A note to the reader:

You might have already noticed that this story picks up speed and gets a little longer with every chapter. The reason is simple, it was the first story I have ever written in english in earnest and with practise comes - hm - capability(?).

Yes I know that you are now super deeply disappointed that I am not actually the inventor of the characters around Harry Potter - but take it as a valuable lesson in life: There is more to beeing an original author than just my good looks and an inflated ego - you have to be a totally different person than me. I only provided a little robot into the mix.

~o~

Chapter 4: Introspection and a drone with a no name

Harry spent the next days reading old newspapers and some muggle books in the London Library to find out more about the history of space exploration and the colonies. He was somehow disappointed about the sparse information, it was evident that the suppressor field had a devastating effect on the muggle world. Only by luck the global climate change catastrophe could have been averted because efficient hydrogen production and engines were invented before the field was erected, seemingly in the year 2040. After that there was no trace of groundbreaking interventions by the muggle scientists beside of finalising a number of space elevators around the globe. On the other hand the global society had become a lot more peaceful. There were a lot fewer people living on earth, only about 200 million, the rest had migrated to space or had died of old age.

The people that were still on earth were staying mostly because they either feared space, were preferring the natural environment or because they liked children. Families had changed as well, it was common for a couple to raise an average of about 8 children during their life and it was a well-accepted practice to let the young people around the age of 16 visit orbit when they were starting to get overly antsy about science, or when they were old enough to choose were they wanted to continue their life: on earth or in space. Only 1 in 20 decided to stay on earth, so the population was declining rapidly since almost no one came back once he was in space.

Harry stared out of the large Library windows, lost in thought. The stupid suppressor field the Wizards had erected was indirectly leading to a mass exodus from earth. The vast majority of humans must live in space by now, because of the ignorance and foolishness of the Wizards a few generations ago.

Then another thought hit him with the clarity only muggle logic was capable of. Hermione would have been so proud of him.

If there were fewer muggles there must be fewer Wizards as well. It was an open secret that the muggleborns were the basis of the Wizard economy because purebloods had much fewer children and that would mean that the foolish purebloods had maybe finally found a way to eradicate Wizards once and for all.

Maybe the large number of children per couple equaled it out, but on the other hand he had once read that only one in every five thousand births a magic child was born. Let's say there were 2 adults for every 8 children on earth out of estimated 200 million people on earth, he scribbled the calculation on a piece of paper and stared flabbergasted at the result. There were only 40 million adults left on earth, roughly as much as Great Britain had by the time he had been petrified. And if the calculation was right, there would be only eight thousand adult wizards in the whole world left! Maybe some more since the magic children would not leave earth, but still. The last census Hermione had told him about had estimated almost 2 million wizards living all over the globe back in the year 2020.

He was very proud of his conclusion because he felt like Hermione must have felt all the time.

Eight thousand wizards! Maybe double or even 4 times as much because wizards grew older than muggles and magic children would not leave earth. If he told the goblins about their true number they would wipe them from earth. They outnumbered them at least a couple of a hundred times. They could kill each of them by just sitting on them for Christ sake!

This would certainly explain how deserted Diagon Alley had looked when he had been there.

The wizards had dug their own grave when they had erected this stupid stupidity field.

~.~

A sarcastic piece of metal

When Harry left the London Library he found an unknown and rather frail looking robot with a very small head but two prominent antennae protruding from his backpack waiting for him next to a taxi, obediently opening the door for him. The build looked like one of the imperial soldiers robots, Harry had glimpsed in the Stormtrooper transport vessel.

"I must say that your package was a mighty shock to us, but it will be a life saver for the magic children of the moon." said the robot while gesturing to get into the taxi.

Harry stopped in his tracks. "Is that really you? You look different today! Wait, did you do something with your hair? New wardrobe?"

"I am sooo glad you noticed! Men these days seem so disinterested in what a true robot looks like! There we are standing in front of the mirror adjusting ourselves over and over and what do we earn? Nothing but shale mockery!"

Without any doubt this was his robot acquaintance from three days ago. Or maybe it was just the same sarcastic artificial intelligence remote driving this new piece of metal.

"As much as I admire your new look, what happened to your last body? Fried again?" Harry asked with a wide grin. He really enjoyed meeting the machine again.

