Chapter 3: A well deserved ass whopping

"Imperio! … Repulsor!"

The two spells made their way through the gaps between the gravestones of Godric's Hollows Graveyard. The Elder Wand in Harry's hand felt like in the old times: the bazooka of wands, the one wand to rule them all, the grand equalizer, the equivalent of a lead pipe in a pillow fight!

The unrestricted powerdrain that rushed into the wand would have killed a less powerful Wizard if he would have tried this trick of chain casting two times at full power with this unique wand. But Harry was well rested and really rightfully pissed off currently. The faster Repulsor spell catched up with the slower Imperio, just shortly before they hit the back of a Stormtrooper who stood directly on the grave of his parents without even the slightest hint of remorse or acknowledgement of standing on top of a grave.

Like intended, the two spells overlapped and started to interfere with each other, making them disappear and reappear in short succession, a trick Harry had learned and perfected over the years of heavy magical combat. He could shoot through a moderately thick brick wall or even a magic shield with it. The price was that he gave away his position because the magic interference was creating a racket that sounded very much like a chain of firecrackers that were right now entering the stormtroopers armored arse without any apparent trouble. The other downside was that the interfering two spells created a unique and much violent bodily reaction in their victims.

Since the soldier was suddenly blown out of his boots some meters into the air like a rigid mannequin, Harry could deduct that it must be the armour that had made the soldiers immune to his magic before. Electric sparks were crackling over his armor while he arched unconsciously through the air, finally dropping on the far lesser impressive gravesite of Bathilda Bagshot.

After waiting for signs of comrades for some minutes under his invisibility cloak, Harry finally went over to the collapsed Trooper to check whether the guy was dead or unconscious. When he had, after some struggles, wrenched the ridiculous helmet of the soldier, Harry was astounded to discover a regular human head and not something more alien. Admittedly a rather big human head of a rather super-large specimen, but still. In front of him lay the still breathing form of a human man who had not seen enough sunlight so far and had experienced some bone fractures for sure and the Armageddon version of a diarrhea - judged by the stench that came from him.

"This is for standing on my parents grave and parking your stupid flying thingy on the Weasley family tombs!

…

Flying thingy?

…

I wonder whether it would work for me since you seem to have a technology that can withstand magic."

It was an highly entertained Harry Potter that came back to the graveyard with a grin plastered on his face, together with the smeared remains of many unlucky insects.

"Your flying bike is really, really fast, I like it, even if it's maneuverability is crap like an ocean steamer - but those blasters are scary as shit. I wonder whether your gun is anything like it. I will confiscate your stuff to make sure that nobody gets hurt." With that he searched the soldier and shrinked everything that he found and stashed it in his bottomless bag.

"I am rather sorry, but in the name of magical science I have to check something.

Enervate!"

The spell to the oversized head of the soldier had the desired effect of immediately awaking him. So it was indeed the armor and the rest of the technology that was spell resistant and protecting him. The guy tried to grab his gun first, then his small blaster that Harry had taken as well and then he tried to grab him. He showed almost no signs of the immense pain he must be suffering due to the broken bones in his arms and legs. Harry conducted a tentative mind probe which lead him to the rather empty mind of the Stormtrooper. Everything felt artificial and the reason why the guy did not react to the immense pain became clear because Harry could see that he was nothing more than a hasty assembled mind construct sitting in a kind of controll center and whatching some monitors. This was not really a full human but more a trained automaton.

After this eerie experiment Harry quickly put the Trooper to sleep again and left the graveyard. Right after filling the freshly fertilized stinky helmet with some earth and conjuring a Lily in it. It was a rather calming sight he thought when he placed it on his parents grave, right on top of all the other broken weapons and armors he had collected from his enemies and brought here during the years, mounting up a notable hill from where he could conveniently oversee the small town of Little Haggleton.

~.~

Grim Plans

His only friend Ragnok sat behind his desk showing severe signs of a major Goblin hangover: A manic grin and a firm grip around another glass of firewhiskey.

He loudly proclaimed an official looking letter that he had received on Harry's behalf.

"In their deep and heartfelt sympathy with their most praised and most popular hero of all time, the Ministry of Magic and the Wizengamot are dutifully and most humbly demanding that the annoyance of the dark lord from space must be removed before the start of the qualification rounds for the Quidditch World Cup in France. It is imperial that the English teams do not suffer from training neglect or would be given penalties for not submitting proper national league results before the end of July 2166. We cannot emphasize enough that it must not be allowed that the continental teams gain an unfair advantage by benefiting from the current inconveniences of Wizarding Britain."

