Description
This is the companion piece for The Lost Gold of Ravenclaw Tower, set loosely in the Harry Potter AU. In that story, Emily was the protagonist; here, Katie takes the lead.
I was really inspired to write this after learning about Siwa, the centre for the Oracle of Amon in the Western Desert of Egypt. The springboard for the story was the idea of a castle built with stones from the original temple; to that I added a school like Hogwarts for Arab boys and girls and the story stated to form quickly. Parts of it work very well: the story of Mary Malouf’s many husbands is one such feature and the visit to the souk in Cairo is another. The four characters from history stepping down from the cartouche is less successful – it would probably have worked better with only two of them here to manage.
The girls loved the story and the girls to whom I read it at St Aidan’s also enjoyed it. It’s a transition story: long at 33 000 words but still using cheesy pictures cut from the Internet and appearing in Comic Sans font.
