"All was well", Harry thought. And so it was-for 15 minutes. With a terrorist attack on King's Cross leaving him in a magically induced healing coma, he becomes the perfect subject for field-testing the first military-grade prosthetic bodies to be used on a battlefield. Will he live to see the magical world and his family again? Will he escape the muggle world before the start of world war 3? Will magic even work in his brand new body-or will it kill him slowly? And just how will the magical world react to muggles discovering functional immortality? Harry Potter-Ghost in the Shell cross-over. Harry-Major partnership, though pairing remains unlikely for now.
Disclaimer: Were there battles of giants vs. tanks in Harry Potter? Could Harry wield guns, use his brain and seduce his best (female) friend before the end of book 5? Could Ron provide a solid grounding in tactics for the DA while Hermione showed a couple of captive death eaters the wonders of dental surgery without anesthesia? Did anyone try hitting Voldemort with RPGs or normal grenades over the course of the series? Did Dumbledore have a brain and Snape have the need to live a normal, healthy life after the war? If your answer is no then I regret to inform you that I do not own Harry Potter, nor would I admit to writing a series in which the good guys blatantly disregard centuries of weapons development and combat tactics in favour of watching 50 hillbillies take on an entire country and win. I do not own Harry Potter, nor will I ever do so. Any references I make belong to works that are, again, not mine. Should any actually belong to me, I will be sure to specify which ones and point them out. However, I own none of those you'd recognise, so do not sue.
Chapter 1 - Start recording
Final log – physical entity – Biological sentient (original) – serial # 1127r5 – Human
Personal identifier type: name – identifier: Harry James Potter
Reason for final log entry: assimilation into conscience database c12, pending FTL displacement for purpose of colonisation of planets LV426, LV427, CL895, ATL-984 and Fiorina FIZ161.
Purpose: to provide a record of the early days of semi-organic integrated prosthetics technology, the reasons behind the rapid development and deployment of fully prosthetic platforms, their impact on the development of the age of synthetic sentience and the social changes the rapid introduction of this new set of technologies engendered from the viewpoint of one of the few surviving recipients of the original prosthetic body platforms.
Log begins
King's Cross station, London, Great Britain, United Kingdom, EU, Earth – September 1st, 2017, 11.12 am
It had been nineteen years since the end of the second blood war and, from the standpoint of one Harry Potter, the intervening period had been one of deep contentment. After experiencing the worst childhood of any wizard in close to 60 years (he had the award to prove it), the wounds inflicted by neglect, emotional abuse, war, torture and discrimination had taken a long time to scab over.
Even nineteen years after the events of his youth came to a close, the longest period of sleep Harry had been able to achieve was pegged at 4 hours. He knew this because of his wife, Ginevra Molly Potter, who had taken to timing him after the birth of their son James.
It was an even bet for her as to who was more likely, at the time, to wake up at 3am with the burning need to communicate their displeasure to the world, her son James or her husband Harry. But, thanks to the patience and love from a family he'd never thought he would live to enjoy (not to mention the criminally expensive consultation time given by Colin Creevey, the only muggleborn psychiatrist in existence), his emotional scars were slowly receding and healing. He was, by no stretch of the imagination, a happy man, but the love and support he gave and received from his family were enough to keep him at peace with the world.
And now, as the Hogwarts train wound its way north with his children on board, he allowed himself to indulge a moment and appreciate just how far he'd come since his prophecy-induced suicide attempt. He smiled and revelled in the embrace of his loving wife and, in a moment of weakness he would come to curse himself for, thought the words no child of prophecy should utter under any circumstances, ever:
All was well.
Had he said those words out loud within hearing distance of Hermione, his best friend and steadfast adventure companion since the troll incident all those years ago (but the less said about sixth year, the better), she would have punched him in the face.
"Honestly Harry," the now mother of two children (including a brown-eyed redhead that looked suspiciously like a bushy-haired Lily Evans, which had earned her the family nickname of Rose "firewhiskey" Weasley until Hermione got creative with time-locked glamour charms and goblet of fire-induced vows of silence and forgetfulness charms. How she got hold of the goblet, nobody would ever know) would have said in a hissing voice "just what exactly were you thinking, saying that? Did you even read 'dos and don'ts: how to avoid tempting fate'? You know, your NEWTS divination textbook regarding how to handle people and situations affected by prophecy? Do you realise what you've just DONE?".
