A New World Odor
By: Ivan Paganacci
Tags: Short Fiction, Harry Potter, Fantasy, Parody, Fanfiction

Witches and wizards are the new power elite and best friends Henry Porter, Harmony Danger and Rob Easily will have to learn magical skills if they want to find good jobs.

Photo by Bee Felten-Leidel on Unsplash

Blundermore was the world’s greatest wizard. On his deathbed, surrounded by his closest friends, he decided to cast a final spell. This was no ordinary spell, but a devastating creation that he had been toiling on in secret for most of his life — one that would, if successful, change the course of history.

He closed his eyes, made a motion with his hand like a symphony conductor and began repeating a series of peculiar words and sounds, each time with greater intensity. Then, having spent the last of his power, he died.

The effect was not immediately apparent and those who were present wondered aloud what he had done. The answer soon came when they saw countless non-magic folk starting to gather around their formerly invisible castle.

Many great mages would spend years trying to undo what he had done, while others would simply try to understand why he had done it. For Blundermore had done the unthinkable. He had reversed the ancient, long-lost spell that for eons had concealed the magic folk and their civilization from the realms of man.

#

Harmony Danger parked in front of Henry Porter’s apartment and waited for him to come down. They’d been friends since middle school and today they were going to school together again, this time at the nearby community college for their first day of magical vocational training. They had both dropped out of top universities, abandoning formerly promising careers in medicine and engineering in the hope of finding positions in one of the agencies the magic folk had set up after taking over the governments of the world.

Henry had tested 66/100 on the DMAT — Dummel Magical Aptitude Test — while Harmony had tested 94. “Dummel,” a term that Henry didn’t care for, was what the magic folk called a person born without magical abilities. The test determined not only to what extent a dummel could learn magic, but also their ability to wield such power responsibly. Henry’s best friend and Harmony’s boyfriend, Rob Easily, had tested with a score of 30, disqualifying him from consideration for the most part. He had decided to attend the local college under a lacrosse scholarship with the goal of earning a degree in finance, a career which would prove useful for years to come while the dummel financial system was being phased out.

Harmony’s stellar test score had earned her a position in the most advanced starting classes, in which students actually got to see a wand. Henry’s courses would consist entirely of theory and history. After a short drive during which Henry stayed mostly silent, they arrived at the college, agreed to meet during lunch break, then said goodbye.

Henry walked into a nearly full classroom. An older man wearing a brown Victorian-era suit complete with a gold pocket watch greeted him. “I’m Professor Lester Lovejoy,” he said. “How do you do?”

“Good. Thanks.”

“And what is your name?”

“Henry Porter.”

Professor Lovejoy scanned his attendance sheet and wrote a check mark next to Henry’s name. “Very good. Leave your phone and any other electronic device in the basket and please be seated.”

For the next two hours, Professor Lovejoy paced around the classroom, expounding on some of the finer points of magic folk history and its key figures, including the wizard named Blundermore, who had cast the spell that had unveiled the magical world, Lovejoy claimed, out of a deep belief that all were created equal and should live together as one. Henry didn’t buy it. Whoever this Blundermore had been, Henry believed he’d either screwed up colossally or had exposed his own people out of spite for something they’d done to him. The chaos that had resulted from that one act wouldn’t be sorted out for decades, if ever.

Most people in the class seemed to hang on Lovejoy’s every word, which Lovejoy clearly relished. Henry was still upset over having to give up structural engineering for this. The world no longer needed people who understood static and dynamic loading when you had magic folk able to assemble a building out of marshmallows if they wanted, and it would hold together for eternity with a few words and the flick of a wand. Henry didn’t even know what kind of job to expect when his training was completed. Would he actually be casting spells and doing something useful? Or opening doors and getting coffee for magical agency bureaucrats?

Some things, he admitted, had changed to his liking. War was no longer allowed, along with missiles, bombs, nuclear weapons and poison gas. No more guns — they had all vanished in an instant, to the outcry of millions. Magical birds now policed the skies and reported crimes as they saw them, which were dealt with swiftly and justly by the Agency of Mischief. Cannabis was legalized worldwide while prescription drugs were banned. Medicine, in general, was seeing profound changes. The magic folk had introduced a cornucopia of herbal concoctions the likes of which humanity had never imagined, quickly making illnesses like cancer, HIV, blindness, paralysis, and erectile dysfunction things of the past.

“Who’s your professor?” Harmony asked as they sat down in the cafeteria.

“Lester Lovejoy.”

“What do you think?”

“Blah blah blah.”

“Really? I like mine. Harriet Hargrave. After lunch, I’m with Gilda Greylock, a potions teacher. It’s going to take years to even begin to understand their culture.”

