A reminder: I would like to bring to public attention that I am not the secret alter ego of any known author of publicly acknowledged fictional works so far. Deep in my heart I feel that I should be – but as of now the reality fails to fulfill my deepest heart's desire.
On the other hand - It's an hour until midnight - New Years Eve - and the end of a disastrous year 2020! Good luck to all of us for the next year!
Chapter 10: A short visit to the Moon and back
"Alabastor, I have a bad feeling, something will terribly go wrong. We had too much luck so far. Nearly all of what we planned so far went more or less according to plan, which is not the way things are supposed to go around me." Harry was sitting on the stairs of his own medieval castle that claimed to be a Manor, watching the midsummer afternoon sun, sipping on his hangover cure that was laced with oranges and sugar and tasted absolutely fantastic. He did not feel his headache as long as he didn't move and the world around him was, so peaceful that he distrusted it. Peacefulness had never been a good sign.
Although his house lay in the midlands of Scotland there were not even any midgets because some of his lesser mad forefathers had placed a repelling field around the whole grounds. In a indirect consequence this reduced as well the racket of the frogs from the small sidearm of the big lake which could be seen at the end of the garden wilderness that stretched beautifully in front of them. They could even hear birds singing and crickets chirping over the frog sounds. Obviously something bad was bound to happen very soon.
"Hmmm" Alabastor imitated to be lost in thoughts.
"What? Out with it, i don't mind what it is, I have already memorized this moment so you must not be ashamed to destroy it. Nobody can take these peaceful 30 seconds away from me anymore, they are mine now."
"You are a strange person Harry. I am saying this because you had to slaughter 19 Goblins yesterday in the bloodiest most cruel 5 Minutes and 25 seconds I had to witness in my young life so far, which you did not enjoy, I am quite sure of that, and you are now suspicious because your life is too peaceful only 12 hours later? You are able to ignore the obvious chaos around you and enjoy a moment of relative peace and then you distrust it because it felt too peaceful? I will help to restart your reality perception a little.
For example it borders on a wonder that Kreacher did not throw your godfathers wardanchor into the lake already. They have been arguing non stop since you brought him here. It really escapes me how one could describe their constant bickering which you are for sure aware of, as peaceful? I am absolutely willing to repurpose one of the battle droids from the dark spacepunk to voice command so that you uncle can leave the poor elf alone."
Suddenly the background bickering between Kreacher and the Siruis amulet ghost had stopped. Even the crickets were surprised by the sudden silence and forgot to make their own racket for a couple of seconds.
"Can Master Fluffy really do that?" Kreacher voice was almost pleading.
"A real battle droid? Like my own battle droid?" Sirius voice was a pleading as well. "I mean I could protect the innocent and guard the grounds and weed the grass with my scimitar extremities. It has those righ? Since it is a battle droid, yes? Pleeeeease? Can it transform into a truck? I have seen those in the muggle cinema, they were sooo cool."
Harry had collapsed onto the stairs "I knew it wouldn't last, I can think of only a few more frightening things than my godfather in one of these walking tanks we saw aboard the imperial star cruiser."
"Oh you have not seen the real large walkers they had in storage. Four legs, build like a Dinosaur, higher than this house, canons attached to the side of his head for whatever reason that could annihilate a small city." Alabastor had a dreamy look.
"A Giant Dino Robot Tank that can annihilate a whole city." The voice of Sirius Blacks ghost had become a whisper like a boy that was afraid of telling his most secret hearts desire to his girlfriend, afraid to destroy it all by just voicing it to loud.
"No Sirius you will not get a walking Giant Dino Robot Tank, even if it exists indeed. Fluffy stop teasing Sirius, he is to young and ignorant to know what's good for him." The robot currently in the form of Alabastor Moony had a mischievous grin on his face.
"Kreacher always wanted a little doggie, Kreacher would not mind if little doggie could talk."
"And no I will not make a dog out of my grandfather for you either, Kreacher but you are welcome to have a real dog if you honestly want one.
Sirius we could grab you a regular robot frame from one of the factories if Fluffy was honest that he could repurpose one to listen to your voice."
"Yes absolutely. It will take a while to figure out the interface - but we need to figure out what to do with them anyway after the virus fried their central command node in the spaceship and this experiment might be a good first step.
Oh stop pouting Sirius you will get a hunky droid body to drive around.
Speaking of children, Harry we still have to get Ryan to visit his parents. Since I do not believe that Headmaster Rimfield would like to see me currently, you could go and abduct him, bring him here and floo to the moon. I can fly over to the Londonderry factory and see what's there for your needy spoiled godfather."
"Harry, are you sure that your friend is a robot, because he does sound more and more like my sister Bellatrix, always full of barbs and accusations and violence. She would as well never give me my toys back.
Just imagine a Dinosaur with Head-cannons!." Sirius whispered in Harry's ear.
.
Harry arrived at Hogwarts and had no problems finding Ryan with some friends sneaking around the Quidditch Team camps, mainly because he was doing the same. Harry could not convince the three of them to let Ryan go with him alone. He was a little reminded at his own friends when he was a kid at Hogwarts and if he was honest with himself he couldn't deny that it would have been epic if at some point they could have made a trip to the moon.
"Ryan, Lysandra and Garrick, you will need to have a cover story. How about that you stumbled upon a Holyhead Harpies Player that was in deep need of help for a birthday celebration for one of their hmm ehemem …" Harry's bullshit generator seemed to be stuck a little.
