The Sacred 28

Limpopo South Africa, 1884

Despite what her younger brother Septimus might insinuate, Gilofrey Weasley did not have a crush on Naledi Shacklebolt. Not even a little. Not even at all.

Not even when, on long trips to faraway places, Naledi would lean over Gilofrey’s desk to check Gilofrey's theory and her slim hands would trace the motions of spells Gilofrey had created for her. Not even when, to her surprise and delight, Naledi had spontaneously hugged her after they had successfully managed to break an ancient curse on a temple in Greece by banishing a particularly malevolent spirit (who called himself ‘the Dark Oracle’ and was really just the ghost of asshole named Trophonius).

She especially did not have a crush on Naledi the night they had too much of Ogden’s finest after a long wet weekend in Ireland chasing a banshee. Their kiss—platonic, if really not chaste— was a result of eager anticipation for the ministry reward and no indication of either woman’s predilections.

They were a team, that was all. Ravenclaw Gilofrey Weasley and Gryffindor Naledi Shacklebolt had barely spoken at school until their NEWT year when they were the only female students pursuing a career in curesebreaking. Though Septimus had informed her that it had become more egalitarian in recent years, neither Gilofrey nor Naledi had been invited to join the ‘Slug Club’ along with their male peers. While the NEWT year boys of note plied the old spider with candy and flattery, Naledi and Gilofrey had turned instead to their transfiguration teacher, Albus Dumbledore.

It was this strange and wonderful mentorship that had really brought them together, and they’d been inseparable ever since. As it turned out, Gilofrey’s brilliance with runes and arithmancy coupled with Naledi’s bravery and sheer magical capacity created a very, very powerful team. The two had at first, traveled across the world for the Ministry, learning about foreign magics and saving foolish British muggles from curses in foreign protectorates. Then, after banishing a Tokoloshe they found lurking in a rural village of the Shacklebolt family’s native Bechuanaland, they had decided to leave the Ministry for Magic.

………

Bechuanaland, 1883

“Stupid bloody mlungu,” Naledi spat at the British muggle as the two of them modified his memory, “know why these curses are so ancient? Because native people don’t fuck with them!”

Gilofrey looked up at the unfamiliar word. “Is ‘mal-une-gu’ muggle in seTswana?” she asked as they hauled the muggle into a ditch behind a soldier’s bar near the British encampment. Naledi grunted noncommittally.

“Let’s just get a drink,” she said, and the two apparated to the nearest Wizarding camp.

Southern Africa was fairly low on the Ministry for Magic’s watch list; after all, the magical people of the area had their own systems of government and stayed mostly out of the way of their own muggles. Small communities of muggleborns who called themselves ‘sangomas’ interacted with non-magical populations, even lived openly among their muggle neighbours, but there was a general stigma that prevented most wizards and witches from interacting with their local communities. Their wards, for the most part, kept muggle colonisers off their lands, and they had non-interference agreements with the Ministry that meant as long as British wizards didn’t take any part in British muggle imperialism, Southern African wizards would stay out of muggle politics. It was a strong-ish policy. The sangomas were vocally against it, but they were mostly compliant in staying out of the way for fear of their own local magical governments, and a few on-hand Ministry wizards who kept British muggles from infringing on magical territory.

“Shacklebolt! Weasley!” called Anthony Borrell, a South African muggle-liaison officer. Gilofrey gave him a cheery wave but Naledi just scowled and stalked off to their tent. With an apologetic smile, Gilofrey followed her.

“What’s your problem?” she asked, walking in to find Naledi unscrewing a bottomless flask of firewhisky. Naledi taken a swig, wincing.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, her voice low and harsh. Gilofrey took the bottle from her and drank.

“Try me,” she said. Naledi took another swig and they sat taking turns in silence until the whisky loosened Naledi's tongue.

“Y’know why we’re called Shacklebolts?” she asked. Gilofrey shook her head, lighting a cigarette, taking a puff, and then passing it to Naledi. Naledi took a long drag as Gilofrey began to roll one for herself.

“Why?” she asked. Naledi was not looking at her, staring moodily at the tent’s entrance.

