The Welshman
by Hyena Cub
Rating: PG-13 for violence, language, and death, especially later on.
Genre: Harry Potter

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CHAPTER 13: Treasure Hunting

Boxing Day dawned bright and cold. And when I say cold, I mean cold; the wind was howling, and I was glad to be inside. I mean I didn't want it to be steaming hot outside, but this was ridiculous!

Everyone was in a sort of quiet mood during breakfast, which was normal for the day after Christmas. Mum was talking about the Boxing Day Quidditch match, which was supposed to be that day between the Kestrals and the Wasps, which only made me feel surly. Boxing Day matches were never open to the public, and it was only because of tradition that they did it. It wasn't part of the normal Quidditch game year.

'How do they choose who's to play the Boxing Day match, anyway?' I asked.

'They draw lots,' said Dad. 'At least the British teams do…not sure if they even do it in other countries.'

'Some do,' said Mum. 'Canada does, for sure, and Australia. I think Japan might have a Boxing Day match, but I'm not sure. They don't have Boxing Day there, but I think Quidditch-wise they emulate other countries.'

It still annoyed me…it would be cool to watch. Though maybe not today. I could only imagine how hellishly cold it was going to be up there today.

After breakfast, Killian disappeared to investigate his potions kit, and Kieran convinced Dad to go out and teach him to start using his new broomstick. Better them than me! Kian had taken to following Arcturus around, something that at once touched and annoyed Arcturus. I, personally, was really amused. It wasn't until we went into my room and got out some of our schoolbooks, and pretended that we had some essays to do, that he wandered off to do his own thing.

'He's not as impatient as Kieran,' I said as I put the books away, 'but he still gets bored easily.'

'Takes after you,' said Arcturus, and I laughed.

'Yeah, well. Who wants to be bored? Speaking of which…what do you want to do? I don't wanna play chess or Exploding Snap or Gobstones.'

'Yeah…me neither. I suppose we can have a walk outside…is this a wizarding neighbourhood?'

'No,' I said, smirking. 'And I could ask Mum if we could go down to the corner shop and get some hot chocolates or something…but you'd have to borrow some of my Muggle clothes.' I grinned at the disgusted look on Arcturus's face; he thought modern Muggle clothing was ridiculous. The closest I ever saw him wear was something that wouldn't have been out of place in the eighteenth century.

'It must be weird, living among Muggles,' said Arcturus.

'Well, there are mostly wizarding living on our street, and maybe a few in each direction. But there're a few Muggles. Some of our friends know what we are, but they're not all friends. And the woman that runs the corner shop is a Muggle. On second thought…it'd be interesting to see what they thought of your robes….'

'No thanks…I think I'll pass.' He gave my clothes a rather despairing look.

'Hey!' I said suddenly. 'I know what we could do. Up in the attic, there're a whole lot of old boxes and crates from all my relatives…some of them are really old. We could go up there and look around….'

Arcturus shrugged agreeably. 'Okay. There's nothing else to do.'

'It's really dusty up there,' I said. 'Did you bring any breeches at all? Your robes would just sweep up all the dust…though Mum might be pleased that you've swept the floor.'

Arcturus laughed. 'Well, I've got my knickerbockers…I suppose I could put those on. Give me a minute…it's those stairs at the end of the all is it?'

'Those are the ones,' I agreed, getting up off of my bed. 'I'll meet you up there, then.'

The attic was as dusty as it had been when Dad and I got out the Christmas decorations. There were a couple of corners in the attic that were fairly clean, as we got into them now and then. The Christmas corner was one, and the opposite corner where other holiday decorations sat. The rest was filthy. It was a good thing neither of us had any allergies.

When Arcturus joined me, he was wearing knee breeches and an old-fashioned shirt. On most people it probably would have looked silly, but it suited Arcturus far more than normal clothing. 'How dashing,' I said with a grin, and ducked the punch he aimed at my arm.

'Watch it,' he said. 'All right…so where're all these fascinating crates?'

I gestured around, sweeping my arm to indicate most of the attic. 'If it's got the dust of ages on it, it's probably not been gone through for decades,' I said. It was a good indicator, too.

'Logical,' said Arcturus, and headed for a trunk over at one side of the room. 'Let's start at opposite ends of the attic and work our way toward one another.'

I agreed that was a good plan, and we split up; I headed for the attic window, where there was an old cedar trunk that looked promising, and Arcturus pulled out an old cardboard box from the bottom shelf of a large bookcase.

