As soon as Fleur stepped into the crack, the darkness inside the trunk vanished, to be replaced by a large, open cavern. The ceiling was high and difficult to make out, but the light shining through it to the floor was green and dappled. There was only one room, it seemed, large and spacious and natural looking with walls made of bark.
A movement to Fleur's left made her turn, and just in time she remembered what Sara had said about curses. Whipping her wand from her trouser pocket she set up the fastest shield charm she had ever managed, non-verbal and with only the smallest flick of her wand. As she felt the protection surround her, she saw a flash of light fly past her. Just in time.
Bill was looking at her with barely-concealed admiration. "Nice shield charm," he said.
"Thank you," said Fleur. "In my fourth year at Beauxbatons zere was a trend of 'exing people in ze corridors. If you did not know 'ow to put up a shield charm quickly you would find your knees would suddenly be on ze wrong side of your legs."
Bill grinned at her. "Well that's an excellent start!" he said. "I guess you'll be keeping your toenails.
"Now, somewhere in here there's a hidden entrance into the next room. I don't know if you know anything about detecting hidden entrances?"
Fleur paused. She didn't know what constituted knowing anything about hidden entrances, but she held her wand in front of her and tried to think back to her preparation for the third task of the Triwizard Tournament. There had been something in one of the thick tomes she had studied late at night about detecting concealment charms.
"Specialis Revilio?" she whispered hesitantly, tapping a wall with her wand. Nothing happened. She blushed and, all too aware of Bill standing beside her watching her every move, desperately tried to recall the spell she had known had been underneath that one.
"Aditus Revilio!" she said, trying to put more confidence into the spell than she felt. The entrance behind them lit up bright blue and, to her surprise, so did an area of the wall to the right. There was a darker blue circle in the middle of the outline.
"Nice! Well done!" said Bill. "Finding out how to get in there's quite a bit more tricky. It took wizards about 5 years after finding this place to figure out what made that door open. When I say they tried everything, I mean they tried everything. Spells, different coloured light, I think I heard about one wizard peeing on the wall…
Then someone thought 'Yeah, but what would have been around for Robin Hood? What would he have been able to do to open the wall?' and they found out that if you create a magical arrow and shoot it at the centre of the circle, this wall suddenly disappears."
Obediently, Fleur waved her wand, non-verbally creating an elegant silver arrow and shooting it at the target. A portion of the wall instantly disappeared, leading to a darker room.
The only light came from what appeared to be knotholes in the wooden walls. The floor was covered in gold. Treasure chests with golden medallions and chains spilling out lay on the floor, surrounded by jewellery and coins.
Fleur and Bill walked to the middle of the room, their footsteps seeming muted by the dusty floor. She crouched down and reached out a hand towards the treasure before something in her head clicked. This place had been discovered years ago. If people could have taken the treasure, or if it was worth taking, it wouldn't be here. Bill was watching her attentively. She stood up slowly and backed away from it.
"Is it… is it cursed?" she asked.
"Some of it is, and pretty nastily too. But quite a lot of it just disappears if you touch it. We think it was probably a defence against anyone trying to steal things, that you'd either get cursed or find worthless stuff here. Pretty good, too. But well done on not touching anything."
He was looking at her a little strangely, and she couldn't help but notice how nicely the light fell on his face, his hair lighting up like copper.
She smiled nervously at him, the tension between them almost palpable.
Bill stepped towards her, blushing to the tips of his ears, not breaking eye contact. He reached out and took her slender hand in his own large, warm one.
Fleur was wide-eyed, staring up at him. Bill began to take another step, intending to move right in front of Fleur.
Unfortunately, his foot landed on a large goblet, which rolled away and sent him flying onto a pile of gold. Fleur jumped with shock as he let out a yelp of pain. Her wand in her hand, she sent a summoning spell towards him, aiming it so that he levitated off the pile of gold first. He fell on top of her, and she gently rolled him over, before levitating him more than a little unceremoniously into the main room, where there was better light. She laid him on the floor there, turning on to his back.
