Curse Breaking
The pale light from the tip of his wand casts strange shadows as Bill Weasley treads deeper into the musty darkness, the scraping of sand under his boots sending echoes up and down the narrow tunnel. They sound like groaning, ancient whispers, and Bill's fingers clench nervously at the grip of his wand.
Her skin is smooth under his trembling hands, dark and gleaming in the firelight. He runs a fingertip along the line of her spine, and her back arches luxuriantly under his touch. She sighs, a deep, silken noise that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and brings heat to his cheeks.
"Gods, I've waited so long for a man like you," she murmurs against his ear, her beautiful voice rough with desire.
Bill reels, shaking his head, trying to dispel the image. His hand, thrust out to brace himself against the wall, sinks slowly into the stone. Fear snaps him out of his reverie; this, at least, he knows how to deal with. Quickstone is a common curse, and easily escaped.
"Relashio!" he barks, and his wand flares. The stone withdraws, and he jerks his hand back. "Duro." The stone crumbles slightly as it hardens, the effect of the spell spreading across the cursed stone leaving a spiderweb of cracks which shoot off in all directions, sending a cacophony of echoes along the passageway. Bill waits until the noises stop, then carefully prods the wall with a finger; nothing.
Her eyes are deep and gold; not light brown, or hazel, but a true gold. They turn molten under his gaze, the eddies of colour and flecks of black seeming almost to shift. She smiles, dark, velvety lips parting across glittering white teeth, and draws him down to her. Her mouth is sweet, a deep, complicated flavour that intoxicates him. He sighs as her tongue runs lightly along his lips and teases his as he opens his mouth further to her kiss. Her fingers pull at the sandy cloth of his shirt, slip under the hem, and leave lines of burning warmth against his skin where they touch his back.
"Finite!" Bill keeps his balance this time, and shouts the spell into the depths of the tunnel, willing his vision to clear. The light at the tip of his wand has winked out; for a moment, while he waits for the spell to take effect, he stands in utter darkness. Nothing happens, and with a rush of fear, he ignites his wand again, but the sandy tunnel is as dry and empty as ever. Bill glances back the way he has come. His team waits outside – appraisers, Egyptologists, and representatives from Gringotts, ready to stake their claim to whatever riches this tomb yields. Bill shudders, and considers returning to the surface, but he has a reputation to uphold. He carries on.
She draws his shirt up over his head, slowly. He can feel the heat from her body against his skin. She tosses it to the side, where it disappears into the writhing shadows, and draws him down to her again. She kisses his jaw, then down his neck to his collarbone, across his chest, to his hip. His skin tingles. He tangles a hand in her smooth hair, which runs through his fingers like a liquid.
She draws back, and his eyes are drawn to the gentle curve of her breasts, sloping down to disappear into the shadow of the thin strip of cloth tied around her chest. She eyes him, teasingly, and he loses himself in the depth of her golden gaze; almost against his will, his hands move to untie the fabric.
Bill ignores the vision, and breaks into a jog, throwing caution to the winds. He has never encountered this kind of obstacle before; the hallucinations are full-bodied, and utterly complete. They seem to be getting more frequent, too, the deeper into the tunnel he descends. His knuckles are white now, so tightly does he grip his wand, but he fights through the fear and confusion, and delves deeper into the darkness with every step.
For a long minute, he runs in silence. He encounters no other curses, no traps, no obstacles. Then, abruptly, the tunnel ends. The wall before him is indistinguishable from the rest of the tunnel, but this, too, is a common enchantment, and this, too, he knows how to foil. He raises his wand.
The fabric falls away at his touch, and she arches her back, golden eyes watching his with sly amusement as he stares at her naked breasts. The soft, dark skin seems almost to glow in the firelight. He reaches out, hands trembling, and cups one in his palm. It is warm, smooth, and firm under his touch, and she bites her lip and growls in the back of her throat as his fingertips brush her small, dark nipple.
"Don't be shy," she sighs. Her arousal makes her accent more pronounced, and he feels himself swept up in her voice yet again. He licks his lips, glances once at her face, then, seeing the encouragement there, bends to kiss her breast. Her satisfied moan echoes in the darkness, mingling with the crackling of the fires.
Bill falters, the spell dying unspoken on his lips, thrown off balance by the intensity of the vision. Even as his eyes clear, and the dark tunnel comes back into focus, he can still feel the numbing, intoxicating pull of the vision, and his body tingles with a mixture of horror and pleasure. Despite himself, he realizes that part of him wants to be back in the hallucination.
