Rating:
R
House:
The Dark Arts
Characters:
Neville Longbottom Ron Weasley
Genres:
Drama
Era:
Harry and Classmates Post-Hogwarts
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix
Stats:
Published: 07/30/2005
Updated: 07/30/2005
Words: 8,016
Chapters: 1
Hits: 391

Little Histories

Mary G

Story Summary:
Egypt in December was light and dust and noise and everything different. Ron wasn’t really certain if he liked it or not, but it was as good a place as any to be. [Ron and Neville.]

Posted:
07/30/2005
Hits:
391
Author's Note:
This is a story I've owed Calliope for a very, very long time. Must thank her here for not only being so gracious about this story's stunning lateness, but for being so encouraging as well. Kind of like life, this story's a little bit het, a little bit slash, a little bit gen.

*

Egypt in December was light and dust and noise and everything different. Ron wasn't really certain if he liked it or not, but it was as good a place as any to be.

The wizards of Cairo made their homes in the oldest part, in the shadows of minarets and Coptic crosses. Magic was everywhere, here; the stones hummed with it, ancient and unforgiving. And while there were no flash tricks, no special phone booths or walls that opened if you tapped just right, no-one worried about what Muggle tourists saw through their camera lenses. The city held all secrets safe.

Ron woke each morning to the cadence of the Adhan, reverberating over the streets, filling his room from the outside in. He thought, occasionally, that there was a good chance he was going to hell for regularly snagging the first shower and the most hot water while two of his flat mates answered the call to prayer. But then so was Ian, flat mate number three, a fellow vaguely C of E ex-pat who managed to snore straight through it every day.

This morning Ron returned to his tiny bedroom, towel-clad, to find three owls waiting solemnly on the windowsill, brown packages grasped in their claws. He raised the glass. "Come in - let me take that - no, don't land - ow!" When the flurry of activity was over, Ron was left with four packages, five cards, and a painful red scratch on his shoulder.

Setting the packages aside for the following day, since that was the proper one for gifts, Ron opened cards as he dressed. One from Fred and George - he put that safely aside 'til he could give it his full, undivided attention - one from Mum, one from Ginny, and one from Hermione signed Hermione and Viktor.

"Knock knock," Ian said, poking his head around the door. "Ready to go?"

"Ready," Ron said, sliding the letters into the top drawer of his bedside table. Each card had been packed full, words on words, too many to get through in such a short time, but he knew what they all amounted to. We're worried, come home.

It was a daily ritual, this brisk walk through narrow, winding streets, Ian's quick stop for rattle-your-teeth strong Egyptian coffee, Ron outside the shop reading the headlines of the English paper and guessing at the stories that went with the photographs in all the others. Then two more blocks, an increasingly-caffeinated Ian talking all the while, and finally a right turn into the Fort of Babylon. On mornings when Ron was feeling awake, he looked at the walls around him - some broken and crumbling, some tall and strong and ready to stand for another millennium - and thought, Wow.

Even in winter the sun was high and bright by the time Ron and Ian crossed one of the out-of-the-way courtyards and passed through the arches that marked the Egyptian headquarters of Gringott's Bank. They parted ways in the open, round lobby, where Ian took up his position behind the counter. Beyond there, the bank was miles of dark passages, twisting and stretching in every direction through the walls of the Roman fortress. Ron had only a scant idea of what the deepest passages were actually like; some said they reached out of time and space as most people knew it, and that seemed likely enough. It was five minutes' walk from the front lobby to the office he shared with two other diviners, a small, square room that had probably been used for storage once upon a time. Now the stone floor was scattered with large cushions, and one desk stood against the wall, a flickering lamp upon it.

Mr. Selim and Mr. Asad were already working when Ron came in, reclining in their respective corners, eyes closed. He'd not arrived before them yet, and was willing to believe they stayed there, day into night into day, always on the job. Every now and then one would rise, make his way to the desk, and scratch down what he'd just seen. These parchments were passed on to other wizards who took the disjointed dream-phrases, studied them against ancient texts and maps of the Valley of the Kings, and turned them into two concise words: Dig here.

At first Ron had balked at the entire process, incantation sleep transcription, because it was so ridiculous that just considering it made him feel a complete ass. He'd tried it since then - self-preservation on the job and all that - now he avoided it for different reasons. His dreams were realer than real and completely untrue and he hated them.

It was a good thing, then, that the goblins didn't mind him accompanying acquisitions teams instead - if saying 'as long as we see profits and oh, by the way, we're not paying if you get hurt' counted as not minding.

And he was increasing profits, Ron was sure of it, in small chambers below the sand and the hearts of towering pyramids. In the hot, quiet dark with the air of a thousand years moving around him and through him with every breath, it was easy to close his eyes and be a Pharaoh, just for a second, to know that the bottomless pit would be over there, and the room of a of a thousand spikes, and there, there, would be the king's gold.

