posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
durham_knits at 06:39pm on 27/02/2006
durham_knits at 06:39pm on 27/02/2006Title: Apocrypha
Rating: PG-13 for swearing
Length: 2900 words
Summary: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
omniocular's February challenge. In a cave at Qumran on the Dead Sea, Bill finds one piece of a puzzle – and more than he bargained for.
Disclaimer: JKR alone.
AN: Ahh, Qumran. It was a record hot day when I was there, and that's saying something for Israel... Some pictures, not mine, for reference: http://vbarr.tripod.com/qumran.htm
Apocrypha
He was ready to fall on his knees and praise whatever deity there might be for the air-conditioned visitor center, a white and glass building hovering like a mirage. Bill ran his tongue over his lips, cracked from the impossibly hot sun and the dry air of the desert. The hike from the Muggle autobus had taken a good twenty minutes, and his six months back at the London office had been enough to rob him of his heat tolerance.
“Mr. Weasley?” a young woman in a purple head scarf called out. “William Weasley, yes?”
He nodded and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “My apologies for being late. Gringotts didn’t inform me that there was a hike up here -”
“No, no problem,” she said. “I am Maryam Fahd, and I am the Gringotts liaison on the Qumran project. And the only… one of us on the program, to warn you. But time is limited; come, come.” Giving him a long look, she ducked into the gift shop and came back with a bottle of water. “Here, drink this on the way to the cave.”
They passed several small, sweaty groups of tourists as they wound through the ruins of the Qumran community hiked down into the dry river bed where the Dead Sea Scrolls had been buried. Maryam took a long look around before asking, “What did they tell you?”
“Only that there was a security problem at one of the archaeology projects in Israel. This is my first assignment back, actually, I was just married in July – I’m out of the loop.” And Fleur was home alone with Mum, which was one confrontation that Bill was anxious to hurry home and end.
“My congratulations,” Maryam said. “Qumran is the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, yes? There were ten caves discovered in total, but the locations of several were lost. We found cave nine, three days ago – or maybe it is cave eleven, but no one really knows. A tourist found it. He said he heard a scream. I work here at the Qumran site as a tour guide for cave seven – that is the cave where the wizarding scrolls were kept.”
Bill nodded. “I saw a fragment on display in England. And I studied the spells utilized to hide the wizarding section of the caves. Fascinating.”
“They asked for you by name,” Maryam said. “I knew I could not break through to see if there was something hidden, or somewhere a tourist had stumbled, but the cave – it feels magical, it feels as if there is something more, there. The others feel it, too – they are writing a proposal for a grant to dig.”
They wound through the wadi, but even the tel nearby provided little shade from the sun. There was no official trail, only the tracks of some Muggle vehicle pressed in the red dirt. “Why the emergency summons? Do they think someone is trapped, the tourist who found the cave?”
Maryam nodded. “We heard screams, again. The workers now think the cave is haunted. We need for you to examine the cave, to save whichever tourist was trapped – and most of all, to keep it secret.” She pointed up a slope. “There it is.”
There was more climbing before Bill stepped into the cool shade the cave provided. The cave itself wasn’t much, simply a hollow carved into the rock, beautiful lines of red and white showing the strata of ages of sand. It was empty.
“The workers refused to come down, after we heard the screams,” Maryam said. She pointed to the back of the cave, where some equipment was leaned against the rock. “It came from there. And that’s where the false stone was laid in cave seven.”
She was right. The very smell of magic pervaded the tiny space, and it grew stronger as he walked toward the wall. When he touched the stone, a tingle raced up his spine. He slid his wand from its holster at his belt and tapped the wall. “Aperio.” A haze of blue swirled over the surface of the rock, and Bill nodded. “It’s here, alright.”
“Is it the same charm? Can you break it?”
He sent a few diagnostic spells over the wall and shook his head. “It’s not. It’s nothing like the other. Go call Gringotts Jerusalem – we’re going to need a team of five or six to break through this properly. I think I recognize the charm, but if it is what I think it is, I’m not sure what we’ll find in there…”
“Right,” Maryam said. “I will be back. Here, just in case…” She tossed a palm sized oblong object to him. “That is a cellular telephone. Do you know how to use it? The first number in the phone book is the main office at the visitor centre. Call if you need help, yes?”
