Pride

They moved away from the Nile, around which the old civilizations had sprung up, and traveled into the desert. The man they had met at the Egyptian Ministry, Anouar Labib, came to escort them. Muggle guides were unable to manage the magic of the deep deserts. 

“An army was once lost in this desert,” Labib said as they flew. “A sandstorm claimed fifty thousand lives. So legends say.”

“What really happened?” Ginny asked.

“A battle of emperors,” Labib said. “A clash of armies. Mages wielding terrible powers. The west is where the dead rise to make their journey. They rose that day, a horde of what you call inferi, souls condemned to wander the desert. The truth of it was buried in the sands, lost to time. Cambyses, the King of Kings, hid his shame, and the story el-jahil tell is of a sandstorm.”

“That’s what they call muggles,” Bill said to Ron. “Since they’re ignorant of the magical world.”

Ron and Harry laid over the edge of the carpet and watched the landscape passing far below. Columns of white chalk sculpted by the wind. Volcano-shaped mounds that looked dipped in dye, capped with crumbling black basalt. An arch made out of shining crystal, blinding in the desert sun. And between all of this an endless, golden sea of dunes. 

The sand rose and fell in frozen waves, and Ron was mesmerized by the sere shape of the land. Labib set them down on the peak of one dune. Harry found a piece of dark yellow glass. He gave it to Ron. No one knew where it came from, or how it was made. Charlie suggested it was from a bennu or phoenix nest, carried far away by some scavenger.

Muggle roads traveled from oasis to oasis, but Labib took them away from these settlements. Instead, they went to Wahat El-Mafquda, the Lost Oasis, an entirely magical community. 

The oasis waters were a clear aquamarine, with date palms clustered nearby. The water drew creatures of all kinds, desert mice, small and bat-eared desert foxes with white fur, wriggling through the scrub. Gazelles, vultures with black-tipped feathers. A massive erumpent—something like a rhinoceros, except with an explosive horn and much, much larger—wallowed in the deepest part of the water, peaceful even as ibises landed on her, birds with black beaks like scythes.

The smaller animals fled when a pack of gryphons flew in, dipping their great beaks into the water. Charlie wanted to follow them, to watch them hunt as a pack. The gryphons flew away before any decision was made, and a new creature appeared, one that made the oasis unnaturally silent. An alarm went up, clamoring through the town. Residents fled into their homes, and Labib hurried them away, casting fearful glances at the shallow pool of water. Later they learned it had been a nundu. 

“I thought I saw it again,” Harry told Ron later. “That black dog.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a serpopard?”

Harry looked at him disdainfully. “I can tell the difference between a dog and a cat that has a snake coming out of its neck.”

Charlie was the only one disappointed by not getting to see—or play with—the nundu, but everyone agreed to err on the side of not having toxic mist sprayed at them. There were a series of caves near the oasis, which the locals said a sphinx resided in, so they made a day of it.  Ron was fairly confident he could answer a sphinx’s riddle and avoid being gored. He and Harry had answered plenty just to get into their common room. But they also had a large group and could flee if they had to. 

There was a mixed reaction when they found the sphinx tearing strips of meat from a dead ibex. It wasn’t a lion with wings and the head of a woman. It was a lion with the head of a red kite. 

“A hieracosphinx,” Charlie breathed. “I’ve read about them. I thought they were extinct.”

The creature turned a bright eye towards them, placing a massive paw protectively over its kill. Their group slowly retreated.

There were complaints from most of the kids who wanted more of an adventure, more up close interactions with the magical creatures they saw from afar. Charlie looked ready to flat out wrestle the elusive nundu. Labib indulged them by locating a swarm of scarabs, their jeweled carapaces flashing under the sunlight. One with golden wings landed on Ron’s hand. Percy launched into a very informative lecture on the use of scarabs in the Wit-Sharpening potion, which his younger siblings unanimously agreed he did not need. 

The desert sky at night was breathtaking. Ron and Harry snuck out of the tent to lay on the ground and watch the innumerable stars whirl above them. Harry pointed out the different constellations, tracing their shapes with his hands. They weren't only the ones they learned in Astronomy; the Ancient Egyptians had found different patterns in the heavens than the Ancient Greeks, and had different legends. Instead of Orpheus charming animals with his lyre there was a raging hippopotamus. The Seven Sisters were a flock of birds. The Milky Way, which cut through the sky like a livid scar, was Nut, the goddess of the sky and protector of the dead, her body curved protectively around the firmament. 

It was overwhelming under that endless field of stars, those far-off suns and distant shores. The vast cosmos pressed down on him, and when a star shot across its expanse, Ron turned to Harry and saw the same wonderment reflected in his eyes. 

