Authors note: To be honest I would not have imagined that this story would get even this long, but at least I got over the short writers block that happened in chapter 15.

I know that all of you are really only reading fanfiction to see in how many different ways an author can express that he or she is in all honesty NOT the author of the original stories and characters. This is for all of you then: I am NOT the author of the original stories and characters. Sadly.

~o~

Chapter 12 - A diplomatic meeting of sorts

On day 40 before the estimated shield collapse, a diplomatic meeting was held in the middle of the brand new lawn of Resort Cave Alpha 26. Some Goblins and the new representative of the Moon Government were there as well as some very official looking ambassadors from various space settlements, including Mars, Venus, Titan and various captains from the Belt.

Alabastor took the introduction round.

"Welcome everyone. Although this might feel like a political meeting - it is none. This is simply an informational meeting to inform you all about the developments that the Harry Potter Institute is going to take, since we feel that our discoveries might impact your further political and economical decisions.

Some informational things to begin with, you will find them as well in the brochure that you will find in front of you." With that the heavy brochures made of real paper suddenly appeared out of thin air in front of all representatives.

"The hardest to believe part at first: The strange force that we all have found in some of the children is not only a reality but it is indeed a force that was so far unknown. Not radiation, electricity, gravity, magnetism, or a subatomic force, but something else, something so far unknown and - believe me - annoyingly mind bending and elusive. Secondly, it is controllable by people with the required gift and training. Mr. Potter here is a representative of these people. Let's call them for the sake of traditions 'Wizards' and the unknown forces 'Magic'.

Thirdly, our troubles with the memory erasing field around earth are based on magic. Mr. Potter is the first capable wizard who could escape the field without being mind wiped. He was the one who enabled the AIs to disable the robots of the alien invasion force that left earth ten days ago. He alone was the one who sabotaged the missile that would have otherwise annihilated millions of lives on the Moon and on earth and he alone was the one who made the so called Dark Lord flee.

So please keep this in mind when he asks you for a small favor now that you all will benefit from in the end. Humankind and us AIs owe him big time, you all owe him because the alien Lord had already begun to produce an invasion force on earth with whom he would have attacked all of the colonies in the solar system. I doubt that he would have won immediately, but his defeat would have attracted the true leaders of the galactic imperium that apparently is expanding in our direction. This war could have cost us billions of lives and was prevented by Mr. Potter before it could begin.

And lastly, as you have already seen, Humans are not the only intelligent species. Over the last ten days there was not one where we did not meet a new self- conscious race on earth or on the Spaceship that we could hijack and if Mister Potter is right we will continue to meet many more over time. Our guests from the Goblin nation have joined our meeting to underline this statement, but there are many more intelligent species on earth and in space than we were aware of right now."

Harry got up.

"Thank you. Ehemm - you might find me more inapt with words than my friend Alabastor, I am just a Wizard and not used to speaking in front of important people. Please allow me to be blunt and short, I would like to have your permission to open up sanctuaries for magically gifted people wherever possible; on planets, space stations or asteroids, above or under the surface. Magic abilities manifest rarely and have a little genetics in passing on to the next generation, which is the reason why there were so few cases so far in space. Because the wizarding society on earth was actively preventing people with magic from leaving, even those with recessive genes were held back. That's the reason it took so long until magic showed itself again in the colonies and space stations. I believe you are all aware of the grief and harm this strange power had caused on your worlds sometimes. That is because magic and your current state of technology do not go together. For this same reasons the sanctuaries - which will be fully self-sufficient – will have to be put where their magic cannot harm or interfere with any technology. They must be apart from any technological encampments at least by some hundred meters to avoid any accidents – so they will not use any of your scare resources in the stations or encampments, but they can provide you all with so much that magic can offer.

Here is the twist, I want them to be politically independent, because magic is so new to everyone else, that there will be way too many people trying to own it, or dictate terms or try to get an advantage in other political power plays. Please look at these places as a kind of monastery or shelter of magic on your planets or stations. Be assured I really do not want to build a political faction - you will discover that wizards are as diverse as any other humans everywhere. But as I said: Magic is something new to your worlds and we magic people politely ask for a place. I can promise you, both sides will greatly benefit from mutual cooperation, but if you don't want it, we will simply not come, no hard feelings, but no benefits as well.

