Chapter 9

The time came for Harry to show Luna the hive cluster he had grown from a single Drone unit, as Luna had requested of him in her own way. Thankfully, Luna was a second year, so she was able to have her own broom. And have a broom, she did. The two met after the lunch hour, and then Harry had led her, on the broom, out to where the hive cluster was located. When they got close enough to faintly see the image that the hive made, Harry heard a faint squeal of delight from Luna.

They set down on the creep below, and Luna gasped at the squishiness of the material. Then, she had run straight towards the closest Zerg, which happened to be a Larvae. The Larvae had reared up and had bared its pincers at the fast-approaching blonde.

Abruptly, Harry's vision and mind had switched from the normal occupation of his own body to that of the Larvae. The vision he was treated to was a hazy sight, and Luna was overlaid with a glow of red, a visual representation of what the Hivemind perceived as a threat.

Harry had forgotten about the way the Swarm thought of non-Swarm: If you weren't part of the Swarm, then you were an enemy. Even worse for the situation, Luna was in was that she was running at one of the most vulnerable units within the Swarm: the Larvae. She was about to be attacked, and to fix that, Harry had ordered her to be added as a friend in the friend/foe registry.

With that done, the hostility of the Larvae stopped, and the Larvae then went back down into a docile position. It was just in time for it to withstand the assault that was a young girl being excited about a "cute" animal. Harry was felt bad for the poor thing; its twenty units of armour proved to be useless in the face of that particular monster.

Ah, well, it will still survive. If it doesn't, it will just be reborn again.

What made it worse was her dreamy exclamation of "It's adorable!"

"Yeah, yeah they kind of are. Wait, what? You actually like them?" Harry asked disbelievingly of Luna.

"What's not to like? They are so adorable! And think of what they can do!" Harry looked at her, amazed before he broke out into a large grin. This meant he didn't have to keep his familiar such a secret! It was a very large weight off of Harry's shoulders, having a confidante in this sort of thing would be essential for his sanity to remain intact.

"Well, if you like the Larvae, you'll love the rest too!"

Now it must be reiterated that Harry was just a thirteen-year-old boy, and while in some cultures that was enough to consider him a man, it was not enough for him to be able to handle a very eccentric twelve-year-old girl "fangirling" over what he was showing her.

It must also be said that despite Harry's odd ability to know things he shouldn't, he was still an oblivious boy. That didn't stop him from caring for his friends, though, and what was happening set Luna on a fast track to becoming one of Harry's best friends.

All of that being said, the Hivemind was not either of those two things. In fact, the Hivemind was originally designed to complement the strengths of the Overmind by providing both a unique point of view the overmind might not have, and as a sort of personal assistant to act in a supporting role. This meant that when Harry was being his oblivious self in regards to much of the situation at hand, the Hivemind was not.

The Hivemind took in the situation in stride. It observed the fact that -though it's squeal should be considered that - the human girl did not immediately recoil in horror upon seeing the swarm's members conducting business as usual. In fact, when the girl had seen the infestation of a human, she requested to see more.

The Hivemind might not be an expert, but generally Terrans, and it suspected humanity as a whole did not have even a similar response to the girl. So it wasn't the Hive's fault that it suspected the request to see more of the Swarm was only part of a nefarious plot of some sort. From this, it was understandable that the Hivemind mistook the squeal of delight as a form of war cry followed by a physical attack by charging at one of the most vulnerable members of the Swarm.

The Squeal itself sounded like an attack all on its own, after all.

So it was a surprise when instead of the attack they were expecting - save the Overmind - the Swarm was treated to the girl fawning and "fangirling" - a term taken from the memory of the Overmind - over them.

As Harry showed off his familiar, all the while the Swarm appeared as though the various members of said Swarm were preening in the light that was their dictator's praise, the Hivemind took the various idle minds to go over - again - what was observed in memory.

A stray thought had been entertained by the Hivemind, derived from this process of observing the interactions between the pair: The Hivemind had seen from the Overmind's memories the details of a feudal system. It had also noted that there existed a tradition amongst humans to mate for life.

The entertaining of those thoughts led the Hivemind to believe it to be a good idea for the Overmind to have the Unit Luna Lovegood as a Queen.

After the two's small excursion to Harry's first Hive, they still had time left in the day. So, Harry had made the split decision to show Luna to a place where very few, if any, had been before.

Besides, Harry thought it was about time that he visit his old aged friends in a castle's basement. Not a dungeon, mind you, but a basement. It still amused Harry when some people got annoyed when Harry referred to the place as a basement, so he would continue to use that term to spite them in a passive-aggressive way.

He wanted to bring along his eccentric blonde friend to meet the four because he thought that she would get along quite well with at least one of them.

However, when Rowena Ravenclaw and Luna Lovegood were eyeing each other with rapt attention, and identical expressions exposed, Harry thought that perhaps it might not have been such a good idea after-all.

At exactly the same time, both Harry and Salazar had cleared their collective throats to break the spellbound - and for all they knew it could have been - gaze of their friends.

Regardless if the staring contest was magically induced, the two both lost said contest by way of changing their focus to the other magical beings in the cave-like room. Luna had acknowledged Harry's presence by way of humming in an inquisitive tone, while Rowena had simply asked, "Yes?"

When they both continued to look on with innocent expressions in the face of questioning looks, Salazar sighed exasperatedly, and asked, "Is there a reason why you and Miss Lovegood had just ogled each other so thoroughly?"

In sync, both Luna and Rowena said, "Didn't you all know it was international Star-The-First-Woman-You-Were-Properly-Introduced-To-In-The-Face-Day? I'm surprised, it's quite well-known." Following the possible - somehow - rehearsed reply, the two had turned to face each other again and grinned widely.

The eccentric pair's actions led Harry to further cement his belief that perhaps it hadn't been a good idea to introduce Luna to the founders. In fact, he now firmly believed he had just made a rather terrible mistake, especially when Helena's Frown-of-Disapproval had appeared on her face, Godric had brought his palm firmly to his face, and "Sal" had given another one of his sighs of exasperation.

How was Harry to know that a Rowena Ravenclaw and Luna Lovegood pair would only result in absolute chaos and chronic migraines for all known life?

Well, aside from his eerie ability to know what most was not able to know before they were to know it, he wasn't to know.

Perhaps Harry should pay more attention to his feelings then since that was how he knew things he was not meant to anyway.

A/N: So, it has been awhile since I had posted anything of this story, and I kinda wanted to find out what happened myself so I thought I would write some more of it.

Hope you like it, please review!