Chương 47: Ch44- Türkiye

Cassian stood outside King's Cross with hands in his coat pockets and a bag looped over his shoulder. The Muggle train schedule was glowing faintly above him like it was urging him to jump. He ignored it. He checked his watch. She wasn't very late, just the perfect amount to annoy him. A group of teenagers drifted by, all Doc Martens and over-plucked eyebrows, one of them balancing a Walkman on his shoulder for attention. Cassian resisted the urge to hex the batteries. Barely.

He cranned slightly to peer past the archway. Still no sign.

"She is not coming," he muttered, mostly to himself.

"I was abandoned for a better-funded research partner. Probably one who doesn't leave their wand in the bread tin." Footsteps clicked behind him. Cassian didn't turn. Just said, "You are late." She pulled him in by the coat, kissed him like she meant it, then murmured against his mouth, "I would never abandon you. Especially because you leave your wand in the bread tin." Cassian chuckled, kissed her back, and flicked a look over her shoulder at the group of teens gawking from the other side of the station.

One of them elbowed the tall one, who looked away fast, ears red. Cassian grinned.

"Poor sods think we are film stars," he whispered, brushing her curls off her cheek.

"Bet one of them is writing a punk love song about you already." She rolled her eyes, leading them away. He let out a low whistle and shifted the bag higher on his shoulder.

"Alright, professor. Shall we go register ourselves like responsible magical citizens, or shall we hop straight to smuggling dark artefacts across five borders?" She gave him a look.

"We're registering. I prefer paperwork to prison."

"Fair. Also rude. But mostly fair." They crossed the street just like any other pair of academics on summer leave. Cassian with his coat open and one boot untied, Bathsheda tidy enough to make up for both of them. She had her hair half up, bag slung over one shoulder, wand tucked into a leather holster under her coat, not obvious, but easy to reach. She looked like someone who read curses for breakfast and filed her socks by etymology. Cassian was eating an ice lolly. In the sun. Juvenile, absolutely.

They passed a café with wobbly tables and one bloke loudly arguing about Thatcher. Cassian held the lolly out without looking. Bathsheda took a bite, muttered something about it being "too lemony," and handed it back. The Ministry's London entrance was hidden behind a bin and a phone box that hadn't worked since 81. Cassian shouldered the door open. Bathsheda adjusted her coat collar.

"No jokes."

"I wasn't going to joke."

"You always joke at the entrance." He stepped inside, eyes already flicking across the wards, checking for changes.

"That is slander. Sometimes I keep it internal." They registered at the International Portkey Office in five and a half minutes. The clerk didn't even glance up, just waved her wand as if she'd seen a hundred Rosiers and couldn't care less. The Portkey wasn't a briefcase or a sock this time. It was a chipped spoon. Progress. One loud tug and they landed in Italy. Not Rome. Somewhere flatter. Warmer. Cassian checked for limbs, then for pants, then for Bathsheda. She was unflappable as always.

Hair windswept, already pulling her compass from her bag.

"Ten out of ten," Cassian muttered.

"Would spoon again." She gave him a look and walked ahead. They didn't linger. A half-hour in a local travel node, then another Portkey out. This one was a train ticket. Cassian held it at arm's distance, half expecting it to bite.

"Someone at the Ministry has taste." Bathsheda gave him a slow blink.

"It is a Turkish relic. Seventeenth century. Enchanted to resist wear."

"Still," he said, flipping it, "very nostalgic. Might keep it." They landed in Turkiye next, Ankara outskirts, judging by the buildings. The heat hit them like a brick wrapped in spice. Cassian peeled his coat off his arms, swearing under his breath. He stuffed it into his bag while Bathsheda muttered something in Turkish and started to argue with the guide. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

She turned to him, brushing sweat off her brow with the back of her hand.

"Seems like we need to rest a day. Consecutive Portkeying is regulated now." Cassian frowned at that but didn't argue.

"Really? Since when?"

"Last September."

"Typical," he muttered.

"Miss one Ministry update and suddenly you are a danger to national health." He glanced around. Heat clung to the city, simmering off concrete, rising off parked cars, slipping through cracked windows. He'd never been to Turkiye before, and the place didn't waste time trying to impress. Spice and car exhaust filled their nostrils. Everything too bright or too faded. A market buzzed a street away, someone shouting about lemons, someone else about prayer rugs.

He stretched his neck, squinting at a mosque's dome peeking over a block of flats.

"Alright, we can walk around. Maybe see some history that hasn't been dug up and stuffed in a textbook or displayed in museums." Then his head tilted.

"Wait. Can we kiss in the streets here?" The guide didn't even blink. Shrugged like he was asked about the weather.

"Public won't like it. No law against it, though. If you don't mind stares and the occasional heckle, go ahead." Cassian turned to Bathsheda with a grin halfway up his face.

"Romance with an audience. Tempting." She gave him a flat look.

"Not on my research day." Cassian sighed.

