Prompt: 78: Setting: In a Volcano
He stuck the knife still deeper into the cliff face, trying to ignore the sweat which was making it ever more difficult to grasp onto. This was made admittedly easier by the blood running down his left hand, as he scrambled to grab onto something, anything, to stop his fall.
God damn it.
In what twisted universe had he agreed to this? The answer to this question was, by all means, impossible to obtain. He had been recorded with a muggle phone by Narcissa Malfoy, of all people, agreeing to not only have this dangerous journey, but to have his memory wiped to not know what he was going to get out of it. All he had been informed of before being lowered in was that he had to find some powerfully magical amulet.
He stared daggers at the woman above him, who was looking worriedly at the inside of the volcano wherein Harry was descending. He had been informed that the summoning charm would not work, but he was at a loss to figure out why he needed to enter. He was young, yes, and famed for being good at Defence against the Dark Arts, but that only worked when he had a wand on hand in the first place.
He shook his head to clear his thoughts. The last thing he needed at that moment was worrying about himself. He was dangling by a rope above a giant lake of molten lava, and he didn't even have a wand for fear of it burning to a crisp.
Once he had tugged on the rope enough to come to the conclusion that it was, in fact, stable, he decided to let go of the edge of the interior walls of the fall down to lava. He tried kicking off from the wall, in order to get a view. He had never seen so much empty space in a volcano where lava could've been. Were they all like this? He spotted what he was looking for, and signalled to Narcissa to let him lower. There it was, there was a small cave which had miraculously formed, and he felt like he could just see a glint of silver at the end of it.
He signalled that he was going to get down from the rope, and unhooked himself. He noticed, as he walked through, that it was quiet. Gone were the bubbling sounds of the lava from outside. It was a deadly silence, with no trace of any life. Steam seemed to erupt from every hole. It was stifling.
And then, he saw it.
It was a lousy excuse for an amulet. Silver was the correct description, and it was unremarkable, except for something clutched inside it. He tugged it out, his expression blank, his heart racing.
It was-
No.
The resurrection stone.
And it all made sense.
"Well?" Narcissa snapped, the moment he got out of that hellscape, sweat and blood running down his whole figure.
Without a word, he threw the amulet on the ground by her feet.
He kept the stone for himself.