It's at this point that she would have kicked him in the privates and stalked away, yelling about how he'd better give her access to the Potter library if he wanted her help in the now inevitably interesting future 'Or else, Potter! Or else!'.
But he never said the words out loud, and thus nobody, least of all him, would be forewarned about what was to come. At that moment Harry James Potter, child of prophecy, was happy for the first time in 36 years. It would be a while before he felt that way again.
Platform gateway (dimensional, localised) exit, 11.15 am
The happy couple went back through the gateway into the normal section of the train station, chatting away happily with friends and family they hadn't seen in days. Harry was still coming down from the high the unexpected emotion of happiness had brought him (which, according to his wife, was a good thing) when he experienced the first pangs of dread. Instincts birthed and refined during a childhood forged by one life-threatening situation after another told him that Bad Things were about to happen and that the time to react was now. He stopped, his head pivoting around scanning the platform packed with civilians. No visible threat presented itself to his refined instincts, with neither visual, audible nor magical potential sources for the feeling immediately presenting themselves for interception. He felt his metabolism kick it up a notch, magic readying itself for combat while his system was flooded by adrenalin and his brain drenched in magically enhanced serotonin, the euphoria counteracting the panic and stress his combat-readiness instincts were broadcasting. The world around him slowed down as his magic reached the final stages of readiness, unconsciously bending time around him as his mind sent out pulses of raw magic-fuelled legilimency keyed towards highlighting any sentient being intent on harm within the train station (ah, the perks of auror training).
Nobody had yet noticed he'd stopped, his friends and family moving deeper into the train station even has his aura started to manifest itself in the lower EM spectrum. The first tendrils of intent-based legilimency returned a positive echo-from behind him and to the left. 4 seconds had passed since his instincts had flared, though the magical time dilation effect meant that it had been 9 seconds for Harry. He detected intent to do harm coming from platform 10, which was currently hosting a cargo train for some reason. What was weird to his auror-trained senses was that the intent to do harm was laced with regret, devotion and an almost fanatical faith in... something. The secondary legilimency wave helped refine the target area and provide more detail as to how the intent will be satisfied. Second cargo compartment, volatile chemicals storage area, contents under pressure, perfect. So the intent was to detonate the storage area - and how had the train even been allowed into King's Cross station? What was going on? No time for that, the intent has been confirmed as well as the means for augmenting the blast. Augmenting it? What was the initiator? Harry's brain processed the information and came up with the answer.
Sentient Bomb? Damn!
The disparity between real time and Harry time grew worse as Harry's brain kicked into overdrive. Based on the intent he sensed, he would have, at best, 10 seconds in real time to come up with a plan and implement it. That gave him a window of forty seconds, 34 with the amount of time it would take to estimate the time he had left and come up with a plan. He was packing only his wand and basic undercover auror equipment, which would be useless as he couldn't apparate in King's Cross anymore than he could at Hogwarts with the wards that had been set up after the blood wars. So stopping the blast was out. That left one option bar portkeying every single human being in the area out of the platform – contain the blast. But how he would contain a blast that size, Harry was having trouble figuring out. 36 seconds left...
Of course! Instead of stopping the blast, he would just have to redirect it anywhere but onto the main platform! The kinetic redirection ward was the only magic powerful enough to stop the blast from going in one particular direction. It was mainly used by auror forces as a counter to area-of-effect spells such as bombarda or confringo, both spells that were designed to provide a powerful blast on par with anything from a pineapple grenade for the lower end of the power scale to the blast of a thermobaric RPG round on the higher end of the power scale. It wasn't very popular amongst the auror corps because it only warded an area and not a moving object (like, say, a cloak) and because it required a lot of power to initialise. But there were two points in its favour: first, it could be cast using three easy-to-carve runes (hence the boatload of power it required, since it was a brute force ward that you cast for short term purposes.) which would work on muggle surfaces such as tile or asphalt. Second, upping the initial power input would exponentially increase the protected area and protect the maximum amount of people. Solution found, Harry kneeled onto the ground and pulled out a blood stylus. 30 seconds...
