Chapter 2
"So how's it looking?"
He could hear her, but it was still weird, knowing she was talking to him from outside.
"Everything looks good - just like on the screen...but its like I'm actually here." She could hear the smile in his voice through the speakers, though his face remained as motionless as the rest of him beside her. They were both getting used to seeing it, but it was still strange. "The scale looks okay - everything seems to look about right to me." That wasn't saying much at this point though - he was standing in a simple woodland, looking at his own hands for comparison mostly. At least it meant that his metaphysical self seemed anatomically correct so far as he could tell.
The VRMMO hadn't quite entered the testing stage yet, but she'd asked Harry if he could help her to make sure that everything was okay within the game itself. While there was now a small team working on the Magic Online project within the Department of Magical Integration, but they mostly worked from outside the game itself. Having Harry dive in and make sure that everything looked and worked the way it was supposed to meant that they could catch any issues early, though that wasn't the only reason he was doing It.
Truthfully, it was a way for Hermione to give something back to her friend. It had been almost a year since the battle at Hogwarts and once the rebuilding had finished and people were getting back on their feet, life changed for Harry. People began treating him like a celebrity, and while it rarely got out of hand, for a private and not that sociable boy like Harry, it made him incredibly uncomfortable. He couldn't go out without people coming up to him, or staring at him, things like that. In the early days, the minister had asked everyone gently to leave the survivors and the fighters alone - to not overwhelm them if at all possible. It wasn't just for Harry - there were many who had fought, who didn't want to be reminded of it or thanked for it. A great many people were healing from that year - from what they had done and what had been done to them, having people flock them in the streets to thank them just made those twisted feelings even more difficult to manage.
Curbing what the public could get away with was something fairly high on Kingsley's priority list, but something that had to be done in a fairly passive manner, lest it seem too oppressive. The fact of the matter though, was that people had been doing near enough whatever they wanted during Voldemort's regime - those in power had had free reign, so those who had joined the Dark ministry were used to having no consequences for their actions against others, while those who had suffered now wanted the tables turned. It was a difficult situation.
So far things hadn't been too bad though - once it became clear that order was in place and everyone should adhere to at least the basic tenets of society (don't steal, don't injure etc) then things got better a lot quicker. Frankly so many people had lost loved ones and suffered, they all understood that it wasn't right to cause pain to anyone else - even if all it took sometimes was just the wrong word in a sentence that reminded them of someone they had lost.
Thankfully, nobody stood for negativity for some time - morale was important those first months and once it became an unwritten rule for nobody to upset anyone else then even when it was no longer quite so important, people still followed that rule. Of course not everyone did - there were always trouble makers, or those who just weren't capable of being particularly nice, but still, it made a difference.
Either way, it drove Harry to stay hidden behind thick walls and in dark places - out of sight. He still wanted to help though, which was why Hermione was constantly roping him into her projects. The Magical World Online was something that he had slowly developed an interest in, as Hermione explained the concept to him - it wasn't like he had much experience on computers beyond what was taught in primary school. Once he'd grasped what they were trying to do though, he was much more interested even if he wasn't sure how to help.
Hermione however, was exceptionally pleased with being able to get Harry on board. Not only for his help, or to give him something constructive to do that he could enjoy, but also as a way for her to help pay him back in place of the rest of the magical world. Out of respect for his wishes, the populace tried to give him his space - though some couldn't help but offer him their thanks and he was still an icon that they all watched closely. However, their attention on him made Harry uncomfortable, and so he hid from it for the most part. Though the VRMMO was meant to be for the muggle population to experience the magical world, Hermione could now use it to show Harry all the places he couldn't go to without people staring at him, or it becoming a spectacle. They even had magical areas from outside Britain - places Harry couldn't go without it potentially becoming a diplomatic visit, just because of who he was.
For now though, she had him exploring a simple woodland - somewhere in the South Downs National Park - and there were supposed to be Aethonan around there; a breed of winged horse. Unlike Abraxan however, the aethonan were of a regular sized horse - Abraxan were closer to the size of elephants. They were still working out the mechanics of interacting with magical creatures in the game - particularly wild ones, but wanted it to be possible to mount and fly on creatures like the aethonan. Harry was going into the game with all his skills maxed out - he was a tester after all, so it wouldn't do if he was too low level to interact with everything, but once the game was released he was determined to go in at level one just like everyone else.
For now though, they were checking the environments - making sure that everything looked right. The first time Harry had opened his eyes in the game, he'd found that his hands were much bigger than they ought to be and that several objects seemed to overlap eachother where they had been overlaid. There hadn't been major problems though - the designers were brilliant and it certainly helped that a real life recording could be taken and used for the game.
Even though this was only the third session inside Magic Online, it still awed Harry to think that he was inside a computer right now - his body was laying beside Hermione in the real world, while he was out here in some forest, looking up at the sky. Speaking of which.
