Chapter 7
“So, Roy, earlier today Albus said he was bringing someone over who needed a job,” Charlie started, leaning back into his wooden chair. They were seated at a small square table tucked next to the fireplace, and a long couch covered in leather and what looked like fox and wolf furs dominated the main space. A small kitchenette made up the other side of the room and a small hallway led down an opening next to the main entrance, likely a bedroom and bathroom. It reminded him a lot of late Berthold Hawkeye’s house, and the thought didn’t sit pleasantly. Fire licked at the corners of his mind while they lingered in the cottage.
“That is correct,” Roy confirmed, legs crossed. It helped that he was wearing a sort of hunting trousers for wizards instead of those dastardly robes that the kids and Dumbledore wore. He was all for a trenchcoat, but he drew the line at a dress. “Forgive me for my bluntness, though, Albus and Charlie - is this sanctuary legal and sanctioned?”
Charlie’s eyebrows rose and he let out a surprised chuckle, but Roy was mostly looking at Albus, trying to convey to him what he thought about this venture, dragon or not. The man merely stared back in amusement.
“Ah, I’m not sure if I should legally answer that,” Charlie admitted.
“Why not?” Roy asked.
“Well, it’s complicated,” Charlie said, shrugging. “I’d need like six lawyers with how much red tape this place runs through and by. But I suppose for the short answer, yes and no.”
“Yes and no?” Roy parried, intrigued. Perhaps this place was not as it seemed. Could he potentially have unknowingly fallen into some incredibly shady shit?
“Before I tell you more, let’s go through with the interview process,” Charlie dismissed, and Roy was further interested, uncrossing his legs to sit straight and observe the man with calculated eyes. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see a gleam of something premeditated in his green gaze. “Have you ever worked for a sanctuary before?”
“Yes,” Roy answered. “I’ve been involved with military conservation work, specifically for our marines.”
“A military man,” Charlie said, leaning forward. “My my, Albus, why didn’t you tell me I was going to host one of the corps? Why didn’t you say you were from America, I would have had some beer for you.”
“I would have loved a glass, actually,” Roy admitted, thinking about America. America - Amestris - America - Amestris. Interesting. And it seemed beer was also universal. He’d have to ask the boys and Izumi if they’d drawn similar comparisons, and he made a mental note to look into America. He had a feeling he’d find some interesting information.
“It simply slipped my mind, Charlie,” Albus said good-naturedly. “Roy here is also an alchemist, specializing in flames. Why don’t we go outside for a demonstration, if that is acceptable for you, Roy?”
“Alchemy? What can alchemy do that magic can’t?” Charlie exclaimed. “Surely nothing beats Fiendfyre.”
“Oh, I’m sure Roy can give us a good show,” Albus said. “Are you up for it, my boy?”
“Before we go outside to see something one of my dragons can do, I’m going to finish up with these interview questions,” Charlie insisted, tapping his hand on the table when Albus gestured to the door. Roy had braced himself to stand and instead chuckled, leaning back into his seat.
“Please, by all means.”
“What is your immigration status?”
Albus clucked his tongue ruefully. “Forgive me, Charlie, for Roy here does not exist. At least, in terms of legal citizenry.”
Silence, and then Charlie laughed again. “Man, you guys are hilarious.”
Roy shrugged, quiet, not able to deny Albus’s claim but also not willing to speak for it. He didn’t like it much more than he supposed Charlie did. Paperwork for a new hire that didn’t legally exist? A nightmare. Roy might as well just walk away right then. Figuring out how he was going to excuse his lack of papers when it was obvious (supposedly) that he had been part of the military in the country America was going to be difficult. When it was apparent that Albus wasn’t lying - Roy hadn’t smiled and Albus was simply gazing serenely at the laughing man - Charlie slowly stopped to stare at Roy with a considering gaze.
“Huh,” he said. “That actually might be perfect.”