He wasn't really sure he had what they thought he had - what Dumbledore had thought he had - what they'd hired him for. He just knew how to think like his opponent, god-king or madman.

Sometimes, it was enough.

*

As he often did, Ian asked Ron if he'd like to go down to the bar with his gang of friends after work; as he often did, Ron refused. Today he had a good reason.

"Family dinner thing," Ron said, as they turned onto the street. "Thanks anyway."

"Oh? Family as in your brother and his girlfriend?"

"They'd be the ones," Ron said. At Ian's hopeful, slightly glazed expression, he added, "No, you can't come. She wouldn't look at you if you did, you know that, right? Not unless she had a crick in her neck and you were sitting right in the only place she could see."

Tough love, but it was necessary.

"That could work," Ian said thoughtfully.

"No, it couldn't," Ron said, and with a wave and a burst of speed, he disappeared into the crowd.

He beat Bill and Fleur to the restaurant by twenty-three minutes. That was a good thing; it meant he had one lager drained, the bottle taken away, and a new full one in its place before the evening began in earnest.

It would've been all right if it had just been Bill. Bill was a natural storyteller, and the night would have flown by as Ron listened to and learned from tales of mummies and jackals and idiot bosses. He had a few of his own worth contributing now, too. And Bill was a good brother who obviously loved and cared and worried about his little brother without actually saying anything of the sort.

But it wasn't just Bill, and Ron was relieved indeed when the eternity of drinks and dinner and dessert had passed. The three of them left the restaurant together, pausing on the pavement outside.

"It makes me sad to think that you will be alone on Christmas Day," Fleur said, turning those beautiful, hypnotic, more-than-human eyes on him. "Is it certain that you cannot come to Saint Gilles with us?"

"No, yes, I mean, I really can't," Ron said. The key to dealing with Fleur was to look away before you found yourself saying whatever would make her smile, so he quickly swiveled his head and studied the street in front of them. "But I hope you two have a wonderful time."

He kissed her cheek - no eye contact required there - said his final goodbyes, and Disapparated.

The flat was deserted when he came in, and Ron moved through it quietly, instinctively preserving the rare peace. In his tiny bedroom, the door closed behind him, Ron stretched out on the bed with his shoes still on. They would be sitting in front of the fire right now, at the Burrow: playing a game, Scrabble maybe, and there would be mugs of hot cocoa and cookies shaped like angels and stars. A room full of people who loved him - a room full of people who wanted to know more than they did about how it had all happened. Ron knew odds, and the odds were at least one of them would ask. . . .

Sighing, he rolled over, fished the letters out of the drawer, and started reading. He was halfway through Ginny's when there was a crash hard enough to rattle the window.

"What the hell?" Ron opened the window less cautiously than he probably should have, considering the wide range of things that could go bump in the Egyptian night, and peered out. Two huge round eyes peered back. "Come on in, boy," he said, and with a distressed hoot, his guest did so.

Ron untied the envelope from the tawny owl's leg and, making soothing noises, felt its wing. Not hurt, he decided, before turning to his mail.

It was a Christmas card, a very traditional English sort of country scene on the front and very few words on the inside:

Happy Christmas, Ron.

Neville.

Ron stared at it, stared at white space and spiky letters, then ran his fingers over both. Closed his eyes and did it again, fingertips shaping letters his eyes didn't see, dips and curves and spikes.

He traced them slowly, and he wondered.

*

Happy New Year, Neville.

How are things?

R.W.

*

Seven days on, three days off. Goblins cared just as much about the conventional structure of a human workweek as they did about human holidays. It was day seven: Ron was tired, the rest of the team was tired, and they had absolutely nothing to show for it.

"Dead end," Ron said, glaring at the wall in front of him.

"Again?" Akil said, joining Ron at the end of the narrow passage. "But there is writing here, near the floor, see? And we have seen none for some time. I shall translate."

Ron backed away, allowing the more-than-competent hieroglyphics expert to do his thing. He didn't really care what the words said, this was the end, he felt it.

Mesi held up her wand, affording Akil some extra light. "Is that how they wrote 'haha, suckers' in Ancient Egyptian?"

"Min fadlik!"

She raised an eyebrow at Ron and mouthed something about people with wands inserted in uncomfortable places. He stifled a laugh.

"Ah," said Akil.

"Ah what?" Ron asked.

"It translates a little closer to 'you are incredibly fucked,' unfortunately."

"Doesn't happen to mention in what way we're fucked?"

"No, sorry," Akil said, standing. "May I suggest we not wait to find out?"

Mesi was already gone, running up the narrow passage, wand-light bouncing crazily. Ron followed her example, Akil close on his heels. Up, up, up, feet pounding on stone, a hundred more yards between them and the main corridor -

Of course, the danger had never been behind them.

