The Servants of Egypt

The Servants of Egypt

Chapter One

The afternoon before the leaving feast had been perfect. The sun was warm and there was not a single cloud in the sky. Family members had already come to prepare for the graduation ceremony the next day. Hogsmeade was packed with people, some of whom had come up to Hogwarts to visit. Now night was falling.

Luna Lovegood knew most of Weasley family was staying at The Three Broomsticks. Only Bill and Fleur could not make it. They had not been able to leave France because of Jacinthe, their very new baby daughter

Ginny had woken Luna up six weeks earlier when she had gotten the owl with the news that she was an aunt. Ginny was ecstatic about the new baby, but a bit disgruntled at the name her sister-in-law had chosen.

"What in the world does it mean?" Ginny had asked, puzzled.

"Hyacinth," Luna answered, yawning.

"That's weird," Ginny said flatly.

"It's just as good as Fleur," Luna answered, shrugging.

As Luna began to pack her trunk to leave Hogwarts, she knew Harry was at the Shrieking Shack with their friend, Neville Longbottom. They had come to see Luna and Ginny graduate. Neville had gone to lunch with the Weasley family, and Harry and Luna had skipped lunch completely for a little private time.

Now as she packed her trunk, so that she could leave right after graduation, she thought about Harry's graduation the year before. She had sat in the Great Hall, watching proudly. Hermione, as Head Girl, had given an excellent speech. As Harry had received the parchment that marked him as a graduate of Hogwarts, Luna had felt, for just a moment, a familiar presence.

When it was all over, she met him on the grounds and hugged him hard. He kissed her, and said happily, "I got you a gift. C'mon. I'll show it to you."

As Harry pulled Luna toward the Whomping Willow, she protested. "It's your graduation. I should have given you a gift, but you said you didn't want anything!"

"I have everything I want, or I soon will, I hope."

Harry opened the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack, and they slipped through it. Popping up through the secret entrance, Harry took Luna by the shoulders. "Stand here. Close your eyes. Don't move."

Luna obeyed him, and for a second felt the other presence again. Before she could question it, Harry was telling her to open her eyes. She'd found him standing before her; holding a small purple box. Opening it, she found an engagement ring.

"Harry!"

He looked at her hopefully. "You told me to wait until after I graduated. I waited. Are you ever going to agree to marry me or not?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Luna squeaked and then she held very still while Harry put the ring on her finger.

"When?"

"After I graduate. The day after, if you like, but Harry, you made me promise to wait about something too, and I don't want to wait anymore, either."

With that, she took him firmly by the hand and led him up the stairs to the bedroom. There she pulled him into a furious embrace.

"Luna," Harry said, when he finally was able to breathe again, "are you sure? I mean, we can just go on doing what we've been doing if you want to. It works for me."

"Oh Harry, just quit talking and make love to me, here, where it all began."

Luna grinned, remembering that weekend. She began to hope that her graduation weekend would end as well. She looked around the room. Everything that she would not need in the morning was put away but the small statue of Isis that Professor Croaker had given her after the scroll of Thoth had been destroyed. She kept that statue beside her bed at all times.

"Oh, Astet, I wish you could be with me now," Luna whispered, her heart feeling very full.

"So, you finally call my name?" said a familiar voice. "I have been waiting all this time, and you did not call my name!"

Luna turned and saw the lady who had sustained her soul, brought her lover peace, and freed her to seek her future. She smiled.

"I've thought of you often," Luna said frankly, "but I knew you were busy, so I didn't want to bother you any more than necessary-- as much as I would have liked to have you with me."

"But I have been with you. I have seen you many times. Have you not felt my presence? When you studied, I was with you, helping you find the path to wisdom. When your beloved Harry completed his learning within these halls, I sat at your side. When you pledged yourselves to each other, I danced for joy. I have watched over all your other friends as they have made their ways as well." Astet grinned broadly. "When you and Harry first made love, I was there with you, and I have been with you many times since."

Luna blushed scarlet. "You didn't! How could you!"

The lady laughed. "Do not be embarrassed! There is no shame in what you have done. Indeed, you are lovely together. You are lucky I was there that first night, my little one. Khnum, the creator, was watching you, and was so pleased with the strength of the bond between yourselves that he wanted to send you your first son. He was about to set the clay on his wheel, and Hekat, who guides those in childbirth was already planning for that day. I told them both that if they honored your joining, they would give you time to enjoy it as two, before making it three."

