Disclaimer- While the plot is mine, the characters are not… I'm just playing with them.
A/N- The second half of the trial does not possess as many POV changes as the first, thankfully, so they have been labeled accordingly. I apologize for the confusion the last chapter was sure to cause.
I don't know when the next chapter of tGEW will be posted. My life has gotten rather busy as of late.
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Chapter 8
Harry found himself in a dead end hallway with eight doors, each a different color.
'One of these door has to be the right door,' he thought and opened the door nearest to him, a bright yellow door. Beyond the door were mounds of gold, jewels, sickles, Knuts and galleons as far as the eye could see.
"Wow!" Harry exclaimed, looking at all the money. However, it wasn't his and he saw neither his asgre nor a hidden door so he closed the door behind him without a thought.
ss
Snape entered the hallway of doors, already weary of what was before him. Before him were eight doors on either side of him, however he had a feeling these were not what he was looking for. He ventured to the end of the hall where he found a pure black door and went through it.
hp
The brown door Harry opened next produced the most wonderful of smells and once opened found a seven course meal waiting for him. But as he was neither hungry nor had he seen either Snape or another door leading elsewhere, this one was closed as well.
Behind the blue door he found only a comfy looking bed and a hand servant eager to wait on him, but it wasn't what he wanted either so he moved on.
What Harry found behind the green door was something that could have appeared out of the Mirror of Erised. Playing in the room was a couple of children as their mother and father watched over them with delighted faces. Harry recognized both adults as his parents but neither one of the children were him.
His family had moved on without him. He slammed the door behind him when he left.
The pink door he opened next and once he didn't as he saw his asgre entangled in the arms of someone nearly Snape's one height as the sounds of what clearly pleasure that escaped the man he wanted. Harry saw silver hair between the legs of what was his but before he could go and force the man off the iompróir, the door slammed shut in his face and refused to open again.
Harry sank to the ground, feeling torn as he willed away his body's reaction to the scene with a vivid image of his Uncle Vernon, Dumbledore and Wormtail wearing a thong and nothing else. His mind however kept returning to the scene that he had just seen. If Harry didn't know better, he could have sworn that that man that had been with Snape was Madra but that shouldn't have been possible.
Unless like everything else, what he saw was just an illusion.
'Yes,' Harry decided that was indeed what he saw. The man he adored would have never surrendered to anyone else so easily.
He would have to hurry if he wanted to play that scene out in real time.
The next door was bright purple and showed him an image of what life would have been like as a Slytherin and the abuse he would have suffered at the hands of his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. Unfortunately it showed him every fight the Trio had with Draco Malfoy with his and the blond boy's roles being reversed. It was him that had been punched by Hermione in their third year and turned into a ferret by the fake Moody three months later.
As Harry closed this door behind him, he rested once more against the doorframe lost in thought. After witnessing the potions explosion illusion in the fiery door upstairs followed by this newest vision, he had to admit that his asgre was probably right.
He was arrogant.
In addition to his beauty, Draco now needed to be apologized to as well.
There were two doors left, a red one and a white one. Harry chose the red one and immediately wished he hadn't, because it showed a scene where he had rescued his asgre from some men that had attacked him. He had killed Snape's attackers in the bloodiest way possible.
It was not the blood that had frozen his blood; it was the look on his beauty's face. The Wybir in this scenario had not made it in time to protect him.
His asgre had not been lying there unconscious. He was dead.
"Sev…," Harry whispered, turning at a run. He was through the white door in an instant, barely registering that he had finally gone through the right door.
He needed to find his Severus before he lost his nerve. He couldn't do this anymore.
hp
Harry found himself in a room of doors and noise those the chambers looked no different than the ones that he had ventured in before but seemed to flicker under its own power. The room unnerved Harry; he swore he heard of not only the voices of people he either knew or thought he knew but of electricity.
The charge in the air was strong.
He wandered aimlessly through the doors, trying to figure out how to proceed when the face in the open door before him froze him in his tracks. When that face called out to him, he could not help but reach for it.
"Mom?"
He did not receive a response as he was thrown backwards by a major shock from the doorway before the figure in the door vanished and another took its place.
Harry shakily got to his feet and whispered, "Another illusion?"
