Chapter III: Potter School of Whatever Works
Disclaimer: Not mine and I make no profit.
Destiny refers to a predetermined course of events. It can be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. It is a concept based on the belief that there is a fixed natural order to the cosmos. Destiny as such doesn't exist. The future isn't set to stone because it hasn't happened yet, but there are probabilities, things that are very likely to happen, like a river will flow in its bed if something doesn't force it to alter its course.
The arrival of Harry Potter into the Alternate Earth AKA Earth Sphere hadn't heralded that great a change by itself. Harry Dursley was an upper-middleclass teenager living privileged upper-middleclass teenager life, going to a prestigious school, with no contact to any warring factions, and had Harry Potter arrived alone he would have been too busy trying to find his way back to his own world to make big changes. Maybe Harry Dursley would have gotten together with Ibie and he wouldn't have. Maybe he would have taken up law enforcement where Harry Dursley's dream had been to have a career in quantum chemistry; it was all the small things. But then Luna Lovegood had followed him. And she had become his connection to the Gundam pilot freedom fighter (or terrorists, depending on who was asked.) She had become his link to a new destiny.
Luna felt a little sorry for him, but really, at this point Harry was spoiled anyway. He'd had a destiny for so long he wouldn't have had a clue what to do without.
They were driving in a real limousine. It wasn't as fun as Luna had thought it might be. There was a lot of room for the legs, the seats were soft and there was even a little television, but limousines were ugly cars. They were too long and flat to look as good as they ought to. She liked short and round cars, the kind that looked like ladybugs. Harry was sitting beside her and Qays Bitar was sitting in the front seat. At least he had said his name was Qays Bitar; Luna wasn't so sure of it. They were on their way to save her father and mother and Luna had warm clothes on so this new world was beginning to look pretty good.
"I like ladybugs," she said. Often she just said things like this, but at times she also wanted to see what people would do. Qays didn't turn his head and neither did the driver, who really shouldn't be driving like that in a city. Maybe they thought she was speaking to Harry.
"Well, I guess they are kind of cute," he said. He didn't seem to be mocking or thinking she was crazy; only a bit befuddled. That was good since she was really set on having her first real friend.
"I like you. May I hug you? I have heard that it gives people a warm, fuzzy feeling," she asked. Now Harry looked even more befuddled and blushed a bit, but he said yes and she hugged him. It worked too; she was feeling very nice.
The car slowed down suddenly so Luna and Harry were thrown against their seat belts and Qays hissed a word she didn't understand, but what had to be a curse, of the not-real kind.
"Oz something something something," said Qays. Harry grabbed her hand and sit straighter, undoing his seatbelt. The chauffeur answered in the same language and both of them moved their right hands towards their waist as the car stopped good five meters from the men.
They were in Oz uniforms, not very high-ranked if Luna was right and she was sure she was. She had seen a lot of soldiers in her life after were all looking kind of silly and the man with the epaulettes was the silliest-looking of them all. Luna's father had always said that it took class to pull off wearing some things, like yellow and orange quilted shirts or beer cork necklaces and radish earrings, and obviously short jackets with wings on the shoulders, red waistcoats, breeches and stockings and calf-length spatterdashes fell into this category as well.
"Isn't spatterdash a really funny word?" she asked from no one particular. The boy who was calling himself Qays made a little strangled sound, but Luna was busy imagining what kind of creature might be named spatterdash. Something that splashed a lot in the puddles, maybe with big, bright-coloured hind legs.
But she didn't like the feeling in the car when the man driving it opened the window when the soldiers reached them. There were bad vibrations and that meant that somebody was going to get hurt. Luna didn't really care if the Oz soldiers got hurt since they had taken her family hostage, but what if she and Harry got hurt? And Qays was rather nice too.
"State your names and business," the man with the big epaulettes demanded. He had yellow teeth and his voice was a bit raspy.
"We are going home from the sermon. We are from the Houses of the Holy Missionary Movement. The spiritual drowsiness of this age has allowed Satan to gradually weave his deceptive thread of antichrist globalism through every endeavor of man. Did you know that smoking is a sin?" Luna said and she called for the disregard, wrapped it around herself and Harry and the two men who had frozen on the front seats like a cloak.
