The room was a potions lab. It wasn't Snape's potions lab—a dank dungeon room where Gryffindor students struggled to succeed despite the lack of light, the dank air, and the intimidating contempt of the teacher. It was what Harry had been hoping for in his innermost desires. It was brightly lit from overhead panels that resembled fluorescent lights despite being in the electricity-free school. It had high ceilings and recessed exhaust extraction to keep the air clear of smoke and potions fumes. Rather than a row of tables facing a disapproving professor, there were simply a few stations spaced around the walls with lots of room to work and the cauldrons and beakers already ready for inputs.
But as the rest of the Marauders walked in and began to appreciate the space, Harry's gaze was locked onto what it was doing to his user interface.
The first thing Harry noticed was that his map had filled in, within the previously-empty space. But it hadn't just created the simple, classroom-sized lab that was currently present. Instead, the area had gone from a simple fog-of-war to a complicated hash-mark. It was diagonal stripes instead of clouds. The map didn't seem inclined to display what was in there, in case it was anything. If he wound up asking for any mazelike set of rooms, presumably his map wouldn't be any help navigating it. The only way he could be sure it was tracking the space at all was his friends' dots floating atop the crosshatched section.
Of course, the second thing was the new "User-Configurable Space" text that had appeared under his map. As he considered it, it expanded downwards into a whole new pane.
USER-CONFIGURABLE SPACE
Simulating WORKSHOP for crafting POTIONS
Door: Default; Security: Default
Options: Bright Lighting
Saved As: a place to brew potions
As his friends began to inspect the stations and chatter about what they could brew there, Harry was zoning out inspecting the interface.
Considering the Door feature offered him a surprise:
EXIT TO
Default (Seventh Floor)
Sixth Floor
Fifth Floor
Fourth Floor
Third Floor
Second Floor
First Floor
Ground Floor
Dungeons
Hogsmeade
"Hogsmeade!" Harry almost shouted. Everyone turned towards him and he explained, "We can get the room to exit to other floors or even somewhere in Hogsmeade."
"Well that'll save some time in the tunnels," Fred mused.
"Try it and see where it comes out," George suggested.
Harry flipped the selection to Hogsmeade and said, "Try it out."
George moved back over to the door and opened it up carefully, peeking out. His eyes widened and he pulled it back closed before announcing, "By the look of the place, I think it's the back of the Hog's Head pub."
"If the owner catches us… might still be worth it," Fred figured.
Harry flipped the door back to the seventh floor before consulting the Security option.
ROOM ACCESS
Default (Anyone)
Door Hidden (Can be summoned)
Lock Configuration to Current Users
"I can hide the door, or lock it to current users… which I guess is us," Harry explained. "I wonder if that's just while we're in here." He switched it to Locked, regardless. Seemed like it would keep anyone else from stumbling on them.
The options list was a huge pane of its own. He toggled on a couple of random features, adding targeting dummies and toilets. Straw dummies rose up along one of the walls that didn't have a potions station, and between two of the stations a door morphed into existence, presumably leading to a bathroom. Next he considered the POTIONS entry.
WORKSHOP TYPE
Potions (Current)
Enchantments
Spells
Plants
Automobiles
Wood
Food
Locks
Clockwork
"Huh. That's a weird list of things we can craft in here…" Harry mused, surprised by automobiles being an option but some more obvious castle-type crafts being missing. But then he opened his character sheet and realized, "Oh! I guess I can only switch it to a workshop for things I know how to craft. Maybe if I learned other crafting skills, they'd be options, too. I guess I don't even know what I'd do with a blacksmith forge or anything."
By this point, most of his friends were just standing around watching him while he messed around with the menus, for all that it just looked like being zoned out in place, eyes darting at nothing. Hermione had still been poking at the potions stations but gave a surprised "Eep!" when Harry switched it to Plants. The potion stations suddenly fell away as if the floor had become intangible. As soon as they were gone, they were replaced by sturdy tables with containers of potting soil, pots to put it in, and a shelf of common herbology tools. They simply slid out of the walls.
