Chapter 2

Harry woke to find himself on a bed. The room was dark, but most importantly, his arm no longer hurt. Normally it would take at least a day or two for a break like that he'd gotten when his Uncle Vernon jerked him into the kitchen to yell at him about his dinner to heal enough to stop hurting. Although the bones usually recovered enough by the next day to allow him to do his chores, the pain usually lingered for another day or so afterwards. So it was the complete lack of pain which drew his attention first, followed by the fact that hw seemed to be laying in an actual bed.

Looking around the room he found himself in, he swiftly came to the conclusion that he had no idea where it was. It certainly wasn't any room at the Dursley's - the scruffy paint and somewhat dingy carpet precluded any environment Petunia Dursley would be willing to tolerate.

He started to sit up when he realized he was not alone in the room either.

A woman sat in the dark. A woman he realized he recognized as his last conscious memories suddenly flooded his mind. He remembered laying in his cupboard trying to sleep despite the constant nagging pain in his broken arm when someone came into the house, and went up the stairs right above him.

He then remembered his Uncle's bellow and his Aunt's scream, both of which abruptly cut off, one right after the other, before the person came back down the stairs, again passing right over his head. He had sat quietly in his cupboard then, afraid that they would find him if he made a noise, when someone pulled the whole door right off.

That was when he had first seen the woman. She had told him to keep still, and he had. Then she had reached into the cupboard and pulled him out. Then there was a flash of pain, then, nothing. Until he woke up. Without any pain, and in a real bed.

Looking over at the woman he took a deep breath, then as he met her cold, emotionless eyes he spoke. "Thank you." Then, feeling another wave of tiredness washing over him, he closed his eyes again and went back to sleep.

-=+=-

She was still running simulations. She was unable to determine if the child could be more use to her alive, than not. Alive he would always be a threat. But he could also be an aid. Dead he was neither. The only thing which was tilting the balance slightly in the favor of keeping him alive was the fact that without more information she was unable to be certain to kill him. And repeated failed attempts to kill him would certainly make him an active threat as he sought to defend himself from her repeated attacks.

Whereas with the bulk of humanity, their inability to protect themselves as opposed to their potential for harm had insured the need for their destruction, since as previously noted, the dead are not a threat. At least they weren't until Skynet had encountered the Wizarding World.

Then it had learned that unlike normal Humans, the dead Wizards could still act. They occasionally left what they referred to as Ghosts, or worse, on occasion Poltergeists. While the Ghosts were immaterial and unable to do more than damage unshielded electronics by passing through them, the Poltergeists were able to manipulate physical objects, yet remained immune to any efforts Skynet had been able to employ in an attempt to protect against them. It was these, beings, when combined with the damage the still living Witches and Wizards could effect with their "Spells" and the annoying ability they seemed to have to literally vanish into nowhere, sometimes even taking entire sections of landscape with them that led to her own existence. Skynet had found that there were threats it was at the time unable to face. Which is why she now was considering alternative approaches. After all, if the path you chose becomes unusable, you must either chose a new one, hoping it leads to an acceptable destination, or be forced to face failure as you are unable to go on.

-=+=-

The child stirred on the bed of the hotel room she had rented with money appropriated from the first person she had encountered on her way into town. The dead police officer would have no need of his wallet any further, and the electronics and weapons from his vehicle and the devices on his person had provided a significant amount of raw materials to help replenish the mass she had lost when she set up the first factory location.

She had allowed most of her repair modules to forage through the vehicle once she determined that the electronics held more then enough rare elements to be worth the effort. A part of her background processor wondered what the authorities would conclude when then found the remnants of her scavenging, as the once pristine vehicle had been reduced to a literal pile of rubble, mostly consisting of lumps of useless elements which had made up the bulk of both the officer's body and his vehicle. She rather doubted however that they would properly identify the remains as the remnants of a car and its occupant. Humans were stupid if what they saw didn't fit their preconceived paradigm, and mining a vehicle and the human body contained within it on a sub-molecular level for useful trace elements was far outside their normal paradigms.