Lune was well acquainted with the disregard. It came for her every time she talked of some creature she was interested in, forgetting that they could only be seen by those who believed in them or that they only lived in other-places, like this whole world was an other-place. Disregard was a cold and scratchy clothe to wear, but it protected well. Mean people had misplaced her things often, but they always found their way back to her, and no one ever tried to hurt her. Harry Potter had many nemeses because he was important. A lot of people hated Draco Malfoy because he made himself to be important. Loony Lovegood wasn't important enough that someone would have tried to hex her in the corridor or feed her to a basilisk. And just as surely as the Slytherins had turned their noses at her and snorted the man with the big epaulettes sneered at them, but his hand fell away from his gun.
"Antichrist globalism? Are the big, bad companies mean to a miss Little Red Riding Hood?" he asked. His men laughed.
"But my clothes aren't red anymore?" Luna frowned and shrugged. Maybe the man had time-overlaps too. That could be confusing. "It is not just the government, education, and economics that have been completely taken over by Antichrist forces and the Rotfang Conspiracy, but Christian churches have been infiltrated and taken over by the powers of darkness as well! Satan has been busy behind the scenes, and churches everywhere have been opening their doors to devouring usury, naughty limericks and other pornography, the books of J.R.R. Tolkien and others of that ilk. Would you like to have a pamphlet?"
"No thanks. And go away now!" the man waved his hand at them and their chauffeur drove as quickly as he could without being overly suspicious. He wasn't very good at being a harmless religious nutty, thought maybe it was because she had picked a wrong religion. But Harry was a lot better at play-pretend than he knew. Luna just knew that if asked, the soldiers would later swear he had been wearing lightweight summer khaki suit with conservative tie and penny loafers.
"I can't believe we just got away with that. Luna, you are great," Harry breathed when they had gotten out of hearing range. Luna felt warm, golden feeling blooming inside her chest. People never told her she was great.
"Thank you, Harry. I think you are great too," she answered. "Do you think a spatterdash would make a good frog? The kind of frogs that climb trees and are really colourful and live in Amazon?"
"Absolutely," said Harry.
It was a good thing, Harry decided, that he was used to a lot. He'd had ridiculously abusive foster family, an owl had delivered him an invitation to a super-exclusive, best-in-Europe magical school when magic shouldn't have existed and he had learned his supposedly drunken driver parents had actually bee murdered by a genocidal Dark Lord, having to deal with two return attempt via possession by the said Dark Lord in as many years. The supposed betrayer of his parents had turned out to be a loving godfather and the real betrayer had been his best mate's pet rat. Going through this all had effectively removed his shock threshold.
So he had gotten booted out of his time and universe by Hermione? He could deal. He wasn't happy by any stretch of imagination and he was going to find his way back, but he could deal. So he had fainted because of a memory overload? It wasn't like he hadn't passed out every year in Hogwarts for one reason or another. His help was required to save his alternate godfather and the family of a fellow dimension traveller? He didn't start gibbering because it was all so much. He was full ready get on with the rescuing.
This was why he was so annoyed when he realised that he and Luna were supposed to sit in a small room twiddling their thumbs while Qays and his men did the recuing.
"I can help you save Luna's parents," he protested for the umpteenth time. The patient, patronizing look on Qays' face made him want to punch him.
"I do not doubt your courage or devotion," Qays said in way that made Harry think the other boy was telling the truth. "But we are dealing with Oz and that is game best left to professionals. Besides, I think that after everything Luna has been through she needs your support now. Please remain here with her."
Harry looked at Luna. She was sitting on a small bed looking serene like an angel. Also, very non-traumatized.
"Not like you are giving me any options," he grumbled, but he sat down on a chair next to the bed. Not like he could do much else.
They were in a small motel where seven tall, darkish, intimidating-looking man resided and from what little English conversation he had caught Harry believed there were more elsewhere. And maybe Qays didn't have the looks of a Kemetian, but his men certainly had and Harry found himself wondering which colony they hailed from. Not L1 or L5, surely, but it could have been any other. Maybe not L2 either; he didn't think there were people as wealthy as Qays there if high Oz officials didn't count. And just how wealthy was Qays anyway? Questions, questions.
