summary: Ginny Weasley is a witch on a mission: find Shambhala, the mystical place that legend says was paradise on Earth. A wrench is thrown into her plan, however, when Harry Potter arrives in her office and insinuates himself into her team. Soon, Ginny has bigger worries than not jumping Harry's bones. Strange things happen around her and she begins to feel something inside of her she'd thought long buried. This story is a romantic gothic-horror story centered on the supernatural.
author's note: I'm not sure that this story will exactly be everyone's cup of tea, but it's something that's been brewing within my brain since 2018. It's been through many incarnations and themes, but I found that this genre and the themes within were the ones that this story needed to have meaning. I can't vouch for just how "horrifying" it will be, because everyone's threshold is different, but I do draw upon elements from both the gothic and horror genres within this story, so do with that what you will.
This story does have more chapters incoming past the Big Bang event, so it will be a bit longer! I hope you enjoy the read and let me know what you think!
Playlist for this chapter:
Bird in a Cage by SPELLES
Now I Know by Kira Skov
Estranged by The Ting Tings
Fallout by UNSECRET, Neoni
prologue: nepal
2004
Ginny Weasley was crouched over the dusty earth, wand in one hand and excavating brush in the other.
"A lot of curse-breakers will tell you that you don't need the brush, as that's how the Muggle archaeologists do it. But they're wrong," Ginny told the younger curse-breaker who was training under her. Ginny looked up to look at her trainee, Emma Le Fanu, who was observing her closely. "Can you tell me why they're wrong?"
There was a bead of sweat making its way down Ginny's forehead and she attempted to wipe it away with her upper arm, rather than free up either of her hands.
Emma looked thoughtful for a moment before she answered, "Is it because of delicacy?"
Ginny smiled at her trainee. "That is correct. Any spells we use could run the risk of ruining our oldest finds. A gentle brushing will always be best until we can get our finds in a lab and tested more extensively. Would you like to try?"
Emma nodded eagerly. "Thank you, Ms. Weasley."
"How many times have I told you, Emma? You can call me Ginny. You're only two years younger than me!"
"But you've done so much!" Emma argued. "Your work with the Roman catacombs and finding magical artefacts there was exquisite."
Ginny handed Emma the brush and pulled her headband down over her forehead and back up onto her head, wiping away any sweat.
"It was an honour to be on that project," Ginny admitted. "Now, make sure to have your wand brandished at all times when on site. You never know what could be lurking."
Emma nodded, focusing closely on the artefact they were digging out of the dirt. Ginny made sure that Emma was doing it correctly before she allowed herself to stare at their surroundings.
Not all her projects had been literal digs, but this one was. Ginny had been researching it for quite a while—she'd seen reports of a young witch discovering a skull (not very unusual in such a desolate, but ancient part of the world) as well as a wand that had been perfectly preserved, one day when she'd been out exploring.
Ginny had been looking for hints of older magical civilizations in Nepal for some time, having heard some other curse-breakers tell stories about the famed city of Shambhala. She hadn't been able to get the idea out of her head and had done quite a lot of research, until she found the report of the witch finding these.
She knew it was a gamble. There was a wizarding population in the Himalayan mountains, of course, and it could have been a coincidence that these were found. Still, she'd created an itinerary and had packed a small bag and had made her way to the Mustang region of Nepal alone, investigating a bit by herself before she'd assembled a team.
When she'd ran a test to carbon date the remains, what she'd found had excited her immensely.
As soon as she'd had the results, Ginny had made a floo call from the English Consulate to her superiors at the Magical Historical Society, informing them of her find and asking for funding. When she told them her suspicions, they had agreed to allow her a small team until a larger, more important magical artefact could be found.
So here they were in Nepal. Ginny had brought her newest trainee, Emma Le Fanu, as well as a research assistant named Cicero O'Connell and another curse-breaker named Balthasar Blackwood.
They had set up Muggle-repelling charms around the site, and then had begun to dig, literally, around where the remains had first been found, and then a large area.
Ginny was glad that it was summer—it was rarely so warm here, and perhaps she wouldn't have found this temperature so warm if she'd been at home. She'd been in hotter climates than twenty-degrees Celsius.
