Summary: The first realm in the Path of Knowledge is a reflection.
Path of Knowledge: Part 2
He couldn't help it... he was disappointed. Harry looked around the room on the other side of the mirror, and as far as he could tell, he and Malfoy were just back in the Hogwarts library. Shelves filled with books, heavy tables and chairs, the occasional potted fern as halfhearted attempts at decoration. He sighed.
Malfoy looked around, the expression on his face making it clear he was barely repressing a smirk. "Out of one library, right back into another. Have fun, Potter." He settled into a nearby chair and rested his feet on the table, making it very clear that he intended to have no part in whatever Harry was going to do.
Harry glared and stalked off to the far reaches of the library to restart his search. Malfoy watched him go with cool grey eyes, squelching the unfamiliar niggling feeling of guilt that he wasn't helping. It was, after all, one thing to come along with Potter under threat of blackmail, but it was another thing entirely to actually help out once they were there, or back, or whatever. He had the sneaking suspicion it was even slightly immoral.
That, and something didn't seem quite right with the place. It was probably like being a musician in an orchestra and having one person (not himself, obviously) consistently playing half a note off-key. Not something that one really noticed, but it was there nonetheless, dancing around the edge of his mind and refusing to clarify itself. "Some Path," he said out loud to himself.
"What were you expecting?" a piping soprano voice asked derisively from nearby. "A hedge maze?"
Malfoy turned his head to see one of the library's small, leafy potted plants sitting nonchalantly on the floor outside its pot playing with some brightly-colored blocks. "Excuse me?" he asked. In spite of the polite phrasing, there was no courtesy in his voice.
The plant set its blocks down and looked him over carefully, inasmuch as anything without eyes could look at anything else. "Were you expecting a hedge maze?" it repeated after a moment, almost respectfully.
Malfoy sighed. First walking through a mirror on a ghost and Potter's say-so, next talking plants. "Something like that," he answered finally.
"Humans," the plant scoffed, turning its attention back to its blocks. "Always so literal. Just because something's called a Path doesn't mean it necessarily is one."
"I knew it!" Malfoy snarled suddenly, snatching out his wand and half-rising from his seat. "I *knew* this was a wild goose chase. Potter is *dead*!"
"You're doing it again," the plant singsonged. "Being too literal. I didn't say this wasn't the Path."
"You said it's not a path."
"It's not the same thing at all." The plant stacked its blocks in one symmetrical pile, then knocked them down. "It's not a path, it's the Path."
"Let me know when you feel like making sense, you stupid thing," Malfoy snapped, dropping back into his chair, momentary rage subsiding. A crashing sound from elsewhere in the library attested to the fact that Harry was still searching through the stacks and had apparently knocked over a shelf. He half-rose again, before the fern spoke again, ignoring both insult and crashing.
"Take your friend, for example-"
"He's *not* my friend," the pale boy snapped, sitting back down when no human noises of pain were in evidence. Potter evidently hadn't hurt himself *too* badly yet.
"Whatever you say," the fern replied, amused. "He's *never* going to get anywhere if he keeps on like that." It curled a few of its roots around the colored blocks and used the rest to haul itself on top of the table Malfoy was seated at. Once there, it began stacking its blocks again. "He's so busy looking for answers that he's forgotten the really important part."
"And a fern knows what's important?" Malfoy asked in acid tones.
"Usually," it answered calmly. "No one bothers to ask us, though, do they? Humans don't give plants enough credit. You zip around all the time and never stop to really think. You can't find the end of the story at the beginning, and you can't have answers when you haven't even asked the question yet."
"Wonderful. Philosophical lectures from a shrub. Get to the point, if you have one. Any second now I'm going to have to get up and fish Potter out of a pile of books."
"You're not going to get anywhere, either. Not with an attitude like that," the plant said sadly. "Which is a shame, because you seem to have potential. Not many who've come through here bothered to pay any attention to me." It wrinkled its leaves in a manner suggesting a smile. "Much less insult me as often as possible."
"That's probably because you shouldn't exist."
It laughed. "You've almost got it. You're almost there. I shouldn't exist, but I do. You can see me, hear me, talk to me. And if your friend-"
"For the last time, Potter is *not* my friend!"
"If your *friend* was over here, he wouldn't hear me at all. He'd just think you were nuts for talkin to a fern in a pile of dirt." The small plant flicked its leaves dismissively. "And that's the truth. So here. These are yours." The root tendrils curled around the colorful blocks and shoved them over to Malfoy. "Use them in good health." The plant climbed off the table and headed back in the direction of its pot.
"And what, precisely, am I supposed to do with these?" Malfoy picked up one of the blocks and immediately set it down again.
The plant curled in on itself as if going to sleep. "Use your imagination," its piping voice yawned. "People with imagination control their world. I can't tell you everything, you know...."
"Be nice if you told me *anything*," Malfoy muttered. Another crash sounded from the same area of the library as before. He sighed, picked up the blocks, put them in a pocket of his robes, and went to investigate.
He found Harry standing in a small pile of books in front of a particularly loaded bookshelf. Particularly loaded, that was, except for the very topmost shelf, which held only one volume, thick and bound with brick-red leather. "What are you doing, Potter?" he asked flatly. "I could hear you crashing around all the way over there."
"Well, if I had some *help*...." Harry swallowed the rest of his sentence and pointed up at the top shelf. "I think that book up there'll tell us what we need to know, but I can't get to it."
"Why?"
"Why can't I get to it?" Harry frowned. "It's too high, and I don't see any stepladders or anything around. I tried to climb a shelf earlier, but it almost fell on me."
"I wish it had," Malfoy snapped back. "That's what magic is for, idiot. And I was asking why you thought that particular book has your answers."
Harry shrugged. "Well, one of them has to, doesn't it? And that one seems to be in the most inconvenient place, don't you think?"
"You can't get to it, therefore it's what you're looking for?" Malfoy asked incredulously. "That has to be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard."
Harry ignored him and brought out his wand from its hiding place up his sleeve and pointed it at the book. "Wingardium leviosa!"
The book shuddered on the shelf for a moment, or at least it appeared to. It was in fact the bookshelf lifting a few inches off the ground. Both boys were silent for a moment, watching the large oak bookshelf hover. "Well," Malfoy said after a moment. "Nice *aim*, Potter."
Harry snapped his wand away from the bookshelf and brought it around so that it pointed at the other boy's head. "You think you can do any better?" he snapped.
"I know I can." Malfoy also brought out his wand, tensing up as if he was going to go into dueling position. "Care to test me?"
They didn't get the chance to debate the point further. The bookshelf smashed back onto the floor, landed on its corner, and fell forward on top of him. Harry, on impulse, dove backwards, grabbing the back of Malfoy's robes and dragging him along.
Both boys bounced off the shelves behind them, right back into the path of the falling shelf. "Why thank you," Malfoy spat. "This is *so* much better. Why be simply squashed flat when you can be humiliated first?"
"Shut up and get out of the way!" Harry managed to say, just before the shelf finished falling and landed on top of them. There was a spray of brilliant rainbow sparkles, a flash, then nothing.