Update:
I've gotten a lot of reviews about these chapters saying they deviate from the plot. They will be relevant to future plot lines so I don't want to change them completely but I've modified them so they're from Pepper's perspective, looking into her brother's pensieve. The story is the same but I hope you prefer this layout. If you don't, I still have a copy of the old ones so I'd be happy to change it back if people prefer that version.
In reality, it had taken the team of Aurors hours to navigate their way through the first level of caverns, with numerous stops and moments when the team's navigator, Ianto Jones, lead them down dead end tunnels. As Harry, Hermione, Ginny, Pepper and Ron watched their journey in the pensieve, the inconsequential hours passed in a matter of moments.
It was important for his family to know that the number of times they wondered down an incorrect tunnel was not only Ianto's fault. The amount of literature that was actually useful for navigating their way through the tunnels was minimal and gave no insight as to what might be lurking in the tunnels. The team got their first hint of danger when they noticed almost invisible wisps of silvery silk swaying in the corners of the tunnels. As time passed, these few wisps became clumps that lined the walls and floor of the tunnels. The feet of the Aurors sunk deep into the soft, sticky material making it ten times harder to move through the tunnels. This, combined with the unnatural, intense heat, left them all drenched in sweat... all except Gabrielle Delacour of course; Veela's didn't sweat and, apparently, neither did half Veela's.
"Zis ees like... walking on custard." Gabrielle Delacour panted, as she, and the rest of the team paused briefly to catch their breath.
"Walking on custard?" Ianto Jones frowned. "You mean wading through treacle!"
"But of course, you know I speak nineteen languages." She told him irritably. "I am bound to make a meestake occaseeonally. Better eet be in Engleesh instead of Gobbledygook, else we'd be keelled by Gobleens!" She hadn't realised that as she spoke, a golden mist appeared around her face as she unconsciously switched on her Veela allure. Ianto's eyes had glazed over as he stared dreamily at her, not really taking in her angry words. Before he had a sexual harassment case to deal with, Harry cleared his throat loudly.
"Rolf, mind telling us what all this stuff is?" Harry asked, pointing to all the little stalactites and stalagmites (Harry had never found out the difference), made from the soft, sticky, white silk. Rolf crouched down and licked the floor in an animalistic fashion, making Padma and Gabrielle screw up thier faces in disgust.
"It's a type of protein, similar to the sorts found in hair and nails... there's only one creature that creates silk like this." The magical creatures expert glanced at Harry awkwardly. "Spiders, in particular Acromantula." The memory version of Harry scratched is scar to hide his nerves. Both Pepper and Hermione had been petrified when the family of Aragog, Hagrid's supposedly harmless pet Acromantula, had attempted to kill Harry and Ron in their second year. If a wild, flying Ford Anglia hadn't saved them, Harry highly doubted he'd be standing there that day... about to face yet another colony of giant spiders. There was no doubt the God of Irony wasn't laughing at him.
"It's strange that they're down here, this species is native to Borneo... although there are rumours that Professor Hagrid was breeding them in the forbidden forest." Rolf, chucking at the idea that a teacher would do anything that illegal and manage to keep his job. Harry avoided eye contact with Padma, not wanting to confirm Hagrid's guilt.
"Now is not really the time or a care of magical creatures lesson." Harry whispered. "Right, a good spell for repelling Acromantula is Arania Exumai. Now let's try and keep our wits together and instead of fear, let's just feel relieved that Ron isn't here."
As the group chuckled, Ron looked rather indignant his friend was mocking his irrational fear of spiders so casually with people who were supposed to be looking up to him. Despite both being Aurors, Harry had gotten the creme de la creme of assignments; full of mystery, intrigue and excitement. He didn't desire the glory and wealth that came with it, he never had. However, at each press release after Harry had caught another Dark Lord and Ron had caught a shabby looking wizard busking as a muggle magician or a witch who'd let a Niffler lose at Glastonbury, the secret green monster of jealousy grew a little inside Ron.