They had left the desert and were traveling down the Nile. Custard rejoined them, flying with a flock of rusty-winged ducks. She got into a tense battle with a bennu, a type of heron that dwelt near thermal springs and vents, with wings that when spread blazed with white fire. Charlie told them bennus were related to phoenixes, and Bill explained that the god Bennu was associated with rebirth in Egyptian mythology. 

Custard was more than up to the task of fighting a firebird, tricking it by diving underwater and dousing its flames. She flew back to them, honking victoriously, shaking water from her singed feathers.

South, in what was once known as Upper Egypt, they stayed in Luxor and explored Ta-Set-Neferu, the Place of Beauty, the Valley of the Queens where the wives and daughters of pharaohs were entombed. 

At the entrance of the Valley, unseen by muggles, was a reflective pool rumored to have regenerative waters. Bill warned them not to touch its glassy surface, and Ron edged around it warily. Did a monster lurk within? Was it some kind of ancient alchemical concoction? Would he be trapped staring at his reflection? The charms against muggles were so strong they made goosebumps on his skin, which was warning enough.

In the tomb of the princess Henuttawy, illusioned so that muggles thought it was caved in, they found a mural depicting a section of her Book of the Dead. As they stared gobsmacked at the images, Bill explained how the winged serpent Nehebkau, the collector of souls, was guarding Osiris, shown as the night sky with his body covered in five-pointed stars. Beneath him was Geb, the father of snakes, the father of Nehebkau, his…suggestive position representative of the ouroboros, a self-perpetuating, eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Nut, the goddess of the sky, arched over a snake-headed Geb. Bill theorized this choice to depict Osiris with stars instead of Nut was perhaps a way of masculinizing Henuttawy. Osiris was appended to the names of entombed women, a joining of the genders in the afterlife.

They’re mum slapped her hand over Ginny’s eyes and pulled her away, while Ron stood next to Harry, furiously blushing. Fred and George fell about, and even Bill was laughing as he contextualized it for them.

“A lot of their mythology is a little…crass under modern social mores,” he said when the twins asked what exactly Osiris and Geb were doing.

“Did they truly need to animate it?” Percy asked snootily. Their parents succeeded in moving them away to look at what they hoped would be the more interesting works of animal-headed gods, their painted eyes watching the family indifferently as they passed, and the princess’ sarcophagus protected with dense spells that crackled menacingly at them if they got too close. A simulacrum had been created for the muggle tomb raiders and was currently on display in some museum. 

“Is it really okay?” Harry asked Bill later that day, after dinner. “To have dug all these people up and put them in museums? Weren’t they meant to stay where they buried them forever?”

Bill picked up his glass, swirling the dark liquid inside thoughtfully. “Are you asking if it’s ethical for me to be a treasure hunter for Gringotts?”

Harry grimaced, but nodded. 

“What I do isn’t exactly grave robbing,” Bill said, smiling at Harry. Ron noticed this made Harry even more embarrassed. He frowned, then looked back at Bill. 

“What’s a curse-breaker do?” Ron asked. 

“Pretty much what it says,” Bill said. “I break curses on different things. It could be decaying spells on tombs, cursed objects, curses that muggles run into. Gringotts sometimes contracts us out to various Ministries to help with tricky cases. It’s not just breaking into pyramids and stealing a dead person’s worldly goods, though sometimes it is that. When it’s a goblin-made treasure in particular.”

Bill took a sip of his drink, something called heqet, which was a thick and sweet barley beer he’d got from an Egyptian witch he knew, in exchange for uncovering a cursed idol buried under her home.

“Goblins have a different idea of property ownership than we do,” Bill said. “Whoever creates a thing is its owner. When someone buys it, it’s actually being leased to them for the duration of their lifetime. Burying it with someone is breaking the lease agreement. It’s a clash of cultures, and there are many goblin artifacts scattered throughout the world, buried for hundreds, even thousands, of years. There are also caches of treasures, lost cities, lost villages, tombs we seek out for ancient knowledge, magical places dangerous to the muggle academics.”

He smiled at the two boys. “It’s not just fighting skeletons and getting piles of treasure. There’s a lot of research I have to do, reports to write, spell analysis, decryption… Egypt is where a lot of curse-breakers start out, mainly because there are so many people in both our world and the muggle world who have worked here uncovering the secrets of the old dynasties.”

Harry listened to Bill’s stories about all the different, exciting, cool things he did as a curse-breaker with stars in his eyes. 

Ron had always looked up to his older brothers, Bill especially, and it did sound like he had a lot of fun at work. Ron had spent his whole life listening to what weird enchantments his dad found on muggle objects, and what Bill did sounded like that but…more. He got to do all kinds of magic, go on adventures, discover new things, and help people who had been cursed.

Ron cleared his throat, glancing at Harry. “So…how exactly do you get to be a curse-breaker?”

