Disclaimer: The characters that look familiar to you belong to J. K. Rowling. The ones you cannot find in any of her books are mine. I don't intend to make any money out of this. I'm just having some fun.
Yamiko's Training Room
Although he hadn't had much sleep the previous night, Harry was full of energy that morning. He woke up early, went to the kitchen and buttered a couple of toasts, then he took another glass of juice before walking into the backyard of the Sam's house. The sun was smiling at him, and so were two men he considered his own true family.
"Already up, Harry?" Remus Lupin asked.
"Yes. Can I help you somehow?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Lupin replied cheerfully, "Could you please remind your godfather that I am the boss here? He wants to change the lesson plan at the last minute and start today's lesson with Yamiko's training room. And I want to test the people first, as we had agreed at the beginning."
"I never agreed to such a thing," Sirius complained, but he winked at Harry, so he was only trying to make Remus mad.
Harry shook his head at his godfather. "I think Remus is right, Sirius, we should start with a little test."
Remus arched an eyebrow and lifted his nose up in the air at Sirius, daring him to complain now, but Sirius didn't see him, because he had already covered his face with his hands, feigning utter distress at his godson's treachery.
A clear laughter made Harry turn to his left. Yamiko was there, drinking some tea. She had been watching the two men's little argument for a while now. Harry went over to her and both of them observed amused as Remus and Sirius tried to hex each other repeatedly without much success.
Little by little, sleepy faces followed by unwilling bodies started coming out of the kitchen, and by ten, all the students were there, although some of them looked very much asleep yet.
"Ok, now that you are all here, we will go to the front of Black Manor, where we will start our first lesson. We'll come back here after lunch," Lupin said, and everybody followed him around the Blacks' house, Harry and Sirius bringing up the rear.
"Nervous?" Sirius asked.
Harry thought for a moment. "Not really. You?"
"A lot," Sirius admitted, "I didn't like much the look on Fred and George's faces, I'm sure they are up to something."
"It's ok," Harry said shrugging, "whatever it is, Remus will be ready for them, after all, he survived their antics back at Hogwarts for a whole school year."
"I want you to choose a partner and stand a few paces away, facing each other in the duelling stance," Lupin was saying, "we'll start with a small test of the basic duelling spells. When I say 'now', you'll be attacking your opponent and defending from him or her the best you can. You can choose the spells you want, but remember this is a class, so we don't want people bad injured, ok?"
Everybody rapidly found a partner, and at the end only Neville was left without one. He was blushing a bit, glad that Aunt Sandrine wasn't there to see nobody wanted to partner him.
"Neville," Lupin said, and beckoned him with his head to join him, he then put his left arm around Neville's shoulders, "before you join the rest, I'd like you to help me. Before we start, we'll have Harry and Sirius make a demonstration, and then Neville and myself will repeat it." Then he nodded to Harry and Sirius, who walked to where Lupin and Neville where and then took some steps in opposite directions before turning to face each other, their wands ready.
Lupin pressed his hand on Neville's shoulder and whispered: "Let's take some steps back, I know Sirius and Harry too well to trust them."
Neville smiled nervously and obeyed.
The movement didn't pass unobserved by Sirius and Harry, who smiled at each other, thinking that the summer was very long, and they would get Remus sooner or later.
"Ready?" Lupin asked aloud. Harry and Sirius nodded. "Now!"
Harry started with a defensive spell, because he guessed Sirius was going to attack him right away. He put a mirroring spell on himself and Sirius' hexes were deflected immediately, bouncing off Harry's body without harming him. Sirius jumped easily out of the way of his backfiring spells and dived to avoid Harry's stunning spell. In a flash, Padfoot was there, zigzagging up to Harry to avoid his spells. Harry tried to back away, but it was difficult. If he ran, Padfoot would be faster. If he stayed put, he would have to hit the dog soon. He finally decided not to move and try to hit his godfather. The closer he was, the easier he became as a target. Finally, Harry hit Padfoot's left leg and the dog whined in pain.
"Sorry!" Harry said, worried that he had really hurt his godfather, and went over to the dog, who was licking his leg.
Pity Harry didn't take a look at Lupin, because the defeated expression on his professor and friend's face would have told him Padfoot was only faking it. As he was only looking at the dog, he didn't see that, and when he kneeled in front of the dog to see if he could help him, Padfoot jumped at him. Before Harry could react he was laying on his back with a big black grinning dog sitting on his chest and licking his face. His wand was some feet away, he had lost it in his fall.
Many people laughed and applauded, and Sirius transformed back into a man and started to bow solemnly, what only made them laugh harder. Harry didn't find it so funny. Neville was helping him get to his feet.
