Chapter 2 The Minister, some confused soldiers, a suspicious robot and a drunken Goblin.

It took Harry hours to negotiate the exact text of the magical oath that would free him and the Minister from their room. He took great care to make sure to be as vague as possible in his promise. To say the least he was mightily pissed at the Wizarding government and especially the backstabbing bunch of the Unspeakables who's general incompetence and amorality had lost him his friends, his love and 120 or more years in petrification. When he thought about Luna's face full of hope that he would come back from his "limbo time-out" as a healed soul, everything went cold inside of him.

He would get even with the bastards who who took her from him.

"I, Harry Potter take this oath on my magic and on my life that I will fight until the Dark Emperor of the Galactic Imperium is banished from earth."

This would give him enough loopholes because it did not even specify that he would fight against the Dark Emperor, just fighting in a general meaning would suffice. And since oaths were as well about intent as about the spoken words, he thought about fighting to never be tricked into anything by any wizard again and maybe just having a look at this Dark Emperor. But mainly he focused on fighting to be happy and stay alive.

"I Elevius Bladdermole, Minister of Magic, representative of the Wizengamot and the whole Ministry of Magic take this oath on my and my positions magic, to return all of Mr Potters belongings and magic or earthly possessions without exceptions within the span of one day - and that the Ministry of Magic and all of its associates will support Mister Potter in all possible means referring to the banishing of the dark emperor and maintain his health and welfare."

Harry was especially proud of the last part that the minister had included the whole Ministry of Magic, the Wizengamot and possibly even the Unspeakables in the oath. And the stupid git did forget the end clause! Certainly the Minister was aware that the oath allowed the Ministry to freeze Harry again as long as everybody believed that would 'help' him. Harry had allowed this gap to distract the Minister from the many other overshooting possibilities he could get from unlimited and unrestricted ministerial support.

A devious smirk was on Harry lips when he was shoved out from the Ministry of Magics visitor entrance. Nobody that knew about the newest prophesy seemed to be too happy to be in his vicinity.

~.~

A dystopian, disappointing lack of differences

A 150 something years in the future! Harry had expected that the world would be bustling with breathtaking new inventions that would have long ago overshadowed all magic - but the lack of difference was truly disappointing. Some bulky robots could be seen in the streets of London, doing manual labor, heavy lifting and maintenance stuff, nothing to exotic. He had seen them only in TV before but still the lack of progress was disappointing.

There were a lot fewer people around than Harry remembered, but beside of this, everything else looked just normal. Harry could guess that this had to be the side effect of the suppression field that the Minister had shortly explained about before they had hustled him out of the Ministry.

The Ministries visitors entrance was still an old fashioned, plain red phone both - like a monument to the ignorance of wizards against change of whatsoever. Even before Harry was petrified those had almost vanished due to mobile phones that almost every muggle owned. The two people Harry had seen so far seemed to talk with others by touching their ear or speaking into their hand, the devices must be implanted or really small, since he could not make them out.

That would be a useful thing but it was unavailable for him. In his past Harry had already learned that microelectronics of any kind were of limited use for reasonably powerful wizards for much longer than a couple of seconds because even a slight flow of magic had the tendency to fry any number of fragile electronic connections nearby. With his wand or a proper wardstone Harry could blow most electronics from hundreds of meters away.

~..~

First Encounter

When Harry arrived at the Leaky Cauldron after a short walk through the strangely empty streets of London, he found 20 of the invading alien troops bustling about its entrance. He remembered the Ministers meager instructions said that these Stormtroopers were not capable of magic but at the same time immune to the few magic spells the Aurors had tried so far. Instead they had reacted quite aggressively and shot the investigating Auror immediately.

The Leaky Cauldron - and with it the entrance to Diagon Alley - was protected by strong Notice-Me-Not and Muggle repelling wards. Nevertheless the Stormtroopers were systematically examining the walls next to the pub entrance. Apparently their electronic devices were not killed by the magic field that shielded the building, but they could still not find it. Every time one of them was coming close to the entrance he warped to the other side of it, which seemed to give them only a bit off a dizzy but they went on examining the building nevertheless.