“Shackles and bolts” she said tonelessly. “It’s the surname my grandad chose when he went to negotiate between the Tswana government and the Ministry, he wanted to remind himself of why he’d come. To free the slaves. He couldn’t—“ she broke off and took a swig, changing subjects. “He stayed for my grandmother— she was a Fawley but her Mum was from an old Naro magical family so she took the name when she married him. My Da told me when I told him I was on assignment here. Grandad hated non-interventionism, but the Tswana magical council wanted it so, yeah. Here I am.”

Gilofrey played with the flask, staring at her hands. They sat in silence for a moment, Naledi brushing angry tears from her eyes and Gilofrey thinking of all the things she’d seen— all the muggles she’d saved just because they were British— and she felt sick. Steeling herself, she stood and strode over to the cabinet where she put on the kettle. The silence stretched like taffy, sticky and tense, as she used her wand to summon the bags and hasten the boiling of the water. Finally, she set one mug beside Naledi and wrapped her hands around the second.

“So,” she said, “bugger the Ministry. What should we do?”

Naledi looked at her incredulously. “What, so we just go back to England and work freelance or something?” Gilofrey shrugged.

“Or we could stay,” she offered, “and protect the right people for a change.” Naledi snorted.

“Yeah, alright,” she said, “you would give up your career and risk being exiled by the ministry to what? Be a rebel insurgent?”

“It would be terribly Gryffindor of me,” said Gilofrey. She thought of all the hand-me-down school robes she had transfigured from Gryffindor to Ravenclaw, all the rowdy dinners where her siblings sat on the other side of the hall together, the lonely Christmas mornings in the Ravenclaw tower, how supportive her parents tried to be and how confused she knew they had been. I am brave, she thought, watching Neladi scrutinize her, I have always had the courage to be different. She tried for a grin.

“It certainly isn’t smart,” said Neladi, shaking her head. But she was smiling now. Gilofrey may not have had feelings for Neladi, but if she did she would have definitely done anything to see Neladi smile. “I think we can make this work, actually. But first? Can we hex Borrell?”

“We can absolutely do that,” said Gilofrey, “lead the way."
….

Limpopo South Africa, 1890

The Motswana government had kicked them out pretty quickly, threatening the Ministry for Magic with dissolution of the non-intervention policy and ICW action. Most of the South African magical communities had been equally hostile, especially larger magical kingdoms like the Xhosa and the Zulu who, like the Mostwana, were exceptionally segregated between magical and non-magical populations.

And then there were those like the Venda and the Khoisan, whose small communities were often openly mixed between Wizard and Muggle. Gilofrey and Neledi lived for several years among the Khoisan people of Bechuanaland and learned their indigenous animagery, a shapeshifting which the Khoisan called a trance and the Ministry called ‘therianthropy’, as though it was a disease and not an ancient magic. Neledi was a python, Gilofrey a rabbit. After the Ministry inevitably issued a demand for their arrest they began spending a great deal more time in animal form, guarding local magical communities by night and keeping an ear out for news of where they were needed.

They were needed everywhere, as it turned out. Sangomas were doing their best to fight the horrors of colonialism but the horrors were emerging from everywhere and they were completely unfamiliar with muggle weaponry. The best Neledi and Gilofrey could do half the time was just to educate locals on how to deal with bullet wounds and jam pistols. The other half was spent trying to alleviate the hunger and despair all around them. There were times when it seemed that human evil knew no bounds; when the suspicion of an African muggle community (rightfully distrustful of the British) refused their help and they watched hopelessly as the British and the Portuguese burned through the countries like fiend fyre, destroying whole villages and peoples in a matter of days. There were times when they had found themselves caught dueling the wizard counterparts of European armies, unable to break free in time to help the non-magical villagers. These times were many and varied and unyielding, and Neledi and Gilofrey knew that they could only ever fight the symptoms of the diseased system that wrecked its havoc on the continent.