"This is an experiment. I hijacked a frame from one of the alien facilities yesterday and implanted a kind of remote control. This machine does not have its own processing unit for higher functions and it is build for labor by the aliens who seem to have mastered a technique of shielding microelectronics against the induced radiation from your magic with their soldiers uniforms. So maybe this robot is more robust than my own drone that you have roasted before when you do your magic thingy.

If you are wondering why I can talk about magic so freely, the real me is sitting safely tucked away in a space station and is controlling this frame. Ahh, and yes, I have read the books you gave my drone. They are now in the Alpha One colony on the moon.

But this frame here is only experimental and when the remote override fails you might have an unconnected and unarmed but still working enemy droid standing in front of you. So please don't hesitate to press this button in this case - and maybe stand back a little." He handed Harry a small remote that looked like a muggle lighter.

Harry hesitated while processing the information the robot had given him. Admittedly he had caught himself short before asking what they should do next - and drop back into his old habit of adopting the goals of people he liked as his own. He needed to access his inner Hermione and maybe even his inner Ron to think more strategically about the situation and what he personally wanted to achieve.

So far he had agreed with himself that he had a particular dislike for the Wizarding culture, especially the statue of secrecy, the so called time-freezing of him after he saved their arses over and over and that shield of ignorance and stupidity that was one of the reasons why an alien force could run around on earth and play emperor and it was the reason of the mass exodus of people from earth. Only that the Wizards were too arrogant to acknowledge that this might pose a problem if not lead to the extinction of Wizards and maybe even humans in the end.

THAT would be his prime mission, to bring down the magic awareness suppressor shield and to weaken or end the state of secrecy. Thinking about it already made the magic of the unbreakable vow he took with the Minister of Magic rise and he knew that he had found his new mission in live for the foreseeable time. Hastily he suppressed the rising magic to avoid grilling his robot companion again. A grin spread over his face when he became aware that due to the unexact wordings of the vow the Ministry itself should be assisting him in his mission, as long as he did not actively work against driving the alien emperor from earth.

Secondly there was the magic youth that was caught on the moon. He felt sorry for them, they might feel like he did in his youth - like freaks, unable to use technology and unable to understand what made them different. So to help them was a cause where his robot acquaintance and he had a common interest.

And thirdly the Goblins. Clearly they were just waiting for an opening to pay back the centuries of oppression and boring accountancy to the Wizards. So bring down the Wizards too much would see them eradicated in a bloody war with the Goblins, or vice versa.

With that Harry became aware of his surroundings again and he noticed that he must have been standing there with the remote switch in his hands for quite a while now. Obviously the robot had tried to get his attention in the meantime by waving his hands in front of his face but had given up by now.

"I am sorry, I was coming to some interesting conclusions. I would like to come to an agreement with you where we could help each other. The problem is that I would need to talk with you more freely, but that would fry your electronics apparently. Thank god you know about Wizard and magic in general already, since the protection is only working on stuff that someone does not yet know. Or at least I believe it works like that.

I would like to help you to help humanity on earth out of this trap. To achieve that we need to destroy this - erm -protection which is contrary to what the Wizards in power want to achieve."

"I appreciate your careful placement of words. From your books I already know about the statue of secrecy and about the worldwide field that the Wizards had erected around the year 2040. And since I know about it already and I am sitting safely tucked away in my shiny spaceship we can already guess that the field that is making thinking so hard on earth is based on a global ward scheme that the Wizards must have managed to install.

Based on information that I cannot yet reveal to you without frying your brain - which would be a nice change of patterns by the way - I as well would like to ally with you. And on a personal note, I like the kind of chaos that you seem to attract. I have read about Harry Potter in Hogwarts a History and I assume that you either time traveled or were frozen or you have indeed access to a philosopher's stone but were obliviated."

"Holy shit! You would really have liked my former best friend Hermione. You are one smart piece of metal. I was frozen, I guess petrified with a basilisk stare. It was sold to me as a healing procedure for coping with the loss of almost all of my friends. But in the end I guess the whole thing was to avoid that I could use my popularity to gain political influence." Harry shook his head before he continued.

