Disclaimer: Once again, I'm uploading the whole story at once so I'm just using the one disclaimer. I own nothing, but I do have Jammie Dodgers … for now.
So here's a reuploading of part 2 of the series, please enjoy the read.
Chapter 1 – Sleepless in the Temple
In a room that he'd just finished fixing; a young Jedi sat, cross legged, meditating. As far as he could tell, he'd been there for nearly a day, but he knew outside, only an hour had passed.
He focused on his breathing, keeping his mind in total balance, finding peace. His face looked perfectly calm, but suddenly he closed eyes became scrunched.
He saw himself, and his best friend, Harry Potter, in a dark but open space. There were statues flanking the stone walkway which they stood on, depicting very large snakes, the funny thing was that he saw this from a third person's view, so either he was having some sort of outer body experience, or there was someone else in the premonition he was having.
They were running towards something, away from where he watched, his perception was bouncing and shaking, almost like someone running with a camera. He kept the same distance with the others, until the statue of a balding head with a massively long beard came into view.
The two knelt down by the unconscious body of a small, red-headed girl. There was a voice behind them and then the vision become a blur of noise and colour, it was too much information for the boy and his concentration broke, shattering the vision as the sound of swinging lightsabers filled his ears.
His breathing was now erratic, he knew what he saw wasn't real, at least not yet, it was a vision of a possible future. "(Who was following me and Harry? Ron maybe? And what happened after we found Ron's Sister?)" he thought to himself.
"Padawan Payne, session ended," a computerised voice announced as the doors opened with a slight hissing sound.
Andrew blinked a few times, letting his eyes adjust to the sudden light, and then he stood up and left the hyper meditation room. He looked at his watch, not completely sure why since he knew the stupid thing would be wrong now.
"How was it Andrew?" his Master asked, walking up to him.
"Relaxing Master, but you know I'm not sleeping any time soon," Andrew stretched letting his numb joints click back where they belonged "What time is it?"
"Getting close to eleven pm," Jarod answered, before adding, "on July the thirtieth if it helps"
Andrew chuckled a little drily. "Thank you Master, if you'll excuse me, I need to write a letter to Harry, it's his birthday tomorrow."
"Of course, run along," Jarod smiled fondly and then yawned, deciding that it was time for him to go to bed and knowing that his apprentice would somehow manage to 'entertain' himself through the night.
Andrew dashed up to his room and slipped into his bedroom, he grabbed a piece of parchment and sat at his desk to write a letter.
An hour later he read over it.
Dear Harry,
First of all HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
How've you been? I've not heard from you since we left King's Cross. As you can imagine life in the order's just one huge drama. You might have heard in the news that the Bank of England was the victim of armed robery.
Well, me and Mel got involved, thankfully no casualties, except one of the robbers who got shot by his boss, execution style. Mel got a little distracted after we were done 'working' and got hit by a speeding taxi. She's fine, don't worry. She needed surgery and lost a lot of blood, and there's been a shortage lately, so the healers here ran out. Luckily, Mel and I share the same blood type so while Masters Cooper and Bailo lined up donors, I got hooked up to Mel's arm.
Long story short, she's become a witch and I'm not sure if that's good or bad, anyway Dumbledore's been tutoring her so that as soon as she's been sorted she'll be in our year. Personally I'm convinced that she'll be in either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw.
Let me think, what else has been happening around here … we've got a bunch of aliens staying here, at least we think they're aliens... anyway they're AWESOME musicians, one says he's a vampire and his name is Kain, his 'son' is a demon called Raziel, one comes from a planet called Veldin (which I've never heard of) and calls himself Ratchet and the last one calls himself Jak, but thinks his home's been invaded.
That was before we calmed them all down, they went nuts when they showed up from literally nowhere, don't worry nobody was killed, but Kain left a bite mark in Master McKnight's neck and I got a nasty bruise from Ratchet's wrench.
There's one more new guy, he turned up with the others, AND HE IS LITERALLY A RACCOON, he calls himself Sly Cooper and he keeps trying to steal my lightsaber, he's a master of stealth and we're considering hiring him as a teacher because he has mad skills.