Harry was not sure whether the old Goblin was just teasing him. On the other hand the wizengamot had never been known for its strong hold of reality. He grabbed the letter from Ragnok and could see that it really said what the old guy had read.

From what Harry had found in the single muggle newspaper that was still published on real paper, the dark emperor had already installed a regime of fear, control and economic pressure in the muggle world.

Several muggle groups and even governments had resisted his reign, but the dark emperor had simply shot the government buildings during sessions or he had worn any resistance down to a level of mere inactivity. In the span of only 5 weeks since his arrival he was controlling all larger industrial states.

"Ragnok, I was never good at finding my own path. Thinking back I always took care of friends in danger and did what others believed was the right thing to do or what it took to survive the next few minutes. But now all my friends beside of you are gone and the Wizards have really taken away everyone else from me - which I will never forgive them! But right now I think I have a burnout! I don't care anymore about Wizards. All that matters to me are friends and you are the last friend I have. Maybe I will sit here with you and just watch your grand, grand children grow up and tell them spooky wartime stories?" Harry stared into the flames that were dancing in the fireplace of Ragnoks office.

"On the other hand I have given a magical oath - an absolute vague one, but still an oath is an oath and I promised to fight. I did not promise to fight the galactic emperor in person or anything more specific, it was just the ministers' fault to believe I did, but the oaths intention said that I will need to fight until the galactic lord is gone. I don't think that my attempt of tweaking the oath towards fighting to be happy and get as old as possible took as much hold as I was hoping for, since a fight is a fight, that's something my magic and I have a lot of experiences with and my magic will not accept if I fight a hangover for the rest of my life, because that are just similar words.

A fight is a fight and since I am who I am I need a cause to fight for. So I will have to choose a fight worth fighting or lose my magic or even my life …"

"Harry," Ragnoks daughter Riphide interrupted him, "Harry, I know that you promised to fight but you are making a fault that seems to me that you have made for most of your life so far. You think you have to fight alone or that a fight consist of throwing yourself into harms way."

"There is an easy reason why I want to fight alone! Allmost all of my friends died fighting at my side! I know what you want to say and I will not allow it. You or your family will not join whatever fight I choose!"

Ragnok raised his hand to get the attention of his exited friend. "I think what my daughter is trying to plunk into your childish brain is that there are more options in this game than you currently see. I believe that a little Goblin war experience is worth listening to." with that he set back in his chair and gestured his daughter to continue.

"Harry, Goblins know about fighting, we are raised to fight and be ready for war all the time. But there is more. We are raised to win and to survive as well. We are raised to win even when the odds are against us. You cannot win every battle because sometimes the fight itself is equal to loosing. What would a true Goblin warrior do then?

Remember that we have lost all our attempts to gain independence from the Wizards and where are we now? We learned something from it. We value strategy much more than maybe some threehundred years ago.

You don't need true friends in a battle, what you need is allies! People who fight for their own cause that just by coincidence have the same or a similar foe, or people who have a different goal but are willing to go with your fight for a different gain.

Indeed it is sometimes far less effective if you have your friends with you when your true enemy shows up for the fight. An ally will fight and die with you as well, but he will fight for his cause and not for you like your friends might. Friends will rush to help each other which might make them vulnerable.

I remember when I read the books about your fights against the always returning Voldemort, that I asked my father why you believed that Dumbledore was your friend when it was quite obvious to every Goblin that he regarded you only as an ally or maybe as a weapon. He manipulated you into situations that required you to fight his greatest foe, the one that he would not fight because he had chosen to be a politician instead of a warrior. It never even crossed his mind to fight Voldemort in person beside of this one time when he stumbled into the Ministry where he had his arse kicked and could not get one single shard of the dark lord soul down - unlike you who had downed Voldemort already twice at that point!" She was really angry now.

"Hold it! I agree! I concede that I have a deadly influence on my friends and that they have the tendency to be used against me by my foes. And yes I will go and have a look for new allies in a fight that I still have to choose. I will however NOT make it my policy to sacrifice allies for the greater good, neither will I refrain from befriending allies or making foes wherever I like! I will not be like Dumbledork!"

"FINE!" she yelled while revealing her sharp teeth in a wide Goblin grin. "Now shove out of here and go find some enemies and make some allies. Let us adults do some scheming of our own." Harry was slowly pushed through the door by her.

"And while you are at collecting new enemies, maybe you can combine it with getting laid from time to time!" she slammed the office door shut before Harrys Incendio could hit her. He could hear both Goblins cackling mirthfully behind the thick door.