Ginevra Potter had stopped listening to Hermione engage in friendly banter with her husband even before she saw her kids off to Hoggity Hogwarts. This was due to the fact that what Hermie The Harry-Borrowing Bitch and Ron The Retarded classified as friendly banter was classified by muggle authorities as noise pollution. She remembered when her family and Ron's brood had gone on vacation to go and see Fleur. Harry had insisted they take a Muggle plane to Paris before flooing to Marseilles, which of course meant going to an airport. She remembered hearing Hermione berating Ron about his eating habits in front of Hugo and Rose Po-Weasley (yes, she's a world-class bitch, but she's good at it. And Harry only had to sleep on the couch for three months, but that was okay because she still loved him) just as a muggle jet Harry identified as a 747 passed directly overhead. She still remembered Hermione's exclamation about Ron's 'anchovies torture' drowning out the noise of the overhead engines. She'd probably be cackling about it to her great-grandchildren long after the Harry-Borrowing Bitch was rotting in her final resting place which would be, if Ginny had anything to do with it, a whorehouse. But hey, let's give ickle Ginny-kins a break here, she's having her period and had just managed to get 4 Potters onto platform 9 and 3 quarters without the world ending.
That took nerves, nerves of steel she hadn't known she had until after getting married to a Potter, a family that had casualty statistics as part of the family tree. Dark Lords, muggle wars, natural disasters, magical disasters, murderers... Less than 10 percent of the Potter family tree had died relatively peacefully in bed since the start of the family. Of that 10 percent, roughly half had died of unknown, violent and/or magically resistant diseases while the other half died happily in their sleep. Of course, one unfortunate percent out of those five died peacefully in bed because their bedroom exploded and they didn't have time to die horribly before being vapourised.
And she had fallen in love with Harry Potter, a man whose bad luck would have done any other previous generation of Potters in (and had, as well) and who wanted as big a family as possible. Which mean more Potters. To the average witch, with a life expectancy often creeping into the lower 200s barring any significant problems, she was now part of a family that would kill her within months of the Potter heir being born. When checking out the statistics, she found that that trend had been statistically significant (in Ron-speak; yes, it happened an awful lot) until the Potters started marrying intelligent, aggressive redheads. Then the trend had improved until it stabilised at about a decade or two of survival whilst married to a Potter for the witch lucky enough to snag herself one. In short, her life expectancy would have been 0.5 to 1 percent of her potential lifespan had she followed in the footsteps of the Potter families of times gone by.
On the bright side, all those muggle life insurance pay-outs and various monetary rewards bestowed on Potters past and present for either disposing of the evil bad thing of the generation and/or surviving said evil bad thing long enough to collect the reward meant that, had she been doomed to the average lifespan of a Potter witch, it would have been a very comfortable decade indeed. But, just three years ago, she had managed to surpass the trend: she was married to Harry James Potter, the unluckiest Potter since his grandfather Charlus Potter, and had just beaten the lower average lifespan of a Potter witch. Yes. Suck on that, fan-girls. Of course, now she was focused on two things: enjoy her marriage to her husband and beat the current record for a Potter witch's survival time, which was held by Dorea Potter nee Black (Harry's grandmother) that stood at 40 years (married in September 1939, death by Voldemort in September 1979). She'd had no idea that it was that bad, even her mum had gone ballistic when she'd found out just how bad it was. Hell, Molly would have tried for an annulment when those figures were revealed had Ginny not been pregnant with James at the time. Her 'hey mum, you'll be able to raise my kids once I bite it!' hadn't helped, according to Harry.
So now she was basking in the glow of a job well done. She, Hermione (she still liked her, even though she was a hussy. She'd only surrendered to her natural cuckolding urges once, after all), Ron and Harry had woken up late, yet had made it to the platform and seen their kids off on time, the first time that their little family had done so without a degree of pain and/or bloodshed. Last year, Harry had insisted that he try his hand at Molly's old spot of Covert Wizard Greeter, charged with assisting muggleborns to get onto the magical platform without them knowing it. He'd done it too, the whole 'ooh, muggles' thing, the owls in cages, the robes, the exclamation of 'where are we supposed to go then, kiddies?' with the pantomime 'platform nine and three quarters!' answer from the youngest actress in the group... It had been fun, until the RSPCA showed up, police and animal control units in tow, to arrest his group for animal rights abuse. Which meant that the train had to be delayed until each and every muggleborn and muggle-raised halfie could be rounded up and surreptitiously portkeyed onto the platform while the aurors tried desperately to stop their muggle colleagues from arresting their boss, who happened to also be the biggest celebrity, war hero and top magical law enforcement officer in wizarding Britain.