"Well," Lupin said when the applause died. "What have you learned from this little encounter?"
Everybody thought for a moment. To everybody's surprise, Hermione wasn't the first one to speak, Neville was: "Never trust Sirius," he said very serious, and everybody laughed once more, even Lupin and Sirius.
"Well, yes, of course, never trust your opponent," Lupin amended. "Until your adversary is disarmed and bounded, you can't be sure he is down. And don't forget that, although magic is our main defence, our enemies -and ourselves- can also use other resources to attack or defend us. For instance, Sirius here took advantage of his animagus form and his skills as an actor to fool Harry and make him lower his defences. You could also use physical strength, for instance, to grab your enemy's wand when he thinks you are his already. But always remember one thing: we are on the side of light, whatever happens, we won't resort to black magic and we won't be as low as the Death Eaters are, understood?"
There was some nodding around the circle of students. Only a girl with white long curls blanched for a moment and looked at the floor.
"Very well. Neville, please?" Lupin said, and walked to where Sirius had stood at the beginning of his duel with Harry. There was a worried murmur around them. If Neville managed to hit Professor Lupin with one of his disastrous spells, this was likely to be their first and their last summer lesson.
Lupin nodded at Sirius, who took over his role as teacher for a moment. "Ready?" The animagus shouted. "Now!"
Lupin sent a disarming spell at Neville, but to everybody's surprise he dove in time and even managed to send a stunning spell back at Lupin before being disarmed in Lupin's second try.
Lupin caught deftly Neville's wand with his left hand and walked over to him to give it back. "Very well, Neville," Lupin said.
"What have you learned now?" He asked them all. Nobody seemed to be sure. "You need to have quick reflexes and you must be fast. While Neville was jumping out of the way the first time, he should have been already sending his own spell at me, but he didn't until he was already in a standing position. He still managed to try and stun me, which was really good," at this he looked encouragingly at Neville, "but he gave me time enough to disarm him and move aside to avoid his spell. Trained Death Eaters are going to move faster than you are used to. Apart from learning hexes and other spells, this summer we'll be training your bodies too. You must learn to improve your reflexes and your legs must be ready to jump, kneel, dive or, if the situation gets nasty, run." He made a pause to see how everybody was taking this. There were some unhappy faces, but most of the students seemed content with the news.
"After lunch you'll see our host's training room. It's a training room designed to train a fuocciri warrior, not a wizard or a witch, but I think we can benefit from it too. So in the morning we will be learning new spells and training our duelling skills, while in the afternoon we'll be training our bodies.
"Now I want each pair of you to stand in front of me. Each of you will duel your partner two times. If each member of a couple wins one time, they will face each other again to have a winner. Then the winners will be fighting against the winners of other couples, and the losers will be fighting against other losers. It doesn't really matter who wins or who loses. I just want to keep a track of how well you can do now and how well you can do at the end of the summer. Understood?"
Everybody nodded.
"Very well, any volunteers to start?" Lupin asked, conjuring up a quill and some parchment to take notes that floated in mid-air.
Ginny and Dean walked resolutely to where Lupin and Neville had stood and faced each other.
"Ready?" Lupin asked them. "Before we start, I think you should all check your wands, because I think some of you might be in for a nasty surprise."
Everybody looked puzzled for a moment, and then took out their wands. Some of them turned into rubber peacocks in their hands. Lupin raised an eyebrow at Fred and George Weasley, who grudgingly gave the true wands back, and then they proceeded with the class.
"Right," Lupin said. "Ready? Now!"
Flashes of light flew from Ginny's and Dean's wands. They both avoided being hit a couple of times, but finally Ginny hit Dean and stunned him. Their second duel was very similar, and Ginny was the winner.
"Ginny, to my right, please," Lupin said. "Dean, to my left. Who's next?"
The morning went on in this fashion and by the time Mrs. Weasley came out of the house to tell them lunch was ready they were all exhausted, some of them even rubbing their bodies where they were sporting small injuries.
During the meal, nobody felt very talkative. If all the summer was going to be like this, on the First of September they were going to be exhausted. Still, everybody was grateful they had been invited by Dumbledore and Lupin to partake in these lessons. Now more than ever was a time to get ready and fight.
In the afternoon Lupin let them rest for a while, and when the air turned a little bit cooler, they all stepped outside once more and stopped abruptly in their tracks as they lifted their heads and saw what awaited them: the smooth land in front of the Sam's house had turned somehow into a inhospitable place. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville, who had been in the Forbidden Forest near Hogwarts, wondered for a moment which place looked more scary. Somehow, knowing that Hogwarts was near the Forbidden Forest was kind of reassuring, but here... here there was nothing that made them feel protected.
