International Wizarding School Competition

Story Title: The Lost Village of Turnopolis

School and Theme: Durmstrang - Misunderstandings

Mandatory Prompt: (object) cursed turnip

Additional Prompt: (occupation) treasure hunter

Year: 7

Word Count: 2,493

Warning for character death, and a slight bit out of character. Also for the made-up turnip people of Turnopolis and their language Turnopo. I would like to take this time to thank everyone who beta read this story for me. It truly means a lot to me that you'd take the time to help me out like this. So, thank you all very much!

Beta: secretfanficlover, LittleTee


Looking back now, I could see that it was a horrible idea to pick up that turnip. The strange-looking thing wasn't even the color that a turnip should be. Which should have been the first thing that alerted me to the dangers that it held. But being stranded in the Egyptian desert with nothing but a canteen of water and a nagging blond named Draco, beggars could not afford to be choosers.

"You just had to pick up that damned turnip, didn't you?" Draco asked, glaring at me as though it was my fault that our truck had broken down miles from the archeological dig site.

"You just had to come along and join me at work," I chided him, looking at the pack which held the mashed blue-green of the turnip that we'd eaten the past two nights. "You couldn't have waited at home like all the other significant others."

"I wanted to see what you did for a living, Bill. Is that such a crime?" Draco asked, folding his arms over his chest in a huff.

"I've told you numerous times that this is a very dangerous job…."

"Can you just focus on getting us back to the dig site and stop snapping at me for one second?" Draco asked, looking at his compass and exasperatedly throwing up his hands. He stormed off in the opposite direction that my compass was telling us to go in.

"Babe, where are you going?" I asked, trying not to sound as exasperated as I felt. "The camp should be…"

"This way," Draco said, pointing in the direction he had been heading in when I had stopped him. "My compass is pointing that North is this way."

"Well, it must be broken," I huffed, looking at my compass, which was still pointing in the direction that I had been heading. "My compass says that this is North." I could see Draco's contemptuous look at the bag which contained the half-eaten remains of the turnip mash we had made upon finding the plant. "Don't start with your theory that the turnip is cursed again. I don't want to hear it. I've dealt with cursed objects for most of my career, and this turnip is not—"

"It is," Draco said, "What has happened to us in the past two nights since finding that thing? We've broken down—"

"In all fairness to the turnip that happened before we found it," I pointed out. "Not after we found it."

"I'll give you that one," Draco said, conceding that point to me. "But what happened after we'd been walking for a few minutes after finding the turnip? Do you remember that?"

I sighed and nodded. The huge sandstorm had struck out of nowhere, and we were lucky enough to get our shelter up in time and get inside. The shelter had been pretty useless after that. Thus necessitating us to leave the ripped remains behind.

"Then the supplies bag ripped and left us with only that damned turnip to eat and one canteen of water between the two of us," Draco pointed out. "Should I go on?"

"But at least we're getting to spend time together as you wanted us to," I said, trying not to sound as sarcastic as that comment came out to be. "Right?"

"This bickering back and forth is us spending time together?" Draco asked, crossing his arms over his chest once more. His cheeks an alarming red from being out in the sun for at least a day or so without sunblock. "If this is your idea of spending time with me, you need to get a new one."

"You should have kept a hold of the sunblock then," I say as though I'd just won some major battle.

Draco seethed as he looked like he wanted to say something. He turned and started to walk in the direction he'd been heading. Then he turned once more and flounced back towards me. Only to storm off once more with a huff.

"You're still going the wrong way," I called after him.

"No," he shouted. "I'm not. You are."

After a minute or so of walking, my conscience got the better of me. Draco had never been in the open desert alone before. He wouldn't know what to do if a scorpion was to come upon him. He wouldn't know where to hide in case of a sandstorm. Taking a deep breath and calming myself, I walked in the direction that the footprints of the love of my life were heading in.

I had to walk for another half hour more before I had finally caught up with Draco. He looked surprised at me walking next to him. He never could hide his surprise from me very well. But he didn't say a word. He must have been still upset about me not believing him, that this was the correct way back to camp. He always did have a way of being childish like that when he didn't get his way.

"Look, Draco, I'm sorry about earlier," I said, being the one to break the silence that had fallen between us. "But you have to understand that I'm used to working in the desert and know more about it than you—"

"This isn't about you being sorry," Draco said, cutting me off. "It's about you knowing more about something than I do. How did I know this was coming?"

I let out a sigh and looked up at the sky. This was going to be a very long day if things kept going the way that they were. I was about to say something when Draco stopped so suddenly that I plowed right into him.

"Ow!" Draco exclaimed, dusting the sands off his shirt and pants, which were a match for what I was wearing. "Why'd you run into me like that?"

"Why'd you stop so suddenly like that?" I asked in return, looking at him as he continued to dust imaginary sand off his clothes. "I think you've got it all."

Draco rolled his eyes at my attempt to stop his hands from brushing his clothes off. He then pointed in the direction that we'd been walking in. "Do you see that, or is this one of those mirror things that people talk about seeing in the desert?" he asked.

"You mean a mirage, right?" I asked, blinking in the direction that he was pointing.

"That's the one," he said, nodding and blinking at the sight that lay a good distance in front of us. "Do you think we can reach it by midday?"

"Are you sure we want to reach it?" I asked, looking towards the distant shape of what looked like a pyramid. Things always tended not to be what they looked like in the dessert.

"Are you just sore because I found it and not you?" Draco asked, a look of triumph at actually finding something crossing his face.

"No," I said, gesturing for him to lead the way. "I'm just saying that maybe we should be careful. You never know what you're going to come across in the desert."

Draco took a deep breath trying to calm his nerves. He then hitched the bag up onto his shoulder once more.

Rip!