"... To celebrate the visit of their owner Harry Potter! We can prep some photos as prove, the players would love to get in your pants anyway, because that's what they said when we were eavesdropping coincidentally just before." Lysandra was evidently the mischievous creative mind of the trio.
"What a nice way to prepare for a trip to your parents! Very well let's go then. And you young lady have to tell me exactly who you were coincidentally eavesdropping on when she made that pants remark you mentioned."
The later question became irrelevant when Harry and the kids rounded the corner of the Holyheads Harpies training tent, where the all women team was having a saucy photo shooting for a magic bathing fragrance supplier. After a very exited half an hour of girlish giggles and an abundant amount of broom riding jokes, Harry could extract himself and the three kids.
"Lysandra, I owe you one, honestly, that was the bestest instant cover story ever. But it seems that Ryan and Garrick here need a brain restart to wipe that drooling smile of their face."
Lysandra was a very lively girl, so she simply grabbed Ryan and smooched him until his eyes became suddenly focused again and he was apparently comprehending what was happening. Then Lysandra did the same to Garrick after which she grabbed their hands. "Ryan and Garrick, you are my best friends and more. Although we are to young for anything that currently swirls to my mind just like yours if I have to guess, I have found my role model in life - I believe." She turned to Harry without letting the hands of her two friends go. "Gosh, I can't believe it took me so long to figure this out."
The boys were still looking a bit shell shocked but they were apparently happy, so Harry flooed them over to his Moon Manor to witness a tearful family reunion. Ryan introduced his friends, they were swarmed by the other youngsters and again Harry had the feeling that all of this was way to peaceful and easygoing. He went away to ponder a little over life, female Quidditch players and the fact that the waterfall on the moon was still running.
One of the scientists came over to his bench in the midst of the puffleflowers. "I think it's called Pandoras Syndrom. The feeling that the world will turn awful and doom will strike any second when you begin to feel happy. It often happens to the abused or veterans of grizzly wars. You should talk it out with someone because it will eat you from the inside on the long run otherwise. There is even a medical treatment but I doubt that regular medications would be a good idea with you."
"Do you know that this is something really strange to tell a stranger who is sitting on a bench somewhere on the moon?" Harry looked sideways at the elderly man who had a dark greenish brown colored skin and an overall strange bodily build altogether.
"I am sorry, my name is Abraham Lincoln - yes my parents thought it would be absolutely hilarious - I am the governor of the Moon currently. That is until next week when someone will inevitably connects two and two and publicly campaign against me based on the fact that I have spent most of my life in the belt. You are Mr Harry James Potter, habited in Grimmauld Place 12 in London, Earth and a person of interest for almost every politician I can imagine. You possess the most dangerous weapon that humankind has ever seen, can do stuff that makes any logical person loose his grip on reality and, as I have stated before, you need friends or a therapist whom you trust enough to open up to before you crack."
"What weapon? The imperial battleship is on its way to be dissected in the belt, it soon will be no weapon anymore."
"The trust and friendship of the AI Mr Potter." With that he got up and went back to his group. While Alabastor came over from the intersection to the non-magic caves.
"Sorry for eavesdropping, I was really nosy what the old wolf had to tell, but it's like always with old men, they hide behind mysterious ramblings only to tell you afterwards that they were always right or when they weren't they can continue to give us the mysterious smile with that 'Only wait, in the end you will see that I was right' look.
On the lighter side of news, Sirius is now equipped with a robot that tries to follow all his motions, which is much better than voice commands. He still has to get used to not slide through walls and other stuff, so he left a trail of destruction in Potter Manor but nothing to bad all in all." Alabastor stretched his long legs and folded his hands over his belly in an obvious mimicking of a man that has time to waste. "And I think that Mr Lincoln is wrong about your post-traumatic stress syndrome. A tiny detail escaped his ever so watchful eyes. You my friend, if I might say so, are not seeking a calm place for sorting through your most traumatic memories to label them and give them meaning. You are an agent of chaos itself. Yes you don't particularly like violence but you like mayhem, chaos, misdemeanor and all kinds of rule breaking, including the rules of the theoretical physics and statistical probability. You are a the one thing that is the antithesis to man's struggle to bring meaning into the universe, you strive to leave the universe baffled and maybe crying a little."
Harry got up and held his wand against his throat. "Sonorus.
If there is someone here or on the moon who has not yet told me who I am and what I am supposed to do, he can come over and contribute to the great, wise advisory session that is apparently happening here. So far nobody had mentioned that I will let milk and honey flow or bring back the Crumple Horned Snorklacks. Please queue up and share your advice for me. It's free, only today."
Harry fell back on the bench and chuckled when the children shouted at him to shut up.
"Harry, if I were actually able to really laugh, I would have to hold my shiny metal arse to prevent to laugh it off now. I can honestly say that I enjoy being around you, and by the way, my faulty emotional simulation is currently switched off."
"Fluffy, I had an epiphany right now. It became crystal clear to me that you and Luna would be a match made in heaven - or maybe in hell? Luna could tie a knot into any straight thought and convince you that you have a parrot in your head. Did you just manipulate me into not listening to the rambling old man that sat himself next to me by making even more atrocious claims? Well I have to say that to you, it did work!"
"Thank you, Harry. You say the nicest things."
"We have only five things on our list to do: Find and save Luna, rescue the elves, kill that still fleeing star lord and bring down this moron field. Ok, six things: I would like to prevent that the Goblins massacre themselves or the wizards in yet another of their half brained rebellions. And yes seventh is to teach and enable the moon children. Oh I forgot your points, you want to prevent a war, establish AIs as an accepted intelligent race and maybe get to this imperium and kick their asses as long as it takes to forget about the solar system and pick up any street dog on the way."