He gathers himself, furious, suddenly, at his own weakness, and at the illusions themselves. He raises his wand again, and fairly spits the spell: "Revelio!"
The wall does not split, or open, or fall to pieces. However, with a resounding crack that echoes along the tunnel, a layer of sand and stone falls away, revealing a symbol carved deep into the rock; not a hieroglyphic, but a simple signal, an unmistakable, universal warning of danger. Bill stares for a moment at the leering skull inscribed in the door, then, in another rush of anger, takes a step back and commits a basic curse-breaker sin: he blows the wall open.
Where his clothes went he can't remember; hers are gone, too. They lie together, wrapped in the thin, silk sheets, on the dais ringed in fire. Her body writhes against his, pressing down against him, and he loses himself in the feel of her, his hands running along her arms, across her breasts, slowly down her back. She straddles him, and all at once he is inside of her, and everything he feels is warm, slick, and snug as she moves with a rhythmic, captivating grace, her hair dancing as she tosses her head and treats him to a breathless, wide-eyed smile. The pleasure threatens to overwhelm him, and for a moment, he loses all sense of presence, and slips into a whirlwind of sensation; but only for a moment.
The stone lies in smoking ruins on the ground, and Bill stands panting among the debris, sand and dust coating his sweat-slicked body. Furiously, he pushed the vision from his mind, trying to ignore the effect it has had on him; he's taut, heat building in his core, every inch of his skin crawling with tingling sensations of loss. He craves the feelings the visions bring him, and this deep, burning need terrifies him more than anything he has ever encountered in his life.
Behind the wall, utter darkness. Still muddled from the hallucination, Bill raises his wand. "Lumos," he mutters, but the light reaches only to the edge of the hole he has blown in the stone, and no farther. It stops, leaving the blackness beyond as absolute as ever. Bill frowns, and holds his wand before him, intoning, "Lumos Maxima!"
The light intensifies, but still refuses to dispel the impenetrable blackness beyond the hole in the wall. Frowning, Bill stoops, and picks up a shard of rock from the ground. He tosses it into the void; it goes, disappearing from view, but clattering against something in the space beyond. The noise reverberates; he has the impression that whatever space lies hidden in the darkness, it is very, very large.
She picks up speed, their bodies moving together. Her hands pin his to the warm stone of the alter top, her hair falling like satin curtains around her face. Her golden eyes have locked with his; he can't look away, even if he wants to, but he doesn't want to. There seem to be depths unknowable behind that molten gaze, and he wants to sink into her, dive deeper. His whole body throbs, and he is cast adrift in a blank sea of pleasure, yet all the while exquisitely, excruciatingly aware of every inch of his skin, every millimetre of contact between their hot, sweat-slicked bodies.
"Lumos Solem!" The visions are, increasingly, taking a physical toll on Bill's body, not to mention his concentration. In the beginning, the worst of it was the disconcerting feeling of arriving back in his body, like a soul plucked free and then roughly returned to its shell. Now, though, as the… content… of his visions intensifies, he can't keep his thoughts from the images and feelings that seem to stay with him even when the hallucinations recede.
The ray of light shoots from the tip of his wand, and vanishes into the darkness. Bill swears, loudly. His focus is slipping; with a violent effort, he forces himself to concentrate, staring fixedly at the back of his hand, forcing himself to see every detail of his skin, every line and scar, each hair, each grain of sand. It helps; the thrall of the visions slips, if only slightly.
Impenetrable darkness is not a curse he has yet encountered, but he is by no means yet finished trying to break it. He can't summon light directly, it seems, but he has other tricks up his sleeve. Taking a breath, he points his wand into the darkness, and hisses, "Lacarnum Inflamarae."
With a shuddering gasp, she convulses on top of him, bright eyes glazing over for a moment with the strength of her pleasure. His own keeps building, higher and higher, the tension in his body growing with each moment spent locked in her embrace. She writhes against him with increasing vigour, bending to bite his ear, his neck, his lip. He feels his hold on sanity slipping as his pleasure spikes; feels himself about to explode from the pressure inside him.
"Gods, yes," she gasps in his ear, and her rough, breathless voice nearly takes him over the edge. He cries out, wordlessly, as his pleasure peaks, and he falls away, out of his body, caught up in a maelstrom of sensation born of each point of contact between his skin and hers.