Bill hadn’t been able to take an entire month off of work, so during their last week they joined him at a recently uncovered site. It was on a river island southwest of Aswan, a city built on the ruins of the ancient frontier town of Swenett. Swenett had been named after a hippopotamus goddess of childbirth and fertility. It was where the state of Ancient Egypt had begun, an opening to the wealth of the Nile.

The temple was dedicated to this goddess, Taweret. The various Gringotts employees were hopeful that the associated tombs contained the elusive resting place of Neferneferuaten, better known as Nefertiti. 

Wild papyrus reeds grew all over the island. Bill explained that in Egyptian mythology their paradise in the afterlife was Aaru, or the Field of Reeds. There were palm groves and fig orchards, all heavy with fruit, but also mango and papaya trees, trailing vines with heavy watermelons, bushes laden with ruby red pomegranates. The abundance of fruit growing without cultivation was one of the few mysteries the curse-breakers were unraveling. They were warned away from eating any of it. The twins and Ginny did conspire to feed a watermelon to one of the many hippopotami that dwelt in the waters surrounding the island. There were wrinkly baby hippos too, swimming around and munching on smaller pieces floating in the water.

“That dog is here again,” Harry suddenly said, no longer watching the hippos. He was staring at a stand of date palms.

“Where?” Ron asked. 

“It’s gone,” Harry said, sounding a little scared. “How did it even get here? Did it swim through the river? There are a ton of crocodiles!”

“Let’s tell mum and dad,” Ron suggested. “My uncle Bilius saw a grim once…”

“A grim?”

They hurried over to where Ron’s parents were talking with an older woman named Amina, who was the Egyptian Gringotts branch liaison with the Egyptian Ministry. The curse-breakers had set up a staging ground for their work, and she was explaining the process to them.

“It was big,” Harry said when asked to describe the dog. “Big and skinny, but not like it was starving. It also had these weird ears…”

A strange look crossed Amina’s face. “I’ll let the others know to keep an eye out. Don’t approach it, or any other animals you may come across. We’ve set up barriers to keep out most hostile creatures, but you can never be too careful.”

Scabbers was hiding in Ron’s pocket, and he noticed the old rat had begun shivering. Ron patted him, wondering if he should have left him home after all. 

Once the curse-breakers had done setting up, they sat down for lunch and listened to them talk shop. Percy was entrusted with a map of the safe locations for them to explore, the areas of the ruins which had been cleared out by the curse-breakers. 

Straightaway the twins tried to shut Percy in a small pyramid. It was perhaps the oddest structure on the island, as the curse-breaks told them most of it was actually built underground, or had been sunk underground at some point. What was visible was the capstone, the pyramidion, which had been plated in silvery gold electrum. There was a small shaft cut into it, an air vent, that Fred and George had talked Percy into crawling in, whereupon they dropped a boulder to block the exit. Percy’s angry shouting drew Ron and Harry from looking at the other side, and they rolled the boulder away. The twins ran off, Percy chasing after. 

“Want to go in?” Harry suggested, ducking down to peer into the darkness. 

“Alright,” Ron said. While the rest of the pyramid hadn’t been explored, they knew at least the part above the ground was safe. It wasn’t even that big, maybe the size of a small house, and the pyramidion was completely solid except for the air vent. What was strange about it was that it didn’t appear to go anywhere. The curse-breakers thought maybe it was meant as a portal for sunlight, or starlight as it was oriented towards the north where in antiquity two stars had circled the horizon. The stars, the Indestructibles, formed the portal to the afterlife, so the story went.

Ron crawled in first, glad his parents had been putting cooling charms on everything since the first day. It was hot inside, and he suspected the metal exterior made it worse even when not in direct sunlight. 

“Can you see anything?” Harry asked from behind him.

“It’s just really dark,” Ron said. He reached where the shaft abruptly ended. It sloped slightly downhill, so it felt like he was falling a little the whole time. There was enough room for him to turn around, so he did, accidentally bumping his head against Harry’s head.

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” Ron said, pressing himself against the stone wall. 

“It’s alright,” Harry said, a little grumpily. “Can’t see anything…hold on… lumos.”

Ron squinted against the sudden light. “Give a warning next time, yeah?”

“Sorry,” Harry mumbled, looking abashed. “Wait, did you hear something?”

“Hear what?”

Harry turned around and froze. 

“Ron,” he whispered. “The dog! It’s blocking the exit.

Ron tried to look around him. “Move, maybe I can do someth—”

The floor vanished beneath them, and they fell into the darkness.

Ron woke up in a lot of pain. Something had happened to his wrist, and when he tried to move it sent a bolt of agony up his whole arm. He bit his lips together, eyes watering. Harry’s wand was still lit, and he saw they had fallen into a large square chamber. It was hard to make out the walls, Harry’s lumos had gone very faint. The feeling of being watched made his skin crawl. 

