This was commissioned by maplerosekisses on tumblr as a gift. Request was for a fusion between Jurassic World and Harry Potter, featuring USUK and America working at the park.
Dragons and Dinosaurs
By Everything is Magic
"Yes but dinosaurs? That's absolutely absurd."
First year Gryffindor Alfred F. Jones was normally a laid back kid. He allowed things to roll off of him, and he wasn't quick to anger. But his best friend and classmate Arthur Kirkland was, once again, testing his patience.
"How can you possibly say that? Your brother works with dragons. Dragons!" Alfred gestured wildly, causing his dorm room bed to bounce up and down as he did so. Arthur, who sat across from him, hands between his crossed legs, huffed.
"Dragons have never gone extinct, Alfred." He shook his head. "Even magic can't bring creatures back to life, but you're expecting me to believe there's a whole muggle park filled with-"
"Yesterday in class we saw fairies!"
"They were doxys, not fairies."
Alfred rolled his eyes. Arthur, quick witted and good at magic as he was, could be so dense. That described the magical world on the whole though, Alfred thought. He loved it at Hogwarts. It had been less than a year since he'd first discovered that he was a wizard. Like most muggle-born children, growing up there were definitely strange moments, moments where his powers had surfaced and resulted in difficult to explain circumstances. He still had no idea how he'd managed to actually turn Matthew, his Hufflepuff brother, invisible that one time, but luckily the charm wore off quickly.
But Alfred was a man of science ('a man?' Arthur would have scoffed, 'you're eleven years old!'), and the wizard world's insistence on thinking perfectly logical things in the muggle world to be implausible or unbelievable tended to frustrate him. It was easier to explain science than magic!
"They didn't bring anything back to life Arthur. They recreated them, with science," Alfred explained. Maneuvering to the left, he reached into the chest beside his bed and pulled out a thick book, the cover was emblazoned with a swirl of color, much like a supernova, and the title God Creates Dinosaurs was written in heavy white font.
It was far above the reading level someone Alfred's age would normally be into, but Alfred, when it came to his precious dinosaurs, would read anything. He handed it over to Arthur.
"Who the hell is Ian Malcolm?"
"Only one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. His work has redefined modern science."
Arthur twisted his mouth into a confused expression at that. "Honestly you speak jibberish, Alfred. An entire theme park full of living dinosaurs is opening in the muggle world, and you expect me to believe it without a second thought?" He flipped through the book Alfred had handed him, his fingers occasionally running across words that he was unfamiliar with.
Alfred leaned forward and smiled, his golden blond hair bouncing as he nodded up and down with great enthusiasm. "Yep. And when I grow up, I'm going to work there."
Midway through the book, a brochure that Alfred had been using as a bookmark slipped out of it and onto the bed. "Jurassic World?" Arthur read the glossy cover and sighed. "Well, we'll see about that. How am I supposed to believe these photos are real when the dinosaurs in them aren't even moving?"
Alfred covered his face with his pillow and let out a silent scream. Arthur Kirkland was his best friend, but Arthur Kirkland, he realized, was also a pain in the butt.
Ten Years Later: Isla Nublar
When Alfred went to pick Arthur up at the exit from the park ferry, he nearly fell over laughing. Arthur was the absolute picture of an embarrassing, over the top tourist. He had a Hawaiian shirt on, cargo shorts, sneakers with slightly too high socks, and a straw hat. In his hand were a few crumpled maps. Sunglasses rested over a nose covered with white sunscreen. It was clear to Alfred that Arthur had, perhaps not chosen the best source to look at for muggle fashion. Well at least he'd tried to fit in. And he'd seen worse. Arthur's mother had once picked him up to go to Diagon Alley while wearing a pair of pants as sleeves.
"Alfred!" Arthur huffed. "You wouldn't believe how crowded the ferry was. And the airplane? It was nauseating. Why couldn't I have apparated again?"
Alfred laughed and stepped forward, sliding Arthur's rolling suitcase into his own hand with ease. He wrapped his free arm around Arthur in a tight embrace. "If you're coming to a muggle park, you've got to do it the muggle way. Besides, long distance apparating can be dangerous, and the last thing I'd want you to do is accidentally apparate into Rexy's enclosure or something."
"Or into the arms of a lethifold. I hear they're rampant in Costa Rica," Arthur grumbled, but he returned Alfred's embrace as he was doing so.
"You'll be fine," Alfred patted him on the shoulder. "And if any lethifold do show up, you just need to cast one of your wicked cool unicorn patronuses and you'll be safe."
