Disclaimer: Note to self: think of something to put here. Do not upload this without putting in the disclaimer.

(And a transition joke. I need one of those too. Make sure to add that.)

I'm calling it now, he's going to completely forget to change any of that. ~f

Catalyst

It was a rare occasion indeed which found Dumbledore looking through the nightmare of paperwork that composed Hogwarts' history. Even rarer, he was doing so voluntarily. There were mounds of receipts, endless piles of lists and reports, forgotten essays, and Merlin knew how the papers here had simply crumbled into dust decades ago from. But in this case, he was willing to bear the torment, for the endless rows of bureaucracy's litter box could help him solve the mystery that was Thenabar Jaren.

The subject of Dumbledore's search was any record of someone by the last name of "Jaren" who had gone to Hogwarts. Hopefully, that would lead Dumbledore to answers about the mystery that was Thenabar Jaren.

Eyes weary, Dumbledore scanned over the latest in a long pile of student rosters. A quick charm blew the dust of the pile, revealing this stack to be the roster of 1954. He set it down next to the others, and began reading. With the soft glow of wand light illuminating the paper, Dumbledore's eyes traveled carefully down the list. It seemed to go on and on, despite the fact that this list was no longer than any of the others. Zibitickle Ingrum. Wharnal Jabby. Faris Jaren. Humbla... wait. Dumbledore read the last name again. Jaren, right there. He at last had a name, something to search for.

"Accio Faris Jaren paperwork!" Streams of paper flew towards Dumbledore, assembling themselves into a neat stack. The Summoning charm was so versatile with the proper focus. Dumbledore picked up the first sheet and began reading through the pile. Let's see, This Faris Jaren seemed to have earned NEWTs in Arithmancy, History of Magic, and OWLs in Arithmancy, as well as all of the core classes. Looking at the results, Dumbledore winced internally. Faris Jaren hadn't done well on his OWLs overall, particularly in his Defense OWL. Despite this, all that was in the file were grades and a few old reports, as well as a detention or two. There was nothing truly notable about him, or nothing that the staff of the time had noticed. Dumbledore himself could hardly remember the boy. It seemed that if Thenabar's exceptional oddity came from his parents, it hadn't come from his father.

Dumbledore re-filed the papers with another flick of his wand. It seemed that nothing in Hogwarts would help solve the mystery of Thenabar, but now he had a name, a place to start looking. It wasn't much, but it was as good a place to start as any.

(Transition)

It was rather strange. Throughout all the Hive's existence, fighting the super colony, assimilating colony after colony, assimilating species, there had never before been consideration of a tangible...end. There were now billions of members, all working as one force, so how could such a great entity end? Of course, many things that seemed impossible were only a hair's breadth from unleashing themselves on reality, and this was no different.

The Hive had severely underestimated the power of the two-legged intruders. They had somehow adapted armor the Hive could barely even scratch, poison that slaughtered hordes of soldiers at once, and worst of all, they were very nearly as coordinated as the Hive itself. It was almost as though this was an entirely different breed of intruder, but the hive had, at great cost, confirmed that these intruders were both functionally identical in their essence to the previous intruders, and capable of hiding the secret to their greatest strengths. On top of that, the intruders had never been trying to attack them before, that much was readily apparent now. But the Hive had shown itself to be a threat, killing the members of their species, attacking the larger, better armed ones, and now the intruders had decided that enough was enough. The intruders, it seemed, didn't tolerate threats any more than the Hive did.

Nearly simultaneously, intruders arrived along the edges of the Hive, clad in bright yellow, massive canisters strapped to their backs. Rather than skulking about the edges of the webs as they had before, these interlopers attacked. They strode confidently forward, spraying poison everywhere they could, wiping out hundreds of Hive soldiers and workers with every puff of gas. Every time the Hive attempted to form a counter attack, to rush at the intruders and put an end to them, they were caught by the deadly fog. Even those few lucky enough to reach the intruders could do no harm, as they were stopped short by the nearly impenetrable yellow armor. Volleys of acid, hordes of scorpions, swarming bees, none seemed to have any effect upon the material of the intruders.

