Welcome to my new WIP, an adventure story featuring our favorite pair. This story is fully Dramione and is based loosely on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Thanks as always to beta superstar CourtingInsanity! xoxo

The Wolf & The Chain

Prologue

April 23, 2008, The Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt.

The air in the canyon shimmered with heat. To either side of the small group, high walls of sand and rock glowed gold in the punishing sunlight. Outcroppings cast long shadows that contrasted against the glare of the sun on the sand. Hermione let the saliva pool in her mouth and then spat, trying to wash the grit from her tongue. Every part of her was coated in a light dusting of sand - she could feel it collected on her eyelashes and in the inner crease of her elbows. Sweat stuck her linen shirt to the planes of her back and soaked the hatband of her felt fedora. She reached up and tugged the wide brim down further over her eyes and squinted at the men walking in front of her.

Dressed in loose, flowing linen robes, the three dark-skinned men led the way through the winding canyon. Hermione had paid them half their fee in Luxor's ancient wizarding district, while drinking shay bil na'na', the local mint tea in a shady marketplace cafe. The Ministry gave her a deep budget to hire local guides and she always took advantage - it would be stupid of her not to. Her job with the Magical Artifacts Retrieval & Research Division had taught her to be cautious and methodical, and when to acquiesce to local knowledge.

One of the guides, a thin man with shifting eyes, pointed towards the cliff face ahead of the group. A bend in the canyon trail revealed a long series of carefully excavated doorways stretching into the distance. The man pointed again and said something in Arabic. Hermione cursed herself, not for the first time, for neglecting her studies of that language. The local dialect was incomprehensible to her. She thought about casting a language charm, but decided against it. The other two men spoke perfect, accented English. It wouldn't be an issue.

The man called Zahur, clearly the leader of the three, turned back towards her and grinned.

"Aanisah, the tomb entrance is ahead!"

Hermione waved in acknowledgement, squinting into the sun and peering at the carefully cut entrance into the sandstone. Discarded archeological equipment lay on the ground, surrounding the doorway, and she could see bootprints in the sand. She walked up alongside Zahur where he stood in the shade of a rock outcropping and stopped, pushing the brim of her hat back on her forehead and wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand.

"And you are sure the Muggle archeology teams haven't disturbed this tomb?"

Zahur grinned, his sun-wizened face wrinkling with mirth. "No, aanisah, the Muggles avoid this entrance but they do not understand why. Perhaps they think there is a rock collapse? Or faulty supports? The local diggers are a superstitious lot, they might even suspect that there is magic here."

Hermione nodded to herself, biting her lower lip in concentration. "It's most likely a light coating of ancient Muggle Repelling Charms - we see that a lot on ancient magical sites. They last indefinitely, believe it or not. Something about those ancient strains of magic has sticking power."

The other man who spoke English, a reedy fellow named Amged, drew up beside Zahur and regarded Hermione with a level stare.

"That one is getting nervous," he said, waving a thin arm towards the third guide Hermione had hired. The man who spoke only Arabic stood several yards away, staring at the entrance to the tomb with a look of naked fear.

"This place holds much superstition for Muggle and wizard alike. He is probably thinking of some story told to him by his old nursemaid." Zahur barked a command in Arabic and the other man straightened quickly and waited as the other three walked past, towards the entrance. He fell in behind and Hermione could smell the stink of his fear.

They passed under the carved entrance and into a cool, dark chamber. Ahead of them a black maw of a tunnel opened in the sandstone wall. Amged drew his wand and muttered an incantation. Light bloomed around him and spread tendrils out towards the walls. Soon the chamber was illuminated in a soft glow. Hermione sucked in a breath, her eyes widening at what the light revealed.

Every inch of the wall was covered in decoration. Hermione was fascinated, rotating in place and trying to take in all of the murals at once. She began to slowly move down the corridor, her eyes flickering from symbol to symbol. Zahur and Amged trailed behind her, their eyes wide. The third guide lingered at the edge of the light, falling further behind as they moved forward. Suddenly he turned, dropped his pack in the dust and ran back towards the entrance, his footfalls echoing within the sandstone chamber.

"Let him go." Amged sneered. "He has proven to be useless anyway. We will split his fee between us, Zahur."

"I do not carry supplies," Zahur snapped, his eyes shifting haughtily to the pack on the ground.

"Leave them. Once we've got it, we'll be able to make it back to the Portkey by dusk." Hermione waved absentmindedly towards the supplies and turned away from the men.