High looming trees greeted them and blocked everything from view: the village down the valley, the mountains behind them... But the trees in themselves, although intimidating, would have been nothing if it weren't for the strange noises coming from the deep woods.
Many people blanched, and even Harry had his misgivings, until a clicking sound as that of a metallic box closing broke the silence and the vision disappeared.
Everybody turned in the direction of the sound. Yamiko stood there between Remus and Sirius, who were smiling. The woman held something in her hands, it was a tiny lacquered box painted in vivid colours. She opened the lid slowly so that they all followed her movements, and the forest appeared again. Many people oed and aed. Nobody could have guessed so much magic was stuck inside such a tiny thing. Then Yamiko closed the lid again, and the vision disappeared once more.
"This place you have seen is my training room. As you see, it's portable, which is very practical, because it allows me to train even when I'm far from home. I just need to find a retired place, open the lid of this tiny box, and then the room appears. You are probably thinking that 'room' is not the best word to describe the forest you've seen, and I must admit I don't know why these magical boxes are called 'training rooms', I guess it must be because, though when you are in front of the place it looks real and without apparent limits, in reality the 'training room' has four clearly defined walls, and you'll be able to see two of them if you come to where we are standing now."
Everybody moved eagerly to where Yamiko, Remus and Sirius were standing. Then Yamiko opened the lid again, and there it was: the forest. But this time they could see two distinct crystal walls in front of them, making a corner of the training room. Inside of them, the trees still looked very impressive.
"In this room there are several levels of training. Many people can train inside it at the same time, and they don't need to be working necessarily in the same level of difficulty." Some people raised their eyebrows and this. "Yes," Yamiko confirmed, "there are different levels of difficulty. I think you are going to start today with the lowest one, so that you can learn to find your way out of the room. It's not that difficult really, and you can be found easily from outside anyway, so don't worry about getting lost, because we'll be coming for you if it takes you too long to get out. Now, if we could all synchronise our watches..."
Harry looked nervously around. He felt a little bad about not having a watch. He hadn't thought about buying a new one since his old one had stopped working, and now he didn't like to admit it, but he couldn't very well go into the training room without a watch, because then he'd never know when to get out.
"I... I don't have a watch," he said, and exposed his bare wrist, "mine broke," maybe he could let out the time when it had broken, back in his fourth year at Hogwarts.
"You can have one of mine," Parvati offered, and gave him a small watch with blue butterflies flying all around it. It looked very girlish and Harry stared at it for a moment before taking it and thanking Parvati. "No problem," she said, "I like watches so much that I always wear two or three at least," she explained proudly, and showed them all her little collection of watches up her left arm, all of them in different colours and with different insects flying around. Hermione and Ginny looked at each other and had to cover their mouths with their hands to hide their giggles. Angelina was looking at Parvati as if she was demented.
"Well, if everybody has a watch now and has made sure they are in time," Yamiko brought them all back to the subject at hand, "we could get inside the room and there I'll give you some clues about how it works and how to find your way once inside."
Everybody nodded and they followed Yamiko into the room, although none of them looked really happy about it. It became immediately cooler and darker, and some of them shivered in their summer clothes.
"Do you see that tall tree with the pink leaves?" Yamiko asked, pointing at some high branches far away from them, a little bit to their right. Everybody nodded, a tree with pink leaves was difficult to miss, even in the wizarding world. "Well, that's the central point of the room, and it can be seen from everywhere. If you get lost, just look at it. You know you must walk from the tree to find the exit. There is no door, just walk through the glass wall as if it were made of thin air, which it actually is. Depending on which side of the room you are in, you'll find yourselves in front of my house, or you'll have to walk around the training room to get there. Understood?"
There was a round of nods, and then Yamiko went on explaining: "Well then, let's move on to more important matters. In this forest you will find many obstacles, branches blocking your way, rivers you must cross, burning woods you'll have to run away from, winds blowing with a ferocity you've probably never known before... Your mission is basically to get out of the room as fast as possible and as unharmed as possible. In this first level there are no real dangers. You can only hurt yourselves if you trip and fall, but nothing is going to hurt you. In the upper levels, the difficulties increase, and you will have to face animals, monsters and other enemies on your way. Professor Lupin thinks it's too soon to let you face such dangers yet, so in this level you'll basically train your body. You'll have to run, jump, climb, swim or dive to get out of the forest. That will help you win some strength, which will undoubtedly help you defend yourselves from your magical enemies."
Some people, like the twins and Angelina, looked excited, others plainly horrified, Hermione and the Patils among them.
"Well now, if you are ready, we'll walk with you up to the pink tree, which is called Pinky by the way, and then we'll let you alone so that you can show us what you are capable of."