He and Luna had been a given a room of their own and told to wait there and be ready to leave quickly. Harry had been given a promise that once they freed Luna's father and mother he was free to go, which didn't please Harry in the slightest. Not that being kidnapped would have been a bundle of laughs, but he needed to get to Uganda and if Qays didn't give him a lift how was he going to manage?
There was a small plan forming in his brain that went against Harry's every instinct. Harry Potter had been taught that letting muggles know would lead to bad things and Harry Dursley had been taught by popular culture that catching the eye of a secret organization or terrorist cell of any kind was a terrible idea, but what if Harry just showed them his magic? If they knew what he could do surely they wouldn't just drop him off at Privet Drive? Upside: they would most likely help him save Sirius. Downside: he would be mixed up in the war up to his eyebrows after. But wouldn't he anyway just for saving Sirius? Breaking some one out of prison, even if and especially if they were a political prisoner, was a crime.
Qays and most of his men left, leaving only two to protect Harry and Luna, who were left alone in their room.
"Bugger," said Harry.
It was a nice room, if a bit small. It was in the top floor so it had an idyllic gambrel roof and the window gave them a good view over the neighbourhood. There was a small park nearby.
"I wish I had my magic better under control," he grumbled. It was annoying how dependent wizards were of their wands. Why couldn't just speaking the incantation be enough?
"Are you having trouble?" Luna asked. She sounded a bit surprised and Harry realized she had escaped from a military base, no small feat, and she didn't have a wand either.
"How do you do wandless magic? It oozes and flops a lot, but doesn't actually do much anything useful for me," he asked. It wasn't a good description, but surprisingly enough Luna seemed to understand what he was after.
"Magic is your friend, Harry. It wants to help you. You only need to tell it what you need it to do. And because magic doesn't have a mind of its own its borrowing yours so you need to know what you are telling it," Luna said and made a very regal-looking wave with her hand. Harry though about her words.
"So the wand isn't that important part of the spell?" he asked for confirmation. Luna nodded.
"If you think that's telling magic what to do, then that's telling magic. But if you think nursery rhymes are telling magic, then that works too."
Harry considered that. It made sense in a way, that the exact wand movement and word wasn't as important as the way the little wizards and witches trying to float a feather believed doing those right was the sure-fire way of making the feather float. He remembered he had wondered what in that wand wave was so important, why this kind of swish and not another, but he had been new to the world of magic and hadn't wanted to seem stupid by asking something obvious and for all Professor Flitwick was a teeny man, he could be pretty intimidating. Afterwards he had just forgotten the issue; that wand movement and the others just were the way things got done. He tried to remember some nursery rhyme just for curiosity's sake; it sounded so very Luna, for all he had known her less than a day. He found he couldn't.
Because no one had ever sung Harry Potter any and SNAP he was Harry Potter, hiding in a motel room far away from home.
He blinked. Describing what was wrong was hard. He was still sitting there, whole and healthy, but he felt…less, or maybe lost. It took him a few seconds to realize what had happened, it was like there suddenly was less him than before and then he realised the overlap was gone. When he had though of Petunia Dursley before there had been the horrible, horsey woman that had used all her time spying on her boring, lawful neighbours, probably because her own life was so unbelievably boring and useless even that had seemed important and the smiling, doting mum who had devoted herself to him and Dudley. There had been a lag when he had to decide which one he was remembering.
He remembered he had remembered mum Petunia, but he didn't remember what he had remembered other than some vague notions. He knewhe should have Harry Dursley memories, but when he tried to grab the fleeting images they flowed like water through his fingers. And it was scary. Harry tried to shake his head, but things didn't become any clearer. His heart was beating a mile a minute and hazy panic was beginning to settle in. He hadn't wanted the Dursley memories. He had been happy for having them in a distant sort of way because pretending to be Harry Dursley without them would have been difficult. How would he have explained his sudden, total amnesia, by falling off the bed and hitting his head on the floor? But he still hadn't wanted those memories to mess up who he was.
But they had been there and they had been safe and now they weren't anymore and he could barely breathe. How could he have gotten so used to them? They had made him faint! Those things hadn't even happened to him, this-him! It had been only two days of being like this!