"If I knew you identify as street dog I wouldn't had to have made the effort to bring Kreacher his new doggie." Alabastor replied dryly but then perked up.
"Oh wait. Sirius managed to call me to say that there is a confused elf standing next to the old oak in the garden. Let's floo down. The kids will be brought back by Ryan's parents, everyone is tattooed already."
~.~
Of Elves and Robots
The thing with elves was that most of them were really single minded people.
"No, you do not have to serve your old master anymore, because he abandoned you and bound you to the ward."
"If Lotty is not bound why is I still aliving?"
"You were rescued by that acorn in your hand, it brought you here where you can have earth magic from its mother tree."
"Is you new master?"
"You can decide who you want to work for, or if you want to work at all or something like Hogwarts or the Ministry or the Moon Academy. You can choose."
"Lotty was good house elf. Always cooked for children."
"Hmm, Lotty, have you been a Hogwarts elf, Lotty?"
"Hoggywads elves yes."
"Do you want to work for a school again? Kreacher here is bound somehow to me but I guess he could give you some advice in choosing your new bond, if you want a bond at all. You should take you time and can spend it here or on the Moon where you are protected against people wanting to possess you.
You must wait with your decision until the other elves have arrived"
"But Lotty must be owned by master."
It went on back and forth like that, after a while Sirius steered his body over to them and asked "Why don't you just offer her a bond and swear to let her go whenever she would ask?" Lotty nodded so vehemently that her ears made a flopp-flopp sound.
"Thank you so very much Sirius. Should I bond with all elves that are to be sent here? That would make me an even worse slavery master than old Dumbleweed back in our time, I would have to bond to hundreds if not thousands of elves. And what then? If I cannot convince Lotty here I will not convince anyone else to live a free live."
"Master Potter would take Lotty? Lotty will be goods elf and learn freely life, Lotty gives promise?" She sounded right out desperate.
Harry gave up because he did not like to see the small elf suffer. "See Lotty, yes i will take you if you promise to work on your dependency issues, you can help to repair the Manor here and create more space on Moon and help the Loony Academy there, because I think Fluffy is right, once the message is spread through the solar system, the parents with magic children will all want to come to the Moon or at least send their children there."
The bonding to the House-Elf was done, Lotty kept the acorn as a symbol for her possible freedom, Harry explained to Sirius and Kreacher that she had to be treated as a regular person and not to be ordered around. Just as they turned around, another crack reached them from the direction of the oak, where they could see a very old elf falling to its knees.
After half an hour full of communications issues with the old house-elf that could not understand or speak any language that the humans were capable of and seemed to distrust Lotty, Fluffy came back from another mission to properly secure the alien production plants.
"It seems that the elves speak a dead language with each other. From, what I have heard so far it is an Assyrian, Persian kind of mix most probable much closer to the real spoken language than the thing you can learn from the writings of that period. So far from Lottie's translations I can see that we will have to learn the elves native language because the elves has to hear and understand the bond from the bonding human.
Harry, I would like to have a little chat between us two. Let's have a walk."
"Is this where you reveal your true feelings for me?" Harry asked to lighten the mood when they walked away from the others and he had erected a series of charms to prevent anyone from listening in. "Oh I almost forgot! Kreacher, Lotty, I must order you not to listen in to what is spoken between the two of us until we return to you."
"Yes Master" the answer came out of thin air, Lottie's voice sounded really excited when she said 'Master' while Kreachers voice seemed unfazed.
"Jeesch, they could still hear you although your last spell even disrupted the connection to my hive node. Not even the ultra low frequencies are working, neither is the x-ray laser. We must try out this field in the Neutron chamber we discovered aboard the Imperial starship reactor core. It would be a blast if we could just walk in there and have a look at the sensors. But I digress.
Ok, as you can imagine there is much more going on in space society than what I have told you so far, especially between the AIs and Humans. I put a lot of weight on our friendship by telling you this for which I want to apologize a bit in advance.
We - as in the AIs - have been working on a technology to create more human like units, a tiny bit like the clones of the dark emperor but a bit more like printed out bodies. It's a kind of by-product of the belters tendency to loose limbs or live with almost full body prosthetics to avoid to have to wear space suits all the time. I believe that the elf will not be able to distinguish the artificial bio unit from actual humans so I have asked one to come down. You have met the Minister of the Moon, he was one of us in this new frame. It was a test run to see what we could do and whether the humans would notice the difference, well they did not. So we will make him lose his job on Monday in a fashion that discredits his successor a little as well, because he will look more ruthless and the people will more likely distrust him if he really calls them out to go against the belters. His visit to the moon magic community was another test to check whether the newest body design based on the Stormtrooper magic resistant armor we reverse engineered would enable him to interact with magic without getting fried. It does.
It's plans inside of plans and so on. We are really good in this game; so far the only factors we did not anticipate were that a space dork would land on frikking earth with the means to conquer the solar system, that this magic force we tried to figure out for years now would be controllable and the friendship with you. This led to a lot of reevaluating factors and change of plans. If you want to have a metaphor, the AIs are looking at a completely new chess board with unknown figures, rules and many more players than before. It is fantastic because it is challenging and it opens up options for a future we would have not dreamed about. So far our projections would have predicted that we would have to separate from humankind in the span of less than a century, but now there are more options on the board depending on the limitations of the floo, the genetics of magics and so on and on. We are suddenly living in interesting times.