Ron and Hermione have been writing to me too, telling me that you're not replying to any of their letters, you'd best do so soon or I swear that Ron'll do something drastic, and I'd be backing him up dude.
Master Cooper told me that he'd issued you a Holo-com and sent it by courier, it was recorded delivery and everything, far as I know, you've gotten the communicator, so how come you haven't called. You're my friend and I'm worried about your silence.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Andrew
After writing that, Andrew turned to the unwrapped present and quickly wrapped it with the Force, just then there was a knock on his door.
"Just a second," he called, trying to hide all the wizard related stuff, but Mel just walked in and Andrew dumped it all on the bed with a sigh, "don't scare me like that maybe?" Andrew said with exasperation as his owl Snowfire soared through the window.
He landed on Mel's shoulder and she stroked his feathers as he nipped at her finger lightly "Hey boy,"
Andrew held up Harry's letter and present "you up for a delivery Snowfire?" he hooted and held his leg out to let Andrew tie them on, he stroked the owl's back when he was done "Say 'hi' to Hedwig for me," Snowfire nodded and took off out the window, into the night.
"Anyway I don't know what you're complaining about," Mel said a little scathingly.
"Only that I had a few books from last year out and we're not supposed to let anyone below Knight rank know about the wizarding world," Andrew replied.
She sighed. "You know that that's what your cupboard is for right? Keeping things out of sight," she then yawned and Andrew looked at his clock, it was nearly midnight.
"Bedtime I think Mel," he thought aloud as she hugged him.
"What about you?" she asked sleepily.
"Well I've got a few more projects to work on, they'll keep me busy for a few hours," Andrew replied absent-mindedly.
"Nothing else?" she asked, he shrugged a little.
"Well our um... guests might be up to some band practise tonight?" he suggested, referring to the band they had sort of created, they didn't even have a name yet. As he shrugged again, she giggled.
"Okay, goodnight Andrew," she said as she slowly drifted out his door.
He flicked his hand and the door closed, he sighed and turned to his slightly cluttered desk.
"(So, what to do next,)" he thought to himself as he sifted through his designs glancing at them briefly before setting them on fire, "(I should have burned those two ages ago, finished them already,)" he watched as plans for gauntlets, foot pads and a suspicious looking chain crinkled into ash in his burning bin.
"(Here we go, this one,)" he glanced at the one he'd decided to work on and burned it before he set to work. "(Thank the Force for photographic memory.)"
Wanting to have this particular design ready for the start of term feast, Andrew set to work.
At three in the morning he had one finished and ready to test, which he did on one of the night watchmen, it was fun. He bumped into Raziel on his way back to his room and asked for some help.
Funnily enough the first one always took longer than the rest did, a second silver ball with a golden cross on top was done and he turned to Raziel.
"Could you make a few copies for me? I can't use magic outside school," Andrew asked, the blue boned demon nodded silently and waved his claws over the ball and there were eight of them.
"(Is that enough?)" He asked, he had to use his mind to speak because he had no jaw.
"Plenty, thanks Raz, we playing tonight I'm getting a little bored," Andrew pouted a little, knowing it never worked.
Raziel shrugged "(Why not ... Kain is rounding them up, they'll meet us there)" they 'jogged' to a sound-proofed room and played around with music and singing until about seven in the morning, mostly television themes for fun.
At that point Andrew's communicator went off, he switched it on and his Master's hologram was there. "Morning Master," Andrew said a little too brightly for that time in the morning.
He yawned back. "Good morning my young apprentice, could you come to my office? Master McKnight has an assignment for you,"
"I'm on my way Master," Andrew shut down his communicator and looked back to the others. "Try and behave yourselves guys?" he joked before dashing off.
"Especially you Sly," Ratchet joked.
"What was that supposed to mean?" Sly demanded, crossing his furry arms.
"Stop stealing shi-?" was all Andrew heard Jak say before the door closed behind him.
A minute later he knocked on Jarod's office door. "Come in?" Andrew walked in and bowed to the two Masters there, Jarod Cooper was slightly ginger haired with a silver streak on the left which he kept slicked back. Julian McKnight however had all white hair which he grew long and kept in a ponytail which also grew into a short pointed beard.
"I trust you had a pleasant trip, Grandmaster?" Andrew asked politely.