“Was it even legal to ask me immigration status to begin with?” Roy asked, but he suspected the answer. “What exactly do you accomplish here besides taking care of dragons?”
“We trade,” Charlie said jovially. “We trade for a lot of money.”
“Let me guess,” Roy said, suddenly catching on. “You don’t let corporate know.”
Charlie laughed again and clapped a couple times, a very animated fellow. He supposed he would be, as well, if he’d grown up with seven siblings. “Oho, yeah, man, you’re so what we need. Okay, after your little light show, I want you to come back tomorrow morning. We’ll go over sales and I’ll introduce you to your first client. Don’t worry, he’s a regular so he’ll have a lot of patience.”
“Does that mean I have the job?”
“Maybe. Let’s think of this as a second interview, with a real client. In the meantime, I have another question.”
“Shoot,” Roy said, waving a hand.
“What would you do if a client handed you money for a company purchase directly instead of making it out to the company?” Charlie asked, drumming his fingers once, a subconscious gesture. “Would you keep it or turn it over? What if the client insisted that you keep it?”
How did he play this: conniving? Honest? Lawful? Charlie’s gaze was piercing despite his casual demeanor.
“I’m keeping whatever is leftover from the initial purchase,” Roy settled on. “In America we tip.”
America meaning Amestris meaning they aren’t a tipping culture but Roy gets tips because he’s greedy and irrevocably shameless and he had two boys who needed new gear. And honesty is the best policy when lying isn’t applicable. This interview question, something his gut told him, included.
The man threw his head back and laughed loudly, a guffaw as bright as his hair that shook the foundations of the tiny wooden cottage they were in. He was sure the dragons in the area could hear it echoing down to them, heads raising and wings lifting to the air in response. Albus had simply serenely kept his hands on the table and chuckled softly with Charlie.
“That’s a great answer, I can’t even tell if you’re serious or not. I knew I was gonna like you,” Charlie said, chuckles slowing to small sighs and a bright smile. “Well, pocketing the extra money is against company policy, but I’m not going to be your boss and I’ve done it myself, so what they won’t know won’t hurt ‘em. We’re not as structured or as observed as someone in the Ministry might be, so there’s a lot more room for freedom. Which is just the way I like it.”
Roy imagined that more freedom plus dragons did indeed make for an interesting and fun time. He wanted to see more of this place - a hidden pocket inside of a hidden world, containing beasts that could shape the course of history, not guarded, not watched, and secretly funding a secret war that was finally reaching the public. He supposed Charlie was warning him, in a way, to not mess with the flow he lived his life by.
He didn’t care that these beasts were supposedly untameable, however, not able to really take Charlie’s life into fair consideration when there was a war brewing. He imagined that Albus wanted him here so he could lay the foundations of a network through the purchase of dragon parts, and he would do so. But he was more interested in how dragons could play a part in a Search and Destroy operation for the Order of the Phoenix (which was a stupid name, but he supposed it matched the rest of the theme). They would need their own powerhouses capable of taking out larger forces their smaller numbers wouldn’t be able to handle. And what better to lay an attack on an enemy base than vicious flying beasts capable of breathing fire?
He just needed to figure out how to hide them. Sneaking them out would be easy, this he already knew, but guiding them to the correct location without drawing eyes and bringing suspicion to the Sanctuary was a different matter, and that was after he found a way to tame them. Perhaps this was more work than it was worth.
(In his head was a picture of him and the boys - and he supposed Izumi, to be nice - riding on the backs of dragons into battle, dominating during the Promised Day - )
“Okay, one last question before we go see your fireworks show,” Charlie said.
“Of course,” Roy said graciously.
“How do you feel about working undercover as a third wheel?”
Roy and Albus exchanged a glance, and Roy was annoyed to see Albus look entirely too proud of himself. Black market, indeed. The look was similar to one he’d worn himself, and seeing it directed at him was infinitely ungratifying.
“I was prepared for that the moment I asked Albus for help in finding a job,” he disclosed. “Not many places take someone with no papers.”
