disclaimer: I own nothing
Author's Note: I wrote this as a gift for my beta, Tina Mairin Goldstein, when they joined ao3 because they love Howl's Moving Castle. But I thought I would post it here too! (They're also on here if you want to check them out) Updates will be irregular, unfortunately, but they will come. I've also never written a Teslen story before. I like it just fine, but I'm more of Magnitt shipper when it comes down between the two.
Ironically, this was unbeta'd. (Because I wasn't going to make them beta their own gift) Enjoy!
*For the purposes of the story, the Five are eighteen or a little older and both Druitt and Tesla are older than Magnus.
Helen Magnus had been born into a world where the subjects of her father's work had become known to the world at large when she had been a small child. So all she knew was a world were humans knew that abnormals (not all of them, however) existed.
She had no idea that it was strange for her to have such an intimate knowledge of abnormals.
Her father had started teaching her young, soon after her mother had died. It had probably been a way to distract him from his grief, but Gregory Magnus had never discriminated his daughter for her gender.
Helen had been on the precipice between girlhood and womanhood when her father had taken in two young men. Perhaps a subsitute for the siblings she'd never had? He had never said.
She didn't care.
James Watson was her father's official apprentice, though he taught Helen right alongside him, training the both of them to be doctors. They drove each other forward in a cheerful competition. It was something that most people wouldn't have afforded Helen.
John Druitt had a fine working knowledge of medicine, but he wasn't interested in pursuing it as Helen and James were. Law and teaching were where his interests lay, though he was always willing to join in an experiment or a study with the other two, especially if Helen was the one who asked.
Neither man-or even Gregory, truly-could resist Helen when she put her mind to something.
Helen herself didn't even truly notice the effect that she had on the men. She just knew that they indulged and encouraged her mind when most of society didn't. Most of society was still afraid of abnormals and Gregory treated his patients under the table, away from the prying eyes of society.
Abnormals avoided the big cities these days, except for the ones that lived in Gregory's London house and he had people to run that for him. So Gregory had moved his strange mix of a family to a smaller town where the Magnus family owned property and established a clinic for all kinds.
Helen had spent an afternoon affixing a wooden sign above the doorway and painting the words 'Sanctuary for All' on it. It was the first official branch of the Sanctuary.
To Helen's utter delight, the smaller town, away from the high society of London, allowed her more leeway in what she did. She was able to work alongside Gregory and James in the clinic.
People shook their heads and muttered at first, but soon found that they were grateful for a feminine touch in a clinic that charged low and provided the most expert care. Even though Gregory and James were compassionate towards their patients, people preferred Helen dealing with women's problems and illnesses.
The abnormals, on the other hand, didn't care.
So Helen spent her days learning and practicing in the clinic. She technically wasn't legally allowed to practice medicine, but women had been treating women for hundreds of years without licenses, delivering babies and doing things men wouldn't. And no one regulated abnormal medicine.
John found a teaching position at the local school, but helped with the abnormals when he could.
They had been in the country for six months when the rumors started flying again.
The vampires were rising up again.
That was more worrying to the members of the Magnus household than to most other people. Gregory had educated Helen and the other two with the knowledge of the vampires. How they had once ruled the Earth and society and then, when they had mostly fallen, the Dark Ages had occurred.
The vampires that were still alive were sterilized and underground. Until now. The rumors were saying that they had come to England. That the vampire queen wanted to establish a stronghold here. No one had truly seen them. But when people vanished and there was no explanation, it was said to be the vampires.
Helen took the stories with more than a grain of salt and didn't notice the worry that creased Gregory's brow when anyone mentioned it or she asked for more information about the race.
About eight months after the vampire rumors started, everyone started talking about the moving castle.
All four of them initially scoffed at the stories, until it suddenly appeared in the hills and moors surrounding the town.
That sent everyone into a flurry of panic. Unnecessary panic, in Helen's opinion.
She had spent what she had been hoping would be an educational hour or so on the roof of the clinic, watching the castle. It was a rather small castle-more traditional stronghold style than royal residence-and it did indeed move. She couldn't tell from the distance how it moved, but it certainly went from hill to hill, field to field. It never came close enough for her to tell how it moved. But it didn't do anything, other than puff smoke into the sky and issue an occasional bang. That 'educational' hour had been a disappointment.
Then came the rumors of its inhabitant.
Most people had thought that the castle belonged to the vampires. Only such a strange, terrifying, impossible structure could belong to them, after all.
That turned out not to be the case.
The castle belonged to a man called Tesla and he was said to be very wicked indeed. He had managed to make the castle move across the land, after all, and that couldn't have been achieved through any known, normal means. He was also said to be a hunter of women.
The rumors that spread through the town was that he chased down and caught young women. What he did with them, no one knew for certain. Some said he ate their hearts. Some said he stole their souls. Tesla was said to be cold and wicked and delight in the suffering he inflicted on his victims. Young women in town were warned not to go anywhere alone, lest he steal them away and devour them.
Gregory scoffed at these rumors. He told Helen that they translated to he took them and had his way with them. He admittedly could not say if the girls were willing participants in this or not (though some most definitely had to have been) and did warn her to watch herself. He also ordered the boys to keep an eye on her.
This irked Helen, especially since no girl from their town had actually gone missing or claimed to have been any sort of victim of the infamous Tesla. That didn't matter to Gregory, however. He wanted his daughter to be safe and a safe daughter he would have.
No one who came into the clinic had been inside the castle or even near it. Everyone was too afraid of it to get too close. Helen, for her part, had never tried to slip away from her keepers to go and investigate. She saw no point, even if it was intriguing. Especially when lightning bolts occasionally shot out the top.
Soon enough, the castle and, indeed, the rumors of the vampires and Tesla became a part of daily life.
The castle became a fixture. The vampires didn't seem to be doing anything. Tesla never showed his face in town.
It was all still a source of intrigue, but not disruptive or out of the ordinary for the Magnus household.
Until Gregory suddenly disappeared.
At first, it wasn't too big of a worry. He had headed out to see if the rumors of an abnormal were true or not in France. That wasn't unusual. Being late in returning was not unusual and Gregory was the kind of man who meant to but always forgot to send a telegram.
When he was gone a month longer than he should have been, that was when Helen, James, and John started to worry.
James contacted the police in Helen's place, because they were more likely to listen to him. John made inquiries as well. Nothing came up. Gregory had gone on the trip alone and he had just vanished.
Helen immediately wanted to go look for her father, but practicality took over, in the form of the three of them sitting down and having a conversation about what to do.
Logic took over, eventually.
As James pointed out, they all cared about Gregory, but there was no point in going after a trail that was over a month cold. None of Gregory's network of associates knew where he was or what abnormal he had been after. They had lives to see to, despite the disappearance of their patriarch. The clinic and London house needed to continue to function. In Gregory's absence, they needed to handle the abnormals that were reported. And, frankly, money needed to come in to keep everything running.
Helen agreed, however reluctantly.
She spent her days in the clinic, caring for the people that didn't seem to care that her whole world had fallen into pieces, trying to figure out what to do.
On a rare break, Helen stood in her father's study, trying to glean all the information she could from the papers there. She glanced out the window when she found absolutely nothing.
The moving castle continued on its way across the moors without a care for what was going on beneath its nose, just a much a mystery as the day it had arrived.
Author's Note: I want to give a shout-out to SpiritHawk7 for helping me with the science of a very special door, though that won't appear for another two to three chapters. Brainstorming with them really helped and I appreciate it. :) (God, the notes are pretty long for a chapter of this length)
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