{15th July 1991}
{Rigel's POV}
A white wave of mana slid across the room, originating from her wand. The Imperius Curse felt unlike anything I had sensed. The spell didn't feel like a ball of mana, hurled from the wand, but like a blanket being pushed over your head. The world dulled slightly as if a veil was flung over my eyes.
A strange buzz unfurled in my ear as I lost focus on the dull ache in my ribs, I forgot about where I was and what I was doing as a certain voice began to whisper in my ear.
For a heartbeat, I sat buzzed.
...
...
Then it was gone, like it never existed. I blinked once. Twice. My senses sharpened once again as I looked at Nalini. 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 of the same white mana washed over me, yet this time I wasn't even buzzed as it simply washed over me.
I let the tension bleed from my shoulders, deliberately overdoing it a little, but most of it was my true sense of relief, letting my mouth lines soften slightly in relief. I tilted my head slightly, as if the last of the fear had finally drained away as I had just now gained a significant advantage.
'I guess my mind is untouchable, with it housing an RPG system and all.'
Confusion gathered in her brow as she frowned at me. She lifted her wand a third time and…stopped. The wand hovered in the air as her hand shook slightly. Frustration welled up inside her, though she managed not to show any of it.
"You felt that, it worked for a moment..." she said at last, voice even. I don't know if she was trying to bluff or not.
"It did," I said. "And then it didn't."
Her eyes narrowed. "No. There are no artifacts on you. There should be nothing protecting your mind, so an Imperius should work..."
I shrugged in my chains as it didn't really matter. "I don't know," I said lightly. "But from where I am sitting, you just blew through your only advantage."
My retort made her annoyance flare as her poker face finally broke. She lowered her wand and said, "An amusing attempt, but this will not change a thing."
"Oh, but it did. It changed everything." I leaned back, making the chair creak, winced a little theatrically, and met her gaze. "Here are my terms."
"You do not get to state terms," she replied reflexively.
"I do now," I said, and made myself sound bored with the whole thing. "Let them go back to England, all of them. Sirius, Harry, Ron, the twins, Ginny. I will stay and open your hidden sanctum and give you access to the knowledge. You get what you want, and we can put this farce behind us."
"...Or?" she finally asked after a moment of considering my words.
"Or you keep us here," I started, "and you have a bigger problem than trying to get into the sanctum. You've kidnapped Harry Potter. 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 Dumbledore notices Sirius hasn't responded to the set signal. I don't know how he watches Harry, but I know he does and while you may be strong for a family. I get the feeling that Albus is stronger."
A ripple of calculation crossed her features as she took in my words.
"Or I can start killing your friends if you don't cooperate," she said, her voice dropping down a few notches. Clearly meant to scare me.
"Won't work because if you harm anyone, my intent would never be to help you. Then the ritual would backfire, and then everything would be for naught." I countered. "Come on, you had a plan. You planned this to be a clean, swift operation so that not even the other families in India would get wind of what you are trying to do. I doubt you could take the pressure of an international incident, along with several attacks from your rival families at the same time."
"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 it's a variable you can just ignore," I said. "And I think you know the difference between how to minimize your losses. What you need is to enter the sanctum. While they seem like leverage to you, they are also a liability. So the easiest approach is to let them go and I'll cooperate with your heist."
"England," she asked.
"England," I confirmed.
She did not blink. "And you? Am I to believe you will cooperate just because you say so and not stall for rescue?"
"I will remain behind," I said. "I will cooperate, with conditions, of course."
"Ah," she said, and smiled without showing teeth. "There they are."
"Three," I said. "We will both sign a contract to make sure that both parties don't back out of it." My words caught her attention as she motioned for me to go on.
"One: no harm will come to them from now on until they are ready to go. The moment they are portkeyed out of here, I will help you get past the blood lock. Two: My safety is guaranteed on the condition that I will share all the knowledge I will gain in the sanctum. Three: In exchange, I will receive a portkey to the Leaky Cauldron, which I will not use until the work here is done and I have shared all the knowledge that I have gained in the sanctum. Also, I need to talk to them before they portkey out, under supervision, of course."
...
My words echoed around the room as she considered them. Head tipped, eyes on my face as she looked for any hint of deceit. "You do know if you back out of a contract, it will take away your magic and destroy your core," she said.
"Yes."
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 can wait for everything to collapse. 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, maybe you'll probably get your way eventually, but I'm betting you don't have enough time to get away with it either."
...
"You're bold," she said after a while, sighing in disappointment, and I knew I had won half the battle.
"Of course not, I'm a Slytherin," I said.
Silence stretched again as Nalini finally nodded.
"You will not attempt to escape. I will prepare the contract and the terms," 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 the contract."
"I will confer with my husband," she said as she stood up
"Nalini," I said, and she paused at the door. "Don't make it any messier than it already is."
The door closed with a solid thud, and I slinked back into my chair.
'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: Sorry for the abrupt delay, I went on a little trip to hide away from my depression. Got back yesterday.
P.S- 58 Advanced chapters on P.atreon: p,atreon.com/Light_novel_addict