Bill nodded and shoved the object in his pocket. If such an occurrence did happen, he’d be fine. After all, Dad figured out Muggle items all the time, and always claimed he had a knack at it.
He hardly noticed that Maryam was gone. All his attention was focused on the task in front of him. The wards were far above those of cave seven, he was sure – far more difficult, and far, far more modern. Based on blood magic, likely. And familiar.
In fact, it reminded him very much of the way Dumbledore’s notes described the protections around the first artifact.
It was an Order secret, an Inner Circle secret shared by Harry himself at a meeting the week before. There were six artifacts to be destroyed, housing the very pieces of You Know Who’s soul. And here, in front of him… could be one.
And then came the scream.
It was almost more of a moan; the howling of a trapped animal or of death’s echoing footsteps. The thought of some Muggle, slowly dying, poisoned by something he could never understand was simply too dreadful for Bill to bear. Quickly, he began unraveling the charms and curses, marking his arithmancy notes on the wall with quick flicks of his wand.
The charms weren’t responding as they should. Whoever created them must’ve embedded some replication algorithm because each time one spell unraveled, another twisted into its place. He hit something in the net of spells; a knot twisted around another spell, and snagged an edge of that to unravel it…
… And the wall pulled him through. Or perhaps pulled wasn’t the right word. Swallowed. Inhaled. Devoured. Bill was thrown forward and barely managed to shift his wand to keep it from stabbing him in the stomach as he hit a wall.
It was dark on the other side. Dark, and dank, and full of the smell of flat air. Bill felt a breeze around his ankles, and heard breath.
A breath other than his, and nearby –
He twisted to point his wand toward the noise, only to lose movement as a hand snagged his wrist and yanked, and his wand wasn’t in his grasp anymore. And what would a Muggle be doing with a wand? It was no Muggle here – a trap, it was a trap, and now he was in enemy hands –
“Lumos,” croaked a voice by his ear.
It took a long moment before Bill recognized the boy who held his wand. The months since Dumbledore’s death hadn’t been kind. The boy’s cheeks were sunken in, and his blue eyes seemed to protrude just a bit. An impressive bruise marred the pale skin of his forehead and his blond hair was flat, long, and greasy.
“A Weasley,” he hissed, eyes narrowing. “I run two thousand fucking miles, and get found by a WEASLEY.”
His own wand was pointed in his face, so Bill slowly, carefully, put his hands up. “Draco Malfoy,” he said. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“How’d you find me?” Malfoy snapped. The wand was shaking in his hand. “Who sent you? He told me I’d be safe, he said no one would find me, and then was here -” He seemed to realize he was ranting and cut himself off quickly. “It was Potter, wasn’t it?”
“I had no idea,” Bill admitted. “And you’re trapped, right? You weren’t supposed to be back here.”
The wand straightened. “How do you know I’m trapped? How do you know this wasn’t a trap laid for you?”
His eyes were almost feral. “How long has it been since you ate?” Bill asked. “Your wand broke, when you came through – did you have food on you?”
“Stop talking! Just stop fucking talking, I should kill you – I can get out now -” Malfoy took a step back toward the opposite wall, and Bill finally got a better look at the rest of the chamber.
The light from his wand revealed a space bigger than he’d expected. It was twice the size of the entry cave, and a pedestal stood near the middle. On it sat an earthenware jar and, surrounding it, shards of crystal or glass. “What is it?”
Malfoy flicked Bill’s wand and sent a wave of concussive force, which slammed Bill against solid stone. “Stop fucking talking,” Malfoy hissed. “Did I not make that clear? And don’t – don’t move your hands,” he demanded, even as Bill rubbed at the back of his head to ensure there was no blood from the impact.
“We’re at an impasse, you know,” Bill said slowly. “I can get out of this cave. You’ll die if you try.”
