"How'd you sleep?"
Bill didn't look up, his hands busy carefully sliding a roll of ancient-looking parchment into a specially padded waterproof tube in his bag.
"Like I'd been hit with a Petrificus Totalus."
Douglas walked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water.
"Good. You'll need your wits about you today."
Bill zipped up his tool bag and turned. Excitement crackled in the air around him.
"Ready for your surprise?"
"As long as it's not another mummified cat that hisses at me."
Douglas leaned against the doorframe, sipping his water.
Bill laughed. He grabbed a leather waterskin from a shelf in the corner and tossed it over.
"Here. Iced lemonade. Charmed to stay cool and clean."
Douglas caught it. The skin was blissfully cold against his palm, perfect for the dry morning heat.
"Where are we headed? Need a flying carpet?"
"No. Too conspicuous," Bill said, spinning a perfectly ordinary-looking Muggle car key around his finger. "The Ministry's tracking charms are like fireworks in the night sky over Egypt. We go by road. Low profile."
He jerked a thumb towards the street below.
"Got us a Muggle four-by-four. Solid machine. Just old. Sometimes, Muggle things work better than magic."
Douglas couldn't agree more.
The iced lemonade slid down his throat, washing away the stale sleep.
Douglas slung the waterskin's strap over his shoulder and followed Bill outside.
An army-green Land Rover sat in the yard. Its paint was faded in patches, and a long, deep scratch scored the driver's side door. It looked like a giant beetle that had rolled in the sand for too long.
Douglas slid into the passenger seat. The sun-baked leather scorched him through his clothes, and he flinched.
Bill started the engine. The vehicle coughed, hacked, and grumbled like an old camel before grudgingly lurching forward.
The Rover left Cairo behind, the city melting into a shimmering heatwave in the rearview mirror.
An endless sea of sand spread before them.
"So," Douglas squinted against the monotonous, magnificent view. "Which particular patch of sand is hiding my surprise?"
"Surprises need build-up."
Bill grinned, steering with one hand. He reached into the backseat, into a heavily protected leather case, and pulled out the thin, crudely-bound booklet made of papyrus fragments. He dropped it onto Douglas's lap.
"Look at this first."
Douglas caught it. His fingertips registered the unique, dry, fragile texture of truly old paper.
The cover was a disaster site of time.
Fourth Dynasty papyrus. Nineteenth-century beeswax binder. Script mimicking hieratic, but clumsily mixed with a few Hellenistic symbols.
"A forged fairy tale book?"
He opened a page. A distinct scent—dust and Nile silt—wafted up.
"You madman. I didn't know you collected high-quality forgeries."
"That's what I thought at first, too."
Bill's knuckles tapped a rhythm on the steering wheel, smug satisfaction bleeding into his voice.
"But the forger made a fascinating mistake. He was too careful with his materials."
He shot Douglas a glance. "Feel the pigment."
Douglas complied. He rubbed a thumb over the dull green pigment and closed his eyes for a second. His eyebrow rose. "Sediment layer from the Giza plateau. Silt collected around the twelfth day of the inundation season, if I'm not mistaken."
Bill smacked the wheel. The whole vehicle jolted. "Knew you'd get it! A forger goes to all that trouble to source period-specific magical materials… for a worthless fairy tale? Don't you think that's the clue?"
His tone was practically a boast as he recounted his five-month obsession.
"I first saw it at a stall in the Khan el-Khalili market. One of those places that sells 'ancient Egyptian' souvenirs to Muggles. It was stuffed between gilded scarabs and cheap alabaster statues."
"You paid for a fake. Then spent five months proving it's a special fake."
Douglas chuckled.
"Does Gringotts pay you too much?"
"The point isn't real or fake! It's what the forger was trying to hide!"
Bill jerked the wheel hard. The Rover bounced around a massive wind-carved rock.
"This fairy tale book is a cipher, old man. Look at The Whisper of the Nile. The girl with the lotus crown. In the myths, she's Hapi's daughter, the river god. She's not scattering ordinary silt. It's Kebet. The earth of life."
Douglas opened the notebook.
It was a chaos of dense handwriting, scribbled sketches, and symbol analysis.
Colored tabs stuck out from the pages: 'Evidence', 'Mythology', 'Geography'.
On one page, Bill had inked a sketch of the seven clay pots from the story. Beside it, a red-pen drawing of the four orthodox Canopic jars. Underneath, scrawled heavily: "Seven vs. Four? Folk variant? Or different purpose?"
Another page compared the description of 'Silence Salve' to a sealing potion recipe from Moste Potente Potions. Notes beside it: "Silt (base?), Stardust (magical amplifier?), Crocodile Tears (emotional conduit?)."
"Seven pots," Douglas pointed at the sketch. "That's odd. Horus only had four sons."
"I knew you'd spot that!"
Bill's excitement threatened to spill out the window.
"The Potter and the Green Lizard mentions seven urns. Weird. Egyptian funerary jars—Canopic jars—there were only four, guarded by Horus's four sons. The number seven wasn't common in the official state theology. It smacks more of Middle Kingdom folk beliefs about soul containers."
The Rover's tires crunched over gravel, the sound providing a percussive beat to Bill's narration.
A faint smile touched Douglas's lips. He seemed to recall someone and murmured, "Herpo the Foul? The Middle Kingdom had frequent contact with ancient Greece."
Bill stared at the road ahead and nodded. "Yes! And that's what makes it interesting."
"So," Douglas picked up the thread. "A perfectionist forger. A plausible ancient fairy tale. Catches the eye of Gringotts' top curse-breaker."
"Exactly!" Another wheel-slap from Bill. "I bought it for a laugh. But the more I looked… there was a wizard behind this. Greek or Egyptian…"
He glanced at Douglas again.
"So my first move was to check our records. Every archive I could access. Gringotts' curse ledgers on tombs. Every obscure text on African, Mediterranean magical history. I dug through it all."
"And?"
"Nothing."
Bill's voice dropped.
"Not a single word."
"In our world… he doesn't exist."
~~~~❃❃~~~~~~~~❃❃~~~~
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