Chapter Eight: Katia
"Well that's
it. I've done everything possible –
it's as dead as a dodo." Ron climbed
out from under the jeep, wiping his hands on an oily rag. Harry pushed his glasses more firmly on to
his nose and shrugged helplessly.
"There's nothing magical left to try either." he replied, a
frown creasing his forehead, "If I didn't know better, Ron, I'd swear there was
some kind of contamination in the fuel."
Ron shook his head, giving his hands a final swipe and flinging the rag
into the back of the jeep.
"Nah," he said, "Something's wrong with the mechanics –
bloody muggle machines! I knew we
should have used broomsticks."
"Don't be daft – how would we have carried the
equipment?" Ron sighed.
"Well, we're going to have to carry it now, by hook or by
crook." He replied, "There's no way we can abandon anything this side of the
lost city." He was distracted by a
rustling in the nearby undergrowth as Katia emerged into the small clearing.
"We are in luck." She told them, "The river is nearer than I
thought – just two kilometres south west of here."
"Two kilometres!" Ron exclaimed, staring at the mound of baggage
in the jeep with a sinking feeling in his stomach. "Have a heart, Katia.
There's no way we're going to be able to move that lot, even with charm
work." Something close to a sneer
crossed the dark woman's face.
"Charms depend upon the strength of the wizard working
them." She replied in a quiet voice.
Ron flushed angrily and clenched his teeth but refrained from
comment. Harry didn't seem to have
noticed the exchange. He was quietly
walking around the offending vehicle assessing the amount of baggage.
"I think we can do it." He said, pulling at a large canvas
sack. "The stuff's not exactly lightweight, but it's mostly in regular-shaped
packages. If necessary we can do it in
two legs, but I'd really rather not waste the time." He began to haul the equipment out of the jeep then beckoned to
Ron to help him.
"It's not too much of a loss really." he told him, "After
all, we'd have hit dense vegetation near the river once we got to within half a
mile or so, and we'd have had to abandon the jeep anyway. This is – just a little earlier than I'd
planned."
The baggage wasn't particularly bulky, but it was certainly
heavy. Harry and Ron spent some time
devising a charm to strengthen the tent platform until it would bear the weight
of the most cumbersome objects, then Katia helped them to string the rest in a
line, roped together. They then joined
forces to keep control of the unwieldy string of packages while levitating them
to about waist height. Harry elected to
take on the heaviest baggage alone as he felt he was better equipped to sustain
the levitation charm for a long periods than either of the others.
Travelling by jeep in the heat and humidity of the Mexican
jungle had been unbearable, despite the Coolcharm fatigues, but tramping
through on foot now reduced both Harry and Ron to the consistency of wet
rags. Katia, of course, soldiered on
silently, hardly seeming to break sweat, but Ron had the satisfaction of seeing
her eyes widen slightly in surprise when he activated Tim Cyu's machete to
clear a path for them. Ron's initial
reaction of open-mouthed salivation to the exotic appeal of their female guide
had rapidly faded to be replaced by intense irritation and a small niggle of
suspicion. He was somewhat disturbed to
note, however, that Harry, far from sharing his feelings, seemed to be openly
seeking her company on frequent occasions.
Over the past two days, Ron had covertly watched his friend and found,
to his alarm, that Harry's eyes seemed to settle on Katia almost of their own
volition. Harry himself seemed unaware
that he was betraying himself so obviously, or even that he was experiencing
anything unusual. Ron shook his head
and gritted his teeth, determined not to slacken the force of his levitation
charm one iota: this woman was beginning to emit signals which set his spine
tingling – and not pleasantly.
By the time they reached the river, the sun was well down on
the horizon and they had very little daylight left to make camp. Swiftly and with the economy that spoke of
long practice, the three travelling companions made camp, anchoring the tent
platform to a suitable tree, activating the charms to stabilise it and pitching
the tent, before cooking a meal in the small kitchen to eat round the hastily
conjured fire.
A fire was one thing on which Ron and Harry were in total
agreement. Apart from the deterrent to
wild animals, the boost to the morale that a campfire imparted was worth
several hours of undisturbed sleep.