The three of them silently contemplated the slab of granite now barring the way. Ron coughed, his throat burning. He tried not to think about how much oxygen they'd wasted, sucking in deep dry breaths as they'd run. He definitely wasn't picturing the six million tonnes of stone over his head.

Mesi stepped forward and, chanting in Arabic, began methodically running her wand over the rock face, up and down and up and down. Ron moved closer, giving all his wand's light to her, absolutely not thinking about the creeping scuttling stinging things that could be underfoot, or what a bite would do to a man blocked by ancient anti-Apparition curses and a wall of stone from any sort of medical assistance.

Ron had moved on to not-imagining the colour purple such a man's face would turn when he saw a small, scarab-like shape glowing under Mesi's wand.

She switched tactics at once. Ron still couldn't understand her words but he knew they were different, in rhythm and power and focus. The scarab-outline grew brighter and brighter, Akil began saying, "yes, yes, yes," and Ron turned all his attention onto Mesi.

Her face was strained, her voice less steady, and as Ron watched she began to shake, backlit by the white, white light, first her arm and then her whole body, shaking fit to fly apart -

He reached out, grabbed her, and pulled her back down into the dark.

Mesi said nothing. Ron held his canteen out and she accepted it gratefully, hands still trembling.

Akil, however, had plenty to say. "Weasley, you idiot, she almost had it - we could've been out of here -"

"Teach me the spell, Mesi," Ron said quietly, "and we'll do it together."

" - that's her job, she's the cursebreaker, your job was to keep us out of trouble like this in the first place -"

Ron rounded on Akil. "That's no reason for her to hurt herself! She doesn't have to do it alone." He'd spoken louder than he meant - well, maybe not - and his words seemed to fill the whole space, bouncing off the walls and coming straight back to him.

Akil threw up his hands and then leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms.

Mesi handed the canteen back, smiling briefly. "Let me tell you what it means in English first, so you can put the feeling behind it - it goes like this -"

Twenty minutes later, the desert sun had never looked so beautiful.

*

What's Egypt like? It's always warmer than I think it should be and the food's very strange. Have you ever eaten a chickpea? I'd never even heard of one before. But now I eat them all the time in more bloody ways than you can imagine.

That's a terrible way to sum up a country but I don't know what else to say. It's nothing like England. But sometimes it's not all that different, either. Maybe because this place is so old? Past is present, there's nothing new, it's like everything's been done and done again.

Enough about me. Is your gran any better?

*

She asked him in the lobby. Why she couldn't have done it somewhere else, anywhere else, Ron didn't know, but she caught up with him in the lobby and that's where she asked him.

"I was wondering - I heard it was your birthday - could I buy you a coffee?"

He looked at Mesi, then away. She was smart, she was strong, she was pretty, he liked working with her - and at some point in the evening, in some way or another, she would ask him to talk about himself.

It could go two ways, from there.

He could tell her a quarter of the truth, pretend it was the whole, and anything that might happen between them would sooner or later spiral down into the gap left behind. Or he could tell her everything, or nearly so, and she would back away or run away and the gulf would be different, but no less wide.

"I can't," Ron said, and he didn't have to fake regret. "But thanks for asking."

Mesi shrugged. "Okay. Ilâ l-liqâ'."

With a little wave, she merged back into the crowd, her dark plait swinging behind her. Carefully not-looking behind him at Ian's counter, where the proceedings were surely being watched with interest, Ron headed off in the opposite direction.

At home, ta'miyya in one hand, Ron closed his bedroom door and, since Ian would be home soon, locked it. He had a number of guests waiting on his windowsill. "You're not getting any of my sandwich," he said, flinging up the sash.

When a satisfactory exchange of Owl Treats and packages had been completed, Ron settled down on his bed to eat and open presents. Two pairs of cargo pants from Mum, bringing him ever closer to his goal of having one for each working day, plus a stationery set. The picture of subtlety, that was his mum. Next was a - surprise, surprise - book from Hermione-and-Viktor. Then a subscription to a Quidditch magazine from Ginny, an assortment of sweets from Fred and George that he would be certain to try out on Ian, and in the last package, a container of rich black dirt and a packet of strawberry seeds.

They'll need lots of light, the attached note said, in a handwriting that was becoming familiar, but I've done a bit of work on this dirt, so water shouldn't be an issue. They should grow quickly and give you a little taste of home.

Ron turned the package over in his hands, thinking of plump ripe berries from his mother's garden, of breakfast battles with Harry over the last of the jam. Harry would have gone without rather than settle for blueberry, and Ron had known it, so no matter how fierce a fight he'd put on, he'd always lost with good grace.

He weighed the seeds in his hands, thinking. They could've been meant for him, really meant for him. They could've been meant for somebody gone, maybe Neville wished or even pretended that that somebody could read these words, plant these seeds. Or they could've been a coincidence, who didn't like strawberries?

He knew what he wanted to think.

He would plant them in the morning.

*

"Your brother and I, we have some news," Fleur said, five minutes in to his post-birthday dinner.