“It’s just a ward. I just needed a wand to do it. I’m good at Arithmancy; I can get out in five minutes if you stop yammering.” Malfoy started sketching a diagram on the wall, mumbling as he did, his body angled to keep Bill in sight. “I’ll leave you here – you see how you like being stuck in a cave, no one to hear you, no one to save you – and I’ll show him not to mess with a Malfoy, he’ll know I don’t take well to traps -”
As Malfoy devolved into a hysterical rant, Bill braced his feet against the wall and launched himself forward. Malfoy didn’t have time to move, and Bill’s strength – ever greater since Greyback’s attack – was far greater than Malfoy’s emaciated muscles could counter. In seconds, the wand was back in his own hands.
Malfoy cowered back against the wall, the feral gleam back in his eyes. “Do it,” he hissed. “Go on, do it! You still won’t be rid of him!”
The boy before him was only that – a boy who had been unable to kill Albus Dumbledore when all was said and done, at least according to Harry Potter’s account. Bill lowered his wand, but only slightly. “How did you get in here? And who sent you here? Was it your master?”
“I won’t talk.” Malfoy crossed his arms over his chest and slowly sat on the cave floor. “I won’t betray him.”
“I can leave you here,” Bill pointed out. “What’s in the jar?”
Malfoy’s eyes narrowed.
Carefully watching him, Bill inched toward the pillar in the centre of the cave. He could feel the magic crackling around it. He also saw a smirk start to appear on Malfoy’s face and stopped short. “You just gave it away, you know. If I get closer, I get zapped by something, right? Knocked out, dead – doesn’t matter. But if you take my wand and try to get out of here, you’re dead, too. There’s a failsafe on the wards on that wall. That’s how I ended up in here. But I know what it is.”
Malfoy looked skeptical.
“How did you get in here?” Bill asked. “Did you try to unravel the wards, and get swept in by the security measures? Or did He give you the password in – and no password back out?”
He didn’t answer.
Bill shifted to the side and sent two detection spells toward the middle of the room. The same encryption as that on the door, mostly, but the knot wasn’t there. Keeping an eye on Malfoy, he set about unraveling the curses. There was a particularly difficult one near the end; the designer had bound a Confundus with something else that looked very, very Dark. Perhaps that was the curse that Malfoy had been warned about, or maybe he’d tried to unravel it wandless. Not the brightest of ideas. But then Bill managed to break through, and the entire chamber was illuminated by a light which erupted from the base of the pedestal.
With a quick “Immobulus” over his shoulder, Bill approached the pillar. The feeling of magic intensified, with some underlying almost greasy, hint to it. Bill tried every test he could think of, but the jar seemed to be fine. With Malfoy watching, unable to move, Bill lifted the lid of the jar.
Nestled inside on the crumbled remains of a scroll was a small, golden cup with a badger inlaid on the side in shining silver enamel.
Remembering what had happened to Dumbledore’s hand Bill stepped back quickly. However, no Inferi came out of the walls – or, at least, not yet. “I’m taking this back,” he announced to Malfoy. “But first, you’re telling me what you were here to do with it. Finite incantatem.”
“You can’t have it; I have to take it back!” Malfoy yelled. He bounded to his feet and took a step forward, stopping only as Bill raised his wand. “He’ll kill me if I don’t take it back!”
“Do you know what this is? Do you realize what would happen if you touched it?”
Malfoy sneered. “It’s a Horcrux, of course I know!”
One eye on Malfoy, Bill slowly put the lid back on the pot. He cast his Patronus and sent it off to find Harry in Russia, where he was hunting rumors of a gleaming golden cup. “You won’t be taking that cup. But, then again, neither will I. Tomorrow there will be a crew of Gringotts workers to cart this pot off. Tonight, at least ten Order members are going to come through here to destroy that cup.”
“He’ll kill me. You don’t understand – if I don’t have that cup, I’m dead.”
“So are a lot of good men and women. A lot of them at your hands, I dare say.” Bill flicked his wand at the wall and started breaking through the wards, searching for the knot of spells again. It was easy to find this time around, and he could read all of the entangled spells, now that he knew what they did.
Malfoy seemed to realize what he was doing. Giving a shriek of rage – or of fear, Bill wasn’t sure – Malfoy started to charge toward Bill. It was too late though; the spell was done and both were transported to the other side, back into the empty cave.