Unaware of his friend's feelings, Harry continued to lead his family after the larger group of Aurors. Pepper was stunned by how thick and dense the webbing became with every step; even shouting 'Bombarda' at the top of their lungs did little to clear the path. The only thing that seemed to cut thought the webs was an enchanted sword Padma's grandfather had given to her. They took it in turns to slash through the webs, however, most of the group were not used to so much physical activity. In two hours, they'd travelled about 200 yards.
At one point, Dennis became so entangled in the webs Harry had to physically cut him out with a knife that looked vaguely familiar. Upon closer inspection, Pepper identified it as the knife Sirius, Harry's late Godfather had given him. Sirius had always been polite to her, but they'd never been 'family' like he and Harry had been. Indeed, sometimes it seemed like he regarded Pepper in a cooler manner than Ginny and Hermione, despite being the daughter of his best friends. Two years after his untimely death, she found out why.
"Strong stuff this." Dennis grinned, enthusiasm untarnished as ever as Harry cut him free. The others grunted miserably in acknowledgement of his words.
"In Wakanda, the people would deem you untrustworthy, with your inane optimism and irritating smile." Letitia told him, bluntly. Her words were met with nods from the team as well as more enthusiastic grunts of agreement. "You ought to stop wipe that grin off your face, knuckle down and work hard like the rest of us. Perhaps then you wouldn't get so caught up in the webs."
"Would you tell the sun to stop being so blue?" Dennis winked, cheerfully.
"Yes." She shrugged. "I wish it were tan." It was impossible to tell whether she was joking.
"Ooo-kay." Harry stretched out the word awkwardly. "Sorry to break up this... really strange discussion, but we have to keep moving. To be honest, I'm shocked we haven't seen a single Acromantula."
He was right, Pepper thought, the Aurors had been extremely lucky not to see one. Just as the thought entered her head, she remembered taking to her brother in detail about his adventures his second year, in the summer between her first and second year. While twelve year old Harry and Ron had spoken with Aragog to try and gleam a shred of information about the chamber of secrets, other spiders drifted gracefully down from the trees, encircling them with an impenetrable mesh of webbing. The thought made her shiver.
"I am not so sure we 'ave not seen one." Gabrielle chuckled playfully, reaching into his messy, black hair and pulling out a tiny, wriggling black spider. "Hmm, on second zoughts, per'aps 'e ees a fraction too small."
The little spider took a suicidal looking leap from her hand, swinging gracefully to the floor where it ran along the floor and headed towards the wall. They lost sight of it as it blended into the pitch black wall... wait... had they? Pepper took a curious step closer to the wall and saw it was not black. The colour was an illusion created by hundreds of thousands of writhing bodies of tiny spiders that had been watching them from the tunnel walls and roof, like a high tech CCTV system on the doorstep to the Acromanula's nest.
The team had lingered too long.
"We've got to get moving!" Harry announced, a panic rising in his voice. "Patil, Creevy and I will take point, followed by Jones and Shacklebolt, then Rolf and Gabrielle at the rear, everyone happy?" The childish sounding chorus of out of sync 'yes's' that followed his words make him grin despite the seriousness of the situation. All seven Aurors instantly began packing up their rucksacks and stretching as if they were going on a hike up a mountain on a summers day. It was only when Ianto, who'd already packed up, stretched his tired legs that they were reminded of the dangers they faced.
"I believe there's a small snag in the plan, sir."
A strong feeling of dread filling him, Harry stood and looked in the same direction as Ianto. He was looking at yet another while wall, engulfed with webbing and teaming with black spiders. Something in his gut told him to turn around, so he did. After slowing rotating three hundred and sixty degrees Harry realised the snag. All their exits were were completely sealed by thick layers of impossibly strong webbing. It was impossible to tell what had once been a tunnel and what was the wall.
As they'd feared, Harry's nightmarish adventures from his second year had come back to haunt him. There was no way forward. No way back. All seven Aurors had unwittingly become encircled into a solid ring. This was the spider's domain... they must have known intruders had been advancing on their nest for hours. They'd played a long, waiting game but now had their pray surrounded, trapped. Ready to be slaughtered.
