merendinoemiliano: My questions about your pairing preference aside, I can tell you that I do not plan to spend any special effort in making Ron an asshat. As for the classes, I thought about letting the characters do a class–subclass combination as seen in FFV and Bravely Default, but I packed enough tricks into the different classes that it became more trouble than it was worth.
Zelavian: The Transition itself did not kill anyone. Now, there were quite a few people who died in the following days and weeks, mostly from monsters they did not know how to deal with, but exactly how many is unknown. What is known is that the already small population of the Wizarding World has dwindled even more over these ten years.
Chapter 12
The Castle
Waking with the sun pouring its light through the window, Harry tossed and turned for several minutes more before giving up further rest as a pipe dream. Dudley's snores added insult to injury. He gave the Knight a glare, then grabbed the dirty rag that he had used to oil his blade the night before and draped it over his cousin's face. It would not teach him a lesson, but it made him feel better nonetheless.
He was surprised to find that despite rising with the sun, he still was not the first of their little group up. Draco sat at the bar of the pub and inn where they chose to spend the night, a steaming cup of tea sitting untouched in front of him. "Morning," Harry said in greeting.
A short nod was the only response he got.
Even knowing Draco only a few days, he still found that silent answer strange. Draco had proven over the course of the journey here that he was in love with the sound of his own voice, talking about anything and everything that crossed his mind. From dawn till dusk he would chatter if given the opportunity. "Something on your mind?"
The Sorcerer scoffed softly, a small smile nonetheless playing on his face. "Just preparing myself for the day ahead of us."
"Does it have to do with the reason you wanted to wait until today to leave for wherever it is we're going?" After finishing their jaunt to the Underhill the day before, they needed to wait only a couple of hours more for Brutus to finishing draining the magic out of all the things Draco brought him. The blond had claimed that they were on a time limit to get the dozens of glass jars from New Diagon to the mysterious castle he had mentioned before, but almost immediately afterwards he recommended they spend the night in the village rather than take advantage of the few hours of daylight left to them. Dudley and Hermione had thought the change in priorities strange, too, though none of them had any good guesses about the cause.
"More or less. I hate going back there," Draco admitted. "Every time I go back, I think to myself how nice it would be for it to be the last time. Now, though, with how difficult it has become to find things to disenchant? It very well might be the last time for real."
"Why do you hate going back there?" Harry asked quietly. He could understand the sentiment; all three of them could, since he and Dudley had chosen Adventuring to escape Whinging Village and Hermione had done the same to run away from the Riverlands. He simply did not expect Draco to be in the same shoes as the rest of them. "Aren't they your people?"
"Our people. You're a wizard too, Harry, even if you know nothing about that world. But the sad thing is that I almost envy you for that," Draco continued. "You shouldn't expect a warm welcome when we get there. I think you picked up on it yesterday, but 'Muggle magic' isn't exactly held in high esteem. Most people see it as inferior to Earth magic and never give it another thought. The few who don't almost to a one see it instead as a threat, believing that Gaian magic and its practitioners – us – seek to overthrow the 'natural order of things'.
"Then there's the issue of Hermione. Back on Earth, there were several non-human races, and none of them were what you'd call well-respected in society. They were different, so they were shunned because they weren't human enough. Except you also have Muggles who were and are looked down on as well because they don't have magic. So Hermione and Dudley, assuming it comes out he isn't a wizard himself, are both going to be treated like they're vermin for both not being wizards and using Gaian magic. You and I will only have to deal with the latter."
Draco frowned and thought for a moment. "You know, I might not have thought this through."
"If you're trying to sell the idea of staying in this place when the job's done, you're doing a bang up job," Harry said with no little sarcasm. This did not sound like a pleasant place to visit. If anything, it sounded more and more like Whinging Village writ large.
"I'm not trying to sell anything. I hate going there, remember?" Draco took a long drink of his tea. "What I want is for you, Dudley, and Hermione to go in there with your eyes open. Less chance you'll be unpleasantly surprised that way."