"Are you kidding me?" Draco asked, watching as I stood up with the bag of turnip in my hand. The canteen of water drained into the sand at my feet where it had burst open. "You saved the bloody turnip and not the water."

"I figured we'd need the food," I said, looking down at the now empty canteen of water, uncomprehending of what I'd just said.

"People die without drinking water after a short period of time," Draco said, looking at me. "You aren't going to sit there and tell me this thing isn't cursed." He indicated the unassuming mashed turnip in the bag. "It's trying to kill us now. I pray to Merlin or whoever is out there that whatever that is, has some water source nearby."

I shook my head at how silly he was being and started to walk in the direction of the pyramid. "You're being ridiculous," I told him. "The turnip isn't cursed, and it isn't trying to kill us. We're just very—"

"Unlucky since encountering it."

"Exactly."

"I'd say that's cursed for sure."

Little did I know how correct Draco had been all along. That it wasn't by our own design that we'd been led to the pyramid that we found ourselves standing in front of at midday, parched and sunburned.

"What does that say?" Draco asked, kneeling down to the size of a small child to read the sign affixed to the pyramid. "It's in some strange looking language that I've never seen before."

I knelt next to him and looked from the sign, then back to the desert where the lost translation book lay miles away from us. Although, I could make out bits and pieces of what it was saying. The language was what looked like a cross between Egyptian hieroglyphs and Nordic runes. But it wasn't a language I knew perfectly well.

"That word means welcome," Draco said, pointing to the word that was in the middle of the sentence. I hadn't known that Draco knew how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. I'd only learned that after becoming a Curse Breaker, which led to me beginning a career as a treasure hunter, which had led us here.

He was just about to open the entrance of the pyramid when I put out a hand to stop him. Something was giving me a deep sense of foreboding. Like we should at least try and figure out what the rest of the runes meant and not just go off Welcome.

"Maybe we shouldn't go in there," I said, looking at the entrance. I could hear what sounded like a running stream of water, which in and of itself was strange: running water in the desert and not near a city.

"Don't you hear that?" Draco asked, nodding towards the entrance. "That's running water. Something we don't have because of you and your turnip. I don't know about you, but I want to go have a drink. You can come, or you stay. But I'm going."

Before I could stop him, he was halfway down the long entrance and just about to step on… A scream of pain interrupted my thought process as I tried to assess what kind of trap was waiting for us. Draco wasn't in sight, but I knew from the string of curses and mutterings about telling his father about this that he was alright if not a little injured. Racing towards where he'd dropped out of sight, I looked down to find my boyfriend looking up at me from the floor of a pit. Blond hair messy and standing up in wild directions, a look of pain on his face as he cradled his leg.

"I don't think the turnip's going to help with this," I said, climbing carefully down into the pit with him. I assess how bad the leg was. I didn't want to take any chances of him being injured further, but I also couldn't very well leave him there alone.

I quickly thought about what I was going to do before the idea promptly presented itself to me. I could put an Immobulus spell on just the leg. That way, that would keep the leg from moving and possibly breaking or breaking further.

"What are you doing?" Draco asked as I pulled my wand from the holster that I usually wore at my hip.

"I'm going to put an Immobulus on your leg, and then we're going to try and get out of here," I told him.

"What about the water?" he asked.

"Forget the water. We can't take the chance that…."

A shrill sound came from the other side of the pit. Right where Draco had been trying to get to when he'd fallen into the pit. Standing there above us was what looked like a… That was impossible. It looked like the turnip we'd been eating all this time. The angry look on its blue-green face made me look to where he was staring.

"Guys, there's some misunderstanding here," I said, standing and moving to protect Draco if any of the turnips should try and attack us. "We didn't mean to eat one of your kinfolks. We'd found him…."

"Eeema," the turnip said, looking at the bag with the mashed blue-green turnip in it. "Eema, meema weema."

"I'm sorry," I said, looking at the turnip man as I helped Draco up on the side of the pit. "I don't understand. What are you trying to say?"

"Yeema kiima meema weema!" the turnip man shouted once more. A shrill cry leaving him wherever his mouth was located. It was soon joined by a large number of turnip folk all screaming with the same shrill cry.

"Go," I told Draco, watching as he began to drag himself back towards the entrance of the pyramid. I then turned back towards the growing sea of blue-green turnips that were now aiming weapons at me. "I'm sorry about your friend." I look towards the bag with the turnip in my hand and the angry ones getting ready to turn me into a shish kabob. Then I flung the bag at the angry group.

I heard their confused cries as I scrambled up the side of the pit and towards the exit. I could feel a child-size spear hit my leg as I ran but I couldn't afford to stop and take care of the wound.

"Come on," I said, picking Draco up and slinging him over my shoulder. I raced towards the light that signified the outside world. I could hear voices nearby too. Human voices. Not the voices of the turnip people.

I put on a burst of speed and raced out the pyramid's door to find the head of the dig standing there shaking his head.

"What are you boys doing all the way out here?" he asked, looking in concern at the pyramid and the angry chittering coming from within. "This place is out of bounds. We made a promise to the long lost people of Turnopolis that no one would come here and disturb them. What do you have to say for yourselves?"

"Only that it's a long story, and you're not going to believe a word of it," I said, sharing a look with Draco as we were helped into the waiting vehicles that would take us to safety.


Across the desert lay a blue-green turnip. The sand nearly covered its surface and the sun gleaming off of its skin. It would wait there for another set of unfortunate passersby and lead them on their journey of discovery too. It just hoped that it wouldn't get eaten up as its sister had.


Translations for Turnopo to English

Eema = She

Eema Meema Weema = She is my wife

Yeema Kiima Meema Weema = You killed my wife

I hope you all enjoyed The Lost Village of Turnopolis as much as I enjoyed writing it.