Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future
Harry studied the new castle design, exactly to his specifications. Hundreds of classrooms, dozens of lecture halls, libraries, engram implantation centres, holodecks, landing bays, weapons training centres, and a docking station all built into a massive spiraling castle to be grown from a single seed amber diamond, reaching two miles into the air from the lowest valley on the planet, a valley surrounded by 30,000 meter alps: everything a student would need to enter Starfleet. Except the staff.
He turned to the design team. "Build it. Now I have to staff it."
"How?"
"Muggles, obviously. There are currently ninety students that have muggle parents in Starfleet. We have another forty Starfleet muggles who are in the know because of muggleborns. So, we start there. I already sent requests to Starfleet Command for their CVs."
"Their what?"
"Curriculum Vitae?"
"Oh, their Educational Intent!" a witch said.
Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. "I need to hire a personal assistant. The language has evolved way too much. and your accents are so Welsh I can barely understand most people. That red-haired asian witch, she spoke with a normal accent, where's she from?"
"The southern continent. It's where most Asian magicals decided to emigrate."
"So asians now speak English with a Received Pronunciation accent whereas most Caucasians speak with thick Welsh or even thicker Glasgow accents? This world has gone mad."
Two people laughed and Harry asked, "Historians?"
They nodded and Harry chuckled himself.
He strode out, followed by his retinue. Four aurors and two gophers to deal with everything he needed.
Harry came to a stop outside the building and watched a dragon flying over. All settlements had anti-dragon charms and all dragons had implanted stones, charmed to keep them away from humans outside their settlements.
"Sire, your next appointment?"
"Right, yes, my artificers?"
The witch nodded.
"Gramps!"
He turned and saw Cirillia running towards him. She hugged him and he patted the top of her head. "Hello little one. Are you alone?" A year plus of her visiting him had turned her from fearful of him to seeing him as the coolest, most powerful person ever.
"Daddy's over there," she said pointing and Harry turned to look at the man. He nodded at him then said, "I have to work so you should run along, okay?"
She nodded and jogged off to rejoin her dad and little brother.
Harry apparated and appeared in a room of pure white without any doors or apparent lights. The wall in front of him dissolved and a dragon's eye on the end of an arm extended and looked him over. "Confirmed. Welcome back, your Majesty."
The walls fully dissolved as various weapons slid back into their alcoves and his artificers were revealed, looking back at him. They all stood in a large glass office, above a massive bay that was a nearly one hundred thirty cubic mile void. Large enough to hold Harry's yacht and the Pasteur class keel and have them not even be noticeable in the dim expanse while the goblins, house-elves, and dwarves who were part of the shipwright team were less than ants from the office.
"We've done some preliminary sketches, Harry," the only muggle—a shipwright who had retired to be near his daughters who were both witches—said as they shook hands, "and from what the team says, your idea is viable."
Harry smiled. "Show me, Hank."
Instead of paper, a holographic display sprang to life, showing Harry's original sketched ship designs expanded upon and drawn so much better than he thought possible.
Sixteen months so far, Harry thought.
He hadn't expected to spend so long here, to create any sorts of ties. But he had friends again, even if they weren't as close as Ron, Hermione, Fleur, or Jammer.
He chuckled, thinking about Jammer. An ascetic who had lived near their village, he and Harry often had a drink or two together—ale for Harry, water for Jammer—and discussed combats magic. Jammer had been a contemporary of Moody before leaving the Ministry and creating a sort of religious movement that had been slowly growing. They eschewed all creature comforts and only used magic to help others, running a growing sanctuary for magical creatures, sentient or not. And very knowledgeable about the filthiest of jokes, some so esoteric, even Seamus needed them explained when he joined them.
He shook that off and studied the dossiers he had received. It had taken three months and a number of imperius and confounding charms by himself on a trip back to Earth to get all the information—by convincing an admiral and her staff that she wanted to investigate the officers herself for missing promotions, as well as another thousand who were also due review—then having to pay a rather large fine for using those spells on muggles in a non-statute function.
Harry had left the admiral with a compulsion to replicate them as physical documents then she 'lost' them in a restaurant on the moon where Harry retrieved them. He had thought about just asking for them but decided not having a trail back to him would be best for now.
He took a long pull of his hard butterbeer and sighed. He had missed the drink, sometimes more than his wives.
Another name to the list. So far, he had eight potential teachers and only needed another fifteen to cover all the positions necessary. So far.
He looked at the mirrors in his office and saw his muggleborn—all Starfleet personnel's children—staff, digesting the current Starfleet operating manuals and writing up what magic could replicate or do better and what would need to be done technologically or could done via technomancy, a still untapped field for many reasons. From their work, the new textbooks for their own starships would be created.
His door opened and his assistant came in, a half-veela, quarter human, quarter Deltan. Harry nodded at her, ignoring her hitched breath, dilating eyes, and her body's inherent magic trying to attract him due to her sexual arousal. Annoyingly, she was the best person for the job but her two overly sexual natures melded together were making her the worst choice for the job. So most of the time she was in a separate room. Hiring her had been a happy accident. Her aura had overwhelmed him in a weak moment due to three days awake but she had turned out to be incredible at the job.
She set his tea on the desk, breathing in so her cleavage was even more evident. "Anything else?" she asked him breathily.
"Call Nevyn and Myrdin, let them know I'll be a bit late for the game."
She nodded and left the room.
