Story Title: The Box of Kelpius the Great
School: Durmstrang
Theme: The Forest of Dean - Look at the relationship between wizards, Muggles, Muggleborns, and other sentient creatures
Year: Exchange - Year 6
Main Prompt: [object] Family Heirloom
Additional Prompts: [Plot point] Unlikely friendship
[Any pairing] Muggle Prime Minister/Minister of Magic
Wordcount: 1859
AN: a crackish AU based loosely on a real figure in history
The Box of Kelpius the Great
In the seventeenth century in the kingdom of Great Britain, some Muggles started following an interesting man from Transylvania with rare talents. He founded what he called The Order of Perfection. But this order was persecuted and he was shunned by Muggles and Magical societies alike for his heretical religious teachings and treasonous habit of consorting with muggles revealing his magic. The man, who called himself Kelpius the Great, was shrouded in mystery and led his people to the New World to escape persecution. They eventually settled in the valley lands alongside a river known as the Schyukyll in the wilderness of a place called Pennsylvania. This place was chosen by Kelpius the Great for its magical strength, though the land was barren, making it very difficult for the Muggle followers of the Order of Perfection to farm and eek out a living. This area would later be site to an enormous Muggle uprising; in fact a new Muggle nation would be formed in the city that sprang forth from Kelipus' settlement, though they didn't call it Kelpiusville, and Kelpius sadly remained lost to history. Anyway, when Kelpius was upon his deathbed, he sent one of his most ardent disciples to retrieve his most prized possession. He told his follower that he would find a box behind a certain boulder and was to destroy it completely by burning it. The follower had no idea what to do, and when he first found the box stowed it away, but Kelpius the Great was a wizard, you see, and a gifted Legilemins at that, and knew right away his follower had not followed orders. Because of this he compelled the man to go and throw the box into the river, as the man was so opposed to burning it. Under a wordless form of Imperius, for Kelpius the Great was actually quite a powerful wizard, the man threw the box into the Schyukill river, where its mysterious contents burst into a great green ball of light-fire, perhaps, or somthing else?- terrifying the follower, who told tales of it that resonate within the Muggle community to this day. It is said that Kelipus the Great drew his last breath at the same precise moment his mysterious box hit the water, for he could rest easy knowing his last most important deed was done. You see, an odd thing happened following the box's implosion and Kelipus' death: the land where the Muggles had tried to plant things suddenly began to grow. "It was as if Kelpius' spirit was smiling down upon the Order," they said., Another theory was that something in the green fireball of a box had seeped from the river into the land, something with an ancient fertile energy, though they dared not speak the word magic for it was forbidden. As the years wore on, this was forgotten to history, more or less, and the Muggles in the area (being very self-important) built their own nation with their own history and almost completely forgot about the miracles Kelpius the Great performed. They named the city that grew from the settlement Philadelphia, after some Muggle Philip fellow, and held it as the capitol of their new nation for a time, never thinking to show respect for the near forgotten Kelpius the Great.
-IWSC-
Some centuries later, the Prime Minister of the UK was walking into her Downing Street home when something falling from the sky plunged down and hit her square on the head. "Blimey! Whatever is this?!" She shouted in pain as she grabbed her throbbing head. Looking down at her feet with watering eyes, she was stunned to see that it was indeed this little wooden box with fancy golden engravings all over it, and it almost seemed…to glow? The Prime Minister Irena Mkynter picked up the box and took it with her into her home office. Here she placed it upon the mantle, making a mental note to have the bobbies check it for radioactivity, because really such a glow couldn't be natural.
Yet she forgot all about it when some very important business came up, and it remained on the mantle over the fireplace for quite some time. During this time, the most curious thing happened to both the plants and the visitors in her home and home office, dignitaries, friends, and advisors alike, and it vexed the Minister to no end! First off her bonsai, potted plants and cut flowers that the First Lady decorated the home with kept growing at a most obnoxious rate! Cut plants, growing? How could it be? And then the most awful thing started to happen with her visitors—they began emitting pollen when they laughed, and violets began sprouting from their ears while they were in the area. It was most irregular, so the minister called out the head of the NHS as well as MI6 to try to find out what was causing the matter. First her home office then the whole of Downing Street was roped off for a time as they tried to figure out what sort of contagion or terrorism could be causing people to sprout violets or laugh clouds of pollen. The press naturally had its way, and there was an absolute field day over what sorts of bioterrorism or infectious ailment could be causing this, but eventually that too settled down, and the public slowly got used to seeing all manner of dignitaries with violets growing from their ears. She even changed her wardrobe to match the violet theme which now seemed inevitable, and everyone kept calm and carried on. She became known as the Purple Lady. After all, far stranger and far worse things have happened to Britain; surely, a few harmless if oddly placed violets weren't cause for undue alarm.