Draco's words still lingered in the back of Harry's mind when the quartet left the inn and made their way to yet another building nearby. At first glance it looked like an outhouse, which raised more questions in their minds than any of them were comfortable with.
"I, er, don't think we'll all fit inside," Dudley said after several seconds staring at the door.
"We can make room. We'll just have to get real friendly with each other." Draco opened the door to reveal a room far larger than the outside could contain, the effect nearly identical to that of the tent he used to store all the magical knick-knacks he had collected. The wizard gave Dudley an unimpressed look. "Or maybe there will be plenty of space. Rule number one of dealing with Earth magic: never trust your eyes. Nothing and no one is what it seems."
Despite that warning, Harry could not help but trust what his eyes were telling him about the room they found themselves in. The enlarged space was nearly wasted, for it housed only a single device: a stone disc on a pedestal, a glowing golden crystal floating in the air above the disc with four plates of the same material at the compass points. A second look around verified that he has not simply missed something lurking in the shadows. It was an… interesting piece of art, but nothing he would give a second look. "This is how we are going to that castle of yours, isn't it?" he guessed.
"Now you're getting it," praised Draco. "Everybody put a hand on the pedestal."
The other Adventures looked at each other and shrugged. It was not as if they understood what was going on in the first place. Once they were all touching the disc, Draco touched the end of his cane to the floating crystal. "Hogwarts."
The disc grew warm beneath Harry's hands, then burning hot. He tried to yank his hand away, but it remained stubbornly attached as though it had melted onto the stone surface. A moment later his coat and then the rest of him started floating. The effect was not entirely dissimilar to what happened when Draco used that Float spell on them during the raid on Diagon Alley, just far, far stronger. "Are were going to fly there or some—"
His words caught in his throat because the disc went from still to spinning at impossible speeds without a second's warning. His feet flew out behind him as though it desperately wanted to fling him at the walls, and now he was grateful for how tightly his fingers were bonded to this miserable contraption. Thankfully the sudden wind also worked to cool the surface so he would not have to spend the entire trip – however long it was going to be – in pain.
That was the only good part about this whole thing.
The first few minutes of the trip Harry spent more nauseous than he ever imagined a person coil could feel. For the rest he was in a state of numbness that he could only guess was his body's way of protecting him from the vertigo assaulting him. An indeterminate time later, the accursed spinning stopped as abruptly as it began, and he flopped to the ground with a sigh of relief. "I'm not riding that thing again," he muttered into the wonderfully motionless dirt. "I'm not. I'll walk back to the village if I have to."
A short distance away, Dudley and Hermione muttered their agreement with that sentiment.
"Warp stones aren't comfortable, I know," Draco said, earning sulfurous looks from all three of his companions. "From the old stories, they combine the inconvenience of the Floo network with the horrors of a portkey. Nothing wizards have ever come up with for travel has ever been fun to use. I don't like it any more than you do, but there's no other way to get to Hogwarts. Not unless someone has figured out how to fly without telling me."
Slowly and reluctantly pushing himself to his feet, Harry followed the Sorcerer's gaze and stared. Even still feeling ill, he was amazed. It was gorgeous.
The castle named Hogwarts was not a free-standing building the way he had assumed. It was built directly into the side of a large mountain, different sections of the walls and towers poking out through the rock only to dive back in farther up. Not was it built in a strictly vertical manner. Harry had never considered himself a connoisseur of abnormal architecture, but the way the towers spread out almost like an ultros's tentacles was fascinating. If he ever stopped adventuring and settled down, he was building a home like this.
"Good heavens, that's hideous," his philistine of a cousin chimed in.
"It's not for everyone," Draco noncommittally. "Come on. The sooner we get there, the sooner we can finish our business and leave."
A narrow trail led from the small clearing they found themselves in to a paddock filled with a herd of strange creatures. They looked almost like stretched-out bison, tall and skeletal thin, but with hairless black hide stretched over their long legs. Odder still, each one had a pair of tattered wings like a bomb's coming out of each shoulder. They turned milky eyes to the group before returning their attention back to the chunks of raw meat inside several troughs sitting in the ground.