She turned back to supervising Emma, who was doing a bang-up job, as Ginny had expected from her résumé. Ginny had hand-picked the curse-breaker herself, having seen a bit of herself in the witch.
"Great job, Emma," Ginny complimented. "Anything you're seeing yet?"
Emma shook her head and continued to brush for a few more moments. "Is there a way to get through it more quickly, if we're not discovering anything?"
Ginny smiled. "There is a spell we can do to detect whether there is anything buried beneath the sand and gravel."
"And you didn't tell me sooner?" Asked Emma, chagrined.
Ginny shrugged and smiled. "I like to teach through experience and questioning. Now, the spell is…"
At the end of their workday, the three curse-breakers and Cicero were ready for a break.
"A long day of nothing," Balthasar complained.
"It's always been a process of elimination in early exploration of areas like this one," Cicero pointed out. "It's just a matter of time, now."
"What I'd really like to do," Ginny said. "Is to explore those sky caves that the Muggles have got people at constantly."
"At this point, there surely couldn't be any magical residue or artefacts," Emma argued. "The Muggles would have tripped some sort of trap already, right?"
Ginny shrugged. "We'll never truly know 'til we get up there. This area is primarily a Buddhist area—I can't imagine that they would booby-trap things quite the same way as the Egyptians or Incans, even."
Cicero was shaking his head. "You say that now, and once we get up there, we'll find some awful trap."
Ginny chuckled, wiping the dust off her hands onto her trousers. "Maybe we'll be so lucky. You lot ready for a drink and some supper?"
Everyone nodded eagerly and grabbed onto their portkey. With a sharp tug to her navel, Ginny found herself swirling through space and time, finally tossed at their rental home in Kathmandu.
"Those portkeys are nasty," Emma complained.
"Apparition doesn't work so close to the Himalayas, so we do what we must," Cicero said. "What shall we eat?"
They decided to make something in their own kitchen—Ginny was craving a good cottage pie and some pudding like her mother had made, and they'd eaten Nepali food for the last week.
"It's not that it's not good," Ginny told her teammates. "I just miss my mum's cooking."
"Your mum is a fantastic cook," agreed Cicero. "I've only eaten at the Burrow once or twice, but I'll never forget either time."
"No one ever does," Ginny said dryly.
She took out the beef and placed a de-frosting spell on it. "Now, I'll get the water boiling on the hob while I go take a quick shower," she told them. "If it boils, put the potatoes in!"
She made her way up the stairs and grabbed the towel from her bed. She was covered in so much dirt that she felt there could be multiple layers. She started the tap running and then moved to wash her face as the water warmed.
"Merlin," she swore. She looked tan! As she wiped at her skin, dust came off. She'd known it was too good to be true; Ginny never tanned on any of her digs—not even in Egypt when she'd been working for Gringotts as a new curse-breaker.
Stepping into the warm water, Ginny began to scrub at her skin immediately. The water beneath her turned brown and Ginny grimaced. Rinsing her hair, she luxuriated in the feeling of the water hitting her scalp and her hands lathering the shampoo through her red locks.
If only she had someone to share this moment with, she thought.
Knowing the warm water wouldn't last for much longer, Ginny washed quickly and stepped out of the shower, wrapping her fluffy towel around her body. She grabbed her comb, combing through the tangles that had amassed throughout the day and while she'd been in the shower.
She felt so refreshed that she whistled as she made her way back into her room to change.
That night, they had quite a time, eating their fill of cottage pie and drinking entirely too much wine.
Ginny went to bed, knowing the next day would bring much the same, or something even better: a discovery.
The next few weeks passed much the same way: lots of digging, dirt, and wine at the end of each day. As their time on the project drew to a close, and their funding grew much smaller, she knew they had to find something. She'd been looking for the mythical and magical Shambhala for over a year now, and this was the closest she'd ever been.
If she found nothing, they wouldn't be allowed to come back.
"I've got an idea," she told Cicero and Balthasar one day over breakfast.
Cicero raised an eyebrow at her questioningly.
"I know that the sky caves are constantly swarmed by Muggles, so why don't we go in the middle of the night? I have a strong feeling we'll find something there."