There seemed to be absolutely no way to stop the intruders advance, and the paths they had chosen left no room for escape. For once, a threat could not be eliminated. It could not be absorbed. Without intervention, the Hive would swiftly join the super-colony in oblivion.

Intervention. The Hive grasped onto the thought, using it as a lifeline. They didn't know how to deal with the intruders, but perhaps It did. There was hope for the Hive yet.

The Queens shifted their focus, even as their children were slaughtered in the millions every second. They stretched their mind, pulling their consciousness beyond their bodies, and reached into the void. With luck, the Mind would answer them once again.

(Transition)

Suddenly, Abathur's arm blew up. Again. And as before, with a quick mend, Abathur had another one. Somehow, he didn't like it as much as the last one.

These annoyances had been going on for some time. The few snapshots of essence he had gained from the potion induced vision were far from easy to piece into anything resembling coherency, let alone the seamless blend it was intended as. It didn't help that Abathur's essence was already an amalgamation of every other zerg creature. It was like remaking a whole brood from mere images of anatomy. It didn't help that whenever the strands were less than viable, the affected part detonated. Speaking of which, there went his eye. At least he was getting practice with decontamination spells.

At this point, it looked as if he was going to have to hybridize. To assimilate foreign essence in order to compensate for the gaps in the original. But how would Abathur be able to gather the essence he required? He would need around a dozen more moderately diverse species just to get started.

Perhaps he could start with the intruders poison attack assist limbs on his back. Even if desperation help extinction the essence wasn't exact, they weren't armor cannot breach not enough particularly complex structures. They were essentially just end near, fear fine tipped spikes attached to limbs. The more complex functions could be help us command us help us added later, assuming, of course, that help us help us help us help us help us the Hive stopped interrupting him so frequently. What was so important that it lead to a request for attention every few seconds?

Perhaps it would be worth investigating this interruption. It was not as if it was normal for the Hive to demand his attention so desperately. Nor was he making progress on restoring his own essence. There was quite literally nothing better to do.

Reluctantly, Abathur pulled his attention away from essence weaving, and towards the rhythmic cacophony of minds that was the Hive. The first thing that drew his attention was the size. When Abathur had first created the Hive, it had been but a single colony, barely holding an area the larger than the log of their main colony. Now, they covered ground the size of a full zerg hive cluster, and had a population in the trillions. Not only that, but they now possessed essence from dozens of species. The weaved essence was sloppy, but effective. Abathur had intended for the Hive to be small scale experiment, beings to test on free from human eyes. This result exceeded his wildest expectations. He would need to pay far more attention to the Hive in the future, even if only to examine the essence they had shaped. But why had the Hive so suddenly, desperately reached for him?

Abathur scanned through the minds of the Hive, and almost immediately felt a wave of distress and death wash over him. The Hive was being exterminated, slaughtered in droves. This was unacceptable! He gathered his focus around one such concentration of death and pushed forward, taking control of the Hive's senses and movement. What he saw terrified him.

Terrans. Armored terrans, attacking the Hive, spraying some meagre toxin, slaughtering his Hive. Abathur was nowhere near ready to fight the humans, and now they were marching through his creations, slaughtering them en masse. If they somehow traced the Hive back to him, unlikely as that was, they would kill him. He had no way to fight against hordes of banshees, armies of marines, even so much as a single battlecruiser. There were no overseers to spot ghosts as they scouted his territory, no roaches to ambush siege tanks. This experiment had gone too far and he needed to pull it back, make sure the humans had no way to trace it back to him. Nothing could remain.

