"Welcome," the young woman said with a smile. She was maybe twenty and had that 'first time staffer' look—still excited and bouncy about meeting 'real scientists, by gosh!' Nancy gave her about two days of working at a symposium this size before she too joined the ranks of the weary and cynical.
"Thanks," Nancy said, forcing herself to smile in reply. She was working on about three hours of sleep so the smile was definitely pasted on. There had been too much to do getting ready for this thing; why in all the blazing pits of firey hell did they give only two weeks of notice? Did they have any idea how hard it was to arrange the time, get someone to cover your lab, gather all your research notes that might possibly be relevant to something with as bizzarely broad a mandate as this thing, organize them into a format for sharing, and— She breathed out, forcing herself to let go of the irritation.
"I'm Nancy Keller and these are my staff, Jason and Lorraine," she said, gesturing to the two excited grad students behind her. "We're really bushed—do you have rooms for us?"
"Absolutely!" chirped Flopsy, or Muffin, or whatever the hell her name was. "The conference is in the Room of Requirement over in Hogwarts, and so are your rooms. It's just a quick pop through the Floo and there will be someone to take your bags and bring you to the conference room. Here, let me show you!"
She bounced to her feet with irritatingly energetic brightness and started to lead them towards a roaring fireplace big enough to roast an ox. Nancy could feel the heat from three feet away. There was a table set up next to it with a large jar of glittery silver dust.
"Here you go!" she burbled. "Just take a pinch of Floo powder, throw it into the fire, step in and say 'Hogwarts' nice and loud and you'll be there in a bounce. Oh, and don't forget to keep your elbows in and get out at the first grate. You wouldn't want to end up in Wales like that last fellow." Her smile was bright and shiny and Nancy just wanted to smack her.
"I don't know what your problem is, young lady," she said in her best make-the-new-intern-wet-himself voice. "Whatever it might be, I am not interested in self-immolating today. Tell us where the hell the conference is and stop wasting our time."
Babs looked horrified. "Oh, right, I'm sorry. Professor McGonagall warned me about this, but I forgot. 'Miranda,' she said, 'the Muggles don't know anything about magic so they aren't going to understand that the Floo is safe, so make sure you show them.' I'm so sorry! Here, I'll go first." She grabbed a pinch of the green dust and threw it in the fire, making it roar up and turn bright green. She stepped in without a care in the world and called out "Hogwarts!" She twirled around for a moment as though she were being spun on a record player, and then vanished with a pop.
Nancy blinked.
"Cool," said Lorraine, pushing her Coke-bottle glasses up her nose. Jason gave one of his braying laughs but didn't say anything.
A moment later, Fluffy—no, Miranda—came twirling back through the fire and stepped out in front of them, brushing a bit of ash off her robes.
"See?" she said.
Nancy forced herself not to growl at Mopsy—damnit, Miranda! It wasn't the kid's fault...probably. Maybe.
"Are you seriously expecting us to step into a goddamn fire just because you have some tric—"
"It's probably fine, ma'am," Lorraine said calmly. "Here, let me try." She grabbed a pinch of the powder, threw it in the flames, and stepped in. "Hogwarts!" she called. With a quick spin she was gone.
She reappeared a few seconds later, rubbing her left elbow. "It's fine," she said. "She wasn't kidding about keeping your elbows in, though. Ow."
Nancy glared at her for a moment but grabbed her roller bag, threw the powder in, and stepped into the suddenly-green flames. "Hogwarts!" she growled. The world twirled around her like it had that one time she dropped acid in grad school. It wasn't any more pleasant this time around.
She was spinning through a cyclone of green fire; something she couldn't see smacked her elbow, making her funnybone shriek and her arm go numb. Up ahead she saw a fireplace grill; she quickly pushed herself to the side and stepped into the grill as she whirled by.
She stepped out of another fireplace in what was either a medieval castle or a really good impession of one. She stopped to look around and stumbled when Lorraine came spinning out of the fireplace and smacked into her. Jason came along a moment later.
"That. Was. Awesome!" Jason said, eyes shining like little stars. "Man, I love this wizarding thing!"
A red-headed teenager in a black robe and a serious expression stepped forward. "Hello, Dr Keller. I'm Percy Weasley, Head Boy of Hogwarts. You're just in time for the introductory meeting. Let me have your bags taken—Twirlmott!" A weird creature appeared with a crack! and a puff of smoke. It was only a couple feet tall, and it looked like a stick figure with a wrinkly potato head the size of a beachball, ears you could use for parachutes, and eyes like something out of one of those anime that Jason liked so much.
"Yes, sir?" the little creature asked. It sounded like it had been sucking on helium.