"Thestrals. Winged horses," the wizard continued when they all looked blankly at him. "They might be the only kind of horse left in the world. No one knows how they managed to survive the journey to this world when so many other species didn't, but somehow they did. They're one of only… four?… yes, four magical species besides humans anyone has seen in this world, and sadly the most useful. Otherwise it's just doxies, bundimuns, and what might be flobberworms or might be giant earthworms. No one's really sure about that last one. Anyway, the thestrals are our ride to the castle."
"We have to ride one of these?" Harry asked, giving the strange creatures the evil eye. "They don't look... safe. Why don't wizards use mustids like normal people?"
"You thought the people in that village you used to live in rejected this world? They have nothing on wizards. They'll do anything to hold onto even the smallest scraps of Earth. Unless it interferes with their standard of living and comfort, of course, then all bets are off."
The disgust and anger in the blond's voice was a shock to hear. Harry was quite done with unpleasant shocks today.
"I'm not riding that thing," Hermione said with finality. She reached out with her left hand and focused. Nothing happened, and she blinked. "What? Why can't I summon my gryphon?"
Draco shook his head. "I have no idea. I wouldn't even know where to start guessing. I don't have an Eidolon to summon in the first place, and I don't know any wizard who knows more about Gaian magic than I do. Maybe it's the wards? They are being used to try to keep Gaian magic out, and while they don't do a perfect job, maybe it's enough to interfere with your brand? I don't know enough even to hazard a guess."
The Stellis gave the nearest thestral a suspicious look. It in turn merely turned its creepy blank eyes to stare at her. "I'm officially unhappy about this. Just want everyone to know that."
"Your objection is noted and ignored," Draco told her, no trace of sympathy in his voice. He walked over to one of the thestrals and pulled himself onto its back. "Come on. We're wasting daylight."
All of them eventually climbed onto their unusual mounts. Draco let out a shrill whistle that made the ears of Harry's thestral perk up. Without prompting it started walking to follow the lead creature, and he had little choice but to sit back and enjoy the ride as much as he could. Not that it was that comfortable of a ride, to be honest; compared to a mustid, this monstrosity was too thin and too bony for his tastes. Thankfully it was short ride, and soon enough they arrived at the doors leading into the castle.
"Do we need to tell someone to put the thestrals back in their paddock?" he asked as he looked around for something he could use to tie the creature to or with.
"They'll wander back on their own. They're self-sufficient like that. Unlike some people I could name."
Harry blinked and looked harder at the Sorcerer. The steadily rising coldness in the blond's voice was disconcerting at the very least. It also confirmed something he had suspected since their conversation earlier that morning: Draco hated this place just as much as he hated Whinging Village. "We don't have to be here if you don't want to, you know," he said, earning him strange looks from Hermione and Dudley that he ignored. His attention was solely focused on Draco. "We can just leave and come back later. Or we don't have to come back at all. If they are anything like the people we grew up with, you don't owe them anything."
"I wish it were that simple," Draco murmured. He looked up at Harry and continued, "Not that I'm not grateful for the sentiment. I just want to get this over with."
Inside the castle, Harry had to force himself not to stop and stare at everything on display. Where he was expecting large expanses of bare cold stone, what he instead found was a treasure trove of exquisite tapestries and more of the moving portraits they had run into when raising Draco's family home. Hermione, he saw with a quick glance at his companions, was likewise impressed. Only Draco, who had seen all this before, and Dudley were unmoved by the decor. Taking one of the many corridors visible just inside the door, the wizard guided them down a twisty path that ended in front of an ugly gargoyle.
"Are we lost?" asked Hermione.
"No, we're right where we want to be. Licorice wands."
At Draco's odd command, the gargoyle started flying. Or not flying, Harry realized after an astonished moment, but riding into the air on top of a spiraling staircase. Draco waved for them to follow him and started climbing the stairs. With nowhere else to go but up, the other Adventures trailed along. At the top of the stairs stood a wooden door folded with gold filigree. Harry expected they would knock, but without another word Draco shoved the door open and walked in.