And, of course, they needed it to keep contact with Sirius. That evening as Katia made a sweep of the
area for possible hazards and Harry sat with his back against a tree going over
his notes, Ron gave Sirius the bad news about the Jeep. Sirius looked tired. He told them vaguely that the Ministry had
been on his case, but that he had kept them at bay. Sirius Black wasn't going to let a bunch of bureaucrats push him
around, whatever the level of urgency.
"Between you and me, Ron," he said, wearily, "Cornelius
Fudge is no longer the problem.
Frankly, he's not going to be anybody's problem for much longer – not
even his own. It's this guy Brown who's
making the waves."
"Do you mean Tantalus Brown? From Operations?" Sirius
nodded.
"That's the one.
Total pain in the ass." He sighed, "I didn't realise until yesterday how
much of this little day trip falls into his bailiwick. He's been in contact on and off for most of
the day, and he's waiting for me to return his calls as we speak!" Ron frowned.
"What's spooking him, Sirius? We can look after ourselves better than most other seasoned
travellers, so where's the problem?
Can't you just tell him we're all big boys here – Katia included. Let's face it, she's got more balls than Harry
and I have between us!" Sirius laughed
but with little genuine amusement.
"True," he replied, "And she has the strongest stomach this
side of Hogwarts!" Was Ron imagining
things or did Sirius shudder slightly?
Ron filed that one away for future consideration.
"Seriously," he tried again, "What is the big rush on this
trip? Why is this thing so important
that we have to take off at a moment's notice, inadequately briefed and with
precious little backup?" Sirius shrugged.
"Ron, when I work that one out, you'll be the first to
know."
"Give some thought to it will you? I'm beginning to feel an itch between my shoulder blades, and
that never fails to make me short-tempered about secrets!"
"Okay, okay." Sirius
signed off with a wave of the hand, and Ron sighed deeply, rising to his feet.
"Time to get some shut-eye." He said, kicking Harry hard on
the soles of his jungle boots. The
dark-haired man started and glared at Ron over the top of his glasses.
"Hey! What was that
for?" Ron jerked his head towards the
tent. Harry glanced about him.
"Hadn't we better wait for Katia?" Ron began to stroll towards the tree.
"You can if you want," he said, over his shoulder, "I'm
bushed and I'm going to get some rest."
However, the tent's largest bedroom, shared by the two men,
overlooked the campsite. Ron paused in
unbuttoning his shirt and looked out of the window. There was no light in the room, and so he was fairly sure the
other two could not see his face as he spied on them. Almost as soon as he, Ron, had departed to the tent, Katia had
emerged from the undergrowth. Now, as
he watched, she and Harry seemed to be deep in conversation, staring into the
firelight, occasionally throwing a twig onto the flames, although this was
scarcely necessary. Ron continued to
undress, hanging his shirt and trousers over a light chair in the corner of the
room, and lay down on the big double bed, his hands above his head, a very
thoughtful expression on his face. It
seemed a long time before Harry crept into the room, undressed silently and
inched his way beneath the light coverlet, trying not to disturb his
friend. Despite his fatigue, Ron felt
Harry relax and heard his breathing deepen, long before sleep claimed his own
mind.
********************************
The next day was even harder. They rose with the sun in order to make the most of the cooler
morning hours, and packed up their gear, stowing it as neatly as possible. Ron took out the package containing Tim
Cyu's raft, waded out into the river and activated it with a pass of his wand. The equipment was every bit as good as it
had been cried up to be, and their spirits rose as they effortlessly stowed
their gear and fired the engine. Ron
used a small Stasis Charm to stabilise the raft, gesturing to Katia to join
him. Slinging her pack into the stern,
she prepared to embark when several things happened at once. Harry, who was following a few paces behind,
gave a startled exclamation and dropped his pack, there was a sudden warning
crackle of undergrowth and a large cat-like beast threw itself out of the scrub
to knock Harry to the ground. His
glasses flew off into the bushes and, unable to reach his wand, his hands
fastened reflexively on to the jaguar's shoulders, trying to push its slavering
teeth and claws away from his face. Ron
yelled, going for his wand and urging the craft nearer the bank, but Katia was
even quicker. Her sleeve holster was
clearly visible, but she made no move to arm herself. Instead, she leaped on to the big cat, dragging it away from her
colleague and, to their amazement, began to fight it with her bare hands. Harry sat up, blinking in confusion. Ron, once he had realised her intention,
shouted and raise his wand to put a stop to the battle, but quickly gave up as
he realised he could just as easily stupefy his colleague as the jaguar.