As for the benefits: Every independent magic settlement will offer magic banking from our Goblin friends here and magical goods for sale as well as the reverse engineered artefacts from the alien invaders. No weapons, sorry, but they are crap anyways as I was told. It will host a sanctuary like a school for magically gifted people where they can live and are free to train and develop their gifts and it will give you access to a magic medical facility which can heal many things that current medicine can't.

I was always told to hold the best for the end: All magic sanctuaries will offer you access to what we call the Floo network, which is a way to travel almost instantaneously to all of its endpoints, wherever in the solar system they are. It has almost no limits in distance and is really, really uncomfortable, but it takes only moments to go from here to earth."

The venusian ambassador jumped up. "Hell yes! Let me shake your hand on it. Can you bring us water like here on the moon?"

.

On the Moon, new caves had been erected in record speed after Harry had started to seal them airtight by releasing Fiendfyre. The melted stone had made an excellent sealant. This method had increased the speed by which the caves could be inhabited, so the whole political party had a longer walk ahead of them. All of them wanted to have a look and had squeezed themselves into the modified Stormtrooper armors Harry had provided for those of them with any neural implants. The belters were excitedly discussing with Alabastor about ways to build magical space stations that could be basically asteroids with a large hull around them.

All talks came to a halt when the party left the airlock to the next cave which was already completed. Large segments of the walls were spelled to show views of earth with the displaced windows spell that had been used in the construction of Hogwarts as well. Just this morning, Harry had created a hundred meter wide panoramic view from above a magic valley in former Macedonia where the local dragon population plus the recently freed giant dragon from the cellar of the Unspeakables were competing with a flock of giant Rock-birds over the dominance of the sky. The evening sun shone it's bright rays through the window and the view was, to say the least, breathtaking. Many Moon tourists had already gathered, just standing there and getting homesick of earth, some of them weeping.

The next cave was the training ground for the magic Moon population, who had been asked to seize their spell and wand training while the visitors were there for security reasons. Instead a Quidditch match was being held. The panorama view on the wall showed the Potter Manor in Scotland where the visitors could see Sirius flying around with his robot frame and basically showing off in front of Ryan and his two friends who seemed more interested in the attempts of the giant squid in the Black Lake trying to catch Sirius. They got bored pretty soon and ran into the Manor where one could see them through the open door entering the fireplace and vanishing in a spectacle of green flames. Only a moments later they came running into the training cave hand in hand laughing and hugging Ryan's parents.

"Was that Floo travel from earth? Is it possible just like that? What about the memory wipe?" The questions were coming from all sides.

"That is far more complicated. Currently it requires either wearing one of these soldier armors or being a Wizard or Goblin and getting a skull tattoo. We are still working on the solution ..."

A surprised yell came from the players high above where the small Asian girl Xiping who was - like always -playing seeker had jumped from her broom, grabbing the snitch out of the air in mid fall and vanished with a crack some meters above the ground. Even the Goblins were staring when she appeared again a meter above Harry who caught her with obvious practice. He had gotten quite fond of Xipings turbulent personality and her penchant for fierce hugs.

"That would have been be a foul Xiping." Harry scolded her laughing.

"No that's Fun!" the little girl shouted out of breath squiggling out of his arms and vanished again with a crack only to appear above her broom again which had been caroling out of control in the air in the few seconds without any rider. She released the snitch again and shouted "Sooooryyyyyy". The group could hear her malicious cackling when she veered out of the way of the two bludgers that had been shot in her direction from both teams.

"Apparently she has learned that from the elves." Fenchurch stood next to Nicholas.

All of the guests were agreeing to convince their governments to have at least one place assigned for a magic embassy as soon as possible and get the word out to their population to bring their childs if they were suspecting them to be magical.

As a special present they each got a Trooper Transporter from the stashes of the captured imperial star destroyer for reverse engineering and to transport some containers with a pre-fabricated Floo network fireplace to their worlds. It would be the first building block of the magical monasteries.