"Your strong feelings rarely lead us wrong," Balthasar commented. "I think we could do it. Take today off to prepare and then head out right before sunset?"
"Let's do it," Ginny said. "I'll take Emma and we'll gather some climbing supplies today, then we'll all rest up a bit for tonight."
They all agreed and continued on with their breakfasts.
As the sun began its descent into the sky in Kathmandu, the team grabbed onto their portkey to the dig site, climbing supplies secured in Ginny's bag where she kept all of her essentials.
As they landed in their tent on-site, Ginny asked Emma, "Are you ready?"
Emma looked uncertain but nodded anyway.
"I can go first, if you'd like," Ginny offered kindly. "My first-ever climb was nerve-wracking, and I don't mind being up there first to cheer you on."
Emma agreed and Ginny began to strap herself into the magical harnesses. "This'll be great," Ginny assured Emma. "You'll treasure these memories forever."
She used a grappling spell to secure her grapple into the conglomerate and began to ascend carefully up the side of the mountain. Once in a while, she felt rock move from under her feet and was extremely glad that she had her magical harness. She prayed that her teammates had their wands ready, in case of any malfunction, which did occasionally happen in her field.
Ginny took in the moonlight above her as she climbed upwards, enjoying the way the wind ruffled through her fringe and ponytail. What a lovely evening, she thought, as she finally made it into one of the caves.
She unstrapped herself and motioned for Emma to follow behind her. Ginny could barely see Emma's face from all the way up on the cliffside, but she could tell by her body language that the younger curse-breaker was nervous.
"You can do it!" She called down. "We've all got our wands out to help you if needed!"
She saw Emma give a firm nod as she harnessed herself up and shakily performed the grappling charm. Ginny gave the witch a thumb's up as she began to climb.
Soon, all the team members were up in the cave, staring out onto the landscape.
"Amazing, isn't it?" Ginny asked. "You don't get views like this in England."
"You certainly don't," Emma replied, looking awed.
This was one of the things that Ginny loved about being a curse-breaker. Besides the adventure, she absolutely loved seeing the world differently than she had before. Every new project she took on brought new knowledge and beauty to the world.
As she looked out from the precipice, Ginny took in how the moon bathed everything in a cool, silvery glow. It created a mystical effect, stirring something within Ginny's chest.
"This is why I took the job," Ginny told her teammates. "I mean, besides the historical things, and the fun booby-traps."
Balthasar shook his head. "Only you would call the booby-traps we've found fun."
Cicero was also shaking his head.
"Now, see here," Ginny grinned at them. "Shall we get to exploring?"
Everyone agreed and Ginny said, "Wands out! We don't know what we may find. Anyone want to do the pre-cursory spells to ensure whether there's any magical residue, or lingering curses?"
"I'll do it," Emma volunteered.
"Good on you," Balthasar complimented.
First, as was standard procedure, Emma cast a charm that would detect any nearby curses. Nothing was pinging, from what Ginny could see. She peered around carefully, checking every corner of the room for any red orbs.
"Do you see anything, Emma?" Ginny asked the trainee.
"No, I don't," Emma answered, still glancing around. "Am I missing anything?"
"If you are, so are we," Ginny told her. "Now, the next spell?"
Emma nodded and cast the spell for magical residue. The room lit up with golden light.
"Sweet Merlin," Balthasar cursed. "You and your bloody feelings, Weasley."
"My mum used to joke that I had a touch of the sight," Ginny chuckled. "But I'm glad this feeling wasn't wrong. Can you tell me, Emma, what the spell is to detect which kind of magical residue this is?"
"Erm, is it the ponitur magicae spell?"
"It is! Good work, Emma. Would you like to do the honours?"
Emma nodded, looking increasingly nervous.
"You've got this," Ginny encouraged her trainee. "I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't think you were up for the job."
Emma nodded again, face now determined. She waved her wand with a flourish and said, "Ponitur Magicae!" The golden light in the room turned a few different colours, and Ginny looked about in wonder.
"Can you tell me what these colours mean, Emma?" she asked.
