Laws of love: Chapter 9: The maze

Harry fell through the air, narrowly dodging a bright yellow bolt of light that he presumed was some curse or another. He rolled forcefully onto the stone cold floor and smashed into a wall.

"Ginny?" He groaned, slowly getting up, "Ron, Hermione?"

No one was there; it was just him, in what appeared to be in a small section of a huge stone maze. Harry looked up at the ceiling, it was mossy and dark, then he looked at the walls, also mossy but with water dripping down them.

Harry slumped back against the wall, suddenly feeling very exhausted.

"Piece of hard rock wall, turn into a cat flap, save me from these skrewt-dragons, when I say doe-die-dum-tap. Doe-die-dum-tap!" a muffled voice said from behind him.

Harry turned around and saw the wall turn into a cat flap, the flap opened and a dark haired girl with creamy brown skin crawled out.

"Parvati!" Harry said, clearly surprised.

"Hey," Parvati said as she scrambled up, "Nice," she said, looking contently at the cat flap.

"What are you doing here?" Harry asked.

Parvati smiled wearily, "So you're just in then?"

Harry looked confused at this.

"Oh yeah. Look, did some auror just give you a port key?" Parvati asked, helping to his feat.

"Uhm no, Dumbledore did. Ginny, Hermione, Ron, Fred and George were there too."

"That doesn't matter, the point is you got the port key and that's why you are here. Padma and I were one of the first here, we got the port key from some Tonks girl and she explained it to us." Parvati explained, "The thing is Harry, this is a maze. It's a labyrinth made by Dumbledore, he created it to coach us. In this maze are loads of traps and creatures that could seriously hurt us."

"Why does he want to coach us?" Harry inquired, brushing the dirt of his trousers.

"Well, only the people who get through the labyrinth are allowed to know. Everyone here is a student from Hogwarts."

"Wow, so…we better get past this then, how far do you think we are?"

"Well I've been at it for hours, you are lucky you got thrown in so far. I'm not sure where Padma is, she got placed somewhere else, just like Ron, Ginny and Hermione."

Harry nodded, "Do you think they are okay? I mean what if no one explains it to them?"

"Don't worry about that, I asked Tonks before the beginning and she said that every late-comer is to be placed close by another contestant who was playing longer, so the other contestant can explain it to them, if not, then one of the safety aurors will apparate to them and help them."

Harry let out a relieved sigh then he asked, "Any others we know that are in here?"

Parvati smirked, "Of course, Dumbledore has only chosen people from fifth year and up, and I've noticed that none of them are Slytherins."

"Grrrmmmmrmrmr" a sound echoed off the walls, causing Harry and Parvati to jump around and to look for signs of danger, "By the way, the maze is very much alive, it moves continuously and shoots dangerous spells at people. I've been hit by a bone cruncher, it hurts like hell but it heals almost instantly." Parvati added.

"Lovely," Harry muttered sarcastically.

Suddenly the walls started moving, but instead of moving right or left blocking exits, as Harry thought they would, they all moved towards them.

"Oh no!" Parvati gasped, stepping closer to him.

"What's happening?" Harry asked.

"They're going to crush us if we don't do something!" Parvati squealed.

Harry pulled out his wand and starting shooting the redactor curse in all directions but they weren't working, "Why isn't anything happening?" he asked angrily.

"I forgot! Only rhyming sentences work in this place, why do you think I was talking that wall into a cat flap instead of blasting it away?"

"Ah! Cant think of a rhyme," Harry said desperately as the walls were closing in on them.

"Uhm, Turn these walls into soft gue, so we can fight you-know-who!" Parvati screamed at them, stopping the walls so that they were barely a centimetre away from their noses, and before Harry could say irritably, "Now what?" the walls sloshed down into gue.

"Well done," Harry said, patting her on the back before leaping over the gue puddle.

"Help please," Parvati pleaded, not being able to jump that far.

Harry smiled and offered her his hand, she took it, and we a strong tug she landed into Harry's arms.

"My, my, my. Here's my girlfriend in the arms of the chosen one." A cool voice said from behind them.