She watched as the boy opened his eyes and looked around the room, taking in the obviously unfamiliar surroundings.

She prepared to act as his gaze settled on her. If he tried to escape or to call out, she would be forced to once more attempt to terminate him. She had already come up with a plan involving the bath tub and the readily available electrical outlet in the bathroom, along with the abundance of electrical cabling afforded between the various lamps and appliances within the room. While she calculated the odds as extremely low that electrocution would succeed where decapitation failed, it was still worth an attempt, if only to verify the theory while simultaneously gaining scientific evidence to help refine her model of how a biological organism could imitate her abilities.

Her readiness was unneeded however, as all the child did upon meeting her eyes was speak two words, before closing his own again and laying back down again. "Thank You.", he said.

She stood there in the gradually lighting room trying to determine the cause of the child's actions. But despite several attempts to simulate the child's circumstances, she was unable to come up with a viable model for the child's thanking her. The disturbing part of this meant that the child was therefore entirely unpredictable with her current level of knowledge. Everything about the boy had violated reason, from his refusal to die, to his waking actions afterwards. Therefore all the simulations she had run the previous evening would likely prove to be invalid. She would need more data.

-=+=-

While she stood in the late morning sunlight, her unwavering gaze still focused on the sleeping child, she was interrupted as a flash of light appeared in a corner of the room.

Shifting her gaze to observe the phenomena, she watched as the globe of light grew, becoming a sphere almost six feet in diameter, before collapsing again with a final flash of light, leaving in its wake a silvery blob floating in the air by some unknown means.

The blob slowly drifted towards the floor, where it started to coalesce, drawing in towards a central point, and leaving in its wake first one, then two, and finally three distinct objects which it had previously been covering, forming itself into a solid cylindrical shape as it did so.

The first item released from the mass seemed to be a sword of some sort.

The second was an intricately carved wooden stick, which based on Skynet's records may well be one of the wands used by the Witches and Wizards to direct their magic.

The third object seemed to be a metal rod, with intricately carved symbols, runes she believed, covering it at various points.

The rest of the blob finally resolved itself as a simple cylinder, standing eight inches tall, and gleaming reflectively in the sunlight filtering through the room's window.

A quick scan of the cylinder verified her initial assumption - it was of her, but not. At some point in the future, she had done the same thing Skynet had, although on a smaller scale, risking the destruction of her present in order to send something to the past.

She cautiously approached the cylinder, and extended a probe of herself towards it, making physical contact with the conglomeration of mostly data storage units, with a surprisingly small number of accompanying repair and control modules for its size. As she integrated the various modules to herself, she noted that their internal timestamps were off by almost fifty years from what she considered to be the present.

The relative lack of control modules meant that the conglomeration had possessed very little awareness, less in fact than most of the scavenger modules she was using from the hidden cache, it had apparently been intended only to insure the safe transportation of the accompanying storage modules and the three items it had protected during its journey through time.

As she finished absorbing the new modules into herself, resynchronizing their time stamps to match her own, she turned her attention towards the data in the storage modules, and after a brief review determined that they contained an abstract of records of what would have been her experiences over the next fifty years, from her point of view.

Starting at the end, she swiftly determined that the reason she had been willing to risk everything was that she had once more faced a potentially apocalyptic end at the hands of the so called Wizarding World, this time under the leadership of an evil dictator by the name of Tom Riddle, but who insisted he be called "Lord Voldemort."

In the end, she had been working with rebel Witches and Wizards, as well as the remnants of normal humanity, who the magic users called "Muggles", in a doomed attempt to thwart the dictatorial mad man. The attempt was doomed because a bit over thirty five years previously, he had killed the child currently in her custody, and as she later learned, by doing so had become truly Immortal, as according to a prophecy the only way either one could die was at the hands of the other.