"You are so much like Severus was, my boy," a man's voice said. "People would be surprised to hear you are not related."
The owner of that voice turned around. This was what Harry would have envisioned if asked to describe a wizard. He was an elderly man with long white hair and an equally long beard that had been tied into an elaborate braid, presumably to keep it out of the way of his food and books. Despite the age obvious in his hair and the wrinkles on his face, though, there were no hints of frailty in his frame, and the crooked nose made him look like someone who had been in too many bar fights when he was younger.
Harry did not know what kind of spells or potions wizards had access to that would keep them so healthy for so long, but he knew he was going to want them.
"It is good to see you again, though, Mister— My apologies, Draco." The man's eyes feel on the rest of the group, and if Harry was not already looking for some hint of a negative thanks to his and Draco's conversation, he was sure he would have missed the momentary flicker that passed through the clear blue eyes. "And you brought friends? How unusual. Do you plan to introduce us, or are you going to leave an old man in the dark?"
"Friends"—Draco was calling them what now?—"this is Albus Dumbledore, former headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and now the leader of what is essentially the last remaining stronghold of wizardkind. Mister Dumbledore, these are my traveling companions. First is Hermione of the Riverland Grange, an incredibly skilled archer and Hunter."
Hermione's ears perked up at the unexpected praise, and she gave the older man a short bow.
"Next is Dudley Dursley, a powerful Knight."
Dumbledore's eyes widened at that name, but they did not focus on Dudley. Instead they moved to Harry almost in expectation.
"And finally is our Fencer, Harry Potter."
"Dear Merlin, I don't know how I didn't see the resemblance sooner. You are near the spitting image of your father, Harry. We thought you were lost with so many others of our people. Draco, you have done our world a great service today."
"I didn't bring them here so you could gawk at them," Draco snapped. "I'm here with mana jars from Brutus."
"Always so quick to get down to business without spending any times on pleasantries with an old man. I know your parents taught you better than that." That rebuke did nothing but harden Draco's expression, and after a long moment Dumbledore sighed. "My apologies again. I did not mean to bring up painful memories."
"Of course you didn't." Draco's tone was at odds with his words, but he reached into the satchel at his side and pulled out a small burlap sack. "Thirty large jars, and another five small jars. A thousand dimma for each large, and seven hundred together for the smalls."
Harry stared at the Sorcerer when he threw those numbers out. No wonder Draco said finding enchanted objects was profitable! Dumbledore, on the other hand, winced. "That is highway robbery, and you know it."
"Sure it is. I'm also the only game in town. If you don't want them, I can walk outside and pop the jars open—"
"Now, now, Draco," Dumbledore said quickly. "There's no need to be hasty. I'm sure an arrangement could be made. I will be happy to pay your normal rate of six hundred per large and fifty per small jar, and once more I truly am sorry for what I said. It was a slip of the tongue, nothing more."
Draco looked like he wants to push back on the price, but he turned to look at the expressions on the other Adventures' faces. "Fine," he said when he looked back at Dumbledore. "Six hundred and fifty respectively."
That was still… eighteen thousand, two hundred and fifty? Harry thought he had done that math right. Even split four ways, it would be more than he and Dudley has ever earned off a single job before. Assuming Draco planned on splitting it in the first place, he remembered; he had, after all, already paid them for retrieving the items he had turned over to fill these jars. Whatever profit he made after that was his own to do with however he pleased.
Dumbledore did not appear any happier at the sum once he calculated it either, but nonetheless he pulled a thick ledger out from a drawer and flipped to somewhere in the middle. "I can give you just under eleven thousand today, and the rest in a couple of months. You know Hogwarts always pays her debts."
"Slowly, but yes," Draco agreed with obvious reluctance. He shrugged and pulled a rectangular box out of the satchel. "I guess you can't afford these then. Oh well."
"Are those…?"
Draco opened the box and held it open so Dumbledore could stare hungrily into it. "Four wands. Ten thousand dimma a piece."
