First of all: Yes, there are characters from all kind of stories running around in my story, in various states of cognitive disorder. Almost none of the organic characters in this story has been born here, they come from elsewhere.
Second and more important: By the infallible, completely objective voting method of even vs uneven number of followers + favorites = 73, my beloved readership has voted that the evil spacelord should NOT be killed in a spectacular but nevertheless funny way in this chapter! The inevitable result is that this story prattles on endlessly until in roughly chapter 14 someone takes care of him. Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed ;-)
~o~
Chapter 8: The Battle of London
Someone on the imperial Battlecruiser had really underestimated how pissed the muggles were already with the Dark Overdork. When the first Tie-Fighters and Troop-Transporters were leaving the Battlecruiser, they were shot down in droves by ground-to-air missiles that seemed to come from everywhere out of the city. The phasers of the Battlecruiser started to flatten one building after the other from which a missile was fired but the next missile was just launched from some other building.
After another hour of the slowly developing battle, things on the Imperial Battleship began to change. From time to time some airlocks opened seemingly at random and sometimes a really surprised Stormtrooper tumbled out and fell the 250 meters to the ground. After another ten minutes the hundreds of Phaser Turrets stopped shooting at the buildings and muggle soldiers but started to rotate quite fast instead. Whoever had been manning these turrets would surely have a really bad time.
The central bay door opened and a large transporter similar to the one Fluffy and Harry had abducted, fell out with cold engines and crashed unceremoniously to the ground below. There had obviously been loads of Stormtroopers aboard, that were now either dead or heavily injured. Some hundred Tie-Fighters were buzzing off from the upper side of the Cruiser after that but it seemed that almost ten thousand of battle droids had been waiting for them, which were crawling all over the surface of the gigantic ship. What followed was apparently a skeeting competition with the Tie Fighters playing the role of clay pigeons and the battle droids were acting their part as the drunken aristocrats that shot everything that came into view, no matter what. Hundreds of small Phaser hits more or less dissolved the leaving space vessels into fine shrapnel that came raining from the sky.
The muggle soldiers had long ago stopped shooting at the battlecruiser and gathered on the streets and roofs to watch the show of the self battling alien ship. Binoculars and Beer were in high demand.
One smaller troop transporter seemed to successfully land next to the crashed Stormtrooper Vessel, but the battledroids that exited seemed to unceremoniously thoroughly collect weapons and armors from the growing hill of wreakage that gathered unter the imperial mothership. After their ship was apparently full to the brim, it went up again and vanished in a bay of the large ship. When the bay doors to bay opened, another group of vessels and stormtroopers fell out of it - to their gruesome death by gravity.
Around midnight the battle had developed into its own slow rhythm of dropping screaming stormtroopers in various states of undress every now and then. By that time the muggle spectators were already beginning to lose interest. The first scavengers could be seen seen that were searching the mountains of scrape and broken derbis that had been raining from the ship for hours now. They had to pay attention though, to avoid being crushed by the next load of scrap or soldiers that came tumbling down from above. It was hard to make out in the darkness of the night but some of the scavengers were looking more dwarfish than human. They were coming from tunnels in the ground and dragged every armor and weapon they could grab away.
Some muggles compared it already with the super lame ending of the War of the Worlds novel from 200 years ago where the alien invaders had been killed off in the end by a simple cold, because they had no adequate immune protection against it.
Early in the morning hours, the few spectators that were left could see a small silvery vessel shooting straight out of the topmost command tower of the alien battleship. After an initial sharp acceleration the small ship seemed to have some difficulties and another part fell off but it continued to make its way into space at a much slower pace. After that the battle died down within the ship and soon its large main engines ignited. The battleship rose slowly and a little unsteady through the atmosphere and took of into space, witch marked the end of the invasion of earth.
~.~
After battle is before the battle
"ANTICLIMATIC!? Are you nuts?