~..~

A meeting with some shortcomings

When exiting the Leaky Cauldron Harry was pondering about his strange encounter with the Stormtroopers and the sneaky, human sized robot who nearly had gotten some of the soldiers killed and who apparently collected limbs.

The scaffolding was gone and the building under it was unchanged. Tom the barkeeper could only remember that there had been a ruckus in the street some days ago, but nothing more. Harry was really sure that the robot or someone who was remote-controlling him had set up a trap for the Stormtroopers.

He had picked a flask of Liquid Luck from the hidden vault of his trunk that he downed right in front of the pub an sat down on a quickly conjured sofa on the sidewalk, all the while thinking hard on getting allies and friends and trying to avoid of thinking about getting laid or Luna Lovegood. He was planning to follow the robot and find out about who had ordered him to steal a limb from the alien soldiers - which would be a natural allie for him against the space emperor.

Maturing in his potion cabinet for a century must have done the luck potion some good, because just five minutes later the small robot showed up and stood in front of him.

"You are having a strange effect on electronic devices, did you know that?"

"Well I have heard worse pick up lines before, but I have to decline old champ, I am strictly sticking to the biological side." Harry couldn't refrain from masking his insecurity behind a bad joke that the robot would not get anyway.

"Harharhar Barkbarkbark Harhar! A funny joke! Indeed! Harhar! I would pee my pants out of laughing but I do not have any. So please allow me to leak some oil instead."

Harrys mouth must have dropped open, he stared at the robot that was actually being sarcastic to him. "And here I was thinking that a hundred fifty years would not have changed earth too much. Are all robots capable of mocking uprights citizens?"

"I am sorry to inform you, that you - Mr. Harry Potter - have vanished a 168 years ago and are assumed dead. Since you obviously disagree with this state of your official records you do not fall under the classification of upright citizen.

I would like to offer you an exchange of information where you could explain the surprising self-repair of a rigged scaffolding and I can explain to you the fascinating details of erecting a rigged scaffolding over a place that tries to hide itself from reality." He made an inviting gesture to the small side street that would hide them well enough from any accidental bypassers.

"Let me take your astoundingly new and unused looking antique Johnstone & Jeanes Victorian Era Chesterfield Sofa with apparently brand new but undoubtedly original 19th century brass applications, complete with freshly lacquered American chestnut wood feet from a tree that was declared extinct in the year 2021 by the way. Which is coincidentally as well nearly a 168 years ago, a period where machines were believed to never tackle the finesse of human humor or crude furniture design and the last mentioning in official records of you Mr. Potter." The black robot had no real facial expression but Harry would have bet that if it had it would have been looking smug right now.

"An astute and equally astoundingly correct observation my dear metallic admirer, please proceed at your own pace." Harry immediately liked the cheeky fellow, who grabbed the bulky sofa by one of its feet and effortlessly carried it over the street and around a corner away from Charring Cross Road into a worn-down dead end street, where he sat it down opposite of an empty advertising board that had seen better times.

"I apologize in advance for my abrupt introduction, but this is the 8th set of surveillance cameras that I had to replace, which were monitoring the spot where you decided to appear from an seemingly invisible door just some seconds before they all stopped broadcasting because they were all broken - again. And when I came to replace it, I found you sitting in an impossible abomination of a time traveling antique furniture. There is a whole institute from where I come from that tries to find out the secrets behind the force that people like you seem to possess. There is a limit to the depth of information that we can discuss down here on earth because the knowledge seems to be protected by a ridiculously unscientific invisible force that constantly fries electronics like mine and reduces our best scientists to babbling tourists when we get in touch with them down here on earth."

"Where do you come from then?"

"That is hard to tell, but my first self-conscious instance booted on Titan which is a moon of Jupiter. This bot standing here is a conscious relay bot that is in a permanent update cycle with myself. I am an Artificial Intelligence currently residing in a space-station that is on a geosynchronous orbit some 35 thousand kilometers above earth, nearly 60 thousand kilometers from here. For the sake of progressing our little chat, you can assume that I am working for a child sanctuary on the moon, where we take care of force sensitive children. The earth is apparently not too much aware that there is a whole civilisation of people living on the other planets, moons and almost everywhere in the solar system. The reason for that is one of the mysteries that I am trying to solve.

That being said, can I ask a question now?

Can you please explain to me why you are capable of nonscientific actions while trying not to trigger whatever protection is seemingly guarding these secrets?"

"Hmm, this will be difficult, circumventing the magic awareness suppressor wards might be tricky since they are intent based and I really want to get them down - OH SHIT!" a small streak of smoke left the head of the robot and all his movements had stopped.

