Aoife couldn't help but hiss in pain as she popped back into existence. The cool air against her clammy skin made her shiver as she pulled away from the figure holding her. No sooner had they separated than her legs, which didn't yet seem to know she was no longer falling, gave way and she collapsed against the nearest wall before sliding to the floor. Her hand went at once to her side which felt as if someone was sawing at it with a particularly blunt and rusty blade. Her other hand was still clenched around her wand which she aimed at her rescuer.

Bill Weasley had his own wand drawn but put it away hurriedly and raised both his hands, "Are you okay?"

Aoife sucked in air and hid her wince, "Oh yeah, never better. Best way to spend an evening."

"If you say so," He was watching her with concern, "Your side…"

"It's grand," She snapped, "What were you doing hanging around like that? You could have been hurt!"

"Me? I wasn't the one jumping out of the tallest tower with a rock in my hand!" He retorted, "Did you really think that levitating trick was going to work?"

"Well I'm sorry! I wasn't exactly awash with options at the time! Besides it has worked, once," She looked away from those blue eyes and down the narrow sandstone alleyway, "Where are we anyway?"

"The Bazaar, Southern District. It was the easiest place I could think to apparate," Bill took a breath, "I don't think they'd follow us."

"Unless you bellowed the location before you left, I think we're safe enough," Aoife brought a hand up to wipe her still sweating brow. Why would her heart not calm the feck down?

"I recognised a couple of them going inside, Birch and Vorona. They're Curse Breakers; they work for Volez."

"Do they?" Aoife closed her eyes for a long moment, "Oh, the fecking joys."

"Aoife, Volez isn't just any normal bank. They're thugs and bullies who deal in the Dark Arts. Nothing is beneath them and if half the rumours are true, I mean nothing!"

"Is that right? Well thanks Bill, there was me thinking they were so sound," She said with sarcasm dripping from every word.

"Then why are they after you? What are you doing that you've gotten their attention?"

Already Aoife was thinking of the best way to escape this conversation, but her legs were still jelly beneath her and it was a bit beyond her to run away. At least there weren't too many people around at this time of night. Erik's words echoed in her mind.

"…Beware other Curse Breakers, you already know more than most the cost of greed…"

Not again. Never again…

The silence dragged out between them.

She looked into his blue eyes, and she saw nothing there but concern, worry for her. She felt a part of herself that had long been frozen, that she had thought she would never feel again begin to melt a little. Fear crept into her mind, but she took a deep breath to steady herself.

"I have an assignment," She said the words slowly, forcing them from herself, taking care with each one, "Something given to me outside of Gringotts. No one else knows about it."

Bill raised an eyebrow, but he stayed quiet.

"I'm looking…well," She smirked humourlessly, "I'm on the trail of a city that no one thinks exists. I'm looking for a member of the Five."

Bill laughed aloud.

It was not quite what Aoife expected. She set her jaw in a hard line and she knew the hurt was showing in her face, "I know it's ridiculous. I know they're not supposed to exist but I said I would try and-"

"No," Bill shook his head, beaming still, "It's not that at all. It's just that I was given an assignment recently as well, outside of Gringotts, to look for city no one thinks exists ruled by a king no one believes is real."

Aoife swore, "Did the person who give you this assignment happen to have a bent nose and wear tacky robes covered in pyramids and camels?"

"He certainly did."

Aoife propped her head back against the wall, "That sneaky, bearded git. He was setting us against each other."

"I think," Bill said it quietly, "That he was rather hoping we would work together."

"Well he didn't know me very fecking well then, did he?"

"I think he knows you better than you imagine," Bill held out a hand, "So what do you say? Partners?"

Aoife looked at his hand and she felt that cold dread run down her back. She felt the darkness closing in, the walls pressing against her, impossible to breathe, impossible to think. She shook her head. She felt like a wild animal that had been backed into a corner with nowhere to go.

"Bill…" She whispered his name with her eyes squeezed shut. She could feel the tears coming but she fought to keep them back, "I can't. I want to, but I can't. I can't let it happen again. Not again."

When she forced her eyes open, she saw Bill had withdrawn his hand. He was now on his knee so he could look her directly in the eye, hazel meeting blue. His face was filled with sympathy, and she thought she might have even seen something shining in the corners of his own eyes.