Then the year before that, they'd started out early and arrived late as a truckload of chickens managed to get loose in rush hour traffic on the M25. And the Grand Splinching Incident of 2014, where some genius in the department of Magical Fortifications decided to finish his work a day ahead of schedule and erect the anti-apparition and anti-portkey wards around King's Cross station on the night of August the 31st and didn't bother telling anyone. This included Harry, who decided that he would apparate in rather than flooing with the rest of the family, a decision that led to him appearing on platform 9 and 3 quarters in three separate pieces. He had successfully broken the anti-apparition wards over King's Cross by himself before the train rush started, saving dozens of people from either spending weeks in hospital or agonising death. He was given an award for that once St. Mungo's released him a month later. In fact, she was starting to regret not asking him to just go and stay in his Halloween Hidey-Hole (a fallout shelter he'd picked up for a bargain after the Halloween incident of '99) on September first. Maybe she should just ask Harry now, since...
"Harry?"
Her question drew the attention of Hermione and Ron, who'd somehow heard her over the ruckus the two were causing. Then again, why was she still surprised about that? Those three had an almost freaky level of interconnectedness that she didn't have a hope in hell of getting close to. They'd shared everything with each other (though the Hussy took it too far, but it's okay), even after the end of the war. They did everything together: Hermione was the brains, Ron was the muscle and Harry was the freakishly skilled and/or lucky bastard that made whatever outlandish scheme of theirs they'd dreamt up work. Hell, they fought crime together, despite Hermione not being employed in a department even remotely connected to the DMLE! Minister Shacklebolt himself had given the three special dispensation for that. So when she caught the worried frown on Ron's face and the expression of calculated panic starting to form on Hermione's (say what you want, that girl's smart! And a hussy!), she finally caught the vibe her decade-long tenure as a Potter should have trained her to pay attention to:
Something's wrong. Very wrong. And bad. Very bad. Start running, foo'.
"Oh no. Harry! Where are you? Get over here n-"
And then she saw him, kneeling on the ground and facing back towards platform 9 and 3 quarters, his hands a blur as he cut himself with a blood stylus and used his blood to draw 3 runes and their associated linkages inside a containment circle. Hermione went very still as she caught sight of what runes Harry had drawn onto the tiles.
"Harry, why exactly are you drawing a deflector ward?"
Hermione couldn't believe what she was witnessing. Being on almost permanent retainer with the DMLE had meant that she knew every trick in the Auror's book and quite a number of those they hadn't written down. Consequently, she knew exactly what she was looking at, the reasons for Harry just dropping on all fours and smearing King's Cross with his blood becoming clearer and the causal lines for such an action more horrifying. He was preparing like a man possessed, the runes and associated runic circles interlinked with a power amplification and wardstone draining druidic charms circle. Whatever he was doing, it needed power, and lots of it. If he added just two more warding enhancements he would be in real danger of magical exhaustion when he activated this. She needed to know what was going on...
"Harry, look at me." And he did, giving her a clear view of his emotions.
Anger. Panic. Fear. Sorrow. Worry. Fear. Frustration. Desperation. FEAR. TIME IS RUNNING OUT. FEAR- She almost panicked at what she saw written all over his face. This wasn't your run-of-the-mill scare a la mad-eye. Something had happened, and they were about to witness the outcome. She turned to the other two, her face a mirror of what Harry's had been. Ron and Ginny paled.
"Run. Run now. No time left. Have to stay to assist. Go! RUN!"
And she lunged towards Harry, ideas for enhancing the circle having already turned to designs having finalised themselves into practical options in her head just as she finished drawing a ritual knife.
Harry looked up at who just entered his little bubble of reality.
"About time you figured it out."
"Shut up, git. Situation?"
"Sentient bomb, possible golem simulacrum of a suicide bomber, cargo train full of chemicals, 20 seconds."
