A HP one shot

by Cozy Mark IV

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit fan-made work of prose. Please support the official release

Author's Summery: Hermione upends the power balance with a single good idea.

The seen was set, all the Harrys were ready, and it was almost time to go when Hermione/Harry handed out the final piece of her plan.

"Now listen up everyone – if this goes well we won't have any need of these, but if the Death Eaters somehow found out, then this is going to turn into a turkey shoot, and it won't be us doing the shooting." She walked around the room passing out basketball sized bags to the mystified looks of the older wizards.

"These are Portkeys – neon balls actually – and if any of you find yourselves under attack, I want you to grab this and bail."

Hagrid opened the bag and peeked at the obscenely bright ball inside. "I don't like the idea of running from a fight lass."

Mad-Eye agreed. "This will be of no use, they could find almost any Portkey in moments, and with something like this they would certainly follow us. You would only move our fight, not escape it."

Hermione grinned maniacally. "Oh, I'm counting on it. The Portkeys all have a spell on them that protects the first passengers from slings and arrows for one hour. Took me three weeks to find that one." She muttered to herself.

"This is our safe way out. If you come under fire, use the Portkey and it will put you out above the ocean. Once you come through, just keep flying as fast as you can." She flashed that grin again. "Oh, and don't worry about the slings and arrows, just worry about whoever is after you."

There were a number of raised eyebrows, but each Harry dutifully tied the bag about their waist.

- Elsewhere-

Captain Ernestine was worried. Duty shifts out here on the Gulf at night were usually just boring routine and drills, but for the last week the crew had been feeling more and more on edge. He had heard rumors about unrest on shore and the possibility of a coming attack. He couldn't speak for the others, but every night for the last three he had dreamed of just that.

The dreams always started at night; he would be on the bridge when there would be a tiny flash of light out on the horizon. The dark would return at once, and he would wonder if he had actually seen anything, but just as he started to relax the shipboard lights would suddenly wither and die, replaced by the dim red glow of the combat lighting systems. The very deck beneath his feet would begin to vibrate with the ominous roar of the air raid sirens. Someone had made it past the outer perimeters. Someone was dangerously close, and they were shooting at his people.

"Sir! We have multiple sea skimming missiles inbound!"

"Track and fire on them! Alert the carrier and support ships! Get us air support!"

"Sir! The cannons aren't responding! They won't track!"

"Counter missiles won't launch! There's something jammed!"

"Radio is down sir! Backups too! I can't warn the carrier! They're going to get through!"

He watched in horror as the bright lights flashed past towards the other ships in the group, their lights still glowing brightly, ignorant of the danger. The deck suddenly lurched under his feet and everything not bolted down was sent flying as the bow in front of the bridge erupted in a spray of metal and fire. Through the blown out window he could see the sick red blossoms blooming on one ship after another as he tried to get control of his ship.

"Damage report!"

Half the screens and displays on the bridge had gone black or were displaying gibberish. A voice several ranks down the chain of command, one who should never have answered his call responded. "It was big sir! Total breach of all forward compartments!"

He staggered forward towards the hole that hand been blasted in the ship's main windows. The window was built to withstand the full force of a category five hurricane, and years ago as a younger man he had witnessed it do just that with barely a squeak of complaint. Now the bulletproof window was reduced to half melted shards strewn about the deck, and as he approached, he lost his footing as he tripped over something left on the floor. It was a human arm, its hand still clutching the backup radio microphone.

From where he lay he watched as the black waters poured over the bow, machinery and bodies welling up from the great gashes in the wounded ship as the bow sunk beneath the water and the deck began to tilt dangerously forward. He tried to hold on, to find purchase, but everything was slick with water, oil and blood, and as he screamed, he slid out the hole in the window and plunged towards the deck several stories below.

…

No one else had told him what they had been dreaming of these last few days, but he knew he wasn't the only one who had awoken screaming in the night, nor was it just his ship; similar stories had been coming in from all the ships in the battle group.

Understandably, the crew had drilled missile attacks scenarios daily since this had begun, and both his ships auto-cannons had received a complete round of maintenance and a radar guidance tune up, despite the fact they were not due for more than a year. The crew had test fired multiple bursts of the 20mm depleted uranium cannon rounds, and as the beasts consumed nearly a hundred rounds a second, they had become quite adept at reloading them.

Under normal circumstances there would be dozens of aircraft out on maneuvers, but for the last week the carrier's deck had had been active ceaselessly as each patrol aircraft was immediately replaced by another. A10 warthogs and twin turboprop surveillance aircraft circled unusually low with anti-missile and anti-submarine ordinance scanning the waves for any sign of trouble. After almost a week of this, to say his crew was trigger-happy would be a major understatement.

…

Night fell abruptly as it was wont to do at this latitude, and the crew settled in for another sleepless night hunched over their radar screens. The night dragged on and on, and it was only a few hours before dawn when one of his radar operators leapt to his feet.

"Target detected, Zero, Nine, Zero degrees, inbound! It's just off the water!"

The sirens spun up and the lights dimmed, but unlike his nightmares, this time every ship in the fleet went dark within seconds. Captain Ernestine allowed himself a grim smile. They would see how this went now that he could fight back.

"More targets inbound! I'm tracking six, no ten inbound targets! Multiple vectors! Two, One, Nine degrees! Five more inbound, One, Six, Three degrees!"

The call outs kept coming and the men on deck dove for cover as the stick man released his dead-man switch that kept the twin min-guns silent, and both five ton guns whipped about a full one eighty degrees in under a second as they locked and fired on the incoming threats, dealing each a burst of fire before moving on to the next target even before the first shells arrived.

The vast majority of the missiles were obliterated in seconds, but the remainder hung on, seeming to dodge or evade everything they threw at them. Captain Ernestine had just enough time to worry when one of the targets reached his ship, leapt up, and skipped right over the deck. The mad bombardment continued as the 'missiles' seemed to form up and speed off into the distance in a tight-knit pack, but Ernestine just stood slack jawed before the window.

He never admitted it to anyone, but for the rest of his life he wondered if he had really seen a fat man in a flying side car motorcycle skip across his deck that warm July morning.