"But let's focus on the closer problems. I have a theory that I would like to test. I know that it is the uniforms that are protecting the soldiers because I have knocked one down already. Sadly my method is absolutely gross. But I guess we could fit one of these uniforms to you so that you will hopefully not get your precious metal ass fried the next time I sneeze magic gold dust out of my nose. Maybe that uniform works for protecting the other way around as well so I could wear one and we could talk freely?"

"I think that white would make me look a bit fat," the robot quipped "but on the other hand I don't know what it would make you look." The robot looked down on Harry who was still on the smaller sizes of humankind.

"Ohh! I am pretty sure nobody cares what you look like, your personality is so charming and mesmerizing that I bet you could stand here wearing no clothes at all and still nobody would say a thing." Harry snorted back.

The robot hesitated for a very short moment before he replied. "Well let's say that's 2 points equal for both of us now. I might have an idea where we could get to see a collection of Stormtrooper armors. I was planning to pay the parade a visit anyways.

I have read something about a cloak that can make you invisible. If you still have it it would help you to avoid unwanted attention."

"Yep, always with me." Harry patted his pockets.

"The imperial starship commander has had it announced that he will hold a speech this afternoon in Richmond Park in front of his troops. I wonder whether we could cheer and welcome our new galactic overlord together with hundreds of other faithful supporters from London?"

~..~

This is for not wearing your armor

Whatever Harry might have expected this was not it. The starship was massive, really huge; it looked like there must be hundreds of thousands of people aboard. If not for the thousands of lights illuminating the ground under it it would have been really dark in the shadow, although it was in the middle of a rare sunny day in London.

He had apparated early into the middle of the park to watch the spectacle from the top of a tree, hidden under his invisibility cloak not too far from where the main ramp had been lowered. About 100 fighter vessels had already left the ship and there was still no end to it. They looked tiny compared to the huge bulk of the battleship but when the machines went nearby, he could see that they were at least as large as his childhood home in Pivet Drive. The battleship must be covering a quarter of London he thought.

Although there were only a few human spectators, a kind of troop parade was held, ruining every spec of lawn that Richmond Parks had to offer. Row after row of Stormtroopers were marching in groups of 25 in neat square formations out of the ship. Someone over there must be really having an obsession about the number five because every 5x5 groups they left a gap again. That was making counting easier. After exact 3125 soldiers an even more rigid pattern of battle droids with the same build like Harry's robot were marching down the large ramp. Again packed in the same 5x5 pattern but marching much tighter together with their weapons drawn. After 15 minutes Harry lost count, somewhat about 50 to one hundred thousand droids must have left the ship when the emperor himself showed up. Harry had his now reconnected enhanced Moody-glasses centered on the guy, but he was disappointed to see an average sized man in grey uniform with a ridiculous purple colored long cape that he dragged over the ruined lawn, strutting through the corridor between the troops. He was surrounded by 25 much taller than him soldiers in bright red uniforms, who for sure have never had seen battle in those abominations of battle gear. From time to time the grey/purple guy in command stopped to yell at one of the soldiers and then marched on. Harry wondered if the soldier he had gotten on his parents grave was under the ones who were shouted at.

Behind the group of his red personnel guard a group of droids were dragging an obviously dead trooper along. They dropped him in front of the pompous little man when he had reached a small stage. Harry guessed that this must be the dark lord emperor of the galactic imperial whateverdom.

To sum the speech up, the dark emperor was disappointed with the earth population, with his Stormtroopers, with the imperium in general, human nature, the stink of earth, the rain, stupid robots, the color green, humans again, especially because of their lack of people able or willing to join his forces - maybe out of height requirements Harry thought - and the abundance of people who were obviously hiding in their homes and shivering in fear of his justified wreath, yaddayadda.

Then the show part started and Harry perked up when the emperor declared that under his protection his soldiers would never die as long as he was near. To demonstrate this he kneeled beside the dead soldier and gestured around mystically. Harry felt a little wave of magic from the podium and already pondered that this was going to be good because there were enough muggles watching and the emperor was not wearing any armor. After a minute of hectic finger wiggling and uttering beyond breath suddenly the soldier moved and stood up again. Either the imperator must have slipped the poor guy some really heavy drugs before, or he had just created a zombie in front of all those people. Harry felt the magic awareness suppressor filed churning up and then a surge went through the emperor when the wards squeezed out every last drop of magic from him to obliviate the hundred or so muggles who had been witnessing his little necromancy show.

