Four Sect Alliance (Harry Potter AU; Xianxia inspired)

The short time since Harry met Hagrid had seemed almost dream-like to her. Despite her doubts, despite her worries, and despite being her being the 'freak' he had offered her something else. He had seen her horrible secret and, despite it, offered her the chance to be be something more. Hagrid had told her of Hogwarts where she could learn to be a cultivator and taken her away from the stifling Dursley household.

As dreams went it had been one of the better ones that Harry had ever had, even better than the one about flying amidst shooting stars, and so she had tried to enjoy it as best that she could.

Unfortunately, whether this was reality or merely a dream, Harry found herself faced by evidence that she couldn't simply have something good happen to her.

"You want me to go down into there?" Harry asked, turning her gaze away from the crack in the ground and back towards Hagrid.

"Yeah." The comparatively giant man said, "Would be a mite small fer me, but yer a skinny little 'un. You'll be right as rain."

The giant cultivator had seemed solid and reliable to Harry before this but, as she looked back at the dubious hole, she wondered if he was really entirely sane.

The opening itself certainly was too narrow for someone of Hagrid's size to fit into. Even a more normal sized adult would have had problems fitting into the space in question, but it seemed more reasonable for a girl of Harry's size. Having slept in a cupboard for as long as she could remember she didn't find the idea of such a confined space frightening, but her common sense still objected.

"Yer gonna have ta face yer fears as a cultivator." Hagrid told her, crouching down to something a little closer to her own height, "They're just another sorta impurity, ones of the spirit, and so they get dealt with one way or 'nother."

Harry wasn't sure what Hagrid meant by impurity, all it brought to mind was one of Uncle Vernon's rants about criminals who were 'stains on society', but she nodded anyway. His hand was a warm weight as it rested on her shoulder and she found the rare experience of such a gentle contact heartening.

"Can you do it?" Hagrid asked.

"Yes." She said firmly, pushing down her own doubts.

"Thata good girl! Keep that up and ye'll become a Gryffindor for sure." He praised her warmly then looked embarrassed for some reason and straightened up.

"So, it's meant to be a challenge." Hagrid told her as he returned what looked like a dog biscuit, something that Harry hadn't noticed him pulling out, to his pocket. "Yer not the first to go this way and ye'll not be the last. It ain't really a maze in there, just a little confusin', but you just need ta get yerself to the other end afore sunset. Quicker done, the more time we got fer me to be teaching you some techniques. Maybe a drill or kata or two."

Harry paid attention to the words, ignoring the way that her stomach twisted at the idea that it would take all day to find her way through whatever passages the opening lead to, and made a note to ask Hagrid later on what the foreign word he had used meant.

"That doesn't sound too hard," Harry said, more to persuade herself than anything else, "I don't need to do anything else in there though? Find something, pick up proof, slay a Beast, or anything like that?"

A few of her cousin Dudley's tales, the ones he'd sometimes told her when they were alone in the house waiting for his parents to return from doing adult things, had included Quests which sounded like this. Harry had always found the stories fascinating even when Dudley's memory of the details had failed him and he had improvised.

Hagrid gave a snort at that, "Naw. Wouldn't expect you to do that, not without being taught. Maybe if ye had a little more meat on yer bones, but cultivation takes all sorts. Could prolly find someut interestin' fer you though..."

The growing enthusiasm in Hagrid's tone, and especially the way that the giant glanced around the surrounding woods as though considering where to find such a Spirit Beast, left Harry suddenly very thankful that she lacked the stocky build of Dudley and Uncle Vernon.

"No, that's alright." Harry said quickly, "I'm sure I'll do fine with this and there's no need to go to any trouble because of me."

She gave Hagrid a pleading look, trying for the one which occasionally got Dudley to share one or two of his sweets, and breathed an inward sigh of relief when Hagrid looked disappointed.

"If yer sure…?"He said slowly. "There's a wolf about and you'd do great against one, I'm sure."

"It'll be fine." Harry replied, trying not to think of the illustration she had seen in a schoolbook of a low ranked Spirit Wolf.

The fact that the Wolf had been pictured biting the leg off of someone had her imagination providing some rather vivid ideas about how a fight between her and such a Beast would go. Most of those were along the lines of a crunch, a choked off scream from her, and eventually a satisfied burp from a well-fed Wolf.

"Right." Hagrid said as he clapped his hands together with a sound like a small thunderclap, "I'm not gonna just shove you in there though. That'd be right dumb o' me. Yer gonna need something to make this challenge more interestin'."

He grinned at Harry then, with a twist and a flourish, was suddenly holding a pill which Harry was certain had not been in his hand a moment before.

"Tada!" Hagrid announced, "This right here? This is any Emptying Surge Pill. Got a lot more ta the name, but I reckon it'd mean a whole pile o' nothin' if I told you. You swallow this and it'll start stirring up all yer inner energies, makin' move an' givin' ye more energy to work with."