"Yes, young one, the wife wanted to take the train for a change, she's never had much of a head for heights," Julien McKnight replied with a thick Scottish accent.
"Oh, that's a shame," Andrew commented, "I'm not sure what I'd do if I had my wings clipped."
McKnight laughed. "I know just how you feel, laddie. Your Master tells me that you're the finest pilot this temple has seen since I came to teach here one summer, before I was voted Grandmaster."
"You honour me, Master," Andrew bowed once more in respect. "You have an assignment for me, Masters?" Andrew asked.
"Yes, I've been informed that your guests have been getting an unfortunate dose of cabin fever and they're getting desperate to get out of the temple once in a while," McKnight explained, Andrew nodded to indicate that he was keeping up, so Jarod took over.
"Kain has explained that he can disguise himself to look like Vampires found on Earth, which would still leave a problem, if Muggles didn't know they exist," he flopped a newspaper onto his desk, the headline read "Vampires Exposed, Public Crying out for 'Nosferatu Registration'".
"Wow, the Wizarding World has to be freaking out over this one," Andrew said as he picked the paper up and scanned through the article, it seemed that a fledgling vampire broke into a late night Parliament meeting that was going out nationwide on live television, he then went on to actually feed off of three people, but thankfully there were no deaths. "No way will it be possible to cover this up ... six million people watch Parliament TV? Isn't there anything better to watch?"
The two masters laughed at that. "The point, Andrew, is that the other four are still going to be conspicuous if they go out in public, especially since two of them have tails, so we'd like you to attempt to make a device that will hide their appearances. I understand you suffer from Nodormiunus, and that while you can't sleep, you're quite the inventor" McKnight explained.
"Well I was already working on something for Raz, something he can feed on which hopefully should temporally turn him back into his vampiric form, I was hoping to test it today, as for the other three maybe holo watches?" Andrew asked, and the two Masters nodded.
"Our thoughts exactly, when can you get started?" Jarod asked.
"As soon as Mel's lessons are over today, Dumbledore sometimes lets me help out which is fun since he permits me to use Magic outside of school for teaching purposes," Andrew grinned.
"Very well then I suggest that you go and see if he needs you today then, he arrived just before we called," McKnight said as he waved the young Padawan off.
In another room Mel was sitting with Dumbledore. "So what are you teaching me today, Sir?" she asked.
"Today we are starting your end of year exams, if you just remember everything I have taught you over the past few weeks, you should pass with flying colours and be with students your own age at Hogwarts," Dumbledore explained and Mel couldn't help letting out a groan, which caused him to smile sympathetically.
Just then there was a knock on the door "Enter," Dumbledore called and Andrew entered.
"Need any help today, Professor?" he asked as he entered.
"I'm sorry Andrew, but we are performing end of year exams today," Dumbledore replied, causing Andrew's face to drop.
Flashback
Mel was excited, she had a wand in her hand, which Dumbledore had lent her for lessons, and was about to take her first attempt at casting a spell.
"Now, Andrew, you have my permission as Headmaster, to perform magic under my supervision," Dumbledore said, smiling.
"Won't I get tracked by the Ministry, Sir?" Andrew asked.
"Yes, but as I said last week, there are exceptions to the law, such as large gatherings where it is all but impossible to tell who cast what, moments of self-defence and now, where someone such as myself grants permission," the Professor explained. "Don't worry, I will take full responsibility."
Andrew nodded and drew his wand, focusing on the feather sitting on the table between himself and Mel. He drifted his wand from left to right and flicked the tip at the feather. "Wingardium Leviosa." he incanted.
The feather drifted into the air, circled the light bulb above and floated down to the table again. Dumbledore instructed Mel to copy Andrew and she did, though not as gracefully as her fellow Padawan.
"How come Andrew's attempt was so much cleaner, Sir?" Mel asked. "Is it because he's had more practise?"
"Not at all," Dumbledore answered. "You must understand Melanie, a wand chooses its wizard, and the wand in your hand has not chosen you. It will suffice for the purpose of practise, but would not serve you well in school. Not to worry though, one day, soon, you will go to Diagon Alley and visit Mr Ollivander for your own wand."
Mel let out a sigh. "I won't deny, that's a relief Sir." she said.
