I swear, there is no fucking way I am ever, not even one more goddamn time, using that damned Magic Perception to look at anything I don't know!
Even packing every kind of profanity into a single sentence did nothing to ease Harry's thoroughly shitty mood.
One glance-he had not even gotten a clear look-and Harry felt his entire mental world shake violently, as though heaven and earth had flipped upside down, leaving him dizzy and unsteady. Then he lost consciousness and all sensation.
In the final instant before he blacked out, Harry had vaguely seen it.
Professor Babbling's exquisite figure, the Magical Flame around her body, noticeably smaller than those of Professor McGonagall and the other two Heads of House but still immensely powerful, and the Soul Projection behind her, as tall as her body and just as breathtakingly beautiful.
And behind her, a phantom of indeterminate size.
The phantom seemed to fill every inch of space between heaven and earth, exuding a pressure so oppressive it could drive a person mad.
It was something spherical, with what vaguely seemed to be an eye on it.
In that instant, Harry saw only that much. Before he could make out any other details, he had already passed out. By the time he woke again, he was lying in a bed in the school's Hospital Wing.
Come to think of it, Harry could just about be considered a regular at the Hospital Wing.
Of course, perhaps not as frequent a visitor as Seamus Finnigan. But he came fairly often, too.
Yet even Harry "Hospital Wing regular" Potter had never seen the Hospital Wing like this.
The white room seemed to have been enlarged hundreds of times. A room that had originally held only a dozen or so beds now held over