"What?" Ron asked. He was fairly sure he knew, though, and a better question might have been when or where or what will I have to wear?

Not that he would be able to attend, of course. Work was just too pressing.

"We marry each other next month!"

"Congratulations!" Ron considered what she'd said. "Next month?"

"Over Easter," Bill put in. "Ginny's got permission to go home for break, and I've vacation coming up. It's the perfect time. Everything in the garden will be blooming -"

"It's going to be at our house?" Ron would've pegged Fleur for the type to want something a little fancier than a garden wedding. Especially a gnome-riddled garden wedding.

Bill leaned forward. "Keep a secret?" When Ron nodded, he went on, "We actually, ah, had a really nice ceremony already. At a church near Fleur's house. Over Christmas."

"You're already married?"

"You say it to nobody?" Fleur asked anxiously.

"No, of course not."

"And you will be there at Easter, since you could not at Christmas?"

"Well," Ron said, "well. . . I'll try, but you know how things are. . . ."

"Not a problem," Bill said. "I'll take care of it."

And, Ron thought, heart sinking, he would. Bill had worked for the goblins long enough to have any number of favours stored up, and he wouldn't have to call in many to get a day or two off for his little brother.

He spent the next half-hour dreaming of a scenario involving Ian, Polyjuice, and a little bribery. Tricky, but it just might work. . . .

Fleur excused herself as they paid the bill, and after a few minutes of awkward quiet, Bill turned to Ron. "You don't have to worry about Dad, or Ginny," he said. "And I can take care of Charlie, and Fred, and George. But with Mum," Bill sighed, spreading his hands, "with Mum, you're on your own."

Ron nodded. Acknowledgment, not agreement.

"Ron," he said gently, "it's time."

Across the restaurant, heads were turning: Fleur had re-entered the room. Ron pulled a few Piastres from his pocket and placed them down for tip. "Come on," he said, "let's go meet your wife."

*

Everyone knew that Ron Weasley, Harry Potter's best friend, had been kidnapped by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. It hadn't been in the Daily Prophet, it hadn't been on the wireless, but everyone knew just the same.

What everyone didn't know was this: it had been his idea in the first place.

Harry had been sitting alone, last one in the common room, staring into the fire. The flames had been low and in Ron's memory it was a room of shadows, everything stretched too large and too dark. He'd come down the stairs silently and taken his place on the rug beside his friend.

"You're going, aren't you? Soon?"

Harry had nodded, still staring straight ahead. Ron hadn't minded; it was easier to keep talking that way. "Let me go first. Let him take me first. If he has something he thinks you want, he'll be overconfident. He'll make mistakes. And," he took a breath, Harry's eyes on him now, intense and huge, "and you'll have him."

They'd stared at each other then, and in that moment Ron had been back on the giant chessboard, and he'd thought - Merlin help him, he'd really thought - that Harry had been there too.

Nodding, finally, Harry had reached out to clasp Ron's arm; Ron had put his hand over Harry's and squeezed.

Everyone knew that Harry Potter had gone in to rescue Ron Weasley from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and everyone knew that only Ron Weasley had come out.

*

Ron squinted against the sun. He was hot, he was bored, and he was getting tired of looking at sand.

"This is ridiculous," Mesi said. "He's going to have to admit he can't translate that by himself sometime. Why not now?"

"Now would be good," Ron agreed. He shifted against the mudbrick wall of the mastaba, trying to get as much of himself in the shade as possible. "But I predict it will be at least another," he made a show of checking his watch, "twenty-five minutes before he comes out of there."

She giggled, and Ron smiled. It seemed she had decided to deal with any potential awkwardness between them by pretending that last week had never happened, and that was fine by him.

"We could go back down there," Mesi suggested after a moment. "Stand around, breathe down his neck, annoy him 'til he gives up."

"Won't work," Ron said, in a voice of long experience with the type. "It'll only take longer, because of all the time he'll spend lecturing us."

Sighing, Mesi picked up a flat-edged stone and began dragging it through the dirt beside her. Before long, Ron did the same. They'd found the opening to the underground shaft with very little trouble that morning, which in his opinion meant chances were good it didn't lead to a burial chamber at all. But Akil had been at it for hours, trying to make sense of the carvings at the very bottom of the tunnel.

Ron was just adding pointy teeth to a lopsided dragon when he heard a shout. He scrambled to his feet and stuck his head around the hole in the rock, peering down into the inky blackness. "All right down there?"

He couldn't understand Akil's response so, shrugging, he lit his wand and began climbing down the ladder. Mesi followed right after, bits of dirt from her shoes falling in his hair as they went deeper and deeper into the earth.

The desert sun had been hot enough, but it was stifling here, out of the open air. Akil began talking before Ron's feet touched ground. "Affirmations of piety here," he said, pointing, "prayers to Osiris here, all standard for a false door. Now -"

"Samehini?"