"Katia, no!" shouted Harry, apparently now aware of the
situation. "You don't need to kill it!
Back off – we'll take it with our wands." It was surely too late for such advice because as they watched,
she adjusted her grip on the creature's neck, there was an audible crack and it
fell, limp and twitching to the ground.
There was a shocked silence then Ron raised his eyes to the woman's
face. She was smiling – grimly and with
tight lips, but definitely smiling.
*********************************************
"It must have been a rogue." said Harry, thoughtfully.
The sun was high in the sky, and the engine of the raft was chugging
quietly, propelling them almost lazily downriver. The sounds of the jungle were fainter and less alarming at this
distance, but the larger inhabitants of the river gazed at them with curious
eyes, and some came close enough to nudge the small raft.
"Letting us know that they are the masters." Katia had
remarked after a particularly large alligator swept its tail negligently at
them, causing the raft to list violently.
"I'd hate to see what they do when they're really annoyed."
Ron had replied, wringing the water out of his teeshirt: it was hopelessly
drenched. Sighing, he took it off,
draping it over the baggage in the back of the craft to dry, reaching for the
sunscreen as he did so. They had
drifted into not uncompanionable silence until Harry's sudden remark.
"A rogue jaguar?" replied Ron, keying in immediately to what
had been occupying Harry's mind for most of the day. His friend nodded.
"It would never have approached us like that otherwise."
"You are right."
Katia handed over the tiller to Ron and sat down next to Harry. "Jaguars are shy and careful beasts as a
rule. This one must have been very
disturbed by something to have ventured so close to humans. We were lucky to escape with as little
injury as we did." He looked up from
his notes.
"Where did you learn a trick like that?" She stared sightlessly into the forest for a
moment, then turned back.
"A long time ago my father killed a maneating tiger." she
told him, "I was only five years old at the time, and if he hadn't tackled it I
would have been caught, dragged into the forest and eaten, as had several other
children in the village. I remembered
exactly how he did it for the rest of my life." Harry frowned.
"You mean – you've done it before? This wasn't the first time?"
She looked at him in surprise, then smiled.
"No, Harry." she replied, "Not the first time." Ron, glancing round at the two, shivered despite
the almost suffocating heat of the day.
He remembered the smile on her face as she opened her hands to let the
dead cat fall to the ground. He
remembered the clearly visible sleeve holster of her wand and yet her impulse
to tackle the animal without weapons.
Faced with her physical strength and skill, he wondered bleakly if she
had ever killed a man and, if so, whether she had enjoyed that too.
By dint of taking it in turns at the tiller and travelling
through the midday sun, they had all but made up the time lost by their
disaster with the Jeep, but at a cost. I
hope we don't have to keep up this pace, mused Ron as he wearily raised his
wand to moor their raft. Harry,
grey-faced with fatigue, hefted the tent and platform and waded to shore to find
a sturdy enough tree to take its weight.
There was even a slump to Katia's shoulders as she checked out the
potential campsite they had located.
"It will suffice," she eventually told them, "But we had
better not risk a fire tonight. I am
not happy about some of the sounds I hear in the forest." Ron pressed her, but she would say no more,
merely repeating her warning. He was
not at all happy about foregoing his nightly report to Sirius and argued
energetically in favour of making a fire, for reasons of security if no
other. However, once he had gained his
point and had established the small blaze, he found he couldn't rake up the
energy to make his report. He had never
felt so physically exhausted in his life and it was all he could do to swallow a
swift, cold meal before swaying towards the tent and welcome oblivion. Harry, who seemed to have expended the most
magical energy that day, fell asleep almost on his feet, collapsing on the
double bed still in his sweat-soaked fatigues.
Ron, fighting his own weariness, managed to unlace and remove both his
own and Harry's boots before sinking down on to the mattress himself and
pulling the light blanket over them both.