Dudley nudged Harry, and he nodded. Draco had gotten five wands out of the manor. Where was the last one?
"I can't afford it with the currency of this world," Dumbledore cautioned, "but that is not the same as not being able to afford them at all. Name your price, and I will get you that much in galleons—"
Draco closed the box with a loud snap. "I told you before, Dumbledore: galleons and sickles are worthless to me. I only deal in real money. You want to buy treasures with rubbish? Find a fool to do business with."
Dumbledore held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "Just because Gringotts is gone does not make them worthless. I am sure the there is someone in this world who can melt them down and work with raw silver and gold."
"Many, which would only matter if the Wizarding World has not been duped by the goblins for centuries." Draco gave the old man a hard smile. "Your currency isn't gold or silver or even bronze. It's just rock that was glamoured to look like precious metals. I know. I had a smith try to melt them down into something useful, and all he got for his efforts was slag. Your scraps are nothing to me. Keep them, and I will keep the wands."
"No one else will buy them," Dumbledore reminded him. "As you said, Hogwarts and Diagon Alley are the only enclaves of the magical world left. Muggles can't use them, not even the users of the Muggle magic you are so enamored with. They are useless to anyone else."
"That sounds like it will be my problem, doesn't it? Let me handle my affairs, and I will stay out of yours. How many people are living here without a functional wand?" Draco added. "There can't be that many adults whose wands still work properly and can cast proper spells. To say nothing of all the children who can't learn magic. No wands, no potion ingredients, no magical creatures or plants from Earth; even the stars are different from the world we came from."
"You are a cruel man," Dumbledore scolded Draco with a frown.
"I consider myself practical." The box returned to the satchel, and Draco turned away from the old man standing behind his desk. "Sounds like we're done here."
"Wait! Wait." Draco put on an expression of mock surprise for the other Adventurers before smoothing his face and twisting around to meet Dumbledore's eyes. The old wizards tapped his fingers on the desk in front of him and sighed. "What if I could provide you with raw gold instead of Muggle currency?"
"I think if you had any to offer me, you would have brought it up before now."
"I don't have it at this moment, but that is not the same as being unable to acquire it." Draco tilted his head and waited for him to continue. "You should know this, but I was a student of the greatest alchemist of all time in my youth. I may not have a Philosopher's Stone, but there are other methods to produce precious metals. They are simply delicate and difficult. Give me a little time, and I can get enough to pay for the wands as well as what I still owe you for the jars."
"Three days. You have three days to gather four hundred ounces of pure gold."
Harry could not tell if Dumbledore was more surprised by the fact Draco agreed, by the amount of time he was given, or by how much gold he was expected to produce. The old wizard nodded regardless. "I can do that."
"Good. Because if you can't, I am leaving and taking the wands with me, and you will never see them again."
Draco stormed out the door and down the stairs, and the others looked at each other and raced after him. They found him leaning against the wall next to the gargoyle with his eyes closed. "Sorry you had to see that."
"Which part? You taking that guy to the cleaners?" Dudley asked with a snort.
Hermione glared at the Knight before looking back at Draco. "Please tell me there was a reason beyond simple greed for why you gave him such harsh terms."
"There was, though I don't know if you would like that reason any better than greed." Draco opened his eyes, and despite Harry's expectation there was no satisfaction to be found. The Sorcerer just looked tired. "There might have been some petty revenge involved."
"You would hurt a whole town to take revenge on one man?"
"No, but I will hurt a whole town to get revenge on that town, and hurt a man to get revenge on him. Dumbledore likes to find and push people's buttons, and I have unfortunately had enough dealings with him that he has learned several of mine. It might have served him well when he all but led a country, but here it is nothing more than a bad habit he is unwilling to break. I don't much enjoy being taunted about what my mother would think of my behavior or actions, so already I'm tempted to gouge him when it comes to the prices. Not to mention that every time he can't cover his entire bill – or more accurately, doesn't want to do so – he offers me some worthless trinket or old currency that no one outside of other wizards will accept. I think he intends to use it to pull me back into this world.