“Too true,” Charlie said, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Roy wondered how old Charlie was. “Well, then, let’s go view your show. I still don’t think I’ll be much impressed. It’s just fire, and I’ve seen all types of fires.”
Roy smirked, amused but anxious. He was good at talking to people. Really good. If this was sales, and sales connected to big bills, even better. Big sales meant important people, and important people were involved in all sorts of things. He had an in. A good in. Messing it up now by failing to impress this person was unacceptable. Roy was confident in his abilities, but he’d never seen a dragon before and he’d never seen a dragon’s fire. He didn’t know what he was up against in terms of power or flair.
“Very well,” he said, inclining his head. “Shall we find a spot that you don’t mind setting ablaze?”
“Yeah, definitely,” Charlie said, standing and making his way to the door. Roy and Albus followed, tucking their tiny wooden chairs under the tiny wooden table. “Can you control what it burns?”
“To a point,” Roy admitted. “Extreme wind can make my aim shaky and spread fires a lot quicker. I can snuff them out just as quickly as a failsafe, however.”
He followed Charlie down the steep cliff along a blocky staircase made of natural granite. Goats lingered along the path, chewing through berry bushes and long grass under a cloudy, grey sky. He wondered if it was going to rain, and for the first time, wondered how he could improve his flame alchemy with magic. Starting fires in the rain would have saved him a lot of hassle back when Scar was after them all.
His alchemy wasn’t specifically about fire, but about controlling the elements that made up the air to create flames out of a spark or a fire that already existed. He could encapsulate and grow and aim and destroy with this ability, but getting his gloves wet made it harder to create flames on demand. He could also snuff a flame out using the same array, demonstrated in Ishval when a group of his soldiers had been trapped in one of the burning buildings. He’d scattered the elements and drawn them away from the flames in an instance, the array hastily activated and held up in the wind as a focal point, hand white and high like a beacon. Now he wouldn’t need a drawn array to blanket fires. He could simply picture the array, press his fingertips together, touch the air - and watch the fire blink out of existence like it was never there. It would look so badass.
“Alright, then, show us what you got,” Charlie said when they settled at the base of an outcropping in the mountain. It looked like something else had cleared the area already, barren and scorched. “Luna had used this place to cook her cow, so it’s already prepped for another fire. Have at it.”
“Gentlemen,” Roy said and fitted his glove onto his bare hand in dramatic flair. Charlie’s eyes were drawn to his scars and then to the alchemical symbol on the back of the glove. Heavens knew what he was thinking now. “With a simple snap of my fingers, I can create a torrent of flame.”
He snapped.
Oxygen laced together in a zap of red like lightning, the very air vibrating in a spindly line visible to the naked eye. The lightning faded for just a split second before the ground shook, violent flames exploding outwards in a wave of intense heat. They all shielded their faces, skin searing pink and hair burning away on exposed forearms. The flames continued for just a moment more before settling, and Roy touched his fingertips together before touching the air.
Flames shifted from a chaotic dance to a choreographed ballet. Balls of flames bounced from area to area, zapping back and forth in a tangle of movement. Fire spouts bloomed and faded, and Roy even saturated the hydrofluorocarbon in the air containing atoms of fluorine, attaching them to each of two carbon atoms to create difluoroethane, a common air cleaner formula sold by the hundreds in large markets in the major cities of Amestris. With this air cleaner, he shot it upwards in small flowers like fireworks of water and snapped once more but with his other hand to create another spark.
Orange flowers flashed through the air in random spots, picturesque and bright and fun. To finish his light show, as Charlie dubbed it, he touched his fingers together and reached for the earth, pulling potassium straight from the ground as he had with the magnesium sulfate at Hohenheim’s funeral. Fire flowers changed from orange to purple, and the shapes shifted from bright sunflowers to fairies.
He supposed since dragons were real, so were fairies. And if not, maybe he could capitalize on the creation of a new fantasy creature.