"First son?" Luna looked at her, shocked. "You mean we're going to have more than one?"

"Know you my mother, lovely Nut, beloved of the people, most ancient mother of those called gods?"

"Yes," Luna answered tentatively. "I feel her near me when Harry and I sit together on starry nights, and look up at the sky. I feel her all about me."

Isis nodded approvingly. "That is Nut, who surrounds us all with love. As she bore three sons and two daughters, so shall you."

"Harry will faint!" Luna exclaimed.

"Your beloved Harry is a gentle soul, and will take delight in every one of them. Family will mean everything to him, for he has lived so long without. But you must take care. He will play, and pet and spoil, and when they do wrong, he will tell them kindly that there might have been a better way. You must cuff them and tell them to stand upright and fix their errors. He will not, and one of you must." Isis shrugged.

Luna fingered the pendant on the chain around her neck. It was the Ankh, symbol of life, that Harry ordered for her from Hogsmeade as she lay in the hospital after first seeing the lady before her. She would have to think about her future life with Harry later. Changing the subject, she asked with interest, "How is Voldemort?"

Isis shrugged. "We hold him firmly. Selket is watching him for me now, and burning away his excess, no doubt. She frightens him more than any other, because he is just now beginning to understand what true power is."

"Selket has a special place in my heart," Luna admitted. "I hope she doesn't mind, as simple as I am, but I always thought it was a little unfair that so many speak of her as evil. She can, I suppose, be destructive at times. I know your people were afraid of her because they believed she caused plague, but if I'm not mistaken, she could certainly cure it as well."

"You amused her, because you were direct with her. She respected your honesty more than she would have been impressed by any prostration." Isis looked around the room, and sighed. "I must go. I will give your greetings to her. Remember that we are always with you. You can honor us by continuing to care for your Harry, and for those on earth whose lives you touch. Never manipulate others with your own powers. They are sacred, and must be used with care."

"I'll remember. Please do give my love to Selket, and Neith, and to your sister, Nephthys. And tell Khnum that when he spins his wheel for me, that I pray he'll make me vessels that are strong and shaped with his finest skill. I trust him."

"It is well." Isis raised her hand in farewell, and was soon gone from Luna's sight.

Luna put the small statue in her trunk with care, and crawled into bed for her last night in Ravenclaw tower.

She remembered that night, however, on another night some time later, as she and the husband she adored were making love. As Harry gave a groan of pleasure, and Luna's mind and body exploded with sensation, an image came to her clearly: it was of a gentle creator, spinning a great wheel. The blob of clay beneath his hands turned first into the earth, and as it spun, a human shape was formed out of it.

Luna gasped, as her husband collapsed on top of her, holding her close. She gently stroked his hair, loving the way it separated into sweaty spikes, revealing the thin scar that he usually tried so hard to hide behind the black fringe. In these moments, Harry wasn't just giving himself to her, he was revealing himself, and Luna always reveled in them.

On that night, however, she knew he had given her something more of himself than he had ever done before, and her heart was very full. "Khnum," Luna whispered, and Harry raised his head, his green eyes looking into hers, puzzled.

"What?"

Luna simply shook her head, smiling and kissed him, over and over again, wondering what their first son would really be like.

****

James Potter turned out to have his father's black hair and green eyes, and his love of Quidditch as well. The fact that Harry had him on a broom as soon as he turned two might have had something to do with that. Harry adored all of his children, as Luna was told he would. But the child he had named for his own father always had a special place in Harry's heart.

When Jimmy Potter had been ready to graduate from Hogwarts, his parents had wanted to give him a graduation gift that he would remember always. Luna and Harry had wracked their brains for just the right thing, but Jim did not want any material gift. He wanted to go back to Egypt, the place his parents had taken him as a child, a place he loved dearly, and at last they had agreed.

"Clark is there, working on a project for the Egyptian Museum," Luna had said to Harry, when he had expressed concern about his firstborn son being alone so far away. "He will look after him for us."

This surprised Jimmy. His mother had always been much stricter with him than his dad.

