Standing atop the cold stone of the Lotus Throne, Allen felt a prickle of irritation beginning to gnaw at his nerves. His logic was sound; he knew it. The alignment of the stars, the flow of magic, the very architecture of this tomb pointed to this spot being the exit. So why were they still grounded in this subterranean silence?
He looked up at the swirling nebula of light above them. It was active, humming with a low-frequency vibration that made his teeth ache, yet it felt like an engine idling, waiting for a gear to engage.
"Wait," Allen muttered, his eyes narrowing. He looked at his empty hands, then back toward the floor of the temple. "The wand."
In a blur of motion, Allen flipped off the edge of the high throne, his robes snapping like a whip. He landed silently among the corpses of the scorpions and snatched up the gem-less wand he had discarded during the earlier chaos. With a single, fluid leap that defied the heavy, stagnant air of the chamber, he vaulted back onto the pedestal.
"If Tutankhamun spent his entire life preparing for his resurrection, he wouldn't leave his most prized tool behind," Allen said, his voice echoing with newfound certainty. "A king doesn't walk into the afterlife unarmed."
As if the temple had been waiting for that exact realization, a sharp whistle tore through the air. The Black Orlov gemstone, which had been glowing atop the Osiris statue, tore itself free from the stone hand. It shot across the temple like a dark comet, striking the tip of the wand in Allen's hand with a satisfying clack. The stone and wood fused instantly, the seams vanishing as if they had been grown together from a single seed.
Allen twirled the restored artifact, the weight of it perfectly balanced. He pointed it toward the swirling vortex above, his heart racing. "Now... move!"
But nothing happened. The nebula continued its lazy, hypnotic rotation. Nancy's face, which had lit up with a fragile hope, began to crumble into a mask of pure despair. "It's not working, Allen. We're stuck. We're going to die in here with these... these things."
"It needs a key," Allen mused, ignoring her rising panic. "A vocal trigger. But what?"
"Maybe it's something simple?" Ron suggested, his voice cracking as he tried to be helpful. "Er... Alohomora? Open up? Reparo? Maybe the ceiling is just broken? Revelio!"
Allen sighed, glancing at Ron with a look that was half-pity, half-exasperation. He couldn't help but think that Ron's History of Magic grades must be truly abysmal. "Ron, this tomb is three thousand years old. The wizards of that era didn't use the 'sanitized' charms the Ministry of Magic feeds us today. They didn't care about convenience; they cared about power and ritual."
Allen closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of the dark temple and the sound of Nancy's sobbing. He searched his memory, replaying every inscription, every mural, every cursed whisper he had encountered since stepping into the pyramid.
The curses? No, those were meant to keep people in. The prayers? Too general. Surely the exit didn't require them to be wrapped in linen and spices?
He shook his head violently, clearing out the absurd thoughts. Then, a specific memory of the golden sarcophagus flashed in his mind. Two lines of text, etched in a script so old it felt like it predated language itself.
Allen opened his eyes, his gaze locking onto the center of the swirling nebula. His voice dropped to a low, melodic resonance, speaking the words not as a command, but as a statement of fact:
"I have seen yesterday... I know tomorrow!"
The wand in his hand didn't just glow—it screamed. A bolt of obsidian-colored light erupted from the tip, striking the center of the vortex. The spinning nebula froze for a heartbeat, then inverted, turning into a solid, blinding pillar of light that swallowed the three of them whole.
In an instant, the world vanished.
Allen felt like he had been strapped to the side of a firework. There was a deafening roar of wind, a sensation of being stretched thin across time and space. The temple walls became a blur of grey, then faded entirely. He could feel Ron's hand gripping his left arm and Nancy's fingers digging into his right, their screams lost in the vacuum of the light.
They were leaping suns, streaks of fire painting the Egyptian sky. Beneath them, the solid earth seemed to turn to liquid. They tore through layers of granite, silt, and sand as if they were nothing more than mist.
Then, the darkness broke.
The cool, night air hit them like a physical slap. Below, the Nile River stretched out like a ribbon of hammered silver, its waters churning under the moonlight. The sheer, terrifying velocity of their ascent was replaced by a sense of weightless euphoria.
They had done it. They were out.
Ron let out a sound that was half-cheer, half-sob, shouting nonsense into the wind. Nancy was laughing hysterically, the tears on her face catching the moonlight. The composed, haughty woman who had looked down her nose at them at the pyramid's entrance was gone, replaced by someone who had seen the bottom of the world and survived.