This shape was harder for him to maintain. The difluoroethane flashed quickly despite being easy to handle, and creating more was easy in the open air but tedious. He was making the fairies move, too, flickering like old film through scenes of dances and poses for their male audience. Charlie sat enraptured, green eyes wide with childish glee, while Albus stood to the side.
He finished with a small bow, almost mocking, and said, “I didn’t know if I would be able to do that, to be completely honest. I’ve never tried to use my alchemy as entertainment.”
“Fine entertainment indeed, Mr Roy,” Albus said. “Fine entertainment, indeed.”
“That was bloody spectacular,” Charlie said. “I was expecting a couple explosions, maybe a fire spout, but flowers? Purple fairies? Genius, man, just genius. How did you do it? I thought alchemy was something that even muggles could do, but this looked more like magic than magic.”
“Where did you hear something like that, Charlie?” Albus asked him. Charlie blinked at Albus.
“Why, something I’d read back in school. It was in the library - I couldn’t tell you the name for the life of me. But you’re telling me all of that was just alchemy? There was no magic at all?”
“If this were even a week ago, I would tell you without a doubt yes, what I just accomplished is only alchemy,” Roy admitted. “But now I’m not sure what the answer is. I wasn’t aware that magic existed just two weeks ago, and yet so far all of the alchemists I can speak to about this are confirmed magical, including myself. So far I have yet to test this hypothesis.”
“What an interesting observation, Mr Roy,” Albus said. “You said yourself that anyone could learn alchemy back in your country, is it merely the existence of magic that is affecting your statistics?”
“Yes,” Roy said. “What if the people that gave up weren’t able to succeed not because they were incompetent, but because they were incapable? It would change a lot of things.”
“Interesting,” Charlie said. “Do you have anyone you can call over?”
“Ah,” Roy said, blank. “Not particularly.”
“Roy is on what his family describes as a work vacation. He’s not allowed to work while overseas,” Albus chuckled. Roy smiled awkwardly and nodded; this excuse was as good as any, and more in line with his character. He took note of how casually Albus lied, and how natural it looked.
“Ah, good man,” Charlie exclaimed, clapping Roy on the shoulder in a manly display of unity. “The things we tell our loved ones while we go on to make a fuck ton of galleons.”
“Exactly,” Roy said, laughing.
“So Charlie,” Albus started. Charlie faced him curiously.. “Could Roy meet a dragon while we’re here?”
Roy’s throat clogged at the thought. Even though they were on the land and he’d even seen a dragon glide above him, he still felt somehow removed from the reality of the fire-breathing giant lizards. The idea of meeting one caused him to be slightly nauseous with nerves.
“Oh, absolutely. I have just the one. Have you ever heard of an Antipodean Opaleye? She’s a right beaut.”
///
Izumi’s first foray into teaching alchemy to a bunch of brats went as well as expected.
Her first class was on Monday afternoon, which suited her just fine. She’d witnessed Mustang leave after saying goodbye to the boys while she sat at the Head table with most of the other teachers during breakfast, the smell of bacon and eggs drifting about the cavernous room. Albus was elsewhere and so was Pomona. She reckoned that Mustang was cornering Albus to finally be helpful, and Pomona was in the greenhouse attending to her first plants of the semester. Izumi had wished her good luck the night before, grown close to the jolly woman.
Filius sat next to her during breakfast in Pomona’s stead, his short stature not impeding his incredible mobility at all. He was a kind man, and she listened as he talked of the ‘old days’ as a duelist and confidant of the All-England Wizarding Duel Competition’s stage director. They must have spent the whole meal talking about the mind and how performative art could shift perception. He made sure she knew who to call if she needed to trick someone, waving goodbye enthusiastically when breakfast ended. She didn’t tell him that she might end up calling in that favor.