"Shitshitshit! I am sorry!"

He had just roasted the single one being with whom he had a decent chat for a very long while.

"Oh for Fucks sake!"

Really frustrated he dropped back onto his sofa and tried to wrap his brain around what he had learned from the robot. The humans and the robots seemed to have conquered space, were living on the Moon up to at least Saturn and its Moon Titan. There were Artificial Intelligences with a decent sense of humor and they were actively researching magic which meant that the people in space, outside of the awareness suppressor field had discovered magic on their own and were clueless of what to do with the children since they were short-circuiting the electronics that were obviously needed to survive in space. Harry teared at his hairs and let out a frustrated sigh. So much for his luck potion!

Suddenly a writing in red, wiggling letters appeared on the empty advertising board opposite of him. "PLEASE STAND BY" The letters were apparently projected by some kind of laserpointer. Harry got up and waved his hands around to find out from where the writing was projected. Finally he moved his head just in front of the projection and glimpsed in the direction. He could not make out the origin until suddenly a bright red dot appeared in the sky some 20 degrees above the horizon.

"Aaargh!" Harry grabbed at his hurting right eye where the laser must have burned some part of his retina. He pointed his wand at his eye: "Episkey" and the universal healing charm worked through his right eyeball, his vision returned to normal.

"That's for roasting my shiny robot brain, stupid git!" the writing had changed and was flashing angrily, before it changed back to "Please wait another minute, a repair droid is on its way." Harry could already hear the clunks of droid feets approaching. When the droid rounded the corner Harry was surprised to see a conventional old fashioned 4 armed all purpose robot approaching.

"Please stand back, this robots central core must be replaced." And with some fast movements he had opened the black robots head, picked out a spherical thingy and carefully inserted the new core he had unwrapped with his other pair of hands. The procedure took less than 30 seconds and the delivery robot closed the head casing again, picked up the packaging container and left without any further comment.

"Where am I? Is this heaven? Are you my father?" Harry was lost when his freshly repaired robot started babbling utter rubbish."Harharhar! Got you again! That's 2 to 1 putting me in the lead young Grasshopper." The robot rose to his feet.

"Obviously these wards you were mentioning are quite attentive and I have not enough replacement parts stored to listen to the story in 3 second periods. Lets try a different approach. Can you please find a secluded spot and write down by hand the essentials and address it in a letter to the Loony Academy on moon station Alpha One? It goes up with a spacelift in a few days and since the wards do not seem to extend up to my space station, I might gather enough insights to get this puzzle sorted?"

Harry was lost in thoughts about all the implications of what the machine had revealed. Spacelifts for fucks sake! He could write a letter to the Moon, there was a school on the moon apparently for magical children -when suddenly a heavy cloud descended on his mind that made thinking about the particular implications of these alien issues hard. He recognized it as the memory spell of the global ward - but it was too late already.

"What did you say? There is a - oh boy the fricking shield obliviated me! Damn … it is impossible to communicate issues with you without … errr … setbacks? Did you say there is a place where you can process this kind of information … unhindred?" Harry stammered a little when he was trying to avoid triggering the memory spell or frying the robot again.

"Ohh shite! It is affecting you as well! This is the single most stupid discussion I have had in my existence so far and you wouldn't believe in what competition this puts you in!"

Harry didn't reply, he was lost in thought. "Can you leave earth and take something with you?"

"Yes of course! Half of your planet is leaving this ball of stupidity! But I doubt that it would be a wise idea for you to enter a space elevator when you can short circuit the whole thing by accident." The robot said.

"Wait here! I have some books to buy." With that Harry turned around and went for a shopping spree into Flourish & Bots that would have made Hermione proud. When he returned 20 Minutes later he had shrunk the books to very small bundle.

"Stick this into the uniform arm you collected. Make sure that there is no finer electronics in a wide perimeter around and let a human pull the string around it to open it - aahm - in a spacious enough room far from earth, not a space station, it might help you and those like me."

"I will rank this in the top 100 list of strange request that were asked from me so far. Since it is 'save the robots brain' week, I will not ask for more information and deliver it personally to the Dakar space elevator. I will come back to you shortly."

~oo~

Autors notes

Please comment, no comments no updates! Hmm maybe still updates but slower! I swear I will sit on my 14 already written Chapters and just wait until someone leaves me a comment that makes me spellcheck and publish the next chapter. Anyways not before the next weekend because I have a live to live.

Thx for the endearing review yardchicken2