Regarding our friendship, we do acknowledge that you are by far the most chaotic and driving factor behind all the changes that we both, the AIs, the Belters and you want. You yourself are making the outcome unpredictable to an unimaginable scale so that we - the master chess players - have to fall back onto general strategies where you don't know the outcome but have to follow principles - for heaven's sake! For a logic mind to fall back on principles and emotion based behavior is really like having to walk on all four again. This emotion we fall back onto when analysis and predictions fail, is similar to what humans describe as friendship because it increases the possible result of mutual happiness. It is amusing and at the same time absolutely frustrating, humiliating and the thing we so far despised in humans: Their tendency to oversimplify just because they would not or could not bend their heads around the complexity of stuff.
You Harry Potter, have taught us a lesson we will remember and for which we are grateful, you showed us our limits which we so far believed we would only find far away from our origins. We do not owe you our friendship, neither do you owe anything to us, but we enjoy our friendship immensely and we will not withdraw from it."
Harry was silent for a while, pondering whether to make a lame joke about overly long speeches for something so profane as wanting to be friends but he decided against it for once.
"Thank you, I want to be friends with you all as well. But don't get me wrong, what would have happened if my magic would have short circuited the Moon Minister in front of everyone watching?"
"Dam you! I have lost a bet! I have betted you would make a joke out of this whole situation and almost 70 percent of the other instances betted against me!
Regarding the Minister we were pretty sure because we experimented before with the waterfall, the children and Nicolas a bit, but when you turn on you magic you can toast a toaster! So yes there were contingency plans depending on the details, most of them leading to his permanent death and the further defamation of his successor. Please remember that we are playing this game quite professionally.
Can we introduce my other magic proofed instance now, because it will increase our chances to have another me managing things here and in Hogsmeade."
"As if you would have to ask."
"Yes we did, because you are not so dumb like you play most of the time. You would have guessed half of our shenanigans the second she leaves the tie-fighter and then we would have lost a bit of your trust, which we don't want to and so on, you know the spiel now."
"She is a she?"
"Well she doesn't identify really as a human woman but to everyone else she is a thirty-something half squib women with a mischievous streak and nevertheless a most caring, motherly attitude. She has some errr some prosthetic enhancements that are mainly found in the martian army and their secret agents, like enhanced visual range, etc. Her muscular strength is more like earth humans but I would really like to see what happens if you two go into a hand to hand combat or an axe fight like you did with the Goblins. I would still bet my money on you, but again it would be 70 percent against me."
Harry canceled the privacy fields.
"So let's go and see whether she can get through to the elf. It would really save time and help with all the visitors from the Moon. What's her name?"
"Fenchurch Chang, she is former mars military intelligence for everyone else."
.
The women that hopped out of the tie-fighter was a good piece taller than Harry, quite sportive, she had red, almost orange hair and judging by her figure she was in the physical fitness range of an Olympic athlete. "Tadaaaa, did anyone here asked for an Assyrian dead language specialist?"
She remembered Harry immediately of the players of the Hollyhead Harpies team back when Sirius was dating their keeper.
"Uhh yes, that would have been that little elf over there. Please tell me that you don't date robots that are possessed by wizard ghosts, because I can already see my dead godfather Sirius mustering your arse from back over there."
"You know, I am absolutely willing to experiment. Maybe it's another of those things that look awful and disgusting at first only for you to wake up the next day and realize that you have married it? But let's take care of the smaller dike first."
Harry had to grin; she was really like a slightly different version of Fluffy.
It turned out that the old elf was named Ganju and came from Pakistan where he had been living in a secluded magical city Shangri-La with the last inhabitant, a nutty dark wizard with no family. Apparently Ganju was distrusting Lotty a little, because bound elves could be told to say whatever their masters wanted. He was not very eager to work for a wizard again, he liked Kreachers new doggy and he wanted to have a look at the Moon academy before deciding. Kreacher took him and his doggy for walkies on the Moon, as he put it.
"Yet another good deed done." Fenchurch said, rubbing her hands together. "Oh it looks like someone did send you an Owl and it is harassed by these large demon owls that inhabit the eastern towers."
Sirius had managed to steer his droid over to them. His movements still seemed erratic at times when the robot could not follow his ghost movements which were not hindered by annoyances like gravity or physics in general. "I believe they are cross breeds with dragons from one of Harry's mad ancestors. This is a Ministry owl that they want for supper, Harry. You should help her to keep up your friendly relationship with the Ministry.
And maybe you can introduce me to our guest?"
Ignoring his godfather, Harry ran over to save the Ministry Owl and retrieve the letter.
~..~
Quidditch rules the wizarding world
Mr. Potter, the regulatory office of the Ministry of Magic Quidditch Department has been informed of your personal involvement into Quidditch, which we cannot emphasize enough is a noble and most desirable endeavor.
"In other words they got wind of my photo session today, already" Harry mused.
Alabastor who was glancing over his shoulder said "There is a human saying for that. Only one thing travels faster than light: gossip."
"Gossip - and the imperial Hyperdrive that we snatched from the Dark Dork. We have to come up with a new saying."
A further investigation nevertheless revealed that you are the majority or sole owner of all qualified English Quidditch teams for the current Quidditch World Cup, which would in effect disqualify wizarding England, especially the official responsible Ministry Department from taking part in it.
Furthermore we are aware that your current dealings with the Dark Lord from Space will prevent you from properly replacing the Ministry of Magic Quidditch Department as an organizer of the complicated proceedings of letting the English teams take part as privately owned teams in the current Quidditch World Cup - which would have a dire demoralizing impact on the wizarding population of England.