Harry couldn't help but chuckle under his cloak when the hairs of the emperor started smoking and turning grey while he staggered back completely flabbergasted. That stupid dork had nearly killed himself right in front of his troops. Since he had no drop of magic under his hood anymore even his zombie dropped dead again and started to fall to dust.

His human spectators were still caught in obliviation stupor and they started to look a little zombie-like themselves. All in all Harry guessed that the dark emperor would need weeks of rest and pepper up potions before he could do anything magic related again and by the look of it at least 3 days before he could walk steady.

The emperors show had come to an improvised end, his personal guards were carrying him back into the ship and then the troopers and at the end the robots were marching up the ramp again.

When fianly the ramp retreated into the ship again, two petty heaps were left on the trampled lawn, a robot and the dead Stormtrooper. Harry guessed that his artificial companion had got himself fried again by the obliviation spell and triggered his self-destruct with it. The former zombie trooper had decayed rapidly and mostly turned to dust already. Harry decided to take the armor and shrinked it into his bottomless bag. He hoped that nobody was looking from the ship above, but if they would have cared they should have cleaned up their mess themselves. Still, just standing under the hovering hulk of the spaceship that had the size of two minor cities made Harry itchy and he apparated away while still under his cloak.

Interestingly the emperor did not use a wand, nor did he look like he carried one. By all means he seemed to be a petty, wandless and clueless necromancer of sorts!

~...~

Armor hunting

Just when Harry had unschrinked his shiny new flying battle bike in a silent back alley to return to the Leaky Cauldron where he had spent his last days, he heard the well-known little whooshing noise of a post owl approaching.

The small post owl dropped a red howler letter in front of him and raced away in an obvious hurry, while the letter already began to smolder. With the easiness of long term practice like all acquaintances of Molly Weasley, Harry spelled the thing to a moderate loudness before opening it with a flick of his wand.

"MR POTTER! OUR RECORDS SHOW THAT YOU FAILED TO BATTLE THE DARK LORD TODAY WHEN HE WAS HEAVILY WEAKENED BY THE M.A.S-FIELD!

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! YOU MUST COMPLY WITH THE OATH!

THE PREPARATIONS FOR THE QUIDDITCH SEASON ARE ALREADY DEFERRED!

IT IS IMPERIAL THAT THE WORLDCUP CAN BE HELD WITHOUT INTERRUPTION!

A HEARING IN FRONT OF THE WIZENGAMOT WILL TAKE PLACE ON MONDAY AT 14 O'CLOCK. YOU WILL REPORT SUCCESS OR JUSTIFY YOUR INACTION TO THE LEADERS OF MAGICAL BRITAIN!"

"Those self-righteous jerks! Fighting him would have me killed either from the soldiers, the droids or from the backdraft of the stupid shield. But maybe that's what they are aiming for. Bunch of backstabbing arses. If anything, they've got even more self-centered and uncaring. Aaaargh!"

While ranting about stupid Wizards, Harry became aware of a well know smell of melted plastic and exploded capacitors. When he turned around there was his most favored magic roasting victim standing a couple off meters behind, having just rounded the corner. So the robot must not yet have known about howlers and the stupidity shield had roasted him for good. Harry tried to remember whether this was the third or the fourth time that the persisting machine had got himself fried.

After more than half an hour long wait, his personal fan-bot showed up again, this time in his old form that Harry had first seen in front of the leaky cauldron.

"Carefully please, this is my last relay frame I have brought down to earth. My other instances are really busy." After this statement from the machine Harry looked suddenly rather dopey.

"Hey! Don't try to scare me by looking all cross eyed, I did not reveal anything too alien to you! I would bet that you have even seen the Avatar Movie back in the ancient times long before I was born, errr made, hmm self-optimized? Anyways, I wanted to emphasis that you are mean and old, like really old, ancient almost, and you should not try to scare a young robot like me."

"Ok sorry, but not really. I have grabbed one rather smelly Stormtrooper armor minus a helmet, but I know where we can get one. Since the dark dork seems to be currently distracted, we could go and grab it right now before sunset from the graveyard where I used it as a flowerpot. Are you up for a ride?" Harry patted the saddle of his flying battle bike.