“Wonderful.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I dunno. I just don’t care about any of it.” Henry sensed that she was going to dive into a lecture about the harmful effects of pessimism. “Don’t,” he said. “Please.”

“All right. Be miserable.” She pulled her knees up and said, “Rob wants to know what you’re doing later.”

“Nothing. We could meet him at the Strychnine.” The Strychnine was the campus bar at Rob’s school.

“Cool. I’ll let him know.”

Henry trudged to the next class and received a proper scolding when he arrived one minute late. For a second, he thought the professor — a short, beefy woman named Malvina Milliport — was going to smack his hand with a ruler.

He couldn’t check his phone or even look down and doodle. All the magic professors were schoolmarms, deadly serious about their jobs and expecting the students to pay utter attention and show endless gratitude for the opportunity to serve in their society. Henry hadn’t felt this helpless since his first day in elementary school when the teacher wouldn’t let him use the bathroom no matter how many times he raised his hand.

#

Henry crashed down into a booth at the Strychnine and sighed. “This day is finally over,” he said. Even the tune on the jukebox, a folksy dirge by Youth in Asia, felt like a godsend compared to being in the classroom.

Harmony slid gracefully into the opposite side, then Rob squeezed in next to her. “I wish they’d put on a game,” he said.

It had become common at bars to play the news instead of sports because something crazy happened nearly every day. A man dressed as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz was, at that moment, climbing barefoot around the base of the Statue of Liberty, shouting and brandishing what was believed to be a toy wand.

A waitress came over. Rob ordered a coal-fired pizza and a pitcher of beer.

“Screw beer,” Henry said, taking a joint out of his cigarette case. He took a deep hit. “That’s it, right there.”

“Pass that,” Rob said.

Harmony took a hit and passed it down. “At least this is legal now.”

“Like that ever stopped Henry.”

“He didn’t like his first day at magic school,” she said, laughing.

“You didn’t like your professor?”

“Oh, but he liked me,” Henry said. “Professor Lovejoy couldn’t take his eyes off me.”

“No!” Harmony said, her mouth open.

“Really?” Rob said.

“Yeah.”

“Are you into him?”

Henry guffawed. “What? Oh, my God, no.”

Their order arrived after a few minutes. Rob stuffed a slice of pizza into his mouth while drinking and smoking at the same time, which made them all laugh.

More people started coming in, none of them magic folk as far as Henry could tell. He could usually spot them even when they dressed normally. There was something about the way they carried themselves, even the way they looked at people.

“They’re so smug,” he said, blowing a cloud of smoke.

“I know,” Rob said.

“Come on. Most of them are so nice, you guys are being way too harsh,” Harmony said.

“Oh, yeah?” Henry said. “Where were they during World War Two when we were slaughtering each other and nuking the planet. And why do all of their names have to be so alliterative? Lester Lovejizz, Henrietta Hargrave, Gilda globbedyglob. Ugh.”

“Harriet Hargrave,” Harmony corrected him.

“I don’t like that they call us dummels,” Rob said. “It sounds like ‘dummies.’ That’s so wrong.”

At a nearby table, a bearded guy wearing a backward baseball hat turned to them and said, “I hear ya, man. It’s bullshit.”

Rob raised his glass.

“All of this gloom and doom,” Harmony said. “We’re going to be fine.”

“Easy for you to say,” Rob said, giving her a kiss. “You scored a ninety-four. You’re going to be a junior wizardess. Sorceress. Whatever.”

Henry lit another joint. “Yeah. That’s hitting just right.”

“What even is magic?” Rob asked. “I mean, what is it, exactly?”

“It’s complicated,” Harmony said. “Sometimes it’s just words. Language is more powerful than we realize, almost anything spoken can become an incantation. Then you’ve got herbs and other natural objects whose magical properties can be amplified through speech and thought.”

“Paprika never had magic powers before they showed up,” Henry said.

“That’s the thing,” Harmony said. “It did.”

“How so?”

“The missing ingredient was the person. There’s something about the magic folk that we don’t understand. They’re able to harmonize with the frequencies, or who knows what, of things like words and plants, and use them in ways that we can’t. Like tuning forks or something. It’s amazing, really.”

“Still doesn’t answer what magic is,” Rob said.

A story came on the news about how the government was having trouble dealing with the growing number of criminals in the dummel prison system and something drastic would have to be done. There was talk of temporarily turning prisoners into mice until the Agency of Mischief had enough staff and facilities to handle the load.

The bearded guy stood up and shouted at the bartender, “Put on the Yankees!”

Rob, Henry and several others started whistling and stomping their feet amid a growing chorus of boos until the bartender finally raised his hands in defeat and pointed the remote at the TV.

The screen flickered, a baseball game appeared, and everyone applauded.

#

This story was first published in As Bad As It Looks. © 2016 Ivan Paganacci