It didn't take them very long to get there, and the path was almost straight. Everybody was thinking this should be easy, but when they reached Pinky, Yamiko had bad news for them:
"Very well, you have an hour to get out. Please, your wands."
Nobody reacted at first. It couldn't be true, they had surely heard Yamiko wrong.
"So-so-sorry?" Neville stuttered.
"I'll take your wands with me, dears, you won't need them, you are supposed to get out of here by your physical strength only."
"But..." Lee Jordan started to protest.
"Imagine you are muggles," Professor Lupin interrupted him, "it shouldn't be so difficult. Sirius and myself have tried the room before, and there is really no danger at all. If you had your wands it would be too easy for you to get out, and the point of this exercise is to train your bodies, not to use your wands. We'll be doing that in the mornings."
"Can't we just do some aerobic?" Padma protested.
Lupin smiled at her for a moment, amused at her distress, but shook his head all the same. With much grunting and complaining, people started to take their wands out of their robes, when the noise of someone approaching made them all start. Who could be walking inside the training room besides them?
"Stay here!" Yamiko commanded in a whisper, and strode purposefully in the direction they had come from. She turned around a tree and they couldn't see her anymore. Barely seconds afterwards, the path in front of them started to disappear, closed by more high trees growing out of nowhere.
Minutes passed by and Yamiko still didn't come back. Sirius and Remus were straining to hear, but there were no unusual sounds. Sirius was looking at Remus every other second now, plainly asking him what they were going to do now. Who had been walking up to them and why didn't Yamiko return? Where they in danger?
Remus was regretting the moment he had accepted Yamiko's proposal. He had had his misgivings at the beginning, but he didn't want to sound ungrateful, and Yamiko seemed eager to have them use the training room. Maybe he should have tried the room a couple of times more before accepting her offer, see if there were any dangers Yamiko, as an ashanrii, might have overlooked. He finally shook himself. Regretting past decisions would take them nowhere now. He cleared his throat and spoke in a hushed voice:
"Hermione, Fred, George, Neville and myself will try to find the path back to the place where we entered the room and see if we can find Yamiko. The rest of you will wait here. If we don't come back in about fifteen minutes, try to find a way out, but don't follow us, because whatever is delaying Yamiko or ourselves could be lurking somewhere in that direction. Maybe you could try to walk in the opposite direction. And... whatever happens..." Remus swallowed, he knew Harry wouldn't like this, "whatever happens, don't lose track of Harry."
As Remus had guessed, Harry immediately started to protest, but Ron put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it hard. Harry looked for a moment into the eyes of his best friend and knew he didn't have a right to complain. After all, whatever had come into the room was probably looking for him, and when they got him, what chances were there that the rest would be let out alive? He hated it, but Lupin was right. He needed to be protected.
With a last parting glance, Hermione, Fred, George and Neville followed Lupin into the web of branches and disappeared into the silent darkness, leaving behind them a shaggy black dog and a group of scared teenagers.
*****
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Thanks all for reading and reviewing!
I'm awfully sorry it took me so long to update. There were some problems with a project at work and when everything seemed back to normal my computer broke down. The technician kept my computer for a whole week! I hadn't realised until then how much hooked I was on the Internet. :-( Well, and when I finally got the computer back, there was again a big mountain of work waiting for me, so I didn't have a minute to spare. But I'm finally back, and hopefully I'll be able to update regularly as I used to.
I'm sure in the meantime most of my loyal readers will have probably lost track of the characters in this story, but I hope you'll remember all about them soon. ;-)
Thanks again for your patience. Let me know what you think of this chapter.
PaigeGirl-nee: I'm glad you enjoyed the chapter. I hope you'll go on reading now I'm finally back. ;-)
hermionegreen: Don't worry about Shacklebolt at all, dear, he's going to be a fine Lucius. He's not playing the role so well now, because there is only Snape with him, but wait until he gets to Malfoy Manor... :-)
Kadi Rilla Wholi: We'll see Amanda again next chapter -which is almost finished. I'm glad you liked Fluffy. :-)
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shadowycat: Now that you had finally caught up with my story I've disappeared for a long time! Sorry about that! Thanks for your reviews. I hope you'll go on reading my story. ;-)
Mad-Eye Moody: Well, we'll be certainly going back to Hogwarts in this story, but that's a little bit far off yet. I hope you liked this chapter.
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Makalani Astral: Oh, Narcissa knows about the Polyjuice Potion alright, but don't forget that Hogwarts Potions Master will be around too, so Shacklebolt should do fine - I hope! :D
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ally: Really? I hadn't realised it was so long, now I feel even worse. I promise I'll update again regularly from now on. By the way, I'm glad you like my story. ;-)
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