He scrambled over to Harry. His glasses had fallen off, and his mouth was open in a slack expression. Worried out of his mind, Ron touched his shoulder, then checked his head to see if there was blood. There was some blood crusted around Harry’s nose, and some drops on the floor, but not that much. It still scared him. 

Harry sat up so fast he nearly cracked Ron’s chin. He blinked, then squinted at Ron. “We fell.”

“Yeah.”

Harry looked around and picked up his wand. The light went out briefly when he summoned his glasses, but quickly came back, and stronger. It filled the chamber with a cool, bluish light. Ron finally got a good look at the walls. 

At first he didn’t understand what he was seeing. It was a large, undulating design, yellow on the bottom and black on top. The yellow part had regular lines cut into it, and the top was ridged in overlapping scales…

Ron turned slowly around, watching the huge design as it peaked and fell in waves, until finally he found it's head. It was a humongous snake, watching them with big eyes like two blackholes. The snake flicked its tongue at them, hissing. 

Harry turned to Ron, worried. “Did you get hurt?”

Ron swallowed, nodding. “My wrist. I think it’s broken.”

“Let me see,” Harry said, scooting closer to him. He carefully took Ron’s forearm, and Ron cringed as pain shot up his arm again. “I can fix it.” Harry tapped his wand where the bone was sticking out oddly, and said, “Episkey.”

There was a horrible grinding that reverberated through Ron’s body, and his bones snapped back into place. He swayed a little, nauseated by the experience. He tested moving his wrist. It still hurt, but it was mobile again, and nothing felt weird.  

“Thanks,” he said. His eyes widened. “Scabbers!”

He quickly checked his pocket, exhaling in relief when he found Scabbers safely tucked away, still warm, still breathing, not squished by the fall. 

The painted snake on the wall began to move, writhing along the walls, hissing.

“He says he’s named Mehen,” Harry said. “He says he’s been waiting.”

A chill washed over Ron. He moved closer to Harry, taking comfort from his warmth. Harry had his brow furrowed, eyes never leaving the snake.

“Waiting for what?” Ron whispered.

The snake stopped.

“For us.”

There was a harsh grinding noise and the room shook. Ron whipped his head around and saw there was a doorway in one of the walls. The giant snake was moving through it.

“He wants us to follow,” Harry said.

“That sounds like a bad idea,” Ron said. “We should wait here. Someone will notice us missing.”

“They won’t be able to get in,” Harry said quietly. “He said…”

“What?” Ron pressed. He rubbed his nose. The air was dry and smelled…old. Used up.

Harry looked at him with a grim expression “He said only the dead may enter.”

Ron shivered, looking at the now empty doorway. Now that the snake was gone, he saw the walls had also been painted with curling waves that rose and fell. There was a long, empty boat floating on them, rocking back and forth.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Ron whispered. “We’re not dead.”

“Not yet,” Harry said darkly. “The snake said he has been waiting for this tomb to be filled.”

Ron looked up at the ceiling, but whatever hole they had fallen through was gone. There was only blackness, painted with twinkling stars.

“Maybe there’s another way out,” he said dubiously.

Harry shook his head. “Remember what Bill said? The rest of this place is underground.”

Ron felt a rush of hope at the mention of his brother. Bill was smart. He would work out what happened to them. But then he remembered how long Bill said it took for them to get into some of the tombs. It could be days, weeks, months. Years.

“If we do what the snake wants, maybe he will let us out,” Harry suggested.

Ron thought it over. They weren’t really lost, they were trapped in a mostly buried pyramid. They wouldn’t be any more trapped if they went into the next room. Between him and Harry, they knew a lot of spells for their age. As long as they were careful and didn’t touch anything, or step on anything, or accidentally activate a rune, or say the wrong thing, or…

Ron looked at Harry. His friend was sweating, his skin was ashen, and he was breathing too quickly. He knew Harry hated confined spaces, and being effectively buried alive was as confined as it got. 

He took Harry’s hand, startling him. He knew Harry was the kind of person who wanted to get things done. Sitting around hoping for a rescue that might never come was the exact opposite of what Harry would do. If the options were between sitting in an empty stone room until they were dead, or walking through a cursed tomb that might kill them, well, they were dead either way.

Ron squeezed Harry’s hand. “Let’s go see. We can always blast our way out if it doesn’t work. The only reason Bill doesn’t do that is because they don’t want to accidentally destroy something valuable.”

The two boys stood up. Ron let go of Harry’s hand so he could get out his wand. He didn’t want to try using his left hand with it still hurting, but he regretted the loss of contact. It had made him feel a lot better about the situation. 

