Um the Muse: I have no plans for doll-wielding mages in this story. The classes here are primarily based off jobs from Final Fantasy V and Bravely Default, and Lulu's methodology was only in FFX. It might be something I consider if this story does well enough for me to contemplate a sequel, but not this one.
Acerman: Will we see the Japanese students again? Who knows? I don't think standing at the epicenter of an earth-shattering magical catastrophe would be good for their health, though.
Chapter 11
Diagon Alley
Two days later saw the four Adventurers slow their mounts to a walk in front of a small circle of buildings. None of the buildings was impressively large or ostentatious; in fact, the most interesting aspect of this little village was that their only apparent defense was a low picket fence surrounding the town that would at most deter any monsters that casually wandered over. "This is what you want to show us?" Harry asked after looking over their apparent destination.
Draco – "You might as well call me by my first name," the blond had told them after they set up camp the previous night – nodded and pushed up his floppy hat. "Welcome to New Diagon. It isn't the most impressive or most important part, but it is the entrance. We'll see a couple of people here first before moving on to our real destination. I need to offload everything that was reclaimed from the manor, after all."
Hermione gave the town another, longer look. "It doesn't look like the people here would have the space to put everything, let alone the money." Privately, Harry had to agree with her. The tiny village of Scunth looked nicer than this.
"They aren't the buyers. I'll actually wind up spending more money here," Draco explained with a small scowl. "Our next stop, I'll finally make it back."
He led them toward the opposite side of the town, and Dudley pushed himself higher on the albino mustid. "Maybe there would be enough people to buy everything. That's a lot of carts."
Following the direction of his cousin's gaze, Harry frowned at the view presented. Clumped together in front of a wooden gate was a large number of carts and carriages, enough for a few dozen people assuming each one held four people. What really caught his eye, though, was that for all those carts, there was not a mustid or bison in sight. How had the carts even gotten here? "Are those normally there?"
"No. No, they're not."
The wizard Sorcerer finally came to a stop next to the cart closest to the gate and hopped off to tie his mustid to one of the fence posts. Undoing some straps to pull a roll of cloth off his mount's saddle, he waved for them to follow. "Let's go inside. One of the people who live here should know more about just what's going on."
They passed through the gate, and Harry blinked in surprise when the innocuous sounds he would expect from a small village were suddenly audible. It was no wonder now why the town had put him on edge; without sound, it seemed like it was completely abandoned, but with it the village seemed much more normal. Draco led them down the circular street to a house they had not seen on the way over. A young man stood outside with a metal pole in his hand, the end of which was stuck inside a stone box. "Fergus!" Draco called out, getting the man's attention. "Is Brutus around?"
"Aye." Fergus slid part of the box open and pulled out the pole. The end was covered in a brightly glowing sludge, and he sat on a nearby stool to blow into the pipe. The glowing bit of what could only be molten glass quickly expanded. "He's in the house," the now-obvious gaffer continued. "I don't think grandpa's busy with anyone else right now, but somebody might have snuck past me."
The inside of the house was much cooler than outside, more than could be explained by just the shade or the contrast with the furnace where Fergus was working. More interesting than the temperature, however, were the lights attached to the walls. They were not candles or torches or lanterns. Each light was a solid sphere of glowing white, almost as if the owners of this house had caught gigantic fireflies and trapped them on the walls.
"Lumos spells," explained Draco when he caught the three of them staring at the walls. "It's a fairly basic spell, and one that still works around here. There are a lot more impressive things to see than that."
"They may be more impressive, but this would be super useful," Dudley argued.
The wizard gave that a thoughtful nod and continued down the hall. "Brutus," he said in greeting, and the three other Adventurers looked around him as best they could. The man he had spoken to looked to be of at most middling age, far too young to be the grandfather of any but the youngest children. It certainly did not make sense for Fergus, who appeared to be older than any of the four of them, to call him 'grandpa'. As though to confirm that they had wandered down the rabbit hole, the man was also wearing what they could only guess was a thick bathrobe. Draco walked closer and exchanged a handshake with the man. "How's business been going?"