Abathur looked through the species the hive had collected, looking for a way to engineer an escape. He was on borrowed time. Sooner or later, the humans would finish, and then they would have plenty of material to investigate. Abathur found a solution to both in the form of a tunneling invertebrate, a creature the Hive had turned into a burrowing devourer. Good.

Abathur sent them into the frontlines, having them consume their fallen brethren. They moved through the earth like a wave, scouring the forest floor. As they ate more, they gained biomass, preparing themselves for evolution. Abathur rapidly read and made adjustments to the worm's essence, setting a trigger for when they grew enough. One by one, the worms grew in size and strength, acquiring a golden shimmer to Abathur's senses. They were almost ready, but Abathur still needed more time that the humans weren't allowing him.

Abathur wracked his brain for anything that could halt the terran advance. The only things left near the terrans were the webs that the Hive had been using as a primitive form of creep. The strands littered the ground around the poison spewers. An idea struck Abathur, just insane enough to be highly possible. His recent tutelage in psionics might just bear fruit. He ordered a worm to surface, and the beast took a breath of poison for Abathur to examine. A moment later, a few hundred newly immune spiders ran onto the webs covering the trees and plants at each human group. They settled into a ring surrounding the exterminators, and dug their limbs into the threads, pulling and twisting them into new patterns. A remote burst of psionic power from Abathur powered the newly formed rune sequences, surrounding the terrans with a shimmering blue shield. He spared a second to check that the makeshift prison was working, a fact confirmed by the humans alarmed shouts.

Several more anxious minutes passed in relative peace as the terrans struggled to escape while the worms continued feasting on the fallen. Soon they had eaten their fill. Abathur encased them all in shimmering, elongated cocoons, mutating their very being into a new tool of the Swarm. Soon the new worms emerged, wider and longer than before, with pores covering their sides and a massive front maw.

The new worms dug back into the earth and spread out. Abathur distributed the tunneling creatures far and wide, keeping them moving around the entirety of the Hive's territory. Their bodies carved massive gaps under the terran, while the pores on their sides poured out liquid, stiffening and reinforcing the tunnel walls. In the space of a few minutes, a whole new tunnel network ran across the Hive colonies. The Hive poured into the new tunnels, huddling underground, disappearing from the surface.

Meanwhile, the terrans remained trap in their cage of psionics. Abathur had marshalled the butterflies assimilated by the Hive, flying them in spirals around the terrans, blocking their view. He would let them take nothing more, not even paltry information, from this conflict.

The Hive gathered itself underground, lining up behind the worms. With a signal from Abathur, they marched forward underground, moving northeast at a rapid pace. With luck, they would arrive within a few days, hidden from the view of humans. In such close proximity, Abathur could keep a much closer eye on the Hive, and he could develop them so much more. He was sure he could find a great deal of use for the Hive at Hogwarts.

Queen: *feauxen steals keyboard* Elizabeth the second has been ruling England for like 90 years now. She's really old, and I do mean really old. She's probably secretly sipping on some immortality cocktail, waiting for the right moment to take over the world. Just you wait. It'll happen. You'll all see.

*puts on tinfoil hat*

(Oh, and she's also secretly an infested Zerg who's plotting against humanity.)

(I was right about the disclaimer and the transition joke, therefore I am right about all of this.)

~f

(Moving on...)

Queen: The generals of the Zerg Swarm, Queens serve as caretakers and commanders for every brood. A more humanoid body mounted on a large base of webbed feet is a familiar profile for any would-be attacker of a zerg hive cluster. Queens generally keep close to hatcheries, acting as defenders. This is both because they move extremely slowly off creep, and because they can boost the larva output of any hatchery. Unique in the swarm, Queens are not produced from larva or mutated from other strains, but are rather produced directly by hatcheries. Queens attack either by launching deadly spines, much like hydralisks, or by lashing out with their bladed wings. Queens, and their more developed counterparts, Broodmothers, serve as the command creatures of the Zerg Swarm, leading them to victory after victory.