She took a long bath in the time between breakfast and her first class, thinking of her husband, Sig. He would be fine tending to the shop by himself, but she might have been reported dead while he was shouldering on, as stoic as he was. She wanted to prove that she lived - to throw herself into his large arms and round stomach, so soft and hard and strong . . .
Refreshed and rejuvenated after her bath, she then made her way to her new classroom to prepare for her first class, not fully ruminating about how permanent the setup seemed. Back in Resembool, she had acreage after acreage of farmland, a doting husband, and a butcher shop where they lived simply and satisfactorily. This was just a decent-sized classroom inside a castle. Yet standing in this classroom she felt oddly like she was home, as fanciful as it was.
It was with this weird sense of nostalgia that she began her first class.
“Welcome,” she started, eyeing down the young children sitting in rows, with long, curving benches that tiered down like an auditorium. They all had bright gazes and sat forward earnestly, their weird feather-pens poised to start taking notes.
Before she could even get her first sentence to her first class out, a small girlish cough sounded from the entryway. Izumi looked over to see Dolores Umbridge in the doorway, dressed in a bright pink skirt with pink rose buds in her curly brown locks. She had a pinched smile on her face.
“Pardon me for the interruption, Professor Curtis,” she said, stepping forward into the room. “As High Inquisitor, it is my duty to oversee each class at least once during the week. I have decided your first class would be quite suitable as I, and in turn, the Minister, am rather interested in alchemy as well. If you wouldn’t mind, please continue as if I am not here.”
With her words, she strode to one of the empty bench seats on the corner of the auditorium rows, a small clipboard pressed onto the desk with delicate hands. She sat primly, and the students in her immediate vicinity eyed her warily. Some kids in the back were making fun of her, Izumi observed, a small smile threatening to bloom across her stern countenance.
“Well, then, welcome class,” she started again, clasping her hands in front of her in a picture of a demure teacher. “The first thing I’d like to go over regarding alchemy is safety and rules. Please copy this down.”
She flipped the double-sided chalkboard behind her to show her elegant script in a simple numerical rule set.
- There will always be Equivalent Exchange.
- Transmuting humans is illegal, dangerous, and will likely end your life.
- To train in alchemy, you must train your body.
“These are important rules for this class. My goal is to help each and every one of you succeed in learning alchemy to the best of your abilities, and this means you must follow these rules.
“If I get word of one of you practicing alchemy by yourselves off in some dark corridor, your access to alchemy books within the school and your access to this classroom will be revoked,” she continued, eyeing each of them with all the seriousness she could muster. “Alchemy is not easy and has great cost. This brings us to rule number one.”
She turned to underline it with her chalk, then faced the class again.
“Alchemy is about Equivalent Exchange. With magic, there seems to be no cost to the person - only a set of ambiguous rules must be applied before your will shapes whatever result you desire. For alchemy, there is always a price.”
Izumi picked up a rock, showing it to the class in a great show of importance, before setting it down on an array in the middle of the classroom floor. Some kids had made quiet comments while they waited for class to start, but most seemed to disregard it as part of the decor.
She pressed gentle fingers to the edges of the array, and a small crackle of blue lightning leaped from the ground. Some students gasped and others leaned closer to see better. The lightning faded and the rock morphed into a new shape - angular instead of round, like a star candy from Xing. She picked it up and handed it to a student to pass around.
“Notice how the size of the rock did not change. There is not enough material in the rock to sustain a large diameter, not unless I were to hollow it out from the inside. To make the rock larger, I could pull from the ground around it, but then the elemental components of the rock change, and would require a change to the array to manipulate it again.”
“That sounds like a lot of work - how do we know what’s even in the rock?” a curious voice piped from the back, hand raised in an aborted movement. Umbridge’s face hadn’t moved a muscle, but she did write something down on her clipboard.
“Please wait for me to call on you before speaking, Ms. Hailsberry,” Izumi said. The girl looked properly contrite, muttering an apology. “To answer your question, alchemy is a permanent change to a material. Magic is only temporary. In some cases, it is very worth it to change the structure of something permanently.