However, before sleep claimed him he remembered at least to reinforce
the anti-insect protection spells. This
quest was already going pear-shaped, all they needed was for one of them to
catch malaria.
Ron awoke feeling cold.
He reached automatically for the cover and found it gone. Fully awake now, he opened his eyes to find
himself alone in the bed, the blanket on the floor.
"Harry?" Ron whispered interrogatively. There was no answer. He slipped out of bed and quickly pulled on
his trousers, trying to make as little noise as possible. All his auror-tuned danger alarms were
sounding at high level throughout his brain, and he was certain that Harry was
not using the bathroom or the kitchen, even though he checked both. He stood still – now what? The hairs on the back of his neck prickled:
was that a voice? He heard a quiet gasp
and a low chuckle. It seemed to be
coming from outside the tent.
Carefully, Ron slipped past the canvas door and stood on the
platform, eyes searching the campsite below.
The moon was round and full, casting a bright light over the small clearing,
turning every individual leaf to flashing silver where the slight breeze
disturbed the foliage. There it was
again – the quiet laugh, somewhere near the ground, by that group of trees. Ron reached for his wand.
"Wingardium leviosa." he murmured, and let the charm
waft him slowly and smoothly to the ground.
Once there, he maintained the magic, gliding noiselessly over the carpet
of leaves and twigs, towards a small group of trees. There, in a protected little hollow, he found them – Harry and Katia.
In retrospect, Ron's thankfulness at having found Harry was
largely eclipsed by his overwhelming relief that his friend was still fully
clothed. Ron was certainly not blind to
the almost lethal attraction that Katia held for Harry, but he was not going to
fall into the 'indignant brother-in-law' trap if he could help it. There were better ways of scotching this
particular piece of extra-curricular activity, he thought grimly, eavesdropping
shamelessly.
Katia's normal everyday appearance was one of smouldering
sullenness, but suddenly here with Harry she seemed to come alive with
promise. Her voice was low and magical,
she moved slowly and with subtle suggestion, and Ron, to his astonishment and
horror, found his own body responding to the inescapable allure of the woman.
Veela magic! the unaffected part of his brain
screamed, Why didn't I spot it before?
What matter that she's dark and not blonde? No one knows how Veela magic
works, whether it's learned or inherited.
But why? Sure, Harry's a world
famous wizard, but why now? Unless –
unless it has something to do with the quest …? Ron's brain was working overtime as he frantically tried to
suppress and overcome the signals his body was giving him. Forcing his mind to focus on the problem in hand,
he tuned in to their conversation.
"I don't want to take you away from your woman, Harry." The soft, melodious voice, so different from
her usual throaty rasp, spiralled caressingly around the soft noises of the
forest, "I'm not suggesting we do anything more than, well, spend a little time
together. Where's the harm in
that? And you are so lonely – I can
tell." She reached out a hand to
Harry's mesmerised face, and her expression didn't falter when he jerked
awkwardly away.
"Katia," he held his hands palms outstretched, obviously
trying valiantly not to touch her, "Katia, I don't – this is wrong, Katia. There are many reasons why any sort of
relationship between us, particularly at the moment, would be a mistake, but
the major one is that I am promised to someone else, and any sort of – of
liaison with you would prejudice that bond."
Yes! cheered Ron, silently applauding Harry's strength of
mind. However, Katia wasn't done yet.
"But you are not married to her, is that right?" Harry shook
his head dumbly. Katia frowned.
"Why not? Are you
not committed to her?" Harry nodded
fiercely.
"Yes, of course I am, absolutely, with every particle of my
being." However, there was something
not quite convincing about it. Katia's
smile widened.
"And what of her? Is
she not committed to you?"
"Of course she is!"
He protested loudly.
"Are you sure? Is
there not something there you are hiding from me – and perhaps yourself
too? Perhaps you did not part on good
terms, perhaps you are afraid she will find – other interests while you are
away?" Harry did not reply but withdrew
his fascinated gaze from her face and stared at the ground. Katia slowly began to move towards him,
reaching out a hand to stroke his fingers gently. He did not resist as she ran her palm up the smooth skin of his
arm towards his shoulder, stroking the stubble on his chin, curling her fingers
around the back of his neck, making him close his eyes and lean into the
caress.