"Twirlmott, please take our guests' bags," Percy said with a polite nod. "They'll be staying in the Room of Requirement, the version with the '37' on the door."
Twirlmott nodded, grabbed all the luggage, and vanished with a pop! before Nancy could say 'no, wait, stop!'
Percy smiled and nodded to himself as though pleased at how smoothly things were going. "If you'll follow me," he began, "I'll take you to the introductory meeting. I think you'll find it qute interesting."
David Martinson was barely in the door when his fourteen-year-old son came barreling into the room with a creature of myth and legend on his shoulder.
"Look dad! He followed me home, can we keep him?" Joel asked, grinning impishly at the stereotype.
David looked at the phoenix consideringly.
"I don't know son," he said gravely. "A firebird is an awfully big responsibility. You'd have to feed him and clean his cage—oof!" He braced himself as his son hugged him, laughing at the mutual joke.
"Okay, where did he come from?" David asked, kicking his suitcase aside with distracted ease. "Does he have a name? I'm guessing he's something to do with those British wizards I was reading about?"
Joel nodded. "I think so, yes. He's smart, and he can kinda-sorta talk, but he communicates mostly in images. Peri, can you tell Dad about yourself?"
fire | primoridal | heart | light | eternal | courage | endless | inspiration | partner-friend-protector
David stumbled and sat down on the couch. "Wow. That was intense." He looked at the bird with new respect. "Okay, so he's intelligent and can communicate, although not in words." He paused. "I really don't know what to ask at this point." He thought about it. "You called him Peri?"
"Yep. Short for 'Hyperion'," Joel said.
David nodded. "Titan of Wisdom, Watchfulness, and the Light, and father of Helios the Sun. Yes, that fits. Glad to see you still remember those old stories." He smiled, remembering the many hours of reading myths and legends and science fiction and fantasy to a much younger Joel at night. At the time, David had had to do a lot of traveling for work, and it tended to show itself by him falling asleep in the middle of a page.
"And then Bilbo said...the plane...needs toothpaste...check oil light..."
"Dad, Dad, that's not what it says!"
"Huh? Oh, right, sorry. And then Bilbo said 'I'm old, Gandalf. I know I don't look it but I'm beginning to feel it in my heart.'"
David smiled a little mistily. Those had been good years; Mary had still been with them then. Ten years, and he still missed her every day.
With a quick cough he brought his attention back to the present. "So, a firebird. No, wait, a phoenix. The Times had that interview with that British girl who was talking to their space agency, she called it a phoenix. Okay, so, why is he here?"
Joel shrugged. "I don't know. I was upstairs last night watching the Perseids and he showed up. I'd been...thinking about wanting to go to the stars, and he asked me if I really meant it. I think that's what he's here for, is to help with that."
"There are two phoenixes known to exist right now, and both of them want to be part of the space effort?" David asked, caught somewhere between surprise and disbelief. "Where were they the past twenty years when we were busy giving up on space travel?"
Peri reared up, flaring his wings wide, threw his head back and sang. The song poured out like liquid light: a challenge, a battle cry, a demand that they rise to their highest, that they fulfill all of the promises they'd made to themselves, undo all the compromises, face up to and, more importantly, overcome their own faults instead of pushing them off on others. It reached into both of them and called forth the fiercest, purest essence of themselves and pointed it at the battle.
When the song stopped, David fell back into his own skin; the world seemed darker...although, perhaps not as dark as it had been before, now that he had the memory of phoenix song. That memory echoed deep within him, plucking on all the strings of hope and dreams that he'd tucked away in order to make room for school and a job and bills and taxes and all the other myriad mundane details of life. It was too late for many of his dreams, but he could help Joel to achieve his. After all, wasn't that what fathers did?
He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, trying to figure out how to do that. "All right...if the goal is to get to space, then we could get in touch with NASA. Or, I suppose we could go up the chain and talk to someone in government—I'm not sure who would be best, though. And I don't really want to end up with reporters camped on the porch, so let's try to keep a lid on this for now. Or...hm. Let me get that article, I'm sure they said something about phoenixes, but I don't remember what. First thing we'll need is to know more about Peri and what he wants from us."
"Has anyone compiled a list of all this stuff?" Fred asked.
Nancy shrugged. "Dunno, I only got here a couple hours ago. First thing I saw was a woman who I swear was Mrs Piggle-Wiggle pushing a cart of candy around, including some frogs made out of chocolate that kept trying to hop away. Over at the bar they were filling the water pitchers with a swishy wand and some bad Latin, and some of the drinks were doing swan dives into themselves. A few feet away from that I watched this Scottish woman turn into a cat—a small cat, so goodbye conservation of mass—and about a minute later some guy in a paisely bathrobe turned a marble into a magpie."