"Oh, wow. There are so many options for base room type," Harry realized, flipping through the options that had shown up when he considered WORKSHOP. "Like, a crazy amount of options. Who wants this to be a beach?"
"How would that even…" Hermione began, then shrugged and said, "Sure."
YOU MUST EXIT THE SPACE TO CHANGE ITS TYPE
"Ah, looks like we can't change it that much while we're still in here," Harry explained.
"At least there are some considerations for physics," Hermione huffed.
"Let's go to the beach!" Ron ordered, already waiting at the door to shoo them out.
As Harry exited, another prompt asked:
SAVE CHANGES TO a place to brew potions?
"No, it's fine," Harry thought to the interface. He didn't want people in the future trying to get a place to brew potions and wondering why they'd stumbled into a herbology room.
Once they were all out of the room and the door closed, it disappeared. "Aw, do we have to walk up and down the hall?" Ron asked.
"No," Harry said, as he realized his control pane was still present but had changed slightly:
USER-CONFIGURABLE SPACE
Simulate BEACH of type SCOTTISH SEASIDE
Door: Default; Security: Default
Options: Summer
Or choose previously saved option?
"I think I just have to activate it as a beach. Do we want one that's like the Scottish seaside in summer?"
"No, thank you!" Ginny objected. "Can it do the south of France?"
"Agreed," Hermione chimed in.
"It can," Harry confirmed. "Let me just look at the previously saved options, first…"
PUBLIC ROOMS
a place to brew potions
a toilet
a dueling room
a place to store the Mirror
a room we can portkey from
a safe place to sleep
The Room of Hidden Things
"Oh, weird. It doesn't look like many people have found this over the years. Or maybe it only saves some of the previous options? It looks like most of these are just exactly what people asked for, without 'I need' in front. But one of them is capitalized. What's the Room of Hidden Things?"
The door reappeared in the wall as soon as he asked that, his game system taking that as a selection. "Beach!" Ron crowed, not having kept up with Harry's narration, and pushing the door open into a place that was manifestly not a simulation of the southern French coast. "What?"
Harry peeked in after Ron, seeing that the space was now like the inside of a cathedral, the floor covered in mountainous drifts of random objects, almost a cityscape of abandoned furniture and other objects. "I think this is the room with the hidden things," he explained. "I wonder if this many people found the room over the years to hide things. Or maybe this is just where the elves store spare furniture and stuff?"
"Think of the contraband!" Fred realized, shoving in after his little brother.
"Centuries of it!" George agreed, right behind him.
"But I wanted to go to the beach," Ron complained, as everyone pushed past him into the cavernous space.
"We can always do that later," Hermione consoled him, absently, fixated on all the books that she realized were haphazardly spread amongst the furniture.
Harry was glancing at the settings for this immense room.
USER-CONFIGURABLE SPACE
Simulating WAREHOUSE for storing EVERYTHING
Door: Default; Security: Default
Options: Cathedral Ceilings, Sunlight, Extra Space
Saved As: The Room of Hidden Things
It was weird that it had the sunlight option, Harry's gaze moving up to the high windows that looked very much like they went outside. But surely that must be a simulation itself?
"We could spend months in here and never find everything," Ginny complained, though seemed interested in an old sport broom she'd spotted. "I think this is an original Cleansweep!"
"Yeah, I wonder if there's a way to make it less of a dump," Harry agreed, poking through the immense list of options. "Maybe this one. Hold up, everyone! I'm going to try to turn on the 'sorted' option."
He waited for everyone to hustle back to the doorway. They'd seen the heavy gardening tables fold out of the wall, and nobody wanted to risk the piles of junk falling on them if they moved suddenly. As soon as they were all clustered together and ready to leap free of the room if it became dangerous, he selected the new option.