"Aoife Moran," He said gently but firmly, "I don't know what happened before, and I don't care. Whether you like it or not, we're in this together. So, we have two options. We can on Volez by ourselves and hope we can match an entire agency. Or we can work side-by-side and meet them together. This is bigger than any one Curse Breaker, Aoife. Dumbledore knows that. He knows we can face it together."

He stood up and offered his hand again, "Now, are you going to take my hand, or will I have to keep saving your backside?"

Aoife wiped at her eyes and stared at his hand for the longest time. That darkness was still crushing in on her from all sides but maybe, just maybe, it wasn't so tight as it had once been? Was she just imagining it?

With a deep sigh, she reached up and took his hand. She felt like a spark passed up her arm as his fingers closed around hers and he hauled her up to her feet. She wobbled for a long moment, heart still thumping.

"I think your debt for Luxor is well and truly cleared now," she said with a weak smile.

Bill waved a hand dismissively, "This wasn't anything to do with a debt."

"And why were you at the Valley anyway?" Aoife's eyes narrowed as something clicked in her mind, "Were you following me?"

Bill snorted, "Obviously I was. Did you think I was going to let you wander off into the night on your own, hours after someone had tried to kill you?"

She took a deep breath. Thoughts raced through her mind; how she didn't need someone babysitting her, how he should have backed off and left her be, how he had no right to be assuming she needed any help.

Instead, she said a simple; "Thanks."

"Don't mention it. Now come on, it's not a good idea to be out on the backstreets of the Bazaar at this time. My place isn't far away," He paused, "Unless you would rather just head home?"

"No," Aoife shook her head hurriedly. The chill of the night was seeping through her clothes and her legs still felt like they were made of jelly, "Lead on."

Bill's apartment, it turned out, was only just around the corner. It was in a quiet and rundown street in one of the less visited parts of the Bazaar. His room, for it was only one room on the top floor, was only a little larger than hers. The view certainly wasn't as good but at least he had two chairs and his table was held up by four, albeit unmatching, legs. The table was groaning under the weight of heavy books and organised piles of rolled up parchment.

"Nice place," Aoife's nose picked up the rancid smell drifting in through the slatted windows, "Remember those brochures they gave us in fifth year, before our O. ? The Curse Breaker ones that promised endless adventure and untold riches?"

"I do," Bill had gone over to the small kitchen and with a wave of his wand, had started a kettle boiling.

"I think we should find whoever wrote those brochures and hex them, so they'll always have ants in their underwear."

He snorted without turning around, busying himself with the mugs.

Aoife wandered around the room with interest. In the corner of the room was a cabinet on top of which was a muted radio set to "Magical Maniacal Metal". Alongside the radio was a photograph of many moving people; a tall and balding man, a short and plump woman, six boys and a girl, all of whom had flaming red hair.

Aoife chuckled to herself, "I forgot you had like a thousand siblings."

"You're one to talk," Bill retorted, "How many sisters do you have again?"

"Five."

"Exactly. How many of them are still at Hogwarts?"

"All of them apart from me and Ciara. Niamh's in sixth year, Soairse and Aine are fourth year and then Clodagh is just going into second year, same as Harry Potter."

"Neat, he's friends with my youngest brother, Ron."

Aoife gave a low whistle, "Any chance he could get me an autograph? I could do with the gold."

"Not at all, from his letters, Potter's quite humble. No real pretentions at all. Did you hear about his first year? He had to fight You-Know-Who and," Bill had finished with the tea and turned to face her with a steaming mug in each hand. He froze when he laid eyes on her. Aoife only then realised that she had dropped herself onto the bed cross-legged with the photo still in her hands.

"Oh," She said as she felt a little heat coming to her cheeks, "Sorry, force of habit."

Bill only chuckled and handed her the tea, "I hope it's how you like it. A cup of tea can solve more than any healing spell, my mum always says."

Aoife giggled, much to her own surprise, "Sounds like something my ma would say. The way she gets on about tea, you'd think it was the elixir of life or something."

"It must be a mother's thing," Bill had taken a seat at the table, "So, what have you found so far?"