The warping of the white armored soldiers was almost comical for Harry who had stopped when he got sight of the strange group and their musing. Strangely enough the buildings to the left and right were covered in some out of the place looking scaffolding. Maybe the In-keeper had decided to renovate the neighbouring buildings?

Some Stormtroopers were guarding the street and occasionally heckled some of the robots that came by. They seemed to have some kind of grudge against robots in general and were pushing and commandeering them around with their synthetic sounding voices. To Harrys astonishment they spoke english, but he suspected that their native language was somehow technologically translated. The soldiers were some good half a meter taller than even the largest men Harry had ever seen. He guessed that they would be only a head shorter than Hagrid who had been a half giant. Their intimidating height, their commanding attitude and their stubbornness to be in the way of almost everything did not bode well with Harry, since he just wanted to get his stuff from Gringotts in Diagon Alley, but he decided be patient and wait until the Troopers had enough headaches by their constant warping around the hidden entrance.

A comparably tiny, black robot in particular caught his attention while he was watching the silly charade of the soldiers in front of him. The lean build small engine tried to move the soldiers away from the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron with the unrelenting stubbornness and ignorance of the situation that reminded Harry a little of his long dead friend Ronald Weasley.

The Stormtroopers had surrounded the human sized machine that was obviously not constructed for heavy work like the other robots Harry had seen so far. The machine was just standing in the circle of soldiers and did try to shoo them away. It waved hectically and constantly repeated "Please stay clear of this area, you are in danger!" It tried to guide the Stormtroopers with polite gestures back behind a yellow security line that was painted on the pavement, but the more it tried the more they seemed to get angry at it. Some of them had a blunt stick that gave of electric sparks when they used it to shock the robot which flinched a little with every touch from the stick but was still relentlessly sticking to its job of securing the area.

"Thank you Sir for pointing this out. Still you are in imminent danger. Please stand behind the security line."

Harry snorted by the unintended double entendre of the polite little machine.

Suddenly the small robot shoved the Stormtrooper closest to him violently back with an unexpected display of strength and knowledge of martial arts. After that he immediately jumped back towards the building and folded himself down into a compact, egglike form. The Stormtroopers jumped the short distance to it with their rifles and elektroschockers ready - when suddenly a large part of the scaffolding came crashing down directly on the robot and the surrounding soldiers.

They were all hit hard by the violent downpour of metal and chunks of ancient brickwork that must have been of considerable weight. Still most of the hit soldiers jumped back into action almost immediately, but one of them had lost his arm. Harry noticed that even the wounded Trooper did not waste any time wailing while his armor immediately sealed over his injury. The others spreaded strategically and pointed their remaining rifles up from where the railing had been falling down. After seeing that the whole scaffolding had come down and nobody could be seen that could have caused this, they began to dig out their buried equipment.

It took them less than a few seconds until they were back in control of the situation and Harry marveled at this display of professional soldiers work. He wished some of his former comrades would have been this much disciplined and focused when surprised. He had lost his best friend Ron when the stupid git had stood up and taunted a Russian wizard after he had tried to lure them into a trap. Well there had been another wizard hidden who had blasted Rons head clean of his shoulders in the brink of a second. Harry had gotten them both only moments after but he had no time to mourn his lifetime best friend for days because the battle started immediately after this incident.

He must have stood lost in thought, staring at the Stormtroopers and their show of professionalism for too long to not to be noticed. One of them headed over to him.

"You! Identify and hand me your papers!"

Harry stepped a bit back and silently casted a wandless Notice-Me-Not charm but the soldier seemed unimpressed. He tried a Confundo, an Itching Charm and even casted the strongest repelling spell that he could wandlessly produce at the guy but to no avail! Instead he found himself facing the nozzle of a dirty and deadly looking alien rifle. Either Harrys wandless magic abilities had suffered over the century in petrification or the Stormtroopers had some kind of magic immunity - that was interesting.

