Obligatory disclaimer: All the characters, world building, and story beats here that don't belong to JK Rowling belong to Jim Butcher (or their associated media empires).
This is the third in the Born in Fiendfyre series. Please check my profile for the completed previous year stories, or this one will likely be hard to follow.
The mausoleum was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.
It was Draco's fault. "Why didn't that work!?" the basically-white-haired teen screamed, usual affected nonchalance impossible to muster at the moment. It was hard to be cool when the horde of mutant skeletons was now a horde of burning mutant skeletons, and that wasn't slowing them down any. It had been a pretty nice fire-making charm that the rich kid had freaked out and cast when the remains of the tomb-robbers started to animate.
It was Percy's fault. "I think they must be surrounded by a dark magic aura that preserved their bones but not their flesh, and that keeps them from burning," my roommate observed. The lean, bespectacled redhead was trying to maintain his dignity while fast-walking out of the tomb, away from the undead creatures. They'd been totally inert until he tried to show off his ability to read demotic to his girlfriend, and wound up animating the tomb protectors.
It was Penny's fault. "There has to be something else involved, though, otherwise the flames would just go out. Maybe they used an early variant of Plankhardt's Inversion to cause a fast-acting mutating cancer, and it's still somehow putting enough energy into the bodies to fuel the fire." The curly-blond-haired girl (for whom Percy had been showing off) was clearly still in researcher mode. She'd been trying to figure out why the skeletonized bodies of the cursed tomb robbers lying about had extra heads and arms. She was hurrying to keep up with the group, but it didn't seem to have sunk in yet that a horde of flaming skeletons were shambling after us. And she was the one that had talked us into slipping into the not-quite-cleared mausoleum for a little investigation.
But it wasn't my fault. My name is Harry Dresden, 17-year-old legal adult wizard, basilisk-slayer, Voldemort's number one annoyance, and part-time felon, and I wasn't even supposed to be there. My other roommate and my girlfriend were off checking out a Sudanese magical beast preserve, but I got talked into exploring the secret wizarding tombs near Abu Simbel, regardless. "Guys! Run now, research later!" I urged them, not happy about how the skeletons seemed to be picking up speed but we really weren't.
The tomb complex was fairly vast, the work of Ptolemy-era Egyptian wizards who'd hidden their city far from the more famous muggle areas. Nobody was quite sure why the Egyptian government decided to move the older Abu Simbel temple nearby when they flooded the original site to make a giant lake a few decades earlier. Maybe it was conspiracy, or maybe it was just good bedrock to support that kind of thing. According to Percy's brother, Bill, the local magicals had forgotten about the tombs themselves, and had a hell of a time scrambling to keep the muggles from finding the site back in the 60s.
Given that some of them had sported the remnants of modern clothing, the skeletons chasing us had probably been a mix of tomb robbers from the original era and the last few decades. Everybody thought they were Indiana Jones, but most of them were Satipo.
You know: Alfred Molina's character? Dies in the beginning of Raiders? I had that movie on the brain since I'd insisted all my friends watch it before we went on vacation to Egypt. Which was why it was especially galling that we'd triggered a trap our first outing on our own. Reading my annoyance as we finally started running, Percy insisted, "The traps should have all been deactivated! Bill insisted it was safe!"
"To be fair, babe," Penny said, still not properly appreciating the tight spot we were in, "you shouldn't have read passages from The Book of Going Forth by Night in front of the corpses."
"Why were there even still corpses!?" Draco tried to run and have a nervous breakdown at the same time. Given that he was the only one of us that played sports, he'd probably have already been to safety if he had his breathing under control. He hadn't been aware that the tarps in the corner of the tomb were covering where they'd relocated the bodies, since they hadn't gotten around to properly disposing of them yet.
The fortunate thing about being chased by a bunch of burning skeletons is that they provide plenty of light to see by, and we were easily able to keep our footing as we finally got to the slightly-collapsed entrance of this particular tomb. I brought up the rear as we stepped over fallen masonry and ducked out of the shored-up tunnel that led into the tomb. "Engorgio!" Penny incanted as soon as I was clear, causing a head-sized chunk of fallen stone to swell to block the entire passageway. "See, no need to panic."
I was actually surprised that my year-mates hadn't panicked. Percy and Penny hadn't really been in any of the combat situations I seemed to find myself in around Hogwarts, where we all went to school. Despite being more than willing to help out, they tended to miss the chaos. While they were both gifted casters, I still didn't have proof they'd be an asset in a real fight. Maybe this showed they would, or maybe they just hadn't realized how serious the situation could have gotten.
A loud, boney thud resounded from the other side of the impromptu barrier and a bit of flame shot around the edges. Everyone was suddenly very still, waiting to see if Penny would immediately be proven wrong. But the boulder held, and the sounds diminished from the other side.
"Lumos," Percy cast, lighting up his wand so we could see in the low corridor that ran under the sands from tomb to tomb. It still bugged me that my wand-reliant friends could either cast spells or have a flashlight. I needed to get them better foci for the light charm. Or actual flashlights. "As I was saying, Bill was sure it was safe. Those bodies were primed to reanimate, but only as part of an enchantment placed on the sarcophagus itself. Which the curse breakers removed!"