No one could figure out what was happening, and no one thought of the box beyond waving a Geiger counter in front of it to check for radioactivity, of which there was none, and so it was deemed safe. The minister, having exhausted all possibilities of nefarious or dangerous incursion into her home, grudgingly accepted that this was merely an annoyance she and visitors would have to put up with. In fact, her daughter began collecting the violets visitors sprouted and putting them in little vases all over the house. Seeing as it made her daughter happy, and the violets went away when someone left Downing Street, she resigned herself to the odd occurrence. Everyone had nearly forgotten about it by the time a most unusual guest showed up one evening.
"Hello Minister," said the face in the fireplace. The Prime Minister startled and nearly spilled her tea all over her nice lavender suit when she looked down to see a face in the flames of his office fireplace.
"Hello? Oh, it's good to see you as always, Fredrick! Just please, do me a favor and ring before you come popping into my floo like that."
"Indeed, Minister! I shall remind my people to remind me." The Minister of Magic, Fredrick Longbottom, (descendant of the Hero of the Second Great War, Neville Longbottom, of course) said. "And how good it is to see you again, Irena!"
Irena smiled and held out a hand for the slightly sooty Minister of Magic who was now stepping out of her fireplace. She gestured to the guest seat while she went and sat on the sofa, dropping pretenses like the flower petals that rained throughout the room so often.
"So tell me, Irena, how have things been….?"
"Well it's all been quite regular, some tiffs here and there with international interests, but our year has gone quite swimmingly—" she broke off here, as Fredrick scratched his ears in a way that seemed most uncouth.
"I must say whatever is this?" He asked, as he felt a tickle in his ear and he found something in his fingers, upon visual examination which proved to be a small blue violet. A look of surprise on his face turned to one of knowing, and Irena couldn't help but release a laugh she had been keeping bottled up for far too long, watching people pull violets from their ears like that. No one reacted the same, although Longbottom's expression was a new one.
"Irena, I hate to intrude upon our lovely conversation, but have people been finding violets in their ears around here?" Fredrick asked.
"Why yes, and it is funny you ask that. We had an entire investigation in January, it was quite a to-do and found absolutely nothing amiss, although now it's just part of how it is, I suppose."
"You investigated, but never thought to call me with how irregular such occurrences must seem to Muggle authorities?" Fredrick was now turned around, examining the box on the mantle.
"Well… Actually, no…"
"I believe you have something that belongs to me," he said mildly as he gestured towards the box he now held. "You seem to have somehow come into possession of this box, the Box of Kelpius The Great, a family heirloom of mine which was retrieved from the waters of a Pennsylvania river in the States by an adventurer ancestor of mine. You see, it is a magical fertility charm that was used by an unorthodox wizard in the New World to make the Pennsylvania area fertile. It was stolen from my home on 15 January this year, to be precise. Tell me, was that the day you found it?"
"Indeed I believe so, I got a right knock on the head when it fell from the sky, and put it on the mantle while I went to have my head seen to by the NHS."
"This would coincide perfectly, as the thief fled on a broom while our aurors pursued. But we lost him over London where we believe he jettisoned the heirloom, having decided it wasn't worth the trouble. If you aren't too terribly attached to all the violets, might I bring it back home with me? I'm sure you grow tired of its effects, after all."
"Twould be fine with me, although I shall rather miss the laughs from seeing the faces people make when they find violets in their ears."
"Yes yes, that is only because it is not being kept within a proper containment enchantment that it has these effects. It is normally housed in the museum wing of the Minister of Magic's estate."
"I suppose it must be repatriated to its rightful owners in the Wizarding Community," Irena said, "although the flowers were rather nice."
"I shall see if we cannot send you an enchanted violet so that you will always have flowers regardless of season—though they won't be in peoples' ears." Fredrick laughed, and so did Irena. They then moved on to more important business in their discussion, and promised to get the families together to watch a quidditch match sometime very soon. Irena was still a little embarrassed she had failed to think of contacting her friend and confidante about the odd little Box of Kelpius, but all was well, she supposed. And Fredrick, true to his word, did send Downing Street an enchanted violet for her desk, so her wardrobe change hadn't been for nought.