Harry led the way, taking careful steps and pausing near the door. Bill had taught them a few basic detection spells, though they hadn’t had much of a chance to practice anything during their holiday. After making sure the doorway wouldn’t kill them, as best as they could make sure, they stepped through. Ron felt the sheno he carried in a pocket warm up, but subside. 

“Did your thing…do something?” Harry asked. 

“Yeah. I don’t know what it means.”

Harry shook his head, then stepped fully into the next room. Ron followed on his heels, looking around. 

This room was the same size as the first. The walls were decorated with figures of red- and yellow-skinned gods and goddesses. He recognized the style from other tombs they had visited. Usually the painters included the dead person making offerings to the gods, or kneeling to them, or holding hands as they were led into the underworld. Here, the gods stood alone. There were empty spaces, as if the artists hadn’t finished their work. As if they were waiting for someone to die. Ron wondered if there was enough room to paint two thirteen-year-old boys. 

The giant snake was nowhere in sight. 

Besides the looming paintings, there were two statues in the middle of the room. Two dogs were on pedestals, laying down with their heads and ears up. One was black, the other was a light grey, almost white. 

“Is that the dog you saw?” Ron asked, watching as Harry took a few steps closer to the statues. 

“No,” Harry said. “The dog I saw had different ears. Like triangles sort of. This one is supposed to be Anubis, I think. He protects graves. 

“Right,” Ron said. They had seen images of Anubis a lot. “What’s the other one?”

“No idea.” 

The two boys looked around the chamber, wondering what to do. Ron didn’t think there would be just two rooms. There had to be a burial chamber somewhere, maybe more than one. Scabbers started squirming around, so Ron let him out of his pocket. Perhaps his rat could find a smaller way out. They could tie a note to him, if they had parchment. Or ink. 

Sighing, Ron turned around and saw that Harry was poking at the Anubis statue. 

“What are you doing?” Ron exclaimed, hurrying over. “Don’t touch random things!”

“It’s not random,” Harry said, petting the death god’s ears. “They were put here on purpose. Like guard dogs. Harry ran a hand down the statue's back, and to their surprise one of his ears twitched. 

Harry stumbled back, staring at the statue. “Is it alive? I thought it was wood!”

The Anubis statue went still. They both watched it for a while, but it didn’t move again.

“Try the other one,” Harry suggested. 

Grimacing, Ron walked over to the grey dog and tried petting it the same way. He reeled away when its carved tail twitched. 

“Do we have to acknowledge them?” Harry said, tiling his head. “Uh, good boy?”

Ron fell forward, catching himself on the grey dog as the chamber rumbled. Another door opened, opposite to the one they had come through. Ron looked at the statue he held, and gave it another awkward pat. 

“Yeah. Good boy…”

Mystified, Ron and Harry walked through the new door. They were in a narrow corridor, painted all over with stars. It sloped downward, giving Ron the impression he was being swallowed. He looked back and was horrified to see the door closing up again. 

“No!”

He and Harry ran back, but it was a solid wall again. 

“It’s okay,” Harry said, his breathing fast again. “If we worked out how to open it, so can someone else.”

Ron was relieved to hear tiny squeaks near his feet. He scooped Scabbers up and put him back into a pocket. He didn’t want to risk being separated. 

“We should keep going,” Ron said, looking down the passage.

“Not much of a choice,” Harry muttered, but he started walking again. 

It didn’t take long to get into the next room. It was as spacious as the last two, though more disconcerting. One wall had a painting of two huge eyes. 

“The Eye of Horus,” Ron said, recognizing them. “And the Eye of Ra.” 

Both eyes were common motifs for the Ancient Egyptians. 

“The sun and moon,” Harry added, looking at the pair of eyes warily. In the center of this room was a single pedestal with a red sphere sitting atop it. 

The other walls were covered in strange symbols, not like the other hieroglyphs. There were lines, spirals with long tails, upside down Us, tall things Ron thought were flowers. Long ovals with lines sticking down from them. Ron had no idea what any of it meant, all stacked up and lined together in rigid rows.

Ron and Harry checked all the walls again, but the stones were seamless. It didn’t even look like blocks of stone, but a solid cubed conjured into existence. Ron went back to look at the strange symbols, the intermittent empty spaces left between them. Harry bravely went to examine the eyes, and the ball that rested in the center of it all. 

“There are two eyes and one ball,” Harry said. “Is there a spell to make a copy of something?”

“Yeah,” Ron said, distracted. It had to be some kind of code. Was there a key?

“Two dogs, two eyes…twins?”

Ron heard Harry sitting down. There weren’t enough symbols for it to be an alphabet. The Ancient Egyptians hadn’t even had an alphabet. There were hundreds of different hieroglyphs. And with only a few characters, there weren’t many different things you could spell..

“It’s numbers!” Ron exclaimed. 

“What?”

