What are the limits of the Room of Requirement?

Question

Can the Room of Requirement provide anything if needed? For example:

• James Potter wanted to hide from Voldemort, it would have served as a perfect hiding place.

• Harry Potter wanted all the Hocruxes, he should have gone straight to the room of requirement where he would have found all the Hocruxes along with the Sword.

• All the muggle borns of the wizarding community could have taken refuge in the room of requirement.

• Can someone meet a dead person in the room of Requirement if needed?

• Would it have been possible for Harry to go in past in order to see Dumbledore for the explanation of many things?

• Can the room duplicate something? For instance, Harry needed the Elder wand; with Voldemort having it, could he still get it?

• Someone wishes to be knowledgeable than Dumbledore, would the seeker find his desired wish by finding books and things?

Who created the room of requirement (surely not Salazar)? Was it beyond Dumbledore's magic to create such a place?

Answer 1

James Potter wanted to hide from Voldemort, it would have served as a perfect hiding place.

It's unlikely he could hide in there.

• As per canon, there's absolutely no hint that James Potter even knew of the existence of the room. It was unplottable and NOT on the Marauders Map.

• On the other hand, Voldemort already knew about the Room of Requirement, since he stored the Diadem there.

• And we know that you can enter the Room when it's already occupied and against the wishes of the occupant:

  • Draco got in while Harry was looking for the Diadem in there in DH.

  • Draco posted Crabbe/Goyle as a lookout when he was working on Vanishing Cabinet in HBP - if he could just lock the room out he needn't have.

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Harry Potter wanted all the Hocruxes, he should have gone straight to the room of requirement where he would have found all the Hocruxes along with the Sword.

The Horcruxes were all protected by anti-Accio spell, so the Room would not have been able to get them:

• In HBP, Harry couldn't Accio the Horcrux in a cave (and clearly if Dumbledore could have, he'd have done so without going into the cave)

  'Me? Oh... okay...' Harry had not expected this, but cleared his throat and said loudly, wand aloft, 'Accio Horcrux!' {{ The Horcrux wasn't acccioed }} - HBP

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• In DH, they couldn't Accio either the locket; NOR cup in the Gringott's.

  “There’s an easier way,” said Hermione, as Harry wiped his inky fingers on his jeans. She raised her wand and said, “Accio Locket!”
  Nothing happened. Ron, who had been searching the folds of the faded curtains, looked disappointed.
  “Is that it, then? It’s not here?”
  “Oh, it could still be here, but under counter-enchantments,” said Hermione. “Charms to prevent it from being summoned magically, you know.”
  “Like Voldemort put on the stone basin in the cave,” said Harry, remembering how he had been unable to Summon the fake locket.

  ...

  “Accio Cup!” cried Hermione, who had evidently forgotten in her desperation what Griphook had told them during their planning sessions.
  “No use, no use!” snarled the goblin.

All the muggle borns of the wizarding community could have taken refuge in the room of requirement.

Not permanently.

First, as discussed above, it's NOT a foolproof refuge. Voldemort would be able to enter

Second, the Room couldn't get food to feed ALL of them, so they'd have starved (DA in Book Seven needed Aberforth's food, due to Gramp's Law exception being food)

Can someone meet a dead person in the room of Requirement if needed?

Most likely, no. It's stressed multiple times in canon that you cannot raise the dead

As I have already noted in the commentary for “Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump”, we remain incapable of raising the dead, and there is every reason to suppose that this will never happen (Albus Dumbledore's comments on The Tale of Three Brothers in TToBtB).

Even the closest one has do geniunely speaking to the dead (the forms called forth by Resurrection Stone) seems to be mostly really speaking to yourself:

“They won’t be able to see you?” asked Harry.
“We are part of you,” said Sirius. “Invisible to anyone else.”

The same way, Dumbledore tells Harry when they meet in King's Cross that it's all in Harry's head.

We have covered elsewhere on this site in detail that talking to portraits also doesn't count as talking to the dead.

Would it have been possible for Harry to go in past in order to see Dumbledore for the explanation of many things?

Theoretically speaking, I don't know of a magical limitation that would prevent the Room from acting as a Time-Turner.

Practically speaking, it's possible Time Turners were made from some super rare material that the Room couldn't get a hold of. We don't really know either way from canon.

Can the room duplicate something? For instance, Harry needed the Elder wand; with Voldemort having it, could he still get it?