Akil sighed. "False door. Used by the spirits of the dead, yes?"

"I know what one is," Mesi said. "I'm just wondering why we've been sitting around while you stared at a door that doesn't go anywhere?"

"If I had been allowed to finish my sentence," Akil said, "you would by now know that the text below is more interesting. You would have also been reminded that false doors are nearly always found in the aboveground rooms of a mastaba."

"So -" Ron searched for just the right thing to say, the thing that would make Akil feel all his hard work was immeasurably appreciated while encouraging him to cut to the chase so that Mesi didn't explode. "So is there a burial chamber behind there, you think?"

By the look on Akil's face, that probably wasn't it.

"Yes," Akil said tightly. "I'm sure the fact that it was made up to look something it wasn't and that the rest of the language was so esoteric it took me three hours to translate means there's nothing to worry about. Please, by all means, go ahead and open it."

Mesi pushed her way to the front and set about doing just that. She used some spells Ron knew and some he didn't; it wasn't long before a long vertical crack appeared in the wall, and a section of rock swung inward just after. Mesi grinned, and took a step over the threshold into the room beyond.

Ron realised something then, or caught a glimmer of it, at least, and he lunged forward to grab Mesi and spin her around in his arms. She didn't struggle or protest, maybe because she trusted him that much, maybe because there wasn't time.

What came next was huge and hot and bright, flaming bright. Ron squeezed his eyes shut, Mesi buried her face in his chest, and then, just as Ron was certain they would all be turned to cinders, there was darkness.

Ron coughed as Mesi disentangled herself. He felt like he'd just snogged a dragon. "Akil?" he managed.

Re-lighting his lantern, Akil stepped away from the far side of the shaft, where he'd flattened himself against the wall. "I didn't expect that," he said, in a tone of wonderment, not self-defence. "Although, of course, it makes a certain amount of sense." He gave a little laugh. "His spirit passed through that door, all right."

"So that was - the mummy?" Mesi asked.

"Transcendentally, yes," Akil said, "that was the Governor Medir, unless I'm very much mistaken. I wonder how it was done - spells to change the spirit into an elemental aren't unheard of, but normally the transformation would happen right away . . . " Ducking around them, he went into the burial chamber, muttering to himself.

"Maybe this guy wanted the chance to smite Egypt's enemies one last time," Mesi said.

"Are we Egypt's enemies?" Ron knew what he thought the answer to that was, and since he didn't like it, he hoped she'd have another one.

"Of course we are," she said cheerfully. "We're removing state treasures on the behalf of private investors. But if we didn't, somebody else would - and they'd get hurt trying. Really, we're saving the Berrani from themselves."

"Since you put it that way," Ron said. He made an after-you gesture towards the doorway.

She took a step, then turned back, pulling her canteen from around her neck. "Here," she said, "you sound like you need it."

Ron followed her in, trying to ignore the uncomfortable prickle of association going up his spine. A vengeful disembodied spirit was never a good thing to have around.

*

If Hermione knew what'd been going on round here, she'd never let me live it down. See, Salih - he lives here in the flat - Salih brought home a cat that he found Merlin knows where. Three days, and she rules us all. I daren't sit in the chair that's actually comfortable, that's hers, now. Her dish is never empty, and all of us - all of us! - keep her sandbox cleaner than our toilet has ever been. I don't even think about it, it's like my hand operates of its own accord, reaches right down to pick up the little spade. . . .

I have absolutely no trouble believing that she's some Egyptian deity incarnate.

Speaking of. . . Last week we were out on a job, my partners and me, and we sort of, ah, let loose an ancient mummy-ghost-thing. A pretty damn ticked-off one. This kind of thing happens, apparently, and Mesi says spirits dissipate out in the desert anyway. Too bloody hot for them to hold together, or something. She's probably right, but it'd be awfully nice to know for sure.

*

"What do you mean, you can't read it?" Ron demanded. "You've lived here since you were seven!"

"It's not even the same alphabet!" said Ian, taking a step back. "It's all squiggles! How could I possibly learn squiggles?"

Ron opened his mouth, realised that he was in danger of using a Hermione-phrase like 'mindless sense of cultural superiority', and settled for whapping Ian lightly on the side of the head with the newspaper before taking it off to his room.

His other flat mates could help, easily, but Ron wasn't in a hurry to ask either one of them. 'Read this and tell me if you see stuff that's mysterious or weird or indefinably evil' was a fine direction to give Ian, because he was so blissfully Ian that he'd actually do it. Other people would ask questions and expect answers.

Ron flopped on the bed. He'd been watching the wizarding paper since the day it had happened - that was easy to do, pay a little more and you could get a translation charm layered on - and the Muggle English papers, too. And nothing. He was going to have to go back out to the tomb, that was all there was to it. And he would, as soon as he'd rested up a bit. . . .

