He began to cast his most practiced composite spell-weave.
From the tip of his wand flowed threads of magic that were nearly transparent — the color of logic and rules made visible.
He bound the emotional resonance frequencies of the seven clay urns to a single, enormously complex external source.
London. The editorial office of the Daily Prophet.
"I've modified the judgment rules for the resonance sequence," Douglas explained to Bill, surveying his own handiwork with quiet approval.
"From now on, the daily unlocking order will dynamically shift based on the first letters of the words in that morning's front-page headline."
Bill tried to follow the logic. A spike of pain shot through his skull.
"Wait. You're saying that to open this door, we need to know the headline of a newspaper published in London?"
"Correct." Douglas snapped his fingers. "First edition only. If they run a special supplement, the password updates in real-time."
"This..." Bill pressed his fingers to his temples. "Honestly — do you put your students through this kind of thing at Hogwarts?"
Douglas shrugged.
"Don't worry. I've modified the emotional mechanisms. When someone cracks the password, the urns will give them the information they need." He paused. "I'll also set up an internal courier system so you get the latest Daily Prophet first thing every day. Students can buy it from you."
To make sure they could actually get in themselves, Douglas had also crafted a variant of the two-way mirror — two brass compasses that displayed the correct current password sequence in real-time. One for Bill. One for Dumbledore.
"A perfect closed loop." Douglas pocketed his compass.
"Let's test it." Bill unfolded the newspaper and read aloud. "Ministry of Magic Employee Wins Annual Most Charming Whiskers Competition."
"So today's sequence is... M-E-W-W-M-M-A-C?"
"Correct." Douglas glanced at the compass. "Magic, Employee, Wins, Whiskers, Most, Meet, Ace."
Bill raised his wand and began tapping the urns in order.
The urn of anger hummed first, low and resonant. Then the urn of deception. Then forgetfulness, key, hunger, sorrow, fear.
Chaotic. Illogical. The only right answer.
When the last thread of magic connecting all seven urns closed the loop, the stone wall at the far end of the burial chamber ground slowly aside.
Douglas looked at what he'd built and felt deeply satisfied.
The puzzle blended ancient magic, modern current events, encryption logic, and a dash of linguistics. More than enough to make any intruder question their life choices.
"Interior decoration: complete." He clapped his hands. "Time for the exterior."
They walked out of the burial chamber and back up into the sun.
Now it was Bill's turn.
"Alright, old Doug. You've had your fun." Bill rolled up his sleeves, revealing several pale scars along his forearms , mementos from curses that hadn't gone quietly. "Time for actual professional security."
He spread out across the dunes surrounding the tomb and began laying down Gringotts-level defensive wards.
Not Hogwarts protection. Not the warm, measured kind. These were the cold, efficient barriers the goblins used to guard their gold , practical, merciless, and deeply unpleasant for anyone who tested them uninvited.
Bill's wand sliced through the air. In its wake, runes burned with a metallic sheen before sinking into the sand and vanishing without a trace.
"Anti-Apparition. Anti-Portkey. Spatial disturbance frequency lock."
Each movement was fluid and exact, every rune placed on a precise structural node.
"Any illegal magical intrusion gets flagged and bounced straight back at the source."
At the entrance, he pressed a final, invisible Gringotts seal into the stone. Not a claim of ownership. A warning to anyone in the trade who might wander past.
This site is under professional management. Trespassers will be dealt with accordingly.
When the last rune disappeared into the sand, the entire magical field over the Dahshur Dunes settled.
The chill that had seeped through these stones for three thousand years , the low, constant murmur of Ankh-Ka's fury , was locked away underground.
Now there was only quiet desert.
"Done."
Bill brushed the sand from his hands and exhaled.
Douglas stood at the edge of the dunes and looked at what they'd built together. Something warm moved through his chest.
A single composite magical structure, fusing ancient Egyptian curses, Hogwarts-grade mischief, Gringotts security engineering, and Eastern Daoist sealing arts.
"Perfect," Douglas said.
"Now even if Grindelwald himself showed up, he'd have to correctly guess what kind of sweets Dumbledore prefers..." He paused. "Okay, that one might actually be too easy for him."
Bill shook his head. He was past the point of commenting.
He was just quietly worried about the psychological damage future students would sustain when they came here for practical coursework.
Inside the ring, the Shadow of Ankh-Ka had gone completely still.
It seemed to have made its peace.
When weighed against the alternative , purification by Felix Felicis , haunting an ancient tomb protected by Peeves' illusions and a rotating cipher wasn't the worst fate imaginable.
At least it was safe here.
Aggressively, almost offensively safe.
"Let's go, SB." Douglas hooked an arm around Bill's shoulder.
"Back to Cairo. We need to start drafting that report for the Egyptian Ministry of Magic and the goblins."
"What's your angle?" Bill asked.
"The truth." Douglas's smile caught the last of the setting sun. "We discovered an ancient curse testing ground with zero economic value, extreme danger, and maintenance costs that are frankly obscene."
He spread his free hand, magnanimous. "And out of pure humanitarianism and academic goodwill, Hogwarts is generously willing to take this problem off everyone's hands."
They walked together toward the Apparition point, their shadows stretching long across the sand.
---
Cairo sunlight was a different kind of magic.
It came through the linen curtains in long blades, filling the air with suspended gold. Every particle of it carried the smell of ancient spice and dry earth.
Douglas had traded his robes for a loose linen garment and gone barefoot. The stone floor was cool under his feet. He stood in front of an old Muggle computer, wand in hand, making tiny adjustments with the focus of someone tuning a fine instrument.
The monitor was wired to a weathered two-way mirror. Across its surface, intricate runic arrays moved like slow water , alive, breathing, perpetually recalibrating.
He nudged one rune with the very tip of his wand. The sensation wasn't like casting a spell. It was like tuning a harp string and waiting to hear if the pitch held.
"Cross-Continental Mirror Video System, version one-point-zero," he muttered to himself. Two-way mirrors worked for long-distance communication, but they had their limits. He was trying to bridge them with Muggle network infrastructure , replicate some of what tablets and mobile phones would one day be able to do.
Across the room, Bill Weasley sat opposite him, his long hair dark with sweat. One hand rested on the mirror's base, feeding a steady stream of magic into the connection.
"Bring the signal strength up another three percent, Bill."
"The fluctuation reads like a startled Augurey."
On the ring, the patch of shadow shifted uneasily. It seemed to be registering a silent protest against the use of sacred magical energy to power a crude box of Muggle iron.
"Teaching Assistant Ankh-Ka continues to hold a deeply critical view of modern technology," Bill remarked, his output not wavering by a fraction. "The magical feed is steady, but the signal keeps spiking."
"Expected. The other end is pure Muggle equipment." Douglas didn't look up. "We're essentially using magic to kick down a door into a completely different world."
He pulled back his wand and hit the enter key.
The mirror erupted.
Snow , a blizzard of static, seething across the surface like it wanted to drag the image under entirely.
Then it stopped.
The picture cleared.
London. Douglas's own sitting room. He recognized every corner of it.
And there was Sirius Black , handsome face, expression already edging toward impatience , pressing himself so close to the camera that his features filled the frame.
"Hello? Can you see me? Douglas? How is this Muggle contraption less stable than the Floo Network?"
"Sit back, Padfoot. You're about to put your face through the screen."
Douglas's voice made the crossing from Cairo to London with a slight, crackling edge to it.
➤ Next: First Cross-Continental Meeting, The Marauders' Global Layout!
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