“You know something of occluding,” Severus said, ignoring the way Harry tensed slightly at the term, “This is not much different.” Harry thought it was greatly different. For one thing, Severus was guiding Harry gently, not invasively attacking his mind.

'Hard', Harry mindspoke rebelliously. Learning to speak was both easy and difficult. He could now project the basics of what he wanted to say at will, but it usually came out in pictures unless the idea was too abstract. And he had no control whatsoever in whom he sent his thoughts to. That was fine when they were in their room where all the walls were warded. Unless a sphinx was standing just outside the door no one in the room would be able to sense them and no one outside the room would be able to sense those within. This included speaking to one another. Rooms were a sanctuary where the sphinx could relax, the wounded could recuperate, and the young could practice their control with some privacy.

Severus had decided that Harry might gain more control if he was better able to shield his mind, a talent he needed to learn anyway if he was ever to change form around humans again. Unfortunately, shielding was a talent where the sphinx's natural curiosity worked against them. Harry didn't want to completely cut himself off from reading those around him, and until he wanted to do it he wasn't going to get anywhere. For the moment, Severus was hoping Harry's equally natural inclination to please him and his new family would be enough incentive.

“Now,” Severus continued, “just keep concentrating on the barrier like I showed you, it helps if you concentrate on your other senses like smell, so that you don’t feel like you’re cutting yourself off.” Harry did as he suggested. It was easier to learn thing when Severus was actually able to show him, in his mind, how to do it. But he didn’t have enough concentration or will to keep up a shield for long; he became too anxious when he couldn’t sense Severus. Suddenly, Harry sat up and transformed into his boy form, without quite meaning to. Severus sighed, sitting back.

“Harry,” he said, his tone admonishing, “You have to learn this in cub form.”

“Why don’t you hate me?” Harry asked instead, and Severus blinked. Harry hadn’t actually meant to ask that, but the question had been growing on his mind, especially as the similarities between their lessons and the old occlumency lessons grew stronger. Why was Snape, the evil potions master and ambiguous spy, suddenly transformed into Severus, the still sarcastic but kind and gentle sphinx? Harry was still Harry; even when the potions master had become the defense against the dark arts master in his sixth year and, no longer playing the spy, had grown much more fair, he had still hated James Potter’s son.

“I never hated you,” Severus answered at last, “I hated what you represented. And you do…did look remarkably like your father. But you don’t feel like him, inside; you feel like Lilly.”

“So it’s because I don’t remind you of my father anymore?” Harry asked, frowning slightly as he considered this.

“Does that sound better than my instincts are screaming to protect you, that your very nature and mine has changed everything?” Severus asked, “You could have been James personified through and through; you could have been the dark lord himself, and still I wouldn’t have hated you. Detested you, maybe, but not hated.”

“So you only like me because I’m a cub?” Harry asked, feeling suddenly upset. Severus shook his head.

“Hywuxkos,” he answered, a term Harry had heard from him before which basically translated into ‘foolish child’ or ‘daft cub’, “I said I would have loved you anyway. The fact that I also like you is down to you being a likeable person.”

“Oh,” Harry answered, and then, “You love me?”

“Back to shielding,” Severus answered, ignoring the question, “You must be…”

“I like you too, you know,” Harry said, “So that isn’t all instinct, right?”

“It would seem not,” Severus answered, and then insisted that they continue the lesson.

Once Harry managed to completely block off his mind for an entire five minutes, at which point the need to sense Severus became too strong, and after Severus had once again looked at Harry’s shoulder, he was set free. Neffy, this time accompanied by Basta, appeared to complete Harry’s tour of the mansion.

“Listen to Basta,” Severus instructed severely, “I know you didn’t take it easy enough the last time.” Neffy looked guilty for one second before her enthusiasm of showing off her home took over. This time she bounded ahead of them in cat form. What she lacked in sleek agility she made up for in exuberance and soon she had to double back or she would have lost them. Harry, too, was in cub form because he learned that he knew a place better if he had been there in his cat form; the senses took in more. Basta, as a woman, carried him even though he insisted he would be careful of his shoulder; he wanted to bound about with Neffy.

For this tour, they once more went to the large common room and then started down the opposite hallway, one Harry had never visited. Neffy ran right past the first few doors, though Basta paused to open them. The first was a small, empty looking room with padded walls. There were not even windows, though there was one of the ever present fireplaces.

“A practice room,” Basta explained, “For individual training. The group training rooms are up ahead, where Neffy’s run.” Still Basta paused to open each door, even the one leading to a toilet and the one to some showers. Harry was glad; it felt incomplete somehow to just pass the closed doors, even if he was told what was inside. Finally, they caught up to Neffy as she darted through a small door within the door. Now that Harry saw it, he realized he had seen something similar on most doors, he just hadn’t realized what it was. It looked like a large square decoration but when Neffy ran into it she passed through as though it wasn’t there. Basta, seeing Harry’s curiosity, set him on the ground and let him walk through it.