"Katia," he murmured, uncertainly, "Please …" He wasn't sure
whether he was pleading for her to stop or to go on. Her mouth hovered invitingly, he could feel her breath on his
lips, her fingers in his hair.
Suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of light causing them both to turn
reflexively, craning their necks to watch as a crimson flame shot into the
night sky, illuminating the campsite as it hung, glowing above them.
"Gods! What was
that?" exclaimed Harry, shaking off the caressing hands and leaping to his
feet. Katia hissed in anger and, seeing
no other alternative, followed Harry out of the trees.
Ron had not been idle.
Once he had realised that Katia was not going to give up without a
fight, he decided to even the odds a little.
The campfire was still smouldering, all he had to do was open the box of
flares and throw one on to the flames.
That gave him a few seconds to get to cover, then he had emerged
ostensibly from the tent, pulling on his trousers for local colour, and
'discovered' the accident with the flares.
"Must have fallen out of this pack." Ron explained to the
others, "It's really bad camp discipline, you know. If the whole box had gone up, we might have lost a lot of
equipment. I don't know what the thing
is doing here, but in future it lives in the boat, okay?" There was no argument and both the others
seemed to accept what Ron had to say, but he caught a look in Katia's
glittering dark eyes which told him that she had far from swallowed his story.
********************************************
"Hold still, Ron. If
I can just suture this, I'll be able to heal it without scarring. Otherwise Hermione will kill me for having
ruined your good looks." Harry was
working as quickly as possible on a two inch gash down the side of Ron's
face. It was shallow but nasty, having
been done with a notched blade, but Harry's healing expertise was very
sound. The wound in Ron's leg was
another matter altogether, being deep, bloody and painful. Harry hadn't said much, but Ron knew that to
heal it completely was beyond his skill.
Ron would simply have to wait for nature to take its course.
Katia was out cold.
Harry had tried to revive her with a total lack of success. Eventually, he had simply wrapped her in all
the spare blankets and deposited her next to the fire. Apart from a large bruise on her temple,
Harry could find no other injuries that would account for her condition.
Harry himself had a shallow but irritating scalp wound, and
a slash around the midriff which would cause him great soreness until he had
healed it. He wanted to finish with Ron
first, however, and was gritting his teeth against the pain until he had done
so. He was about to continue with Ron's
leg wound when his friend grabbed hold of his wand arm, forcing him to look up.
"Harry," he said as gently as possible, "Please, heal that
wound in your side before you bleed to death.
And besides, Katia's still out and there's no way I'm going to be able
to pitch the tent myself tonight. You
need to be fit." Seeing the logic in
this, Harry obeyed and spent the next half hour attending to his own needs.
It had been completely bizarre. One moment they had been pulling the raft out of the river into a
clearing Katia had spotted as a potential campsite, the next they had been
jumped by a party of three thugs. It
had been obvious that they were muggles, but less obvious as to why Katia bore
the brunt of their immediate attack.
She scarcely had time to reach for a weapon when they were on her,
apparently beating her senseless. Harry
and Ron had realised immediately that they could not use magic against these
people. Ron had been extensively
trained to deal with situations just such as this, and Harry proved far more
adept in unarmed combat then Ron would ever have suspected, but even so it had
taken an accidental activation of the automatic machete, fortunately in Ron's
hand at the time, to drive them off once and for all. Their wounds were debilitating, but not life-threatening, and
Harry managed to erect the tent and levitate Katia into her room while Ron
conjured a fire and prepared a basic supper for them.
"I guess we'd better erect a wall of force tonight." Harry
suggested, over his baked beans. Ron
grunted.
"That means we'll have to sleep out here to make sure we
keep it sustained." Harry nodded,
scraping his plate.
"I really don't think I could fight them off again, you
know. Not even with magic – I feel like
a wet lettuce." Ron grinned.
"Well, you certainly didn't act like one earlier." He
commented, "Harry, where did you learn to fight like that? My training comes with the territory, but I
didn't think you university types did anything other than read books and
talk." Harry laughed.