But here he was, in a strange world without a clue and he didn't even know a single nursery rhyme.
"You are being mean to your memories and now they pay you back," the voice of a girl guided him back into the motel room. Luna's eyes seemed to glow softly in the dim room. Only then Harry realized were kneeling at the floor, so close to each other their noses were almost touching, and that he had to have tried to get up. And that Luna had switched off the lights, the only light the room coming from the late afternoon sun. "Extend an arm and say you are sorry. They will come back for sure," she said.
Harry extended his arm, palm up, the best he could and closed his eyes. He felt light-headed, like in the class just before fainting, but the world wasn't spinning. We aren't rescuing anyone hiding here, he whispered in him mind. He pictured himself in Hogwarts' robes and another him in Smelting's uniform, arms crossed over his chest and very Dudleyish pout on his face. I'm sorry. Please come back. He felt stupid, but like in a dream, like bespelled, he obeyed Luna Lovegood and apologized. Harry Dursley didn't stop pouting in his head, but he grabbed Harry Potter's hand and then there was him again.
Harry Potter-Dursley. It wasn't a rush like it had been the night he had arrived or when he had fainted, but more like weight at the back of his mind. He knew they were there and when he tried to recall nursery rhymes of his childhood Who Killed Cock Robin and How Many Miles to Babylon jumped to the front of his mind.
He wasn't sure how long this uneasy truce was going to last. He was sure he didn't like how big a part Harry Dursley was of him now, but he closed his eyes and counted to ten in his mind. He could deal. He could deal and he would get back to his own world, if for no other reason then so he could yell at Hermione for doing this to him.
(Hermione had done this to him and he liked her – she was one of his best mates but he ha…) No. Not now. He didn't have shock threshold anymore, he could deal.
"We need to go save your parents," he said, and despite his newly reacquainted memories he was more Harry Potter now than he knew. Harry Potter hadn't learned to trust other people to get things done. Other people – adults – mostly hadn't gotten anything done right around him. "But why do you need me? You can use your magic," he asked.
"It isn't the same thing," Luna said and worried her lower lip between her teeth. For a little while she seemed to at miss of what to say. "Think of us as computers. I have some special software you don't, but you have more processing power so you can run more programs."
So Luna had quality and he had quantity? It was a bit, or a whole lot, humbling to think of it that way, but if they teamed up then they should have each others' weaknesses covered.
"Lay on, McDuff! We should have a few hours to practice since I don't think they are going to do anything before it gets dark. How do we get into the place they are holding your parents at?" he asked and Luna smiled. He hadn't thought of her as very pretty when he first saw her. She had nice, blonde hair and she was pretty willowy without being too thin, but she had also protuberant eyes and those plain weren't good-looking. But when she smiled like that she was a lot more beautiful than Hermione or, say, Ginny or Cho Chang or anyone. Even more beautiful than Ibie or Lai.
"I can give you directions, but I'm going to need your help since my processors can't run this program…"
Cell block seven was underground, deeper than the basement. Quatre and two of his Maguanacs were climbing down the maintenance shaft of the service elevator that led them to break into a maintenance conduit running above the corridor leading to one of several entrance points. Attacking and overwhelming the place would have been no problem for them, but the soldiers were no doubt under orders to kill the Lovegoods rather than allow them to fall into enemy hands. Also, they would be even more on edge now that Luna Lovegood had escaped them through freak occurrence of incredibly good luck – for her. For Quatre rescuing them all at the same time would have been preferable.
Getting in and out without being noticed and taking two civilians on their way back was a problem. Still, while the security of the base was good the facility was old and it had its weak points.
It was hard to hear anything down there. The machinery that surrounded them resembled eerily what Quatre imagined that a human body would look from inside, wires and pipes like nerve clusters and veins surrounding them, their small colour-coded tags the only colour in the middle of steel gray, protected with metal grills. And it all hummed softly, rattled, hissed and let out high-pitched metallic whines that hurt his ears, all multiplied by echoes. At least they didn't have to worry about being quiet. They were at the heart of the London Oz Main base, there they could have crippled much of it with a single well-placed explosive, but that had to wait until they had saved the Lovegoods since the shaft was their only way out. His men had done as much as they could with the security system from the outside, hacking into and deactivating sensor alarms in the grounds, the roof and the access tunnels and also giving them override to the doors. They were ready to stage a distraction and extraction, if need be.
