AN: Prompts will be displayed at the bottom to avoid them potentially giving away things.
The Catacombs
AlwaysPadfoot
Rowan Khanna had not expected her first official venture into curse-breaking to be quite so horrifying.
When she'd been handed the file and told to prepare to travel internationally, she'd been expecting Egypt or Peru perhaps. She had not been expecting the French Catacombs. She had not been expecting narrow passageways and wall's slick with moisture. She was not expecting to tackle a centuries-old curse that had lured wizards and muggles alike into the catacombs and then were never to be seen again.
Rowan, alongside her colleague, Daniel Scott, and two curse breakers — Jacques and Milo — from Le Ministère de la Magie had made the journey into the catacombs. Save for the dim light from the tips of their wands, they were in complete darkness now.
They'd been walking for over forty minutes, only seeming to get more and more lost. Rowan swore the passageways were getting harder to manoeuvre through and thanks to the slimy ground beneath their feet, her boots were coated in something thick and disgusting. Personally, she didn't want to assume it was just mud — they had entered through the sewers after all. Considering their relatively social start to their task, the group had fallen quiet.
There was just the sound of their footsteps echoing in Rowan's ears.
She considered piping up a few times just to break the eeriness a little. Unfortunately, Jacques — their stoic team leader — was a man of very little words, and he seemed to like it staying that way.
Rowan could just see a split in the tunnels up ahead when someone slammed their hands down on her shoulders. Emitting a brief yelp, she barely managed to keep hold of her wand as she spun on the spot. She came face to face with Milo who was wearing a wide grin.
"Merlin, Milo, you—" Rowan began, her hand on her chest.
"Oh, Rowan," he said. "You need to relax and have some fun,"
He shook his blonde hair from his face and pushed it back with a pale hand, still smiling at her. She didn't find it funny at all, and apparently, neither did Jacques.
"Milo stop dicking around," he snapped, his accent thick. "Imbécile."
Rowan pulled a smug face and the two looked to the man leading the group. Her wand light illuminated the back of his head. With very little hair at all, Rowan quietly wondered how he wasn't freezing cold down here. It was November; she was wearing several layers.
Jacques stopped, peering ahead into the darkness. "Runes."
Rowan followed the beam of light and saw them too. Carved into the stone on the wall up ahead were several runes and from a distance, she identified them as markings typical of those used for warding places.
"Those are ancient," Daniel noted as they all moved closer. "Just on the wear and tear alone, they've got to be at least five hundred years old."
Daniel was somewhat of a runes expert whilst Rowan's skills leant to more practical lines of work, what with all her experience from the Cursed Vaults. Her spellwork had always been second to none, even back as a first year.
The water on the floor got a little deeper as they surrounded the runes. Rowan pointed her wand down only to feel her heart stop.
"Is that...blood?" Milo said behind her, sounding a little afraid finally.
The four of them were standing in a stagnant pool of dirty red liquid. It was seeping into Rowan's socks, and suddenly, all she could think about was if they got out of here alive she would have to shower for at least three hours just to feel clean again. Their worrying venture into the catacombs was fast becoming a nightmare in her eyes.
"Okay, this is concerning," Jacques stated.
Daniel and Rowan shared a knowing look at the older man's apathy. They have secretly agreed that he could do with improving his bedside manner.
"I'd say so, yeah, Jacques," Milo responded sarcastically.
The three of them waited as Jacques looked between the blood at their feet and the runes on the wall before he finally spoke again. "Come, no team has gotten this far before."
"Yeah, because they probably died horrifically before they could report back to le Ministère," Milo pointed out.
Rowan very swiftly switched from not liking Milo to agreeing with him. She knew curse-breaking came with risks, but she had sort of hoped she would make it through her first assignment.
"Well, merde," Jacques said. "It looks like you just volunteered to go first."
