Ch 16 How's it hanging? Part 2

In front of Sirius was an elaborately decorated pedestal that was about a meter tall, and behind that was nothing but a dead end. There was a shiny emerald brooch placed on a cushion on the top and it was shown in such a way as if it was a prize for the winner.

But the brooch stank of a malicious dark curse from afar without even needing Sirius to use his wand for a preliminary scan, which spoke a lot about the strength of the curse.

There was also a small sentence etched underneath the cushion and it was in an ancient dead magical language but thankfully Sirius had learned that one among others as a part of his training under Beth. Of course, he had made ample use of a particular magical potion for that.

What the etching basically said was, "That's your portkey, Take it and leave..." just in a more decorative language, of course, he needed to first clean the dark magic off of it.

Sirius was sure that it would take him a while to unravel the dark magic of the brooch but a lot of tension left his shoulders when he understood that it would be his final obstacle and that he would be finally going away from this place.

He happily raised his wand and was just about to start deciphering the curse when his instinct faintly started ringing in the deepest part of his brain as if telling him that it was too simple.

"She is way too devious to simply hand me the route home..." Sirius mumbled to himself before he raised his wand and started casting all kinds of detection magics that he knew of, from the simplest to the most complex ones, just to be sure.

And it paid off as when he cast a simple spell that showed the structure of an object, an incongruity made itself known. There was a hollow part just underneath the cushion in the pedestal, while everywhere except was filled with stone.

Sirius immediately raised his wand to levitate the lid over the hollow surface, (it was the first thing that came to his mind,) and to his delight, it worked. He placed the floating lid with brooch and all to the side for the moment and looked inside.

"Ooh, what do we have here..."

There was an identical brooch in the hollow part but the difference was that this one didn't seem to have any dark curse on it at all.

Of course, Sirius didn't believe it right away and tried to find if there was any trap but he found to his relief that it was a simple portkey to Beth's place and nothing else. And the reason he knew it was a true one was that he had used one to Beth's place before so he was familiar with the coordinates of the place.

But of course just because he knew the coordinates didn't mean that he could just create a portkey into the place willy-nilly at any time as the wards in that place worked against that. For example, even though most of Magical Britain knew about the location of Hogwarts only the Headmaster at that time could create a portkey that would lead you inside.

"Thank Merlin!" Sirius sighed in relief at his luck that he didn't already start with the removal of the dark curse from the other one impatiently or he would have been here for hours.

"Now let's get out of this place..." Sirius took the portkey in his hand after once again making sure that nothing was wrong before he activated it using his wand and immediately he felt a familiar hook in his navel as he disappeared in a swirl of colors.

The moment the portkey stopped spinning and deposited him, Sirius raised his wand and looked around vigilantly, his body poised for anything. If not anything else then the one thing this excursion had taught Sirius is how to be paranoid.

But thankfully there was no need as there was no action awaiting him this time and the portkey had just deposited him in Beth's living room which finally relaxed his tense muscles and cleared the frown on his face.

"Beth! Beth!" he called out when he found that he was alone in the living room, but no one answered even after a while so he just assumed that she was not home and he was too tired to care about it anyway.

Sirius went toward the closest sofa that looked way too comfortable and the moment he placed his bum on it his body went limp as he closed his eyes in relief.

"I'll just rest my eyes for a few minutes..." Sirius mumbled that to himself but his body vehemently disagreed with the 'Few minutes,' part and he had no idea when he fell into a slumber.

But he would distinctly remember when he woke up...

As he was floating in his dreams, Sirius was abruptly brought out of his sweet sleep when he heard a muffled voice that sounded something along the lines of, 'I'm home,' but he couldn't be sure. He opened his eyes blearily and what came into his view was the back side of a woman who had just placed a very heavy bag just beside her.

The woman was one of those rare ones who you only need to see from the back to know that she would be a pretty one.

....

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