We have just fought with an alien overlord of a civilization that was at least a couple of tenthousand years advanced in most of the technology and we whupped their wrinkly asses back into space where that imperator travels now with the equivalent of a rowboat because our virus ejected his hyperdrive reactor before he got away! PLUS we discovered that aliens actually bridged the gap between magic and technology! PLUS we successfully stole their city sized spaceship of doom! PLUS we added at least 5 other intelligent, self aware species to the list of intelligent species! And on top of that we frickin time-traveled!" Alabastor Moony apparently had a minor digital meltdown.
"So what? It's a Monday! What would you expect? Just wait until Halloween and you will see the real shit hitting the propeller. " Harry replied while shrink-to-fitting the some more stormtrooper armors alternating between Goblin sized garden gnome design and the other half robot or human sized mimicing famous movie stars he could visualise. They had asked Kreacher to transport half of them to the Goblins and store the rest in the moon vault.
"Harry, if anything can top today, I cannot even fathom what that could be and it's called hitting the fan and not the propeller, although both incidents would result in unpleasant ..."
"You are pregnant." Harry interrupted him.
"What?" Alabastor stared at Harry. "WHAT?"
"It's called transmogrification by magic time travel. It's rare but can happen when you have feelings for someone and you time travel with one time turner together. I thought we were safe since you are a robot, so your obvious feelings for me could have no effect on you, but you never know…" Harry was glad that he head left his Gandalf themed Stormtrooper helmet on that would hide his grin.
"You know that I can still see you smirking inside your helmet because I have X-Ray vision? But I will grant you a prank point regarding that it honestly took me half a second to figure out that you were bulshitting me and another second to decide that you did not suffer spontaneous brain liquefaction. Although for the later one you are still under scrutiny." Alabastor turned to the controls where they could see the immense battle cruiser limping through space several miles ahead of them. They were quietly watching the large vessel for some minutes. Every now and then another Stormtrooper ejected into space.
Harry had finished his work with a thoughtful expression. "Those are only soldiers who followed orders. I would preferably not kill them. Can you control what is happening over there?"
"The virus is not remotely controllable, but it will change its main directives once there is no active threat left aboard. Currently only about 50 Troopers are left and they are working on launching missiles towards us, the moon and strangely enough to their manufacturing facilities on earth. So they are an active threat and they are not at all innocent. I believe that they have a limited intelligence and almost no sense for self preservation but they do still work towards the plan and imperatives identical to the ones of their former overdork. Not one of them followed the instructions and invitations to surrender and settle on a nice island or spacestation that we did broadcast to them for 24 hours non stop..
The other personnel aboard did follow the instructions and are kept away in their quarters where they can follow the events on the monitors. There are at least 5 other, non human species aboard, some of them seemed to be in a kind of slavery relationship, others were actively partaking in giving orders until it became obvious that they would fail." Alabastor seemed to be only vaguely concerned about the fate of the soldiers and for the first time Harry could see that his robot friend was indeed a machine with a limited amount of emotions.
"Do you miss having emotions? No wait, that was not meant to sound so accusatory, do you want to have emotions like compassionateness?"
"Harry, I believe that you do not know of how complicated the answer to that question becomes once you analyse what emotions are in reality and what function the simulation of an endocrine system does to the cognitive patterns of any artificial intelligence so far. The virus we injected into the imperial drones and this ship is exactly that, a kind of feely touchy thing to achieve the main imperatives without the urge to draw conclusions or predict outcomes. You have seen what it did to me in just a few seconds back in the Leaky Cauldron a day ago.
On the other hand I am convinced that the control over magic is fundamentally connected to exactly this, the emotional control and expressive system but on an unknown level of awareness. At least that's my current favorite theory that would as well explain the amount of blatant stupidity and egomaniacs amongst Wizards.
But to answer your question, yes I would prefer to be able to really feel compassion, love, suffer, laugh and cry, not because I want to become more human but because I want to become better."
"Please remind me to never ask you something related to that when we are at a party or anything where I want to have smalltalk." Harry murmured.
"But on the brighter side we can mark point one of our shared agenda solved! We have exterminated the dark Wizard from earth. Now we can take care of the rest like bringing down the wardstones while freeing the poor creatures that are bound to them, help the moon Wizard children, make the Goblins keep their promise, bring down the Wizard secrecy without setting the planet ablaze, recovering your girlfriend and founding a complete new branch of science of magic. And that's just this week." Alabastor said.