He turned around, smiling at Harry’s confusion. “The writing on the walls. It’s numbers!”

“You think it’s counting something? Or is it maths?”

“Equations,” Ron said, turning back to look at all the blank spaces. “These are unfinished equations. Maybe we have to solve them.”

“Then what’s the ball for?” Harry asked, walking closer to it.

“Be careful.”

“I am,” Harry said, walking around it. “Wingardium leviosa.”

The ball didn’t move.

“Strange,” Harry said, now reaching out to touch it. 

“Harry!”

“What?”

“Don’t touch it with your bare hands,” Ron said, a little annoyed, mostly scared. “It could be cursed!”

“Right,” Harry said, taking a breath. He used his wand and poked at the ball. It wobbled slightly. “So far, so good.” He covered his hand with a sleeve and tried nudging it, which also worked. 

“Be careful with that thing,” Ron said, watching the ball warily. “What if there’s something inside it? It could be a weird egg.”

“I think it’s just a ball,” Harry said, putting his wand away and picking it up with two sleeved hands. 

“I really think we have to solve these problems,” Ron said, waving at the walls. 

Harry ignored him, carrying the ball over to the wall. He held it up to the eye on the left side, the right Eye of Horus. He held it up, and Ron saw the ball was the same size as the pupil. Harry tried pushing it into the wall.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s a red ball,” Harry said nonsensically. He moved over to the right side, the left Eye of Ra. To Ron’s surprise, when Harry pressed the ball to its pupil, the eye flashed with light, and the ball disappeared from Harry’s hand. 

“Shit, that was the only one,” Harry said fearfully, stepping away from the wall. 

But that wasn’t the only thing that happened. Symbols appeared in separate parts of the other eye, symbols like the one on the walls Ron had been looking at. 

“Look!” he said, running over. “What does an eye have to do with maths?”

“It’s diving up parts of the eye,” Harry said, tilting his head. “Fractions?”

The two boys put their heads together to work it out. 

It took a while to decipher the numerals and equations, more time to carve the answers into the stone. They didn’t have anything to work things out on, so they had to triple check they’d actually got the right answers. 

Both boys had seen Ron’s mum conjure glasses and water enough that they were able to replicate it after a few attempts, so they didn’t go thirsty. Ron was getting hungry, though. He didn’t know how long they had been trapped, and the more time passed the more worried he got that no one had worked out what happened to them, and that no one was coming to rescue them. 

Finally, when the last line was scratched in, the room shuddered. Ron looked around for another door opening, but instead saw the pillar the ball had been on sinking into the floor. In its place was a narrow staircase that led deeper into the pyramid. 

“I don’t get it,” Harry said. “Is this supposed to be a game?”

“It felt more like an exam,” Ron said, rubbing his temples. He had a headache coming on. He was tired, hungry, worried about how Harry was doing. He wanted to see his family again. He wanted to go home. 

“A test,” Harry said tonelessly. “Right. Of course.”

Ron looked at him, concerned. “What is it?”

“There are trials in Duat,” Harry said. “The underworld. To prove that you’re worthy.”

Ron nodded, not really following. He remembered Bill mentioning something like that. 

They walked to the center of the room, looking down the stairs. They curved away in a spiral, so they couldn’t see that far. 

“This better be the last one,” Harry said, glaring at it. 

“Do we really want that?” Ron asked. “What if we…”

“We’ll dig our way out like muggles if we have to,” Harry said with determination. “I’m not dying here, and neither are you.”

Harry went down the stairs first, and Ron followed close behind. They went around and around, and he was relieved that the air was getting cooler. Thinking about air gave him yet another worry. Would they run out of it? Were there actual air vents anywhere? Maybe they could crawl through one…

Harry came to a stop at the bottom, and Ron bumped into him. 

“What is it?”

“There’s no way,” Harry said breathlessly. 

“Harry, move let me see.”

Ron pushed at him lightly, and Harry shuffled forward. Ron got a look at the room, and his mind blanked out for a moment. 

It was the room they had fallen into. There was the giant snake Mehen on the wall, the undulating waves of water beneath him. The small drops of Harry’s blood on the floor. 

The only difference was the boat. What had once been an empty vessel now had a group of people standing on it. A group of gods, all facing to the right. On a throne in the middle of the boat sat a hawk-headed god, holding an ankh in one hand and in the other a thin scepter with a strange head. It was Ra, the sun god. Behind him was a goddess with the head of a red kite, and a god with the head of an ibis. Nephthys and Thoth. At the prow was god with a strange hair, almost canine with two triangle ears, the points attached at the head then flaring out. It was Set, holding a scepter with a forked end in both hands, as if prepared to strike. The boat was now hitched to two dogs, a black one and a grey one. Some creature with a crocodile head, a lion body, and hippopotamus legs lurked in the water. The snake kept moving, shrinking, encircling the boat with his coils. 

