Disclaimer: All canon characters, scenery and plot references are the property of J.K. Rowling. I do not own or profit from this story in any way.
Rating: M for language and some eventual sexual content
Summary: Dani and Bill have been best friends for as long as anyone can remember. They've also butted heads for as long as anyone can remember. Throw in a lost king, a team of curse breakers and a good mystery, and you've got yourself a story.
Author's Note: Apparently I'm a glutton for punishment, because this is the third of three un-finished stories that I am posting. Anyway, this is a Bill/OC fic that is slightly AU, only in the fact that Fleur and Bill don't meet or get together in my story. Fleur will make an appearance and I slightly demonize her (no hard feelings, I like Fleur—It's just for the progression of the story).
I've taken some liberties with my take on curse-breaking, but other than that, enjoy!
Under the Desert Sun
Chapter One: Pyramid, Scheme.
I don't have to leave anymore
What I have is right here,
Spend my nights and days before
Searching the world for what's right here.
Islands- The XX
The corridor was dark. Fingers of dusty light leaked through the cracks in the stone walls, glimmering brightly in beams that cast wild shadows across the narrow hall. Danielle took a shaky breath of dusty air and wiped sweat from her brow with the indigo bandana that hung around her neck. It was going to be especially hot today, and even now, so early in the morning, the humidity was sweltering.
She paused, squinting down the corridor again. She'd passed through it dozens, maybe hundreds of times before, but being reckless even for a second could get you killed down here. They'd removed most of the curses and traps in this hall, at least, but there always seemed to be more, hidden away in the darkness.
The chamber was small, maybe an arms span across. Large sandstone bricks made up the walls and floors, coated with layers of dust and sand that were marred with the faint footprints and scuffs from the frequent and systematic forays made by her team. To her trained eye, each brick held faint markings, patterns and hieroglyphs, some enchanted with traps and spells, others issuing warnings, telling stories or depicting images of the lives that had built these tunnels, or, the lives that would occupy them in the afterlife.
Dani glanced down at her dragon hides boots, flexing her feet inside of them. They were sturdy, but flexible, and they wouldn't do much good for protection, but they good for moving quickly, which suited her well. She'd always been quick on her feet.
Another deep breath and she was moving forward into the hall, regarding her footing carefully. One wrong step, only an inch to the left or right could mean certain death, but, for her, the steps came easily. It was almost a dance now, a step to the left, two forward, spinning under a shaft of life, spring forward, duck and spin, back and left and right again. She'd always loved dancing.
The closer that she got to the far side of the passage, the further apart her footholds were. She carefully jumped over a shaft of light, landing gracefully on another tile a few feet in front of her. I am a cat, she assured herself. I have nine lives and I cannot falter. The next jump was difficult, but she moved all the same. A cat, she remembered, does not give up. She turned, taking a deep breath and sprang forward, landing on the ledge at the far side of the passage. She grinned triumphantly, shouldering her leather knapsack, and ducking under another beam of light and into the annex beyond.
It was an antechamber of sorts, and was much wider than the halls leading here. There was a table set up in the centre of the room, and large lights near the walls. Dani bypassed both, choosing instead to light the end of her wand, preferring the magic of the tomb to the harsh artificial lighting. A cat can see in the dark.
She eyed the archway that led deeper into the pyramid longingly, but, as much as she'd like to continue on, explore the lesser traveled reaches of the pyramid, that wasn't why she'd come in this morning, and she needed to stay focused.
She pulled her bag from her shoulder, slinging it over one of the chairs that her team had set up, and digging through it until she found a leather bound journal and self-inking quill.
She flipped through the pages, and with the skill of a practiced hand, she copied down some of the hieroglyphs from the wall of the antechamber, stopping to choose the words she scrawled carefully. It took half an hour, and she stopped twice to drink from her canteen, but when she closed the journal with a snap, she had a grin on her face.
Even making her way back through the chamber, (It was much easier crossing from the opposite side), she couldn't keep the giddy grin off her face. In what seemed like no time at all, she was back across, where she promptly ran directly into something, or more precisely, someone.
She stumbled back, cutting directly through one of the light beams.
Hands grasped her, pulling her into a muscular chest, and she barely missed an enchantment that darted across the chamber, right where she had been standing, just seconds before.
"William Weasley! What the hell!" She exclaimed, looking into the startling blue eyes of the familiar redhead. "I could have been killed!"
"Then you should count yourself lucky that I was here," Bill said in return, taking a step back from her, and looking her over to make sure she was alright.
"What?" Dani scoffed, "I wouldn't have needed your help if you hadn't knocked me back into the beam in the first place!"
