Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
when there is no longer anything to take away.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

As Romeo Marchonné

"That's it.  Come on, just a little bit farther, you guys." I yelled back at my team, doing a small headcount to make sure that I hadn't lost any of them during the hike that would lead us back to the Schnell estate.  This route was far less perilous, and a snapfreeze overnight had resulted in the ground being hard, if a little slippery in some places.  It was my job to make sure nobody got hurt, especially since we had no magic on hand for us to use.  My own wand was still at the estate, having relied on what I knew of Muggle and Durmstrang's survival techniques to see myself and the team through the night prior.

Still, even with my guidance and my ability to ensure that we would indeed survive and thrive in these woods, that did not prevent this hike from being wearisome and long. Combined with some soreness from the day before, it doesn't surprise me that our pace is slow and uneven, even if I've only allowed ten minute breaks for every hour we've walked.  We are only about another 45 minutes out, our last rest point having been fulfilled.  With words of affirmation, I encourage my charges to keep going, a vastly different persona than the one that I had had prior to this event.  Genuinely, I wanted them to succeed. To thrive and accomplish.

"A little farther and then you guys can have lunch, alright? Look, see that small hill? The estate is on the other side." A small fib.  The estate is indeed on the other side, but only after passing through a small chunk of overgrown forest and then walking over the clearing that leads to the Hydra tent.  Then they would be at their destination. "Just make it up the hill. That's all you have to focus on for the time being.  Just crest that hill."

¤ | Ω | ¤

As Valentin Schnell

Once the team arrived back at the tent, Valentin bowed cordially and swung wide the flaps of the team tent. With the gruelling onslaught of training day after day, peoples’ belongings were naturally scattered from the exhaustion the team faced at the end of each day. Those who still managed to keep a tidy area regardless would find their belongings relatively untouched, but those with messy tendencies would find their areas exacerbated by what must have been Captain Schnell’s meddling. The white seeker wore a backpack people hadn't seen before, and he pressed a single long fingertip against his chin with a grin.

“Welcome back guys. I hope you enjoyed your relaxing stroll because now it’s time to test your hand-eye coordination AT SPEED. It’s time to go to London, and it’s time to go FAST. Pack up your things right now. You don’t want to miss your ride, right?! Think, if you had to march allllll the way to London because you couldn’t push through this last little bit. You know the secret, right? If you don’t pack up in an organized way, it’s not going to work. If you do a bad job, I’ll throw your stuff around to show you how you can’t afford to be sloppy when you’re going fast. After all, you can’t use space economically if you just shove everything in a bag. It’s just not all going to fit with such carelessness. GO NOW!” Schnell patted the crop on his belt with one hand as his other waved at the scattered objects around the room.

“What’s this? Sloppy work! I told you, you have to learn to ECONOMIZE MOVEMENT. This is the way to speed: the lack of waste. Why are you TENSING UP!? You have to relax or you won’t have any control while going fast. Come on, fold that sheet better. No, come on, at least pair the corners, and you should just roll it, like this. Ah, boo, NOT like that!! Here, a penalty to give you more to practice with.” Valentin began to scatter his victim’s belongings around, undoing the badly folded clothes and hanging them off any edge in reach. He plucked up mis-paired socks and scattered them to the four corners of the tent, not caring a whit for how filthy the items might be.

“INSPECTION!!” Yelled Valentin, looking into another player’s bag. "How can you just cram your shirts into the corners?! They will crease and you will make your whole team look like SLOBS!” Pulling the shirts out of the bag, the martinet threw them back in their owner’s face. “Again, and now EFFICIENTLY. Yes, symmetry is nature’s way of being efficient. It has all kinds of tricks for economizing space and minimizing waste, and that forms what we call BEAUTY. Now look at this crumpled food wrapper stuffed with… Look, I don’t want to know what that is… but you can’t just put this next to your linens. What if the contents spilled out, like this??” Schnell dribbled some of the bag’s leftover food particles over the top of the bag to demonstrate the risk. “Cleanliness is the absence of junk, just like speed is the way of uncluttered movement. Hey, why is this sock soooo stinky? Skunks roosting in your shoes? Isolate this from the clean ones, alright?! Come on, hurry up! Do you wanna walk to London??”

Once the team had adequately packed their items, those observant players who still had some life left in them would notice the absence of certain precious items.

“Alright, you have done well enough… except you are each missing something. You can’t afford to miss critical things, even under pressure. That’s how games, and lives, are lost. Now, I have taken from each of you what appeared to be a most precious possession.” In one hand, Valentin waved a pair of journals, one of them being Charles’s sketch diary and the other being a red leather notebook, while Val's other hand wriggled its fingers to show off one of Johannes’s rings and Astrid’s best drawing quill. Other, bulkier player belongings must have been in Valentin's pack. How did he get all of these without them noticing? Step 1) be Niffler, Step 2) nab those items not pickpocketed earlier while the team is trying to haul the minimum amount of weight across the wilderness.

“Oh what, you want these back? Then COME GET THEM!!” Valentin dashed out the door and ran into the clearing, turning every once in a while to jump up and down to taunt the exhausted players (and slow down to allow them to almost catch up). After a few moments, Valentin began running in a circle, just out of reach but in range of everyone hearing him.

“Come on, work as a team! Dogpile me, or split up to limit my escape routes! What’s your plan?! Hmm?! Don’t make me run off again! Get over here, FASTER!! Almost there!!”

After another minute of tormenting the exhausted players, Val allowed himself to be caught when the team finally came together on a suitable capture strategy. He returned all their items with happy laughter, nodding at them to silently convey how proud he was of them all for making it through so far.

“And now, lunch will be served on the carriage ride back out! Sergei!! Please clean our people up well enough to ship out."

¤ | ∞ | ¤

This is a co-written post by both authors.