The blood on the floor sloshed as Milo squeezed between Daniel and Rowan, making his way to the right-side passage. He peered down it, his nose wrinkled in suspicion as he hesitated. Raising his wand, Milo squeezed through the gap and lead the way through the tunnel. It seemed impossibly long, another fifteen minutes passing without so much of slight verge to either side. Rowan calculated that they were deep inside the catacombs now, miles from any known entrances. That felt even more terrifying; it felt as though they would be trapped down here forever.
The walls were lined with thousands of skulls which Daniel had pointed out first, his face drained of colour. He looked twice as pale as the two Frenchmen with his black hair plastered to his forehead.
Milo spat out a string of French up ahead and then switched to English for our benefit. "We're not finding anything, Jacques. We should turn—"
Everything happened at once.
One minute Milo was complaining and then the next he was spluttering and gargling, a thick black substance was oozing from his mouth, and ears, and eyes. Rowan's eyes widened with horror and they all shouted at once. She took a step towards Milo to try and help, but Jacques wrenched her backwards by the hood of her coat.
"No," he yelled. "No. It's too late for him. It's too late."
The next thing Rowan knew she was running back in the direction they came. Water and blood splashed at her feet, wand light bouncing erratically ahead of her as she led the way. The other two men were hot on her heels. Pushing the image of Milo from her mind, she focused long enough to cast a spell to help her find her way through the catacombs.
They were all going to die if they couldn't find an exit soon. Whatever had killed Milo would turn their inside black too.
Somehow, the three of them found themselves bursting out into a church graveyard, gasping for breath. Once Jacques had sealed the door behind them, Rowan collapsed in the grass holding the stitch in her side. To her side, Daniel was bent over and had thrown up. The other man, white as a sheet, slid down against the door he'd just sealed and swore.
"We just left him," Rowan stammered. "He has family, friends."
"We couldn't have done anything," Jacques said. "You're going to have to accept the fact that sometimes we can't save everyone."
Rowan swallowed thickly. "I can accept that. It just doesn't make it any easier."
She was dimly aware of Jacques casting a Patronus charm, sending a large white elephant off into the dark to seek help from le Ministère. Daniel finally came and sat beside her, putting his hand in the centre of her back in an attempt to soothe her.
"You got us out of there, Rowan," he said, his voice strained. "Without you, we'd all be dead."
Rowan hummed slightly and didn't respond.
By the time le Ministère had arrived Rowan had scribbled down everything she remembered in her notebook, she'd even sketched out the runes from on the wall. If they were ever going to have any hope of breaking the catacomb's curse, people would need all the information they could get.
And if Rowan could help, then she bloody well would.
Comps and Prompts
Assignment 3: Curse-Breaking, Task 1 - Write about someone's first assignment as a curse-breaker.
IHC: 745. Job - Curse-breaker
365: 168. Job - Curse-breaker
SC — Days of the Year — September 22 2018 - Business Women's Day: Write about a career-orientated woman.
SC — Summer Prompts — (word) Relax
SC — Shay's Musical Challenge — 39. Dreamgirls - write about a tough job.
WC — Character Appreciation — 6. Dialogue: "You need to relax and have some fun!"
WC — Disney Challenge — T3. Wisdom and Knowledge - Write about somebody wise.
WC — Showtime — 2. Two by Two - (setting) France
WC — Amber's Attic — S2. New School- cartoonish style popular in the 80s and 90s and characterized by animated aesthetic: Write about someone or something childish.
WC — CYB — D3. "Is that… blood?"
WC — Ami's Audio Admirations — 11. BBC — Write about a small part of a large organisation or group.
WC — Em's Emporium — 2. Amber (Cheeky Slytherin Lass): Write about a character with less then 50 fics in the archives.
WC — Lo's Lowdown — Q5. "You're going to have to accept the fact that sometimes we can't save everyone."
WC — Bex's Bazaar — B1. Write about someone with a elephant Patronus
Word Count: 1325