He was saved when a loud commotion came from the middle of the debris. The small robot unfolded from his compact form, effortlessly removing a heavy steel beam from his shoulder while standing up.

"Do you need medical assistance? I have called an ambulance and have twenty thousand eight hundred fifteen medical helping procedures available." He tried to move towards the kneeling wounded Trooper but his feet were apparently stuck in the rubble.

The Stormtrooper who had been inquiring Harry immediately whirled around and concentrated on the robot who was still stuck with one foot but still tried to help the wounded soldier who had lost his arm.

A loud whining sound and the hot gush of propulsion exhaust interrupted the scene when the soldiers were collected by an impressively large flying vessel that had no problems maneuvering in the confined space of the narrow street. Its many turrets were pointing towards the surrounding buildings and Harry and the robot.

It took the Stormtroopers only some seconds to board their vessel and they were back in the air before the doors began to close.

Harry raised his eyebrows, he had learned some interesting facts from this little incident. Firstly the Stormtroopers were real professionals and not to be taken lightly. They were tough even when injured and they always kept their heavy artillery nearby.

Secondly he was pretty sure that the robot had created a distraction to enable him to get away undisturbed, which led Harry to believe that it was much more intelligent than one would have guessed. Which left the question whether it had fabricated or provoked the whole incident on purpose.

Harrys ponderings were confirmed when the machine reached down and effortlessly flicked the steel rod away that had previously seemed to have trapped its foot. It gave Harry a small nod, grabbed the detached arm of the Stormtrooper from under a very sharp and out of place looking steel beam and marched away without looking back to the destruction the incident had created.

Harry picked his way through the mess in front of the Leaky Cauldron, he really needed to get all his other belongings from Gringotts. He felt vulnerable without his wands and his combat gear and the deathly hallows and all of his other stuff. Although he was not planning for a confrontation anytime soon, meeting soldiers that were immune against his wandless casting powers made him feel itchy. It reminded him of the times when he was still in school and not able to protect himself.

The Minister had merrily assured him that Diagon Alley, the Leaky Cauldron and almost everything else were still just like in the good old days. Thinking of the place brought back his memories when he had met his friends there a whole lifetime ago.

He felt a stab of painful memories when the memories of the friends and the life that was lost to him forever washed over him. What a fool they had been back then to believe in the mumble jumble from the Ministry and Dumbledore! That only the few of "Dumbledore's Finest" were chosen to defend the Wizarding world against the foes who constantly arose from the middle of the magic community. Foes that were born and nourished over and over again from the arrogance and backwardness of the rest of the wizard society. This made every death of his friends even more painful for him. They had died to defend something they all had loathed, the elitism, the blood purism, the looking upon on the muggles, elves, centaurs, giants and everything that basically was not a proper wizard.

Harry stomped through the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron with furor on his face. He had thought that the muggles at least would have conquered space, solved poverty and diseases and that science would have made them equally if not better than any wizards by now - instead of being conquered by some frickin oversized space Nazis in some magic resistant plastic armors!

Like always his anger helped him to get over the grief and pain that always lingered in the back of his mind. Harry could feel his magic rise and boil inside of him and it began to sparkle around his fingertips which was a certain sign that he had to vent it immediately before he would cause an spontaneous explosion of accidental magic, which almost never ended good. He stopped in the middle of the Leaky Cauldron when he thought back to this one time when his accidental magic had indeed served him good and transformed the ignorant Dark Lord into solid gold while Harry was hundreds of meters under him, trying to sneak his way into his dark medieval fortress. His face got a really strange look when he thought back to the look of complete surprise on the face of the golden statue of the long feared Agnark the Viking sitting on a golden toilet. A modern plumbing would have prevented his fate because he wouldn't have shat on Harry's unsuspecting head in the deepest darkness of the night! Harry briskly turned around and went back through the entrance to the heap of fallen stones and scaffolding in front of the pub. He had decided to put the magical awareness shield the Minister had warned him about under a dire field test.