"I'll drive, you will only perform some magic thingy and get yourself killed."

"Forget it, my bike, my rules. And I have testdriven this baby already and it's magic proof like the armor. Hmmm, thinking of it, maybe I could transfigured you completely into this cruiser, you could become my talking, flying motorbike. I would name you even KIT!"

"I recognize the reference you are doing and I suspect that you only want to date small, disproportionate women while I needlessly jump over hills to save the day over and over again. I will tell you what, this robot here is not your personal possession that Knight Riders you anywhere. This is a free bot you are talking to."

Harry had the suspicion that the bot was citing some other obscure TV show, but he could really not remember what it was, and he was too proud to ask.

His assumption that the alien invaders were too distracted with their exhausted emperor was negated when they were halfway through their journey. His robot tapped him on the shoulder and pointed back. Harry had to max out the magnification of his glasses to make out two of the alien spaceships that he had seen earlier in the day in pursuit, getting closer quite fast, despite their completely non aerodynamic build.

Harry cranked the little engine into a steep climb.

"Now you can fly this thing. Maneuverability is the key, these flying cupboards have an even wider turn radius than this abomination here and they are too fast. These here are the front cannons, they have quite a punch and I think you can get one of those flying ships down with them. If not, fly some circles until I can help you. The other one is for me."

With that Harry jumped from his saddle and was immediately falling away, while the robot had more pressing problems to grab the handles of the flying bike and get it under control. By incident his erratic moves saved him from getting hit. A green phasershot screeched through the air above. He could see Harry almost a kilometer below him, already sitting on his flying broom and searching his bags in total disregard of the criticality of the situation. Then he removed a leathery ball from his bag and jerked his broom in a zigzag pattern before heading directly towards the two fighter ships, who in return were opening up a continuous stream of phasershots on him. He twisted easily around them altogether getting closer and closer to the vessels.

The robot had gotten control of his flying bike and was now as well speeding towards the two spaceships, firing his canons as soon as he deemed himself close enough to have an advantage in maneuverability. Indeed as Harry had predicted his shots hit one of the fighters, disabling one of its thrusters, which started to emit a thick stream of smoke. The ship turned to limp out of range.

Suddenly Harry disappeared and reappeared in midst air, not carrying the strange ball any more. The second fighter began making random motions and twists. The pilot seemed to have other problems than flying the machine.

They both concentrated on the returning first machine that featured an already damaged turbine. They paid attention to keeping a large distance between each other so that Harry could not accidentally short circuit his robot friend again.

This thought made Harry stop in his tracks, which accidentally was the most surprising thing he could do in the middle of an air fight between a flying bike thingy, a broom and a spaceship. The pilot of the spaceship was desperately trying to get a shot at Harry and was overstraining the flight controls of his damaged vessel already when he hit his decelerating thrusters. At the same moment a shot of the robot bikes cannon coming up from behind cleanly disabled its second main thruster and the fighter ship dropped like a stone towards earth.

Harry and the robot looked completely surprised by the sudden end of the fight. The robot pointed to the second ship that was erratically tumbling slowly towards earth and raised his shoulders signaling that he did not know what to do with it. Harry signaled him to wait and flew after it.

When Harry apparated into the ship this time, he was greeted by a very strange sight. The overpowered Quidditch Bludger he had set free in the cockpit had done an excellent job in disabling the pilot. The guy had received a severe beating and seemed to be unconscious. Harry summoned the Bludger and pocketed it and then he tried to get into the oversized pilot seat while the ship turned and tumbled around him. After a minute of cajoling on his broom in the confined space of the cockpit, avoiding to be hit by the pilots body which zipped back and forth, crashing into the controls and changing the direction of the ship again, Harry mastered to jump into the pilot seat and get a grip on the steering thingy. With a quick sticking charm he glued himself to the seat, the former pilot to the roof and his broom to the side of his pilot chair.