He wouldn't tell Arthur this, because the poor man was nervous enough already, but Alfred had worked on perfecting his patronus before taking the job at the park for the same reason. Carnivorous dinosaurs? Bring it on. Masses of black energy that suffocate you? Hell no.
Arthur blushed at his compliment but then cleared his throat. "True enough. Now let's get going. You have… dinosaurs to show me, supposedly?"
He knew that by this point in time Arthur was just teasing him about not believing the work he did at Jurassic World was real, but he still stuck his tongue out at him.
"Yeah. That is, if your stodgy little mind can even handle the level of amazingness I'm about to reveal to you."
Alfred tapped a staff member on the arm and explained to him where he wanted Arthur's suitcase taken, then turned back to Arthur.
"Where is she taking my suitcase?" he asked, sounding panicked.
"Just to your hotel room. It's a standard service the park provides." Alfred shrugged and rested his hands behind his head.
"But what if they open it? They'll see what I brought, and it could break the statute of secrecy! We'll have to have someone come in and perform a memory charm on the muggle and-"
"Easy, Arthur. It's fine. They won't open your luggage." Humorous as Arthur's behavior was, he could tell the man was legitimately nervous. He was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of muggles, in a very strange place, and Arthur's experience outside of the world had been—minimal. His family had always been rather traditional. He placed a brief kiss on Arthur's lips and smiled.
In the distance they could see the entrance to the park, and Alfred took Arthur's hand and yanked him forward. "Let's go."
They didn't go into the normal park entrance, much to Arthur's bewilderment. He imagined they'd be going through the giant gateway, aptly labeled Jurassic World, but instead they went through a small staff entrance several meters away from it.
"Aren't we going to the park?" Arthur asked.
"Well yeah, but being that you're my boyfriend, I wanted to…" He rubbed the back of his head and let out a short laugh. "Well actually I wanted you to see me work."
Arthur put his hands on his hips. "I thought I'd come here for a vacation."
"You did!" Alfred gestured in front of him.
"Then why are we-"
"You'll see. Just follow me."
It was a series of tunnels that they went through, which Alfred informed went under and next to enclosures and visiting areas of the park and was exclusively for the staff. They were rather dank and humid, and Arthur made that much known. "Welcome to Costa Rica," Alfred said. "You'll get used to it."
"I highly doubt that," Arthur quipped, but he smiled.
The staff tunnel eventually exited into a very green, very tropical area, complete with the sounds of a nearby stream and the rumblings of various insects, few of which Arthur knew the names of. Visible in the distance was sturdy, tall, metal fencing, and that's the direction Alfred was heading.
"Do you have permission to bring me back here, Alfred?"
Alfred threw a glance back at Arthur and grinned. "Since when were you such a stickler for the rules?"
Arthur gaped. "Those rules don't usually involve flesh eating dinosaurs!"
He snorted. "My coworkers know you're coming, and you're not going in the enclosure anyway."
"Well that's a relief…"
"But I am."
Arthur stopped walking. Of course Alfred would interact with them directly, but it still made him beyond anxious to imagine his most important person in the same den as a bunch of should-be-extinct meat-eaters. Although… perhaps they weren't. Alfred hadn't specified what type of dinosaurs they were visiting.
Alfred sensed his tenseness and squeezed his hand. "Hey. Relax. Your brother? Dragons? And he's fine. These guys are much smaller than that."
"For one," England began, and he felt something, which he was hoping was just a leaf and not a large bug, crunch under his feet, "wizards have been practicing dragon-keeping for centuries. Secondly, he's not fine. Have you seen the burn scars he's got? His left leg is nearly half scar tissue by now. It's bloody insane."
Alfred laughed. "It's sort of badass though, don't you think? Plus, dinosaurs don't breathe fire, so there's no fear of that happening to me." He pulled an employee keycard out of his pocket and slid it through the lock to open the door. Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but Alfred cut him off. "It's not magic. It's magnets."
As he said this though, Arthur noticed for the first time that Alfred had his wand sticking out of his back pocket, mostly concealed by his untucked shirt. He thought he hadn't even brought it with him, and he considered chiding him for having it out and visible among muggles. Perhaps he'd just forgotten to hide it? He shook his head. Well no matter. Muggles would likely just assume it a twig of some sort.
Steel steps led up to a large platform, high above the enclosure, and Arthur stopped in the center after Alfred had come to a halt.
"So uh, this is the velociraptor enclosure," Alfred said, and he was nervous, like a boy trying to present a gift to someone he cared about. It wasn't a gift, but it was something he was proud of, and he hoped that Arthur was at least a little impressed by it. "Right now they're in the other half of the enclosure, because this is the one they eat in and- it's considered a good idea to feed them in a different area than their normal habitat? You know, basic animal husbandry."
