Rune stone path

Choosing of the champions

After dinner the group of friends split up. Luna wandered off with Ginny while Fleur followed her schoolmates back to their carriage. Harry waved goodnight to his companions in the other houses and walked up the stairs towards the Gryffindor Common Room. When they hit the seventh floor though Hermione stopped him.

"Harry," she said chewing her bottom lip. "Would you mind coming with me for a bit?"

"Sure, Hermione," Harry said curious. "Nev, we'll catch up in a few minutes." His friend nodded and kept going while Hermione led Harry towards the corridor with their meeting room. "How come you wanted to see the Room, Mione?"

"A few reasons…" she said quietly. Hermione pulled to a stop near the tapestry and asked Harry to stand against the wall while she opened the Room. Pacing nervously in front of the tap dancing trolls, Hermione eventually got the Room's door to materialize. "Okay," she paused hand on the knob and let out a long breath, "come on, Harry."

His brow furrowed at his girlfriend, Harry followed her inside and promptly stopped dead, eyes wide. "What the…" The Room was not the meeting room he was used to. Harry had long since figured out it subtly changed each time they used it but it had always been primarily the council chamber with a few extras. Now…now it was basically as far from a conference room setting as was possible to get. In place of the round table and chairs there was a writing desk against the wall and a bed in the middle of the room. In place of the comfy easy chairs surrounding a small fireplace, there was a beanbag chair and a recliner in the corner. Almost every wall was consumed by bookshelves filled with everything from Jules Verne to romance novels. The ceiling had several different posters including, Harry noticed blushing slightly, one of him and Daphne made from the photo Luna had taken over the summer as they stood in front of the dead basilisk.

"Mione…what the bloody hell…"

She stood near the desk nodding slowly. "Well, that answers that I suppose." Turning to Harry she smiled and gestured for him to sit on the bed and she took a seat next to him. "I started thinking about this Room over the summer, Harry, and I came up with several conclusions. It's obviously not a normal castle room. Even magical locations can't generally alter themselves on the fly like we've seemed to do at times with this place. I got to thinking about how the older members of our contingent all stumbled across it in different…configurations I guess would be the appropriate term: Shiva with her supply cache, Amelia with her bedroom, Susan with her secret meeting area. When you mentioned at the World Cup about the walls suddenly being able to absorb spells when you needed a training area I started to put two and two together."

She shrugged as Harry stared at her in amusement. "I figured that there were two primary explanations. Either the Room existed in several primary setups that could be subtly changed in small ways or it quite literally molded itself to whoever opened the door. Either way, the requirement to walk past it three times envisioning what you want would be how it latched onto the configuration to display."

Harry looked around the small bedroom with an intrigued eye peering more closely at the subtle touches that gave it life and character. "It's the latter isn't it? This is a copy of your bedroom."

Hermione smiled at him and patted his leg approvingly. "Yes, it is. I thought it would be excellent for accomplishing both purposes of this evening. The first was of course testing to see if we could create new schematics for the Room, which obviously was a resounding success."

"Agreed," Harry said turning to Hermione with a grin. "It's very you, Mione. I can't wait to see it in real life. The poster is a cute addition by the way."

She blushed and muttered, "Yes, well it was a good picture and you were both rather dashing in that pose…" Hermione shook herself and continued slower and more confidently, "I would very much like for you to see it when we next return home, Harry. I still need to introduce you to my parents in a better manner than the harried meeting at Diagon a few years ago."