A deep frown twisted the man's expression. "Slow," he finally said. "A lot slower than it's been in a good long while. I hope it's just because other people have decided to join in and are giving me competition, but…"
While Draco nodded, Harry exchanged confused glances with Dudley and Hermione. This wizard wanted competition? In what world did that make sense?
Brutus opened a door and waved them inside. The room beyond was practically empty aside from a few glass jars and an elaborate carving on the floor. It was two circles sitting nearly side by side, one larger than the other. Both circles had shapes and letters within them, and an 'x' merged into each circle to join them into a single coherent design. Altogether, it certainly looked magical enough.
Draco unrolled and unfolded the cloth in the corner, and it quickly became obvious that it was a one-person tent. Was he planning to sleep here or something? While he fiddled with the poles, Brutus shook his head and pulled a slim stick from his belt. "Are you a wizard or not? Erecto."
The cloth quivered for a moment before stilling again.
Brutus glared at the twig in his hand, and a second look revealed that it was an Earth wand like those Draco had hired them to find in his family's manor. "Very few of us can still consider ourselves wizards," the blond said, not looking at the man. Harry walked over to help him pitch the tent, and when it was up Draco pulled open the flap.
The inside of the tent was enormous. An entire inn could have fit inside! The floor space was covered with chairs and couches and statues, and smaller objects were piled on top of them. "It's been about six months or so since I was last here," Draco explained, looking embarrassed at the mess that was now revealed. "You can collect a lot of knick-knacks in that long a time. And once the magic is pulled out of these things, it won't last long. I'd rather not travel back and forth to the castle all the time if I don't have to."
Draco, Dudley, and Harry grabbed one of the sofas and carried it out of the tent and onto the larger circle at Brutus's behest. He in turn picked up a large glass jar from a different corner of the room and manhandled it into the smaller circle. Once they were out of circle, the man bent down and placed both hands on the outside edge. A brilliant light poured from the tips of his fingers into the carving, the light splintering as it spread into the different parts of the design that revealed themselves all to be connected.
"What is he doing?" asked Hermione in a low voice that would not carry to the older wizard.
"Ritual magic. It was rare to see on Earth because wands were so convenient, but here on Gaia it's one of the very few kinds of magic that works consistently."
The glow had filled the entire carving on the floor while they were talking, and small wisps of iridescent smoke started to waft off the couch. The smoke was pulled towards the jar like iron to a magnet. Something bent the smoke's course to a single point just above the center of the 'x'. When the first edge of the smoke touched it, a narrow beam of white light lanced outwards and into the jar, causing it to shine from within.
The colorful smoke was taking more than just magic with it. As more and more leaked out of the sofa, Harry saw the rich fabric fade away to a dull brown. The wood creaked and twisted to the point that it nearly collapsed on itself. By the time the magic had been sucked away, all that was left was a near-colorless lump of uncertain material.
Dudley tilted his head. "Is that thing good for anything anymore, or is it just rubbish at this point?"
"We use it to make charcoal for the furnaces and some cooking, but that's about all it's good for now." Brutus grabbed a tool that looked like a three-pronged metal rake and dragged the lump out of the ritual space. "That whole tent full? I'll need to call my boys in to help."
"Take whatever time you need," Draco told him. "Out of curiosity, we saw a bunch of carts in front of the gate. What's going on?"
"Oh. That." Brutus snorted. "Ole Tom decided to call a bunch of numbskulls here to see about grabbing some stuff from the Alley. Didn't work last time he tried it, but I guess he thought that maybe it would work better this time around. I heard he called in some people who went out and learned that Muggle magic to see if that would do the trick." The wizard shook his head. "Can't see the sense in that myself. The Alley is too dangerous for full-grown wizards; I doubt a few tricks even Muggles can do are going to make much of a difference."
"Yes, what good could they do?" Draco echoed, a blank expression covering his face like a mask. "We'll let you finish this up. I'll check back in a couple of hours to see how far you've gotten." The blond's cape rustled as he whirled around and walked off.