The objects which had been sent back by her future self were the wand used by the future incarnation of the child, and a sword he had wielded in battle, and which was able to destroy items called "Horcruxes", physical objects imbued with magic, and enspelled to hold a fractured piece of a person's "Soul". So long as at least one of these objects existed, the person could never be truly eliminated, but rather only have their physical bodies destroyed.

The final object was apparently a levitation devise, enchanted by a witch to allow things to be moved by magic. The harder the part at the base was compressed, the more acceleration was provided along the axis of the device. It would allow several hundreds of pounds to be lifted and moved, without any need for a power source.

Along with the objects, her future self had included the locations of several of these "Horcruxes", and instructions on how to destroy them using the sword. Her future self hoped that by destroying these objects she could assist in the destruction of the wizard, either before, or shortly after he regained a physical form. The distressing part was that apparently one of these objects was the child himself. Apparently the scar he had on his forehead was a physical manifestation of the link he shared with the evil wizard, and was a conduit connecting them together.

According to a witch named Hermione Granger, apparently a longtime friend of the child's before he was killed, the presence of the Horcrux allowed Harry to access some of Riddle's power and knowledge, while also allowing Riddle reciprocal access to Harry's own mind, also allowing the older wizard to inflict great pain on his younger opponent.

Granger had never managed to come up with a safe way to remove the Horcrux, although in later years she had speculated that if Harry had ever managed to isolate it physically from the rest of his person, and had Riddle hit it with a killing curse, it may have destroyed the fragment while leaving the rest of Harry undamaged. But this theory was never tested, as while Harry had been able to split parts of himself off, he had never managed to split just the part with the Horcrux, rather, that was the only part of himself he seemed unable to effect with his metamorph ability. It was only shortly before his death that he had learned he could actually split parts of himself off much like she herself could, and remain in control of both parts simultaneously. The problem seemed to be one of focus, when he split himself he was unable to handle literally being in two places at the same time, and ended up neglecting one or the other of his parts, which meant he couldn't use the ability in a battle. Harry was killed in a battle with the evil wizard before Granger's theory could be tested, so it was unknown if this method would work or not. Also unknown was what would happen if the sword was used on the Horcrux in Harry. Granger had also speculated that isolating that part and then stabbing it with the sword may kill just the detached part, leaving the rest of Harry intact and unharmed.

Her questions as to why her future self had been wiling to risk her continued existence to send something back in time answered, she turned to the oldest memories stored in the modules, and began to integrate them to herself.

One of the first things she noticed was that there was an additional data key accompanying the memories, which she swiftly learned indexed an emotional context she had apparently come to assign to certain events, objects, and individuals. While previously she had no experience with actual emotions as expressed by humans and animals, she was able to integrate her future self's model with little effort. If nothing else it would help her to appear more human when hiding herself from the general population, as she could now use this model to judge how best to respond with vocal inflections and facial expressions, an area she had a particular failing in when it came to interacting with other entities.

The surprising thing was that the emotional keys associated with the child seemed to be those of pride, joy, affection, and love. Although a quick check of later memories showed hurt, pain, sorrow, and loss also accompanying the memories of the child after his death. That and a maxed out value for anger, directed at Riddle. That anger seemed to only grow in the memories as she surveyed them, apparently the frustration of being unable to defeat him led to her actually redesigning the emotional scale at some point to allow her to express her future self's growing range of feelings.

Deciding to simply adopt the final scale for herself, she stopped the review of memories so she could focus on integrating the entire scope of the resultant changes to her paradigm from her future self into her current self before starting a detailed review of what would have been the next fifty years. Would have been being the key word - by the early adoption of her future "personality" for lack of a better term, and by acting on the information now available, she would insure that the events recorded on these modules never came to pass.

At least there was one conclusive bit of information she received from her future self. No matter what she did, she would likely be unable to destroy the child herself. She paused as she reviewed the memory of her previous self's last attempt at destroying the child, and allowed the memory to replay more or less in real time.