“As for how to know what is inside of something, I will introduce the Elemental Table in another class. To know how to use alchemy, you will know how to read and differentiate between all the elements.”
A hand rose in the corner, a young boy with auburn layers. Izumi nodded to him.
“Professor, the second rule says that Transmuting humans is illegal and can result in death. What does that mean? Why humans and not something like wood?”
“Excellent question, Mr Cambell,” Izumi said. “Humans are not transmutable because we house a soul. If you were to tamper with the soul, it would cost something more than you can give, and you will wish you never had the thought to begin with.
“It ties it with Equivalent Exchange,” she continued in a louder voice. “There is nothing worth the price of a human soul, nothing at all, not even the weight of a thousand other souls. Do not try human transmutation.”
The rest of the class passed in a similar matter; students would raise their hands and ask the most interesting questions about alchemy she’d ever heard. She supposed it was due to the nature of what magic was, and bridging the connection was difficult for them to grasp in the logical way alchemy required. None of these kids grasped basic physics and chemistry, and most couldn’t even tell her what a right angle was. But there was promise there - their questions bordered on how to apply the energy for alchemy and the flow of the array. She’d have to educate them in science, and they definitely needed a crash course in learning how to run, but she saw potential.
Umbridge only sat through this first class, though she did leave with a cutesy, “Mhm!” Her eyes were barely visible inside the folds of her face, but when Izumi made firm eye contact she froze. There was something there - a glimmer that was familiar to her. It was the same kind of emotionless, devoid-of-life look she’d seen in the eyes of Selim. In the eyes of the Homunculus they’d glimpsed in Albus’s memory.
Umbridge left before Izumi could click open her frozen jaw, steps quiet but sharp and quick. She disappeared around the doorframe.
Izumi leaned against the first curving desk closest to the floor, suddenly weak. She didn’t know what that was. That look. Was the Homunculus able to shape-shift? Was it masquerading as an Inquisitor for the school? If so, what did it seek to accomplish here? Was it invested in her class so it could observe alchemy, or observe her? The questions never ended, but Dolores Umbridge just climbed to her number one spot for suspicious people, above even Albus.
She prepared for her next class, another group of first-years, in silence, and thought of empty laughter and an emptiness inside of her.
The end of the day brought with it relief, and she ate dinner in a reserved manner. Albus still wasn’t back, but Pomona was there. The woman had a heck of a day, it seemed, and she rattled on about her plants and about the promise of her students for this term. Filius seemed just as tired as Izumi and sat with a reserved air. It wasn’t until later, as he walked her to her room, that he disclosed Umbridge observing his class, as well.
“This isn’t looking to be a peaceful year,” he’d confided in her, short legs working twice as hard to keep up with her stuttered gate. “With rumors of the Dark Lord and the Ministry poking its head in at Hogwarts, I fear times are going to change, and quickly. Like they did back with Grindelwald.”
“Who’s Grindelwald?” she asked, curious.
“Gellert Grindelwald was another dark lord, one that Albus defeated himself. He unleashed terror upon the land and wanted to end the Statute of Secrecy. He believed in dominating the Muggles, you see, and thought of them as monkeys.”
“So Albus stopped him. Did he kill him?”
“Ah,” Filius said, voice catching. He must have spoken too much, she mused. “Well, Albus certainly tried to stop him and not kill him, but Grindelwald forced his hand. I don’t think Albus has forgiven himself, truly.”
“I see,” she said. “Don’t worry, Filius, I won’t tell a soul. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity.”
“Well, of course, Professor Curtis,” he said, smiling up at her through smudged glasses. “You’re very easy to talk to. I forget myself sometimes, my apologies if I’ve rambled your ear off earlier.”
“Nonsense,” she laughed, stopping in front of the knight portrait that guarded her and Roy’s rooms. “I do hope you have a good night, and sleep well.”
“You as well, Izumi, you as well. Goodnight.”