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chapter eighteen; everything goes
The next morning, they had a breakthrough. She'd woken up at dawn, went on a run, and after she came back and showered, James was already waiting for her in the library, despite the infernal heat from outside—it was a particularly hot day for the country, but it was also the end of August—and ready to crack on with their research.
Amaya was glad for the heat, finally feeling some sort of familiarity with the weather though she had grown used to average temperatures and cloudy skies, and so she was boiling as they sat in the library. Not even a cooling spell had helped (not an incantation nor her magic), so they had agreed to leave as soon as they found something. Then they'd go for a game of quidditch and follow up to the pond, where they had already planned to spend the afternoon with their friends before they had to go to the Order meeting.
And, she didn't know whether the heat was making them smarter or dumb enough for them to pretend they were smart and then come back the following day and find that they hadn't found anything at all, but they were convinced they found something.
"There was an opportunity for me, and I took it, " Amaya read out loud one of her father's passages, translating it so James could hear.
She'd told him the journal was something her father had given her, after acquiring it from a thief, who went by the name of Goldsaint. She didn't want him to know the truth, that her father was a thief and she was no better, she didn't want to see the look on his face if he knew; so she lied but kept her lie as close to the truth as she could, because lying to James was sort of impossible.
She kept on, despite the pauses and stumbles on forgotten words, "It presented itself on sorts of silver platters, and pale hands and almost red eyes that looked at me like a trusted asset, like a servant, like I was someone roped into his ranks and that escape was not an option anymore. No matter, I had wanted to take it, the thing so many before coveted, an artifact of the Four.
"And I wanted to take it the way I knew how; a way far superior to the English Bastard's murderous ways. No! I would not steal a life to get a relic, that was far too easy, far too simple. He took a life and an artifact, and I'd take an artifact and pray. For the woman lying in the grave, welcomed by earth to rot in eternity, the woman in possession of two of the greats, in possession of the silver locket, still unstained, and the one I'd take."
"That's Slytherin's locket," James said, "Whoever that woman was, she had two of the artifacts. That leaves either the Cup or the Diadem."
"And whoever she was, Voldemort killed her for the locket."
"And wanted the other one after it happened," James concluded. He scribbled something down. "Keep going."
"Days after her demise, I ventured into their mourning halls, a family so old it still held the air about them of those in charge of education, of the yellows of this life, and their tears fell like drops of gold. I swept through the shadows, on light feet, and quick hands; dancing through their walls and there it was. Soon I cradled it, no mundane relic, but a vessel to be destroyed by the one who claimed to be superior.