“What the hell is this?” Ron said, breath coming out in a mist. The room was freezing cold, a cold so deep he could feel it in his bones. He glanced back to the staircase, but it was just a solid wall now. “We’ve heard about this. It’s the sun, right? Making its way through the sky?”

“Ra making his journey through the underworld,” Harry said, pressing into Ron. 

“Is this…” Ron swallowed, putting a hand over his pocket. Scabbers was shivering too. “Is this where we’re supposed to die?”

There was a harsh laugh and both boys jumped. Turning around, they saw another painted goddess, one with golden skin, sitting on a chair in front of a table. On the table it looked like a game of chess was being played. Ron didn’t know the Ancient Egyptians even played chess. There were two other objects on the table, likely other games. 

“That’s Isis,” Harry said, pointing to the ankh she held. 

The portrait of Isis said something neither boy could understand. No one had spoken the language for millenia. 

“There isn’t a tomb,” Ron said, because he really didn’t know what to say in this situation. They were in a room surrounded by pictures of death gods. 

The snake, Mehen, hissed something to Harry. 

“What did he say?”

Harry looked nervously back at Isis, who was smiling in a very unsettling way. “Death goes by many names, and comes in many forms, but in the end it’s all the same. Everything shall fade from the world.”

They stood silently for a moment, huddled together. “That’s—” Ron started to say. 

Isis said something else, in her enchantingly musical voice. Ron wondered why the other paintings in tombs were inanimate. Maybe they just didn’t want to talk to anyone. He tried to commit how it sounded to memory, though he didn’t understand a single thing. 

His thoughts were interrupted by more hissing from the snake.

“What now?” he asked. 

Harry shuddered, then walked towards Isis. “She wants us to play a game. She wants us to choose a game.”

“Great,” Ron said, teeth chattering. “What game?”

Harry began walking towards the wall with Isis, looking at the table where three different games were laid out. It was hard to tell what any of them were, since all had been painted as a side view. One look liked chess, but there were only ten pieces. Another was a box with pegs sticking out of it, topped with the heads of dogs and wolves, or perhaps jackals and wolves. Sort of like cribbage, but one needed cards to play cribbage. It was just a green square, with a lion and a circle on top of it. 

“We don’t know how to play any of these games,” Harry said. He turned around and repeated it in parseltongue. Ron glanced at Isis’ portrait, and quailed when he found her staring right at him. 

Harry made a frustrated noise. “He says he’ll only tell us how if we pick his game.”

Ron looked at Harry. “How are we supposed to know what that is? Snakes and ladder?”

Harry shook his head. “Let’s just pick the one we like best.”

“How? We don’t know how to play any of them!”

“I don’t know!” Harry snapped. 

“Don’t get mad at me,” Ron snapped back. “It’s not my fault we’re down here!”

“Are you saying it’s mine?” Harry asked. 

“No, that’s not—”

“It’s fine,” Harry said, turning away from him. “I know it was probably something I did. It always is…”

“What are you talking about?” Ron asked, heart pounding. He didn’t want to fight. They’d been trapped for hours already, they only had each other and a bunch of creepy portraits that didn’t speak the same language and seemed to enjoy messing with them. What if when they solved whatever this room was they got sent to another? Then another? What if it never ended?”

“Nothing,” Harry said. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s just go with this one.”

Harry reached out for the last image, the one that was a green square. 

“Wait, can we talk about—”

Harry’s fingers touched the wall, then sank into the wall. Harry gasped, pulling his hand back.

“It’s stuck,” Harry said in a panicked voice, moving his arm desperately. He started to reach out with his other hand, but Ron grabbed it. 

“You’ll just get both stuck,” Ron said, trying to control his breathing. “Calm down, let me—”

“Calm down?” Harry said frantically. “My arm’s stuck in a wall!”

“Let me try,” Ron said, pulling on Harry’s stuck hand. He glanced at Isis, and saw her now looking significantly at the empty chair on the other side of the table.

“I think we both have to take it,” Ron said, reaching for the wall. 

“Ron, no! Don’t—”

As his hand touched the wall, the image flashed, and Harry stumbled back holding a thick disk in his hand. Small figurines and marbles fell to the floor, as well as several sticks. 

“Thanks,” Harry said. He said heavily on the ground, setting the object on the floor. Ron gathered up the fallen pieces and carried them over. He sat down right next to Harry, and Harry leaned against him. 

“Sorry,” Harry said. “That was stupid.”

“Yeah, it was,” Ron said, smiling to take the sting out of his words. “It’s not your fault we’re here.”

“You don’t know that,” Harry said, sighing. “Anyway, I think this is Mehen’s game. See? It’s shaped like a snake.”