"What were you thinking anyway?" Bill ignored her accusations, leading the way back through the other cambers and annexes that they'd already disarmed. "Going in alone?"
"I had hieroglyphs that I needed to get," Dani copied Bill's action of dodging to the left and ducking under another shaft of light. They had reached the main annex now, a large cathedral style room with large stone columns spanning up to the ceiling. Like many magical pyramids, the pyramid was much larger on the inside. "It's not my fault that you slept in so bloody late."
"-And it's not my fault that you wanted to go out last night," Bill countered as the ascended the step steps that led out into the hot desert sun. Ahead of them were tents, about two dozen, forming a small city of canvas near the dried up river bed. "And it's definitely not my fault that you talked me into just 'one more drink' last night." He added, rubbing his head with a wince.
"You didn't have to drink it," Dani grinned at him, "Have you been to see Madge yet?" She reached up to ruffle her friend's long tresses, pulling them out from the leather throng that held it out of his face. "She brews the best hang over potions."
Bill swatted her hand away, "I'm not hung over," He said grumpily. He stopped abruptly on the path and turned to look at her, his face serious. "Dani," He breathed, reaching a hand up to cup the side of her face. "You shouldn't have gone in alone, it's not safe…" He told her, worry evident in his tone. He didn't like the idea that no one had been with her— that he hadn't been with her. "Promise me you won't do it again?"
Dani studied her best friend, brow furrowed. He was tall, towering over her by at least a foot, with his long red hair and bright blue eyes shining with emotion. His tanned face was marred with scars, remnants from Fernier Greyback and the war, but he still was one of the most handsome men that Dani knew. He constantly wore a dragon tooth earring in one ear, and a thick leather necklace with a ring on it around his neck. Despite the heat, he was wearing his trademark leather jacket, and a loose green shirt which did nothing to hide his very well-toned body. He was wearing tan pants and leather boots, and staring at her with an intensity that, frankly took her aback.
She could hardly say no. She wasn't reckless, well….not usually….not on purpose. But…occasionally, she had to do things on her own, and she couldn't be bothered to wait if there was no one else around. She was known for being stubborn and impatient, and once determination struck, there was nothing for it. But now, with Bill looking at her so sincerely, she couldn't help but nod along.
Bill had been her best friend for years. He'd been her partner, her family, and she trusted him more than anyone else in the world. And now, the look on his face had her thinking twice about this morning's actions. It hadn't seemed like a big deal at the time, but now….well, would it have killed her to wait another hour for Bill to have shown up?
Then again, she knew that'd he'd come looking for her the second he'd arrived at the dig site, he always did. She smiled weakly. "Yeah, alright," She said finally. "I promise."
"You took far too much time coming to that decision," Bill told her, despite looking relieved. He knew her far too well. "Weighing your options?"
"Something like that," Dani shook her head, leading them up the path, and pushing the flap open to a green canvased tent on their left and ducking inside.
Not for the first time in her life, or even that day, she found herself immensely thankful that she was a witch. One of the great marvels of the undetectable extension spell was that tents like this one, small and unremarkable form the outside, were so much grander on the inside.
It was a full meeting room, which doubled as a canteen. It was complete with water closets, a small kitchen and mercifully cool air. Tables filled much of the first room, long ones for communal eating, smaller circular ones for meeting and planning. The smaller tables were covered in books and scrolls, documents and maps. There were several pin boards on the walls, and bookshelves containing not only books, but artifacts in need of classification, brushes and tool sets, a wireless, and a coffee pot.
Inside, there were a few people milling about. Madge, their kitchen witch, and unofficial site-mother, was threatening some of the local wizards with a spatula to stay away from the pies she had cooling on one of the tables. A few of the interns eating breakfast at one of the long tables, and at one of the book-laden round tables was Jacob Rossi.
"Morning Jake," Dani greeted her friend with a smile. He was a remarkably skinning man with sandy blonde hair and green eyes. He was currently doubled over a scroll on the desk, comparing it eagerly to a book in his hands. He nodded to them as a greeting, but didn't look up.
Jake was one of Dani's best friends, but he was also somewhat of a mystery to her He'd been a few years above her in school, in Slytherin, of all places, though he certainly wasn't what Dani would call the embodiment of the house. He was tall and lanky, shy and studious, and a self-proclaimed bookworm. He openly admitted that he didn't like the heat, sand, or even getting dirty, and he looked as though he belonged in a library or a museum rather than a tomb.
He was also one of the best translators that Dani had ever met. He was clever, quick witted, and what he lacked in grace, he made up for in a panoply of facts and tireless research. He was also quite perceptive, and incredibly resourceful when he needed to be. Dani was constantly thankful for his presence here, and the calming factor he brought to the team.