He knew that while in the Fae Realms that there was a chance that he might see the spirits of his deceased parents and knew deep inside that he was just fooling himself. Maybe though, he could talk Lord Wotan or his Master Arawn into seeing them.
In the meantime, he still had to find his asgre. He thought he had heard his voice amongst all the noise, now he just had to find it.
ss
Snape found himself standing a couple steps away from the doorway that had led him here and took the time to look around it as if it was his first time. In many ways, it was as his young Wybir was standing at his side like a statue lost in a deep sleep or trance. The chamber itself was small and unadorned with the only thing of interest being the three foot long crystal that floated mid-air in the center of the room. He swore there was a blue fireball glowing in the center and wondered what it really was.
He then heard, "You're not supposed to be awake!"
Snape glared at the crystal where he suspected the childish voice originated from & demanded, "Who are you and what do you want from us?" He now understood what the floating crystal signified; before him was the prison of a condemned spirit.
"I am Arwain and this is my domain. You have interfered with the trial!" the childish voice screeched and he had to keep himself from wincing. It didn't stop him from returning back to where Harry stood, ignoring the shouting thrown at him.
"Stop! What are you doing?"
"Harry," Snape whispered into the young man's ear, "it's time to wake up. Come back to me, puppy." When that didn't work, he decided to try a different approach. "Let me see what you see.
"Legilimens!"
"No! Stop!"
hp
It proved to a rather futile gesture as the people in the doors changed every couple minutes and after twenty minutes of no luck and two more brief electrocutions, Harry found himself camped out in front of a door awaiting his asgre's arrival. Ten minutes and another short shock later, the man he was looking for arrived. The moment he reached for the door, the fifty doors became ten but each of them had the same face.
Severus Snape was smirking back at him.
"Come to me, my puppy…"
Harry felt the fur on the back of his neck rise in anticipation as he looked at the doors. All of the Snape-doors said the words but only one of them had spoken.
That one was the one he needed to find.
He found it on the first try and went quickly through the door left behind.
He was getting closer to his goal and his mate.
hp
The chamber was filled with lights glowing from ever thing, shape and form. Harry found himself drawn to the largest of lights, a giant crystal standing in the center of the small chamber. What he saw surprised him.
It was an image, not of the past but of the future. A life he might share with his asgre one of happiness and joy, and while the thought of spending the rest of his life in the arms of his pregnant mate while their children played amongst the hellhound puppies too young for training was a pleasant dream, it was not for him. There were too many things he needed to do first.
The prophecies that affected him and everyone around him had to come first. He would not put his family or his asgre in anymore danger to satisfy the whims of the Wizarding World but he wasn't going to be their whipping boy anymore either. He would take care of Voldemort on his own terms or not at all. The Wizarding World no longer had a say in what he did anymore.
A door opened and Harry took it. This was the real door to his future.
cwn
Harry found himself in a stone chamber, identical to the first but different in so many different ways. The room was bare except for his asgre, a large crystal with a blue flame sparkling inside that stood in the middle of the room and behind him a door that led to the world outside of Mount Hukairya.
What stunned him was that he was seven steps from the door leading outside.
"Welcome back to us," Snape focused the Wybir's bewilderment to himself.
"Was that real?" Harry asked, shaking his head in an attempt to clear his mind. "Or was all that an illusion?"
"A bit of both I would think," Snape answered. "You were in the deepest reaches of your mind."
Harry wondered what that meant when he heard a voice that sounded remarkably like a small child said, "Stubborn brats."
"That is Arwain whom I believe is the guide of this test," Snape told him when the Wybir pup started looking around for the source of the disembodied voice. "The poor thing is still rather annoyed at me, I believe."
"What did you do?" Harry asked, wondering where Arwain was.
"The brat broke free from the test half way through it," Arwain angrily commented, "Not that he was playing by the rules to begin with."
Snape merely shrugged, telling Harry, "I am a master of the mind arts."
Harry looked at his mate bewildered. He didn't finish the trial? "Are we married then?" he stammered out. He didn't want to lose his asgre due to his stubborn headedness.
"There are seven trials," Arwain snarled, "and seven there will remain!"
Harry promptly screamed then collapsed where he stood. Snape quickly rushed over to where his pup lay twitching before losing consciousness. Seeing no injuries, Snape rose to face the crystal, demanding, "What did you do to him?"
