Aba Rajan Interlude
Despite not being a 'big fish' in the wizarding world, Wizarding Turkey was a comfortable place to live. Its economy was stable. Its few schools had produced some notable wizards in the past. Its government was rather lenient and lax, and the culture was laid back.
In other words, life was decent for most Turkish Wizards. Especially those who lived in the hidden villages, far from the non-magicals, known to them as Yokbuyus.
Nobody liked the Yokbuyus. Their odd religions, idiotic beliefs, and strange technologies were frequent causes of discomfort and anger.
The wizards knew that magic was always superior.
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Aba Rajan was a young man who lived in Derin Orman, a small village of the Northern Woods.
He and his clan owned plenty of land there, though not all of it was tame. Tradition maintained that some of their land should be kept 'wild' lest the beasts that lived there become weak and useless for potions.
The potions that the Rajan clan was so well-regarded for.
"Mother. I'm off." He called.
"Come back soon!" She shouted back at him, from where she was bent over her cauldron.
Aba winced. He'd always been telling his mother to sit up straight when brewing, but she never heeded his advice. As a result, her spine was constantly bowed and hunched.
He'd told her to see the doctors, but she never listened to that either.
Putting on his Giant-hide cloak, he stepped out into the cool air of the outside. Behind him, his tower-like house loomed, tall and thin, like another tree of the landscape.
With a flex of his will, he apparated. It was just a short distance, so he had no need for his wand.
The dark-haired boy appeared in front of a pile of ruins. An ancient castle, destroyed and dilapidated from some great battle hundreds of years ago, was all that muggles would see.
Aba knew better though. He rapped his hand on a slightly discolored stone, and light flared, obscuring his vision. When it died down, he found himself somewhere completely different.
A bazaar swarming with people. Shouting reached his ears. Lights glimmered in the sky, where magical lamps brightened the expansive place.
There were food shops where wizard cooks boasted their skills with bread and sugar. There were clothes shops where each table housed mountains of carefully enchanted linens. An apothecary displayed rows upon rows of potions, potion ingredients, and cooking apparatuses like cauldrons and pots. There was even a small, tidy wand-shop tucked into a corner somewhere.
This was Derin Zengin, where pockets ran deep with gold and wonder. And Aba was amazed by it no matter how many times he visited.
After relishing the sights, he began moving again. After all, he had friends to meet and errands to run.
First, his feet carried him to the hospital. There, he had to meet with a particularly stupid family member.
A mediwitch greeted him outside the room.
"Ah, hello Mr. Rajan. Here to see your father?"
"Yes. Mother has been insistent that I see him, despite the fact that he has only been hospitalized for three days."
The witch gave him a sympathetic look.
"Yes, mothers can be... extremely worried over the slightest things..." She mused. "Well, maybe I should hold my tongue. After all, the potion your father came into contact with was... rather serious. It's a miracle he wasn't harmed more than he was."
Aba's mouth quirked to the side in annoyance, but he internally agreed with the mediwitch. His father's condition, while not serious, could have been much worse had anything occurred differently during his brewing accident. And as annoying as his old man was sometimes, Aba would certainly shed tears over his death.
He stepped through the doorway and observed the man inside.
"Oy, where can I get some good Deletrius Daal in this place, eh?" The old man called out to no one. Then he saw Aba. "Oh, son, you're here. It's about time! Do you think you could bring me something from home? The food in this hosiptal tastes like flobberworm dung!"
Aba's eye twitched in annoyance.
"Well, Babam, I came to see you since mother was worried, but it seems you're doing fine and have nothing important to say to me."
Having said his piece, the man turned and started walking back out the door.
"Wait, wait!" Aba stopped and turned, eyebrow raised. "I love you son, now will you just talk to me? I've been stuck in this bed for days now, and the potions aren't healing me any faster today than they were yesterday."
"When are you getting out, anyway?" Asked Aba.
His bedridden father waved a hand uncaringly.
"Oh, sometime in a week or two. But please, what's been happening while I was gone? Did your mother finally finish... the potion?"
The younger man stared at the older one incredulously.
"It's been three days, Babam. Mother has been trying to make the potion for years now. You know this. What makes you think she'd finish it now?"
The old man was sheepish.
"Well, you never know..." He said. "And besides, I was too busy thinking in this awful place, and wondering how much I was missing. Then my imagination became wilder and wilder from there. You know how it is."
Aba sighed. Indeed, he knew how it was.