At the end of the conduit they reached an access panel, a metal grating that shielded them from casual view. And people rarely looked up, even if they were purposefully looking for something. It was ingrained into humans to look behind things and under things, but anything above their eye level went easily ignored. And the people working blissfully ignorant under them didn't look up even once.
Quatre reached for Abdul's hand in the darkness, his fingers flicker a message on his wrist Abdul would pass on. There were five guards under them and they didn't have a choice with them. Abdul's fingers tapped an acknowledgement on his forearm and Quatre took a deep breath, arming his mind as he quietly screwed his silencer on. He closed his eyes and remembered.
He had allowed himself be taken hostage when the Maguanacs had commandeered MO-III intent on freeing the anti-Alliance political prisoners forced to labour for the Alliance. He had saved Rashid from Yuda, helped to hold off the Alliance's mobile suits, enabling the Maguanacs to get to Earth safely, because there he had a made a decision that had deepened the rift between him and his father to the size of Grand Canyon. Because while the peaceful solution should always be the first option, the whole Earth Sphere had long since moved past that point. Peaceful solutions should always be the first option, but people were entitled to defend their lives and homes. He remembered the red-hazed pain of the bullet as it had gone through his arm, the pounding of his heart and the taste of iron in his mouth.
A guard wandered beneath the maintenance hatch. Quatre dropped down and the number of people he had killed face-to-face entered double digits.
The corridor was very bright after the darkness of the maintenance shaft. Quatre led his men to the area that couldn't be reached through it, making sure to not step on a puddle of blood, almost cheerily red in colour and looking very much out of place in a situation like that. He remembered thinking that first time, when he had seen his own blood, that in movies it looked a lot darker.
"How are you, commander?" Ahmed asked. He had a thin line of blood under his fingernails.
"No injuries," Quatre answered shortly. That was close enough to what had been asked. Those had been enemies.
They sealed the doors to the section they were in; there was only one way from the cell block into the shaft and it wouldn't do to be trapped down there. They almost made it to the cell block seven before Quatre's communicator beeped a code, informing him that somewhere someone had discovered the security had been compromised and activated the alarm. No alarm was sounded where they were, no blinking lights or thundering footsteps signalled as their override protocols and viruses started going into action. The base now knew there were people in, but what they didn't know was that they were extremely vulnerable outside, on the ground level, around the perimeter. Without further ado Quatre paged Rashid, not even pausing for a step and they broke into a run. The time for stealth was over now and it was time to rely on speed and strength. They were close enough to complete the mission and get out of the base with the Lovegoods alive.
As he entered his override code in the lock for the cell block, the first shouts sounded behind their backs. There shouldn't have been anyone there, but he heard the thump and rattle of something metallic chiming in his ears. The door didn't open a moment too soon as the first bullet followed only a second later, hitting the door that was already closing behind them. The doors weren't merely fire-doors, they were explosion-proof and there was no way shooting at them was going to even dent them unless one of the soldiers happened to have a portable beam cannon.
"They followed us through the shaft," he said and Ahmed cursed, only to be outdone a second later by Mirrikh and Mohammed. And the inevitable conclusion was daunting. "This was a trap." Because there was no way the soldiers could have climbed that quickly down the shaft. And Quatre imagined he could hear the small cylinder rolling on the floor behind the door, steel gray, the sound it made as it hit the ground hidden in the melee. Small, innocent-looking thing easily overlooked. It was their insurance.
High pressurised nerve gas. It was non-lethal and reversible, merely causing five to six hours of paralytic coma. A signal from Quatre's communicator would open the cylinder.
"The override will hold them off for a while," Quatre said. Thirty minutes, in fact, if the ozzies here were at the top of their game, but they didn't have that much time to waste as they needed to be able to fight their way back through the maintenance shaft until they at least got to the basement level.