The move took Malfoy by surprise, and he tripped on the pile of equipment.
“Go,” Bill said, stepping back.
But Malfoy didn’t move. “Kill me,” he whispered. “Please. You don’t know what he’ll do to me. Just – I don’t have my wand, I don’t have anything, I can’t get in there again – kill me.”
“Go,” Bill repeated.
“But he’ll kill me…”
Bill shrugged. “You joined up with him in the first place. Did you think Voldemort would shower you with love?”
Malfoy opened his mouth to respond, but the fellytone thing began to ring in Bill’s pocket. “The rest of my team is coming,” he lied. “You’d better get out of here, or what you find will be worse than death.
“I can’t go back.” Malfoy whispered, looking shell-shocked. “I can’t… oh, Merlin’s beard, I can’t go back.” With a long look at Bill – and more specifically, at Bill’s wand – Malfoy drew to his feet and backed toward the cave entrance. “This isn’t over, you know,” Malfoy said. “The Dark Lord has six of those. You’ll never find them all.”
“Already knew that,” Bill said. “But thanks for confirming the intell.”
Bill took a step forward as Malfoy edged into the oppressive heat and winced. “How long since you’ve had water?” Malfoy didn’t answer. “And since you’re a pureblood, you wouldn’t ever bother to carry Muggle money on you…”
He didn’t want to be responsible for a death, especially not for this boy, who made a wrong choice but still had a chance to escape it. Bill picked up the mostly full bottle of water from where he’d set it when he started stripping the wards. “Here. Take this. You won’t make it as far as the road, otherwise.”
Malfoy eyed it and, desperation painted on his sharp features, nicked it from Bill’s outstretched hand. He backed out into the sunlight.
He would have a hard road ahead of him, Bill knew. A road that would likely end in a gruesome death. At the very least, it wasn’t on the end of his wand.
Outside of the cave, Malfoy had stopped. He turned and looked back inside, looking younger in Bill’s eyes than even Ginny.
“What do I do now?”
To that, Bill had only one answer. “Run.”
Rating: PG-13 for swearing
Length: 2900 words
Summary: For
omniocular's February challenge. In a cave at Qumran on the Dead Sea, Bill finds one piece of a puzzle – and more than he bargained for.Disclaimer: JKR alone.
AN: Ahh, Qumran. It was a record hot day when I was there, and that's saying something for Israel... Some pictures, not mine, for reference: http://vbarr.tripod.com/qumran.htm
Apocrypha
He was ready to fall on his knees and praise whatever deity there might be for the air-conditioned visitor center, a white and glass building hovering like a mirage. Bill ran his tongue over his lips, cracked from the impossibly hot sun and the dry air of the desert. The hike from the Muggle autobus had taken a good twenty minutes, and his six months back at the London office had been enough to rob him of his heat tolerance.
“Mr. Weasley?” a young woman in a purple head scarf called out. “William Weasley, yes?”
He nodded and dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “My apologies for being late. Gringotts didn’t inform me that there was a hike up here -”
“No, no problem,” she said. “I am Maryam Fahd, and I am the Gringotts liaison on the Qumran project. And the only… one of us on the program, to warn you. But time is limited; come, come.” Giving him a long look, she ducked into the gift shop and came back with a bottle of water. “Here, drink this on the way to the cave.”
They passed several small, sweaty groups of tourists as they wound through the ruins of the Qumran community hiked down into the dry river bed where the Dead Sea Scrolls had been buried. Maryam took a long look around before asking, “What did they tell you?”
“Only that there was a security problem at one of the archaeology projects in Israel. This is my first assignment back, actually, I was just married in July – I’m out of the loop.” And Fleur was home alone with Mum, which was one confrontation that Bill was anxious to hurry home and end.
“My congratulations,” Maryam said. “Qumran is the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, yes? There were ten caves discovered in total, but the locations of several were lost. We found cave nine, three days ago – or maybe it is cave eleven, but no one really knows. A tourist found it. He said he heard a scream. I work here at the Qumran site as a tour guide for cave seven – that is the cave where the wizarding scrolls were kept.”
