Even though James missed on the rumor last evening, there was no way he wouldn't hear it at all.
And so, a few days later, James was very interested about that unknown room. He really wanted to see it for himself, and maybe to get an artifact from it?
He was now searching this room in the castle every afternoon and evening to the point where his sleep suffered from it. Although he searched that hard, he didn't find anything. There were only a few places where he had just passed them quickly, but that was simply because there was nothing in there.
When he thought about it, there was one suspicious place, where it didn't led to anything, but was quite big as well.
The next night, he went back to that place – it was really troublesome, because it was on the seventh floor – and, again, saw nothing.
At that instant, his only wish was to find the room, and to get powerful artifacts from it.
Suddenly, a loud sound was made, and the wall next to him began to change. The wall had now a big, well sculpted, door, and James couldn't saw what was behind.
He decided, in his trademark unresponsible style, to just go in.
As soon as he entered, the door closed for James, and he suspected the wall was back at his original state.
He stopped looking back at the door and started gazing in front of him.
The room – if it could be called a room – was very dark, and James couldn't see the end of it. There was something like a haze that stopped him from seeing very far. The room made him uncomfortable, but he didn't run out of the room. He was a Gryffindor after all.
He activated the Wand-Lighting charm thinking that it would help him see, but it wasn't the case at all. It just made the haze clearer, and nothing more.
He used another charm, a very useful one, that made a golden compass appear on top of his head. He was looking like a saint, and was really gorgeous, but unluckily nobody saw him like that.
The utility of the compass was to go in a straight line, and to know his path back once he wanted to return.
So, he was now walking, no, running, in the opposite direction of the door, hoping to find something.
He ran for what he thought was an eternity, before finally seeing a pedestal, with a red glowing gem-looking stone on top of it.
He decided to touch it, as there was seemingly nothing else anyways.
When he made contact with the cold stone, the haze instantly disappeared, and the room was lit. Everything became clear to the eye, and he was sad to see that, in reality, the door was just a few dozens of meters behind him.
He didn't know who enchanted this room, or what was it enchanted with exactly, but it seemed it liked playing with him, which angered him a bit.
He still took the stone, and, for a moment, felt that it was not an ordinary stone before its glow and the sensation disappeared.
He placed it in one of his inner pocket and went back from the room.
He didn't know what was this stone, but, with such a grandiose entrance, it promised to be interesting!
The few next days, James searched at the library for what could the stone be.
Apparently, fate thought it was funny that, whenever he encountered something mysterious, he couldn't find out what it was.
Anyways, this time he was prepared for this result, as there was nearly an infinity of stone that can be made red and have this shape.
Also, since the nightmare he had the day the rumor started, he had had numerous other nightmare of the sorts. All of which he was a dark wizard doing very evil things.
The more those nightmares appeared, the more he saw how dark magic could be powerful – and dangerous.
Still, he didn't know why, but he was somewhat appealed by the idea of using dark magic himself.
He resisted this urge the best he could, but someday, he just couldn't, and researched books about dark magic at the library.
Fortunately, there were no books about dark magic accessible. There were probably some in the restricted section, but he didn't know – and didn't want to find – a way in there.
He had an easy mind after that because he knew that he wouldn't practice dark magic even if he wanted to get stronger with dark magic, he couldn't.
What he could do though, was getting stronger by learning more spells and getting more experience. As he was still in the library, he searched and found a spell book. The book looked quite old, and there were dueling charms in it.
James was very excited since he didn't find that types of book very often.
In it were recorded powerful spells, very powerful ones. The magic was very complicated too; it was very esoteric, and it required a great deal of magical power.
He practiced until it was dinner time and went to borrow the book.
When he asked the librarian, the man searched through the list, but he didn't find the book. After searching a little more, the librarian and James were shocked to know that the book he had wanted to borrow was from the restricted section!
James immediately explained why he had that book in his hands, and, even though the librarian didn't trust him, he believed in what he said as doing that intentionally would have been very dumb, especially for someone who knew very well how the library worked.
So, James simply handed the book down to the librarian and came to dinner empty-handed.
When he told this story to Ethan, the other was very excited about the content of the book. James had remembered some parts of it, but not everything obviously, and hadn't mastered any of the spells.
James now really wanted to finish mastering that book, as the spells in it were very interesting. Learning it would also pose a really challenge, challenge James was eager to face.
Now, he was pondering on how to get that book, and found a simple answer.