As the group moved deeper into the chamber, the light followed them. It rolled across the walls and more decorations were revealed, crowding the space with ancient scenes. Vertical stripes of painted hieroglyphics rose from floor to ceiling, broken only by colorful murals depicting dark figures in profile. Splashes of ochre and indigo paint showed expanses of water and sand. White winged birds flew in azure skies. Figures marched across the sandstone, their arms bent at right angles and their hands gripping wands.

Hermione's boot hit something and she stopped, crouching low and wiping away layers of dust from a leather pouch. Her fingers passed lightly over the embossed insignia of the British Ministry of Magic.

"So this is where McCullough ended up."

"A friend of yours?" Amged's question was soft in the eerie glow of the light from his wand.

"Colleague. He was very, very good." Hermione rose, brushing the dust from the knees of her khaki trousers.

"No one has ever come out of there alive! Why should we place our faith in you?" Zahur's voice shook with what Hermione could recognize as fear.

The deeper they moved down the corridor, the more oppressive the atmosphere became. There was old magic within these sandstone walls, they could all feel it. She moved closer to one wall, her hand rising as if to trace a symbol of an eye, the rims painted in rust colored paint, the iris a deep blue. Her hand dropped to her side and she reached into her waist pack, drawing out a small beaded handbag. The jet beads caught the light and sparked as she pulled open the drawstring and stuck her hand in. She rummaged about for a minute, her eye's never leaving the hieroglyphics, and then her hand withdrew from the bag, clutching a rolled piece of parchment. As she unrolled it, she didn't notice the glance exchanged by her two guides.

"No one ever had what we had." Hermione held the parchment up to the wall, comparing the drawn hieroglyphics to the symbols on the wall. She paced along the length, her eyes darting back and forth as the guides trailed after her. She stopped suddenly, her tongue clicking against the roof of her mouth in a satisfactory sound. She smoothed the parchment against the sandstone. "Assuming that the symbols here mean…"

Suddenly Zahur's wand was in his hand and pointed at the back of Hermione's head. His boot scuffed sharply against the sandstone and she glanced back at him. On seeing the wand point trained at her face, she lowered the parchment and turned. As she moved her hand reached up behind her into her shirt and slid out brandishing her own wand. In one fluid movement, her wand raised towards Zahur.

"Expelliarmus!"

Zahur's wand flew from his fingers and Hermione's hand whipped up to catch it as it launched past her shoulder. She pointed Zahur's wand at Amged as the hand holding her own wand coiled back and flicked once again towards Zahur.

"Stupefy!"

Zahur dropped like a deadweight, his body hitting the floor and kicking up a cloud of dust that glittered in the wandlight. Suddenly the chamber was silent except for Amged's ragged breathing. Hermione regarded him calmly.

"I knew nothing! He was crazy! Please!"

Hermione waited one breath and then nodded, tossing Amged's wand back to him. The man scrambled to catch it, his eyes wide with fear. Hermione holstered her wand and cast a glance towards Zahur's supine body.

"Let's go."

Xx

Hermione and Amged emerged from a series of pitch dark corridors into a larger sandstone chamber. At the entrance, a shaft of sunlight pierced the darkness from a fissure in the ceiling. Amged made to move into the chamber but Hermione's arm shot out across his chest, stopping him from going further.

"What —?"

Hermione cast around them and found a loose stone in the dust. She scooped it up and tossed it through the shaft of light. As the stone sailed through the sunlight, immense iron spikes sprang from the side walls of the chamber with an ear-splitting burst of metal grinding on metal. The impaled corpse of a man hung from one of the center spikes.

McCullough.

"We can go no further." Amged was trembling violently beside her, his wand held loosely at his side. The spikes retracted, the sound grating along Hermione's spine. They watched as each one disappeared into dark recesses within the walls, leaving an empty room once more.

"Now Amged, we don't want to be discouraged by every little thing!" Hermione let out a laugh, only slightly tinged with hysteria as she stepped sideways into the chamber. She moved along the wall, her back pressed against it as she slipped past the holes the spikes had retracted into. She skirted past the shaft of sunlight and held her breath until she was clear of it. Amged whimpered softly as he watched her, but he slid his own body against the wall as she motioned for him to follow.

Once past the spikes, they descended a staircase cut into the sandstone. The sound of their boots on the dusty stone stairs echoed in the silence. At the bottom, they faced a narrow corridor some fifty yards long. At the end was a doorway that glowed with light from whatever lay beyond.

"Let us hurry! There is nothing to fear here." Amged took a step forward but Hermione grabbed his shoulder to slow his steps.

"That's what scares me."