"Harry!" He heard Padma squeal. Looking back at his team, he saw all their eyes were pointed up at the ceiling.
Trickling through the mass of silk that engulf the ceiling and the walls, came impossibly large spiders. Their hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he stared at the terrifyingly graceful acrobatics show being held before his very eyes.
"Defensive formations guys!" Harry shouted. The others nodded, quickly running into the centre of the ring, back to back, wands pointing outwards. Padma held her enchanted sword in one hand, her wand in the other, both her knuckles had turned an alarming she of white. Dennis looked alarmed, but was humming the Indiana Jones sound track under his breath. Letitia looked completely neutral as always "Hold for now, we don't want to initiate the fight if we don't have to."
"The fight has already been initiated." Letitia snapped at him. "I say we attack."
"Ees zat a bad joke?" Gabrielle asked, incredulously. "Zey would slaughter us, like shooting feesh in a pond!"
"Barrel." Ianto corrected. "Like shooting fish in a barrel."
"Ah, zat eez rideeculous! Why would feesh be in a barrel?" She chuckled nervously to herself.
"Can't fault that logic." Harry allowed himself to grin. While others would scream and panic, his team were calmly arguing about the English language. It was clear from his eyes that he loved his team for their plucky attitudes, however, even he had to concede this wasn't the right time. Since the spiders had the power to slaughter them the instant the Aurors started fighting, Harry needed his team to be a unit, fighting and thinking as if they were one person. That was difficult however, with the number of strong, clashing personalities in his team... but they'd been though worse and survived.
The ground underneath their feet began to tremor as something ginormous approached them. The quakes became stronger and stronger, until each one caused a sonic boom to reverberate around the caverns.
"What... is... this?" A deep, melancholy voice caused goosebumps to spread throughout his body. From behind the curtain of webbing, a single, long, black hairy leg appeared. Then another. And another. Eight legged monster that eventually stood before them peered down at the seven puny humans with its eight eyes. It was almost twice the size of Aragog with pincers as big as Pepper, which clicked with a seemingly desperate hunger. She knew it was just a memory. She knew it couldn't hurt her. Yet, Pepper found her legs shaking like jelly as she stared up at the monster before her. Beside her, she heard Ron, cowering being Hermione, whimpering like a dog in a thunderstorm. "Who dares to enter my realm?"
"We're searching for something." Harry called politely. "We've been lead to believe it's hidden in these tunnels." None of the other Acromantula seemed to speak English, but, by they way they clicked their pincers in a cruel laugh, they understood it.
"We know what you seek." The largest spider told them, his voice grave. "Many bipeds have come before you, none have survived." He tweaked one of his eight legs, causing a fracture to appear in the webbing above their heads. Out of the newly formed gap, fell five skulls, silk laced between the holes where the nostrils, mouth and eyes were supposed to be. Despite being slightly fractured, there was no doubt they were human.
"Cool!" Dennis grinned.
"You have serious issues." Padma breathed deeply, trying to calm herself down from the panic that had engulfed her when the skulls clattered to the ground.
"We do not scare so easily." Letitia told the spider defiantly, ignoring her team mates. From the expressions of Ianto and Padma's faces, it was clear that they fervently disagreed with her thoughtless use of the word 'we'.
"That may be true." The spider told them. "But whether you are afraid or not, this will end the same way. Your skeletons will decorate the walls of our halls for millennia to come."
"I think not." A smile, never before seen by the others appeared on Letitia's face as she raised her wand. "I think it will be you-"
"Shacklebolt stop!" Harry bellowed, before she did something stupid. "That's an order!" She didn't lower her wand or look away from the spiders but she stopped talking, listening attentively to the team leader. In the awkwardly silent seconds that followed, she made no attempt to use magic.
"You bipeds." The spider laughed, a sound that reverberated around the tunnels so loudly that it was a shock the roof didn't threaten to cave in. "You are all blinded by your lusts for power and goblin like greed. The so-called team you arrive with will fracture from the inside first, making our hunt that little bit easier." The pincers of the spiders around them clicked together, in another chorus of laughter.
