Chapter 75: Space Transformation
Today was draw day, and George had especially returned to the island just for that.
The last two times had gone well, and now, with the chaos pearl stirring again, he was more than ready.
His consciousness sank into his sea of mind, then deeper still — into the chaos pearl. There, the familiar vision of the "three thousand worlds" greeted him once again, swirling like a distant galaxy. He reached for one of the light spheres, drawn once again to something from the Harry Potter world.
Inside the glow, he saw what looked like a worn leather briefcase. Before he could break it open, the chaos pearl pulsed — faint, but distinct. Not alarm, but... desire.
George had a guess. This was likely Newt Scamander's briefcase, the one enchanted to house a full habitat of magical creatures.
Newt had traveled across continents and cities, cataloging beasts for his book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. He always carried that briefcase. And it wasn't just some box with a few shelves. It held a living ecosystem — a controlled habitat complete with a lab, climate systems, and space for creatures far too large to fit in something so small.
Obviously, there had to be more than a space-expanding spell involved. The creatures needed food, air, and temperature regulation. A habitat like that required spatial magic that bordered on dimensional manipulation.
George, through Flamel's knowledge, understood such things were possible, just incredibly resource-intensive. The materials alone were difficult to acquire, let alone the spells.
So when the chaos pearl pulsed again, he didn't hesitate. He pressed the glowing orb deep into the pearl's core.
It vanished on contact.
And a second later, a light repulsion pushed his consciousness back into his body.
He tried re-entering the space, but the pearl felt sealed, like it was undergoing some internal process. Locked from within. He could still sense its core — it was his, after all — but he couldn't get back in yet.
Rather than force it, George let it be.
His energy stores were untouched. His dantian felt normal. Nothing was damaged or missing. But something had changed. He could feel it.
Before, energy had always trickled out from the chaos pearl and collected in his dantian naturally. He never had to draw it in — it just grew. Techniques for Chakra cultivation were largely irrelevant to him.
Now, after the pearl swallowed the briefcase, that energy flow had stopped. He could still cultivate, but it added almost nothing. Like topping off a lake with a teacup.
Still, he wasn't panicked. He'd already removed any valuables — gold, weapons, art — from the chaos space months ago, storing them elsewhere. The only things left inside were water barrels, a few crates, and some old firearms. He wasn't losing sleep over that.
With nothing else to do, George Apparated back to the main villa.
All the staff here were loyal, handpicked old retainers from the Swinton family estate in Britain. At the center of it all was old Fred, the butler who had been with the family longer than most buildings.
George gave him a short list of tasks. First, make arrangements for the families of the senior security personnel to move onto Hogwarts Island. The lakeside villas were ready, and it was time to let them settle in.
Second, finish sorting the decorative items. The artwork, vintage cars, and clocks — all of it needed proper placement. That alone could take weeks.
With things back in motion, George — still thinking about Newt Scamander's travels — decided to plan his own tour.
But not a quiet one.
If he was going to travel the world, he'd make it an event.
He bought a cruise ship — a large one — and decided to turn it into a roaming gala. A nonstop, floating banquet hall. The kind of thing only someone like him could pull off.
The concept was simple: announce the route through newspapers, sell limited boarding tickets, and host formal cocktail parties every evening at sea. At each port, he'd allow guests to disembark or new ones to join, using smaller crafts to ferry them back and forth.
The plan worked better than expected.
Within six months, the cruise had already paid for itself several times over. The press ran glowing headlines: "Orwell's Golden Voyage,""The Floating Empire,""The Ship of Power."
People didn't come just for the scenery.
They came because who else would be there?
The wealthiest bankers, rising industrialists, diplomats, artists — they all wanted to rub shoulders aboard the "Golden Ship." Opportunities flowed between evening drinks and idle remarks. Some passengers walked off with deals worth millions.
Soon, getting a ticket became nearly impossible.
George, of course, didn't stay onboard the whole time. He appeared at some ports, disappeared from others. Sometimes he explored ancient ruins or admired landscapes that caught his eye. Other times, he bought land on the spot — places with cultural weight or geographic advantages — and quietly left behind Portkeys.
Over two years, the cruise never stopped. And by the end of it, George had a personal network of properties on nearly every continent. Not vacation homes — anchors.
