Short
Written for The Houses Competition, Year Two, Round Ten
House: Hufflepuff
Year: 5th
Category: Short
Prompts:[weather] earthquake
Word Count (Google Docs): 1975
Betas: Aya, starspangledpumpkin
Title: In Hot Pursuit of Charlie Weasley
Summary: He sells his soul to the calling and walks into the fire.
Sicilian Lavarocs are named for the way they are born. They rise from the hot magma of a live volcano in a fiery explosion, then transform into a brown-black scaled beast on its way down from its maiden flight. Some say the Lavarocs are the descendants of the Greek monster Typhus. Both Typhus and Lavarocs are myth wrapped in the deepest histories, never seen, never proven. They are monsters without souls, terrifying images dreamt up by ancient civilizations throwing too many wild parties with too much wine and song.
Until now.
Charlie Weasley holds the smooth magma scale in his hands. He's never felt anything so magnificent in all his life. In his hands, he's holding the first evidence of a new breed of dragon.
He has a soul, unlike the wild creatures in the ancient stories. Unlike the benefactors of this expedition who only want to know the unknown if it's a convenient truth. Charlie hopes on one hand that the myth remains the myth, for the myth's sake. But he's pledged to a higher calling. He hears the calling now, rhythmically pumping through his veins.
"Hurry up, Weasley!" His partners already gather around a small Grecian vase that should be in a national museum, but for the purposes of the Dragon Studies Group, it must transport all five of them, along with their equipment, cross-continent to Sicily. Only an object infused with its own magnificence can take them that far.
Charlie wraps the scales in his bag and goes to where Wade and Harrison are, balancing Wizarding trunks and other items on their backs, ready to touch the portkey on the signal.
"Three, two, one…" Five hands reach for the vase. Five wizards disappear from Romania to appear at the foot of a large mountain in Sicily.
Charlie helps his partners fix their campsite in the woods at the base of the mountain, where they can't be disturbed. But then ground shakes, and a deep rumbling comes from below.
Henry grabs the tent pole to steady it, and Nadine freezes mid-swish. The tent's canopy flaps in the mediterranean breeze. When the earth settles, Harrison casts Security Charms, as if the earth hadn't just given them a greeting. No one knows when, or if the next Sicilian Lavaroc will appear, but as soon as camp is pitched, Charlie is off through the woods towards the mountain, with his partners on his heels.
Under the brilliant Sicilian sky, the team mounts their brooms. They keep low to the ground, watching the green landscape turn brown and barren. The ground shudders more as they get closer to their goal, the great mouth of Mount Etna, the live volcano where the Lavaroc scales were found.
Charlie feels at once like he's home, and also like his home is as far away as it's ever been. His soul sings as he discards comfort for potential calamity and rushes towards danger. Now that he's seen the scales, the myth is taking a step towards the truth. It scares him more than the rumbling earth below him.
The volcano marks the sky with a smudge of grey, where steam escapes from the earth. Charlie sees a smattering of more scales that lay along a cooled conduit where the magma is hard and rocky.
When they land, the air is hot, but it's the sound that catches them off guard. A low whine from the cavernous opening grows as the magma pressurizes. The earth shudders again, knocking Charlie into Nadine, who drops her notes and scrounges to pick them up before they scatter to the wind. He apologizes for his clumsiness, but it's not really him. The earth itself continues to shudder and hum. They brace themselves for whatever comes next.
Charlie stands on the precipice of life itself. The mountain shudders again, and the perpetual whine rises in pitch, like boiling water pushing up through a capped pipe.
His soul whispers that it's okay if he never makes it back.
Then the noise stops. Charlie and his team raise their wands, preparing for the end. Or the beginning. Or whatever.
Suddenly, the mountain explodes in a deep rush of air. They cast Shield Charms around them as magma shoots up in front of them. Fire shoots up in balls of red and hurtles down around them, changing as it cools through the air and hitting with the force of giant boulders against the surface of the volcano. Charlie slips the new gloves on, one-handed, while maintaining the shield that's keeping him alive. He casts once more, under the shelter of his partners' spells, making himself Impervious-To-Fire, a spell that he's been practicing for a long time.
For a moment such as this.
This is when they feel it. The earth allows the rush to settle around them, and it shudders one last time. Charlie and his team keep their knees bent and their eyes aware as they ride out the unexpected earthquake.
This is when they see it, a fiery red and yellow bird-shaped thing, emerging from the magma below. It bubbles to the surface of the churning lava, and then shoots up to escape the volcano's core. Just as it reaches the crest, Charlie makes his move, leaping over the cone of the volcano, arms outstretched, grabbing the monster by its neck.
His soul flies with him, singing and laughing and praying.
His Shield Charm protects him from the heat under him, around him, on top of him as the beast soars up, following the path of the magma before it. As it rises, so do Charlie's spirits. He whoops in delight at the sensation of riding the wind on a new, unexplored creature.