"The green symbolizes protection spells, but the rest I can't quite remember…"
"That's right," Ginny told her. "The red symbolizes jinxes and such. You can see there's a small trace of that here, but not much. And the blue symbolizes knowledge or wisdom spells."
"What are knowledge and wisdom spells?" asked Emma.
"They're much more commonly used in this hemisphere than our own," Cicero explained. "Western magic is a bit different—something we always have to keep in mind when we travel to the east. Sometimes our own detection spells won't make sense in analyzing their spells that we're not familiar with."
"What can we do to combat that?" Emma asked.
"Learn more about the magic of the culture we're exploring. It's something each curse-breaker needs to do before coming on a dig, especially if they don't have a direct supervisor or trainer that all information is going through. This will be a great learning experience, since we rarely are able to see this in the field."
The colours from Emma's spell were beginning to fade, leaving the cave darkened once again.
"You lot ready to explore some more?" Ginny asked.
Everyone nodded, and Ginny cast her own spell that would point her in the direction of more magical residue to follow.
The spell led them to a wall, where a large concentration of energy gathered on top of a mural.
"What is this?" Ginny asked curiously. Wand ready, she approached the mural, fingers tracing over the writing. She cast a translation spell, but still wasn't able to make sense of it. Shrugging, she grabbed her camera out of her bag and snapped a picture, excited to have this on film, at least, for later when she wrote her reports.
Casting another spell, Ginny discovered that the wall behind the mural was actually a door.
"Merlin, how do you do it?" Balthasar asked. "Every time it looks like we've hit a dead end on a project."
Ginny shrugged silently, thinking through how to trigger the door to open. "Emma, what are the most common ways to open a hidden door?"
Emma listed off the spells and Ginny nodded. "Great job. Shall I try them and see if any of them work?"
She tried the first two spells with no luck, but on her third try, the door opened and swung inward into what looked to be another cavern.
"Wands ready," she reminded everyone. "If this hasn't had anyone in it in who knows how long, we've got to be on guard."
Ginny lit one of her safe flares that kept her wand free and ready to cast and entered the cavern. The light of the flare illuminated the cavern, casting it in a golden light. She performed the same spell as she'd had Emma practice in the first cave, looking for any latent curses.
"Looks like there's no curses in this room," Ginny announced. She set the flare down on the floor nearby and performed the other charm. She could see Cicero furiously taking notes with each charm and finding. "This is interesting," Ginny said.
The charm didn't have any concrete findings, the colours in the room not seeming to be able to make up their mind.
"What does that mean?" Emma asked.
"I'm not sure, actually," Ginny admitted. "I've never had this happen on any of my projects."
"Well, that can't be good," Balthasar muttered.
"Why don't you cast the spell, then, Balthasar?" Ginny asked the other curse-breaker. "I don't feel like I've let you do much tonight."
"I'll give it a go," Balthasar said. He cast the same spell, with the same exact results that Ginny's had gotten. "How strange," he said.
"What is the standard procedure, Emma, when we find inconclusive results in the field?"
"Erm, is there another spell that might be more successful that we could try?"
"Unfortunately, not. We have to do it the Muggle way. Can you tell me which methods these are?" Ginny asked.
Emma looked like she was thinking hard. "Sorry, I'm drawing a blank."
"That's alright. First, we'll explore each wall of the room, making sure not to touch any of the objects. We'll do the same charms on each wall, as well as looking for anything that could be out of place or suspicious."
"We can each take a wall," Ginny suggested. "If Cicero doesn't mind taking one as well."
Ginny didn't even bother looking at the passage that led out of the cavern, focusing her attention on the task ahead of her. She took the furthest wall to the left, carefully avoiding the various pots and cauldrons that were left.
"Some of these don't look like they're from the same time period," Ginny commented. "Cauldrons weren't in usage here until after the imperial period."
"What does that mean?" Emma asked.
Ginny was staring at something on the wall, written not in any of the native languages of the area, but in Latin.
"It means," she told them, worriedly, "That any assumptions we'd had about this site could be completely wrong. We have to proceed with extreme caution. It looks like someone has been here and practiced magic here since those that lived here thousands of years ago."