Once he was level with it, he found he could sense its absence and he had no more trouble walking through it than getting onto platform 9 ¾. Through the door, he saw a room similar to the smaller practice rooms, but much larger. For one thing, the ceiling went all the way up through the to the first floor; there was a small catwalk up there like a balcony that ran all about the room and with a small slide so that the person up there could easily come down. Getting back up again would doubtless be a bit more of a hassle.

The room itself was less empty, having another door leading, as Neffy soon showed him, into a large storage room. It was filled with weapons, mostly training with magically warded edges, and brooms and training wands and the like. There was a second door that led into a bathroom, one direction for women and the other for men.

“Here!” Neffy cried, transforming swiftly into girl form and tossing Harry a wand and a broom, “Let’s have a practice duel!” Harry barely became a boy in time to catch the wand and duck the broom.

“Oops,” Neffy cried, “Sorry.” And then she took off on her own broom, swooping out of the storage room and into the air. Harry followed eagerly.

“Not so fast!” Basta cried, from the middle of the room. Both children paused, certain she was going to make them come down. “No duels without the proper equipment,” she ordered, “Get a warded safety pad for his shoulder, one of the ones used for the injured.”

“All right,” Neffy answered, rolling her eyes, and they both landed so that Neffy could show Harry what Basta meant. It was a sort of harness that was apparently designed specifically to stop further injury to already injured body parts, in his case his shoulder. In the meantime, Basta got her own broom and practice wand.

“What are practice wands?” Harry asked as he looked at the one in his hand. It looked like a wand but didn’t feel quite right.

“Bits of wood that hold spells,” Basta answered him, “Not like real wands that actually channel your magic to do your demands. These would work for anyone if they knew the trigger words and movements. And they dampen the effects of harmful spells or don’t know them at all.”

“And they know when you’ve been hit and take away points!” Neffy called from above them, “And if you lose too many you’re out!”

“Do all sphinx know magic?” Harry asked, ignoring Neffy’s impatient calling.

“Sphinx are magical creatures,” Basta answered, “We have magic enough to use wizard sticks. We also have our own magic that humans, even magical humans, could never manage.”

Then Neffy, impatient for the game to begin, cast a jinx towards Basta. She blocked it easily and they both leaped into the air after Neffy. The game lasted for an intense fifteen minutes. Harry was glad to know that his smaller size hadn’t reduced his knowledge of spells, and even with hundreds of years of experience on him he still managed to hold his own. And his small size was definitely an advantage when it came to dodging spells. Unfortunately, Basta managed to blast him and Neffy both while they were concentrating on each other.

Afterwards, they took another ten minutes to relax, Basta murmuring something about Sev murdering her if Harry came back asleep. But Harry was tired of being careful of his shoulder and said he wasn’t too tired at all. So the tour continued as they came next to what Neffy declared the best rooms in the entire mansion, the game rooms.

There were tables set up for board games and other indoor games, some quite elaborate looking except that Harry didn’t really recognize them. There was even a two lane bowling alley. There were also numerous arcade types of games, except that Harry didn’t think those worked around magic. Basta informed him that they worked by magic. And it seemed that magic could make some more elaborate games, especially when it came to virtual reality. There was a virtual quiditch game, and virtual battle games and even a virtual racing game. There were also televisions set up that could get any channel that one liked and that also, if you wanted, instantly translated any language into any other language.

“I wish we had things like this at Hogwarts,” Harry said, “It always seemed so weird that you could do so much with magic, but that Muggles were way ahead of us in some ways.”

“Wizards are afraid of change,” Basta explained, “The sphinx are used to it. We are able to see great many changes within our lifetime. And the wizards are terrified of Muggles really; if they wanted to they could find ways to duplicate electronics with magic, even improve upon it, but they won’t have anything to do with Muggle contraptions.”

“I know a wizard who loves everything Muggle,” Harry said, and suddenly, he felt strangely homesick. It was especially odd because, for the first time in his life, he was home. Then Neffy managed to distract him by challenging him to an odd board game that he didn’t recognize but that she said had been around for centuries. In her enthusiasm to show him the game, which she called senetos and which looked fairly simple but turned out to be really complicated, he forgot all about any sad feelings. They were only partly into the game, and Harry was completely confused, when Basta suggested that they finish the game some other time so that they could complete the tour.

The final room in the hallway, at its very end just as the dining hall was at the very end of the other hallway, was the library. Like the group training room it took up both floors, but it also had both floors connected by a ramp. It was filled with books. It was also even larger than Harry thought possible; he had to ask Neffy if there was some magic about it. She said she thought there must be, but no one had ever said. There was probably something of magic woven into every stone of the mansion. Basta took them away from the library much sooner than Neffy wanted and into the upper wing. There Neffy cheered up again. She could show him her room.