"My researches have taken me to a number of very out of the
way places." He told his friend, "I've learned a lot of different survival
techniques – and self-defence was one of them.
I don't really follow any particular creed, but I incorporate moves I
have learned from various adversaries over the years – abroad and also in LA! –
and I admit to having taken some classes."
Ron sat up.
"Classes? What in
self-defence?"
"Sort of." Harry
sounded as though he was suppressing laughter.
"Come on, Potter, spill it."
"Okay." He put his plate down. "I was mugged on the subway
one evening, late after class. It was my
own fault – I should have realised I was a sitting target for these three thugs
who thought they were in for an evening's fun.
Well, I was down on the ground and they were putting the boot in when
suddenly there was a bit of shouting and one of them fell over me and lay
still. When I'd got over my surprise
and heaved him off me, I saw that a fourth person had joined the fray. One of the other thugs was flat out holding
his groin and being violently sick into a drain, and my saviour was delivering
a paralysing kick in the solar plexus to the other guy. When I could stand, he whisked me out of the
subway and into a cab – I should have been suspicious of his motives, but the
shock was getting to me by now. Anyway,
he took me home, dressed my wounds and gave me some sort of lecture about
taking it easy for a few days and never, ever being alone on the subway at that time of night again. I think he would have gone then, simply
faded into the night, but I caught hold of him and asked him his name and address. He smiled at the last request, but simply
told me his name was Mouse and that the guys at the subway station would know
where to find him. Anyway, to cut a
long story short, it turned out that he was one of those vigilantes, you
know? Guys and girls who dress tough,
act tough and generally scare the hell out of the ungodly on the subway. They aim to make the place safe for people
to travel, and they aren't afraid to take on the dregs of the earth. I met up with him again and persuaded him to
teach me to fight." Ron whistled.
"So your kind of self-defence is
– dirty street fighting, LA-style?"
Harry grinned.
"Something like that."
"Well, it's certainly effective."
"It should be – he was very
expensive." The two friends laughed and
poured more coffee, presently summoning bedding and turning in around the dying
fire.
"Ron?" began Harry from the other
side of the fire.
"Hmm?"
"Silly question, I guess. You missing Hermione?" There was a pause.
"Extremely silly question, but
I'll answer. Yes, I'm missing
Hermione. I feel as if my right arm has
been painfully severed and is residing, still bleeding back in England."
"Yuk! Unwanted mental image."
"Maybe, but you asked."
"True." A silence, then a movement of bedding.
"Harry."
"Yeah?"
"Why did you ask?"
"Oh, I don't know. I just wondered if you even got used to
being away from her or stopped thinking about her at all."
"Well, I don't think about her
all the time, if that's what you mean.
If that were the case, I'd never get anything done. But let's be practical, Harry. I've had years to moon over Hermione – we
were always meant to end up together, it was just a case of persuading her she
felt the same way. I'm used to coping
without her."
"Have you ever been – distracted
by anyone else?" There was a small but
intense pause as Ron rapidly went over the options in his head and decided to
tell his friend the truth.
"Yes." he said in low tones. Harry started.
"You have?"
"I have." Another silence.
"Going to tell me about it?"
"Nothing much to tell
really. These things happen. Of course, I wasn't actually involved with
Hermione at the time – I don't think I'd have gone through with it if I had
been."
"Gone through with it? You mean you actually …?"
"We're getting on to very
delicate ground here, Harry, and if you breathe a word of this I will
personally pound you into matchwood, self-defence classes or no! But yes, I did actually – several times as a
matter of fact." Harry seemed to be
digesting that.
"What happened?" he said at
last. Ron shrugged.
"I came to my senses, I
suppose." He paused and seemed to be
gathering his thoughts.
"We weren't exactly compatible."
He began, choosing his words carefully for maximum effect, "We were from totally
different backgrounds, different races, she didn't even speak English as a
first language. And we had very little
in common." he added, almost as an afterthought, "It was hard to see it as
anything other than, well, sex really.
Although that part was pretty fantastic, I have to admit. There just wasn't really anything else."
"Would you do it again? If you weren't involved with Hermione, I
mean?" Ron considered.
"Probably, but that doesn't make
it necessarily the right thing to do."