"Seamus!" Parvati exclaimed happily, prancing away from Harry and enthusiastically flinging her arms around Seamus's necks who watched Harry with narrowed eyes.

"Hey," Harry said awkwardly.

"Don't be so grumpy Seamus, Harry was just helping me." Parvati said, her arms sliding from his neck down to his midriff, then she kissed him sweetly on the lips.

Harry turned away, getting uncomfortable, "Shall I just go then?"

"Yeah." Seamus said rudely but Parvati thought differently, "C'mon Harry, we promise we won't do it again."

"No its okay. But Seamus, did you see Ginny, Hermione, Ron or Fred and George for that matter?"

"I found Hermione a while back; she had broken her arm during the landing so she thought me the healing spell so I could fix it for her because you cant self cast it." Seamus said in one big breath.

"She okay now? Why isn't she with you?"

"That is because I got kid napped by humongous spider, I just managed to throw myself off when I saw you two at it."

"We weren't at it." Parvati hissed angrily.

"Anyways," Seamus said dismissively, "She'll be down there, about 5 passages away."

"Thanks," Harry said before running down the route way Seamus directed him, unfortunately not hearing Parvati say angrily, "Seamus! That's the passage way of the strangle nets, he'll get stuck!"

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Hermione ran after the big spider, thanking Merlin silently that it wasn't Ron that wasn't picked up by the beast. "Seamus!" she called out frantically, "Seamus!" but he was out of sight, the hall way splitting up into 50 different new passage ways making it impossible for her to know which one the spider disappeared in.

She breathed heavily as she came to a halt, placing her hands on her knees for support and resting for a minute or two before straightening up.

"Lead me to the eight legged fiend, Shine bright passage way, and let my fears be weaned!" Hermione said strongly under her breath, causing the second passage way from her left to light up.

Hermione smiled and ran into it, her footstep echoing.

But her smiled fade when she came to a fork, Hermione took a deep breath and ran into the right one; she had a feeling that it was this one she needed to have.

But she was wrong, instead she came to a large empty room of which she couldn't see the sides or ends of, she turned around to run back, but realised that there was now thousands and thousands of doors, all lined up, and she couldn't remember out of which one she came.

She took a tentative step towards the first one but was pulled back by a rope that had wrapped itself around her ankles.

Hermione tried to pull herself loose, but soon enough twenty more ropes shot up out of nowhere and starting circling around her.

"Help!" she cried before the ropes had covered her mouth and nose.

Hermione struggled even more since she couldn't breathe any longer, "Help! Help! Help!" she thought weakly.

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Harry pushed open a door and saw nothing but darkness, he walked carefully inside and the door slammed shut.

Harry turned around but saw nothing, "Fill the room with light, is it darkness is it fear, what is it that I see when I fight, I hope by God it's not queer." Harry chanted lamely, while waiting expectantly.

After the third time of chanting aimlessly in the darkness a small light appeared right in front of him, the light grew and grew, illuminating countless of doors.

Harry watched the glow as it spread over the entire room, the satisfied smirk fell and exchanged it self for a horrified gasp, "Hermione."

Harry sprinted up the room, thinking frantically of a rhyme to get those ropes of her limp body, which was hardly recognizable except for the bushy hair that was peaking out.

"Release her, you horse haired strings, and let her go, or I will do evil things!" Harry exclaimed.

Instantly the ropes pulled back, dropping Hermione with a loud thump to the floor.

"Harry," she breathed, reaching up for his face.

"Hey 'Mione," Harry said softly, taking her hand in his, "You okay?"

Hermione nodded painfully, she had marks across her bare arms and face, her shirt and trousers were slight torn, revealing irritated red patches of skin under them.

"Can you get up?" he asked kindly.

She nodded again and allowed Harry to lift her in his arms, "Alright Herms; just put your arms around my neck and you'll be fine."

She smiled feebly and did as she was told. Harry didn't mind carrying her, Hermione was fairly small and quite light, he easily traipsed to a door and opened it with his available hand.

"Congratulations Harry and Hermione, you finished the maze."