Harry looked up, admiring the way her backside swayed as she walked effortlessly on six inch stilettos without a platform on the ball of the foot. She was essentially en pointe all day. Fleur had had a number of shoes like that, he remembered. I wonder why fashion is so cyclical, he mused as he looked out the window.
~•~
Myrdin rolled the fist sized ebony ball along the closely cropped lawn, biting his lip as it began to slow, then turned and grinned at Nevyn as the ball just touched the white pin. "Try to beat that!"
Nevyn scowled. Myrdin's ball now blocked his from hitting the pin dead-on, leaving them deadlocked. Hitting Myrdin's ball first would make him lose two points even with a knocked over ivory pin.
Then he noticed his other two balls were sitting at fairly good positions for potential banking shots.
He brought his arm back then let the ivory ball—made of actual dragon ivory—go, and watched as the forward spin he let it go with picked up speed from the magic in the lawn. The ball ricocheted off one then the other then slammed the pin toward the two, sending the ebony ball to hit the remaining black pin, stealing a point, letting Nevyn win. "Hah!"
~•~
Harry apparated onto the receiving lawn of the Potter Bowling and Card Club, scowling at the little royal crown above the name Potter. It had showed up the day he had accepted a membership. "I love you Hermione but Merlin damn you," he muttered.
He found the two at the bar, watching the bartender create a layered drink the muggle way. Harry watched, impressed. It was a difficult skill to properly layer drinks and not have them mix, like this witch was succeeding at.
The witch set the drink in front of Nevyn and she stuck a straw in then blew into it. Flames of gold and blue erupted off the drink as Nevyn pulled her head back. "My hair okay?"
Myrdin and the bartender nodded as the drink went out. The six layers of red hued liquors had changed to blue and she picked up the glass, turning to smile at Harry.
"Hey, Sire."
Harry couldn't escape the title but at least these two didn't kowtow. "Nevyn, Myrdin, you haven't started the game?"
"Everyone else is late too."
"Then a Seven and Seven and some crisps."
Nevyn gave Harry a brief hug hello then Myrdin patted him on the back as he asked, "How's the new school going?"
"The castle design is done, just scouting the teaching staff at the moment. I know we're going to have to hire muggles who don't know about magic. The students' parents aren't all qualified to teach."
"You can tell anyone you want, though."
"I still have to vet them before hiring them. You two want to see Earth?"
"I was stationed there for a decade," Nevyn said.
"And I've got my first grandkid about to arrive," Myrdin replied.
Harry nodded. He hadn't really wanted to bring them but he thought they might be useful to have around. And having a few people near his age was nice. Or close enough. People that were the age he looked were still in school. People that were his actual age were all dead save one in a million of the population and of those, nine of ten were afflicted with memory issues. But these two were just past their first centennial and had dealt with enough that Harry being Harry didn't really bother them. And he knew how to make some fantastic cocktails.
"Wait, first grandkid? Now?"
"I didn't have a kid until i was fifty and then he didn't have a kid until, well, next week."
"Huh, happen to know the average age of reproduction?"
"Twenty-six," the bartender said. "And the average family has two point one children, sire. Family planning laws from the beginning of the colonization really influenced the culture."
Harry nodded. "So they actually passed that law?"
"Not a law. A stipend. Taxes were higher if you had none or one. No taxes if you had two, Stipends for a third and fourth," Myrdin replied.
"Still a law," Harry replied. "But not as bad as I feared. No pureblood laws for procreation?"
"A fine for pureblood marriages, actually," Nevyn replied. "Not big for most purebloods but enough. And closeness of relation laws."
The rest of the players arrived and Harry nodded then led the way into the card room set aside only for his use. This was one perk he really didn't mind since the other rooms all smelled of hundreds of years of various tobaccos. His room only smelled of one cigar blend.
One of which was waiting at his spot with a platinum-titanium alloy cutter and a specially bred near-sulphurless dragonette waiting to light his cigar.
It flew to his shoulder and snuggled against him after recognizing his scent and got a bit of high quality lump charcoal as a treat.
The dealer came in and settled in, manipulating the cards as stewards began bringing in the buffet.
One crafted Harry's favorite sandwich for him as the dealer began sliding cards across the table. Harry tossed in the small blind and looked at his cards.
~•~
Hours of Camelot Hold'Em had gone by and Harry was up six thousand fluyts—inflation had driven the largest coin to the patache then the fluyt—and smiling. He knew he wasn't winning because he was Emperor: the charms on the room caused all within to play to their best. He was winning because they were rather bad at hiding their emotions and they all had tells.
Finally, most were ready to call it a night and one of Harry's assistants stacked the money and left to take it to drop in the St Mungo's box out front.
"SIre?"
He turned to see one of the younger assistants holding a textbook—she was studying for her Mastery in Combinative Magicks—and looked pensive.
"This books mentions a skill you developed but it has nothing else on it."
"Shatterpoints?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Ever see a window with a crack in it?"
"Yes."
"That crack is a shatterpoint. Hit it there, even lightly, the window shatters. The Shatterpoint skill is a way to see that in everything. It's a dangerous skill. Because you can see the shatterpoints in a relationship as easily as you see it in a wand. What if you see the woman who will shatter your relationship with your husband? So you kill her. Only that's what shatters the relationship because she's his family. Or you don't kill her and she seduces your husband away from you because you took no action?"
She went a little pale, imagining how the skill could be used.
"Di-did you ever use the skill?"
"Yes. One must develop a skill to master it. But we were at war so I was using it there for the most part. I didn't truly master it until I was on the planet though."
