Disclaimer: Nothing here is mine...
No apology will compensate for the unpardonable lateness, but I'll say I'm sorry anyway.
Harry picked a book at random from the shelf. Not quite at random, perhaps, he had tried to allow instinct to guide him to the most useful book in the room, but still, his instincts were hazy, as Snape still occasionally gently reminded him. And, very often, not-so-gently reminded him. He looked at the title. A guide to magical mazes and obstacle courses – how to make 'em and break 'em! Harry laughed. This was perfect. It might not help him in training, but it would help him survive the gruelling course towards the training room. Why was that necessary anyhow?
Because I want my trainees to arrive in the training room as they would arrive on the battlefield. Exhausted and depleted, physically, emotionally and magically. Snape's voice answered him from somewhere inside his head. Harry didn't think Snape had yet fed him that line, so where did it come from? He turned around and Draco stood behind him.
"Git," Harry said idly, turning towards an armchair to read. "That really sounded like him, you almost frightened me. Honestly, get some new tricks." He sat down and opened the thick volume. "Imitating Snape's mental voice is getting just as tired as copying his real one. I tell you, though, I can't wait for the next prank to be ready..." Why wasn't Draco responding? He realise something was not right. He would have felt safest simply keeping his head down and prattling on until Draco escaped, but he steeled himself to stop talking and look up. Draco's face was like a death mask. It was completely empty. It certainly did not look like the face of a boy gleeful with the success of his trick, or someone downcast at his failure to surprise. He just looked glassy-eyed and hollow. "Was it you doing –' Harry faltered.
Draco nodded curtly, and left the room. Suddenly Harry felt more cheerful, as though a shadow had left his armchair, and shaking his misgivings away, he opened the book. Right away, he saw that this was, if not Snape's torture-course-setting bible, it was at least his starting point. He skimmed through the first chapter quickly. He had studied this sort of material carefully before the third task in the Triwizard Tournament. He couldn't help admiring the way the author put the ideas so neatly, but it was familiar. Then came chapter two, and Harry could almost hear Snape reading the book aloud. He wondered if Snape had a sister, if he did, it was probably her who wrote the book. Or a cousin. The styles were just so similar.
A complete understanding of the theory underlying magical mazes and their obstacles necessitates a return to the basic principles of wizardry. No obstacle spell can be cast unless the witch or wizard casting it has full knowledge of how to bring it forth, bind it, control it and release it. All obstacles must be bound to the area for which they are designated. To bind a spell, it must be brought forth from the deepest recesses of power and then gently disconnected from it. The power source should be transferred carefully to resonate with the destination aura. For more information on transferring spells by source, see An understanding of power sourcing by Cornelia Tarpin.
That was just like Snape's obsession with theory. He was right, sort of; if you really understood the principles you could cast a better spell. The trouble was that really understanding was a difficult process. Most of the time, you just ended up with applying rule-of-thumb half-truths to your spells. Snape said this was Hermione's problem. Harry didn't see that Hermione necessarily had a problem, but Snape thought most people had some problem or other. Harry couldn't really understand why, so he filed that thought away and continued reading.
He passed over the descriptions of the spells you could use. Snape had taught him that when you were learning, it was more important to learn the general principles than specific spells or techniques. He understood what Snape was doing when he set it up, but was no clearer as to what he was supposed to do when he got into the tortures. Well, perhaps torture was a bit strong, call them obstacles. Then came the chapters about how to do the mazes: navigation: finding a path, navigation: through an obstacle, what to do if you get stuck...
Harry grinned. This was going to be fun.
"You may begin." Snape disapparated, as usual, and Harry was left alone in the study to navigate his way to the training room without dying. This time, however, he was armed with specialist knowledge.
The first few tasks were far too easy. Harry was certain that there was something much worse later on; these trifling obstacles were hardly Snape's usual style. A pit full of poisonous snakes – were they vipers? – simply required levitation, a falling guillotine needed to be carefully immobilised. After calmly neutralising a small group of salamanders, gently curbing their excited little flames, Harry looked up and saw something odd. He told himself that he couldn't possibly be seeing right. Look again, his eyes insisted. It's truly there.
He was in a ball. Not a large ball, either. Its diameter was no more than ten feet. Harry cursed himself for being stupid enough to have walked into the trap. How could a large empty ball have suddenly surrounded him without his noticing? He must have been really off his guard. Not very sensible. Now he was stuck inside a black beach ball with no light besides that of the salamanders. This light of course had to be dim, because if he allowed them to brighten up his gloomy sphere, they'd burn him.