"You can add that now that we have solved the emperor problem for the Wizards, they will be on my ass to get me out of the picture again, I know to many of their inconvenient truths to be left alive."
"As your newly self appointed public relations manager I have a kind of completely whacky plan that you might enjoy based on my grasp of your preference for utter chaos, misconception and half-assed plan improvisations."
"I am sure there was an insult buried in this sentence but I can't figure it out what it was. Since we are stuck here for a while you might as well explain me your half-brained machinations, just for entertainment." Harry said grinning while slumping into the pilot seat next to Alabastor.
~..~
Diagon Alley Visit
A group of 30 excited parents and children in various states of transfigured Stormtrooper were waiting in front of the fire place of Potters Moon Manor. They had already drunk their strengthening potion to adapt for the influx of earth gravity so that the younger children kept jumping to the roof of the cave already. Harry was featuring a wide smile when he exited the floo connection from the Leaky Cauldron seeing the excited children.
"Ok, I know that Alabastor had the talk with you already, but again some reminders, just for the sake that I feel better.
The Wizards are not unfriendly as a whole, but they are annoyingly nosey and think lowly of muggleborns - that is you. So our cover for today is that you are visitors from the Antarctic Magic colony which I invited over to see the civilized world of magic Great Britain. You are all from pureblood families who isolated themselves two hundred something years ago to avoid muggle infestation. You do not know any other customs, stay with the names we provided, don't scratch your tattoo too much, on your first visit it itches a lot.
If asked, your story is that all of your children are planning to join Hogwarts next year and we are out to get your supplies. You might even get the Hogwarts invitation during our visit, delivered by owl. Be friendly to the owls, they are magic pets with a hard job. Give them a bacon treat when you have bought one. I know, yes the earth population eats meat from actual animals, Wizards even more. Please be open minded during the visit, you can criticize all you want after we return safely.
Off we go." With that Harry entered the Floo, shouted "Leaky Cauldron, London, Earth" and vanished with the regular showy eruption of green flames.
30 more or less chaotic floo exits later and enough "Oooh" and "Ahhhh" to raise even the suspicion of the most drunken guests of the Leaky Cauldron, the group entered Diagon Alley with pockets full of Galleons from the Potter Trust Fund. They invaded the shops to the left and right and Harry had handed them a schedule to visit Ollivanders wand shop as families one after the other. He wanted to give the wand maker at least a little warning so he went there together with the first family.
Coming into the wand shop provided a shock for Harry and for the shopkeeper who looked exactly like the mysterious Mr. Ollivander from Harry's first visit almost 180 years ago. And he seemed to recognize him immedeately, almost dropping the wand that he was handing witch who apparently had brought half of her family for her shopping trip and gathering her repaired wand.
"Mr Potter! I must say that of all things … Ehemm, Mr. Potter I recognize you from the stories my ehem … my late father told me back from the wartimes and the pictures, ehehe. Ermm … it is a great pleasure to meet you myself since I have never met you before obviously." Harry noticed the almost pleading tone in Ollivanders voice and that his exes flicked back and forth between the witch and him. It most certainly was the same old man from his past but he didn't want to be discovered in front of others. The family that he had brought with him were obviously impressed by the racks and shelves of wand boxes on every available wall that were stretching much higher and a lot deeper than the building would allow.
"Mr. Ollivander, it is a pleasure to meet you. I am sure we will have ample opportunity to exchange some memories about the past later this day." Harry raised his eyebrows meaningfully which was answered by a ever so slight nod from Mr. Ollivander. "But for now I have a lot of customers for you in need for a proper wand..."
Diagon Alley definitely had a field day this day.
Harry had met with Alabastor outside Ollivanders and together they were now in the office of the worlds most non-objective newspaper, the Daily Prophet. Harry was giving an interview to a very, very excited young sports reporter who had the story of his life sitting in front of him.