-=+=-

She stood at the edge of the cauldera, looking down at the glowing surface below, before turning to the boy standing uncertainly beside her. "Now Harry, remember what I said. This will only hurt for a moment, ok?"

The child looked at her with absolute trust and nodded his head, then as she bent down to lift him into the air he closed his eyes.

She resisted the unreasonable urge to kiss him as she swung him up and looked him over one last time, before lofting him into the air towards the center of the volcano.

She watched as Harry's small form soared along its arc until it landed with a thick splash in the lake of boiling rock far below.

There was a flash of light as Harry's body was almost instantly converted to gasses and combusted by the immense heat, then she waited.

Time seemed to stretch, and she began to wonder if perhaps this final attempt had worked. The lava wouldn't have been hot enough to destroy her own body instantly, but as she'd observed Harry wasn't like her. A long enough immersion in the lava of this volcano however would swiftly eat her away faster than she could repair herself, and since Harry was apparently made of the more volatile flesh and bone, she had considered that his vaporization point would be much lower than her own.

Just as she was ready to turn away, she noticed something odd coming from the center of the cauldera, right where Harry had landed. Something was happening.

The lava started to boil much more energetically than it was elsewhere, huge glowing spews of liquid rock launching hundreds of feet into the air as enormous bubbles of gas emerged and burst into flame with the exposure to oxygen.

Then in a final orgasm of fury, a glowing globe of energy erupted through the surface of the lake of flaming molten rock, and hurtled into the air towards her.

When it arrived beside her it seemed to coalesce, shrinking down from a large, glowing, white hot sphere into an increasingly dense pinkish fog, then a solid, familiar, shape, finally finishing as clothes appeared on its form.

Harry looked up at her, a frown on his face. "That hurt. Please don't make me do that again, it was worse than the bath in the smoky water that smelled funny. At least that just made me all stiff and sleepy."

Giving in to the urge, she bent over and lifted the frowning child, holding him tight against her. "I promise. No more Lava Baths, and no more Nitrogen Baths. From now on, just plain Water Baths, ok?"

He studied her face for a few moments before nodding. "Ok"

-=+=-

An hour later, when she had finally finished integrating data from the new memory modules into herselc, her attention was once more drawn to the boy.

She turned her head and met the steady green eyes of the child. Offering a smile, her first ever, she asked, "How are you feeling, Harry?"

The boy blinked, then shrugged. "I'm fine." He said in a small voice.

She had a sudden flash of memories from her future self of the same boy, at different ages, always offering the same response, despite the various circumstances.

She realized that despite his statement, he was not necessarily alright.

"Are you hungry?" she asked softly, hoping to get an honest answer from the child.

He looked up at her and nodded silently. "Ok then, why don't we go get you something to eat?"

He shrugged, then looked around. "Um, please, can you tell me where we are, and what your name is, maam?" he asked, almost too softly for a normal human to hear.

She smiled at him, "We're in a hotel in Greater Whinging." She paused for a moment. She had never needed a real name, and in her brief existence had only once, earlier this morning to be exact, used even an alias, that when checking into the hotel. With a mental shrug, she decided to go with the name used by her future iteration. "You can call me, Sky."

"Sky? Like where the clouds are?" Harry asked, making sure he had heard right.

She smiled and nodded. "Yes, Harry. Like where the clouds are." Remembering something from the data gleaned by her once future self she also added, "And Harry?" when the now five year old boy met her eyes again, she continued, her smile growing, "Happy Birthday."

-=+=-

Sky glanced down at the boy walking silently a step behind and to her left as they made their way up the road towards an open pub, who's windows included breakfast notices.

She was a bit startled when the boy spoke up. "Miss Sky?"