Fred frowned. "Why a marble and a magpie? Was he just into alliteration?"
She shrugged. "I asked him that very same question and he said 'Why a magpie? Because I'm bollocks at parakeets.'" She shook her head in disbelief. "I'm glad you're here, Fred. This is a little weird for me; it's nice to have a familiar face around."
Fred smiled and was just starting to open his mouth when a young boy tapped him on the arm.
"Excuse me, Doctors Blaise and Keller?" he asked politely.
"Yes?" Fred asked curiously.
"I'm Harry Potter. Welcome to the symposium. How have you found it?"
"Oh, it was easy," Fred said casually. "I just got off the Portkey and there it was."
Harry blinked. Nancy sighed.
"Kid, where's your dad?" Nancy asked. She didn't do kids. "I'm assuming he was the Harry Potter who sent the invites?"
Harry frowned and took a breath. "No, Doctor Keller. I was the one who organized this symposium. I need to find a way to do ultra-fast healing, age reversion, and a full-spectrum disease cure. We already have a means to prevent death regardless of injury or age, we just need to solve the eternal youth and health part."
"You need, huh?" she said. Christ. Wizards, and now a kid organizing things. Yeah, right. "How old are you, anyway? Nine? Ten?"
Harry's face got cold. "Twelve," he said, clearly hanging on to the shreds of his temper.
"Nancy..." Fred said. "Maybe go easy? Things are weird here, maybe they have some kind of instantaneous education or something? Or maybe he's like the Merlin from legend, he ages backwards or something?"
Harry's face got even colder. "You are in error, Doctor. I am, in fact, twelve years old. I am also the son of an Oxford professor, I have read the Feynman lectures, can do calculus, and, quite frankly, I probably know more about psychology and the function of the brain than both of you put together. I also break physics on an hourly basis and defeated a Dark Lord—not once but twice—was the first one ever to destroy a Dementor, was the one who figured out that Dementors are simply the shadow of Death, was a major participant in the effort to destroy every Dementor during that unpleasantness a few weeks ago, and was the person who instigated a serious effort at curing Death and illness. A job, I might add, which neither of you has seen fit to do, despite working in biogerontology for longer than I've been alive. I would appreciate it if the two of you would stop automatically treating me like a child and actually use your brains."
Hot rage boiled up Nancy's throat. "Look, you snot-faced little—"
Fred placed a hand on her arm; she glared at him but stopped talking.
"All right, Mr. Potter," he said. "You're an adult in a child's body and you have a significant list of achievements. Why were you coming over to us?"
Harry's voice was icy cold and precise; he seemed at least as angry as Nancy. "I would like to introduce you to Mr. Throgwattle and Professor Slughorn. Mr. Throgwattle is a senior med-wizard at Saint Mungo's, which is the best hospital in wizarding Britain. Professor Slughorn is undisputedly the best potion master in Britain and quite possibly in the world. I suspect the four of you will have some very interesting discussions. Also, you should be aware of the laboratory facilities; this is the Room of Requirement, and it takes whatever form is desired, and supplies whatever facilities are needed. Simply step out the door, tell the receptionist what you need, and he'll open it to an appropriate lab."
"Thank you, Mr. Potter," Fred said with a polite nod. "Please, lead the way. By the way, we were wondering if anyone has compiled a list of all this magic stuff and everything it can do?"
Harry snorted, not even bothering to turn and look at them as he led them across the room. "Has anyone compiled a list of this science stuff and everything it can do? This school spends seven years teaching a functional level of magical knowledge, and there isn't enough time to study every subject. However, you can pick up a briefing packet at the door; there was a delay and they didn't arrive on time or you would have been given one on the way in.
"The things I think you should be most immediately aware of are Invigoration Draught, Wit-Sharpening Potion, Liquid Luck, and Polyjuice. You'll find descriptions of them in the packets but they are, respectively, a powerful stimulant, a nootropic, a guarantee of successful action, and something that will turn you into another person. The advantages of intelligence enhancement and guaranteed luck should be obvious; I had thought that perhaps Polyjuice could be modified to turn you into a younger or uninjured version of yourself." He led them around a knot of people eagerly discussing the opportunity for using False Memory Charms and Legilimency to exchange knowledge from mind-to-mind. Pushing through a last bit of crowd he brought them to two men who were leaning on the wall and sipping drinks.
"Professor Slughorn, Mister Throgwattle, I'd like to introduce Doctors Keller and Blaise," Harry said, nodded politely. "They are experts on life extension from the Muggle side of things. I think the four of you will have a great deal to discuss. Excuse me." He turned and vanished into the crowd.
"Okay, can you get it to take the—"
"She."
"Excuse me?"