Arthur shrugged. He really didn't know.
"Where are the other keepers?"
"Oh that's Bruce today. He'll be up in a minute, I'm sure."
"Okay…" Arthur fidgeted. It was quiet, save the sounds of the jungle, and he could hear his heartbeat in his ears. If only this were a magical creature, he wouldn't have been so anxious. Part of him realized that was silly, as a magical creature wasn't so dissimilar that the situation was that different, but- the muggle world had always been so terribly strange to him, and even Alfred's extreme familiarity with it hadn't quelled that as much as he'd hoped it would.
"Alohomora."
Arthur started, then he turned to Alfred, his eyes wide. "You're using magic?"
Alfred finished waving his wand and smiled. "It makes things a lot easier." A series of clicks, and the mechanical doors that separated the normal enclosure from the feeding area opened.
Arthur heard them before he saw them, the strange almost- chittering that he couldn't really compare to any sound he'd heard before. It didn't sound like a dragon, nor any other reptilian magical beast he'd encountered. It had the carriage of a large animal, confident in its own existence, despite the fact that it wasn't very loud.
And then he saw them, and they were not dragons, nor hippogriffs, or even one of those awful cockatrices that they'd been shown during their care of magical creatures N.E.W.T.
They moved like, he thought, perhaps birds? Not like any bird he'd ever seen before, but it was the closest possible comparison he could muster. They were varying shades of bright, about as tall as Alfred, and their long snouts were lined with teeth like tiny daggers. They were, he couldn't deny, rather frightening. And no bloody unicorn patronus was going to work on them.
Alfred placed his wand next to his throat. "Sonorus." And then he whistled, and the whistle, amplified by the spell, caused the group of five raptors to run to the bridge on which they were standing.
"Can they jump?" Arthur was feeling breathless.
"Not this high."
He gulped and nodded. "Why are you using magic?"
"As I said, it's convenient."
"Yes but…"
Alfred shook his head. "Our classmates always thought I was weird for wanting to work in the muggle world." He winced. "And maybe they were right." It was true that it had been a lot of extra work. He'd had to take a test that confirmed he could pass the muggle equivalent of high school, and then he'd attended muggle university, which Arthur would never stop thinking of as strange.
"Well that's what squibs do, not wizards."
He rolled his eyes. "Well I don't see why. Just because I'm a wizard doesn't mean dinosaurs are going to stop being the coolest thing on the planet."
They were interrupted by another man, Bruce, as he introduced himself in a breezy Australian accent, careening up the walkway with a huge vat of… something smelly.
Dead rats, Arthur quickly realized when he peeked into it. He crinkled his nose.
The raptors screeched, realizing their food had arrived.
"Hey Bruce!"
"Hello," Arthur said politely.
Bruce plunked the tub down and placed a firm hand on Alfred's shoulder. "So this is the famous Arthur Kirkland?"
"Famous?" Arthur mouthed.
Alfred grabbed Arthur around the shoulder and squeezed him to his side. "The one and only."
When Arthur glanced up to Alfred's face, he noticed that he looked proud, and his heart skipped at that.
"And he's a…." Bruce lowered his head and cupped his hand to one side of his cheek, "a—you know- like you?"
"Yeah! He was my first friend in… that world, actually."
Arthur's eyes widened. "You told him you're a wizard?" he almost shouted.
Bruce let out a hearty laugh. "Mate, even if I told someone else that Alfred here was a wizard, it's not like they'd believe me. Yeh've got no need to worry about me blowing your secret statute or whatever."
He relaxed slightly (only slightly, as he could still hear dinosaurs screeching beneath his feet) and sighed. "You're still a bloody idiot, Alfred."
"And not just a wizard, but a totally gay wizard," Bruce winked and Alfred punched him in the shoulder. "All right, all right, let's get going."
The feeding was relatively easy and uneventful. Bruce or Alfred would throw a rat down, and one of the raptors would catch it. Sometimes they'd throw several down at once. Before Arthur knew it, they were to the bottom of the bin.
And then, much to Arthur's abject terror, Alfred climbed into the pen.
In his hand he had five rats, squeezed tight in his grasp so he wouldn't drop them. Arthur's heart was hammering in his chest, and he glanced frantically at Bruce, who looked completely unconcerned.
Once he was halfway down, Alfred threw the rats; one at each raptor, neatly into their mouths.
Within moments, the quintet had collapsed, falling unconscious into a quiet sleep. Alfred looked up at Arthur and grinned.
"Was that a-"
"Sleeping draught? Yes. It's much kinder than a tranquilizer, don't you think?"
Arthur crossed his arms. "Hm, well I suppose you always were decent at potions."