With Portkeys and Apparition, distance was irrelevant now.
He returned to Hogwarts Island quietly, just as the second anniversary of the Golden Ship's maiden voyage passed.
That night, while reviewing papers in his office, the chaos pearl pulsed again.
This time, it didn't push him back.
He entered.
What greeted him wasn't the usual floating orbs and spatial void.
It was land.
A real, curved surface — about fifty acres, with a gentle rise at the center and a still, round pond tucked neatly within it.
The air felt warm. The silence was clean, not empty. There was soil now — actual soil — and George didn't need to move to examine it. With a thought, a small mound lifted into his open palm. He rubbed the dark earth between his fingers.
He held it for a long moment. For once, something tangible had come from the abstract.
Before now, the chaos space had been nothing more than a glorified storage unit. Now it had depth. Texture. Ecosystem potential.
He ran a few basic tests.
Could he enter with his real body?
Yes — with a thought, his body appeared inside. From the outside world, he simply vanished. His clones confirmed it: one moment he was there, the next he wasn't. No ripple. No flash.
He returned and repeated the process with just his consciousness. Still worked.
Time flowed normally here, synced with the outside.
The water in the pond had a light sweetness to it. He hadn't tested the properties yet, but it didn't taste ordinary. Possibly some kind of low-level energy enrichment.
As for the soil, no plant life had grown yet, so he couldn't tell what it could support. That would take time.
But what mattered most was this: he could shape it.
With a few thoughts, he carved a shelf into the rock wall. Then a pit. Then, a small cube of vacuum — sealed, airtight, perfect for storing delicate materials. All of it obeyed his will instantly.
He had created a sovereign space.
A place not bound by external rules.
He stepped outside the pearl's realm feeling something rare — stillness.
No pressure. No interruptions. No questions left unanswered for the moment.
He'd been moving for two years.
Tonight, he could finally rest.
___________________________________________________________________________
The Girl Who Drew Maps
(Story 1 of 4 – Golden Ship Anthology)
Final Version — ~2,200 words
She was sketching the stars again when the ship left port.
From the bow of the Golden Ship — that great silver city adrift on the sea — her notebook lay open, its pages fluttering in the salt breeze. A piece of charcoal stained her fingertips. Her lines weren't perfect. They never were. But the sky above her was so clear, so impossible, she had to try.
Anaya had never seen a sky like this in her life.
Back home, in the narrow alleys of Colombo's waterfront, the stars were faint and hidden behind smoke and streetlights. But out here, they looked close enough to touch — brighter than fire, older than anything she'd ever drawn.
Behind her, the ship's jazz band played something strange and cheerful — a sailor's song, someone said, was called "Binks' Sake". The crew had turned it into a soft-swing number with laughing horns and piano runs that spilled across the deck. Even when the melody dipped into something mournful, it still felt like joy — joy with a memory behind it.
She didn't know the lyrics.
But she understood the feeling.
A Month Ago
She had never planned to board the ship.
She was a sketch artist, barely seventeen, drawing maps and temple walls to pay for her brother's medicine. The Golden Ship had docked in Colombo, towering like a myth — larger than any ship she'd ever imagined. Children ran to the docks just to look at it. Sailors stopped mid-load to gawk.
Anaya didn't go. She was working, as always.
Until a man with gray eyes and a quiet voice approached her with a commission.
He didn't ask her to draw what the stars looked like — only how they felt.
When he saw her sketch of the night sky — one she'd drawn just for herself — he smiled once and said, softly:
"You should see what it really looks like."
The next day, she had a cabin.
She wasn't a guest. She wasn't staff. No one ever said what she was.
But her name was on a list, and the crew all seemed to know her. Tomas, a steward from the western deck, brought her ginger tea each morning. The gardener showed her the floating bonsai trees without asking why she'd come. No one questioned her presence.
The ship welcomed her like it already knew she'd be there.
It was not a ship. Not really.
It was a city, stretched across steel decks and swaying towers. A floating world where nothing was small and everything was alive.
She wandered for hours.
There was a Turkish café with hand-painted lanterns that flickered even without wind. A tea garden styled after Kyoto that always smelled faintly of moss and spring. A silk market modeled after Delhi, tucked between two upper decks, where vendors offered sweets that tasted like old memories.