Bill staggers under the force of the illusion; his aim falters, and the blue fireball that shoots from his wand goes high. For a moment, it seems that it, too, has disappeared into the darkness. Then it explodes against the ceiling, flames cascading to the ground like drops of burning sun, and fire explodes from the ground, spreading in an instant to fill the cavernous room with flame.
The brightness, after so long in the dark, nearly blinds him for a moment. Still shaking from the strength of his hallucination, Bill throws a hand up to cover his eyes. The tiny part of his brain still thinking rationally notes the absence of heat; the fire is light alone.
When he can finally look without his eyes tearing, he sees the path of stone between the flames, leading into the room. With a mounting sense of doom, Bill steps over the rubble. He almost can't help himself.
The crackling fires reach nearly to the ceiling; walking between the walls of flame is like walking through a forest of fire. The flames burn so brightly, he can scarcely make out what is just a few metres ahead or behind him, but he continues on, frustrated, furious, and flustered to the point of incoherence. The aftershocks of his illusory experience reverberate through his body.
Then, up ahead, he sees shadow for the first time since he's entered the room. Pillars of sandstone; they reach up to the distant ceiling above, forming what seems to be a circle where the flames do not go. For the first time, it occurs to Bill to douse the flames. He struggles to clear his mind; the pillars spark a chord in him, as of a distant, half-forgotten memory.
"Aguamenti," he manages, but the water passes through the flames without effect. He walks closer, his eyes grateful for the shadows within the pillared circle, after so long amid the brilliant flames. Then, as his vision clears, he sees the dais among the shadows and stops dead.
She lies, as if sleeping, among silken sheets. The dais is pure white marble, the silk black as midnight. She wears the headdress of a Pharaoh, a stylized double crown, but little else; a strip of white cotton around her breasts, and a short skirt of cotton wrapped around her narrow waist.
He steps into the shadow of the pillars, but this is no longer a vision. Bill blinks his eyes, fear and – he can't deny it – desire mounting in his chest. This is no illusion, no hallucination brought on by some enchantment. This is happening.
She shifts under the sheets, and he flinches back. Her eyes open; molten gold, with flecks of black, which seem to shift under his gaze. She sits upright, suddenly, and smiles, dark lips spreading slowly across white, glittering teeth.
"William," she breathes. Bill stares.
"How…" His voice catches in his throat, and he coughs, licks his lips nervously, and starts again. "How do you know my name?"
She smiles again, and in a sudden flash he sees the curve of her breasts, and tastes the honeyed sweetness of her dark nipple, her skin taut and smooth under his hands as he pulls her body against him, and she says, "I've been waiting for you, William. Seven thousand years, sealed in this beautiful prison, cursed to wait for you."
He puts a hand against a pillar, steadying himself. He needs to snap out of this, needs to free his mind from whatever keeps pulling him into these visions. At the same time, his desire is growing; he can't keep his eyes from her. She swings her legs off the dais, her bare feet flexing, and he runs his hand up her calf, feeling the warm, smooth, firmness of her body, and kisses her thigh, kisses higher. She gasps, her fingers tangling in his hair, and she whispers his name like a blessing as his lips move higher, and her sweet smell and taste overwhelm him leaving him reeling, back against the pillar. She steps towards him, smiling that same coy, knowing, seductive smile.
Bill holds his wand out in front of him, desperately trying to keep the visions at bay, but his eyes are drawn to the curve of her breasts under the cotton bandeau, and down to her hips, where the curve of her belly slips beneath the waist of her wrapped skirt. He can physically feel how good it would be to touch her, kiss her, taste her.
"You've come to free me, haven't you, William?" Her voice is soft and hoarse, melodic and accented, and he wants, more than anything, to lean into the oblivion she offers; let her guide him inside, where the warmth and pleasure can fill his mind and drive out all traces of fear and want and pain. He wants her, as he has never wanted anything, and he knows that he can't live without having her, now that he's seen her, except… a different kind of vision flashes behind his eyes; a simple memory this time. The skull, etched deeply into the sandstone: a warning, earnest and uncalculated, to anyone foolish enough to try and desecrate the tomb.