Aoife hesitated and looked down into her tea, holding the steaming cup in both hands. She opened her mouth to speak but found no words coming out. The past few days raced through her head and yet she was unsure of what to start with, of what to tell him.

Bill sighed as the silence dragged, "Shall I start then?"

He described what he had found, the discrepancies in the records; exceptional harvest years but no increase in tribute, talk of wars without the lists of loyal cities changing, years of reigns overlapping.

"I found references to a pharaoh who it looks like they've done their best to conceal; Sankhkare. There are scattered references to him and little else."

"I've found a few," Aoife said quietly while still looking down into her cup. She explained what she had found in the last few days; the writing in the temple at Luxor, the missing page in the Maktaba Man Alsahara, how she had been attacked and the trip to Asim's temple that evening.

Bill was frowning and deep in thought, "So do you think they split the message between two tombs?"

"It certainly looks that way," Aoife took a sip of her warm and soothing tea, "Unless it was the fashion to fill your tomb with absolute bollocks."

"But why?"

"If I knew that Bill, I would be off collecting my money from Dumbledore, wouldn't I?" She pulled a face.

Bill rolled his eyes, scratching at his chin, "I can only assume they didn't want anyone who broke into one tomb to take the entire message, that much is obvious."

"Obviously."

"So, it stands to reason that the message was important. Something that both Asim and Ankhtifi didn't want lost to history, hence it being present in their tombs, but that they couldn't risk falling into the wrong hands."

Aoife raised an eyebrow at him, "Are you sure the Sorting Hat didn't mumble and you're actually a Ravenclaw?"

Bill was now pacing and ignored her, "So they split the instructions, ensuring that anyone who found them accidentally weren't given the full picture, they would need to bypass the defences of both tombs."

"That's some very astute detective work, well done," Aoife said in a rather singsong voice, "But it doesn't solve one significant issue we still have."

"And what's that?"

"That we have more chance of seeing Professor Sprout in a bikini than we do of getting back into that tomb."

Bill now pulled a face, "Because of the Bronzescale?"

"Yes Bill, because of the dirty, great, feck-off dragon currently having a nap on top of the message."

"Do you have any ideas?"

"Wait it out?"

He gave her an incredulous look, "They can hibernate for thousands of years, Aoife."

"I didn't say it would be easy."

"Anything else?"

"Lure it out with food of some sort? It must be hungry."

Bill laughed, "As tempting as it is to throw a steak into the tomb, I don't think the Ministry would appreciate us bringing that monster out into the open above muggle Luxor. Besides, even if we could get past it, the main chamber was destroyed. There's no way we'll be able to see the writing again."

"Well, do you have any ideas then, genius?" He shook his head and she sighed, "I do wish I could just remember what it said but I only had time to glance at it and…"

"Aoife!" Bill's excited shout made her jump, "That's it! There is a way you can remember it! The Scholar!"

Aoife fixed him with a long look, the empty teacup in her hands as it felt like her stomach was squeezing in on itself. She shook her head, "Absolutely not."

"But why not?" Bill was pacing around the room again, "It's the perfect solution! Instead of sneaking past a Bronzescale again, we can just pay over some gold…"

"Which neither of us have."

Bill ignored her, "Just pay over some gold and he can pull the memory for you! There are no downsides!"

"Except having a smelly, random stranger rummaging around in my memories? No, thank you," She pulled a face, "That's something I don't particularly fancy right now."

He wheeled around to face her and threw his hands up in the air in exasperation, "You said it yourself; there's no way we're going to get past that Bronzescale and without the message, we've hit a dead end."

She had folded her arms stubbornly, "How about we go find our own pensieve?"

"Even if we could find one, and afford it because they're not exactly cheap, extracting your own memory is incredibly complex magic."

"I'd still give it a go."

"And it can be dangerous."

Aoife considered that last point, "You mean I might accidentally forget this conversation ever happened?"

Bill snorted derisively.

"Fine!" Aoife snapped as she felt her stomach give another uncomfortable lurch, "Fine! But you're putting up the gold. I'm not having some old lad sticking his wrinkly, snotty nose into my head and paying for the privilege as well."

"Deal," Bill grinned, "I know he goes wandering but as soon as we can find him, we'll go see him!"

"I can't fecking wait," was Aoife's gloomy reply.