In an emergency session of the Wizengamot it was decided that this shortcoming of you was not to be put to your disadvantage because you have currently equally important dealings to overcome in the muggle 'space' world and in an so far unknown 'alternate dimension' where you are dealing with your Dark Lord project..
"Don't torch it until you have read the last part, it gets even better at the end." Alabastor provided gleefully.
The Wizengamot recognizes your efforts as a true Quidditch Fan and will honor your engagement by christening the temporary Quidditch training stadium next to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry 'Ministerial Quidditch training grounds: Harry Potter'. As by law from now on, any ownership of more than a tenth of the shares of Quidditch teams or related supply manufacturers or media outlets is illegal and will be transferred to the Ministry of Magic Quidditch department. We recognize that you had no time to adapt to the new regulations of ownership so we will not hold it against you. Furthermore the Ministry of Magic will compensate you for the ownership of the Quidditch teams. The Ministry has deposited the amount of 2500 Galleons in a Ministerial Treasure Fund from which you will receive any yearly earnings after deduction of the managing fees, in accordance with the Wizengamot decision of today.
Harry let the letter sink and shook his head. "Please tell me that there are not so many self-centered ignorant people in the muggle world like there are apparently in the wizarding world. How on Earth can anyone first force me to solve their problems and shortly after that make it sound like it is all my fault and then seize a considerable fortune from me, compensating it with let's say the equivalent value of a middle class flying broom per year?"
"It's honestly a masterpiece of politics and stupidity which are both - I have to admit - a special talent of politicians all over the solar system, even including the belt. I will have a field day with your attorneys and press department ripping this apart in the press."
Harry shook his head. "Nope, I am fed up with rulebook games. Alabastor, Sirius and Fenchurch, please stand back a little, I want to seriously fry some arses."
Harry went some 100 meters away from the manor towards the Black lake and the border to the forbidden Forrest. He took the Elder Wand and concentrated on gathering as much power as possible to give the ritual some extra punch. His spectators could see the grass around him withering and turning black in a pattern of a runic circle. The earth under their feet suddenly looked like swelling, like a giant that took a deep breath before releasing his power. Everything had gone quiet, even the waves in the water of the lake had stopped, the light of the evening sun felt like a liquid that flooded towards the small figure of Harry Potter that stood in a pool of light. He opened his eyes that were glowing green and looked to Alabastor and Fenchurch.
"Now watch this, young friends of mine." He intoned a long enchantment in Parseltongue and the pool of light at his feet flared into a green fire. The fire split up and flooded into the withered rune pattern that reached out from him until a 15 meter wide circle of a winding, burning rune pattern surrounded Harry.
"I declare my magic oath bound by my blood, name and my magic as fulfilled and demand the promise given to me to be fulfilled by deed as spoken or by blood, name and magic as the oath was given and by all that were partaking in it.
So mote it be."
With that he took the Elder Wand and his Phoenix Wand and struck them both into the earth, right in the center of his runic circle. The tension released and a rumbling grew from below their feet. The green fire went out and the tension that had built up flowed out of Harry, flattening everything in his closer vicinity and knocking his spectators off their feet.
From behind the hill in the direction of Hogwarts a bright flash of light could be seen. The green fire runes ignited again and flowed back to Harry. The sound of five elf apparitions sounded over from the oak tree.
The pattern repeated in short succession, more and more of the green fire flooded back into Harry, who's hair had already began to burn.
"Uhohh. Maybe I have overdone it this time" Harry shouted over to them. "Keep away please. House elves I need help! Take your share of magic, bond if you want."
Seven pops later the air still smelled of ozone and Harry's hair was fully aflame with a large pillar of green fire. Green sparks and flashes were covering the rune array now.
"Fawkes! I need help, take your share, it is enough to refill your ranks."
The bright fiery flash of the Phoenix materialized in the middle of the flames and the bird sucked it up, setting himself on fire. The ashes rained all around Harry but then his head was again engulfed in the green flame that rose into the air in the form of a giant burning snake.
"Ohuh fuckfuckfuck! Ehmemem, what else? The grounds! I declare myself warden of these grounds and my magic to serve the reinstallment and return of everything that was wrongfully taken from me or one of my houses."
The burning snake nodded and slithered towards the Potter Manor. Wherever it touched the building all patina fell away from it, every window was restored and the colorful wall paintings came back that were hidden before by layers and layers of color.
Sirius pointed to the still brightly burning rim of the circle and said. "Wait, I think there is more coming!"
Indeed the green flames were again climbing over Harry's head, slower this time, but forming an even more powerful flaming creature of a winged dragon who roared its fury into a steep flame that rose into the air above them, forming a fireball that slowly climbed high into the sky.
"Shit, oh damit! Fluffy, I need help, what can we repair or grow that belongs to me? If I don't come up with something my magic core will burn in some seconds."
"The Potter Moon Manor! Enlarge it as far and deep as possible without crossing existing caverns or plumbing. Cover the walls in airtight molten stone, the dragon seems to be capable. I will warn the people."
Harry nodded to the dragon, standing in the middle of the green flames that formed his body. "See to it"
The flames vanished again and the tension below their feet seemed to lessen considerably. Again the sound of arriving elves sounded over to them and Harry begged them to bond which they all did. After that Harry asked them to take care of any wounded people on the Moon and in Hogwarts.