To Harry's eyes the smooth and hard looking exterior of the Pill made it seem like nothing more than one of Dudley's more exotic candies. Yet as she looked at it more closely there was a iridescent gleam to it that brought to mind the pearls that Madame Figg favoured.

"Go on then." Hagrid said encouragingly. "Take it."

Harry pushed down her sudden doubts, the ones which came from the warnings that every child heard about taking strange medicines offered for 'free', and took the pill from where it lay on Hagrid's palm. It had seemed such a small thing, tiny there in comparison to the giant's hand, but in reality it was only the size of the first joint of her littlest finger.

Feeling that it would be better to get this over with she was about to toss it into her mouth when Hagrid spoke up again.

"Oh, one warning though, " Hagrid said and Harry almost fumbled the pill as she aborted her motion. "Swallow it whole or yer not gonna like what happens."

"It'd be… bad?" Harry asked as visions of strange things, terrible things, happening to her as a result of the pill filled her head.

Hagrid looked at her for a moment then gave a laugh, "Not like I guess yer like as thinking, lass. It's got some prize ingredients in there and if you bite down it'd be like gettin' a nose fulla pepper or a mouthful o' chillis."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir." Harry said, wincing at the thought of how that would be but also relieved that it wasn't something far more dire that she was being warned off.

Hagrid gave her an expectant look and, with no other options rather than to kick up a tantrum like Dudley used to to, she popped the pill into her mouth. Whatever coating was on it prevented the pill from tasting of anything in particular as it rested on Harry's tongue and, without water at hand, she simply tilted her head back then swallowed a few times, until she finally managed to get it down.

"That wasn't so bad?" Harry offered tentatively then blinked as a wave of strange sensations hit her.

"Good to hear it, lass, real good to hear it." Hagrid said soothly, one hand taking hold of Harry's shoulder and guiding her suddenly unsteady path towards the hole.

That supportive hand was the only thing which ensured that Harry stayed upright as something inside of her stirred. There was a churning sensation which came from somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach, yet somehow both lower and deeper inside of her, which was accompanied by a sense of pressure rushing out from that point. Her skin tingled and she could suddenly feel the small motions of her clothes against her body as well as the faintest of breezes on her exposed skin.

"I feel like I could run forever or lift a mountain." Harry murmured without thinking.

"Not yet, student." Hagrid said and, despite speaking no louder than before, she felt his voice in her very bones. "You might, in the fullness of time, but not yet."

With the fizzing energy filling Harry's head the words felt like a promise and she laughed. With her senses heightened and her body bursting with energy the world seemed to be such a clear and wonderful place to her that she couldn't but give voice to her joy.

The laughter trailed off awkwardly as Harry realised that Hagrid had gently pushed her forward until she was almost at the stone opening which was to be her challenge.

The opening no longer appeared quite so innocent.

There was no single detail that Harry could pin down as different about the hole. It had not suddenly changed shape or somehow shrunk, but where it previously had seemed no worse than her cupboard it now came across as being confining and suffocatingly narrow.

Harry noticed an odd sensation from her feet and looked down only to discover that she had stopped walking but now was being pushed by Hagrid towards the gap. She looked towards him in confusion, wondering what Hagrid was doing, yet she had no chance to object before he literally shoved her into the cave entrance.

"Hagrid?" She asked weakly, trying to regain enough coordination to move the few steps back out again. Somehow the surging energy that Harry felt had suddenly deserted her. Her body seemed someone empty, hollow was perhaps the better term, and the sensation was made all the worse by her still heightened senses.

The walls around Harry were close, the space narrow enough that she wouldn't be able to raise her arms far before they touched both sides, but the truth of its size didn't matter. She could feel the unmoving stone near her, above her and under her, as a suffocating presence and she struggled to breath.

Hagrid's body was large enough to eclipse most of the daylight which tried to enter the cave and left his face in shadow from Harry's point of view. Yet Harry could make out his actions as he reached the side, seizing something that she had missed seeing before and dragged it sideways with a loud scrape of stone upon stone.

"Hagrid?!" Harry exclaimed again, stumbling forward a half step as the slab of rock began to block what meager light reached her, "What are you doing?"

"Student, this challenge is to demonstrate your worth." Hagrid said, his tone suddenly as formal as he had heard him use when he pounded on the door to her uncle's house and demanded her as a student, "Show your spirit or else prove that you should be discarded. At sunset the exit shall be sealed."

Rock met rock with an air of finality and the last of the light vanished from Harry's sight.

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How do you feel about this? (Pick one, no write-in.)

[ ] Even if you have to crawl through the cave you're intent on surviving.

[ ] Everyone hurts you, but you need to shrug it off and just keep moving.

[ ] It hurts so much to have your hopes betrayed that you're inwardly numb.

[ ] This can't be happening. You can't believe it. There has to be an explaination!

[ ] Your anger at Hagrid's betrayal fuels your efforts to escape.