It was early evening when Ron left his room, wand in his pocket, the Everlasting Lantern Bill and Fleur had given him for his birthday clipped to his belt. He went to the kitchen to fill his canteen and found Ian there, frowning into a cupboard.

"Want to go out and find something to eat?" Ian asked, letting the cupboard door slam.

"Nah," Ron said, "I've got to go somewhere."

"Oh, well, I'm going to, before I die of starvation. Want me to bring you something back?"

"Don't worry about it," Ron said, turning off the tap and screwing the lid on his full canteen. "I'm not really hungry."

Ian stared, widening his eyes as dramatically as possible. "You. Not hungry. Okay, that's it." He pulled his wand out of his pocket and began advancing on Ron.

"What the -?"

"Taking your temperature," Ian explained. "Been thinking for days things weren't right with you - this just proves it -"

There was a scuffle, and Ron had two wands at the end of it. He reached up and tucked Ian's onto the little ledge over the door - it was handy, having height on practically everyone - slung his canteen around his neck, and Disapparated.

The desert was still a world of hot, even with the sun starting to lower in the sky, and it took Ron a moment to get his breath properly in the scorching air. He was going to have to learn how to deal with this heat. His first proper Egyptian summer was fast approaching, and every day he was a little more sluggish, a little more headachey. It wouldn't do.

Ron took a long drink of water, and set off across the sand. Out here, Mesi's theory seemed a thousand times more probable, but there was still a dark feeling he couldn't shake, and he pressed on.

Five minutes, and he was at the mastaba. Ron found the door again without too much trouble and realised the moment it opened that he'd done something entirely stupid: it was a long way down and he'd brought nothing remotely like a ladder. After a moment's thought, he unlaced one of his shoes and Transfigured the string into a decently sturdy rope. He attached it to the wall with the strongest sticking charm he could muster, and started down.

It was a lot darker in the tomb when he was on his own. Ron turned his lantern as bright as it would go and held it high. The walls were covered in hieroglyphs, and he was willing to bet they contained clues to the deceased's plans for the afterlife. Not that he could read them.

He moved around the room quietly, trying to get a feel for the kind of man this Medir had been. A self-important bureaucrat, he decided finally, his hands on the lid of the sarcophagus. A man who'd thought the world wouldn't turn properly without his help.

Not an evil man, he thought with relief, just one who felt he owed it to his country to stick around. . . unless he, Ron, were full of shit, in which case all bets were off.

He walked round the room again. There was a chest along one wall; when he shifted the heavy lid, Ron found four pottery jars within, the top of each shaped like the head of a god. "Aha," he said aloud. The mummy's internal organs - or what remained of them - would be inside.

He knelt, thinking. He wasn't well-versed in tracking spells, especially spirit-tracking ones, but surely one could be done with something as unique and important to a person as a major organ. Akil would know. After a moment of considering his chances of getting Akil to come out here again, Ron reached in and carefully lifted the nearest jar. He wasn't about to open it. Whichever body part he had, it would have to do.

It was tough going back up the rope with a jar hugged to his chest, but Ron made it eventually, breathing hard. He waited around a bit, in case Medir wanted to come back and take issue with Ron making off with bits of him. But nothing happened, and not on his walk to the Apparition point, either, not even a sandstorm.

He stood there for a moment, considering. It was Friday night, the first time in recent memory that one of their "weekends" had coincided with the rest of the world's weekend. . . where might Akil be?

Easy.

The whirlwind chaos that was downtown modern Cairo took some getting used to under any conditions, but after the silence of the desert, it left Ron reeling. He'd not been here much, maybe twice at most; he'd never felt at home in Muggle London, and this was busier, louder, crazier. Horns honked and people yelled in Arabic, and as the crowd swept Ron along he looked out at the street, certain that death by vehicle would result if he tried to cross it on foot.

Past was not present, here. Cairo was moving on.

Over the years, Muggles had painstakingly copied down spells they'd found in pyramids, on the walls, in the coffins. And Egyptian wizards had very quietly come along behind and stolen these texts, left altered copies in their places, and placed the originals in their own great library close to the Muggle one.

And, Ron realised with relief, he had chosen his Apparition point well, and no street-crossing would be required. He was there.

The quiet inside the library was glorious. He walked the floors, finding Akil in an out-of-the-way corner on the third level. He was sitting just as Ron had imagined he would be, taking up a whole table with his books, scrolls, and scattered bits of parchment. He didn't look up as Ron approached.

Ron cleared his throat.

"Yes?" Akil frowned, not as if he was curious as to why Ron was standing there with a canopic jar under his arm, but a distracted, can't-you-see-I'm-trying-to-work-here frown.

Sensing that his hold on Akil's attention would be short-lived, Ron explained quickly.

Akil sighed. "I would not have thought this necessary," he said. But he seemed to realise that Ron wouldn't be going away anytime soon, and moved a few books aside to make room for the jar.

