Eternal Sands

Chapter 5

It was hot. It was ridiculously hot for someone from England.

Vernon hadn't needed more of an explanation than 'she was getting a ticket somewhere far, far away from England and possibly in an area less than friendly to outsiders' before he happily paid for a first class ticket and even helped her pack for the summer.

She spent a week at the house (to power the wards Jafar had sensed there) and then was on the first plane to Saudi Arabia.

Hedwig, for safety reasons because snowy owls were not built for such hot climates, was sent to France so she couldn't be used to track her down later.

Normally she would send Hedwig to Hermione or Ron, but Jafar had owned a parrot before. He knew they liked the peace and quiet, and regardless of how well behaved Crookshanks was, it was rarely a good idea to leave cats and birds in the same house. The Weasleys were good people, but she didn't want to impose on them the burden of caring for another animal.

Fleur and Gabrielle promptly sent her a mirror so she could stay in contact with them, in case she needed help. They were already on the way of adding her to the 'Sisterhood' as they called it as a full member, which meant she would finally have some actual protection from the nonsense that came up in her life.

Case in point, all the slanderous articles Rita had written the year before.

"You just had to have a tower in one of the hottest, most hostile regions on the damn planet..." she complained.

After Jafar sensed that parasite, he wanted it out of her immediately. However, as he predicted, she did not want to waste a wish on removing it.

Which meant her best option was potentially tracking down Jafar's sister...she was a better mage than he had been, and a skilled necromancer when such professions were barely tolerated.

If he knew her, there was a strong chance she was either hanging around or deliberately reincarnated and still had her old skills. Either way, she was their best option.

The problem was that she would be a ridiculously hard person to track down, and centuries would have honed that particular craft.

Nasira did have a few items in his hidden workshop that Acacia could use to track her down.

Hence why Acacia was wandering around in this Merlin-forsaken heat, relying heavily on translation charms to converse with the locals, and following the limited directions that Jafar could pick up on that came from his workshop.

She was passing by a local bazaar, and was dressed appropriately for the climate without showing much skin, when she found something interesting.

It was an obviously magical parrot, who had a pissed off look on his face and upon closer inspection a nasty curse around his beak preventing him from doing more than eating or drinking.

What struck her most was that the bird resembled the one Jafar had as his familiar. As it had been trapped in the lamp when he was first turned into a genie, it had been given a rough sort of immortality...but the familiar bond had never been severed so he knew vaguely Iago was still alive.

Acacia knew instinctively this was Iago, Jafar's familiar.

She went up to the man selling it, and after a bit of bargaining, managed to by the parrot for just shy of three galleons.

The bird gave her a crabby glare, but she was at least gentle with him so he didn't try to savage her like the last idiots. The fact that her first act as his new 'owner' was to remove him from the cage put her in his tentative good books.