"You get to go and stay with Uncle Clark?" Jim's youngest sister, Kiya, had said, unbelieving. "Lucky! Lucky! Lucky!"

"Yeah, Uncle Clark is so cool," his other sister, Lily, had said. "But watch out, Jim! Uncle Fred told me when they were kids he and Uncle George tried to shut Uncle Percy in a pyramid. Don't bother Uncle Clark too much while he's working, or he might do that to you!"

Lily then turned to tease her sister. "Maybe they can finally find your tomb!"

Kiya stuck her tongue out at Lily, but couldn't help grinning. She had been named for an 18^th Dynasty queen, a lesser wife of Akhenaten. Luna had always been fond of the Kiya story. Her sarcophagus had never been found, and was one of the mysteries of Egypt that had always intrigued Luna.

Harry and Luna's children had no real relatives except each other, but they were nearly grown before they realized it. They considered Clark Croaker to be their great-uncle and the Weasley and Longbottom broods to be their cousins. They'd all had a wonderful childhood growing up in Grimmauld Place, and spending lots of time visiting Longbottom manor and the Burrow.

Clark Croaker had always been a special favorite of the Potter children. They had never known their paternal grandparents, and their grandfather, Lewis Lovegood had died when Jimmy was a baby, shortly before Sirius was born. None of them remembered him, although Luna was careful to tell the son she had named after her father many stories about him, just as Harry had told Jim about his grandfather James. Croaker, though, was in and out of their lives often, always bringing wonderful surprises. He traveled everywhere from Alaska to Africa in between his visits, and was good at telling them stories that taught them lessons without them even realizing it.

So it was decided that Jimmy would Apparate to Cairo, where Harry and Luna had made arrangements for him to stay at the Ramses Hilton Hotel on Corniche El Nile. Harry had changed plenty of galleons for Muggle money, and promised his son that he could go anywhere in Egypt and have any thing he wanted within reason, as long as he stayed in contact with Uncle Clark.

****

The man in the hot, stuffy room looked around at the stone walls, and ran a hand through his hair, which was flecked with gray. His head throbbed, and he winced as he felt the bruise on the back of his head. An oddly accented voice rang out, causing him to flinch.

"You will do it."

He wearily replied, "I can't!"

"You are one of them! You can do it. I have seen it done. You will do it for me."

"Give me back my wand. I need my wand."

"No. It is not needed for this. You are trying to trick me. I have seen it. You will prepare the potion, and read the ancient words. You will do this for me. I don't care how long it takes. You will stay until it is done. No wand. No escape. You will stay here until it is done, or until you die. Tell me what you need. I don't care about anything else. "

When he did not answer, the man with the accented voice shrugged and went away, leaving the beaten man sitting on the stone floor, in one of the worst situations he had ever been in, and he had been in some fairly horrific situations over the years. There was no way out. No way out of the room, and no way out of Egypt. At least not without his wand.

****

When they had visited over the years, Harry Potter had found modern Egypt disappointing. His wife Luna had not. She especially loved the bazaar in Cairo. She loved the smells of grilling lamb, the fruit and spices on the carts, and the freshly brewed coffee. She loved to bargain with the vendors, who considered bargaining an art. She loved the sounds that assaulted their ears, the Arabic music, the car horns, and the mixture of English, Arabic and French language in the streets. She even loved the heat and the sand and the dust.

This Harry had complained about, only to receive a pitying stare from his wife. "This sand might have been sand that Isis walked on, or Tutankhamen, or Akhenaten."

Jimmy had his mother's love of Egypt, old and new, and one of the first things he did upon his arrival was head to the bazaar.

With his black hair, and the loose clothing he had chosen to wear, he was able to move more easily through the crowds than some of the other tourists were. He noticed a young blonde woman about his age walking alone, and shook his head. A girl alone, especially a blonde one as lovely as this girl was, was asking for trouble here. She had hair the color of his French cousins, Jacinthe and Yvon, and was almost as beautiful as Jacinthe, who besides being the oldest of his generation, was easily the prettiest girl in the family, having inherited the exotic Veela looks of her mother.

The young woman in the Khan el Khalili bazaar was wearing tight jeans, even in the Egyptian heat, and a light blue blouse. She was carrying a large tote bag, and Jimmy hoped she didn't have all her money or her passport in it, since he could picture someone grabbing it off her shoulder. Poverty was a problem in Egypt, and Muggle tourists were prime targets.