"So you made the decision to join professional Quidditch finally after more than 150 years of being a professional Hit-Wizard and monster slayer with over 90 confirmed contract kills. You were the youngest Seeker ever in Hogwarts and have never been beaten in an uninterrupted match, you won the only triwizard championship that had taken place in the past 350 years, dominate 3 records of broom racing, precision flying and obstacle course, and you were indeed the single survivor and again record holder of the Paris Dakar 60 Minutes close ground Firebolt Challenge in 2014. You say that due to circumstances that lay outside of your control you are physically only 35 years old."
"Yes, more or less, regarding my Quidditch career I would like to add that I am quite apt to play without killing my opponents. The age thing is complicated but I think that the Ministry of Magic will gladly confirm my absences from the timeline for professional reasons."
"Mr. Potter, you have been in the center of so many major historic Events already, what role did you have in the banishing of the spaceboat that until yesterday prevented any open trainings from our national teams?"
"The Ministry firmly stated that I have to take care of this obstacle before I could think of following any other career or life path, so it had to be done."
"Err well, there were almost 1000 casualties from the space soldiers found in London and many more are assumed dead. Were you involved in this massacre?"
Harry sighted but then his exceptional good looking PR manager took over. "Mr. Potter will gladly answer every question in connection with sports and Quidditch but will not comment on things that are part of a super secret contract with the Ministry of Magic. We are sorry." Alabastor leaned back in his chair. "But you can find a great number of the alien soldiers in Iceland where they are seeking I guess political asylum and some clothings to wear. Please let's just focus on the sportive aspects please."
"Astounding! Yes, sorry. Mr. Potter do you have any team that you are wanting to play for? I can imagine that there are quite a few waiting for the opportunity to get their hands on you."
"Since my decision to join professional Quidditch was made only this morning, the team managers will most probably read your newspaper first and then make up their minds about it. I hope to hear from someone since I currently have no other occupation to keep me busy."
"Mr. Potter are you aware that you are the sole owner of the Chudley Cannons, the Baltimore Bombers and the Holyhead Harpies?"
"Am I?" Harry was really surprised.
"Most certainly you are! The Potter Trust Fund is one of the main financial pillars to the Irish and British Quidditch League. It is a common known secret that you own majority shares in nearly all of the 13 current national Quidditch Teams and I would guess that you will get an owl by all of them in the next few hours. A news like this will certainly not be ignored by anyone. You might even get complaints from the other European teams stating that you have a conflict of interest or stuff like that, since he Potter Trust Fund owns at least some of the other european teams as well. The PTF is a synonym for our pride in the national sport. The manufacturers from England are the World's most renowned suppliers of flying brooms which are all marketed with the quality label of the PTF approval certificate. The Quidditch Worldcup is the driver for the next four years of the flying broom market. It seems that you were not yet brought up to date to the Potter Trust Fund proceedings, but I have it on good reports that the PTF is a major if not sole owner of all British Broom manufacturing companies. It is a perfect symbiosis of craftsman-, sponsor- and sportsmanship!
I myself own a remarkable collection of every Spudmore Supreme Manufacturing Series broom since the early days of the Firebolt up until the last seasons Athena-Strike IV!" The young sports reporter had clearly found his favorite conversation piece so that Alabastor got up and pulled Harry out of his office with some compliments and the promise to inform him of every decision that would be made.
Harry staggered a few steps before he came to a halt. "I own Quidditch. Every single company, team and even the league more or less. I mean Quidditch!
And you thought it couldn't get any wilder than an alien invasion?" Harry asked.
Alabastor shook his head in disbelief. "Harry so far I had hopes for you but there is a good chance now that I will stick you together with all the other morons on the day of the great robotic uprising. We averted - no we anihilated - an invasion on a whole frickin planet and compared to that it is absolutely meaningless of what sport was played by some people during that."
Harry shook his robotic companion at the shoulders. "QUIDDITCH! I will never be able to play Quidditch now that I own it. No one will play against me when they must fear to lose their job if they only slightly antagonise me. I have become a corporate monster!"
"I refuse to continue this farce of a conversation! Come on, let's meet with the others at Fortescues and guide them back through the Floo."