They carried on with the lessons, Mel was being pushed hard by Dumbledore, he was determined that she study with students of her own age when she started at Hogwarts and therefore needed to cover everything Andrew studied over a year, in just eight weeks.
Whenever they covered theory, Andrew worked on a little project of his own. After the first month, he stopped sleeping and, with permission from Dumbledore, had his first experience of Floo Powder, which he used to travel to Hogwarts to use the library for research.
End Flashback
"Um, mind if I sit in, I've been given a project or two to try and get done before going back to school and since this room's going to be quiet it's fairly perfect to do a bit of drawing," Andrew asked, Dumbledore nodded and motioned him to sit next to Mel as he passed her the first exam.
To start with Andrew took his watch off and sketched it out, then he added schematics of the inside and stared at it intently, picking out which pieces could be replaced and what programming any new parts would need in order for the watch to function as needed.
As he was half way through the design, Dumbledore took a seat next to him and looked over his shoulder, taking a fascination for Andrew's inventions and wondering what it was supposed to do and how it worked.
Ten minutes later Dumbledore noticed a message on the page, it said 'Permission to use magic sir?', he raised his eyebrows and pointed his wand at the page and the word 'Granted' appeared underneath.
Smiling, Andrew retracted his wand from his lightsaber, pointed it at his watch and said "Duplicus!" causing an exact copy to appear next to the original.
Dumbledore and Mel stared at Andrew, Dumbledore looked shocked and Mel looked impressed.
"I have never heard of that spell, Andrew," Dumbledore stated calmly, this scared Mel since she knew he was over a hundred and fifty years old. Andrew, however, was not surprised.
"No shock there, I invented it. I've actually been dying to try it for the past week." Andrew explained with a smile.
"I feel I should warn you against mass experimentation with new spells, Andrew," Dumbledore cautioned. "New spells need to be tested for safety and approved by the Committee for Experimental Charms," he explained. "You will need to show a representation of all theory which went towards developing your spell and demonstrate its function."
"If it is deemed safe, it may well be taught to students at Hogwarts and other schools all over the world, failing that, it may be deemed dangerous and illegal." he explained.
"And if I make any further developments to it?" Andrew asked.
"You will need to inform them and possibly have it retested," Dumbledore answered.
"Um, if you were the representative ...?" Andrew started his obvious question.
Dumbledore smiled, seeing right through the boy. "I would say that the spell seems perfectly safe and acceptable, if you like I can send an Owl to a friend I have in that department and request a visit tomorrow,"
"Department, Sir?" Mel asked.
"Yes of the Ministry of Magic, they are responsible for keeping Magic a secret from Muggles, part of which includes monitoring underage magic, in fact if I were not here to supervise then the two of you might be in severe trouble and Andrew might in fact be expelled by law and his wand destroyed," Dumbledore explained.
"I take it someone there is having a bad day thanks to that vampire last night," Andrew wondered aloud. "Anyway I better take this away and make a prototype," he put his own watch back on and carried the copy away, "have fun Mel" he joked as he ran off.
"Um, Andrew," Dumbledore called, stopping Andrew before he opened the door. "How exactly did you invent that spell?"
"Oh, well first I came up with the idea of copying any item perfectly, so I thought if anywhere would have a list of currently existing spells, it would be the library at Hogwarts. So I spent a night looking up that info, then I studied how new spells get invented. So then one thing led to another and I came up with this spell." Andrew explained.
"And, knowing your memory, none of your research is written down," Dumbledore guessed with a knowing smile.
"Yes, sir, that's right." Andrew then sighed. "I take it that the committee needs everything written down."
"Yes, they will," Dumbledore answered.
"Well, that'll give me something to do tonight." Andrew smiled and waved as he left Mel to her exam.
"Can I have that time added, Sir?" Mel asked, Dumbledore chuckled a little and rewound his clock.
After getting back to his room which doubled up as a lab, he sat as his desk and opened the spare watch up, got together the parts he needed and got to work, by lunch time he'd finished.
"I hate working so fast at times," he whined as he stood up and went to find Sly, he had the bigger tail so he'd be the best test run, if the watch could disguise him perfectly then it would work perfectly on Ratchet and Jak, at least in theory. But then his stomach grumbled and he realised he hadn't eaten at all since before he went to work fixing the hyper meditation room.