The trio followed after him and found the Sorcerer standing outside, a hard sneer firmly focused on nothing in particular. "I apologize about that," he said after a few minutes to school his emotions. "It was rude of me to leave you in there by yourselves."
"It was a house. We'd be terrible Adventurers if we could get stuck in one of those," Dudley told him, trying and failing to lighten the mood. "I'm more worried about why you stormed off in the first place."
"An old issue, one I should have grown past already. It's of no importance." Shaking his head, he waved for the rest to follow. "Since we're already here and with nothing better to do, let us check out just what Tom is up to."
The short walk was apparently not enough for Hermione to keep her curiosity to herself any longer. "I think I understand what is going on so far. You have been collecting objects that were enchanted before the Transition, and you hire Brutus to draw the magic out and into the jars. But what do you do with the jars?"
"Mostly use them to keep other, more important pieces of Earth magic going. For example, towns use walls to keep monsters out, right?" Harry nodded with the rest of the party at Draco's question. "Wizarding settlements and houses use wards to do something similar. We had wards on Earth, too, and they were extremely reliable. They didn't even need anyone to keep them going. They pulled magic right out of the ground to fuel themselves.
"Unfortunately, the magic here on Gaia is completely different than on Earth. Wards can't draw on it, and without any way to replenish themselves they naturally started fading away. What's worse, it seems that Gaian magic is actually damaging to Earth magic, so the wards aren't just slowly failing. They are constantly and actively being attacked just by existing on this world. The magic to keep them intact has to come from somewhere, and the best source of Earth magic is things like what you found in the manor."
"Is that why Brutus said he hoped he had competition?" asked Harry. From an economic standpoint, competition was something no one ever wanted, but if he looked at it from a more humanitarian angle…
"More or less. If there is competition, his old business may just be being taken by someone else. If there isn't? That means there are even fewer things left for him to disenchant than I thought." Draco pointed at the building in the center where they were headed. "That is what Tom is probably hoping to accomplish today. The Alley is full of valuable Earth magic. It's just also incredibly dangerous to step foot in because of all the monsters. They didn't find their way in," he continued, looking back at the group. "Just like in my old home, they actually appeared there without any warning during the Transition. And, if the stories I've heard are correct, they are a lot stronger than the undead you dealt with."
That was anything but comforting, Harry decided as they entered the building. The interior looked like a fairly typical pub or inn, no different than any other in the world with the exception of its occupants. Many of them wore strange robes just as Brutus did, and only a very small number had any kind of armor on. None of them, not a one, was dressed as was typical for an Adventurer.
He did not want to pass judgement prematurely as had already been done today against them, but if any of them were experienced in Gaian fighting and magic, he would lay down his sword and become a Bard.
A heavily wrinkled man stepped out from behind the bar and gave everyone a look. Tom, Harry had to assume. "Are we still waiting for anyone?"
"That dolt Lockhart said he wanted to come, but it wouldn't do any good waiting even if he really was gonna show," one woman called out.
Tom moved to a door at the far end of the room. It was thick and made of a dark wood, with three horizontal bars making completely sure it could not be opened from the other side. Harry took a quick glance around in confusion; if he was not totally wrong, there was no where for that door to go but outside. "Thank you all for coming," Tom said, calling his attention back to the group. "I know it's been a long time since we've done anything like this. I don't have much money, so almost everything you can find in the Alley, you can keep."
The assembled wizards muttered to themselves at that, and understandably so. Considering how much Draco was willing to spend to collect things, someone who got extremely lucky could have a very profitable day.
"What I need, and the only reason I'm willing to open this door, is certain potions from one of the apothecaries." Tom held up four fingers. "Pepperup Potion, Fever Reducer, Wiggenweld Potion, and Nutrient Solution. I will pay ten sickles for every bottle of any of those you bring back.
"Because it's so dangerous, I can only keep the door open for an hour. I'll ring a bell when I'm about to close it. You need to get back here before then."
Tom waved a couple of young men over, and together they started struggling with the first crossbeam.