Something about this was beginning to feel more and more wrong, but Ginny wasn't sure what it was. She performed a spell on the writing but was unable to make sense of it. Whoever had written it didn't have a strong grasp of Latin grammar.
"You lot finding anything?" Ginny asked.
"There are some candles over here," Balthasar said. "Black candles."
How strange, Ginny thought. Common spells didn't need candles, and most Tibetan magic didn't include them either. Especially black candles…
"I think this has been used for rituals," Ginny realized. Cauldrons and candles, and strange traces of magic that their charms couldn't classify.
"Should we continue to explore, or leave?" Cicero asked.
"We've got to keep on it, now," Ginny muttered, frustrated. "We've got to catalogue what's been done here and see if there's anything else that they've left behind. Damn it, I wanted real history!"
"This will still be an interesting report," Balthasar reassured. "And Emma is getting great experience with this as her first official dig."
Ginny nodded, brushing her fringe out of her eyes, irritated. "Let's get to taking pictures of it all, I suppose."
Ginny pulled her camera out again, taking pictures of each of the anomalies they'd found in the cavern.
"The black candles worry me," she commented quietly to Cicero. "There aren't many good rituals that use black candles."
"We'll just have to be careful," Cicero said. "When we get back to the house, I'll see if there are any western rituals that use those."
Ginny nodded and crossed her arms for a moment. She watched Emma catalogue the findings along her wall.
"She's doing a great job," she said. "It's too bad we couldn't find anything more exciting."
"If other wizards and witches have been here, that's another type of discovery that the society will be interested in," he reminded her.
Balthasar and Emma rejoined them after they'd finished with their examinations.
"Shall we continue?" Ginny asked, gesturing towards the passage that led further back.
Ginny led the way now, uncertain what they could find ahead of them. Any time some sort of ritual had occurred at a site, there were always unpredictable results.
She scanned the passage for curses, still finding none. She pulled another flare out of her bag and lit it, holding it aloft in her left hand.
The passage seemed to go on for quite a while before it emptied out into a much larger cavern.
"Oh, my," Ginny gasped as she held the flare in front of her, taking the room in.
There was a large cauldron in the middle of the room, as well as a human skull, devoid of any flesh, and seven chalices that were knocked over on the ground.
"What in the bloody hell?" Balthasar asked.
"My thoughts exactly," Ginny concurred. "Careful, Emma. These types of rooms are often more dangerous than even an Egyptian crypt would be."
Ginny ran a number of spells on the cauldron before she took a picture of it, and then did the same with one of the chalices. There were no curses lingering on either object, but there something decidedly… strange about them. She couldn't put her finger on it, nor was she sure she would want to.
The room seemed to be getting colder around her.
"Are you lot getting chilly?" Ginny asked. She wouldn't think that a room this deep into the cliffside would be affected by the weather.
"I am," Emma reported. "I'm glad we brought our coats."
"Nepal can get quite cold in the nighttime," Ginny said, more to reassure herself than Emma.
A chill ran down her spine, skin turning into gooseflesh inside her coat. A shiver forced its way down her body.
Something was wrong, she thought. Very wrong.
She heard a giggle from somewhere to her right, though she knew that her teammates were not in that direction. Turning to look, Ginny saw a flash of red hair disappear around a corner into another cavern.
"Did you hear that?" She asked.
"I heard something, but I don't know what. A breeze, maybe?" Cicero asked.
Ginny shook her head. "That's what it had to be."
These caves were playing tricks on her mind.
"This room is rather unsettling," Emma told them. "Does this mean there were more rituals?"
"Yes," Balthasar answered shakily. "Something dark, if there's a skull here."
"I thought I'd seen enough dark rituals in my lifetime," Ginny muttered, thinking of the things she'd witnessed in the war—thoughts and memories she'd long buried within her mind, now back at the forefront. Ginny had to remind herself for the first time in quite a while that this was not related to Tom Riddle or the Death Eaters. Probably not, anyway.
Still, she couldn't help but recall his obsession with the number seven…
Shaking the thoughts away, Ginny took as many pictures as she could, documenting everything until they could get more funding. The Magical Historical Society would be most interested to find out that someone had been tampering with historical artefacts and performing rituals in what may have once been a sacred place.
