Chương 25: Ch23- Brain Drills

They passed a cluster of researchers, all doing a poor job of pretending not to watch. The Ministry tent's cold lamplight, joyless chairs, a little desk pushed into the corner. A heating charm barely masked the chill that crept in through the canvas. The two officials followed them inside, closing the flap behind. The woman pulled out a quill that looked like it had been plucked from a particularly disgruntled crow and set it to a long scroll already half-filled with notes.

The man dropped into a chair, crossed one leg over the other.

"State your names."

"Cassian Rosier."

"Bathsheda Babbling." He scratched both names down without looking up.

"Have you discovered anything?" Cassian shrugged lightly.

"Depends. Are you the sort of people who get excited about pre-linguistic runic systems?" He scratched his neck, eyes narrowing.

"But yes." The man blinked.

"Yes?"

"Very yes," Cassian said.

"Found a spiral formation of runes inside the cave. Not Norse. Not Elder Futhark. Not even something you would get out of a misaligned decoding rune. It is old. Proper old. Possibly pre-agricultural, and certainly nothing the Ministry's textbook writers have seen." The woman finally looked up from the scroll. Her quill stopped scratching.

"You are suggesting you uncovered a new language?"

"I am suggesting someone should get a shovel and start digging through the Department of Mysteries' discarded bins. Because whatever is down there predates the Saxons, the druids, the whole lot. This wasn't a burial mound or a carved hall. This was something else entirely." Bathsheda didn't say anything. She sat with her hands folded and eyes fixed on the edge of the desk like she was waiting for someone to argue with him. The man drummed his fingers against the parchment.

"And the collapse?"

"Caused by interacting with the runes, most likely. Or perhaps the entire chamber deciding it didn't want visitors. Either way, there were structural shifts tied to magical response patterns. Stone didn't just fall. It folded when it felt presence." The woman scribbled something.

"You are saying the cave closed itself?"

"I am saying the cave was enchanted to lock behind anything sentient enough to understand what it was seeing." He glanced over at Bathsheda.

"I am also suggesting you don't dig anything else up before you are bloody sure you can handle what is in there. That wasn't just some broken shrine or enchanted tomb. It was alive. Still is, probably. And dangerous. That much I can guarantee." No one jumped to fill the silence. The woman jotted something again.

"Do you believe it is a sentient entity?" the man asked. Cassian tilted his head.

"Well, it didn't offer me tea, but it did try to collapse a tunnel on our heads. So, unless that is your idea of a friendly hello..." The man frowned.

"You are saying you were targeted?"

"I am saying it wasn't random." Cassian shifted back in the chair.

"We weren't in there five seconds before the runes flared and the tunnel started folding. Not crumbling... folding. Like someone was trying to shut a door. Or a mouth." The woman's eyes finally rose.

"And this 'entity,' you think it is bound to the site?"

"Bound, buried, or just bored and cranky after a few thousand years. Take your pick." He tapped his temple.

"But Hilde touched that stone, and it gave her a memory that wasn't hers." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. The man glanced at Bathsheda.

"I saw what it did to Ms Vogel," she said.

"And I saw the runes. Clean. Too clean." She scratched her thumb over her knuckle.

"They didn't belong to anything in the archives."

They left the tent after laying everything out. What they'd seen, what they touched, even sketches of the runes and that serpent symbol by the pit. A third official came in halfway through, didn't say a word, just nodded and began drawing a floor plan while Cassian and Bathshedda gave him details. Rock formations, slope angle, the pit's width... he copied it all down with the grim focus of someone planning a warding ritual or a tactical siege. Maybe both. Then came the bit that made Cassian's neck prickle.

Near the end, one of them hinted, very politely, that a memory extraction might help confirm things. Bathsheda furrowed her brows like she didn't quite understand the question. Cassian, meanwhile, blinked like they just asked to borrow his spleen for a weekend getaway.

"No need," Bathsheda had said, crisp and smooth.

"We wrote it all down." Cassian just nodded along, trying not to look like he was thinking too hard about that particular phrase, memory extraction. They stepped out into the cold again, Cassian tugged his cloak tighter, like someone asked if they could probe him, and glanced sidelong. He blinked at her, mouth half-open.

