter!"
Harry looked at the blank wall. It was opposite a large, moth-eaten tapestry of a wizard named Barnabas the Barmy. He was called "Barmy" because one of his hare-brained ideas had been to teach trolls to perform ballet. However, the trolls had had other ideas — they expressed their displeasure of ballet by taking their clubs to Barnabas, as the tapestry showed. "Er— here?" he asked, pointing to the blank wall.
"Yes, Harry Potter," Dobby nodded vigorously.
"Not really seeing it, Dobby," Illyana commented. "How do we get in?"
"Harry Potter must walk past this wall three times, thinking very, very hard about what he needs," Dobby explained.
"Sounds pretty easy," Illyana said, glancing toward Harry, who was still looking a bit wobbly as he stood there. "Are you up for that, Harry, or do you want one of us to try it?"
"I'll try it," Harry said. "But first —" He unfolded the Marauder's Map. "Let's see, Filch is… ah, there he is, in his office."
"Where's Mrs. Norris?" Ron asked, looking over the Map in Harry's hands. "There she is! Third floor, other side of the castle. Nowhere near us."
Hermione was peering over Harry's other shoulder. "And Professor Dumbledore is— I see him in his office. And all the staff are there as well."
"That's strange," Sirius muttered. "I wonder what they're all doing…?"
"They're not looking for us," Harry said. "At least, I hope not."
"They might be," Sirius remarked, matter-of-factly. "Dumbledore can probably find you through the Trace."
Everyone turned to look at him. "What the heck is that?" Ron demanded.
Sirius shrugged. "It's a spell put on every child born in Britain. The Ministry uses it to tell exactly where you are and if any magic is being cast near you. They use it to determine if an underage witch or wizard is using magic out of bounds."
Harry, Ron and Hermione were staring at him, openmouthed. "Sirius, are you ser— are you kidding us?" Harry asked, incredulous.
"No," Sirius said, with a wry shake of his head. "That's how they knew you used magic at your aunt and uncle's home the summer before your second year."
"But I didn't!" Harry protested. "Dobby did that!"
Dobby looked horrified. "Dobby is so sorry he caused Harry Potter trouble!" he wailed. "But it was for Harry Potter's own good! It was very dangerous for Harry Potter to come to school that year because of—"
Harry put up his hands. "Hold on. That's not important right now. Let me do what you said to make the Room of Requirement appear to us." He fell into step in front of the bare patch of wall, concentrating intently as he strode back and forth:
We need somewhere to hide from everyone who wants to take this ring from me. Just give us a place to hide…somewhere they can't find us.
"Harry!" Hermione said sharply, as Harry finished his third pass in front of the wall. Harry turned.
A large, polished oaken door had appeared in the wall. Ron was staring warily at it, while Illyana was smiling and softly applauding Harry. Sirius grunted in surprise as the door appeared. Harry reached out, took the door's brass handle, and pulled open the door. He led the way into a spacious room lit with blazing torches like those on the walls of the dungeons, eight floors below them.
"Whoa," Ron said, looking around after they were inside. "This is brilliant!"
The room looked like a classroom without any desks, but was otherwise unremarkable. Sirius, the last person inside, closed the oak door behind him, noticing a large brass key in the lock. Absently he turned it, hearing a loud click as the door locked. "Not a bad setup," he commented, looking around. He walked over to where Harry, Ron and Hermione were standing. "Where does the Map show we are now?"
Harry held up the Map, but after a minute of searching he announced, "I don't find us anywhere on here!" He looked at Sirius. "Does the Map use that Trace spell you mentioned to locate us?"
"No," Sirius shook his head. "The Trace vanishes once you're of legal age, so you can't locate adults using it. I don't know how the Map does it — Remus found a way for it to locate anyone on the grounds of Hogwarts, even ghosts and animals."
"But once we leave this room, the Ministry can use the Trace to find us, right?" Harry asked, in a troubled tone.
"Afraid so," Sirius agreed.
"Hmm," Illyana mused. "I may have a way to fix that." She held out her hand and her Soulsword shimmered into existence. "Don't move, Harry." Before Harry or anyone could protest, she swung the sword at him.
Harry gasped as the sword passed through his torso. Hermione screamed and Ron shouted as Sirius lunged toward Illyana, grabbing her arm and immobilizing her. She made no move to defend herself.
But instead of falling to the floor cut in two, nothing had happened to Harry. He looked down at himself where the sword had passed through him, feeling his midsection. "What did you do?" he asked Illyana, as Sirius slowly let go of her.
"My sword can break magic spells," Illyana said. "I used it to 'cut' the Trace from you. Now nobody can use it to locate you." She turned to Ron and Hermione. "I can do the same for you two, if you want."