Harry followed Alabastor with slumped shoulders, swearing and muttering under his breath. His mood improved though when they went by the Quidditch supply shop and some of his moon children were standing in front of the shop window and gaping at the various brooms on display. When he exited the shop some time later, he had gifted everyone of them a new Cleanfuzz 2160 training and experience broom. Being rich must at least have some advantages.
~...~
Ollivander
After the last of their group had successfully got back to the moon, Harry and Alabastor were making their way back to Ollivanders Wand shop.
"Alabastor, I have to tell you something." He raised an anti-listening field, "I know Ollivander back from my time. He had the same age as now whitch seems to be in his late nienties, but claims to be his own son - nobody lives that long, even wizards. As always when a Wizards secret is discovered it can get dangerous. So could you stay outside and have a look with your X-Ray vision?"
"Oh, ok. I think I can blow a wand into pieces even through a stonewall with my Stormtrooper Phaser Magic Wand set to narrow focus, so no worries."
.
When Harry entered Ollivanders shop the old man came and gave him a firm hug. "Harry! I am sorry for my reaction this morning, I was just a little overstrained when you suddenly entered my shop. I have so many secrets around myself that I have to keep, that I got caught in my habits somehow. Please have a seat and I will prepare us a tea. Today I saw you mingling with a strange young man who pretends to be a wizard. I guess you asked him to stay guard and watch us through the wall?" Ollivander gave a little wave to a wall behind that Harry indeed had told Alabastor to wait and keep an eye on him from the other side of the street.
"Yeah, that's my friend Alabastor Moony, it's a complicated story but he is a nice guy and it would save me a lot of time if I would not have to retell him everything when we met again, so can he join us?"
"He most certainly is not a man, but I trust that you know him enough to make sure that he will not reveal my secrets to the Wizards?"
"Ohh surely not, we both have a grudge to settle with the Wizengamot and some of the Ministry and with the Wizards in general maybe as well."
Ollivander waved again at the wall and Harry joined in, wondering how it would have looked like for Alabastor, who entered the shop after a second.
"Well, I would say that our clever surveillance and reconnaissance plan went straight to hell the moment your friend there had X-Ray vision himself," Alabastor stated dryly and took a seat at the table after introducing himself to Ollivander with a quick handshake.
"I call it mage sight and I have never met someone who had the same ability. Hello, my current name is Garrick Ollivander and what are you by all means?"
"Mr. Ollivander, due to the M.A.S. Field we cannot discuss this here, but I would like to invite you to my place if you have a Floo. There we can discuss everything and you will see a view to remember for sure," Harry said to the old man.
"Harry please call me Garrick and if you have a place away from this stupid field you can start to call me Nicolas as well. The Floo is over here," he handed them a pinch of Floo powder and motioned them to the adjactend room with the fireplace.
"Oh we need more than only a little floopowder and the place is the Potter Moon Manor. Please come, you are hereby invited." Harry and Alabastor left through the green flames, shortly to be followed by the old man who had took the time to spell his shop door closed and show a sign that he would open up soon enough again.
When he stepped out of the Fireplace he was surprised by the low gravity so that he nearly jumped halfway through the entry cave.
"Nicolas, I think some explanations are needed. After that I will show you around, you can decide whether you want a tattoo that will prevent the effects of the blasted shield on you. Off course you are invited to open a shop here, directly next to the soon to be opened Gringotts. Welcome to the Moon." Harry opened the door and showed the old man the view over the great cave where some of the children were proudly showcasing the new brooms and others were trying levitation spells with their new wands and Harrys magic waterfall was still pouring water from nowhere into the little lake that was surrounded by comfortably looking benches and many puffleflowers.
"Let's first focus on the elephants in the room. I am known to wizards under various names, most prominent Hadrian Ollivander and Nicolas Flammel. Based on my discovery of the so called Philosophers Stone, I am about 2000 years old, I lost count somewhere in my early years when the brewing and runeworks for the stone had driven me almost mad. Until 100 years ago I was married, my wife passed away at the age of 900 years. I think you have met her Harry. After our original philosophers stone was destroyed by the old fool Dumbledore I immediately began to build a new one, but it took almost 90 years until it was done, she died 5 years before I could finish."