Hermione looked at the warded array already in place. The deflector would cover the station itself as a whole, but that left the membrane of the ward tight as a drum and thin as paper, no room for error or manoeuvring. And after the initial blast wave, no power-
"Can only stop main blast, no secondaries, with just you powering this."
"I'll power the runes, you power the additions. Deal?"
"Sure. You owe me dinner for this, by the way."
"Sure. Just like old times."
She rolled her eyes at this. Yes, having your current crisis buddy taking a trip down memory lane just seconds before King's Cross is scheduled to be turned into a shrapnel-filled not fun house is such a relaxing occurrence.
"Yeah, i'm getting too old for this shit too."
"Tell me about it. Done. Ten seconds left."
" Done, am powering additions now. 6 seconds."
"Same, runes powering up."
4, 3, 2, 1- And there was light.
Ron took Ginny by the hand and forced her to follow him. He'd seen that look on Hermione's face before, when Harry had been trapped in a cave that he'd collapsed on top of a rogue Goblin's nest. It was the look that said to stay out of her way while she solved the problem or face castration via rusty spoon. There was no use arguing with her when she got that look. He loved her dearly, truly he did, but sometimes he was vividly reminded that she was both the smartest and the bossiest witch of her generation. Yet, he understood that look.
He too had been observant enough to noticed the runes written in Harry's blood and just what they meant. Runes were Hermione's area, she could help there. He had Harry's back when it came to beating the evil out of criminals, she had their back as far as research was concerned. The only real difference to the group dynamic from their Hogwarts days was that now they were comfortable enough with each other to recognise both the good and the bad sides of each member of the golden trio. Hermione would bring the house down on anything she had 'issues' with. Ron had bouts of jealousy that, somehow, also translated into pure cowardice and petty vindictive viciousness at the worst possible times and the most obscure reasons imaginable. Harry was the closest thing wizarding Britain could produce to the bastard lovechild of Shinji Ikari and Rei Ayanami. Emo, died several times, probably immortal, completely anti-social and thought by some as herald of the apocalypse or rebirth for a society whose stupidity doomed itself. Hell, he would probably never have gotten laid had he not had girls flinging themselves at him with abandon after Voldemort's final defeat. Oh, and had the minor fact that he forgets to use condoms if he's anything more than slightly tipsy become public knowledge. But no-one speaks of this, under pain of Hermione.
Hey, Harry's technically the master of death, but Ron didn't really find him that scary. Harry's got nothing on Herms when it comes to inducing ball-shrivelling terror. Anyway, they had talked about this with him and Ginny after it turned out Harry was the dad. Ron'd come around. Of course, that was after pummelling Harry, his boss and longtime best friend, into a bloody pulp in front of the entire DMLE and ignoring Hermione for 4 months straight (and ignoring her for five minutes was a massive undertaking in and of itself) after the Talk. He'd come around when he'd looked at little Rosie for the first time and she'd smiled at him. She was their little golden girl, the child of three parents. The other Weasleys had come around too, though George never uttered the word 'firewhiskey' in the presence of one formerly bushy-haired witch ever again. That Goblet was surprisingly useful when roping people into things they never agreed to, but it was for his, their daughter. Lily was their angel and, one day, he'd be able to lift his daughter's glamour charms and tell her that she had two dads, not just one, and that that had changed nothing when she was born and still didn't change anything now. Besides, madame Granger absolutely loved the little tyke.
But schmaltzing away on the job is not a good idea. If he didn't get Ginny clear of the danger zone in the next few seconds, then the chances were high all four of them would buy it. Being the muscle of a three-person team meant being the smarter one on occasion, given how often three people are outmatched when facing dozens of often very talented and dangerous criminals for a living. When you're a muscle man muscling in on gang turf, you are in fact in the position where the only advantage you have amidst a ton of disadvantages is brains. And on this occasion, he was smart enough to realise two things; first, being a Gryffindork and sticking around to watch the show would distract his two best friends and probably kill them all. Second, if it all did go the way of the Disney lemming, then having him and Ginny alive would mean that the kids would still have a living mother and father each. He didn't like it, his inner lion was screaming cowardice at the top of its imaginary lungs, but surviving in Potterworld often meant cultivating your practical Slytherin side above the naïve and idealistic side young Gryffs often mistake for bravery and valour. Not that he would ever admit to such a thing as having a Slytherin side. That'd be almost as bad as talking in parselt-no wait Ron, forget that, talking to snakes is not bad. It's being a snake that is. You're not a snake. You just... occasionally have to think like one. You're muscle. Crabbe and Goyle were muscle. You're a Lion through and through. They were Snakes. You're smart. They weren't. You're alive. They're dead. You're a lion, they're compost. And not even Hermione could get him to say otherwise. Now let's see-there!