She is just a few feet away now, stepping closer, slowly, her soft feed noiseless on the warm stone. With one last, desperate effort of will, the remaining vestige of sanity in Bill's mind forces him to concentrate, focus. He stares down at his hand again, at the little scar between the knuckles of his third and fourth fingers. He remembers Fred and George charging him with their wooden swords, remembers the sudden flash of pain as one of them – even he can't remember which – smacks him in the hand.
He smiles, despite himself, at the pleasure of the memory. Despite the pain, it was a beautiful moment; Mum, cradling baby Ginny in her arms and Dad playing with little Ron, Charlie building up the fire in the backyard, Percy chatting away to no one in particular, as he dueled the twins one mid-summer's eve not so very long ago.
His eyes clear; he feels for a moment as though he has surfaced out of deep water, gasping grateful gulps of air into tight and painful lungs. With the rush of pure, simple pleasure, his mind has become his once again. Legilimency. He curses his foolishness; he's been taught to recognize the signs, though he has never had cause to use Occlumency while curse-breaking. He clears his mind, as he has been taught. The woman pauses, her first uncertain movement; her smile wavers slightly.
He runs his hands up her leg, and slips his fingers around his wand, raising it, fighting the muddling probes into his mind. She smiles, reaching to run her fingers along his arm, drawing him down to her lips, his own framing a spell, fighting, focused, feeling alive for the first time in a long time. This is what he lives for; breaking curses, risking death in the dark. The thrill helps him concentrate. She snarls, anger clouding the molten gold, her face darkening as she lunges for his throat. "Impedimenta!"
She drops, snarls, leaps like an animal towards him, but Bill is moving now, dodging away, light on his feet, a true smile playing across his features as he comes back to himself. Her mental probes are weakening as she concentrates on her attack. Her hands run along his naked chest, and reach like claws for his throat. "Everte Statum!"
She lands on her feet, though she's been flung nearly into the flames that lap at the outer edges of the circle of pillars. "Curse you, wizard," she snarls, and lunges again. He grins.
"Sorry," he quips, thoroughly enjoying himself now, "you almost had me there." There's another bang, and she's thrown away again. He skips behind the dais, keeping his eyes trained on her. She leaps again, redirecting herself to avoid his first hex. He dodges, but her fingers close on the hem of his shirt, tearing at the fabric. Time to finish this.
"Immobulus!" She hits the ground, hard, eyes flashing at him furiously. "Incarcerous!" Ropes shoot from his wand, binding her tightly. Satisfied she can't move, he approaches, carefully.
"What, exactly, are you?"
She sneers in reply. He smiles back at her. "Oh well. We'll figure it out when we get you out of here, won't we?" He turns his attention to the dais, stripping the black sheets from the marble. This is the tomb itself, he realizes, the sarcophagus of whomever is buried here. "Specialis Revelio," he whispers.
The lettering appears, glowing golden hieroglyphs tracing themselves across the marble. Bill doesn't read hieroglyphs – that's what the Egyptologists are for – but he knows this kind of curse by reputation; he's seen pictures from famous tombs. It's infamous among curse-breakers: the trap captures and contains a dark magical creature, charging it with the protection of the tomb for all eternity. He scans the lettering. There, at least, is a hieroglyph he knows.
"Succubus…" He smiles at the creature thrashing on the ground. "Well. They'll be impressed back at Gringotts!" He knows the counter-curse, though he's never had the chance to use it. He steps back, raises his wand, and with a flourish, intones "Oscurus Liberatus!"
There's a flash of light, and the hieroglyphs glow brighter, until they're blinding, and he has to look away. The succubus makes one final, herculean effort, and breaks free of his jinx. She gives a final scream of rage, but even as she leaps for him, she is pulled away, drawn back into the void as the curse that bound her to the tomb is lifted. With a final, blinding burst of light, the lettering on the sarcophagus fades, leaving nothing but gold lettering etched in the stone. The succubus is gone; the fire ringing the pillars gone, too.
With the fire gone, Bill can see the room for the first time. The cavernous space is at least as large as the Great Hall in Hogwarts; enough gold and jewels are piled on its expansive floors and against its marble walls to rival any dragon-hoard of legends. Bill whistles, still high on adrenaline. This should earn him a pretty bonus. He pats the marble sarcophagus one last time, vanishes the ropes which now lie, broken and empty, on the stone floor, and heads for the surface.
One more incredible story to tell his brothers, he thinks as he walks back along the tunnel, then, with a guilty shiver recalls the taste and feel of the succubus's skin, and amends his own thought: perhaps when they're a little older.