Bill nodded. “I saw a fragment on display in England. And I studied the spells utilized to hide the wizarding section of the caves. Fascinating.”
“They asked for you by name,” Maryam said. “I knew I could not break through to see if there was something hidden, or somewhere a tourist had stumbled, but the cave – it feels magical, it feels as if there is something more, there. The others feel it, too – they are writing a proposal for a grant to dig.”
They wound through the wadi, but even the tel nearby provided little shade from the sun. There was no official trail, only the tracks of some Muggle vehicle pressed in the red dirt. “Why the emergency summons? Do they think someone is trapped, the tourist who found the cave?”
Maryam nodded. “We heard screams, again. The workers now think the cave is haunted. We need for you to examine the cave, to save whichever tourist was trapped – and most of all, to keep it secret.” She pointed up a slope. “There it is.”
There was more climbing before Bill stepped into the cool shade the cave provided. The cave itself wasn’t much, simply a hollow carved into the rock, beautiful lines of red and white showing the strata of ages of sand. It was empty.
“The workers refused to come down, after we heard the screams,” Maryam said. She pointed to the back of the cave, where some equipment was leaned against the rock. “It came from there. And that’s where the false stone was laid in cave seven.”
She was right. The very smell of magic pervaded the tiny space, and it grew stronger as he walked toward the wall. When he touched the stone, a tingle raced up his spine. He slid his wand from its holster at his belt and tapped the wall. “Aperio.” A haze of blue swirled over the surface of the rock, and Bill nodded. “It’s here, alright.”
“Is it the same charm? Can you break it?”
He sent a few diagnostic spells over the wall and shook his head. “It’s not. It’s nothing like the other. Go call Gringotts Jerusalem – we’re going to need a team of five or six to break through this properly. I think I recognize the charm, but if it is what I think it is, I’m not sure what we’ll find in there…”
“Right,” Maryam said. “I will be back. Here, just in case…” She tossed a palm sized oblong object to him. “That is a cellular telephone. Do you know how to use it? The first number in the phone book is the main office at the visitor centre. Call if you need help, yes?”
Bill nodded and shoved the object in his pocket. If such an occurrence did happen, he’d be fine. After all, Dad figured out Muggle items all the time, and always claimed he had a knack at it.
He hardly noticed that Maryam was gone. All his attention was focused on the task in front of him. The wards were far above those of cave seven, he was sure – far more difficult, and far, far more modern. Based on blood magic, likely. And familiar.
In fact, it reminded him very much of the way Dumbledore’s notes described the protections around the first artifact.
It was an Order secret, an Inner Circle secret shared by Harry himself at a meeting the week before. There were six artifacts to be destroyed, housing the very pieces of You Know Who’s soul. And here, in front of him… could be one.
And then came the scream.
It was almost more of a moan; the howling of a trapped animal or of death’s echoing footsteps. The thought of some Muggle, slowly dying, poisoned by something he could never understand was simply too dreadful for Bill to bear. Quickly, he began unraveling the charms and curses, marking his arithmancy notes on the wall with quick flicks of his wand.
The charms weren’t responding as they should. Whoever created them must’ve embedded some replication algorithm because each time one spell unraveled, another twisted into its place. He hit something in the net of spells; a knot twisted around another spell, and snagged an edge of that to unravel it…
… And the wall pulled him through. Or perhaps pulled wasn’t the right word. Swallowed. Inhaled. Devoured. Bill was thrown forward and barely managed to shift his wand to keep it from stabbing him in the stomach as he hit a wall.
It was dark on the other side. Dark, and dank, and full of the smell of flat air. Bill felt a breeze around his ankles, and heard breath.
A breath other than his, and nearby –
He twisted to point his wand toward the noise, only to lose movement as a hand snagged his wrist and yanked, and his wand wasn’t in his grasp anymore. And what would a Muggle be doing with a wand? It was no Muggle here – a trap, it was a trap, and now he was in enemy hands –
“Lumos,” croaked a voice by his ear.