The motion of the piles of detritus was as beautiful as it was terrifying. Piles sunk into the floor only to rise in other places. It was like the crest and fall of a windy ocean, and Ron had to look away before he became seasick. After about thirty seconds, the place was almost unrecognizable. Instead of haphazard rows of piled objects, with meandering paths through them, they were suddenly looking at a real warehouse. High shelving was set in orderly rows, items stacked neatly upon the shelves.
"Oh, but where did that broom go?" Ginny complained.
"Probably sporting goods," George gestured at one neatly-labeled end of a shelving unit.
"Aisle five!" Fred chortled.
"Merlin! Look at all the books!" Hermione nearly squealed, power-walking to the section that had basically become a library all of its own, thousands of discarded books shelved by the library's standards.
"We've lost her forever," Ron sighed, then followed his sister toward the sporting good racks. The twins had already spotted the contraband section and dragged Lee over with them to see what they could collect.
That left Harry alone to see what he could find of interest. The problem was that it was all interesting. He absently wandered over to the weapons section before realizing he already had a magic sword he hadn't really had the opportunity to use. That was next to the wands section which would have been a big help to replace Ron's broken wand if they hadn't already gotten him a new one. Most of them looked even more damaged than the one that had broken, though: probably not many people hid their functioning wands.
Next to that was the clothing section, which was massive, the shelving having converted to basically closet-style bars and hangers. The room didn't really seem to want to label anything besides the ends of the rows, but it seemed like it had organized the clothing both by body type and by fashion era. Most of it was just robes, but a few inspections gave Harry enough information to work that out. A few of the outfits seemed to be partially armored, and inspection indicated that they were dueling robes, some with minor enchantments. They were way too big for him, but there might be a way around that. Clearly, if he wanted to fill up the slots on his paper doll, this would be a good source of gear. Maybe not the best gear, but better than nothing.
Speaking of gear slots, the clothing aisles blended into jewelry. It didn't look like anything in the room was particularly valuable, otherwise it wouldn't have been hidden or thrown out. But some of the bracelets and amulets seemed to have minor enchantments on them, and he threw a few into his inventory that seemed like they might be useful. And some just looked nice and might make for fun presents for friends later on. Though now that they all knew about what was essentially a zero-cost thrift store, it would probably be pretty obvious that he was regifting Room of Hidden Things detritus.
Wait, maybe not all of the jewelry was discarded junk. Near the end of the row, he spotted something far fancier than the sterling silver, brass, and semiprecious stones that had otherwise made up the row. A crownlike object—Harry thought it might be called a circlet or diadem—of intricately-worked silver clasped a large sapphire at the front. There didn't appear to be anything obviously broken, so had someone stolen it and hidden it in here in the past? Maybe if he inspected it…
DIVINATION SUCCEEDED
ROWENA RAVENCLAW'S DIADEM
This magical headpiece was created by the founder
of Ravenclaw house, and grants the wearer several
mental enhancements. It was stolen by her daughter
and hidden. Eventually, it was recovered by Tom Marvolo
Riddle, who added several additional magical features.
MENTAL FORTRESS ACTIVATED
"Uh oh," Harry announced, backing away from the item, that name a warning even before his mental fortress triggered. Glancing down at his combat log, he spotted:
Ravenclaw's Diadem uses Suggestion on Harry Potter: Failure (Mental Fortress)
"Guys!" he shouted, backing further away from the cursed object.
"What is it, Harry?" Ginny asked as he almost bumped into her. She had a relatively-modern broom slung over her shoulder, and had found the clothing and jewelry to browse. The rest of her siblings and Lee poked their heads down the aisle at his shout. Hermione was presumably still absorbed by the library section.
"Nobody get anywhere near the diadem at the end of the aisle, okay? I think we're going to have to talk to Dumbledore about getting back that basilisk fang. Looks like the diary wasn't the only cursed object that Tom Riddle made…"