"I wish him luck with that one," Draco added. "I've dealt with enough rejection from 'proper wizards' that I have less than no intention of giving them any other opportunities. That plays into the revenge on the people within Hogwarts. For almost as long as I can remember, they mocked and belittle me because I was curious about the magic of this world. Even the mere idea that there might be something worth learning from other races or the Spires was met with laughter and, later, punishment. They resisted any sort of change even as the foundations of their society crumbled around them. Do you know how that changed when I started finding and bringing jars filled with magic to them so they could keep the wards and the other enchantments in this castle going? When I brought wands back from my travels so they could keep using the spells they had known their entire lives?"
Harry shook his head. They had no way to hazard even a guess, but Draco was not asking a real question. This feeling towards the society of his birth was clearly collecting inside him like a poison, and the only way to help him was to give him the opportunity to purge it from his heart and soul. "How did it change?"
"It didn't! My knowledge, my Mark, and my skills are the only reason this precious little bubble of theirs hasn't collapsed on them already, and I get not one peep of thanks or apology! I have them and their entire way of life in the palm of my hand, and they still treat me like shite!" Draco panted lightly after that outburst, and it took him several seconds to put himself back together. "I'm not asking for much. I don't want them to fall down at my feet and beg for forgiveness, though I certainly wouldn't turn it down from some people. I don't want to be made king of the wizards. I just want the respect that my actions – all for their benefit, mind you – deserve. I don't think that's too much to ask."
"Is that also why you kept your old Earth wand after it transformed into a Gaia wand?" Harry asked. "As two fingers to the wizards?"
That question startled Draco, but after a moment he gave Harry a wry smile. "I suspected you figured that out yesterday. Yes, that's part of the reason. The other reason is that typical Gaia wands don't work with any kind of Earth spells, even those I've managed to adapt to this world's magic. It has to be an Earth wand. I'm sure there is some way to make a wand capable of it without waiting for an Earth wand to transform, but I have yet to figure it out."
"Question," Dudley said, distracting both of them. "If these people don't leave this castle, how does this Dumbledore guy have dimma to pay you with in the first place?"
"They can't be entirely isolated. If they were, how would Draco have learned about the Spires and Marks in the first place?" Hermione pointed out.
"You're actually both right. Most wizards have no interactions at all with the outside world, but a few go to New Diagon from time to time. Mostly I think it's for trade, like different kinds of food. They need dimma to buy anything. As for how they get it?" Draco shrugged. "I don't really know. I've long suspected Dumbledore has some way of getting money whenever he really needs it, though whether that's from extracting metals from the mountain or duplicating something to sell over and over or some other method entirely I couldn't tell you. It's another reason I could push him on how much he needs to buy the wands. I didn't expect him to admit to being able to make gold on demand, and I don't know if I even believe him about that. He might be using the alchemy excuse to blind me to how he really plans to get all that gold. There is just no telling with him."
"So we just have to sit around and wait for three days while he does whatever?" asked Dudley.
"I guess I did say I wouldn't leave until he had a chance to get the gold, didn't I?" Draco said with a wince. "Bugger me. You three don't have to stay here if you don't want to. The warp stone will take you back to Diagon, and I'll meet up with you there."
Harry shook his head and gripped Draco's shoulder with one hand. "After seeing how this place is affecting you, you will just have to put up with me sticking around."
"Where Harry goes, I go," Dudley said without hesitation.
Hermione blinked at him in confusion. "I can find plenty of things to look at and places to explore in a castle like this. You don't have to worry about me getting bored."
Draco did not seem to know what to say to the outpouring of support he received, and he swallowed a few times before he could speak in a normal voice. "Thank you. I know where there are some available rooms, for guests and the like. We can stay there. Let me show you the way, then I need an hour or so to take care of another errand."
"You don't want us to join you on that one?" Harry asked.
"No. I'd rather you didn't. This one is…" Draco grimaced. "…personal."
Yay, finally at Hogwarts. This should mark the roughly halfway point of the story, assuming my notes are accurate and my muse doesn't throw me some curveballs.
Silently Watches out.