Since the machine was currently climbing, Harry took time to experiment with the controls. Steering and rolling seemed easy and working similar to the flying speeder. Due to his Quidditch hardened stomach he could even enjoy the powerful, rapid moves this engine was performing. After a couple of minutes he had the feeling that he could control enough of his newest shiny spacecraft to make it back to the ground and collect his robot companion. He had a halfway working Stormtrooper and his magic resistant battle gear with him, so there was no reason to travel to his parents grave and dig out the other helmet, as he had originally planned.

Harry couldn't figure out how to prepare the ship for landing, since there were too many buttons that he did not yet have tried. And he didn't want to accidentally shoot something or drop a bomb or stuff like that, so he tried to hover close to the ground not too far away from the crashed other space fighter. Suddenly the craft took over automatically, landed itself smoothly and opened the side doors.

Harry left the machine with a smug grin plastered over his face just when the robot landed the speeder with similar effortless smoothness next to the ship.

"You really have a knack for spreading mayhem and chaos! I believe this is the reason why the Wizards had kept you buried for so long."

"Well I for once did not shoot an alien vessel, declaring an intergalactic war at the same time. I saved this poor fellow here from dropping out of the sky because he was trying to play Quidditch whilst flying.

And look, out of his wholehearted gratitude for saving him, he presented you with his nearly undamaged magic resistant armor and to me he gave this really shiny spaceship." Harry looked really pleased with himself.

"The next time I blast an attacking spaceship out of the sky to prevent it from running you over, I expect an equal share of the bounty. Now let me take a look at that downed ship over there which emits a rather nasty amount of radiation, so you shouldn't go there unless you are radiation proof on top of everything else. Maybe you could peel the soldier for me? Although I will have to adapt my frame to fit into the armor, these guys must have been grown artificially or in a zero g environment, they are way to large." With that the robot stalked over to the smoldering wreck of the half exploded second ship that had buried itself into the ground.

Harry's soldier was already moving and struggling against the sticking charm. But since Harry had already removed his helmet he could just send him to sleep again. Removing the armor was a different matter and Harry couldn't puzzle it out until his robot returned from the other ship the second time with an armload of paraphernalia that he dumped into Harry's new spaceship.

"We only have about 15 minutes before the crashed ships reactor will finally blow I guess. The radiation inside already killed the pilot and it doubles every 3 minutes. I have checked when we landed that the surrounding isn't populated, so there should be no casualties beside of the wildlife when the thing explodes.

Oh and if the all-knowing mighty Wizard needs any help with the armor, there is a tiny hole in the back where you can release the top armor, let me show you."

Harry grumbled a little although he had to agree that technology was definitely not his expertise. They stripped the Stormtrooper and marveled at the thin man they revealed.

"Definitely artificially grown in a zero g environment. This armor must be much more than only that, it must have actuators and more or less a life support system build in. Otherwise I doubt the he would be able to walk around upright." The robot was already experimenting around with the way to large armor.

"Maybe I can shrink it for you, now that it is open?" Harry offered.

"Ok, but let me get at least some hundred meters away before you take out you magic sticky! I don't even want to see it without protection. Harharhar, you never know where you have poked your thingy before, harharhar!

You understand?

That was meant as a joke! A double entendre as we people of spirit and good education are calling it. You should try it once in a while." The robot called back while running from him at impressive speed. Soon he was about a 150 meters away and shouted "OK, I believe I will survive here."

Harry used both his wands to shrink the the armor from within and from the outside simultaneously to almost half its original size. He still could see that some of the control lights inside were glowing, so he assumed that he did not fry the thing. Next he shrunk the helmet and waved the robot to come back.

"These charms will not be permanent, they will wear off until we have time to etch some runes into it."

"Err Harry, why is the armor suddenly black and has golden sport stripes and old fashioned brand logos all over it?"

"Ohh this? I was just a little distracted by your remarks about my thingy, so maybe I lost concentration in the midst of transfiguration?" Harry's grin couldn't get any wider, while the robot put the armor on. In Harry's opinion he looked quite smashing. Even the new pink cat ears did absolutely fit the whole ensemble.

~oo~

One more thing:

The most disappointing Christmas season ever is just beginning (because of the damned Coronavirus), which in reverse means that I will be super busy and can only update on weekends most probably. Don't be shy and shout at me in the comments, it makes me feel special. :-) Remember, reviews are the thing that makes me publish faster :-)