The curse, whatever it was, had burned right through his shirt, and onto the skin underneath. Bill seemed to be semi-conscious, making quiet groaning noises.
Fleur pointed her wand at the wound and murmered 'episky'. Nothing happened. She recalled that it was normally used for minor wounds, but it should have had some effect. She tried a number of other healing spells, all of which she had tried and tested before, but still to no avail. Bill seemed to have lost consciousness now, and Fleur was struggling not to panic.
Clearly magic wasn't going to have an effect on these cursed wounds. She placed her wand just over the wound and whispered 'aguamenti'. She controlled the amount of water with her mind, very carefully keeping it to a cool trickle, and trying to keep her mind on anything cold she could to keep the jet of water cool.
She stroked Bill's hair as the water trickled off his back, whispering words of comfort to him as he lay there. Fleur thought of Saint Mungo's, which Sara had mentioned earlier that day, but she had no idea where it was, or how long it would take her to find out. In her panicky state she couldn't think of anyone to call on for help. She desperately tried to remember what she knew of Muggle healing. She needed a first aid kit, she knew that much. She had one back at her flat. Pulling Bill upright, she spun on the spot and Disapparated, appearing seconds later in her flat. She levitated Bill quickly onto the bed, making sure he could breathe, and rushed to get the first aid kit which had been one of the first and only purchases she had made for the flat (she had learned early at Beauxbatons that it was always useful to have bandages, plasters and numbing cream for when the healing spells were too advanced).
She ministered to the burns for half an hour longer, and was just beginning to apply a burn cream as Bill opened his eyes again.
"Fleur?" he said. "My back feels like a dragon ate curry and decided to use it as a toilet."
Fleur smiled at him, gently cupping his cheek and kissing it lightly. "I am glad you are well enough to make jokes. Now perhaps you can tell me 'ow I should take care of zis burn?"
Bill turned scarlet at the kiss on the cheek and it was only the pain that brought him back from his cheerful, if brief, daydream.
"Oh, right. The curse needs butter to break it. It used to be used as a remedy for burns, but wizarding folk didn't feel like they needed to know about it, so I guess Hood thought it would be quite a safe way to make sure only wizards were affected permanently."
Fleur hurried into the kitchen, grabbing butter from her fridge, and smeared it on Bill's exposed back as he flinched. "Oh God, they were right, they said it would hurt like hell for a while after the butter was on… it's like those magically enhanced chillies people went around handing out in my seventh year. Talk to me? Anything. Stupid stuff. Just… distract me? Please?"
Fleur racked her brains. She ended up telling him a fairytale, one she had heard as a child. "Le Prince Lutin," the story of a prince turned into an imp after a run-in with a fairy disguised as a grass snake that he saved. It was a long story, the way she had been told it, and her English was faltering in parts as she tried to find the right words. Bill filled some of them in, and she could see the muscles in his back (which she had been trying hard not to stare at) relax slowly as the remedy began to take effect.
After another half an hour or so, Bill had recovered enough to stand up.
"I'm so sorry it ended like that. I didn't mean- I mean, I'd hoped – I don't know if you want to-" he stuttered.
His shirt was badly burned and hanging off him in places.
"Um, I should probably get going." He said. "Sorry. Um, I'll see you…" he paused.
Fleur said "I think my next working day is on Wednesday?"
"In, um, three days, I guess, then?" he said. "I'll try taking you somewhere different and not messing it up so spectacularly."
Fleur hesitated, unsure of what to say. She had thought that earlier there had been a moment between them, before it was ruined by the curse. But now she wasn't so sure, wasn't sure that she hadn't been seeing exactly what she hoped to see. So she said nothing as Bill disapparated from her room. Looking around the place, she had been slightly embarrassed at the state her flat was in. This was how she ended up, on her second night in London, waking up from the nightmare and beginning to make some improvements.