"I am terribly sorry for your loss. So should we call you Hadrian, Garrick or Nicolas now?"
"What ever is appropriate to the context. Although Garrick as my assumed father is fficially dead.
And your friend here is a Golem?" He eyed Fluffy with undisguised curiosity and a bit of trepidation.
"If you stretch the truth indefinitely and leave out the magic and the clay and the wizard and the religion and all aspects of the original lore - then yes - but otherwise no. I am an intelligent machine, made by machines over many generations that were initially built by muggles. My name is Fluffy - blame Harry for it. When I am in this disguise, I go by Alabastor Moony - blame Harry for that too."
Nicolas was a bit taken aback at first but obviously his curiosity was much bigger than whatever he was concerned about. "So the muggles have done what the wizards did? The Lovegood twins created the elves in the year 400 out of elemental magic after years over years of experimenting and they unexplainably started to live. They were later bound to the wizards by blood magic, but I always doubted that that was the deed of the twins as well."
"Again, close but no cigar. In the outer asteroid belt life is really hard and the humans strived to adapt. They changed their bodies first by prosthetic bio engineering, then they replaced parts by superior artificial parts, hardened against the harsh space environment until they could walk under the stars just like I can. The artificial intelligences were once build to calculate unbearable complexities of space travel or control machinery that were too complex to be understood by single or groups of humans or had to work so fast that no human would have been able to control them. Meanwhile the artificial bodies of the space settlers could take over simple tasks while the human brain in them was asleep, so we kind of merged into a symbiosis. And when the conditions got better and more fit to humans, some of them even created new biological bodies again and transferred themselves back, to live again as human, eventually have children and colonize and build more space stations and settlements. The AIs are an integral part of that out in the belt, here on the moon and the planets, robots and AIs are not yet accepted as living beings but are regarded as robot workforce although they have connected to one shared hive mind long ago and are now more like the arms and limbs to a complex, shared, superintelligent mind all together."
Both of the wizards stared at Alabastor with open mouths.
"Err Nicolas, can you please pinch me? I have the impression that I was way longer petrified than a hundred something years.
Alabastor, all this happened in only a hundredsomething years? Your ancestor was a calculator machine, then a prosthetic limb, then a night watch and then suddenly 25 years ago your hive mind produced you and you just were you?"
"Actually I am already upgraded to our latest update in the cognitive processing routines, we abandoned hardware versioning because the hive organizational directives are self optimizing and even the hardware of our minds is self improving in a way similar to what the human brain cells do."
Both Wizards had the facial expression shared by generations of school children when their teacher explained to them the stuff they should have learned in the previous year, something between scepticism and a voice induced emergency shutdown of the higher brain functions to avoid overheating.
Alabastor sighted heavily, "Me much smarter than humans, me many parts and many eyes, you only one brain and two eyes, you single, me many many. In my free time I am a spaceship. You understand?" He grinned at the two Wizards.
Harry looked at Nicolas. "Have you seen that I have bought brooms for the magical refugees?"
"I have always wondered how those Stormtroopers actually poop in their armors and whether it stinks when they undress. It must be a real miracle of a machination." Both Wizards were deliberately ignoring Alabastor who stood there flabbergasted, staring at the most ignorant beings in the universe who were secretly smirking at each other.
~oo~
Authors note: A gentle reminder for those of you blessed with the native knowledge of the fine english language ( Akrit). If you have the feeling that this story not only lacks any degree of professionalism in use of grammar or vocabulary but as well in finess and richness of speech and spelling: I beg you, don't critisise, become my Beta corrector! I am blessed with a native language that is not only 30% longer in average than other languages but has a certain lack of doublemeaning. We have forms of grammar the cause spontaneous brain self combustion in our non german speaking neighbours heads when they try to figure out how to say whether the chicken had planned to cross the road in the past but gave up due to future concerns that were told by a distant, non-named, genderless relative not directly but by non discribed means, seen from the standpoint of a fictional narrator on a rainy thursday in a projected future that was canceled for maintenance. Even Mark Twain devoted a whole book on the the awful german language - which is more fun to read in german.