~.~

Convincing Harry

Fenchurch, Luna and Harry were sitting on their favorite bench, watching the Macedonian sunrise in the gigantic panoramic window of what was now called the Dragon's Cave. They could feel the warmth of the sun on their skin.

"So we will have to wait until all elves are here and the field is down and they will all need to want to be free and act together to achieve it." Fenchurch was recapitulating the plan they had come up with over the span of the past week to Harry who had been busy with cave digging. His magical core seemed to have gained a severe imbalance and had to be vented at least 3 times a day. Maybe it was because he still aggregated the magic debt of so many oath breakers from earth.

"That might be impossible, some of them will be just as stubborn as Ganju was at first." Harry was looking rather unsure.

"Yes but now he is helping to equip new caves just like the other elves, it only took him longer." Luna provided.

"He did it because of you, Luna, he bonded to you, just like all the other elves that bounced from the wardstones so far. But that does not make them free or wanting to be free."

"Yes that's true. The solution to the problem must respect that elves are really, really slow to make up their minds. They are simply not used to thinking for themselves for hundreds if not thousands of years. But given enough time they will make up their minds in the end, I am absolutely sure of it." Lunas voice had become weaker again so that Harry had a reason to hold her hand and give her another boost of magic.

Fenchurch continued. "So the plan is that all elves will finally have to bond to Luna, even the ones who have currently bonded themselves to you will have to be transferred to have a bond only to Luna. And in their bond they will have to include a somehow virtual part so that they will be bonded to an idea as well.

That is why we started to ask the new arriving elves to bond to the family of the Lovegood elves. The Idea behind it is that the family is made of Luna and the elves together. It is a harmless enough expression so that they will not expect any foul play."

Harry could still not discover the trick. "But they are not free."

"Nobody is truly free, we are all bound by our perceptions and values. The elves will have a strong bond to each other - their family." Fenchurch said.

At that Moment Luna cast a silent stupor spell at Harry so that he could not move or say anything anymore.

"Sorry Harry, the next part will be difficult for you and you need to listen until the end and not get angry and run away to drill another cave."

Harry was sure that whatever they had come up with must be so dreadful that they were sure they could not tell him without restraints, so he did not fight the spell.

"The thing is that after all is done, to leave them all bonded to each other's and me and nobody else, I will have to die." Harry's magic reacted on its own and the light became considerably darker in the cave, but Luna continued without giving it any credit.

"The bond has a magic source in the magic core of the wizard and if he dies the elves will feed from the natural surrounding magic. They can go down to earth and power up as well for example with the acorns at Potter Manor, but they will not need any wizard any more, they will be bound to their own kind. At the same time they cannot declare themselves not bonded to each other and go and find another wizard, not until all of them would declare themselves unbonded to each other at the same time, which they wouldn't dare fearing to not find another wizard. And besides that, there is Winky, she made a promise to you to learn to be free, and I know that she wants to keep her promise. So even if all the elves have found a new owner and try to unbond themselves in some kind of stupid synchronized juvenile rebellion, Winky will not agree do it because she promised. To prevent that some greedy wizard would try to kill her, Fenchurch will take her to Titan or even farther away, so that they cannot reach her, or maybe she will hide all by herself.

And if I am dead for long enough they will make up their minds slowly and start to see their bond to their family of elves as freedom." Luna took a handkerchief and dried the tears that ran down Harrys face. "Oh stop crying you wussy! Because then I will come back."

"Maybe I can explain this a bit better than your wife to be." Fenchurch said. "Harry, you remember that we have a way to regrow bodies? It's called cloning and in the Belt everybody uses regrown and improved body parts or even complete bodies with the exception of the brains. We cannot transfer the mind or memories. But magic can."

Luna took over again. "I will submit my whole self and all memories, minus the traumatizing parts into a chain of pensieves that will become a connected super-pensieve, able to extract all my memories and store and transfer them. I will store the bad years as well but I will never look at them again and keep them separate. And Fenchurch and Alabastor will grow a new body for me, just like my old one minus all the injuries and the old age and maybe add a cats tail, because I always wanted to have a cats tail and cats ears since I have seen a comic about a women that did all the things that I planned to do with you - after you would have come back …"

"We can discuss these things later Luna, because I can see Harrys face is getting a strange, absent look."