It took a long moment before Bill recognized the boy who held his wand. The months since Dumbledore’s death hadn’t been kind. The boy’s cheeks were sunken in, and his blue eyes seemed to protrude just a bit. An impressive bruise marred the pale skin of his forehead and his blond hair was flat, long, and greasy.
“A Weasley,” he hissed, eyes narrowing. “I run two thousand fucking miles, and get found by a WEASLEY.”
His own wand was pointed in his face, so Bill slowly, carefully, put his hands up. “Draco Malfoy,” he said. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“How’d you find me?” Malfoy snapped. The wand was shaking in his hand. “Who sent you? He told me I’d be safe, he said no one would find me, and then was here -” He seemed to realize he was ranting and cut himself off quickly. “It was Potter, wasn’t it?”
“I had no idea,” Bill admitted. “And you’re trapped, right? You weren’t supposed to be back here.”
The wand straightened. “How do you know I’m trapped? How do you know this wasn’t a trap laid for you?”
His eyes were almost feral. “How long has it been since you ate?” Bill asked. “Your wand broke, when you came through – did you have food on you?”
“Stop talking! Just stop fucking talking, I should kill you – I can get out now -” Malfoy took a step back toward the opposite wall, and Bill finally got a better look at the rest of the chamber.
The light from his wand revealed a space bigger than he’d expected. It was twice the size of the entry cave, and a pedestal stood near the middle. On it sat an earthenware jar and, surrounding it, shards of crystal or glass. “What is it?”
Malfoy flicked Bill’s wand and sent a wave of concussive force, which slammed Bill against solid stone. “Stop fucking talking,” Malfoy hissed. “Did I not make that clear? And don’t – don’t move your hands,” he demanded, even as Bill rubbed at the back of his head to ensure there was no blood from the impact.
“We’re at an impasse, you know,” Bill said slowly. “I can get out of this cave. You’ll die if you try.”
“It’s just a ward. I just needed a wand to do it. I’m good at Arithmancy; I can get out in five minutes if you stop yammering.” Malfoy started sketching a diagram on the wall, mumbling as he did, his body angled to keep Bill in sight. “I’ll leave you here – you see how you like being stuck in a cave, no one to hear you, no one to save you – and I’ll show him not to mess with a Malfoy, he’ll know I don’t take well to traps -”
As Malfoy devolved into a hysterical rant, Bill braced his feet against the wall and launched himself forward. Malfoy didn’t have time to move, and Bill’s strength – ever greater since Greyback’s attack – was far greater than Malfoy’s emaciated muscles could counter. In seconds, the wand was back in his own hands.
Malfoy cowered back against the wall, the feral gleam back in his eyes. “Do it,” he hissed. “Go on, do it! You still won’t be rid of him!”
The boy before him was only that – a boy who had been unable to kill Albus Dumbledore when all was said and done, at least according to Harry Potter’s account. Bill lowered his wand, but only slightly. “How did you get in here? And who sent you here? Was it your master?”
“I won’t talk.” Malfoy crossed his arms over his chest and slowly sat on the cave floor. “I won’t betray him.”
“I can leave you here,” Bill pointed out. “What’s in the jar?”
Malfoy’s eyes narrowed.
Carefully watching him, Bill inched toward the pillar in the centre of the cave. He could feel the magic crackling around it. He also saw a smirk start to appear on Malfoy’s face and stopped short. “You just gave it away, you know. If I get closer, I get zapped by something, right? Knocked out, dead – doesn’t matter. But if you take my wand and try to get out of here, you’re dead, too. There’s a failsafe on the wards on that wall. That’s how I ended up in here. But I know what it is.”
Malfoy looked skeptical.
“How did you get in here?” Bill asked. “Did you try to unravel the wards, and get swept in by the security measures? Or did He give you the password in – and no password back out?”
He didn’t answer.
Bill shifted to the side and sent two detection spells toward the middle of the room. The same encryption as that on the door, mostly, but the knot wasn’t there. Keeping an eye on Malfoy, he set about unraveling the curses. There was a particularly difficult one near the end; the designer had bound a Confundus with something else that looked very, very Dark. Perhaps that was the curse that Malfoy had been warned about, or maybe he’d tried to unravel it wandless. Not the brightest of ideas. But then Bill managed to break through, and the entire chamber was illuminated by a light which erupted from the base of the pedestal.