"Hey Hermione, you might want to have them just tweak the sky a little bit - I know this game is meant to be colourful but I'm pretty sure I've never seen the sky to be that shade of blue." It was pretty, but a little bit too turquoise. This may be the Magical World Online or whatever they were calling it, but it was still planet Earth.
The name was actually still being decided on. Everyone involved seemed to have their own opinion on the name, or their own version of it. Officially it didn't have a name at all - the project had a name, but not the game itself. Thus the game was identified as 'Magic Online', 'Magical World Online', 'The Magical World', and other variations along the same vein.
Regardless of the name, the project was well underway. The first dive had been nerve-wracking for all involved, especially as it came quite soon after they'd found a way of using muggle electronics. Using magic around electronics had always been a problem before, but because they would have to use the muggle dive systems for their game (otherwise it wouldn't be popular, if people had to buy all the tech when they already had their own dive gear). That meant being able to use the systems within a magical location though - or at least with magic around, while they developed the game. In the end they had found a decent stop-gap measure of simply insulating the electronics against magic. It involved a bit of alchemy - and some rather foul-smelling goo that solidified into a hard, shiny shell and resisted magic. It had a habit of cracking if spells were cast directly on it, but another layer could be applied over any cracks to reseal it.
The real test had been making the dive system viable for the magicals. Some of the younger students had used the dive system before they learned they were magical, and in times of stress had caused accidental magic in the real world - usually shorting out their hardware in the process. They were still working on stopping that from happening - short of opening up the dive hardware and putting the goo over every bit of it, and even then it would only work for a little while. At this stage though, just testing the benign stuff, it wasn't necessary. There weren't any enemies in the game yet - most of it was still in development after all.
"Alright Harry, we're going to relocate you to Stonehenge at night - we want to be able to use it for some of the traditional celebrations." Hermione warned him. Both of them were learning a great deal about things they never thought they would - including some of the traditional magical celebrations. Particularly as muggle raised, without family in the magical world, they had no way of gaining many of these insights.
While they had of course learned about the boost that certain rituals gained on Samhain courtesy of Voldemort, that was about it really. It turned out that there was a lot more to it than that however, more even than Hermione had learned at Hogwarts, about how magic was effected and the things that magicals had traditionally done throughout the year. Much of it was comparative to paganism - with Christmas being Yule, Halloween as Samhain and so on - and celebrating the equinoxes, harvest days and so on.
Though she was only now seeing some of the traditions that had been popular in the magical world, Hermione was beginning to understand why so many purebloods had disliked the muggleborns so much. For all that she had buried herself in the magical world, into books and learning, she had never known these simple celebrations and ways of life. It had been disrespectful of her to come in criticizing, even if she had done so because she hadn't been able to get that information. It was passed down through families mostly, and she was only learning it because there were those among her now willing to teach her. Ron certainly hadn't been any help in that regard - she'd learned the most from Molly in truth, during her visits to see her. Molly had been raised a Prewitt, and just because she was pro-muggle didn't mean that she had cast away her history.
Still, it had raised an interesting issue - how little the muggleborns knew or were being taught about the magical world. Not only that, but how the education at Hogwarts had been lacking in certain areas - and Hermione was determined to help fill those gaps within the game, so that any magical who wanted could learn a few things about their world that they may have missed.
She was distracted from her thoughts when Harry spoke up again, his voice coming clearly through the speakers.
"Have you ever been to Stonehenge Hermione?" He asked conversationally, and she could see his virtual self poking around the tall stones that made up the historic landmark.
"I have visited once or twice, with my parents." Muggles weren't allowed so close though, not unless they were given permission. She'd never been up close like Harry was now, even if it was virtual.
"I've never seen it before." He sounded a bit melancholy, but then chuckled. "You know, I don't think I'm the best person for this job Hermione. How am I supposed to tell if something looks right if I've never seen it in real life before?"
"Don't worry Harry, you're mostly there just to make sure that the graphics are working correctly. Though, if you want something that you've seen before, how about this..." The excitement in her voice was enough to make Harry turn, she could see his character on the screen looking towards her. She typed in a few keys, relocating Harry to what looked like someone's house.
Before he could say anything however, he got to experience the first completed cut scene of the game. In front of his eyes, a special letter slipped through the letterbox, coasting through the air towards him. It looped in the air and landed in his hands, and Harry couldn't help but laugh as he saw the Hogwarts seal proudly displayed on the front.
Now everyone could experience the joy of the being invited to the magical world.
Notes: So this is still pretty slow in terms of characters and I'm sorry about that. Just to clarify, this isn't going to have Ron-bashing, its just he's off doing his own thing for the most part, and hasn't come up yet, so don't worry about that. Also I forgot to mention, but I don't have a beta so if you spot any mistakes or think I should rephrase anything, let me know - thanks.