He finally reached the stairs with Gin-Gin. They were going down, underground and hopefully far enough from whatever his friends think is about to happen. People stare at him oddly, the act of dragging his sister behind him attracting more unwanted attention than he'd normally be comfortable with. He may be wearing muggle clothing, but he was still a pureblood through and through. The way he'd slow down to gawk at every new poster and late-bolb as his dad called ecklecktrick lumos charms that he saw, even though it was plain as day that he was in a hurry, just added fuel to the fire. Embarrassment joined up with urgency and pushed him forward on the wings of fear, making him practically run down the stairs after forcing Gin-Gin into an involuntary piggy-back ride.
"Merlin, Won-Won, what the hell do you think you're doing, leaving them up there? Go back and get them now!"
Ron, face flushed with adrenalin and perspiration, just shook his head as he adjusted his not-so-little-anymore sister's weight again.
"No-wheeze-chance-wheeze-ickle-wheeze-Gin-Gin-wheeze-Bad Things-wheeze-about to-wheeze-happen. Harry wanted you-wheeze-as far away as-wheeze-possible from the area. -Gulp- Don't ask me why, but I have a feeling I am not going to like it. And Harry'd want you safe. You know how having his loved ones in danger distracts him from minor issues, such as his own survival."
He could feel Ginny's glare on the back of his head. He'd swear he felt his scalp heat up under the gaze it was exposed to.
"Ronald Bilious Weasley" she hissed in what his younger self used to call the 'bat-bogey' tone, though it had mutated into the 'angry Howler monkey mummy' voice when Albus Severus got his first howler for pranking Gryffindor into submission. Of course, when that little nickname reached Ginny's ears, it was too late for him to run. "You will turn back this minute and go help your brother-in-law or so help me, i'll bat-bogey you and spell the hex to be self-casting on your privates! Think they hurt before, ickle Ronniekins? Just imagine what it'd feel like to have bats digging their way out of your cowardly scrotum!"
He could feel the famous Weasley red start to tackle the trek up his cheeks before bravely gearing up for the final push towards the summit and the roots of his hair. He wasn't up to this, he really didn't like doing it either. And he'd be damned letting her getting away with calling him a coward.
"Ginevra Molly Potter. I am a fully trained and accredited Auror currently trying to evacuate you, Ginevra Potter, a civilian (heh, he'd have to thank Draco for the unintentional help in perfecting the classic 'insult to the achievements of man' tone one day, just not right then and there), and here you are threatening me, an officer of the law, with a potentially dangerous and physically harmful curse. Shame on you, miss Potter. If I didn't know you so well and felt the same as you do, why I do believe I would take offence at such slander! But no, I have a job to do. I must keep you safe today (finally, the end of those damn stairs!) and safe I shall keep you, even if I have to knock you unconscious, hogtie you and drag you back to your hotel room to do so. I will not fail, Ginny, so get moving unless you really want me to do what I just said I would."
It must have been a weird sight for the normals, seeing two adults engaged in piggyback riding in an underground part of King's Cross, their arguments getting weirder and their faces getting redder by the minute. Finally, the woman on the man's back takes a deep breath and speeds towards the conversation they both dreaded. They didn't even really stop along the way, still trying to put as much time & distance between them and whatever Hermione and Harry came up with.
"Ron, i'm -"
And there was light. And all was not well. After all, the only binary state there is that truly exists is neither the good/evil one nor is it the good/bad one. It's light and dark, life and death, the beginning and the end. For though, you see, all was not well, it was both an end and a beginning... of a sort. A paradox, a giant Gordian knot begging to be solved the old-fashioned way. Dichotomies that aren't are way more fun than riddles could ever hope to be. But that is yet to come. End log entry one. Begin log entry two...