Up and Down

Rise and Fall

"Do you know anything about Egypt?" Sebastian asks weakly, trying to distract himself from the relentless seasickness. The ship sways again and he grabs onto the railing, trying to hold back what's left of his breakfast.

"Only what I've read in the books," Ominis' tone is clipped, his mind probably occupied by their shared plight.

Not the seasickness. Anna.

When she didn't write back, he was upset, but chalked it up to the long distance and perhaps a lost letter. Then his second letter also went ignored, then the third, and then Ominis' mentioned that he was worried about not hearing an answer from Anna either...

That's when they realised something was seriously wrong. But what could they do?

When her owl showed up bearing a letter from her father, for a brief, sickening moment he was afraid of the worst.

It still sits inside his chest. The fear he thought had gone away, the cold twisting feeling of impending doom. Sebastian thought he'd get used to it by now. He lived with it for nearly a year already as Anne slowly died.

But the gut punch of it happening to the young woman he loves... he was not prepared for that.

He just got her back. After two months when he thought the rift between them would never heal, she was back in his arms, and then she was gone.

Now she might be gone for good.

His stomach lurches again, this time not from the rocking of the boat.

What are they even trying to accomplish, rushing over to Egypt? They aren't even allowed to cast spells outside the Hogwarts grounds, with Ominis still two more months away from his seventeenth birthday and he - four.

But it seemed like the only right thing to do at the time.

They have no real plan. This isn't like a meticulously constructed trip they took to London with her. They have no one to guide them through the nuance of the Muggle world. At least Ominis had some galleons saved up from the allowance he received, so they were able to exchange those for Muggle pounds at Gringotts, and book passage to Alexandria, the capital of Khedivate of Egypt.

Sebastian rummages around his memory for clues and ideas. Anna has been mostly open in the discussions of her strange magic, but he is pretty sure she didn't tell him absolutely everything.

But what she did show him was striking enough. Watching her unleash the power on the battlefield was like watching a tempest. Dangerous, wild, untamed.

It excited him. It still does.

But in the memories of memories in the Pensive, down in the Undercroft, he saw other feats she was not privy to. Creation of immense structures. Passages reformed out of solid rock, connected together in impossible ways. Reshaping reality like water.

It felt old. Primordial. Unknowable.

If she found something more in Egypt... would they even be able to help? But, with Fig dead, Sebastian is the only living person - aside from Anna herself - who knows at least something about her ancient magic.

It has to be worth something.

The steamship rises on another wave and Sebastian loses his battle with nausea once again, retching over the side of the railings.

Ominis is standing by him, impassive and grim, utterly unaffected by the sickening rocking, and silently hands him a handkerchief once Sebastian finishes emptying his stomach.

They make landfall in Alexandria and are instantly overwhelmed by heat, noise and colour. Red fez hats bob all over the sea of people. A few Europeans, the two of them among them, stand out in the crowd like a sore thumb. Squinting against the harsh sun, Sebastian tries to figure out what they should do next.