"Well, to sate your burning curiosity, nothing of note has happened in the past three days. Well, Jalil's mate gave birth to a new litter. They are extremely cute."
The old man slammed his fist down on the table next to him, wincing as if in pain.
"Dammit." He said. "We have kittens now, and I can't even see them!"
The younger man shrugged.
"I'll leave you to your recovery. Since you're so bored, I'll have Baris courier you some newspapers."
"Ah, I knew my son still loved me!" The old man dramatically exclaimed.
Aba just smiled, waved, and left.
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Aba's next stop was the apothecary. The owner, Miss Yesim had acquired a stock of rare Sphinx hair recently, and he wanted to buy some before everyone else bought it all up.
Sphinx fur was often good for lessening the worse side-effects of intelligence-boosting potions. If Aba was able to incorporate the hairs into his potions, then their value would skyrocket.
Unlike the rest of Derin Zengin's shops, the apothecary was not open-air. Instead, it was behind glass windows and a windowed door, preserving the atmosphere of an open-air market, but keeping it separate from the rest of the bazaar.
Bells jingled as he opened the door and stepped in. The market's roar died down when he closed it.
"Hello?" He called.
"Yes?" Came a voice from behind some shelves.
He knew that voice. It was James, an employee of the apothecary.
"Hey James. I heard you had some Sphinx fur, and I wanted to buy some."
A man with a scraggly beard popped his head up over the shelf.
"Sphinx fur? Yes, please buy it! We've got a whole pound of the stuff!"
That was... a lot.
The European man took him to a back room, where even more shelves were. Each contained some strange material. Eyeballs, bones, sinew. Leaves, stems, petals. Special sands, iridescent grains.
Eventually, they came to the fur section.
"Here you are." Said James, drawing out a jar. Inside the jar was a clump of fine golden hairs.
"This right here is ten grams, and it's currently going for four Dinraal-per-gram."
Aba took out forty coins from his pouch. He and James swapped hands, a satisfied smile on each's face.
"Thanks for your business!"
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Aba's next person to visit was an old friend of his, a woman who went by the name of Mira. She was a forest scholar, by which it was meant that she studied the natural world and the creatures that inhabited it.
She had been in Derin Orman for the past year, studying the Northern Forest's ecology.
"Mira, how are you?" Asked Aba in English.
She nodded.
"Just fine. Made some breakthroughs recently."
"The forest is looking fine?" He asked.
"Oh, yes. It's alright, though there have been some concerning developments lately."
He frowned.
As a potioneer of Derin Orman, Aba relied on that forest for most of his ingredients. If anything happened to it, then he could lose quite a lot of money.
"Like what?" He asked.
"Well, when I checked the latest migration cycle, I found lower populations of greyskin trolls, Haba Gremlins, and Mini Rocs. Much lower."
"You think something is killing them?"
She shrugged.
"Maybe some strong creature moved into the forest. A creature strong enough to eat trolls..."
Upon hearing those words, Aba remembered the Canavar Ayi.
It was a story he'd been told by his grandfather. A story of a giant, monstrous bear that lived deep within the forest and before winter would stalk the forest devouring all that came within its grasp. When it roared, one would become too frightened to move.
He hadn't been sure whether or not his grandfather had been telling the truth, but if there was something in the forest that was eating Greyskin trolls, then it could be the Canavar Ayi.
"It could be that a dragon had moved into the area. Though I hope not, since it would mean we have undocumented dragons in the area. That would be a nightmare." Mira continued.
A dragon would fit the bill too, Aba supposed.
"Anything else?" Aba asked.
Mira shook her head.
"Not especially. Well, we lost track of one of the Haba Gremlin tribes, but I'm sure they're still somewhere in the forest. Apart from that, everything else looks stable."
"That's a relief." Said Aba.
Mira nodded.
He left, having more shopping to do.
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He spent the next few hours walking around the bazaar and buying various groceries and ingredients, the same way he had at the apothecary. Some items he knew his mother would want. Others were for himself.
Prices were particularly low today too. A wonderful thing.
After a while, Aba found himself walking out of the crowded marketplace, full bags in hand. He cast a notice-me-not on himself, and apparated out of Derin Zengin, back to his home.
As he did, he felt a chill from the air, and cast a warming charm in response.
His bags were laden with ingredient after ingredient, which he dumped down on his kitchen table at home.
"Mother, I'm back!" He shouted.
"I'm brewing! Don't bother me!" She shouted back.
All in all, it was a good day for a simple potioneer like himself.