Chapter 234 - A lucky break!

{15th July 1991} 

{Rigel's POV}

A white wave of mana slid across the room like silk.

The Imperius Curse did not strike like a blow, it breezed—soft as breath on a mirror—and the world dulled softly as if a veil was flung over my eyes. A strange buzz unfurled under my skin, dissolved the ache in my ribs, smoothed the iron bite of the chains. 

For a heartbeat, I sat buzzed.

I blinked once. Twice. The dullness did not deepen, it thinned. Across from me, Nalini's satisfied smirk cracked. Confusion pricked the corners of her eyes. She made a small, precise gesture—no wasted motion—and a cleaner, brighter wave washed over me, a kind of diagnostic polish that should have raised rattling in my rudimentary occlumency shields. Nothing buzzed.

I let the tension bleed from my shoulders, deliberately overdoing it, letting my mouth soften into something like relief. I tilted my head minutely, as if the last of the fear had finally drained away and left me pleasantly hollow.

Her confusion gathered into her brow. She lifted her wand a third time and…stopped. The wand hovered in the air like a question mark. Frustration flattened her mouth; it never touched her mana. That stayed steady—disciplined, calculating, a lake with wind moving only its skin.

"You felt that, it worked for a moment..." she said at last, voice even. Not a question.

"It did," I said. "And then it didn't."

Her eyes narrowed. "No trinkets. No ward protecting your mind. Even with Occlumency, you should not—"

I shrugged in my chains as if the matter were beneath me. "You brought the Boy-Who-Lived into your little party," I said lightly. "Perhaps luck is catching."

The retort landed; annoyance flared and went out. She folded the wand behind her wrist. "Amusing. This will not change a thing."

"Oh, but it did, it changed everything." I leaned back so the chair creaked, winced a little theatrically, and met her gaze. "Here are my terms."

"You do not have terms," she said automatically.

"I do now," I said, and made myself sound bored with the whole thing. "Let them go back to England—Sirius, Harry, Ron, the twins, Ginny. All of them. I will stay. I help you open your sanctum and gain access to the knowledge. You get what you want."

"Or?" she asked, because she couldn't help herself.

"Or you keep us all," I said, almost kindly, "and you have a bigger problem than trying to get me to work. You've got Harry Potter trussed like a goose. If your Imperius had worked, you might have puppeted me into smiling and unlocking your doors before anyone blinked or noticed if something was off. But it didn't. And you have hours, maybe a day, before Albus Dumbledore notices that his favorite variable dropped off his board. I don't know how he watches Harry, but I know he does. Your timetable has been compressed."

A ripple of calculation crossed her features like a shadow, quick and thin. She smoothed it flat.

"We can keep them quiet," she said.

"For how long?" I asked. "Without bruises, without residue, without the other families smelling the wrong kind of smoke in these mountains? You planned this to be clean. I doubt you could take the pressure of an international incident, one where one of the strongest wizards in the world would be bearing down on you soon."

"You think I am afraid of Dumbledore?" she said softly, her mana still frozen; she was trying to bluff, and that much was easy to tell.

"I think you are too intelligent to pretend he doesn't exist," I said. "And I think you know the difference between a knife fight and a siege. What you need is a key and the time to use it. I'm your key. They are your liability. Set them down where they can no longer complicate your line of approach."

"England," she said, tasting the condition.

"England," I confirmed.

She did not blink. "And you? You will remain. You will cooperate. No stalling for rescue."

"I will remain," I said. "I will cooperate. With conditions, of course."

"Ah," she said, and smiled without showing teeth. "There they are."

"Three," I said. "One: no harm will come to them now or in transit. The moment they are portkeyed out of here, we need to move to the vaults. Two: My safety is guaranteed on the premise that I am willing to share whatever knowledge I gain in the sanctum. In exchange, I will receive a portkey to the Leaky Cauldron, which I will not use until the work here is done. Three: We share an oath to that degree one that binds both of us so that neither flouts at our ends of the bargain."

She considered that, head tipped, eyes on my face like a jeweler's loupe. The candlelight made the planes of her cheekbones stark, flattened her lips into a line that screamed distaste. "And in return," she said, "you want your friends delivered home. Not just released here."

"Yes."

"And you want to tell them yourself."

"No. They don't need to know, knock them unconscious and let me examine the portkey, I would be able to tell if they are headed to the right destination or not."

"They wouldn't agree to go, most likely."

"Of course," I said. "Tell them I traded for them. Let Sirius and the others argue; they will. Tell them I'll follow soon."

A flick of something—curiosity, maybe—moved across her features and was gone. Her wand made a small, thoughtful circle against her wrist. "And if I say no?"

"Then we sit here," I said, and let the boredom edge back in, "and we wait for your timetable to fail. Imperius is not going to make me stand up and work for you. Threatening them won't make me work willingly, which would be disastrous for the Ritual. And any attempts at Cruciatus or any other torture would make this thing needlessly messy. Sure, you'll probably get your way initially, but it will end up pretty bad for you, trust me."

"Bold," she said.

"Efficient," I said.

Silence again. The fan's shadow stole around the ceiling like a slow hand. I watched her watch me, trying to figure me out.

"You will not attempt escape," she said finally.

"I will not jeopardize their safety, plus we'll all be swearing on our magics," I countered. "There is no way any of us will go against any plan."

Her gaze slid aside, measuring a thing only she could see. Frustration had banked to a cool ember; her mana was now as smooth as jagged glass. She turned away suddenly, pivoting on her heel with a contained violence that rattled the chair she had conjured. "I will confer," she said, and the control in the words was the control of a blade not to cut when it wanted to.

"Nalini," I said, and she paused at the door. "Don't make it any messier than it already is."

The door closed with a sound like a page being shut. The muffling charm swallowed her footsteps. Silence pressed in—not empty, but dense, like the hush in a theater just before the lights drop. The candle sang its small, steady flame. My wrists burned where the chains bit. I sat back and let the breath I'd been holding ease out between my teeth.

'I'm going to put a spare wand in my inventory once I get to Hogwarts; there should be plenty hidden in the room of hidden things.'

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AN: Been a while, I'm done with the project, it ran longer than expected. I'm also on notice period now, so I should have plenty of free time once again as I search for another job. This one has been killing me for almost a year now. I think it's time to move on. Anyway, I'll be focusing on writing for a little while. I'm debating whether to continue with more chapters of this story or refocus on the original one, which has been on hiatus for a while now...