“How did you know which one it was?” Ron asked.

Hardy shrugged. “I didn’t. I just liked the lion.”

The game, as the snake explained it, was fairly simple. The board was a snake coiled up in a spiral, but there were recesses in it like a checkerboard. The marble fit into these gaps, and the lion stood on the raised segments. The goal was to get from the tail of the snake to its mouth, then back again. They threw sticks to determine how many spaces they moved. If one of them passed over the other, the one passed over was sent back a space. They had to get the exact number of spaces to reach either the mouth or tail. One could also move forwards or backwards, oddly enough.

The boys started playing rather despondently. Neither was in the mood to play a game. They were tired, hungry, cold, scared. Ron was afraid of saying something that might upset Harry, and frustrated with the reckless things Harry had done. The first time Harry sent his lion piece back, he almost snapped at him. Instead, he focused on winning. It didn’t even matter who won.

Harry also became more invested in the game. He complained that Ron’s lion had an unfair advantage, which didn’t even make sense, but he gave Ron a faint smile and on his turn moved his marble backwards, which had the effect of advancing Ron’s lion.

It was absurd to play an ancient board game in their situation, to become so invested in it, but it was a distraction from their raw emotions and the hopeless situation they had literally fallen into. When Harry’s marble finally ended up in the snake’s mouth, they both let out a ragged cheer. When finally, finally Ron had the perfect throw that got his lion out of the serpent’s coils, Harry nearly tackled him to the ground when he hugged him.

“You did it!” Harry said. “You won!”

“Yeah,” Ron said, beaming at him. “Now what?”

The room answers that question. The board and pieces vanished. The temperature dropped again, now dangerously cold. The boys scrambled for their wands, set aside to light the room as they played. Ron helped Harry stand and they looked around. The paintings were gone. All that was left was the snake, the size of a regular snake now, and the water. There was something different about the water too. It looked…choppy. The waves were getting bigger, more chaotic.

Ron took a step closer to Harry and heard a splash. He looked down, and was horrified to see the room was filling with water.

They ran at the walls, kicking the icy water up, shouting and banging onto the stone. Their voices echoed off the walls, going nowhere. There was no one to listen. The water was past his ankles, and he couldn’t feel his feet anymore. 

“Stand back,” Harry said, pushing Ron behind him. “Bombarda!”

The spell exploded against a wall in a loud flash, but when it was over there wasn’t even a mark.

“Reducto!”

Again, nothing. They tried every spell they knew, but it was like the walls absorbed their magic. The water got higher and higher. Harry started talking to himself, which scared Ron more than anything. 

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

Ron grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “Stop it! Nothing is your fault!”

“That’s not true! If it wasn’t for me, everyone would—” Harry broke off, looking confused by his own words.

“It isn’t your fault!” Ron shouted. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying either, but he knew Harry was wrong about something fundamental. “They shouldn’t have treated you like that!”

He pulled Harry into a hug, even as the water surged past their knees. He thought the cold might kill them before they drowned. 

“I want my mum,” Harry said brokenly. “It’s not fair…”

“I want mine too,” Ron admitted. His mum would probably know a spell that would stop them from drowning. Like a bubble that went over your head or something. He tried casting some warming charms, but nothing would stick. His magic just wouldn’t work.

The water reached their waists, then their chests, and soon they were floating, struggling to breathe as the water raised them up to the ceiling. The ceiling was still painted black, still with rows of five pointed stars. Curiously, there was a spot without any stars, just a black square.

Ron stared at that spot for a long time before understanding what it was.

“Harry,” he gasped, swimming towards his struggling friend. Harry wasn’t the best swimmer, but he was able to get around the pond. The freezing water they were in seemed to have sapped all of his strength.

Ron didn’t bother with words. He grabbed Harry’s arm and kicked them over to the shaft they must have fallen through. The water was almost touching the ceiling. He pushed Harry in first, then wriggled next to him. It was a close fit, but their heads were still above water.

Seconds passed, then the water surged up around them. Ron took a final, painful breath as they tumbled through the dark, chaotic whirlpool. He felt like there was a vice around his chest. There was only water, and the arm he desperately clung to. He couldn’t let Harry go. He might never find him again.

There was an abrupt change in direction, and Ron smacked his head against something hard. He needed to breathe. He couldn’t even think anymore, not through the burning strain of his lungs. 

Ron opened his eyes, and to his surprise saw they were heading towards a light. He had a moment to wonder if this was it, if this was the end, then he and Harry were spat back out into the world, a gout of water spinning them across the scrubby grass. 

He gasped, breathing in the cold night air. Everything was loud, everything was too much. Someone was grabbing him, pulling Harry away. He thought he heard his mother’s voice. His vision went black around the edges, and he stopped thinking at all for a while.