"Congratulations!" Draco sneered, sitting on the floor with his legs pulled against his chest, trying not to hyperventilate. "You found an ancient curse even Gringotts curse breakers missed. Better write to McGonagall to have that count towards being Head Boy." Being sarcastic seemed to make the kid feel better in almost any circumstance.
"I already passed on that," Percy shrugged.
"Wait, what?" I asked him. Being the school's Head Boy (as hilarious as I thought the title sounded) had been one of Percy's dreams.
"They gave Head Girl to Gemma Farley instead of Penny," he explained. "Which I have no doubt she earned," he nodded to Draco—Gemma Farley was the Slytherin girls' prefect in our year and presumably a friend of Draco's, since that was his house. "But I realized that it would be a lot of responsibility and time, not even spent with Penny. I have too much study for NEWTs to do, and our research project. The position is helpful for the general Ministry bureaucracy, but not for the Department of Mysteries."
"That's really smart, man," I told him. He'd come a long way from the status-obsessed kid I'd first met two years earlier. "Who'd they pick instead?"
"Flinton, I think," he answered. The Hufflepuff boys' prefect seemed like a good choice.
Penny had clearly already known about this, but squeezed Percy's shoulder anyway for making such a mature decision. She said, though, "That digression aside, I guess a recitation shouldn't have had that much effect if it wasn't keyed into the tomb wards. Now that I think about it, a password-activated animation effect would have been really hard to miss. So why did they suddenly stand up and attack us?"
"They may have only attacked us because someone set them on fire," I glared at Draco. Obviously it was slightly hypocritical because I might have blasted them by reflex myself if I'd been a few seconds faster than Draco. But this time it wasn't my fault, and I was going to hang onto that fact. "As for why they animated, I wonder if it was coincidental…" I trailed off, realizing that my subconscious had been trying to raise a flag about something I'd half-noticed for a few minutes now. "Does anyone else hear drumming?"
I stopped talking, and everyone shut up. My hearing is generally uncannily good, but, once I pointed it out, I could see that the others began to realize that the only sound in the underground necropolis other than our breathing was far too rhythmic to be the natural sounds of wind and earth. I did a quick bit of math and realized that it was probably a little after sunset outside. We'd been too engrossed to clear out when the rest of the Gringotts teams and their guests started leaving for dinner, and this close to the Equator sunset was only around 6:30 even at the end of July.
"Have they ever spent the night in these tombs before?" I asked. Everyone else gave a big shrug. "Maybe we should go ahead and leave?"
Even with magic, the ancient wizarding Egyptians hadn't believed in wasting any more effort digging underground passages than their muggle contemporaries. The corridor was low enough I had to duck under the recently-installed wooden support beams as we walked, and Percy ducked his own head just so his untameable carrot top wouldn't brush against them. While he wasn't anywhere near my freakish height, Percy had gotten the last of his growth spurts around the time he turned 17, and most of the Weasley boys were tall.
Draco had only just turned 13 a couple of months earlier, so might have to worry about being too tall someday but not yet. And he already had Penny beaten for height, so she was pulling ahead of the group, completely unconcerned due to having over a foot of clearance over her petite frame. Sometimes being small was an advantage. Not having to duck every few feet meant she had time to get her thoughts in order, so asked, "If this is drumming, and it's related… that's American necromantic traditions, right?"
Percy answered, "Yes, though possibly by way of Africa: syncretism between various native traditions that grew to prominence around the Caribbean. I believe it is supposed to require less effort and time than the British style. An inferius is essentially a dark magic item, with all the enchanting work that entails. Drumming necromancy requires significantly less preparation, but relies on the drumbeat to represent the beating of the heart. Stop the drummer, stop the undead. Or, at least, remove the necromancer's control, which often ends the animation."
"Good to know," I told them, grimacing, "Because I think we're heading toward it."
The passage finally emptied into a much larger room, which served as entryway and embalming chamber for the various connected crypts. It was the only way out of the complex, up to the Gringotts encampment where we were spending most of our vacation. Beautiful frescoes covered the walls, and had held up better than their muggle equivalents due to preservative magic. The excavation teams had placed cool-burning bluebell flames in glass jars throughout the room, providing plenty of light, albeit with a bluish tinge.
And, sure enough, standing in the middle of the room, atop a stone bier used for embalming, between us and the doorway, was the drummer. A slender, androgynous figure that I assumed was female from the knockoff Cleopatra robes and headdress alternated using her hand and the end of a black, lacquered wand to strike the head of a simple wood-and-skin drum slung across her chest with a leather strap.
If she weren't the drummer, I would have assumed she was one of the things it was animating, because her skin was a near-translucent, pallid gray and her eyes were milky with cataracts. She saw us as soon as we exited the corridor, and her deathly-blue lips turned up in a smirk—humor that didn't reach those dead eyes.
"Early party guests!" she said, voice cultured but extremely gritty like a heavy smoker, and glimpses of yellow teeth didn't bely that impression. "Don't worry, the others should be along shortly. Then we'll all go out and make more friends on the surface. Oh, but where are my manners, new friends? Pleased to meet you…
"You can call me Mavra."
Author's Note: As with previous years, the plan is to release this story twice a week (on Tuesdays and Fridays) until completion.