As the creature turns back to the earth, it darkens under Charlie's hands. Between the scales of the creature, he sees the red, fiery liquid still coursing like life-blood. Charlie marvels at the birth of this fire-born creature, and the wonders what happens next.
There are no stories after the birth of the Lavaocs. No one whispers where they go, how long they live, or about the ancient magic from the center of the earth. If Charlie can hold on long enough to answer any of these questions, it could change the way that the Wizarding World views the birth of magic. He also knows that any answers he brings back to the Wizarding World may bring an end to the secrets that have been kept since the dawn of its existence. If he jumps now, he and his team can still claim ignorance, but then he will never know, and he doesn't know if he can live with that not-knowing. The two truths war within him.
Eventually his calling is louder than his fear.
With the spirit of the creature born from fire, he rides to wherever it carries him. He looks back, sees his team on brooms in hot pursuit, chasing him and his ride of a lifetime.
Onwards they fly. The land shrinks below him and the dragon rises into the clouds. As the dew collects around them, the dragon turns a darker brown. Charlie can no longer see the magma veins through its scales. Everything is dark and weighty, and he feels the pressure of the air, and the pressure of the dragon, and they slowly descend.
He sees a ring of smoking islands below, like little chimneys in a circle. In the middle, a large area of grey ash spreads out before him. The dragon lands, and Charlie rolls off and ducks under its wing for cover. It hasn't noticed him, because it's sniffing the air. Waiting.
Charlie's feet crunch through the ash, and he sees hundreds more of the scales. Thousands. That can only mean one thing.
His team lands far away from this new dragon, using one of the smoking mountains to shield themselves from the creature's sight.
It roars like none Charlie or his team have ever heard. Then it lopes to the edge of the ash-filled basin, where the ground squirms and writhes and is filled with dots of red.
Charlie dares not get too close, and his team stays a respectable distance away, except for Henry who flies over on his broom and lands beside him.
"Can't let you be the only daredevil on the team," Henry jokes as the sky fills with dark-winged creatures from the surrounding mountains.
Henry's soul glows like hot magma. Charlie can see it in his eyes. It matches the sound of his calling and it makes him thrilled to be alive.
"Give me a lift on that broom, yeah?" Charlie says. He's brave, but not stupid. They find cover while the other dragons greet the new arrival.
Charlie and his team have a lot to note, such as the lack of seismic activity in these Pacific Islands, the remote location, and the number of dragons that look just like the one that had flown out of the live volcano in Sicily.
While the dragons sniff and butt heads and scoop up Ashwinders from the squirming ground, the team celebrates a quarter mile away by distilling fresh water from the ocean to drink and setting up a precipitous camp with little to no supplies. Nadine disappears for a closer look at the Ashwinders, who have an abundance of ash to spawn in. She comes back flushed from the heat and renewed from the discovery. This is her element, and she embraces it.
Sicilian Lavarocs are born in a trial by fire, and Charlie feels like he's just lived through one himself. There is so much more to discover about these creatures that have hidden themselves away from the rest of the world for so long.
But he knows that is not the thing that is keeping him here. The truths that his team has unearthed might be better off if they remain the myths that they always were.
"We can't go back," Nadine says.
Charlie's gut clenches, and he realises that he's already thinking the same thing. The discovery suddenly feels like the burden that it is.
"Remember the Peruvian Vipertooth?" she adds, and the air grows heavier.
Everyone remembers the Peruvian Vipertooth. Charlie's team studies the mantra daily, remembering that not all discoveries belong to all wizards. Some people, his benefactors included, (the ones without the souls) are not ready for the responsibility of this kind of breakthrough. They exploit for the sake of exploitation, until the discovery rebels. In the case of the Peruvian Vipertooth, the species developed a taste for human flesh and had to be eradicated. It's one of the most horrific stories that his team pledges will never happen again.
"Then what do we do?" Harrison asks. He's not drunk, because all they have is water. Charlie wishes that Harrison could be properly drunk for this next bit.
"We stay," he says. "They can't know about this place. Until we figure out how to get home without revealing theirs, we can't leave."
They all nod in agreement. This discovery will remain a myth, and someday, they will go back and prove to everyone that the Sicilian Lavaroc scales are merely strange magma formations, caused by the eerie pressure underneath Mount Etna.
That is, when the team figures out how to get back home.
"Merry Christmas, Henry," Charlie says. "Merry Christmas, Nadine." He and his team toast their distilled water to the days that are to come. He thinks about the flight, reliving the rush of adrenaline and nerves. Tomorrow, he will rise with the morning, with a fabricated story of wild parties and too much wine. His soulless benefactors won't know the difference, but Charlie's soul, and the souls of his team will sing the truth. The Firerocs will remain as they are: born from the magic of active volcanoes and disappearing into the myth.