"Should we even continue on?" Balthasar asked. "It's getting rather late."
Ginny glanced down at her wristwatch. "It's still early, Balthasar. It's not quite eleven. We need to document as much as possible."
Ginny herself wasn't sure she quite wanted to be here anymore, either, but she had a duty to see her work through. None of them were in danger, and so they had to continue.
"We'll go as far as we can tonight," Ginny decided for them.
Balthasar muttered something she couldn't quite hear, and her teammates all looked slightly queasy at the thought.
"I know it's strange, and horrid, even," Ginny told them all. "But this is why we're here, and we have to follow through and investigate our findings further."
"Spoken like the sister of Bill Weasley," Balthasar said. "You Weasleys have got entirely too strong a sense of adventure."
"Well, he taught me a good deal of what I know about being a curse-breaker," Ginny said, thinking of that first excavation she'd done in the Parisian catacombs, and the horrors that had followed.
Nothing quite like that had happened in any of her projects that had followed, and Ginny thanked Merlin that it had been a one-off. She still wasn't sure what had happened down there…
Shaking her head of the thoughts, Ginny grabbed the flare and led them all onward, keeping an eye out for the strange apparition, as well as any other dangerous traps or curses. Nothing seemed about, anymore. The corridor seemed to go on forever before it led to a fork.
"Left, or right?" Ginny asked.
"Left," Emma decided.
Ginny nodded and they took the left, refusing to split up to explore the two passages. After what seemed like another considerable amount of time, it led them to a dead end.
"Would you like to do the charm to see if there's anything there?" Ginny asked Emma.
Emma nodded eagerly, brandishing her wand with a flourish. Nothing happened.
It was truly a dead end.
The giggling sound Ginny had heard before sounded again from behind them and she whirled around, wand ready.
There was nothing there.
"Maybe we should get out of here," Ginny finally acquiesced. "I think this will be enough for the Magical Historical Society to launch an investigation if they'd like."
Her companions nodded and they began walking back where they'd come from. As they came back to where the fork had been in the corridor, the path they'd decided against was walled off.
"What in the bloody hell?" Balthasar asked.
Ginny's heart was pounding, now, too. She didn't commonly allow herself to get frightened in the field, but something about this felt wrong. She remembered that first time she'd been in the field, in the catacombs, how tunnels seemed to pop in and out of existence with no prompting, how teammates had gotten walled off away from her whilst they'd been exploring…
This isn't that, Ginny told herself. But, she was in a cave, again, a voice pointed out. And rituals had been done here, as well…
No, Ginny told herself, not allowing herself to entertain the thought any longer.
"Just keep walking where we came from," Ginny told her teammates.
No one argued with her. As they came back to the cavern with the cauldron, finally, all seven chalices were stood upright.
"Keep going," Ginny urged them. She could hear her heart pounding in her ears, and she was starting to feel dizzy with fear.
They were all practically running now back to the chamber with the trick door.
"What's the spell again?" Emma asked, staring at the wall with no door. Her blue eyes were wide, eyebrows furrowed, a single bead of sweat rolling down her forehead.
Ginny performed the spell for her trainee, and they hurried out into the open chamber. Somewhere deep in Ginny's mind, she imagined and feared that there would be no way to exit the caves.
To her relief, the entrance they'd climbed through was still open.
"Okay, Balthasar and Emma, you go first and repel together."
They nodded grabbing their grapples and securing them into the conglomerate cliffside with a spell.
Ginny watched and made sure they made it all the way down before she and Cicero began their own descent.
When they were all safely on the ground, Ginny shuddered in relief.
"That was fucking creepy," she told them, finally able to breathe. "Let's get back to our portkey and get back to the house."
No one argued.
When they arrived back at the house in Kathmandu, Ginny couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness.
After a night of tossing and turning in bed with little sleep, Ginny made a decision.
"I think that will conclude our project, for now," Ginny told them. "We're about out of funding anyway. Are you lot alright with going home a few days early?"
Everyone nodded, and that was that.
They each began to pack their bags, and by the end of the day, they were back in London with their findings.
Only, none of Ginny's photos from the sky caves would develop.