Yet there were good times, too. Victories like when Gilofrey created an impregnable shield charm that stood up against all British wizarding knowledge or when Neledi had managed to drive off an entire battalion of soldiers by making them think they had been cursed. There were days when they would sit and drink banana beer and swap spells with whichever community they were staying. The more time they spent as animals, the simpler their needs became. They became less self conscious, curling together for warmth and comfort, shedding their prudish humanity.

One night Gilofrey awoke from a dream in which she and Neledi were both snakes, twisting around each other in impossible ways, their smooth skins pressed so tightly and feverishly together that she could not tell where Neledi ended and she began. When she opened her eyes she felt Neledi’s stomach pressed to her back, Neledi’s arms around her, their legs tangled.

“Ledi,” she whispered, and felt Neladi’s breath come in sharp at the back of her neck.

“Gil,” Neledi whispered back, her voice slightly strangled, “I, er,”

“I’m sorry,” said Gilofrey, untangling herself, she looked at Neladi and felt her own breathing stutter. Her pupils were blown and her lidded, her skin glowing with a thin sheen of sweat.

“Don’t—“ said Neledi, and she bared her teeth in frustration. “I mean, I don’t…”

“…mind” Gilofrey finished, and Neladi swallowed and nodded. Gilofrey felt her entire body flush and realized, with an embarrassed thrill, that her nipples were peaked through her thin nightdress. Neledi seemed to have noticed as well.

“Would you—“

“I wouldn’t,” said Gilofrey immediately, “mind. I wouldn’t mind.” She gulped and moved back towards Neladi who moved back towards her and softly, hesitantly, she placed her lips in a dry, chaste kiss upon Neladi’s.

It wouldn’t have mattered if they had touched even the most calloused soles of their feet together— the feeling of Neladi’s skin, of her proximity was enough to send Gilofrey reeling. She kissed her again, harder this time, and Neledi’s lips parted with a moan. Gilofrey trembled.

“Can I—“

“Please,” she said urgently, and then they were on the sleeping mat and Neladi was on top of her, her hands pushing at Gilofrey’s nightgown, Gilofrey slipping her leg between Neledi’s and groaning at the slick heat of her, needing Neledi’s hands to slip just a bit lower, to touch her—

“Muffling charm,” Neledi panted, sitting up to cast non-verbally, without a wand. Gilofrey felt a familiar thrill at Neledi’s powerful magic, and rolled her hips involuntarily. Neledi keened.

“Oh sainted Isolt do that again,” she begged, her voice high and pained. Gilofrey panted, rocking hips into Neledi’s.

“Please,” she said again, her breath short and begging, and Neledi seemed to read her mind, running her hand down to hover between Gilofrey’s thighs. Gilofrey could not think coherently; her mind was fuzzy with pleasure and a dull throbbing pain that ached for release. Neledi slipped a finger over some center of pleasure and Gilofrey hissed at the sensation, nearly losing control. Her hips bucked of their own accord; her trembling fingers slipped inside of Neladi and then over the swollen bud of her quim, pressing in the same frenzied circles she felt Neladi rubbing into her, babbling incoherently.

“Ledi—“ she gasped, “I— I’m—“ her moves were jerking, erratic, and though she felt that it was perhaps unfair to reach whatever end seemed fast approaching first, she knew that there was nothing she could do short of stopping and if she did that she would almost definitely explode. Both of them had grown shaky, clinging to each other, moving in desperate jagged tandem, their breath ragged.

And then in a burst of white hot pleasure Gilofrey felt herself seize and gasp, her entire body shaking and radiating with release. She saw Neladi tip her head back in agony and, with a last push of strength, Gilofrey rocked her up against Neledi’s quim which was impossibly hot and wet and desperate. Neledi gasped and curled inward, shaking, and Neladi gently slid her fingers back and forth until both lay on the floor of their tent breathing as though they had just run across the entire continent.

“Fuck,” said Gilofrey, and Neledi laughed, the most genuine laugh Gilofrey had heard since they had left Britain.

“That is what it’s called,” she quipped, smiling, lacing her fingers through Gilofreys. They lay there giggling, holding hands, both of them marveling at each other’s softness and warmth. Gilofrey, to her surprise, felt a gentle throbbing rise again in the base of her stomach.