"Sirius, I did not tell you so far, but your armor is capable of flying, can you please release the owls and other birds from the repaired towers? Harry's serpent of renovation installed windows and I believe they are now stuck. The activation password is 'Gogogo Ponderosa!'." Alabastor turned back to Harry. If anything else comes I am out of ideas, you could repair the house of your parents maybe?" Indeed Harry did send away another green burning raven and a deer before the flames seemed manageable for him.
"When you are done with showing of for today we could apparate over to the Ministry. I bet they are too distracted to notice us two searching for your frozen hero colleagues."
Harry carefully removed his wands out of the earth, but the rune pattern kept still glowing green, flooding the surrounding ground with excess magic, which produced strange plants to grow, small fairies to rise from the grass and the sound of laughing children and tinkling glassware could be faintly heard.
"That went worse than expected, I would say let's just not do this again, shall we?" Harry with his still green burning hair staggered over to the three of them, but he had already his mischievous smirk all over his face. Sirius was still hovering in the air with his flight engines turned on.
"Sirius, can you please stay here and greet any new elves and see that the other elves come to their senses? They looked alarmingly overpowered and exited, even Ganju bonded and looked 100 years younger.
Is there any limitation on how long this armor can fly?" Harry had directed the last question to Alabastor.
"I guess it will hold longer than he finds it entertaining. The switch of code is 'Pokanhontas'." As he said it the thruster engines of the flying Sirius died and his robot frame fell from the air, leaving a confused ghost hovering over it.
"Hey not fair! Gogogo Ponderosa!" The robot flew up to Sirius to fill out his proportions as good as possible again. "But still thank you."
After Harry had apparated them over the length of England in one single jump, the flames on his head had become already less prominent.
~...~
The stasis chamber
Harry was a little disappointed by finding that the Ministry still seemed to be standing, although there were many confused and disheveled wizards walking around in the streets, some of them were staring in disbelief at their no longer working wands.
The Minister of Magic came running towards Harry when the three of them appeared in front of the Diagon Alley exit. "Mr. Potter, what happened?"
"Minister Bladdermole, I am glad you are unharmed. I have defeated the last anchor of the Dark Lord to earth, he cannot return by his magical means anymore. He fled the planet. Quidditch is saved! My Oath has been fulfilled."
"But Mr. Potter, you triggered the fulfillment clause!"
"Well yes, I had to do it to be able to find my way back to this reality, the oath anchored me to this realm, so I used it as an anchor point which must have dissolved the oath somehow. Was there any problem? Why is everyone outside?"
"MR. POTTER, I HAVE LOST MY MAGIC!"
"But that's impossible after all what you did? You didn't hide or take any of my possessions away or did we do something wrong with the oath? There was a surge at first but then my magic came back hundredfold and pulled me back here together with my helpers."
"Well technically speaking there was an unfortunate event in the Wizengamot today …"
"But whatever it was you would have known not to act against a binding oath? Imagine what could have happened! It could have cost lives! Nothing is worth risking the lives of the few capable wizards we have left over!
We have to find the Unspeakables, they must have a plan of what to do now." Harry garbed the Minister by his sleeve and pulled him towards the entry to the Ministry.
"But Mr. Potter, you don't understand, this was all planned! It was them who urged me into this disaster!" The Ministers voice was almost whiny now.
Alabastor and Fenchurch were following the two of them into the Ministry with the expression of cultural connoisseurs in a surreal modern theater play: They had not the slightest clue where all this would lead to but they were pretty sure it was meant to be enjoyed and afterwards someone would explain everything to them over a nice bottle of expensive wine.
The atrium was full of even more confused honorable members of the Wizengamot. The Aurors were guarding the entrance to the lifts and when they came close they heard them requesting from anyone who wanted to enter that they proved they could still do magic.
"In accordance with the Wizengamot edict 2166 from yesterday the entry to the Ministry is limited to capable wizards and witches only. Before entry every visitor has to prove that they are capable of performing magic or must address the squib office that is opened Monday between 7:13 and 7:33 o'clock. To enter the Ministry Squibs and Muggles will have to buy a priority ticket that is handed out in the Ministry office for Muggle affairs in the seventh floor.
Would you please show me that you can perform magic sir?" The monotone singsang of the Auror was the epitome of carelessness about the fate of the people who had queued in front of the entrance. Harry transfigured one of the guards into a potted, cheerfully blinking Christmas tree with a quick spell shot at knee height and all the people suddenly surged through this sudden breach in the Aurors barricade. The distraction enabled Harry and his party to get to the most stressed looking young Auror in the barricade.
"Yes yes, we know." Harry held up his wand and showed a lumos spell, he urged the Minister to do the same and to the Ministers utter surprise his wand spread an intense red light as well. Their two accompanying wizards from the alternate dimension looked at each other questioningly. When it was his turn, Alabastor transformed into a large hellhound, while Fenchurch took out a metal wand pronounced "Lumos" and the head of her wand emitted a bright white light. They could pass after that.
In the elevator Harry addressed the Minister again. "I think we can speak freely for a while in here. Minister do you know where the interrogation room is located where we spoke first? It must have been somewhere else than in the regular Auror guarded interrogation cells, because I know where they are.
We will bring you to your office from where you can contact anyone and hopefully we can straight this whole disaster out, but we have to find the room where I did spend my petrification."
"I am sorry Mr. Potter, I was made believe that it would be the only possibility to continue the Quidditch world cup. The offices of the Unspeakables are somewhere under the dungeons, so is the interrogation room where we have met."
Suddenly Harry felt a magic wave flooding the room shortly, his tattoo on the top of his skull heated up shortly, indicating a large obliviation or mind altering attempt. The Minister had gone cross eyed for a moment but he brightened up quickly.