For some time, neither of us said anything. From the moment I opened that first trunk and began going through its contents, I was completely enrapt. Things of days past always intrigued me, and I couldn't believe I only now realized what a treasure trove of ancient artefacts was up there! The first trunk contained a bunch of women's robes, and a few letters…mostly love letters, which I had absolutely no use for. But I found a neat old tiara that I set aside to show my mum.

A nearby crate was full of old schoolbooks, from maybe fifty years ago, and I paged through those with mild interest. Most of them looked a lot like the ones we had now, though some of the wording was a bit archaic. One of them had a name in it, 'Louis Weasley'. I didn't remember having heard of a Louis Weasley in our family, and I supposed he was probably one of the many uncles and cousins that were running around in the Weasley family tree.

'Cripes, Calen,' said Arcturus. 'How many people are in your family, anyway?'

I laughed, looking over at him to see what he'd found. He was holding up a book whose pages seemed to be a bit ripped. 'What is it?'

'It's an address book…it's got the year 2043 in it.'

'Bet it's full of mostly Weasleys,' I said.

'Oh it is. Blimey, you're taking over the country.'

I had to laugh at that! It wasn't far off. The Weasleys had a penchant for having big families, mostly boys, who carried on the family name.

When Mum called us down for lunch, I was shocked that morning had slipped away so quickly. Arcturus and I reluctantly left the fascinating attic, and I grabbed the tiara I'd found. When we arrived in the dining room, looking dusty and dishevelled, my Mum gave me a strange look. 'What on Earth were you two doing all morning?'

Dad looked like he'd guessed what we'd been up to, since he'd been with me when I mentioned exploring the attic. I told Mum about it, and showed her the tiara. 'I thought you'd like this. I found it I an old trunk with a bunch of robes, and love letters.' I made a horrible face, an expression that was mirrored by all three of my brothers.

'Oh, how lovely!' said Mum, taking the tiara. 'I wonder how many other things like this are up there.'

'Not much so far,' I said. 'It's mostly clothes and books and stuff…but it's still really interesting! There's all sorts of history in there.' I never knew how to explain why I liked old things. I didn't think there were words for how it felt to hold a book that someone had held a hundred years before, almost about to feel that strange other world, like you were holding Time itself in your hands. Or when I picked up an ancient coin, the chill that went through me, imagining what the world was like when it was newly minted, what kinds of things surrounded the person who carried it in his pocket, or her handbag.

'Can we come up too?' asked Kieran interestedly.

I shrugged. 'I guess so. It's boring stuff for you, though. All that 'stupid old stuff' that I like to go through.'

Kieran's expression fell a bit. 'Oh. Well…if you find any toys, will you tell me?'

'Sure,' I said with a laugh. 'I haven't seen any yet, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.'

Satisfied, Kieran went back to his meal.

Arcturus and I ate quickly, eager to go back to our exploration expedition. As far as expeditions went, it was kind of tame, but at least it was fairly interesting.

Killian joined us when we returned, sitting quietly at my side with a book and looking at the things I brought out of the crates. If it was something that interested him, he'd take it and examine it before handing it back. Once I found an old potions book from Hogwarts that he kept, intending to ask Mum and Dad if he could have it.

While Arcturus began to get into an old pile of boxes that were way in the back, I started on a new set of shelves, pulling out old clothes and odd things like monocles like the one Professor Blake had, or hats, or boots. Once I found a pair of obnoxious shoes with the word 'Converse' stamped into its sole. It was red and black checkered.

We were at it for hours. Up to and after supper, until Arcturus finally slumped back against the wall with an exhausted sort of groan. 'That's it for me,' he said.

I was beginning to feel pretty tired, myself. I was dusty, sweaty (all the heat from the house seemed to have risen into the attic), and sore. Me knees aches from crawling around among all the boxes, and my shoulders were sore from pulling things out one by one. Killian had gone down into his room three hours ago. 'Yeah, me too,' I said, looking out the little attic window at the strangely light street. When there was snow on the ground, all the moonlight reflected off of it and made everything look weirdly bright.

I looked at the item I had in my hand, which seemed to be a very old, but fairly thin book with a soft leather cover on it. 'Yeah, me too,' I said flipping through it.

'Let's come back up here tomorrow.'

That was a good idea! And so vowing, Arcturus and I went back downstairs to take turns at the shower. I tossed the book onto my bed, intending to have a look at it before I went to bed.

I was glad I did! While Arcturus drifted off the dreamland in his sleeping bag, I opened it up and wasn't entirely surprised to find it was the diary of some Weasley or another. Fred Weasley, in fact. And the first date in the journal was the seventh of March, 2013.