"Hi Jake," Bill plopped down at the table across from him; Dani took a seat too, slightly more gracefully than her friend.
"I see you found her," Jake said, still not looking up from where he was writing in a steady sprawl.
"Yeah," Bill said nonchalantly, "She was down in Antechamber K," He looked far too innocent for his own good. Dani knew exactly what he was up to.
"Alone?" Jake's quill stilled, and he looked up finally. He like the rest of the team, had a tendency to be extremely overprotective of her. It came with the territory of being one of the only girls on the dig site, she supposed. And to be fair, she was equally as overprotective of them.
"Yeah, Yeah," Dani slung her pack from her shoulder onto the table and waved her hand dismissively at him. "You'll both forgive me for it once I show you what I've found." She pulled her hour journal and flipped through the pages, setting it on the table once she'd reached the red ribbon that had marked her page. She slid the journal across to Jake and leaned back casually in her chair.
Jake straightened his thickly rimmed reading glasses, and turned the journal around. He began to translate the runes, reading at a painfully slow speed. "Only... under…"
Dani, as impatient as ever, took over. She'd read the words through enough times to know them by heart, and when she spoke, she caught both Bill and Jake's stares.
"Only under Darkest Night,
When She shines her fiery light,
Mountains tremble, paths are near,
What you seek will soon appear,
The King awaits the lonely one,
And He alone can take His throne.
But be wary Traveler, for trials await,
And few alone can best this fate.
The start of tests is at hand,
Beneath the layers of rock and sand,
So fear not child, your fate is sealed
The King's rest, will be revealed."
Jake's mouth dropped open. He glanced down to the symbols in her journal, and then back to Dani, amazed. "W-what?" He asked, brow furrowed.
"What the hell was that?" Bill dropped his feet down from the chair they'd been propped up on to lean forward, hoping to get a better look at the symbols himself.
"Where did you get this?" Jake asked at the same time.
"It's only a rough translation," Dani chewed on her lip, "But…remember those numbers that we found? The weird ones that we found etched in that tablet in the stone box?" Of course they remembered, When they'd first found the site, outside the entrance of the pyramid was a thick stone box. It had taken them nearly a week to break the curses on it.
Inside had been a tablet, with a symbol and a string of numbers. They hadn't figured them out yet, but it had been a constant point of discussion and intrigue among them.
They'd searched everything they could think of: Dates, coordinates, mathematical and arithmancy equations, ciphers, codes. But they had gotten nowhere. Nothing anyone could think of had them any closer to cracking the numbers. Until this morning.
Dani leaned forward and flipped her journal back to the beginning, where she'd originally carefully copied down the tablet, drawn a picture of the box. "It was a cipher after all."
"What?" Bill repeated, catching her eyes. As impressed as he was by her translation and puzzle solving abilities, what he was really asking was why she hadn't told him anything about this. They shared everything, even wild speculations and random inklings that were just odd shots in the dark. She'd kept this from him, and he wanted to know why.
"I wasn't sure," Dani explained, with a shake of her head. "I didn't even want to bring it up without proof, because it seemed like a farfetched solution, and I didn't want to get our hopes up again." She frowned. "In antechamber K, there's a wall with that glamour-curse, the one hidden under that wall that was a tribute to Nefertiti?" She chewed on her lip. "There were hundreds of words on that wall, but it always seemed sort of out of place—" She flipped back to the page that she'd copied down today, and held the pages between her hand, flipping back between the two. "They both had the same symbol." She pointed it out.
It wasn't a glyph that they recognized, so they had assumed that it had been the author's mark. It was an upside down V with three lines coming out of the side, fanning out like cat's whiskers. Inside the V was an arch, cupped upwards, and a circle in the center. It had stood out to Dani when she'd first seen it, and to be honest, she wasn't sure how she hadn't made the connection sooner. She suspected some sort of notice-me-not charm.
"Each number corresponds to a word, and it took me a while to get them all down, but once I did…" She blushed, looking up at her friends. Jake was reading over the page again, mouthing the words as he translated and then looked up to stare at her again. "This is….brilliant!" He jumped up and pulled her into a tight hug. "You're brilliant!"
"He could really be buried here then?" Bill exclaimed, pulling her into a hug the second Jake had released her, excitement heavy in his voice. "You know what this means?"
"That we aren't going to lose our funding after all?" She was thinking it too, "That Gringott's is going to keep the site open?"
"It means…that we are going to have to look damn good for the benefactor party tonight," Bill grinned back. "Owl Kate and find Ted— we're going to get our grant renewed."