They moved forward slowly, Hermione's eyes darting across the hall. After several feet of nothing happening, Amged's pace quickened and he drew ahead several steps. Suddenly he pitched forward, his foot sinking below the floor. Hermione grabbed the back of his shirt, hauling him back to stand beside her. He doubled over, his breath coming in ragged gasps, as Hermione pointed her wand before her and whispered Lumos. The floor of the corridor was covered in a dense carpet of cobwebs. She cast a quick Incendio and watched as the cobwebs burned, leaving behind a dark pit as wide as the corridor and too long to jump across. Amged picked up a stone from the floor beside his boot and dropped it into the blackness. They waited several breaths but no sound came. Hermione let her gaze sweep the corridor and noticed large support beams crossing the ceiling overhead. She trained her wand upwards.

"Flagrum Distendo!"

A glowing whip of light shot from the tip of her wand and arched through the air, wrapping several times around the support beam. Hermione gave it a hard tug and leaned into the tension. It appeared to hold her weight. She gripped her wand and took several steps back. Amged made a garbled sound as she launched herself forward, swinging over the pit and landing neatly on the other side. She swung her wand back to Amged and watched, an amused look on her face, as the man clumsily followed her lead.

As Amged caught his breath and Hermione ended the spell, there was a faint splash from deep within the pit. Hermione looked at Amged, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. Her guide shuddered, his face cracking with fear, as Hermione moved past him and through the doorway.

They entered a large, cavernous room with golden sandstone walls and a black and white tiled floor. The tiles were set in haphazard design, no discernible pattern apparent. In the center of the room was a carved sandstone pedestal, ringed with hieroglyphics and painted friezes. On the top of the altar was a thick papyrus folio, bound together with what appeared to be a net of fine gold wire. Hermione's breath caught in her throat.

The Book of Thoth!

She tore her eyes away from her objective and let her gaze sweep across the tiled floor. She crouched on the sandstone threshold and reached out, tapping a white tile with the butt of her wand. She waited several moments, and when nothing happened, she shifted and rapped her wand against a black tile. There was a whizzing noise and Hermione moved swiftly to the side, turning to stare at the thin dart embedded in the sandstone wall behind her. Amged pointed across from them, to a wall riddled with small openings. Hermione guessed that the darts came from there.

She straightened, dusting off her trousers. "Stay here."

"If you insist, aanisah!"

Hermione gripped her wand and began to make her way across the room, stepping carefully on the white tiles. It wasn't terribly difficult, her training made the fluid movements less strenuous as she danced her way to the dais. As she approached, Hermione pulled her beaded bag from her waist pack. She ascended the cut staircase, and as she climbed she stuck her arm inside her bag. The folio sat in the center of the altar, the gold wire glinting in the dim light. She narrowed her eyes, taking in the bare sandstone surface and the light coating of undisturbed dust. As she regarded the folio, taking in it's thickness and dimensions, she removed her arm from the bag and withdrew a stack of plain paper.

She spent a moment comparing the stack in her hand to the folio, withdrawing several sheets and replacing one or two until she felt she had a good match. Placing her beaded bag back into her pack, she shifted her weight until she felt well balanced. The stack of papers in her left hand trembled as she hefted it several times, testing the weight. Her right hand clenched and unclenched in the air above the folio. Hermione willed herself to still, taking a deep breath and letting her shoulder muscles loosen and relax. After another deep breath, she pushed her weight into her stance and, with one fluid movement, switched the stack of papers for the folio.

Her breath, which she didn't even realize she had been holding, hissed out of her lungs. She stood stiff and poised in the silence before a sharp series of clicks echoed somewhere above her, drawing her eyes to the ceiling. Another series of clicks began.

Oh shit.

The sounds shook her to action, and she leapt from the dias, hitting the last step with both boots planted firmly. She began the hurried dance across the white tiles back to the chamber entrance, the folio clutched to her chest. The clicks had given way to a series of scraping sounds, each progressively louder and grating. The sandstone walls were starting to shake and dust floated down from the ceiling, coating her hair and arms. Just as she reached the threshold where Amged waited, a rock shook loose from one of the walls and hit the floor, sending a cloud of darts into the chamber. Hermione grabbed Amged's shirt as she rushed past, hauling him through the doorway.

They scrambled up the stairs and Hermione dug her wand from it's holster, casting Flagrum Distendo as they ran. She tossed her wand to Amged and watched as he swung across the pit. Once on the other side he turned, her wand still gripped in his hand.

"No time to argue, throw me the book and I will throw you the wand!"

Hermione scoffed, her eyebrows rising into her hair. Was he mad?

Amged growled, his eyes narrowing. His passivity melted away, revealing a look of pure venom. He pointed his wand towards Hermione. "Accio folio!"