It was apparent that this Fred Weasley was not one of the famous Weasley Twins, whose names were Fred and George. We've had several twin sets in our family, but the Weasley Twins were rather a family legend. Quite skilled wizards, they took part in the battle against Voldemort. One of them died during the final battle…they were the ones who founded Weasleys Wizard Wheezes, in fact.

This one, though, was born too late to be one of the twins. A bit of skimming through the pages revealed he was the son of the surviving twins, though! It figured…he seemed to have inherited his father's trickster nature. I had an idea that Kieran might just take after them a bit.

I read a bit longer than I had intended to, but this kid's life was just way too entertaining. He was in his fifth year at Hogwarts when he wrote the diary, and had an adventurous school career. Among his crowning achievements were covering the Quidditch pitch with Portable Swamps right before a game, so that there was no time to clear it off before the match. I had to stifle my laughter…that was something I would love to try!

But what was the most interesting was the mention of a room called the Room of Requirement that was somewhere in Hogwarts. Fred Weasley didn't say much about it, but it was obviously a very special room:

I was almost caught sneaking into the Room of Requirement with my bag of WWW goods…that would've been a month's worth of detention if old Filch had caught me! Good thing he doesn't know how to get into the Room. All he knows is that it's on the seventh floor. Not how to get in.

I figured if a room was important enough to be capitalized, then it was important enough to find out more about. And now I had a location to go off of: the seventh floor. Brilliant.

Yawning, I put the book on my bedside table, blew out the lamp, and lay down to sleep.

--

The next day, Arcturus and I spent the day with my family, playing in the snow, and forgot about going up into the attic. In fact we didn't remember until the day before we were supposed to back to Hogwarts, especially with the distractions of the mini New Year's party we had. Mum and Dad actually let Arcturus and me have a small glass of wine, each. It was pretty good, too! The little kids were allowed a sip each, and Kian and Kieran both proclaimed it to be disgusting. They got sparkling grape juice instead, which was far more to their liking. I was just surprised they managed to stay up until midnight, especially Kian.

When I finally remembered that Arcturus and I had intended to resume our attic exploration, I was irritated with myself…we could have probably gotten through everything up there if we hadn't forgotten about it! Still, I supposed that would give me something to do during spring break.

And so, after lunch, Arcturus and I went attic spelunking.

I found a few more clothes and things, and even a toy carriage that still had enough magic in it to roll around; I snagged it for my brothers to play with. It wasn't until I got into a little, wooden trunk near the very back of the attic that I found the really interesting thing.

The trunk looked like it was hundreds of years old--preserved rather better than a Muggle-made container would have been, but still, it was old. The thing was sealed tightly, even as old as it was, and it took several surreptitious taps of my wand to get it to open. If that locking charm was set down as long ago as I thought it was…I was impressed. I didn't think any charm could last hundreds of years.

Very intrigued now, almost insanely curious, I opened the lid and peered inside.

The thing that flew out of the trunk nearly caught me right between the eyes. I think the only thing that kept me from losing an eye was the age of the device that was inside. There was a glint, a click, and a sudden, urgent MOVE NOW instinct made me give a startled yell and lurch to the side. I caught sight of Arcturus, looking startled, turning my way as the trunk and its contents banged to the floor and scattered. And the knife that would have hit me in the eye or right between them thunked into the wood floor with enough force to embed the blade halfway in.

I stared, my heart thumping with sudden, frantic speed, my breathing coming in short, quick gasps. My entire system, just seconds before content and curious, was keyed up for action, for a fight to the death. Was this what adrenaline felt like? It sort of like what I had felt at my first Quidditch game or when dodging a bludger that could crack my head open.

'What in the bloody hell was that?' Arcturus demanded, hurrying over and helping me to my feet.

My breath was beginning to slow, and I was able breathe in deeply for a moment, holding it to try and dispel some of the ready-now feeling still tingling my nerves. 'I…am not sure,' I said, peering warily at the trunk. It seemed to be still and quiet, but I wasn't about to trust it again so easily. 'It tried to skewer me!'

Arcturus swore very softly as he looked at the knife in awe. 'That could have gone right through even your thick skull,' he said with a shaky laugh. I would have laughed, too, if it wasn't so true. It was slowly sinking in that I could have, right at that moment, died. Just…died. Within a second. I wasn't sure if the thought excited me or terrified me beyond belief.

I edged towards it carefully, keeping a close eye on it. Arcturus hissed, wincing as he grabbed my arm. 'Watch it…watch it,' he said.

I nodded tensely. 'I am.' I could only imagine what it looked like to an outsider, the two of us sneaking up on a little wooden trunk. I gave the thing a nudge and jumped back when there was another click. Arcturus made a noise of startlement, and we stumbled back several feet…but it seemed my light kick had simply joggled the sprung mechanisms.