A group of boys slightly younger, fourteen or fifteen or so, were already following her, asking her questions in a mixture of languages, trying to beg cigarettes or small change off her, and trying to sell her souvenirs. The blonde woman ignored them, and left the goldsmith section of the bazaar. Jim watched as she headed toward a small square where there were some antique shops. He saw her lean over slightly to look into a window display, and was not entirely surprised to see one of the teenage boys reach out and grab her bum. He was quite surprised, however, when she whirled around, furious, and all of the boys as a group went flying onto their own backsides into the dusty street. They all began to shriek and run for their lives.

With a grin, Jimmy walked up to her. "Nice repelling charm."

The young woman, who was about a head shorter than him, looked up into his face. "Did you think so?" she replied, in a drawling voice.

"One of the best I've ever seen."

"I'll bet you've seen a lot of them, too," she said, with a shrug, and started to walk away.

"Hey, wait," Jimmy said quickly. "I was hoping I could buy you a coffee or a tea. You're the first, well, the first person like me I've met here. You ARE a witch, aren't you? Where did you go to school? I just graduated from Hogwarts last June"

Her gray eyes swept the street. "Keep your voice down. Do you want every Muggle in Egypt to hear you?"

"They wouldn't know what we were talking about if they did. C'mon. How about that tea?"

She considered him carefully. "Is it safe? I've heard terrible things about the water here. I've heard it's either not clean enough or too chlorinated, and I've been very careful about what I drink. I don't want to get sick. I have no intention of wasting an entire day trying to find a healer."

"Water in tea shops boils all day long," Jimmy said firmly. "You'll be fine. Please? And you'll certainly be much safer with me than you would be alone. There are a lot of places in Cairo where women just don't go alone."

"I can take care of myself, thank you, but very well. One tea."

Jimmy steered her into a tea shop that he remembered visiting with his parents during their last trip to Egypt as a family.

"You'll like this," he told the blonde girl, as he ordered bi 'lnaana, mint tea, and basbusa, coarsely textured semolina cakes that were coated in honey, chopped dates and nuts.

"How many calories are in these?" she asked him suspiciously, taking a small bite.

"Like you need to worry," he answered, taking a huge bite.

"Thank you, I think."

"I know you're a very pretty girl," Jimmy said recklessly. "Tell me something else about yourself."

"Blunt, aren't you? All right. My parents were English, but I grew up on the continent. I just graduated from Durmstrang."

"My Great-uncle Clark used to teach there, many years ago, and my Aunt Hermione once dated a guy from there. His name was Viktor Krum. Have you ever heard of him? He was a famous Quidditch player. It was at least twenty years ago, but maybe someone at Durmstrang would remember him"

"Your aunt is named Hermione?" The girl looked at him oddly. "That's not a very common name."

"Well, I call her my aunt, but she's really just a close friend of my parents. They've been friends since before I was born," Jimmy said sipping his tea, enjoying the tingling freshness it left in his mouth. "My name is James Potter, by the way, but you can call me Jim," he told her, trying to sound as sophisticated as possible.

The girl's entire attitude changed. She had appeared to be mildly curious about him up to that point, or at least sociable, but after he had introduced himself, her mood turned decidedly cool.

"Clark Croaker, is it? The wizard archeologist? "

"Yeah, that's who I'm here to visit. Do you know him?"

"I've heard of him. "I've definitely heard of him," she said with a sigh, swirling her tea and watching the mint flecks move through the water. "Are you staying with him?"

"No, I'm at the Ramses Hilton. Why? Where are you staying?"

"At the Nile Hilton. It's closer to the Egyptian museum. I'm surprised you are not there. Or did you stay at the Ramses so you could go down to the Falafel restaurant every night and watch the belly dancers?"

"Nah, I go for the shish-kebob. The belly dancers are a bonus. Hey, where are you going?" He looked confused as she stood up, and pulled her tote bag onto her shoulder.

"I have to go, Mr. Potter. Believe me, it was an experience meeting you, but I don't think we should see each other again."

"But why? C'mon, don't go! I don't even know your name!"

She gave him an odd smile as she backed away. "My name is Olivia Malfoy."