"In Wakanda, we have a saying for times like this. A roaring lion kills no game." Letitia snapped. Pepper could easily read the meaning behind the saying; standing around talking would not save their lives. Perhaps it wouldn't, but her gut told her that aggression would only make the situation worse.
"You can't fight them all single handedly." Harry told her, his voice low and urgent as he came to the same conclusion. "There are too many."
"'Arry ees right." Gabrielle murmured. "As ze saying goes, you will attract more bees weez 'oney zan weez vinegar."
"Flies." Ianto corrected her.
"What do flies 'ave to do weez 'oney?" Gabrielle asked incredulously.
"Now is not the time to argue about idioms!" Padma hissed desperately, as she hopped from one foot to the other.
"Patil is correct." Letitia nodded approvingly, "Now is the time for action!"
"No, please listen to Gabrielle." Rolf argued. "Not about the idiom - Ianto was right about that. She's right about using charm rather than brute force in this case. Please, Letitia... Harry. Let me speak to him." At school, Rolf had never looked Pepper, who was his closest friend, in the eye for longer than half a second or so. Even in the memory, eighteen years later, his eyes spent most of their time directed at his own mismatched shoes. At that moment, he stood taller than Pepper had ever seen him, staring straight into Letitia's dark eyes hat looked, in Pepper's opinion, like the opening of the pit.
"Very well." Letitia nodded once in submission, placing her expressionless mask back onto her face. "You are the expert after all."
"Thank you." Rolf muttered awkwardly, his eyes falling back to the floor as if he was embarrassed or ashamed of his actions. After fiddling with the striped scarf in Hufflepuff colours that hung around his neck (despite the humidity), he spun around so he was facing the largest spider, who had been listening to the Aurors exchange in amusement. "Mighty Acromantula, as I'm sure you agree, my family and I will rue the day we set foot over your threshold."
"You are the first to try and win your lives with politeness." The great spider's chuckle reverberated off the thick, stone walls of the tunnels. "I can assure you it, will be as effective as using violence."
"I understand, O' King of Spiders." Rolf bowed deeply. "And you deserve to take pleasure in our deaths, since you thwarted our plan to steal the artefact. We were foolish to think we could ever outsmart you!" It was safe to say that Rolf's methods were beginning to worry Pepper. She couldn't help but wonder whether Letitia had the right idea in this case. From the way the other Aurors were gripping their wands, (so tightly a few sparks flew from the ends), they were thinking the same thing. "As you say we were blinded by our lust for power..."
"Ha!" The spider laughed out loud, followed by another cruel chorus from his family.
"May I ask, what is so amusing?"
"You sought something you heard had great power." The spider said, "as did my ancestors many years ago. They found, as you would have found, that alone it is worthless, powerless until paired with its sister. Even then, it can only lead you to power so great that no mortal creature, especially not a biped, can withstand or comprehend."
"If I may be so bold," Harry stepped forward, suddenly intrigued by the spider's words. "What drew your noble ancestors to the caverns?"
"We were fleeing from the war." The spider admitted, gravely. "A long time ago, my family lived in a mighty forest, feasting on everything that wondered unknowingly into our nest. It was peaceful, a better time. Only when you biped went to war amongst yourselves, we were harried out of our home like dogs. Terrified, we ran towards a castle where we were attacked by more bipeds. We had no way forward, no way back. So we went underground with many other magical creatures. Hunted and persecuted wherever we went, we eventually sought power to overthrow the bipeds. Power that, rumour has it, was hidden in the caverns. I lost many family members searching for what you call the artefact, for there is something deeper in the caves. Something that also fought for the Lord of the Bipeds, but recognises no other allies. We found no power, but we stayed safe in the caverns feasting on pitiful insects power hungry travellers like yourselves."
As the beast concluded his story, Pepper felt something she had not expected. She felt pity. The great battle between bipeds he'd spoken of had been the battle of Hogwarts. Pepper remembered seeing the horde of terrified Acromantula sprinting across the castle grounds. She remembered Hagrid's useless shouts as he tried to stop people hurting the spiders, and she remembered Colin Creevey's limp, lifeless body, slashed open by Acromantula fangs and drained of all blood, some webbing wrapped around his head.