"She's a girl. Well, no, phoenixes are actually immortal and don't reproduce so they don't really have genders. Still, I think of her as a girl, and her name is Xare. Please don't call her 'it.' And she's just as intelligent as we are; you can talk to her directly."
Patrick "call me Pat" Halligan rubbed his forehead, hard, as though trying to push the ache out. He'd been a systems engineer at the Space Agency for ten years, and Chief Engineer of Life Support Systems for three; he was used to dealing with problems, but he was having a lot of them today. The idea of talking seriously about sending a twelve-year-old girl into the single most lethal environment known to man—i.e., outer space—without any protection aside from a suit, was probably the biggest problem. The fact that the laws of physics were really more like polite suggestions was another—actually, maybe that one was bigger, he wasn't sure. The fact that he was sitting opposite the aforementioned-twelve-year-old girl and she had a flaming creature of myth on her shoulder which was actually on fire, right now! yet wasn't burning anything...and apparently the thing had human-level intelligence and he was supposed to engage it in conversation... He pulled the bottle of Tylenol out of his desk drawer and knocked four back. Screw recommended doses, this day was just getting more painful by the minute.
"Okay, fine. Xare, sorry about this but if you're going to be involved in experiments that could kill someone, then I really need to check. You're actually fully intelligent? Like, self-aware?"
Caw!
He sighed. "Right. Maybe, maybe not, but you can't speak English."
"She said yes, sir," Hermione offered.
He really hoped the Tylenol would kick in soon. "Okay, good. Let's try something else. Can you read?"
Caw!
"No, sir, she can't," Hermione said.
He rubbed his head again. "Okay, something else then." He pulled three variously-colored pens out of his breast pocket and set them on the desk in a careful line. "Xare, would you please touch the red pen, then the blue one, then the red one again, and then the green one?"
The phoenix gave him a rather old-fashioned look, but it—she! remember the she!—hopped over to the desk and tapped a claw on the indicated pens.
"Huh." He stared at the bird for a moment. So, this is what first contact with an alien species felt like. Well, not really first contact, since apparently these 'wizards' had known about them for years. Still, first contact for him. "Okay, how's your grasp on math? Can you tap your claw two plus three times?"
The phoenix cocked its head at him in confusion.
Sigh. "Okay, no grasp on math," he said. "I suppose that's something that immortal birds made out of fire don't really need. This should be jolly fun."
"Do you really need her to do math, sir?" the girl asked. "You and I can do the math, but don't we just need to know if she can get somewhere?"
Pat shrugged. "I suppose." He shuffled through his folder for a minute and passed over an 8x10. "Okay, uh, Xare, this is a picture of Mare Imbrium. Could you go there based on the picture?"
The phoenix looked at the picture, then hopped back onto Hermione's shoulder and craned her head around to look at her human.
"We need to be able to get there, Xare," her mistress said firmly. "It's important. Everyone, everywhere may depend on it—far more people than the Dementors could ever have killed are at risk if magic and science are mixed and someone decides to use them for evil. We need to have a base somewhere else, so that at least some people can survive. Could you do it? Could you take me there?" Hermione picked up the picture and held it up in front of the bird, looking from Xare to the picture and back.
Caw! the phoenix said. There was a blast of fire and bird and girl were gone.
Author's Footnote: I have a mailing list! It can be found at bit. do /dks-list. There is one email every two weeks, and each one includes links to new postings as well as bonus material not available on the web—world history, character studies, deleted scenes, etc.
Also, I have other stories for sale! You can find them over on 'davidstorrs. com'. I've listed the current catalogue and the current prices below; obviously they may have changed if you're reading this long after I posted it.
"The Draugar War: Opening Salvo" ($1.99), fantasy, novella. It's a spinoff from my story, 'The Two Year Emperor'; High Marshal Albrecht Löfgren arrives for a simple troop inspection but ends up having to lie to High Command, pretend to kill several thousand legionnaires, and—oh yes—fight off the end of the world. Ah well, looks like it's Tuesday.
"One Hot Night" ($0.99), fantasy, novelette. A spinoff from my story 'The Two Year Emperor' in which Ingfred wheels, deals, and cons his way into walking through a legal loophole so that he can make a a fortune selling his memories to a tabloid...and then the law catches up to him.
"Baby Blues" ($1.99), rational horror, novella. Mitchell has escaped from Rikers Island and is desperate to reunite with his daughter, but it's not going to be easy; Rikers is no ordinary prison, Mitchell is no ordinary prisoner, and every human in the city is desperate to get him back behind bars...
"Pay Attention" ($1.99), rational horror, novella. Pay attention. Don't touch the ouija board again. Don't let yourself be distracted. You can keep your mind as long as you don't get distracted. Stay focused. Stay alert. And, whatever you do, pay attention.