A minute later all three Gryffindors were free of the Trace. "I can't believe I'd never heard of that spell," Hermione said, vexed at her ignorance.
"Don't be," Sirius told her. "You may think of it as being restrictive, but it comes in handy if we ever have to find you when you're lost."
Harry was looking at his friends, his godfather and Dobby, wondering if there was some way they could help with the Sinestro problem. Ring, he thought, if I wanted my friends to have rings like you, how would I go about getting them?
I AM CAPABLE OF CREATING DUPLICATES OF MYSELF, the Ring responded. Good, Harry nodded. Is there any problem if you create, say, five duplicates, one for each person here?
NO PROBLEM, the Ring told him. HOWEVER, EACH RING MUST BE RECHARGED ONCE PER PLANETARY ROTATION, INCLUDING THIS POWER RING.
Recharged? How do I recharge you? Harry asked.
WITH THE OAN POWER BATTERY, the ring replied.
Where is this power battery?
THE POWER BATTERY IS CURRENTLY HELD BY GREEN LANTERN JORDAN, LOCATED IN THE HOSPITAL WING.
"Oh." Harry didn't remember seeing the Green Lantern with anything that might be a "power battery." "How long until I need to recharge the ring — I mean, recharge you?" The others heard him talking and were listening to his side of the conversation.
REMAINING CHARGE WILL END IN 25 MINUTES.
Not much time, Harry realized. "Can you bring me the power battery so I can recharge you?" he asked.
NEGATIVE. GREEN LANTERN JORDAN RETAINS POSSESSION OF THE POWER BATTERY UNTIL TERMINATION OF ALL LIFE SIGNS. POSSESSION OF THE BATTERY THEN PASSES TO THE POSSESSOR OF THIS RING.
"But Jordan's not going to die now," Harry said. "Right?"
CORRECT.
There didn't seem to be any other option. "I have to go down to the hospital wing," Harry said. "Jordan has a power battery that I need to recharge the ring."
No one spoke for several seconds.
Then, "Well, let's get going!" Illyana declared.
"It may not be that simple," Hermione cautioned. "If they're trying to find us they could have the portraits on the lookout if we walk by them."
"So let's use the Cloak of Invisibility," Ron suggested.
"I don't think all six of us can fit under it," Harry said. "Someone will have to stay here."
Sirius looked unhappy, but said, "I'll stay. If Snape sees me he'll run to the Minister, who'll call in Aurors. I'd rather not go back to Azkaban, seeing's how I didn't kill Pettigrew."
"Okay," Harry agreed. "But we still have to get down to the hospital ward without anyone seeing us, and using the Cloak's too slow." He looked at Illyana. "Can you do your disc thing?"
"Piece of cake," Illyana said, grinning.
-o=o-
Voldemort was silent as he considered Sinestro's offer, his mind unusually devoid of conscious thought, knowing the alien was easily capable of reading them. "I accept your proposal," he said at last. "I and my followers will devote ourselves to your cause, provided you teach us how to use these rings effectively."
"That I will do," Sinestro agreed. He took a step toward the Dark Lord. Though Voldemort was taller than he'd been as Tom Riddle, Sinestro still towered over him. "But be warned, human. I know the treacheries of your kind. If you even dare think of betraying me, I will burn you down without a second thought. Do we understand one another?"
"I understand," Voldemort nodded, his mind still blank.
"Hold out your left hand," Sinestro ordered. "And make a fist."
Voldemort did as he was told. Sinestro placed his fist against Sinestro's. The yellow ring flashed brightly. Voldemort felt solid metal form on his ring finger.
"While you wear this ring, there is an oath to recite once per day." Sinestro said. "Repeat these words after me:
"In blackest day, in brightest night,
Beware your fears made into light.
Let those who try to stop what's right
Burn like my power Sinestro's might!"
When Voldemort had finished repeating these words, Sinestro said, "You are now a part of the Sinestro Corps. Take me to the rest of your followers to receive their rings." Turning to the cell door, Sinestro hit it with a power beam, tearing it off its hinges. They stepped out into the corridor, a yellow glow now surrounding both men.
"I don't feel the Dementors pressing against my mind anymore," Voldemort said in surprise.
"The ring protects you from harm," Sinestro told him. "The emotivores can be a sources of energy for our rings, which uses the power of fear as its energy source."
Voldemort nodded, pretending understanding, all the while managing not to think of what he and his followers would do once they were empowered with yellow rings and trained in their use: they would overpower this Sinestro and take his ring, using it to control first Britain, then Europe, and in time — the world.