It's unlikely, but there's no firm disproval in canon.

Someone wishes to be knowledgeable than Dumbledore, would the seeker find his desired wish by finding books and things?

If the books required can be transfered to the room, yes. But the room is unlikely to create books for you from scratch.

Answer 2

The Room of Requirement has limitations. It's stated so in the Harry Potter Wikia:

The Room of Requirement, also known as the Come and Go Room [1], is a secret room within Hogwarts Castle, that only appears when a person is in great need of it. The room is thought to have some degree of sentience, because it transforms itself into whatever the witch or wizard needs it to be at that moment in time, although there are some limitations. For example, it cannot create food, as that is one of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration. It is believed that the room is Unplottable, as it does not appear on the Marauder's Map, nor do its occupants, although this could simply be because James Potter, Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew never found the room.

It's also noted that all the Hocruxes except for Ravenclaw's diadem had enchantments and protective spells on them. Also remember that in Order of the Pheonix the room was discovered so it wouldn't be exactly a perfect place to hide.

I also want to add that this particular room only changes itself into what the witch / wizard needs it to be. Because of the uses it had during the books I believe it can only create common things, for example:

Dumbledore's Army used the room as their headquarters and practice area. Among the items provided by the room for the D.A. were Dark Detectors and shelves of helpful books such as A Compendium of Common Cures, The Dark Arts Outsmarted, Self-Defensive Spellwork, and Jinxes for the Jinxed. Around Christmas, which was the last meeting before the break, Harry was cornered by Cho Chang under some mistletoe and the two shared a kiss. They were eventually discovered by the Inquisitorial Squad; due to the Squad wanting evidence, the Room provided the meeting room and the list of members.

I do not think the room had enough power to transport anything into and out of the room. This can also be defined by Draco moving the Vanishing Cabinet from the hallway into the Room of Requirement.

In his sixth year, Draco Malfoy spent the majority of his days within this room, fixing the Vanishing Cabinet that he moved from the school's hallway, in order to smuggle Death Eaters in and help him assassinate Dumbledore. The repair took most of the year, as Draco spent much time inside the room, and had his friends Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle remain outside in disguise to drop something onto the ground should anyone approach, to warn Draco not to come out.

If the room was powerful enough to bring the hocruxes there, why would Draco even need to fix the Vanishing Cabinet? He could have just got the room to bring him / create a working one that was connected to a different one so that the Death Eaters could get in.

As far as the points you made...

No it is not possible to meet a dead person in the Room. This is due to one of Gamp's Laws:

Exception #4: Bringing a human being back from the dead

We've been told over and over again in the Harry Potter books that dead is dead.

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, in the Battle of the Ministry, after Sirius has fallen through the veil, Lupin tells Harry:

"There's nothing you can do, Harry--" "Get him, save him, he's only just gone through!" "It's too late, Harry--" "We can still reach him--" Harry struggled hard and viciously, but Lupin would not let go... "There's nothing you can do, Harry... Nothing... He's gone." (OotP pg. 806/711)

If you could bring a human back from the dead, there wouldn't be any need for infiri, which are animated bodies that are nonetheless still dead. Why not bring them all the way back? (Unless you wanted them to be extra scary.)

If you could transfigure a human being back from the dead, there'd be no need for the Philosopher's Stone, and the Resurrection Stone wouldn't have been one of the three Hallows. But most of all, if you could transfigure someone back from the dead, Voldemort wouldn't have needed horcruxes to achieve immortality.

So, that's four. But Hermione said there are five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration.

As far as we know there is no way for the room to actually transport somebody to the past, it can only create items / rooms. How exactly would the room transport somebody into the past?

Also, as previously stated, the room does not have teleportation qualities as previously explained, so it couldn't bring Voldemort holding the Elder Wand.

Answer 3

It is limited by the exact same limitations as any witch or wizard. Either the room uses magic to create the various rooms it needed, or the founder witches and wizards created various rooms for different purposes. The room would still be limited in the same way as a normal wizard so it couldn't revive the dead or bring the wand, it could serve as a suitable hiding place but no more than an enchanted house would.

Also in the half-blood prince there are a lot of canon references to the specificity of the wizard who wants to use the room. This takes place when harry is trying to find out what draco is doing, generally asking the room to show him what draco is doing and what draco is up to etc. This shows part of the rooms limitations.