Outside, Rashid Kurama drove the car he had commandeered from a patrol of off-duty soldiers like a madman to the gates of the London OZ Main base and led a dozen blood-soaked, uniform-clad figures to the faces of shocked gate guards. Great Britain was considered a cushy assignment among the ozzies, a prosperous and stable country that hadn't begotten much in the way of anti-Alliance political opposition, let alone resistance groups. No one expected trouble in Great Britain. This particular base seemed to expect trouble considering the number of guards they had positioned around the perimeter, but as all four that had been standing at the gates ran towards them, abandoning their posts, and the guards posted nearby drifted towards them as well, Rashid had to hide a smile. Expectation of trouble didn't make up for being totally unprepared to deal with it. The guard who ran to them first, a tall, wiry man with hair so pale it was almost colourless, looked on in horror as he witnessed the extent of their injuries.
"What's going on here?" he asked with a startled breath.
"A terrorist attack" one of the blood soaked figures replied through teeth clinched as if in pain, "more on the way." He was helping another "soldier", Auda, stand. Auda remained silent. Often when a person chose to not speak people would mistake them for being unable to speak.
"Get your medical orderlies here, my men are injured and need help," Rashid commanded as they hobbled towards the entry to the base.
"Yes of course" the man agreed running back towards the gate, "it will only be a moment." In the army, people didn't tend to question orders barked at them. The man might have wondered where these soldiers were from that he didn't recognize a face among them or why they had parked the car so far from the gate, forcing the guards to leave their post. But all he saw was muted green uniforms splashed in red and all he heard was a tone used to commanding respect. He didn't hesitate at all. Guards from all over the perimeter of the base that had been like an anthill someone had poked with a stick left their posts, gravitating towards his men, mingling with them, touching and leaving themselves wide open. No post was left completely unmanned, but several required more than one man and combined with the hacking job done earlier this left the perimeter security with more holes than Swizz cheese.
Moments later they were in and the suddenly healthy patients drew their guns. There were screams, but only for a short while, and now their stolen uniforms were wet with real blood, none of it their own. The battle, if one could call it that, was over in a short time, with the Maguanacs proving once again that quality and surprise will overcome quantity in most conflicts.
"I want C-building cleared, keep the initiative and don't give them a chance to kill any prisoners there might be, but first priority is the extraction of commander Winner," he commanded, lifting the mic hidden in his watch to his mouth, "Where are my reinforcements, I need reinforcements here now!" Only seconds later another army van drove to the base, this time right through the gate into the middle of the courtyard, and the rest of his men sans those left to protect Lovegood and Potter attacked.
Rashid would rather have assaulted the place in Mobile Suits, but as long as Quatre was inside that was out of question. He adored his diminutive commander, they all did, and if master Quatre was harmed at all there would be several hells to pay.
Inside, a flash of fear and hate was the only warning Quatre got before a bullet hit the wall just beside where his head had been a second ago and another drove a muted scream from Mirrikh. Three guns fire as one and the Oz soldier, a very young-looking red-haired woman who had just happened to be on the wrong side of the door and bold, or stupid, enough to try and take them on, was thrown back against the wall from the force of two bullets hitting straight to the centre of her mass. And she was down, but so was Mirrikh who was holding his left shoulder. Quatre didn't even dare hope it hadn't shattered the bone as he knelt down next to the man who was now pale as a sheet under his tan, hunched over on the cold floor.
"Go free the Lovegoods," he ordered Abdul as he applied pressure to the wound, staining his fingers in red. He was reaching towards his first aid kit when the sudden feeling of something happening, very emotive someone caught his attention, frustratingly vague, but painfully strong. There shouldn't have been a way for him to feel this if the person wasn't standing right beside him; he wasn't a clairvoyant. And then everything happened almost too quickly for him to react to.
There was a literal crack, a sound that burned against his mind with intensity and fear and smugness and determination. If he remembered the blueprints right the room they had entered had once been a monitoring hall and while all monitors had been removed there was still a large conference table left bolted into the floor, with a few empty holes which Quatre assumed were for portable computer hook-ups. On that table before them now stood Harry Dursley and Luna Lovegood, the former still in his very maroon and orange school uniform and the latter in non-descript dark blue shirt and sweatpants, hands intertwined in embrace. The thought "friendly" entered only by a fraction of a second his brain before he fired the gun already aimed at them, closely followed by "What the hell?"
