With the Marauders map successfully acquired I could really start fulfilling my goals for the year. Although I am confident in my abilities to conceal myself, the map will help eliminate any possibility of being caught red-handed. I have a feeling Dumbledore will find some ridiculously convoluted way to find out when I'm sneaking around, but there's no way for him to know for sure what I'm going to do, rendering him a none factor in my books.
The next day was the weekend, giving me the free time necessary to find the room without breaking any rules. After carefully concealing myself and heading out of my room, I headed to the left corridor on the seventh floor to find the funny tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy trying to teach trolls ballet. I really have to wonder if wizards are that lacking in common sense, that one of them would try to teach the incredibly difficult and precise dancing of ballet to a race of moronic, carnivorous and violant giants, and that no one doubts this happened.
Well I did find the tapestry. I waited and made doubly sure that no one was near or had the possibility of passing by any time soon. I then proceeded to do the necessary steps to find a specific set-up of the room: the Room of Hidden Things. The room in which Tom Riddle hid Ravenclaws Diadem, where Draco found a way to bring Death Eaters into the castle, where Harry held the practices for Dumbledore's Army and the place where many forgotten things can be found.
I walked in front of the tapestry three times thinking 'I want to find something.' Simple but should work. Where else would the room take someone who wants to find something other than a room full of lost things? And so, after my third pass a door appeared causing me to get quite excited. I stepped through it and found the mother of all disorderly messes, with furniture pilled to the ceiling, books in various states randomly dumped everywhere, broken items lying around, skeleton models and so much more.
After taking in the fact that I'd found the right room I began my first goal: finding a time-turner if possible. So I tried the quickest and easiest way "Accio Time-turner!"
.....
And nothing. I also tried to summon a book not far from me to see if the spell was working or if it was just that no time-turners were in the room. Seeing the book stay immobile confirmed a theory about the room of Hidden Things stating that the summoning spell doesn't work in here, forcing anyone to find what they seek manually. No one is sure if the feature was built into the room or if Riddle added some kind of spell to protect his Horcrux.
"Welp, it looks like I gotta do this by hand." I said with a sigh.
"I can't spend that much time doing this, I have plans for what to do with a time-turner. It'll slow me down, but I'll be fine. So... yeah, a week, that's how long my search window is for. After that it doesn't matter." I said to myself with a plan.
Having made up my mind, I then close my eyes and start to feel everything around me through magic. Feeling for enchanted objects. Feeling for intricate things. Feeling for anything with an hourglass shape.
And so my search began. I couldn't find anything during the weekend, which was disappointing, but it did make me feel better when I saw Snape's face during Potions. His eyes wouldn't stop twitching when he saw me, all due to the magic of homework. I mean the man asked for a lot of homework and he received it, not my fault.
The next day I thought my search in that mess was over, but after checking out the time-turner i had found, it turned out to have been cracked. And when I'm about to mess with a fundamental part of reality I want everything to be in order. I did use it to get a feel for the magical signature of these things though, allowing to filter out a lot of my finds.
After another two days I found two more damaged ones and a straight up broken one. This made me seriously consider using the Felix Felicis in made that broke my tutor. But no, it should only be used when absolutely needed. I can do without the Time-turner so there's no need to take it and be unable to for the next decade. So I persevered.
And so, on Thursday, after six days of searching, I finally found a fully functional time-turner. This one seemed to have been made in the style of a pocket watch, with an hourglass in the middle. It was silver, with various runes engraved on the inside to protect and contain the enchantments. Simple and elegant. I liked it.
With my goal reached and some spare time till my deadline, I started going through some of the books piled up everywhere to see if any hidden gems were around. I found about two dozen books which caught my interest due to their now forbidden nature or for being discontinued. I have no desire to walk the path of the dark arts, I've experienced first hand their methods and results, but I will understand them, I will study them, and I will break them!
I also tested out my new toy the next day to get more time in the room whilst still attending class. Very useful toy indeed. But as much as I like it, I shall adhere to its rules strictly. Five hours a day max. Never interact with yourself. And don't change anything. The use of this tool shall only be for me to spend more time in the room of Requirements, while attending classes.
Now my first two goals of the year are complete, time to spam the Room of Requirements or RoR for short.
During the weekend I ran a series of tests to find out the limits of the RoR. Like the books it couldn't give me any food, but I also found that it included ingredients for food and ones for potions. No ready made stock of useful potions either. No relative time manipulation like in some fanfics. And I could only come in and out on the seventh floor.
The good bits were that it could indeed provide me with all the books available not just in the library and the forbidden section, but in all of Hogwarts as long as I could think about what I wanted. Can't get what you don't know exists for sure. These were only available in the RoR, but I found a loophole by getting some enchanted quills to copy the particularly interesting or difficult books for further studies. It could also form a fully equipped potions lab, with everything one needs to create difficult and long-brewing potions. It also formed the perfect practice area for any kind of spells I could think of, with moving targets, obstacle courses and sets of self repairable targets. All in all, it should be useful for the foreseeable future.
And so began my intensive studying and practice. I learned new spells daily and improved my knowledge by leaps and bounds. My control over my magic was being refined as pushed myself to not only use spells as they were intended, but to push them to the limit and training to use everything a could silently and ,when possible, wandlessly. I trained certain spells like Stupify, Diffindo, Expulso and Confrongo to be true weapons in my arsenal, increasing their strength, penetrative power and speed for casting. I've even figured out a way using Arithmancy to add minor tracking abilities to trick opponents, but I do not know how well it will work during duels or on moving targets. I found myself becoming enamored with two particularly useful spells for their potential uses in combat: Aqua Eructo charm and the Scorching charm.
Aqua Eructo is an advanced version of the water-making charm, allowing one to summon high pressure water from the wand. By training it to be used in combat, i found it to have high potential for offense and defense, but I'm still in the beginning phase and cannot control the water I summon properly.
The Scorching charm is actually what McGonagall used when forcing Snape out of the castle near the final battle. It uses intense heat and flames to attack the opponent, forcing the recipient to deflect since the heat is still transmitted through magical shields. Useful to buy time, attack and distract. I'm still learning to up the heat and the amount of flames I can summon, I'm also having some trouble executing it multiple times in a row.
I've also found a way to train my use of Legilimency, so I don't fry anyone's brains by just looking into their eyes without my glasses. It involved starting off with small animals and building my way up to humans, in the hopes that handling less developed and more fragile minds i could learn to control my probing.
Last of my new projects using the RoR was concerning my knife. Although it is already a deadly weapon, i wish to make it a lethal threat against almost any opponent and to do that i will make it capable of controlled flight. My plan being to enchant it so I could make it fly according to my command, not making it a sentient artifact. And to accomplish that I started to study the most famous example of flying devices: broomsticks. Hence why I took a bunch of different brooms in working order from the room of Hidden Things and started dismantling them after I had enough fundamental knowledge. This allowed me to get a great many ideas regarding how to make it fly and protect it from anyone tampering with it, but I still need to figure out a way to control it and I want to study newer brooms to make the best product I could.
All in all, my next few months at Hogwarts we're very productive. With my time turner, cheat-like quills, the RoR, my ability memorize and categorize nearly everything I read quickly, and my hard work were turning the RoR into a very useful place indeed.