"What's a sickle?" Harry asked their local expert.
"It's one of the denominations of money we used to use on Earth. Knuts, sickles, and galleons. Don't ask for any kind of conversion rate to dimma," Draco warned before he could do that exact thing. "Wizards are the only ones who use it, and by and large they refuse to change over to dimma. The only way you'd be able to convert it is by buying something with it and then selling it again."
"I'm more curious what those potions are for," chimed in Hermione.
Draco nodded. "That's what's bothering me, too. Fever Reducer is exactly what it sounds like. Pepperup is good for colds and things. Wiggenweld gives a boost to the body's natural healing process. Nutrient Solution is something you can drink if you haven't been able to eat for a while. Put them all together, and it sounds like potions to use if someone was extremely sick and the Healers couldn't figure out what was wrong with them."
That struck a nerve in the Stellis, no great surprise considering she had joined Harry and Dudley for essentially the same reason. "We have to get out there and find those potions."
"We really don't. I don't know where the apothecary is, and we only have an hour to look. We would be better off searching the nearby buildings for—" Draco made the mistake of looking backwards and meeting Hermione's stern stare. A quick moment passed before he turned away. "…Fine, we'll look for the bloody apothecary."
Tom and his underlings moved the last brace, and he pulled the door open. What as revealed as not the street they had walked to get here or even another room, but a small cobblestone space with an arch. Through the arch an entirely new street was visible, one with strange and crooked buildings on either side. The wizards did not appear surprised and started moving as soon as the door was open.
Harry, on the other hand, had to shake himself a bit before falling into step behind Draco.
The view was even more alien once they were all through the arch. He could not recall ever seeing colors this eye-searingly bright, and even the Sorcerer was blinking rapidly. "What the hell is this?" Harry asked.
"This? This is – or was – the biggest shopping area in Wizarding Britain." Draco swung his arms around to encompass its impossible size. "Welcome to Diagon Alley."
Instead of being impressed, Dudley looked green. "Are all wizard buildings so weird?"
The slightly smug expression on Draco's face fell, and his arms dropped to his sides. "No, they aren't. Or they weren't? Do you remember how strange the inside of the manor was when you went into it? That's what happens when large concentrations of Earth magic interact with Gaia's magic. They twist each other in ways no one can predict or stop, and this is the result. A place that just doesn't feel right."
"That's why Underhills are so rare," whispered Hermione. "There were only so many wizard locations for them to form from."
"And why keeping wards up is so important. They don't just keep monsters away. They protect little pockets of almost-Earth. When they fail, there is nothing to stop another Underhill from forming."
"Is there anything of Earth magic Gaia doesn't ruin?" Harry asked.
His question was mostly facetious, but Draco shook his head. "No. Not even wands. It used to be that a wizard would carry the same wand his whole life, but now each one only holds so much magic, so many spells. The more you use it, the fewer you have until you run out completely. And, just to rub salt in the wound, a used-up wand transforms itself into the Sorcerer wands you are familiar with."
Earth wands would transform? Harry's eyes drifted to the cane Draco carried, the cane he had revealed was really the wand he needed to cast Gaian magic. Could it also be the wand he used when he was learning Earth magic?
Draco switched his cane from one hand to the other and moved it out of sight. "Shall we carry on? I don't remember where the apothecary is, and we only have an hour to look. Less, actually."
"Are there wands here we could grab for you?" offered Dudley.
That startled a laugh out of the wizard. "I'm sure there are. We aren't even going to try that. I heard all about the few attempts that were made to raid Ollivander's old wand shop. Almost no one survived. An incredibly powerful monster took root inside, and it would take a miracle to kill it. Miracles are not something I keep in my pocket."
The wizards, not being as preoccupied with explanations the way the Adventurers were, had already spread out through the alley. Some of them were breaking into the closest buildings while others, presumably those with knowledge of how the shops used to be arranged, had gone further down the street to begin their search. Considering how the Transitioned had changed Draco's family home, that was an assumption with little support. With no obvious answer, they looked around before Dudley finally suggested, "Let's just pick one at random."