And the Ceiling Room — her favorite — where a dome showed the stars above as they actually were, projected with such precision that even astronomers came aboard just to stand beneath it.
She filled two sketchbooks in her first week.
Some nights, she'd stay on deck just to feel the ship breathing — the soft creak of its body, the distant thrum of engines humming like a living heartbeat.
And the sky — always the sky. Unclouded. Eternal.
As if some spell held the clouds away just for her.
She first noticed the others one evening in a small café near the rear of the ship.
A sharply dressed man — American, loud — was arguing with a cluster of older guests, arms waving, shirt untucked, wild grin on his face.
"Orwell's finance arm just needs vision!" he said, too loud, like he needed the sea to hear him.
Another night, she passed a quiet man in a narrow hallway. He was fixing something small — a pocket watch, she thought — muttering to himself in a French accent, tools tucked neatly in a cloth roll beside him.
And once, while sketching the stars, she noticed a man on the lower deck. Older, quieter. He leaned on the railing, not smoking, not moving, just... watching the sea like it held answers only he remembered to ask for.
They didn't speak. Not yet. But the ship was big and slow, and faces repeated. Recognition came quietly, like a tide.
Then came the night of the whale.
The sea had been still for hours. The jazz band had stopped. Most passengers were asleep.
Anaya stood alone at the bow, sketching the constellations above, when something caught her eye.
Beneath the surface, something glowed.
It moved slowly, long, shadowy, and graceful. A shape too massive to name. Bioluminescence trailed behind it in soft blues and greens, like paint swirling in water. The creature — whale, spirit, dream—passed silently beneath the ship and vanished into the deep.
She didn't tell anyone.
She just drew it.
The ship kept moving. Port to port, city to city.
In Muscat, she watched fishermen chant as they pulled their nets at sunrise.
In Marseille, she wandered into a spice shop built into a side room of the ship that hadn't existed the day before.
In Alexandria, she drew with charcoal until her fingers cracked.
Each time they left a port, something of that place appeared on the ship. A hallway lined with Persian tiles. A small fountain shaped like an elephant. A row of lanterns glows in the shape of Arabic calligraphy.
It was like the ship didn't want you to feel homesick. It remembered the land, so you didn't have to leave it behind.
More than one crew member told her the same thing:
"There's no ship like this. The second biggest ship in the world doesn't even come close."
And somehow, Anaya believed them.
Back in Bar D'Or, her favorite spot on the ship, the pianist was playing softly again. The bar smelled of old wood and orange zest. People laughed in low tones, voices washed smooth by wine and salt air.
Anaya sat in the corner with her sketchbook.
Raoul, the bartender, passed her a warm glass of milk. "For the hands," he said. "You draw too much."
She smiled. She'd heard that before.
From her seat, she saw the French watchmaker again — same corner, same drink. He didn't notice her, but she saw the way his shoulders relaxed as the music drifted around them.
She saw the quiet clerk, too, folding a letter with thick fingers, eyes tired but content.
Even the loud American appeared briefly, laughing with two women near the entrance, all confidence and mischief.
She didn't speak to any of them.
But she knew their names now.
And more importantly, they knew hers.
One evening, as the ship pulled away from a port in southern Spain, a group of musicians gathered on the forward deck with lanterns swaying in the wind.
They started to play.
Binks' Sake again — the same cheerful, strange tune from weeks ago, but slower now, gentler. The horns were soft, and the piano felt like waves under your feet.
Passengers gathered with drinks and shawls. No one danced, but no one moved either. It was the kind of moment you didn't want to break.
Anaya stood alone, sketchbook closed for once.
She didn't need to draw tonight.
She just wanted to remember.
Later, in her cabin, she looked over her filled notebooks.
Twelve sketchbooks in total. Pages and pages of stars, of doorways that vanished, of sea creatures she couldn't name. Faces she'd only glimpsed. Lanterns she'd never seen twice.
She tore out one blank page.
Taped it to the inside of her cabin door.
And in the center, in careful, unshaking letters, she wrote:
"This was real."
End of Story 1
To be continued in: A Suit, A Watch, A Lie (Story 2 of 4)