"Mr. Potter, what a coincidence to meet you here, I was just on my way to my office, I believe, ahh yes, I've gone too far already. I hope you will not make a racket like in your last visit that was only yesterday ehem - in my timeline. You have to excuse me; I have to see what all this excitement about the Quidditch committee is about. These French wannabes are trying to disqualify the Ministry from partaking in the Quidditch World Cup! Who would allow such a thing to happen?" The babbling Minister left the elevator.
Fenchurch was the first to speak again after the doors shot and the cabin dropped down. "Let me get this right and make an educated guess, these Unspeakables managed to raise ANOTHER awareness suppressor field that prevents the people to find where the Unspeakables are located. Am I the only one who thinks that this Unspeakable field seems to work a bit tardy, because the loony Minister could remember where the level is?"
Harry pondered a bit. "On the other hand, maybe it's a trap inside a distraction that looks like tardiness?"
"Ahh, you have just played too much Dungeons and Dragons as a kid" Alabastor provided.
"Never heard of it, but just for the sake of my conscience and since my excess magic builds up again, please step back." Harry began to raise protection fields, at least 10 stacked onto each other if Alabastors count was right. He was not very sure of the number because Harry did not keep to the spells in the books.
The level counter had stopped counting a while ago, the elevator music had started to play a decidedly darker theme and the lighting began to flicker. "Ohh come on, this is too cliché to be honest. Someone is trying to scare the visitors." Alabastor had his transfigured blaster stick in his Hands, Fenchurch had her metal rod in her hands as well.
The doors opened with a creaking noise to a pitch black darkness.
"My mage sight is blocked, it's still black, can you have a look?"
"I have something that might be even better," Fenchurch said and fished in the pockets of her trousers. She came up with a box of contact lenses. "Let me put these into your eyes, they can transmit our vision and enhance and much more."
They fumbled around with the lenses a little but then Fenchurch was satisfied. Harrys vision flared and the darkness was brightened but still cloudy, at least he could see the floor and some steps in front of them there was a hole in the wall with a bit of debris lying on the floor. Behind that the clouds of darkness covered everything.
"The Darkness is only a spell or a curse." Harry stuck his wand through the glimmering fields while still holding them with the elder wand. "Finite Incantatem"
The darkness gave way and in front of them there was a marbled hall still not illuminated. In the middle of it there lay three burned corpses of Goblins, one of them had been wearing a Stormtrooper uniform that was melted on the front.
"Now you two will have a wonderful opportunity to meet one of the most fantastic magical beasts. A Hungarian Horntail Dragon can get aeons old but most of the time they kill each other before they get older than 20 years. I remember the smell of this one, I have met her almost 200 years ago, so she will be huge by now. They never stop growing when they are fed regularly. A dragon this old must sit on a golden nest to maintain his magic. I strongly suspect that this one was spelled invisible, but there is a faint golden glow in the back corner over there." Harry had fallen automatically into teaching mode.
"Wait Harry, I switch your view to echolocation - so. You can see an unsharp image of the dragon sitting over there in the back of the hall. She is not moving currently so the passive echolocation does not work very exactly." Alabastor told him. "I guess I can shoot her from here but I wouldn't like to. It is quite barbaric and that's a damned large beast. She must be longer than 80 meters head to tail."
"Yeah I would prefer not to kill her too. But if she begins to fry my sorry arse, could you please still shoot her? I will try a trick that works against Stormtrooper Armor as well, but if it will not work it will make her very, very angry, and rightfully so." Harry had gotten his invisibility cloak out of his pouch.
"Here is my plan: First the dragon, then find if there is Luna petrified around here or other old wizarding heroes and get them out, then find the shield wards, possibly both sorts but the M.A.S. Field Wardstones would be enough and prep them with some acorns. If we have time after that, the Dragon will get some Unspeakables for dinner tonight."
Harry sneaked towards the dragon which was already sniffing the air suspiciously. She could neither see nor hear the foe that was sneaking up to her but she knew the smell from when she was young. It was the egg thief! A deep angry growl escaped her throat and she moved her head to the left and right to get a better sense of the direction the smell came from. Her diamond hard scales made a grating sound against each other but she was sure she had him located roughly. Before she could turn her head completely to flood the foe with her fire, the small wizard appeared and shot two spells at her belly from short distance.
"Imperio! … Repulsor!" the two interfering spells reached the dragon while making their characteristic racket when overlapping, canceling and reinforcing each other. They slipped through her impenetrable armor like nothing and then her digestive system relaxed and cramped at the same time. She vomited a white hot liquid that immediately began to melt through the floor, and from her back a tsunami of feces, goat bones and a random collection of arm or leg bones of one or more unlucky dragon handlers were erupting with the force of a rocket exhaust. The fermenting gases that were the base of her complex dragon oil producing organs where catching fire as well so that she slid over the slippery black marble floor like a very messy lorry with a rocket motor, ramming her into the next wall head first, leaving her unconscious.
In Harrys opinion the resulting stench was worth a record entry in a book about such things.
Suddenly a wall disappeared to his left and a hooded figure shot a spell at Harry who could throw himself to the side just in time. Out of the corner of his eyes he could see a phaser shot flitting over his moving body in the midst of his escape move. He landed back on his feet and stopped his next spell when he became aware the the phaser had vaporized the wand and complete arm of the hooded attacker who was just now beginning to comprehend that he had no weapon anymore. Harry followed up with a tongue binder curse, but the Unspeakable was still trying to lose a speechless, wandless spell. It was a bit spectacular to see his eyes begin to glow red and then his fingers glowed red as well. At that point another phaser shot this time from Fenchurch vaporized his other arm as well. Since the magic had already been on the brink of being released and had no regular exit through the arms of the assassin, it took its route through his legs apparently, which were unsuitable for these things and stuck in magic proof dragonhide armor. The legs of the assassin suddenly exploded, inflating the armored trousers and boots, before collapsing.