Harry shrugged and followed after his cousin, and the other Adventurers fell into step behind him. Dudley took one overhead swing at the handle to break the door open and stepped just past the threshold. "Is it supposed to be this dark— Whoa!"
The floor beneath Dudley's feet crumbled and collapsed to reveal a pitch-black void. Dudley plummeted down into the hole, and without a second's hesitation Harry jumped after him.
Through the darkness they fell until the floor raced up to meet them. They slammed into it and bounced off the spongy surface only to land again. Harry lay still for a moment to catch his breath when something else fell, and two grunts caused him to look over and snicker. Hermione glared back at him and rolled out of Dudley's lap; the Knight, on the other hand, curled up in a fetal position holding his delicate bits and moaning. "I'm not that heavy," she bit out.
"You're no featherweight, either."
That made three of them, with one conspicuous absence. "Did Draco run off to get help?" he asked as he stood up. Immediately afterwards, he heard something else coming from above them.
"—aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAH!"
The caped wizard hit the ground hard and rolled for several feet until he came to a stop at Harry's feet. "I hate you all," he grumbled into the ground.
"No one forced you to jump down after us," Harry reminded Draco. Offering his hand, he pulled the other man to his feet. "Dudley, you okay down there?"
"Just leave me here to die."
Rolling his eyes, Harry helped his cousin up as well. "Quit being so melodramatic. We need to get out of here."
"That seems simple enough." He looked over to find Hermione fiddling with a door set into the wall. "There's only one door here. Which probably means it won't be anywhere near that easy."
"Let's not tempt fate, please," he warned.
The lock clicked, and Hermione kicked the door open and stood to the side to draw her bow. It was no surprise she did not want to take the lead; she was an archer, and they worked best farther back. Instead it was Harry who walked through first, his blade bared in front of him. The room beyond was much brighter lit than where they landed, even though the diffuse glow had been welcome after the fall through utter black. Here, however, torches were set at regular intervals to cast light on the bookshelves that filled the space. Each shelf was packed with books and tomes. If it were not for the drop, this would be a bookworm's paradise.
Something shuffled from down one stack, and Harry raised his rapier higher. Of course they would not be alone. What was down here was a surprise, though. Around the corner came a tall, thin figure all in an off-white. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing. It looked like a guard or a knight, but made entirely from paper. Its armor, its helmet, even its arms and legs were all made from the same material. The only bit that was not paper was the large feather it had pierced through its left hand.
He expected the knight to rush at him now that they were visible to each other, but it ignored him and walked down a different aisle.
"What was that?" he asked to no one in particular.
"Maybe it can't deviate from its patrol route?" suggested Hermione. "Or maybe its vision is so bad it can only see us if we are directly in front of it. I'd rather not experiment to find out."
"I don't think it can hurt us that bad. It's made of paper, and the only weapon it had was a feather."
"Have you ever heard the proverb, 'the pen is mightier than the sword'?" He nodded, and she continued, "I would not be shocked if it took that phrase in a very literal direction."
"So we don't fight it." Dudley nudged his way past them and pointed at the bookshelves. "Those things don't reach all the way up. If we climbed them, we'd have room to move around but could still stay out of that thing's way. Particularly if there are more than one of them."
That was a plan everyone could get behind, and they ran at the nearest bookcase and climbed up the shelves like rungs on a ladder. The books did not leave much room for their feet to find purchase, but it was enough to make it to the top. Looking at the rest of the room from their vantage point, Harry whistled faintly. The room was huge, and more importantly the bookcases were not arranged in a nice, orderly manner. No, they made up the walls of a literal maze, and even from here he could see more paper knights patrolling the paths.
"Well, Dud, when you're right, you're right."
The compliment puffed up Dudley's ego the slightest bit, and the Knight proudly took point as they navigated the maze from overhead rather than within.
In the middle of the room, the maze broke apart into two pieces, and the Adventurers stopped to watch knights and origami tigers drift between the two halves. "Any idea how we're going to get across that?" Harry asked the group. "I'd rather not try to fight them all at once. It would be too easy for them to surround us."