He tried walking around a little, but it was like using a hamster's treadmill wheel: the ball just rolled towards him and he didn't get anywhere. He thought about what he had studied earlier. He didn't think that the Magical Mazes author had included anything about being trapped inside black balls, certainly not ones with salamanders in them. There had been a chapter entitled Trapped! Something like what to do when the worst has happened. It was all about escaping when you've somehow got imprisoned, and, judging from what he'd read, he knew it would take ages to get out.
He tried to remember. Step one – is there a specifically designated way out? He started testing the ball, running his mind over its surface, but there was nothing. This ball was not designed so that he'd be able to easily escape.
Step two – what are the defences? Can they be breached? The defences – magically enforced plastic. Without spells, it was just a big beach ball really. Harry made a virtual knife with his mind and tried to pierce the wall to burst the ball. Nothing. He tried harder. He imagined his entire life force pouring into the imaginary knife. He drew on power in the air around him. He reached deep into himself and pulled strength from the recesses that had helped break Snape's body-bind curse two weeks before. He pushed the knife into the plastic again. When the tip touched it, a wave of pure black rolled into the ball, extinguishing the salamanders' helpful little flames.
Now he was left in the dark, with seven squealing salamanders. Evidently, having your flame put out was either painful or frightening. Or possibly merely irritating; Harry had no idea what the cries meant. Step three – try to remove the spell from its source. Great. Now he was going to have to work against a spell of Snape's, which would be about as easy as passing an Arithmancy NEWT without studying. Slowly, he probed the ball, deeper and deeper, searching for the spell's point of contact with the corridor he estimated he was in.
Two hours later, he was out, gasping for breath. He'd forgotten about how much air, or rather how little air, a beach ball has inside. He thought he'd never breathe again, and he could spare no energy from destroying the ball to provide air. He then fought a manticore, which, every time you cursed it, changed shape so violently you were almost thrown backwards. Still, it was easier than the ball; Harry comforted himself as he picked himself up for the seventeenth time to battle an armchair-shaped manticore without any weapons.
When the manticore was dead and dissolved, Harry now found himself facing a new spell, one he hadn't yet seen. It seemed to be a violently pink mist, the colour irresistibly reminding him of a certain dreadful Valentine's Day organised by one Guilderoy Lockhart. He stepped tentatively forward.
"Welcome to the Circle of Love," a sweet voice announced. "The place you will never leave."
He was standing on a circular floor lit by gaudy pink spotlights. Nobody else was there, though he couldn't' help gut feel that he was waiting for something to turn up – or someone. A delicious, flowery scent assailed his nostrils, and suddenly he knew what was coming. An image entered his mind, of swinging red hair, a graceful footstep, two blazing eyes.
And he was right. Ginny, just the way he remembered her, just the way she appeared in the dreams he tried to ignore, almost danced in to the circle.
"Come dance with me," she asked. And Harry was no longer in control. Some sane part of him was warning him, telling him it wasn't real, but it wasn't telling him loudly enough, and he went down to meet her. She was so light, so graceful. He was reminded of his disastrous experience with Parvati Patil at the Yule Ball, and he marvelled over the difference. Here, he wasn't trying to stay as far from the girl as possible, but bringing her closer as they waltzed. They drew nearer and nearer as they danced, the sweet music lending atmosphere Harry could hardly believe possible. Son, he could feel her beating heart; their faces were almost touching.
"Kiss me..." Ginny murmured, almost purring. And Harry had to obey. The music, the smell, everything was numbing, blinding, he really felt as though he held Ginny Weasley in his arms. Their lips met, and then Harry's mind switched off. This was all he needed. He knew that given the choice, he would stay here for the rest of his life. An eternal kiss with the only girl that had ever really mattered to him, even while the sane part of his mind, quieter now, was telling him to run.
Then he came to his senses and remembered that Snape watched his trainees in case they were about to die. Snape was watching him snog a animated mannequin! He tried to break away from her, but it wasn't so simple. She held him tighter now, and she was still kissing him even while he struggled to leave, which was extremely distracting. Harry braced himself, and cast a perfect revulsion jinx. It didn't affect her too badly, since she wasn't human, but she loosened her grip slightly.
That was all Harry needed. He whirled away and ran, not allowing himself the luxury of a single backward glance. One more corridor, one battle with a ghost, and he was through.
He opened the training room the way Snape had shown him, and triumphantly entered in the knowledge that he had beaten his last record by over ten minutes. He only hoped Snape would congratulate him for it, that would be the perfect finish.