"Thanks," Ron said, placing it on the table. And then, "Ew," as Akil took the lid off, and he unfortunately caught a glimpse inside.

"Lungs?" Akil said. "That should do."

"How can you tell?">

He pointed to the god's head on the lid. "That is Hapi. Now, stand back, please -" With his wand, Akil drew a cross in blue light on a blank piece of parchment. "This is the most basic spell. It will tell us if any of Medir's ka remains to the north, south, east, or west of this part of his body."

Ron nodded.

Akil began, moving his wand over the jar's opening and saying something in Arabic. Ron stared at the parchment, but there was nothing, not the faintest glimmer of light. Akil paused, then repeated the spell.

Still nothing.

"You have your answer. The ka has passed entirely from the earth."

"Thank you," Ron said again, as Akil replaced the lid and rolled up the parchment. Looking up, he saw that they were being watched: Mesi, looking rather un-Mesi-like, was standing nearby. Noticing Ron's eyes on her, she smiled at him, then bore down on Akil.

"It has been three minutes since my sister left the house," she said. "That gives you seven to arrive at the restaurant."

"Yes, thank you," Akil said, opening up a book with renewed vigour.

Mesi rolled her eyes and turned to Ron. "They'll be perfect for each other," she said, "if I can ever get them to meet."

Ron wasn't really listening. He'd been wrong. He should feel relieved, and foolish, and he did; but also confused and off-balance. "Mesi," he said, nodding back towards the table, "you know what we were doing?"

She nodded.

"Then - tell me. What are you thinking?"

She tilted her head. "Really? Honestly?" He nodded. "All right. . . I'm thinking I told you, and you didn't listen, but I don't think you would have listened to anyone. I'm thinking that you see the world as a much more dangerous place than I do." She grinned. "And that's kind of hard, since I nearly kill myself at least once a week."

Ron didn't smile back. He wanted to ask her who she'd lost. He wanted to ask her when she'd seen evil.

But he didn't. For one thing - she was right.

"Would you like some company taking that back?" she asked.

"That's okay," Ron said. Her hair was all loose, in a way he'd never seen it before, and she was wearing a long, flowy sort of skirt. "You look like you have somewhere to be."

"I do, but there is always time. But," she said, raising her voice, "not for you, Akil."

Akil held up three fingers: three minutes.

"One day they'll have a house full of books, Akil and my sister. Books from floor to ceiling, along every single wall. And they will never go anywhere." She frowned, lost in this mental picture. "I wonder what they will eat?"

"You'd better stay and keep an eye on him," Ron said. "And -" he stepped firmly on that little part of himself that wanted to know where she was going, who she was meeting - "have a nice night."

"You also," Mesi said.

Ron removed the jar from beside the frantically-scribbling Akil, and with a wave to Mesi, headed back out to the desert.

*

Hello, I'm Ian. Pleased to make your aquaintance. Assuming this mad bird of Ron's manages to get this to you, that is. I was hoping you could see your way clear to doing me a favour. . .

*

Ian opened the door to a dark-haired man who was the very definition of unassuming. "Yes? Can I help you?"

"I'm Neville," the man said, "a friend of Ron's from England. Someone owled me?"

"Oh!" Ian said, rocking back on his heels a bit. He realised now he'd been hoping for a brisk sort of person who would order Ron around in a tone that brooked no argument - a male version of his own mother, in other words. It didn't look like he'd got his wish. "That was me," Ian said. "Do come in, I hope the trip didn't put you out too much. . . ."

"Not at all."

Her Highness, who had taken on approving all visitors as one of her feline responsibilities, gave Neville a long, green-eyed look, then silently padded back across the room to her armchair throne. Ian felt encouraged.

Lowering his voice, Ian said, "He doesn't know you're coming. He told me what he'd do to me if I contacted his brother, and that was scary, and then what he promised if I talked to his mum was truly terrifying. So I quit asking permission."

"I'm glad," Neville said.

Ian tried to stare without actually staring. It was tricky. He'd been very good whilst going through the drawer where Ron kept his post; he'd kept his eyes squinted up so that he was only reading names, and one name had occured far more than the rest. One person Ron had actually written back to regularly, and it wasn't his mum or sister or one of his brothers or a girlfriend.

It was, apparently, someone more ordinary than ordinary, and oh, Ian wanted to sit this Neville down and make him tell every single thing he'd ever known about Ron.

He shook himself. "Right. Well, I told you what's been happening. He's missed three days of work now, and with our bosses, that's not on. He's ill, he needs a doctor, he won't listen to me. Think you can talk sense into him?"

Neville smiled, slowly. "I don't know about that," he said, "but why don't you see about making an appointment? For this afternoon, if they'll have us." He picked up the shabby leather bag he'd come in with. "Which way?"

"Down that hall, and to the right. Do you want me to show-?" But Neville was already walking, and Ian basked for a moment in the relief of not being in charge anymore before calling for his owl.