Hermione glanced around them and shook her head. "I don't see anything we could climb over with. No chandeliers, no ledges."
"Any wizardy ideas?" Dudley asked, his eyes moving to Draco.
Draco shook his head. "I can't create a bridge or something for us. Transfiguration was never my strong suit even before… Anyway, no." His eyes narrowed, and he looked back and forth across the gap. "Although…"
"Even a dumb idea is better than what we have right now," Harry reminded him.
"This might count as a dumb idea, all right, but let's give it a go." Draco aimed the ball of his cane at Harry and made a swirling motion with his off-hand. It looked almost as though he were trying to cast a Wind spell, which was impossible. Only Clerics and Fencers could use that spell line. "Float."
A gentle breeze buffeted Harry from below, and he looked down to find his feet were no longer on the top of the bookcase. Instead he was hovering a few inches above it. "What is this?"
"It's Float. That isn't the name it has in the Wizarding World, but it also isn't supposed to work quite like this, either. So I guess it's a spell of my own invention?" Draco pondered that for a moment before shaking his head. "Regardless, this might help us get across."
"I know I said it when we were escaping Whinging Village, but it would have been so helpful for us to have met you a couple of years ago. I can definitely see the utility of wizard magic."
"You should be able to do it, too." Harry shook his head, but Draco continued nonetheless, "Your parents were a witch and a wizard, just like mine. There is magic running through your veins, just like mine. You would have a lot to catch up on, but give you a wand and there is no reason you couldn't learn to use it. It would be nice to have someone else to help me figure out how to cast old spells as Gaian magic.
"But first, let's get out of here. We won't have to worry about the future if we die today."
The Float spell did not let them fly, per se, but neither were they walking on air. It was something in between, single steps followed by drifting. Draco had to keep the spell going while they were under its effect, so they wasted no time in crossing the gap. The wizard himself was the last to cross, his own path more wobbly than theirs as he had to split his focus between his movements and the spell. Only when they were together again did they continue on through the maze.
The door that stood at the opposite end of the room from where they entered was a welcome sight, and Dudley shoved it open to reveal the street they had come from. "Did we just walk in a circle or something?" he asked, looking as confused as Harry felt. He was quite sure they had not moved upwards at all, and they had started this bit of exploration with a tremendous drop.
A bell rang in the distance, and Draco shoved them out of the way. "We need to go! That's the bell Tom said he would ring before he closed the door!"
"How?" demanded Hermione as they all sprinted back towards the inn. "We were only in there for twenty minutes, tops!"
"That's part of what makes this place so dangerous. Diagon Alley isn't a single Underhill like the manor. Each shop is its own Underhill as well. Time and space are totally unpredictable here."
The arch that led into the shopping district soon came into view, and Tom gestured at them to move faster. "Get in, get in! Some idiot riled up the monster in Ollivander's! I have to shut the door now!"
That eked out more speed from Draco, and the rest of them did their best to keep up. The door shut as soon as they slipped inside.
Harry panted faintly and watched the men from before move the bars back into position. "We got trapped in one of the stores," he explained to the innkeeper. "We never even found the apothecary."
Tom's shoulders fell. "Neither did anyone else. I don't know that they were even seriously looking for it, not with some of the things they were carrying out."
No one else went looking for the things Tom wanted? He shook his head, and from beside him he heard Draco mutter, "I told you. Everyone else had the same thought I did: this was an opportunity to look for things they wanted or that they could make more money from."
"What did you want the potions for?" Hermione asked.
"It doesn't really matter now, does it?" Tom said in reply, his sad gaze moving upwards to something only he could see. "It doesn't matter to anyone."
I did my residency in a town whose neighbor was well known for their glasswork, and they regularly put on demonstrations of glassblowing and sculpting. I'm happy to get away, mostly because the "culture" of the hospital where I had to work was shit, but you could consider the use of glass in this chapter as an homage to that area in general.
Silently Watches out.