As the light deposited them gently onto the soft, silty bank of the river, Allen's legs buckled. His face was ghostly pale, his stomach doing slow, sickening somersaults. "Did we just... fly through the ceiling?"
Nancy, caught in the throes of an adrenaline-fueled breakdown, instinctively lunged toward Allen for another embrace. Allen, still reeling from the magical transit, panicked. He scrambled backward, using Ron as a human shield. Nancy, realizing she was about to tackle a very confused Weasley, skidded to a stop.
Ron's mouth hung open, his hands hovering awkwardly in mid-air as he prepared for a hug that never came. Nancy looked at him, then at Allen's terrified expression, and burst into a fit of genuine, bell-like laughter. She reached out and gave Ron a quick, fierce hug instead, leaving the boy looking like he'd been struck by lightning.
"Ahem."
The sound of a throat clearing broke the moment. Several figures materialized out of the shadows of the nearby palms.
Arthur Weasley rushed forward, his face a map of exhaustion and terror, followed closely by a grim-looking Bill. Beside them stood an Egyptian wizard named Sayid—a man with a sharp, black ponytail and a red headscarf that fluttered in the breeze.
"Ron! Allen!" Arthur cried, nearly tripping over his own robes as he reached them. He grabbed Ron's shoulders, checking him for missing limbs. "We've been searching for hours! We thought... we thought the pyramid had claimed you."
"Where the hell did you two go?" Bill barked, though his eyes were shining with relief. "Do you have any idea what Mum is going to do to us when she hears about this? You were supposed to stay in the marked zones!"
"We didn't mean to!" Ron protested, his voice high and defensive. "The floor just... disappeared! It wasn't our fault!"
"Luckily, Sayid here is an expert in blood-tracking," Bill said, nodding toward the Egyptian wizard. "He managed to lock onto your magical signatures just as you broke the surface. We would have been searching the ruins for weeks otherwise."
Allen and Ron bowed their heads in respect to Sayid, who merely nodded back, his expression unreadable.
"And who is this?" Mr. Weasley asked, his gaze settling on Nancy, who was currently trying to wipe the dirt and scorpion blood off her expensive jacket.
"This is Nancy," Allen explained, stepping forward. "She was caught in the same trap we were. She's... she's the reason we made it through some of the tighter spots."
Arthur's expression softened, but then he looked closer. "Wait. Allen, this young lady... she's a Muggle, isn't she?"
Nancy looked up, confused by the term. "I'm a what? Yes, I'm a normal person, if that's what you mean. Who are you people? How did you just... appear?"
The air on the riverbank grew heavy. Bill looked at Allen with a grimace, then at his father. "Dad, we have to. You know the rules."
"Rules?" Nancy stepped back, her eyes darting between the wands in their hands. The fear from the tomb began to leak back into her expression. "What rules?"
"I'm so sorry, Nancy," Arthur said gently, his voice thick with genuine regret. "But there is a law called the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. Non-magical people cannot be allowed to carry memories of... well, of everything you just saw."
"You want to erase my memory?" Nancy's voice rose to a shriek. She looked at Allen, her eyes pleading. "You're going to wipe me clean? Like I'm a broken machine?"
"It's for the best," Bill said, though he didn't sound convinced. "You've had a traumatic night. Forgetting the scorpions, the darkness, and the monsters... it's a mercy, really."
Sayid stepped forward, his wand already raised. He didn't see the conflict the British wizards were feeling. To him, this was a simple administrative task. A Muggle had seen too much; the Muggle must forget. It was the law.
"Wait!" Allen shouted, stepping between Sayid's wand and Nancy. The tip of the Egyptian's wand hissed, a spark of memory-altering magic hitting the sand and scorching it black.
Nancy was trembling now, her hands over her heart. "Allen, please. I don't want to forget. I don't want to forget that I survived. I don't want to forget you."
"Dad, there has to be another way," Ron pleaded, his voice cracking. "She saved us! We can't just turn her into a stranger."
"The Ministry... the Confederation... they don't make exceptions for friendship, Ron," Arthur said, his heart clearly breaking for the girl. "If the Egyptian Ministry finds out we let a Muggle walk away with knowledge of a Royal Tomb's internal defenses, they'll have us all in cells."
Allen looked at Nancy, then at the elder Weasleys. His mind, still sharp from the life-or-death puzzles of the tomb, found the only loophole left.
"What if we make an Unbreakable Vow?" Allen's voice was steady, challenging. "If she swears never to speak of what she saw, under the penalty of magic itself... can we let her keep her life?"
The silence that followed was broken only by the rhythmic lapping of the Nile against the shore.