Hermione had a split second to react - she clutched the folio tightly to her chest and launched her weight forward, hoping that the momentum of her leap and the spell would propel her across the chasm. She soared over the dark pit and hit the edge, the impact knocking the folio from her grip as she scrabbled to keep herself from sliding into the darkness. The folio skidded across the sandstone floor. Amged lunged for it and as he turned away from her, Hermione cast a wandless Accio and thrust her arm into the air to catch her wand as it shot towards her. She swung her body onto the floor and rolled, coming up with her wand trained on Amged's fleeing back.

That little bastard.

She watched as he disappeared into the next chamber. Shaking the dust from her hair and clothes, she followed him at a run. As she crossed the threshold, a bloodcurdling scream rent the dusty air. It ended as abruptly as it began. Hermione moved cautiously into the chamber as the spikes retracted and slid her way to where Amged's body hung from an iron spike. Ignoring the rapidly growing pool of blood on the floor, she plucked the folio from his death-grip and moved past, sidling past the shaft of light and moving into the darkened corridors beyond. From here it was a quick run down a long, dark passage, if she remembered correctly.

Suddenly she was aware of the scraping and grinding noises again - they had been a drone in the background as she had fought to catch up to Amged. But now they shook the walls and sent loose rubble flying from the walls and ledges.

As Hermione ran into the passage, a deep rumbling tremor sent her scrambling for her footing. As she straightened, she cast a glance behind her up the inclined passage and felt her heart drop. Above her, a giant boulder shuddered into view, rolling down the corridor.

Oh this was just absolutely perfect.

It was picking up speed and Hermione began to run, her legs reaching for long, loping strides. She clutched the folio to her chest as she ran, her breath coming in hot, ragged bursts and her lungs aching. The light of the entrance glowed ahead of her and she ran towards it, feeling the rotations of the boulder and the tremors of the sandstone as it ground against the floor and walls.

She was yards from the entrance, her legs churning beneath her and her mouth slack as she gasped for air. She could feel the boulder nipping at her heels, a massive presence threatening from behind. Five more strides and she would be there, four, three, two - she dove forward, ducking into a roll and skidding out into the canyon just as the boulder slammed into the doorway, sealing the tomb forever.

Xx

Hermione lay flat on the sand, her breath heaving through her lungs. After the darkness of the tomb, the sunlight was blinding and she squeezed her eyes shut. Bursts of light bloomed behind her eyelids and she shuddered, sucking in air. The folio was still pressed against her chest and she consciously loosened her grip so as not to cause any more untoward damage to the priceless papyrus.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over her. She opened her eyes, squinting into the sun. Three figures loomed above her, their bodies blocking the sunlight. The two on the left and right were local men with stocky, muscular builds. They stood menacingly, their wands pointed at Hermione. The man in the center was tall and lanky, dressed in immaculately pressed and clean khakis and a white linen shirt. His skin was pale and the hair peeking out from underneath his hat was almost platinum. Hermione hit her head against the sand with a groan. The man chuckled, the movement causing the sun to reflect off his aviator sunglasses.

"Granger. You choose the wrong friends, and this time it will cost you." Draco Malfoy reached his hand out expectantly. The sleeve of his white linen shirt was cuffed to halfway up his forearm and the bottom inch of his faded Dark Mark stood out against his pale skin.

Hermione glared up at him, taking several moments to orientate herself. She let her mind track down her body, cataloguing what she had on her person. Folio, waist pack, wand holster, wand. The bastard waited, his arm still extended with his palm up. Hermione sighed deeply and shook herself, handing him the folio. Malfoy grinned wolfishly down at her, his eyes locked on hers as he took it from her, tucking it under his other arm. He reached his hand out again and Hermione grunted, handing him her wand. He smirked.

"Again, we see that there is nothing you possess which I cannot take away. And you thought I'd given up."

Hermione snorted, her eyes flicking to the men flanking Malfoy. They were watching the blonde man expectantly, their eyes bright as they took in the papyrus portfolio. He had most likely told them it was invaluable and promised them untold riches in exchange for their muscle. Poor, misguided creatures. "Too bad they don't know you like I do, Malfoy."

"Yes, too bad. You could warn them… if only you spoke Arabic."

She sneered at him and he laughed, saying something to the men beside him in the local dialect. They grinned and turned with Malfoy, away from Hermione. She smirked - he always had underestimated her.

She kicked her leg out in a fluid movement, hooking Malfoy's ankle and jerking him down. She was up in a crouch before the other men could move, rolling against Malfoy as he dropped. She palmed her wand, tugging it from his grip and coming to her feet, spell already halfway past her lips. As the Apparition took hold, she heard Malfoy's shout and their eyes meet. He threw her a mocking grin, holding the folio before him. Hermione growled, spun and was gone.