*

Someone was moving about his room in a way that was clearly meant to be quiet, but falling short. Ron cracked an eye open, the dim light in the room hitting his head like a Bludger. It took him a minute to figure out who the hell his visitor was - not surprising, it'd been months since they'd last met, and he wasn't exactly on the list of people who just happened to be in the neighbourhood. "Ian -" Ron coughed, cleared his throat. "You're Ian's fault."

"That I am," Neville said. He gave up on quietly trying to move the chair, and shoved it up to the bed with a sharp push. "And you can't wreak any sort of revenge on him, because you didn't tell him not to owl me."

"Hmph," Ron said. He would have done, if he'd known Ian was thinking of it. . . He liked talking to Neville, yes, but the way they normally did it, from afar. Because then he didn't have to think about why he liked it.

Neville knew what it was like to be a fuck-up. And even though he'd had finished what Harry had started and saved the world, everyone still treated him the same, like it had been some kind of miraculous one-off.

Neville knew, deep down. And if that was it, well, then Ron was using him, and it wasn't nice.

He shifted, pulling on his pillows until he was propped against them, more or less sitting up. There was a chance - a damn good chance - that Neville was using him, too. He'd been all right with not finding out for sure.

"You didn't need to come all this way," he said, staring at the covers. "I'm not at death's door, or anything. Just having trouble getting used to this bloody heat."

"I wanted to," Neville said. He leaned forward, and Ron saw that his forehead was a million creases, an echo of his childhood perpetual state of worry. "And - well-" He hesitated, then pointed at Ron's arm, where it lay on top of the sheet. "This isn't normal, Ron."

Ron swallowed. "It's just dry skin. Peeling, from the sun." Although he hadn't been burnt.

"Along with headache and fatigue and dry mouth and all the other symptoms of dehyrdation?"

"Erm."

"What I heard." Ron made a mental note to kill Ian. "You know I don't know much about medicine," Neville said, "but I spend enough time 'round the hospital to be friendly with some Healers, and we talked about you." He flashed a shy smile. "Hope you don't mind."

"By name?"

"No, no," Neville said quickly. "And one of them worked out here, years ago, and he said it sounded like desert flu. Otherwise known as turning into a mummy from the inside out."

Ron stared. "Pull the other one."

"'fraid I'm not," Neville said. "You don't want that to happen?"

"No!"

"Good," Neville said with a smile, and then, quietly, "that's good to hear."

Ron was fighting panic. "There's a cure, right?"

"Oh, yes," Neville said, "a series of potions, I think. And it doesn't look like you're too far along, yet - you can still bend your fingers, right, and wiggle your toes?"

Ron held up a hand and tried. "Yes - but they feel a little stiff - do they feel stiff to you?"

Neville took Ron's hand in both of his own and gently pushed the fingers this way and that. "Maybe a little. But you'll be fine, when they're done with you. And from what Healer Jenkins said, you're loads younger than most of the people who get this, so you've got that going for you, too."

"So it's usually old people?" Now that he wasn't busy picturing himself all shriveled up, Ron was quite curious. "How do you catch it? Why haven't I heard of it?"

"The way I understand it, you're not just breathing air inside those pyramids, you're breathing trapped spell-residue, too. All sorts, but especially drying spells, yeah? It usually takes years and years to become a problem, and most people don't stay in the business long enough for that."

They lose their life or limbs long before then, Ron thought.

"But you could just be particularly sensitive," Neville went on, and Ron realised that as they'd been talking he'd grown more and more confident, to the point of being really quite reassuring. Ron wondered if this was the way he spoke to his plants when they'd got a bit of root rot.

He thought about what Neville had said, and about what had happened in that mastaba. "Nah, I got about twenty years' worth in one go, not long ago." And while he still knew Mesi had been right, right about everything, now he knew he hadn't entirely been wrong - there had been danger ahead, for himself, and possibly for his friends. A trip to the Healer was in their futures, too.

Neville cocked his head to one side. "I'm almost afraid to ask." He still hadn't dropped Ron's hand and maybe it was just that fact, or maybe it was something more than that, humming under the surface, but Ron thought: He knows who I am. He always has.

He closed his eyes, letting certainty wash over doubt, push it to the bottom. He had some things to work out but that was all right, he didn't have to do it today, or tomorrow, Egypt was starting to teach him something about time.

There was even more ahead than behind, and as long as you were moving forward, there was no hurry at all.

Ron opened his eyes. "What are you doing over Easter?"

*


Author notes: So many people helped and encouraged me with this story! Thank you, thank you, thank you to Dorotea Senjak, Cynthia Black, Hiddenhibiscus, Stacy, Jaimelesmaths, and Penguin Sensei. :x If you're wondering about Fleur's dialogue - I have a Thing about spelled-out accents, and the wonderful Penguin Sensei guided me in word choice so that I could reflect her speech in that way instead.