The two of us looked at each other for a moment – he looked a little pale and very alert, and I probably looked the same—and then all at once we began laughing. I don't know about him, but my laughter had more than a little release of tension in it. Who knew a trip to the attic could be a life and death situation? And the booby trap wasn't even the half of it. If only I knew then what I had done by opening that unassuming little trunk.

We finally determined that the trunk had only the one booby trap in it, and I very carefully set it upright. There was nothing left in it; it was all over the floor. Arcturus knelt down and helped me to gather it all up. I was more curious than ever now to see what someone could have thought was so important that he had to protect it with a deadly booby trap.

At first I was sorely disappointed. There were some very old parchments, so faded I could barely read them, but they only seemed to be legal documents of some sort. I'd have to show my dad…he'd love these old parchments. There was some jewellery, which looked very old, mostly rings and one pearl necklace. There was a small dagger, which was pretty neat (this one was in a sheath, not in a spring-loaded instrument of death.)

'Well, pretty cool, ' said Arcturus, examining one of the rings. 'Emerald…the best colour, you know.'

I laughed a bit, looking around to make sure we hadn't missed anything, and that was when I saw the coin.

At first I didn't realize it was a coin. It was steel-grey, triangle-shaped, about an inch and a half from base to tip. It had a triangle shaped hole in the middle, obviously part of the coin's design. Thinking it was an amulet or a trinket or some sort, I picked it up, peering at the markings on it.

'What is it?' asked Arcturus, coming over to get a better look.

But my heart was suddenly racing again with excitement; I had finally identified the 'trinket', and if I was right, it was very valuable…almost priceless to a collector! I ran over to the lamp, holding it up and having a good, long look at it. But it couldn't be real, could it?

'Er, Calen?' asked Arcturus, coming over to me once more and looked baffled. 'So what it is?'

'A coin!' I exclaimed, seemingly unable to speak above a whisper. 'It's a coin…a wizarding coin!' I gazed at the strange design, my eyes fixing on the wands that decorated the two slanted sides of the triangle, skimming the Latin I couldn't read that was stamped along the baseline. I turned the coin over with a hand that shook slightly and was able to read the date: 1193.

Arcturus was giving me a very strange look. 'You sure about that?'

I laughed, feeling weak with excitement and amazement. 'Positive,' I said. 'These were made in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries…this was when wizards, not goblins, ran Gringotts. Actually…I dunno if Gringotts even existed yet. But this was minted by….' I turned the coin on its edge, searching for the mint mark, and made out the tiny, precise etching. I blinked.

'What? Who minted it?' asked Arcturus, who seemed to be catching my excitement.

'Wesley,' I murmured. 'Creirwy Wesley…at first I thought it said Weasley.' I was quiet for a moment as I stared at the edge of the coin. It was in astonishingly good shape for supposedly being so old. Even if it had sat in this trunk all that time, even if the trunk had never been moved, it should have been far more worn than this. Even without other forced to wear a coin down, time itself was more than enough. But this coin looked brand new. The lines were crisp and sharp, the edges were even and straight, and the etching and deign looked like they'd been minted yesterday.

I told this to Arcturus, who took the coin and frowned. 'Maybe it's a replica,' he said.

'Yeah,' I agreed, taking it back, my heart seeming to sink a bit in my chest. 'Probably it is.' Still…there was the matter of it being in that ancient trunk, with all of that old jewellery. 'Maybe I'll ask Dad.'

And speaking of Dad….

'Calen!' Dad's voice floated up from the doorway at the bottom of the stairs, and I trotted over to peer down at him. Dad grinned up at me, taking in my dusty clothes and bedraggled appearance, and shook his head ruefully. 'What a mess. Anyway, it's time for supper.'

'Okay, we'll be right down' I said, and Dad disappeared.

'We'd better, er, do something about this,' said Arcturus, nodding down at the knife stuck in the floor.

Good idea! I agreed, and he and I went over, taking turns wedging it out of the wood. The more we had to pull at the dagger, the more uneasy I got. The force it must have been propelled with--! Even if it hadn't lodged in my eye, it probably would have killed me. 'I still can't believe that,' I said as I finally yanked the blade out. I ran a finger lightly along the gouge it had made in the floor. Not that anyone would notice; no one came up here much.

'Well…good thing you play Quidditch,' said Arcturus. 'Like dodging a bludger.'

It was true, all that practice just might have saved my life. 'Come on,' I said. 'I'm suddenly starving.' That tended to happen when I was doing something interesting. I forgot about food until someone distracted me, and then I was ravenous.