"The child is a ghost just like me," the crystal answered. "He is subject to the Attero Phasmatis just like I am." Snape grimaced; he had forgotten that hellhounds also fall prey to the ghost regulating spells.
"You would dare use the banishment spell on him?" He demanded, enraged. That he would not allow. However, he was weaponless and wasn't quite sure what the enraged spirit had in mind.
"You, who would not allow the rules, dare to demand anything from me?" the spirit snarled.
"Your anger is not with him, but me," Snape retorts. "Let him go."
Even unconscious, the scream from Harry was painful to Snape's ears as the vengeful spirit smugly remarked, "You are in no position to be giving me orders."
"What do you want for his life then?" Snape retorts. "Do you want me on my knees begging for you to spare him?"
"Like you did for the life of the Potter woman? For your mother's life? Don't be ridiculous," the spirit retorts. "You've been embarrassed by your owners quite enough already. I've already seen your soul. The trial was meant for you to see what you truly are. In that aspect you failed."
Snape proceeded to sit down, wondering what his curiosity and pride had cost him this time. Surely not the existence of the child he had spent his entire life trying to protect?
"What do you want then?" He whispered.
"My freedom," the spirit said.
"I cannot," Snape answered, buying for time. As much as he adored his puppy, the cost was too great. He could not set lose a soul bound for Tartarus.
"You did it before," the spirit protested. "Remember the gate?"
'Ah, so that was what greeted him during the Fire Trial…' Snape realized and told the spirit, "I refuse."
"Then he dies," the spirit said and Harry screamed. Snape knew it would happened as he bent down to hold the puppy close, his magic instinctively seeking out to shield the puppy from the pain by taking the damage into himself.
If they were going to die then they would go together.
The moment Snape joined Harry in unconsciousness, his magic lashed out at everything in the chamber.
He did not see his Father's arrival on the scene nor the chaos that followed.
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Notes
Mount Hukairya is the highest pinnacle of the sacred mountain, Hara Berezaiti (Avestan for High Watchtower), of the Buddhist faiths. Stars and planets are said to evolve around this sacred place, evil is forbidden entry, and the mountains and rivers originate from there. Hukairya is Persian for "of good deeds" and is a place of fertility. (A/N- As the Buddhist religion is known for self-enlightenment, I decided to use the meanings of the seven major chakras to design the marriage trials faced. The descriptions below are listed in the order the trial was taken.)
Muladhara (root/base chakra)- color- red, yellow or gold/element- earth… It represents instinct, survival, lust, obsession, sexuality (greatest joy, natural pleasure, controlling passions, blissful concentration) and stability as well as the 4 petaled lotus and the gonads.
Sadhisthana, Swadhisthana or Svadhisthana (sacral chakra)- color- orange or white/element- water… It represents relationships, violence/addiction, baser needs/pleasure (affection, pitilessness, self-destructiveness, delusion, suspicion), joy/enthusiasm, creativity and sexuality/celibacy/fertility as well as the 6 petaled lotus and the sacrum.
Manipura (navel/solar plexus chakra)- color- yellow or red /element- fire… It represents spiritual ignorance, personal power, thirst, jealousy, treachery, shame, fear, disgust, delusion, foolishness, opinion, introversion, transition/growth and sadness as well as the 10 petaled lotus and the adrenal gland.
Anahata, Anahata-puri or padma-sundara (heart chakra)- color- green or pink/element- air… It represents complex emotions (lust, fraudulence, indecision, repentance, hope, anxiety, longing, impartiality, arrogance, incompetency, discrimination & defiance), compassion/unconditional love/tenderness, equilibrium, rejection, well-being and passion/devotion as well as the 12 petaled lotus and the thymus gland.
Vishuddhi or Vishuddha (throat chakra)- color- sky blue, smoke, or turquoise /element- space/void/akasha… It represents communication, growth/thought, security/independence, self-expression as well as the 16 petaled lotus and the thyroid gland.
Ajñi or Bindu (brow/third eye chakra)- color- dark blue, indigo or white/element- light … It represents the mind, clarity/truth, balance, inner guidance, and intuition as well as the 2 petaled lotus and the pineal gland.
Sahasrana (crown chakra)- color- purple or gold/element- none/nirvana… It represents inner wisdom, oneness/being, consciousness, and karma as well as the 1000 petaled lotus and the pituitary gland.