They had practiced in the park Harry had seen from the window. They had been given a room of their own and the door had been closed, but Harry didn't doubt the two men, he was almost sure their names were Usman Asiffar and Waheed something, were keeping an ear on their charges as well as an eye on their surroundings. He didn't want them getting interested in the random reciting of nursery rhymes, hissing and other potential oddities and opening the door at wrong moment, spoiling their rescue operation.
Luna had done something that had allowed them to climb through the window unnoticed. He didn't know what it was, Luna didn't even say a word, but she said it was all right and Harry had opened the window and climbed down first. He was pretty good at climbing up and down things like devil snare traps and secret passageways to secret chambers, but he had never learned to do so without sound and this new body was weaker than the one he had used to have, taller probably thanks to more food, but weaker thanks to lack of labour. The eave gutter made a lot of noise, but no one seemed to hear anything.
They had sprinted over the street and slipped into the park between the bars of the walls surrounding it, not bothering to go look for a gate. It was exiting in a good way, the feeling they were doing something they had to hide from the adults and getting away with it, and as they crawled under a birch tree that had been cut so its branches cascaded towards the earth like a waterfall, leaving there a small secure pocket, he was happy that Luna was there with him. Sure, he might have preferred someone he had actually known before, Ron would have been best and Neville close second, but Luna was nice. But the feeling of levity disappeared soon. In the budding green, fresh shadows, kneeling on dirt, Harry Dursley reasserted himself and he wasn't feeling co-operative.
It was the apparating. Or, as that stubborn part of his mind insisted, teleportation. The transfer of matter from place A to place E without going through places B, C and D first. And it plain wasn't possible. The need of recording a human's entire atomic structure with enough accuracy and the kind of computer needed to handle that and the ethical issues of destroying a human in one place and recreating a copy elsewhere and would that provide a sufficient experience of existential continuity and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle… Harry's head was hurting. And Luna had said that believing it would work was the most important part.
"I'm probably going to end up with magical schizophrenia," he grumbled and hit the dirt. It didn't mind.
"It doesn't make a copy," Luna said. "Apparating just moves you."
"How is that even supposed to work?" Harry asked. Luna made a vague wave with her hand that was probably supposed to emulate using a wand.
"Magic," she said. And Harry had to talk himself into believing that yes, magic operated under an entirely different set of rules. He was afraid he spoke out loud at moments, but luckily Luna wasn't giving him any funny looks when he finally thought that he could give it a try.
The sun was setting and they needed to hurry now. And then he run into a new roadblock: chanting nursery rhymes did nothing for him, except made him feel silly. How many miles to Babylon, he tried. Three-score and ten. Can I get there by candle-light? Yes, there and back again. But he wasn't getting anywhere. In the end it was Dudley, Harry Potter's Dudley, who gave him the keys to the problem. He remembered how he had found himself on the roof once when Dudley and his gang had been chasing him, without any recollection of how he had gotten there, after having wished he could get somewhere Dudley couldn't reach him in.
"Dudley!" he said, remembering well the feeling of helplessness and the resentment and the joy of getting away, at least until he was punished for being a freak again… And he found himself sitting on the tree he had hidden under, uncomfortably sandwiched between two branches way too close to one another.
"Potter School of Whatever Works," he mumbled as he manoeuvred himself down to a cheering Luna. It was some kind of popular culture reference though he wasn't quite sure what it was referencing to.
There is a reason apparating wasn't practised a lot more often as it was. Harry didn't know the limits, being much too young to get himself an apparating licence, but a person had to know where he was going. There had to be a picture of the place in their mind and so people generally only used it to go to places where they had already been before. What most people didn't know, but Harry managed to figure out by accident, was that having an anchor worked too. It was possible to apparate to a place where someone you knew was. But Harry didn't know Luna's parents, hadn't ever even seen a picture of them, and so he learned something no one else ever had.
As long as someone you knew where someone they knew was, you could apparate there as long as you took them with you. Potter School of Whatever Works.
And that was what led to him and Luna standing in a dim room, on a table and being held at gunpoint by Qays and one of his men. The other was bleeding on the floor and there was a brief flash (Ginny, red, tangled hair, so cold on the floor and cold, mocking voice) of the last time he had seen someone seriously injured.