"(Okay ... lunch first,)" he decided, after checking the clock, and went to eat.
Luckily he bumped into Sly when he sat down with Mel; strangely enough the guy was eating a fish stew.
"I thought Raccoons ate nuts, like Squirrels," Andrew said before taking a bite of his sandwich, which he started gagging on when he tasted peanut butter.
"Nah I eat about anything I can get my paws on," Sly answered, he gave Andrew a side-glance and stole the rest of his sandwich, but Andrew caught his wrist and slapped the watch on.
"Test it," the Raccoon was ordered while the young Jedi washed his mouth out, he wasn't exactly a fan of nuts of any kind. Sly gave him a confused look and Andrew pressed one of the buttons.
Suddenly an eighteen year old man was sat there; he had grey hair with black streaks, blackened eye sockets, dark brown eyes and, thankfully, no tail.
Being a little curious, Mel felt around to see if Sly's tail was in fact gone, but she smiled in an 'I'm slightly confused' way when Sly suddenly went rigid. "Found it?" she asked.
"Yeah the watch creates a holographic field around your body which hides anything that isn't human, but your tail is still there, so you can accidentally brush somebody with it and bring up some um, awkward questions," Andrew explained, noting that Sly's ears weren't showing either.
Sly took the watch off, knowing Andrew needed to make more, so he went back to his room, calling Raziel as he went, without an answer.
Forgetting about it, Andrew got down to making Raziel's 'medicine', eating a ham sandwich he'd taken from the mess hall. About an hour later he had a concoction ready to try and he called Raziel again.
"(Raz, could you come here please?)" Andrew asked.
"(Where are you?)" He answered this time.
"(My room)"
There was a knock on Andrew's door, he waved his hand and the door opened, revealing Raziel.
"Got one ready, try this" Andrew announced as he picked up a large phial with a misty swirl inside and passed it to the demon before him.
"(Whatshould this do?)" Raziel asked.
"Well, it shouldgive you enough energy to revert to your vampiric form, you'll still need to feed from souls, but you'll look like a vampire," Andrew explained.
Without another thought Raziel pulled back his cowl and made a sound much like taking a deep breath, and the soul floated from the phial and into Raziel's throat.
At first both of them thought that it hadn't worked, but then Raziel doubled over in pain as his wings repaired themselves, first the membranes then the bones, which snapped into place, the next thing to return was his jaw bone, then skin covered his body and a pale-skinned, yellow-eyed, bat-winged vampire was on all fours before the young Jedi.
"Right … now just wait here and just ... don't move, I'll get you some clothes," Andrew said and ran from the room.
After searching for two minutes, Andrew found Kain and asked for help, he explained what had happened and Kain conjured some leather leggings in Raziel's size and gave them to the Padawan.
But unfortunately when Andrew got back to his room Raziel had reverted to his demonic form.
"Okay then, give me a minute, get those leggings on, and I'll see if I can make it more potent," Andrew suggested while helping the demon to his feet.
"(Was it supposed to be so painful?)" Raz gasped, taking huge gulps of calming air that he didn't really need.
"Well thinking on it I'm not too surprised, think about it, you're re-growing the bones from your wings, and your jaw, that's bound to hurt, but hopefully we'll be able to make this a much stronger dosage, strong enough to last twenty four hours." Andrew explained.
"(The other option is to just get used to it, since I now know what to expect I can ready myself in advance,)" the demon suggested.
"True, but this one should at least last longer," Andrew said as he handed another phial to his friend.
When the vampire Raziel stood before him once more Andrew asked how long the previous dose lasted. "About five minutes," he said, shocking himself, "I never thought that I'd be so happy to actually hear my voice again," he mused.
Andrew laughed and went to work on the rest of the holo-watches, making the suggestion that Raz time how long that dose lasted so that he could make a comparison and calculate how strong a dose would need to be to last a full day.
Raziel nodded and left without another word whilst Andrew thought about how Harry was enjoying his birthday.
Well that's all for now (how am I doing so far?) the next chapter will take a while, I'm planning to tell it from number 4, The Burrow and the Temple, so please bear with me.
