Romancing the Sorcerer's Stone

Chapter 7: Golden Snitches

April 2000 — Cachora, Peru

Harry kicks a small rock into the gutter. He mutters to himself, hands shoved deep in his pockets, eyes firmly on the ground. He doesn't understand why none of the guides he's encountered seem willing to take him to the Choquequirao ruins. Sure, they're supposedly cursed, but... People don't actually believe it, right? And even if they do, there has to be someone willing to take him.

He spins on his heel, stalking back toward the seedy bar. Someone in that smoke-darkened room is bound to be willing. He'll just have to flash a lot more gold. He doesn't like resorting to bribery — that's more Malfoy's territory — but he needs to get up there.

He strides through the swinging doors, wincing at the the way they creak and shudder. A rust-colored rain of paint flakes speckle his boots. He has to get himself under control before his magic brings the place down around his ears.

He firms his jaw and strides to the bar. The weedy man behind it peers up at him, beady eyes clouded by age and smudged lenses.

"Yes?" he asks. "What can I get you? Drinks only, mind." His hands never stop their slow, inevitable motion over the wooden surface of the bar, smearing the stains around with a gray towel that Harry thinks was once probably white.

Harry grinds his teeth, forcing his tone to remain even. "I need a guide."

The man blinks at him but doesn't stop wiping the bar. "And I need to be young again." He waits a moment. "Seems neither of us will get what he wants today."

Harry scowls. "I can pay," he says shortly. "Gold."

The barman stares impassively back at him, but he doesn't say anything else, just waits.

They stare at one another. Harry sees the beginnings of smug gloating swimming up from the depths of the man's cloudy eyes. Before it can fully surface, someone speaks up from the silent crowd of men behind them.

"I'll do it."

Harry turns slowly, half expecting the voice to have been only in his head.

Facing him is a short, squat man of middling age. His hair is shading toward grey at the temples, and his tanned face is seamed with wrinkles, but his eyes are clear and hard.

"I'll do it... for 5,000 Sol."

Harry blinks. It's an outrageous sum, more than a year's wages for the average worker in Cachora, and yet... No one else bats an eye. It seems they, at least, consider it a fair price. He sighs. He's brought that much — barely. It will leave him dangerously strapped for cash for the journey home, but... Well. Knowing Malfoy, he may as well not return without the medallion. They'll just have to make it up in the sale.

He nods and holds out his hand. His guide ignores it.

"If we go, we go now."

Harry looks skeptically up at the sun, which hangs decidedly higher in the sky than he would like. "But—"

The man glares at him. "Now, or not at all, outsider."

Harry nods.

—

He regrets that decision almost immediately. He'd hoped they'd take some of the burros tied up outside the bar. Not that he'd been looking forward to riding a burro, exactly, but he really isn't looking forward to making the climb on foot.

By late afternoon the next day, he's bruised and beaten, trudging grimly behind his guide as the man winds inexorably up the mountain. The man clearly doesn't believe in so mundane a thing as a path, and opts instead to veer away from any they come across, slicing through hanging vines and underbrush alike with a wicked machete that he'd whipped out of... well, Harry isn't sure where it was, but it's spent the last several hours almost constantly in the man's hand. It makes Harry's arm hurt just to watch him.