"Tragic." They followed the guide into a guesthouse tucked between a bakery and a crumbling post office. No name, just a chipped blue door and a row of planters out front with herbs fighting for space. Inside, the ceiling fan wobbled, and the room smelled like cardamom and old rugs. Cassian dropped his bag onto the low-slung bed and sprawled without asking.

"If I die of heatstroke, tell Hogwarts I went down a scholar."

"You are not dying," Bathsheda said, kicking off her boots and heading to the wash basin.

"You are whining."

"Same difference." He lay there for a few minutes, staring at the cracked ceiling while distant honks and the shout of children floated in. Eventually, he sat up and peeled off his overshirt, leaving his vest clinging to damp skin. Bathsheda tossed him a cloth.

"Try not to collapse before dinner. We are meeting a contact near the mosque." Cassian wiped his face, muttering something.

"If the contact isn't bringing iced tea and answers, I am not interested." They left just before sunset. The streets were quieter, painted in burnt orange and gold. Cassian rolled his sleeves, shirt half open. The guide led them through narrow alleyways, the kind you wouldn't find on a map unless you bled on it first. Their contact was a woman with calloused hands and a limp, seated on a folding chair outside a shop that sold copper lanterns. She didn't bother standing.

"You are early," she said in English, then switched to Turkish.. Bathsheda replied smoothly, exchanging something... names, places, or curses, Cassian couldn't tell. He caught one word, "archive." Sounded similar in Turkish, apparently. The woman pointed west. Then up. He climbed after Bathsheda, huffing at every step. At the top, a courtyard spread out, ringed with archways and shadows. Pigeons burst into the air as they entered. The woman led them through a door so narrow Cassian had to turn sideways.

Inside, shelves. Hundreds of them. Scrolls, loose parchment, bound books tied with strips of silk. The air smelled like dried ink and dust that hadn't been disturbed since the Ottoman Empire. Cassian stepped in with the reverence of someone about to rob a church.

"Now that is what I am talking about." Bathsheda didn't answer. Already scanning the shelves, eyes narrowing at every symbol she didn't immediately recognise. He joined her, fingers trailing over a row of brittle papers. He pulled one, unrolled it partway, then whistled.

"Found a treat. Six-pointed sigil, layered runes, some pre-Islamic geometry. Bit Babylonian round the edges." She leaned over his shoulder.

"Protection spell?"

"Looks like it. Or maybe containment. Depends on the translation." The woman from the lantern shop didn't follow them in. Just stayed by the door, humming to herself and smoking something that smelled of old cloves. Cassian turned back to the shelf.

"You think these are indexed?" Bathsheda snorted.

"You think this is a library?"

"Touche." They worked through the stack in silence for over an hour. Cassian found three spells he never heard of before, one curse that made his hair stand on end just reading it, and a fragment of a journal that might've been written by a Roman wizard with a drinking problem. He copied that one. Purely academic reasons, of course. By the time the sun dipped past the horizon, their guide tapped the door.

"Time to go." As they settled in for the night, Cassian was half-tempted to Apparate south. Göbekli Tepe was only a few cities away. Still partially-buried. Still anonymous to the rest of the world. In his past life, he'd only seen it through screens, drooling behind a university desk while his grant applications were ghosted and the dig went to some bloke with better connections and shinier boots. Here and now, in 1991, no one had touched it. Not even a whisper. He could go. Right now. Unearth it. Study it.

All by himself. He sat on the edge of the bed, shirt clinging to his back, a half-warm cup of Turkish tea balanced on one knee. Across the room, Bathsheda was folding her notes, oblivious to the absolute historical goldmine her current geography was taunting him with. He rubbed his eyes, "Imagine, a whole site to myself, no funding reports, no peer reviews, just good old-fashioned dirt and mystery."

"Talking to yourself again?" she asked, not looking up.

"If someone were to… say, Apparate south for a few hours, maybe poke around a hill no one's catalogued yet…" Her quill stopped mid-line.

"Don't even think about it." Cassian raised a brow, lips twitching.

"I haven't said anything incriminating."

"You don't need to." She glanced at him now, "Southern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia are historical goldmines. Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Hittites, entire magical lineages rose and fell here long before Hogwarts was even a dream. Half the region is soaked in enchantments older than written language, the other half still warded by Ottoman curse-breakers who didn't trust anyone to touch their tombs." He smirked faintly.

"So what you are saying is, there is something worth seeing."

"What I am saying," she said evenly, "is that if you so much as breathe too loud in that region, Ankara's magical enforcement bureau will sense it and bust you before you even finished your first incantation. They monitor cross-border magic like hawks. This isn't a playground, Cass. It is a powder keg with centuries of bureaucracy piled on top." He leaned back, sighing theatrically.

"You ruin all my fun."

"Good," she said, pinning him with a look.

"Someone has to keep you from starting a diplomatic incident." She didn't comment further. She looked done for the day, socks off, hair unpinned, one hand absently massaging her temple while the other scribbled in the margin of a rune index.