With a quick “Immobulus” over his shoulder, Bill approached the pillar. The feeling of magic intensified, with some underlying almost greasy, hint to it. Bill tried every test he could think of, but the jar seemed to be fine. With Malfoy watching, unable to move, Bill lifted the lid of the jar.
Nestled inside on the crumbled remains of a scroll was a small, golden cup with a badger inlaid on the side in shining silver enamel.
Remembering what had happened to Dumbledore’s hand Bill stepped back quickly. However, no Inferi came out of the walls – or, at least, not yet. “I’m taking this back,” he announced to Malfoy. “But first, you’re telling me what you were here to do with it. Finite incantatem.”
“You can’t have it; I have to take it back!” Malfoy yelled. He bounded to his feet and took a step forward, stopping only as Bill raised his wand. “He’ll kill me if I don’t take it back!”
“Do you know what this is? Do you realize what would happen if you touched it?”
Malfoy sneered. “It’s a Horcrux, of course I know!”
One eye on Malfoy, Bill slowly put the lid back on the pot. He cast his Patronus and sent it off to find Harry in Russia, where he was hunting rumors of a gleaming golden cup. “You won’t be taking that cup. But, then again, neither will I. Tomorrow there will be a crew of Gringotts workers to cart this pot off. Tonight, at least ten Order members are going to come through here to destroy that cup.”
“He’ll kill me. You don’t understand – if I don’t have that cup, I’m dead.”
“So are a lot of good men and women. A lot of them at your hands, I dare say.” Bill flicked his wand at the wall and started breaking through the wards, searching for the knot of spells again. It was easy to find this time around, and he could read all of the entangled spells, now that he knew what they did.
Malfoy seemed to realize what he was doing. Giving a shriek of rage – or of fear, Bill wasn’t sure – Malfoy started to charge toward Bill. It was too late though; the spell was done and both were transported to the other side, back into the empty cave.
The move took Malfoy by surprise, and he tripped on the pile of equipment.
“Go,” Bill said, stepping back.
But Malfoy didn’t move. “Kill me,” he whispered. “Please. You don’t know what he’ll do to me. Just – I don’t have my wand, I don’t have anything, I can’t get in there again – kill me.”
“Go,” Bill repeated.
“But he’ll kill me…”
Bill shrugged. “You joined up with him in the first place. Did you think Voldemort would shower you with love?”
Malfoy opened his mouth to respond, but the fellytone thing began to ring in Bill’s pocket. “The rest of my team is coming,” he lied. “You’d better get out of here, or what you find will be worse than death.
“I can’t go back.” Malfoy whispered, looking shell-shocked. “I can’t… oh, Merlin’s beard, I can’t go back.” With a long look at Bill – and more specifically, at Bill’s wand – Malfoy drew to his feet and backed toward the cave entrance. “This isn’t over, you know,” Malfoy said. “The Dark Lord has six of those. You’ll never find them all.”
“Already knew that,” Bill said. “But thanks for confirming the intell.”
Bill took a step forward as Malfoy edged into the oppressive heat and winced. “How long since you’ve had water?” Malfoy didn’t answer. “And since you’re a pureblood, you wouldn’t ever bother to carry Muggle money on you…”
He didn’t want to be responsible for a death, especially not for this boy, who made a wrong choice but still had a chance to escape it. Bill picked up the mostly full bottle of water from where he’d set it when he started stripping the wards. “Here. Take this. You won’t make it as far as the road, otherwise.”
Malfoy eyed it and, desperation painted on his sharp features, nicked it from Bill’s outstretched hand. He backed out into the sunlight.
He would have a hard road ahead of him, Bill knew. A road that would likely end in a gruesome death. At the very least, it wasn’t on the end of his wand.
Outside of the cave, Malfoy had stopped. He turned and looked back inside, looking younger in Bill’s eyes than even Ginny.
“What do I do now?”
To that, Bill had only one answer. “Run.”
chipper
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