“Really?” She asked, kissing Neledi softly, languidly, luxuriously, “can we try it again?”

……….

Everyone needs a holiday. They spent a few days in the quiet warmth of each other’s company, making love and talking softly about things they hadn’t been able to say for years, those intimate things that even they, who knew eachother’s fears and regrets and dreams and long-past secrets, were only just starting to understand. The years they had spent loving each other melded seamlessly into new patterns; their magic became so wrapped up in the awareness of each other’s bodies and each other’s magic that they were able to instinctively cover each other in battle, to know what hex the other would need help casting before the hex had reached the other’s lips. They were a force to be reckoned with, a never-ending defense against the dark forces of the empire. Gilofrey began to write theories of love-magic, complicated technical theories about emotion and bonding creating sympathetic magic which rivaled in strength any of the one witch or wizard who participated in. She began to experiment, with Neledi’s help, in blood-bonding using the help of a Swazi sangoma who knew more about sympathetic magic than any celebrated wizard in the global north had ever known.

Though they spent weeks, even months apart sometimes— Gilofrey with her experiments, Neledi spreading their knowledge and resources to far-flung and despair-ridden magical communities— they began to dream each other’s dreams and could, with enough focus, communicate through images they thought to each other across miles of terrain. By the time the years, Gilofrey had written hundreds of feet of parchment on how dark magic could be subverted to an equally powerful light magic: through love.

Neledi teased her, of course, but she herself had checked the arithmancy and practiced the spells and could not deny that, even if irreplicable in anyone but them, it was real. “Who will you send these to?” she would tease every once and a while, tracing the wrinkled lines that creased Gileroy’s freckled forearms.

“Someone who will know how to use them,” she would say, because she didn’t know. Neledi would laugh, pulling her into her arms.

“You write too much,” she would say, kissing her, “put those hands to better use.” And so Gileroy would and then they would go back to working and learning and succeeding and failing as the century turned and Europe collapsed in on itself and the countries around them pushed for independence. By the 1950s there were no more British wizards in Southern Africa and the struggles people faced were their own. African ministries began to complain more vocally about the rogue witches living amongst their people and stirring them to action.

They decided it was time to move on; they couldn’t return to Britain but there was a great deal of world out there beyond Britain. Wizarding schools were emerging all over the United States, and teachers were in high demand; Castello Bruxo in New Mexico seemed the perfect place to retire. One winter day in 1970, Gileroy put down her quill and gazed, satisfied, at the volume before her.

“It's done," she said to Neledi, who was writing a defeated “see me” on an AP Defense Against The Dark Arts paper. Gileroy gestured at the manuscript.

“Nice,” said Neledi mildly and went back to grading. Gileroy summoned the paper out of her hand and glared.

“Babe,” said Neledi, who had started saying “babe” during the 60s to Gileroy’s chagrin and delight, “it’s been almost a century. I am so proud of you. I just can’t believe it’s finished.”

“It is,” Gileroy insisted, tapping it to duplicate. Neledi grinned at her, pityingly.

“It is,” she grumbled, wrapping the copy in heavy brown paper, casting an impermeable charm, and pulling out a piece of parchment to scrawl a letter.

Hope this helps! I’ve never been one to believe in prophecy, but it is always wise to explore all of your options.

Speaking of options, get out there! Meet some nice Wizards! You never know.

Love (and love to A, bless him)

G. W. S.

“Who will you send it to?” said Neledi, and Gileroy felt Neledi’s mind reach out to hers insitinctively. Gileroy opened her thoughts.

“Are you sure?” Neledi asked, skeptically. Gileroy shrugged.

“He may not do anything with it,” she said, “but if it gets him out of that drafty old school once in a while it’ll be worth the postage.

“Suit yourself,” said Neledi, coming up behing her to press a kiss to the top of Gileroy’s head. Gileroy leaned back into the strong knot of Neledi’s arms, humming contentedly.

“I mean,” Neledi continued, “if there’s anyone whose working definition of love isn’t particularly strong, it’s Albus Dumbledore.”