Many did not know the real meaning of the Wizarding World before the war broke out. It was thought to be an isolated community with hidden towns and schools making up most of the population.

This is wrong.

Whole countries belonged to the Wizarding World before the war. Areas of high magic density gave rise to clusters of magical populations born with talents unique to the magic from which they sprung. Some of these countries are protected by large versions of what we know as the Fidelius Charm. Others are covered in so many wards that nobody without magic in their veins could enter unless they were born within the wards. Those hidden behind the protections are aware of them and know that, although they are not there for their safety, the wards keep them safe.

In one of these lands, alchemists live and thrive. They know of magic and have studied it extensively. Whole theorems have been developed to show how it does not violate their laws. You cannot expect those who live by Equivalence to be satisfied with anything less.

Magic, it turns out, is an exchange like anything else. Simply being born with magical ability makes electrical devices more likely to act up in your presence. Unless their magic was suppressed, a magical being under non-magical care would die. Wizards cannot advance in anything but magic.

But the exchange goes deeper. Using magic takes energy from the caster and draws misfortune into the area. The amount of either varies with the power of the spell. Schools have always had a forbidden area where the wards funnel the misfortune.

This was not as tidy a solution as it may seem. Creatures in that area did not like the fact that the more wizards there were, the more dangerous their living area became- and so, hostility and tension ran high between the two groups. Over the years, wizards have come up with many justifications for the creatures' behavior, ignorant to the truth. Prominent Amestrian scholars have argued that part of the cost was the inability to see the cost, but since wizards know nothing of equivalent exchange, the hypothesis has never been tested.

While some researchers have claimed that the feats wizards were capable of outweighed the cost, historians familiar with that world disagree. Tragedies strike the Wizarding World often and wars have a habit of breaking out. While they are immune to many non-magical diseases, there are still those who suffer and die because they couldn't use non-magical methods to heal. Amestrians understand that the price of magic is dear.

It is during one of these times that our story begins, about a year before the war, in one of the hidden countries, known as Amestris.