"What the hell?" asked Qays. His eyes were so wide he was beginning to remind Harry of a Disney animal – as long as he overlooked the grim mouth under those eyes. And the gun.
A small knot of anxiety Harry hadn't even been aware had been there unravelled in his stomach. Just like that the pressure of making a decision was lifted from his shoulders; there was no way he could just explain this away. He jumped down to the floor and rubbed his head, feeling kind of sheepish. He hadn't really planned getting caught at disobeying while still, well, in the process of disobeying. It was always better if you had results you could show.
"Apparating. That is, uh, teleportation," he answered. And Luna left him to explain it alone, running towards one of the doors, not marked any different from the other two. She banged it with her fists.
"Dad, mum! Can you hear me?" she shouted.
Qays' head turned like in a tennis match between him and Luna, him and Luna. The man still standing, Ahmed, kept looking at him and Qays, the only noise there was the silent banging from the door behind Qays' back and Luna's cries for her parents. Then Qays dropped his gaze to the man whose bleeding he was trying to stop and the line of his mouth thinned and he nodded to himself.
"Ahmed, free the Lovegoods. Harry, can you teleport us out of here?" he asked. Harry nodded and felt his lips twitching into a smile for all it was a serious situation. Finally he was beginning to get it right! He saved Luna's mum and dad!
"All right. When the Lovegoods arrive please teleport us out of here. What kind of tech do you use?" Qays' voice was nice enough, but somehow Harry could picture himself tied to a kitchen chair at the end of the question. And that raised utterly improper hilarity bubbling in his chest. Qays' eyebrows went up a notch and that made a snort force its way through his nose.
"No tech, it's a power I have," he said because he didn't want to have the "magic is real" conversation right there. Qays opened his mouth, but Luna's joyful, very loud – and strangely musical – squeal and a second later a huge, thundering boom that made the concrete under their feet vibrate interrupted him. And now Harry was beginning to fear the place might come down around them. He tried to force his racing heart to slow down and took several, deep gulps of air; it even smelled different underground, kind of stale and a lot like chemicals.
Luna, he thought. Luna's mum and dad. Qays and his men. He concentrated with all his might, pictured Mathilda Sisulu and the yard of his old school, the trashcans and how they had smelled like wet coffee grounds. He was going to get this right.
"Dudley!" he shouted, pushing every ounce of strength in him into transporting them all to safety. Only, he couldn't have known how manyof Qays' men there were.
It had been bad the first go-around, like being forced through a very tight rubber tube. Now many, many hands grabbed him, tearing him everywhere at once, then his insides felt like someone had compressed them into a tiny ball like a snitch and bloated them like Aunt Marge at the same time. Outside in, inside out, Harry felt like throwing up and for a horrible, disquieting moment something slipped. But this was Luna and Luna was her friend and parents were important. He grounded his teeth together, somehow, even though he wasn't sure he had teeth at the moment, and then there was floor under his feet and it fell up to meet him.
Terrible, searing headache, exploded in his head, making dazzling zigzag lines dance in his eyes and all the voices were so loud, painfully loud. He was sweating like a pig and he thought he might throw up. Slowly it dawned to him that there were lot of voices, lots of legs, and then hands grabbed him and liften him from the floor. And instantly there was blessed silence. Harry smiled at Qays' blurry face gratefully even as vertigo took him, making him close his eyes and wish someone was merciful enough to give him something a lot stronger than aspirin.
"Hurt," he managed to croak. How come switching universes had hurt less than this?
"Harry is suffering from magical exhaustion. He needs sleep and a lot of food when he wakes up," Luna voice drifted to him as the darkness behind his eyelids seemed to deepen. He wondered briefly just what kind of explanation Luna would give them all and how scary thought that was and then the pain went away along with his thoughts.
AN: In case someone hasn't noticed, I love writing Luna. I had no idea I would have this much fun with her before I started.
So why no splinching? Harry is a complete novice after all. Well, splinching occurs when a person has insufficient determination to reach their goal, causing certain body parts to fail to arrive at the destination with them. Harry was plenty determined here. And I know it's Saotome School of Anything Goes. Harry doesn't.