"You know, this reminds me of a very old earth movie where there was a similar situation. We would need a white rabbit and a nutty wizard to make it perfect."
Alabastor had come next to Harry while Fenchurch had gone over to examine the now visible, unconscious dragon.
A rooster came running at top speed around a corner that lay behind the armless and legless man. According to the look on his face that was not a good sign. He tried to crawl away, Harry placed a healing charm on his wounds and used a stupor spell to immobilize him.
From around the corner they could her confused shouting and cursing and the angry hisses of a snake. Harry held his robot friends back when they wanted to go towards the noise.
"I have an idea what is happening, let's wait a little." Indeed, after a minute of fearful shouts that were cut off in the middle and some running and crashing, the noise had stopped.
"I believe there is a very angry Basilisk down there. I would like to talk to it first. Could you find and muffle that rooster, that might console it alittle." Harry turned without waiting for an answer from his robot companions.
Some minutes later Harry called the two of them down. They rounded the corner, carrying a rather stressed rooster who was stuck in the hood of the Unspeakable. Both of them were grinning like mad until they saw that Harry was carrying a large, evil looking snake around his shoulders and a box with two very tiny evil snakes that had angry red eyes. The large snake had its eyes shut. There were two pertrified and three dead Unspeakables standing or lying around, they had been wearing mirrored sun glasses but some of them seemed to have had troubles seeing properly since they had not found the Floo Powder. The Bucket had spilled at some point the two dead Unspeakables had taken off their glasses had been scrambling on the ground in front of the fireplace. The dead dog of the Head Unspeakable lay there as well; obviously it had succeeded in getting rid of its special doggy sunglasses with the result that it had been killed by the stare of the Basilisk. Apparently the Basilisk had freed itself when the Unspeakables were distracted by the fight upstairs.
"Lotty!"
The small elf appeared with a crack, still surrounded by the green glow of Harrys previeous overcharge, "Yes Harry Potter Sir? Ohhhh, this pet for Kreacher?"
"No, not this time. Can you please bring these snakes to the forbidden forest? There is a nest of large spiders living there so maybe you could find them a warm, secure place not too far from them, but not in the middle of the spiders as well."
"Lotty can do. Will lil' snakey eat evil spiders? Spiders very nasty to Hoggywads students."
"Yes they will." Harry spoke to the large Basilisk in Parsletongue, handing the box with it's two younger colleagues to Lotty. She touched the Basilisk and then they popped out of the Ministry.
"We will need to carry everything else to the Moon, it's safer there." Harry and his two robot friends were searching the room and began to stack everything interesting in the middle, calling an elf now and then to pop it over to the Moon.
After working through another hidden library, blowing up another wardstone and bonding to another elf, they discovered a room with a lot of broken, petrified people who seemed to have been blasted apart by spells recently. The air was full of fine dust and the body parts were strewn around chaotically, some of them still smoldering. This had been the room where they had stored the petrified wizards, this was the room where they had stored Luna as well.
Harry paled at the sight, his legs buckled under him. He couldn't breathe and just stared at the slaughterhouse in front of him. Time had stopped for him and his magic drained out of his body in black smoky cascades, unable to find a form or will from Harry, the Magic materialized itself. Darkness rose from the ground, it began to rain everywhere in the Ministry of Magic and the temperature dropped with every second.
Unable to move, Harry could see Alabastor and Fenchurch jumping over his sunken form through the doorway into the room that grew darker and darker. They looked like they were captured in super slow motion, he could not hear a thing beside a very low hum, Fenchurch touched Harrys shoulder reassuringly without breaking her stride. Alabastor had jumped into the room with way more force and looked almost like he was flying due to the slowed down time. He had his eyes switched to full illumination force and Fenchurch used her flashlight to get through the oily darkness. They were moving towards the far end of the room and Alabastor seemed to be shouting something.
When Harry did not seem to hear or react, Alabastor shot the doorframe next to Harrys head, which finally did the trick. The time seem to speed up again and Harrys eyes snapped back into focus. His magic rushed back into him, forming the brightly glowing green tendrils that Alabastor had already seen at the incident in Grimmauld Place.
"Ouch! What was that for!" Harry picked at some splinters that had peppered the side of his face.
"You were going Super Saiyan on us again and I believe we have found her under the bodies. Move your sorry ass over here and stop moping!"
Harry jumped up and the green fires everywhere fizzled out. Luna was lying face down, when he turned her around he could already see what the wizards had done to her. Her dreamy look was gone, she had deep furrows lining her face together with scars, hundreds of scars. Parts of her head had no hair but showed grizzly curse marks. Her hands were cramped around her wand and an amulet. She looked old and withered in Harrys arms. Even the tears that had been on her face had been petrified and Harrys tears fell onto her face now as well.
Alabastor and Fenchurch took care of cleaning out the dungeons, asking Lotty on her next return to bring the other Potter elves to help as well. They were all eager to help and popped Harry and Luna over to the moon, being very careful with the two of them.
~oo~
Authors Notes:
There, it only took me 10 chapters to bring back Luna into the story.
Please review. I am new to this fanfiction stuff and any hint could help me getting better.