"Magic can do that?" She chuckled, brushing hair back from her cheek.

"I love when you act all silly like these are new inventions." He shut his mouth fast, tried for a smirk like he'd been joking all along.

"Right. Course. I knew that." Inside, he was screaming. What else could they do? Flip through your dreams like a catalogue? Rewrite your childhood so you thought you liked parsnips? He kept walking, but his brain was on full sprint. If they asked for his memories... God, he wouldn't have had a clue how to fake it. Would they have seen through it? Seen him? He needed to learn more. Fast. Memory magic, whatever it took.

No way he was going to end up in a Ministry cell because he didn't know which end of a brain drill was up. They slipped into their tent... blessedly warm, still smelling of burnt pine and old paper. Cassian dropped onto the nearest chair, eyes flicking to the bookshelf, then to the empty desk where he could already imagine a stack of research books waiting for him. Memory magics. Runes. Yrsa. All of it.

Two days later, the Ministry gave up pretending this was a normal dig and slapped wards all over the cave mouth like plasters on a leaky pipe. Officially, the site was "sealed for safety and future study." Unofficially, it was a magical hazard zone with too many questions and not enough people willing to answer them. The researchers packed half their things and moped. The Ministry dragged in more grey-robed bureaucrats and didn't share their tea.

Cassian, meanwhile, had zero intention of returning to England just to sit in Rosier Manor and watch his uncle reorganise cursed family portraits. And Bathsheda, to her credit, didn't have any reason to rush back either. She scheduled the next few weeks at the rune site and wasn't about to trade frostbite for a staff meeting at Hogwarts. So, without actually saying it, they agreed to stay. Not quite a holiday. Definitely not work. Something in between. A field trip gone rogue.

Taking a Portkey back to Oslo felt like getting yanked through a washing machine full of regret and frost. The battered old shoe hadn't improved on the old suitcase. This tool smelled like mothballs and wet socks, still flared to life with that bone-deep pull that made your insides think gravity was just a polite suggestion. Cassian landed boots-first on the Ministry's designated Portkey field just outside the city. The air was windy again, colder here than it had any right to be in June.

Beside him, Bathsheda straightened, again, unflappable. She brushed her shoulders off.

"Right. Back where we started."

"Right," Cassian muttered, brushing his hair back into something vaguely human.

"That was charming." They didn't dawdle. The local officials gave them a nod and a folder full of "keep quiet and don't get cursed" notices. Cassian skimmed it, then handed it back without comment. From there, it was a short hop through one of those grumpy Apparition gates Scandinavians used instead of Floo, and just like that, they were in the heart of Oslo proper. Cassian glanced up at the neat stone buildings, the steepled roofs, the tiny cars trundling past like beetles on wheels.

"Why do we taste ash every time we travel? We can use this magic back home instead," he muttered. Bathsheda rolled her eyes.

"Good luck trying to convince Wizards back home. They are as stubborn as mules. Won't consider anything new unless it comes with three Ministry seals and a scandal." He snorted.

"Right. Can't have the Floo Powder lobby losing business." The two travelled from Oslo to Bergen, and from there to the coast. Cassian claimed it was "historical context." Bathsheda called it "procrastination with boots on." They boarded the train like two scholars trying to pretend they hadn't nearly been crushed beneath a pile of prehistoric runes. On the way to the train, Bathsheda had fled the underground two stops in, swearing never again.

Now she sat opposite Cassian, gripping the seat like it might vanish beneath her. Cassian was still laughing.

"You are telling me this is a scholarly detour?" she asked, after making sure the speeding tube wouldn't kill her. Cassian leaned on the window frame.

"It is important fieldwork," he said solemnly.

"To experience Norse maritime trade routes in a fully immersive, fish-scented way."

"You just wanted to eat fish stew while pretending to be a Viking, admit it."

"Both are legitimate scholarly pursuits," he said, deadpan.

"I will cite myself in the footnotes." The train rolled along the coast.