When Pepper looked at Dennis, she saw the inane smile had finally dropped off the poor boy's face at the memory of his brother's body. The poor boy had only been thirteen years old. He'd who had worshipped his big brother. Now Dennis was a man, Pepper could see anger in his eyes as he looked into the eight eyes of his big brother's murderers.
"You said another magical creature fled the war..." Harry said quickly, trying to gleam as much information as he could before he lost control of his team.
"You should rejoice you will not live to see them."
"Are they bipeds?" Harry asked, frowning as he tried to figure out what would be waiting for them, if they ever got past the spiders. Both giants and werewolves fought on the side of Lord Voldemort, both had fled the battle. Pepper doubted that neither species would be a welcome sight in the lower levels of the caverns.
"We know not." The spider said, approaching Harry, each leg shaking the floor as they moved. "Nobody knows what is under their hoods, except for their pray. Now, as much as I have enjoyed your final conversation, my family is becoming impatient with me. It is not good to play with your food for too long, lest it finds a way to worm its way free. I will say goodbye..."
"NOW!" Harry bellowed, ignoring the last words the giant spiders would ever say to them.
The tunnel was filled with bright blue sparks and the painful screams of the spiders as six of the Aurors shouted "Arania Exumai" over and over again, blasting the spiders back away from them. The seventh Auror, Rolf, crouched in the middle as his fellows circled around him, trying to prise his old, battered brief case open. The small brown face of a Niffler poked itself out of the gap, a triumphant expression on its little face. Finally, it had freed itself! After glancing around the caves with its crow-like eyes, searching for something shiny, he realised his predicament, let out a little squeal, and disappeared back into the brown leather case.
"Hurry Rolf!" Harry bellowed as an Acromantula grabbed hold of him. The venomous fang ripped his hiking trousers and sunk easily into his leg. Dennis shot a spell at the Acromantula, basting it backwards and grabbing Harry around the chest. Harry's head was already starting to spin as the venom coursed through his veins.
The whole world went black.
Authors Note:
Similar to the last chapter, I've rewritten this one with Pepper watching through a pensieve. It's half the size of the previous chapter as I;ve taken out a lot of things that I considered irrelevant.
Thanks also everyone who left such lovely reviews on the last chapter (and all the chapters before that). I love the person who left a review saying they imagined Rolf in the dress to be like Eddie Redmayne in 'the Danish Girl'. I hadn't thought about this when I wrote it, but I'm happy how it worked accidentally.
My thinking behind the team of Aurors was similar to Navy seals in that they'd go on missions in teams. Harry's in a team of seven Aurors since it's a magically significant number (the reason Voldemort chose to have seven Horcruxes). Initially I wasn't going to go into this much detail about the characters, but I think it's more interesting to give the team different roles and personalities rather them just being faceless Aurors who just follow Harry into dangerous situations.
Although these chapters are around Harry's adventures (it's become four chapters - I initially wasn't going to include the dialogue with the Acromantula and I'm quite enjoying writing these), Harry and Pepper will have lots of lovely brother-sister chapters after this. In the next chapter as well, you should see some of the reactions of Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Pepper as they're hearing Harry's story. Tony and the other avengers will also come into the story a bit later on. Please let me know if you have any constructive criticism - I'm always happy to have a chat to find way to make my writing and the story better! I also love hearing ideas for future chapters and any theories you may have.
The struggles Gabrielle has with English idioms, I've copied from NCIS, similar to Ziva's struggles when she first moved to America. Also, I also borrowed what is perhaps my favourite quite from Brooklyn 99: "Would you tell the sky to stop being so blue?" "Yes, I wish it were tan." Rolf's dialogue with the Acromantula was inspired by Bilbo's chats with Smaug in the hobbit (with the over the top compliments). I don't own any of these, but I think they add something nice to the story line and help to develop the characters a bit.
Thanks for reading :)
