AN: Double chapters! Because I forgot how stinkin' small this one was and should have posted it with last week's.
The rooms they had been given were sufficient. Sasuke did not appreciate how far away they were from Harry's dormitory, but they were in close proximity to the main door and it gave the team more freedom to move about without students noticing. There was, however, something distinctly unsettling about the bedrooms and it took Sasuke a distressingly long time to realize why. None of the connecting rooms were actually adjacent to one another. Instead they spread out like spokes on a wheel, each connected somehow to the center, either directly by a door or down a long corridor, but none of them were actually in close proximity to each other. There would be no going through the wall to get to a comrade's room if needed. It was a subtle detail, but they all felt the separation.
It was something they were going to have to get used to here. The easiest path between point A and point B might not even be connected or on the same level in this place. Things seemed to move or only be tenuously located in actual proximity to each other. It was not something visible so much as something they all felt in their gut. Sasuke was used to knowing instinctively how far he was from the ground, not just the floor under his feet but the actual earth. Enough to know exactly how hard of a blow it would take to break through the flooring and to the dirt below. Now it felt like he was always just a little bit higher than he thought, or somehow below ground without even realizing it. It was nausea inducing.
"My room is creepy," Naruto complained.
Sakura scoffed. "There's no ghosts in your room! Harry already talked to you about this, Naruto. You're going to have to deal with it."
"Yeah, but it still feels funny. Like the walls are going to collapse. Can we sleep somewhere else?"
"Who said we're sleeping?" Sasuke demanded.
"But I'm tired!" Naruto whined, drawing the last word out until it was almost unrecognizable.
"Suck it up," Kakashi-sensei ordered. He had called their group back into the main room once Harry had left. Apparently he felt confident that Sasuke's cousin could make it back on his own without too much risk. Sasuke kind of wished he had been consulted as part of that conversation, but it was a little late to go running after the other boy. And Kakashi-sensei obviously had plans for them. "We've got approximately 10 hours to build a map of this place. I want to know all points of egress. We need to identify spaces we can use to box in an opponent and which ones will trap us in retreat. By start of class tomorrow I want to have firm control over the spaces Harry may move through."
"What are we going to do about the classes?" Sakura pointed out. "We're not ready yet."
"You're nin. Deal with it."
And that was all of the advice Kakashi-sensei had to give to them. It was all Sasuke had expected, honestly. They just needed to stall for time. They had only had wands of their own for a couple of days now. With plenty of examples to observe, and with a more systematic exposure to the theory than Harry could provide, it should not take them long to work out how to use them. They just needed to buy themselves time.
Sasuke was more worried about the rat warren of hallways and classrooms and goddamn nooks this place seemed to be made out of. He had seen no less than a dozen possible murder holes just walking to and from Harry's dormitory. All castles had a certain level of protections built into them, but this place seemed to have been designed with a madman's collection of them, only to then have each and every one neglected or poorly repurposed into something else. It was almost worse than there being nothing at all.
They divided the space into quadrants and then subsections, or at least tried to. Ten hours seemed like a lot of time, but they'd already seen how much more complex the situation was than it appeared. It took six hours just for Sasuke to finish his first section. He was only halfway through his second when time started running out. With a curse he had to break off halfway through a hallway and dart back down to the main classroom areas. Sakura and Naruto were both due down on one of the lower levels, but Sasuke's was closer to the library. He had at least enough of a grasp of the building's layout to know how to get to a place without being lost. He could not shake the feeling, however, that there were quicker ways of crossing the distance. Short cuts he couldn't see. Secrets that might mean having the advantage. He just had to find them.
If only they did not have to attend lessons like a bunch of pre-genin too foolish to manage on their own. The fact that they were actually incompetent at magic only made it burn even worse.