He sighed.
"Harry, I think you chose a very
poor period in your life to be celibate."
"I didn't exactly choose it, if you think back to the
circumstances!"
"No, well, it was still a bad time. The rest of us were just learning what it
was like to come to terms with women, deal with their expectations and ideas
about us. We had four years of
education in life, while you were buried in your books."
"Hey! I wasn't a
hermit, you know. I had girlfriends."
"No you didn't, Harry.
You had girls who were your friends – there's all the difference in the
world." This time the silence was
longer and it was Ron who broke it.
"Harry, I know you and Ginny are going through a tough
patch, but she hasn't exactly had it easy either."
"I know that."
"Do you, though? You
certainly came along like a knight in shining armour, swept her off her feet
and into your arms, rescuing her from her wicked suitor, but she's had precious
little time to recover since. You got
together at the beginning of the summer, and we're only in September now. She was with that Markland pratt for three
years – there's got to be some kind of payback for just walking out like
that. She barely had five minutes to
adjust to being boyfriendless again, when suddenly she wasn't – you were
it. And now, when her career's just
started to take off big time and she's having real difficulty coping with the
pressure, you leave her flat."
"Ron," Harry was aghast, "It's not like that at all!" Ron made an explosive sound.
"Pcha! Of course it
isn't – you know it, I know it." He
paused, "My sister's being a right royal pain in the ass at the moment. She's got no time for anything that doesn't
directly impact upon herself, no time for anyone who needs her support or
help. But you two are not exactly a
normal couple, are you? And you haven't
had much quality time together, have you?"
Harry was left almost completely speechless.
"I didn't realise you were so insightful." He
confessed. Ron was glad of the darkness
to hide his blushes. He shrugged.
"I just know my sister, Harry. And now if we've no more soul-searching to do, I'd quite like to
get some shut-eye."
"Perhaps someone ought to check on Katia?" Harry tentatively
suggested, making a move to get out of his bedding. Despite his fatigue, Ron got there first.
"Stay there – this one's on me." He said, absolutely certain
that his friend was going nowhere near Katia' bedroom tonight – or any other
night. Harry shook his head.
"I hope she's okay.
One way or another, this trip is turning into a series of
disasters. How much more can happen to
us?" Ron declined to answer, merely
levitating himself to the tent and padding in through the canvas door to check
on their guide. He came away from her
room satisfied that Katia's unconsciousness had now given way to a natural
sleep, but by the time he returned to the dying campfire, Harry's weariness had
got the better of him. Ron climbed
silently back into his bedding, wincing at the pain in his leg, and watched the
dwindling flames until he too was overcome.
*******************************************
Ron had a great deal to occupy his thoughts the following
day. He sat in the boat, alternately
taking the tiller, adjusting the engine or just keeping watch for danger, but
his mind was on the events of the previous night. Harry had seemed completely normal during their conversation
around the campfire, yet his response to their attractive guide the previous
day had been far from usual. Ron
himself could testify to that! He
couldn't make up his mind whether his hunch about the Veela magic was the
result of genuine insight, or merely his own wish to absolve his friend from
any responsibility. Was this what
Sirius had been warning them about?
Come to think of it, he owed Sirius a call – perhaps he had better get
to it as soon as they made camp.
"We must be getting near."
Harry shouted, moving eagerly into the stern, as if he could make their
craft move faster merely by wishing.
"We are approaching the area." Katia affirmed, guiding the tiller, "We will have to disembark
soon and approach Chinga'an on foot."
As she spoke, the craft rounded a bend in the river, and before their
astonished eyes rose two huge carved stone pillars, both translucent white, set
either side of the river.
"Yes!" Katia's face lit up with triumph, "We have found
it! See – this is the gateway. Centuries ago, as legends tell, these
pillars contained an enchantment which repelled any who approached the city
with evil in their hearts. It was
protection for the people and an early warning system."
"It didn't save them from extinction though." Harry was not looking at her, his eyes were
still riveted on the two great statues.
Katia bowed her head in acceptance of his statement, but replied:
"Who knows what caused their extinction? No one knows, wizard or muggle. Perhaps our visit will shed some light on
that particular mystery, who knows?"