"REPARO!" Harry wandlessly casted the spell at the debris in front of the entrance, standing in the middle of the street, in plain view of two muggle pedestrians, and – hard to guess – at least 5 surveillance cameras. He felt his accumulated magic slamming into the pile of torn metal and stones which promptly rose back and straighten itself into its previous state. A pedestrian that had just rounded the corner had stopped and taken his electronic glasses down to watch the spectacle open mouthed.

Right after the last piece had fallen into place Harry felt a new sensation, like a cold hand grabbing his magic core and squeezing another jolt of magic out of him. Without any willing contribution of himself Harry felt a massively overpowered Obliviate spell leaving his hands, radiating forward and floating through the muggle witness and even through the cameras and their network cables. The magic was drained directly from his core and it became quite painful for almost a minute before the feeling slowly ebbed away.

Harrys vision blurred but he could still stand, after a magical drain that would have hospitalized or killed nearly any other Wizard that he knew. The muggle was already back on his way, oblivious to what had happened.

A visibly shaken Harry Potter swayed towards the entrance of the Leaky Cauldron, swearing most foul about the stupidity of Wizardkind.

~...~

Gringotts

"Mr. Potter! What an unexpected visit!" Harry was speechless for some seconds. Not only had the Goblin forgotten to insult him, but the second most astounding thing was that he knew him!

"Master Account Manager Ragnok! May your gold flow like the blood of our enemies." Harry had automatically dropped to Gobbledegook and stared unbelievingly at the Goblin, with whom he shared some wartime memories and some more murky drinking memories. The sole Goblin who had stood next to him when they dropped a 16 tons block of Iron upon Petrov the Last right here in the main hall of Gringotts, or Petrov the very Flat how Ragnok had referred to him from then on. For Harry it had only been a year ago since he had seen his friend drunkenly falling from the table of his home where he had proudly announced that he had won the accountantship of the whole letter P, including Potter, Pettigrew, Peverell, Prewett and Plunkett.

Oh it felt so good to meet an old friend, even though the Goblin looked really frail and climbed down his chair instead of jumping. They went to his office and Harry was pleased to see that the Guards all bowed respectfully to his accountant, the son of the former chief of Gringotts who himself had fallen into disgrace after the Petrov incident.

A couple of Firewhiskeys later another Goblin entered the office, dragging Harrys battered expandable dragonhide trunk with him.

"Harry, thish isch my wonderful daughter Riphide. Shesh - err – she isss – hmmm- my daughter!" Ragnok sank back in his rather comfortable chair and started snoring, while Harry staggerd over to his trunk and drunkenly fumbled with the lock until Riphide handed him his phoenix wand with a broad grin plastered over her face.

"Mr Potter. It is an honor to meet a Wizard who can make my father happy and manages to stand after drinking with him. Even if barely so." She added after Harry had poked himself in the eye in his first attempt to spell himself sober.

"Mens Sanitas", Harry held his wand in both hands, slowly and carefully executing the required movements and was very relieved when he felt the alcohol induced clouds withdrawing from his mind. He knew that he would have to pay a high price for this later in the day, peeing out unprocessed Firewhiskey was not for the faint of heart.

"Riphide! It's my honor to meet the little girl I presented her first war hammer! Excuse me for my overly human sentiments, but I had expected that everyone I had known to be dead. You and your father are the closest I have to a family and I am a little overwhelmed. Your father told me you have a family of your own so I owe you quite a lot of birthday presents and then some to your children -" he stopped, raising his eyebrows questioningly "- and their children?"

"- and the children of them. The clan Ragnok now consists out of more than 180 members, all due to a Wizard who saved my father when another one of those Drark nutcakes tried to eradicate Gringotts and claim all the vaults. When every other Goblin and even my own godfather had abandoned propper accountantship." Harry could hear the emotions and noticed that she held a firm grip on her well used axe in one and the stylus in her other hand.

"Believe me, I will make it my prime mission to visit each and every one of them with appropriate presents, just after royally kicking one last preposterous collection of arses."

"I've already learned that you were chosen to banish the Dark Emperor from space?"

"Oh well, maybe I will kick his arse as well."