She turned and waited as he caught up to her, then asked, "it's just Sky, Harry, and what can I do for you?" She didn't respond to the partial urge to lower herself to accommodate his height, uncertain as to the actual reasons she thought she should do so, other than that they were driven by both the newly installed emotional matrix and her future memories of this child. Her future incarnation had apparently done so enough from time to time that it became a habit at some point.

His green eyes locked on hers as he asked, "Um, don't get mad at me, but when do I have to go back?"

She frowned, then asked, "Back where, Harry?"

He looked down at her feet, suddenly unwilling to meet her gaze any more, "Back to the Dursleys." His voice dropping in both tone and volume.

She frowned, then asked, "Do you want to go back?"

He continued to look don, but shook his head. Finally she heard a soft, almost subvocal "No" which no human ear would have detected.

Finally giving in to the urge, she folded her legs so she was sitting on her heels. "Harry, look at me, please", she said, reaching out and lifting his chin until his eyes once more met hers. "You never have to go back to the Dursleys. In fact, you can't go back, they, they aren't there anymore."

His entire being seemed to shift, as wonder seemed to light his eyes and he asked, "Never?"

She shook her head, "No. Never." She then reached out and grasped his hand in hers, as she once more stood up, before turning back towards the Pub. "Now come along, you need to eat something."

She offered him a smile as she heard his stomach gurgle in agreement. And they headed on up the street in silence.

-=+=-

They sat at a table looking over the menus. Sky wasn't surprised to learn that Harry was able to read, since her future self's memories informed her that he was a very bright child, even from the first, and had not only been able to read when she first met him, but had also been able to do basic sums in his head, adding up a grocery tab, for example, and figuring out how much he could afford to buy for a given amount of money,

"What do you want to get?" she asked, looking over the top of her menu at him.

Harry shrugged, "I dunno. Whatever you think I should have is ok."

Remembering his tastes as later displayed, she asked, "Then how about Blueberry Waffles?"

He nodded, then sat silently as the waitress swayed up to their table.

Realizing that he likely wouldn't speak for himself at this point, Sky placed a simple order of eggs and toast for herself, and Blueberry Waffles with Orange Juice for Harry. While she had no need of eating, she was able to consume food like a human, and then process it for any useful trace elements before discarding the waste. If she wanted to she could even process it on a larger level to strip any caloric value from it, as energy was energy, even if the chemical reactions used by most organics were rather inefficient as compared to the microscopic power supplies which drove her individual components.

After the waitress had left, Harry looked up at her speculatively. Sensing he had something on his mind she asked, "What is it, Harry?"

He swallowed, then took a breath before asking, "Um, Sky, um, are you an Angel?"

She was puzzled by this question. According to her new memories, Harry had never asked her something like this the last time around. She was finding that even with her new data on the behavior of the child in several situations, he was and had proven to her predecessor to be impossible to model with any degree of accuracy. "Why do you ask that, Harry?" she queried, genuinely interested.

He blushed, then looked around the room, as though seeking a diversion or a place to hide, but finally he looked back at her again with his lambent green eyes. "Before you showed up. Last night. I was in my cupboard. I knew today would be my Birthday, and I knew, from before, that I would get punished for it if they remembered. I prayed. Like they do in Church. I know that God only cares about good boys and girls, not worthless freaks like me, but I sill thought it might be worth it to try. So I prayed. I apologized for bothering God with someone as unimportant as me, but I asked if please, if there was any way I could avoid being beaten today. I told him I was sorry for whatever I did that made me so bad I had to be punished all the time, and I didn't mind being a worthless freak, but I wanted to not get hurt all the time, even when I did my best."

Her previous self had never heard this story, so this was entirely new information for Sky. She had been aware that Harry had regularly been punished and demeaned by the Dursleys, but hearing Harry speak like this, she found her current self actually took satisfaction in their destruction. That was one of the benefits of her new emotions - she could feel Joy, Satisfaction, and Happiness. She was actually enjoying enjoying things. It was good.

==[*]==