Alfred landed on the ground next to the sleeping dinosaurs, and he, much to Arthur's dismay, gave the nearest one, a bright orange color, a scratch on the back of the neck. "Science, Arthur. If you go into potions with a scientific approach, anyone can be good at it."
"You combine science with magic and magic with science…"
He was next to the largest raptor now, and he pulled out his wand and, with a great summoning of strength, pushed him over so his stomach was exposed.
Arthur gasped. There was a wound, large and bloody and quite deep looking, on his abdomen. "Wh-what happened?"
"We have a sixth raptor and he's been really aggressive lately. I finally had to separate him from the rest of the pack after this happened."
"Will he be okay?" Arthur was worried, which surprised him as- well, he hadn't felt particularly warm toward the dinosaurs before now.
"Well… luckily I know a few short cuts for treatment." He pointed his wand toward the wound and smiled. "Vulnera Sanentur," Alfred said, and the wound began to knit itself closed before their eyes. Bruce just crossed his arms, a small smile on his face, and Arthur realized that this must be familiar to him by now. "He's been reopening it. It's in such a vulnerable spot. But if I keep closing it, it will heal eventually. It's already so much better than it was yesterday."
"D-do you have any essence of dittany?" Arthur shouted.
Alfred nodded. "Nope. I was waiting to be sure it wasn't infected before applying that…"
"Do you think it's infected?"
He looked at the current wound again and ran his hands over it. There was very little inflammation, and it was clean and precise looking. "No, but I forgot it…"
"Wingardium Leviosa!" Arthur had pulled his wand out of his small portable knapsack and cast the levitation charm. Toward Alfred floated a small bottle of brown liquid.
"Is this…?"
Arthur blushed, just a bit. "I had a bit of essence of dittany with me because I was worried about sunburn. You know me, two minutes in the sun and I glow brighter than a puffapod."
Alfred's mouth widened into a huge grin and he caught the bottle. "Thanks Arthur, you're the best."
The essence of dittany was quickly applied, and Alfred, feeling confident in how much it had sped up the healing, cast tergeo to clean up the blood around the wound and ferula to bandage it. He gave the wound one last look over before doing a quick health inspection of the other sleeping raptors.
"It's amazingly convenient," Bruce turned to Arthur. "Your Alfred's magic, that is. The amount of time and stress it's saved our animals, you wouldn't believe it."
"It's… unusual for someone to use magic in the muggle world like this," Arthur said. "He could get in a lot of trouble."
Bruce laughed. "I'd understand it if he were using it for something selfish, but seems to me using it to help others is different entirely. Plus, I won't tell anybody."
Alfred gave the orange raptor one last scratch before climbing back up onto the bridge.
He'd always been strange, Arthur thought. Most muggle born wizards became more distanced from the muggle world as time went on, mostly abandoning it except for their relationships with their muggle families in time. Alfred had done no such thing. He'd had his eyes on a goal before he ever knew he was a wizard, and damn if a little thing like 'having magical powers' was going to change that.
"What did you think?" Alfred said, his expression nervous.
Arthur wrapped his arms around Alfred's shoulders. "When will your dinosaur friends wake up?"
"Eh, about fifteen minutes."
Arthur nodded. Bruce, sensing the change in mood to a rather more intimate one, left the bridge. "I—admit I'm impressed. Don't get me wrong, it's still a little foolish to toy around like this with melding our two worlds and- but…" he cleared his throat, "I suppose you've always been that way, haven't you."
"I just don't understand why I shouldn't be," Alfred said.
"I know," Arthur said, "and that's fine. You make it work, don't you?"
Alfred beamed and shook his head enthusiastically, his golden blond hair bouncing up and down the same way it had done when he was eleven years old, trying to convince Arthur that dinosaurs were real in the Gryffindor dorms.
"I guess I'm going to have to get a little bit more accommodated with the muggle world myself, if… we're going to be together," Arthur said.
Alfred squeezed him in a tight hug and planted a sloppy kiss on his lips. "I'll gladly help you with that, Sweetheart."
Arthur laced his fingers in Alfred's. "Are you done with work for the day now?"
"Yes, I'm off for three days!"
"What about your uh- injured friend? Will Bruce be able to care for him?"
"I can come check on him off the clock if it would make you happy," Alfred offered.
Arthur's cheeks pinked. "Well I just…" He coaxed Alfred forward off the bridge, giving his hand a squeeze as he did so. "Just show me the rest of the dinosaurs, you git. I want to get my money's worth."
"But you didn't even pay for a ti-" Alfred cut himself off, smiled, and shook his head, following Arthur's lead down the steel stairs and back out into the jungle.