"Ohhh OK then." Luna grabbed Harrys face and looked him unto his eyes to get his full attention. "Harry, now listen closely. It will take a while for the elves to get over the betrayal as they see it, five years to be exact. You will have to wait for me for quite a while, at least until the elves have stopped wailing about being free. And after that you will have to wait a little more until my body is finished and the procedure is finalized.

Here is another important thing: I expect you to have found the love of our lives by the time I come back, because that's the only way that things very far in the future can work out, which I cannot tell you about." Luna looked Harry in the eyes. "This is important, Harry, trust me. You will know it when it happens. She is the one who can bring me back and save more or less the future of almost everyone. I cannot be more specific without influencing the future for the bad or irate Fate herself, so see to it!

I have to return as your wife and even better as part of your family. You will need to fabricate a bit of a changed magical core and changed DNA for me, so that the elves will not be able to declare them bonded to me again. Fenchurch is sure she can achieve it since we discovered some very nasty books about magical core extraction and stuff like that in some of the abandoned Dark Wizarding libraries that you and I have discovered during our careers. We have been raiding them all and they are part of the library on the Moon." One could see that Lunas energy was leaving her, now that she had gotten her message through to Harry.

Fenchurch took over again. "Since we do not yet have developed the tech or magic required to feed back the lot of the memories into a newly grown brain in Lunas new, cloned body, we will hold Lunas old body in a cold storage just in case, but we promise that you can destroy it yourself once you are successfully revived."

"I am unsure if I can unfreeze him now, Fenchurch. He doesn't look happy."

"Yes I agree. I think you are in for one of those Harry Potter ass-whoopings you explained to me that you were fantasizing about."

Luna drew in a sharp breath. "That was a secret and you promised to not tell anyone, traitor!"

"Must have slipped my mind, can happen you know, me being busy to figure out so many different things at the same time …" Fenchurch jumped out of the way cackling when Luna weakly tried to punch her arm.

~..~

Harrys To Do list

In a completive mood, Harry had written down a list of the five things that were left to do:

1) Find Luna (done)

2) and save Luna, (work in progress)

3) rescue the elves, (work in progress)

4) bring down this moron field (work in progress)

5) kill that still fleeing star dork before he could snitch on us (open for suggestions)

He had to add some other stuff, because that was important as well:

6) prevent that the Goblins massacre themselves in yet another of their half brained rebellions (what are they up to anyways?)

7) teach and enable the moon children (work in progress)

8) and any other magic children in space (work in progress)

9) prevent a war between the planets by giving them a common enemy – preferably the imperium – it's a better common foe and can distract everyone from realizing how much the wizards have fucked up (work in progress)

10) establish AIs as an accepted, equal race (maybe their own problem)

11) and all the other races as well (I need to make a list)

12) and maybe finally get to this Sith lords and kick their asses as long as it takes to forget about the solar system (or they surrender and I can get another shiny spaceship)

13) and pick up any ugly street dog on the way

Alabastor had added the last point after they had discovered that Sirius, although being a ghost, could still change into his animagus form, resulting in a real fierce looking ghost dog. He had confessed that he had already used it to hound the castle of Hogwarts, especially the Slytherin's common room - twice.

Sirius had convinced them that they would take him to a sightseeing tour to the - now not so magical anymore - Ministry of Magic.

.

Because of Sirius constant nagging they were now standing in front of the Ministry visitors' entrance, Harry, Alabastor and 'THE HOUND!' as Sirius had insisted on being called when he was in his ghostly animagus form. He had his unoccupied robot frame programmed to follow Sirius around wherever he went when he was in his ghost-animagus form. It gave the both of them the appearance of a battered alien robot having an invisible leach leading to a ghostly Grim. Alabastor had already suggested to paint the robot in a better matching self-illuminated lowing color, but Sirius had dismissed this otherwise splendid idea because when he transformed back into a human ghost he would then sit in a ghost colored robot, which would be a little too much ghost for his taste.

They had already done their daily shopping trip through Diagon Alley where Harry had become the most reliable source of income for all book stores, apothecaries, alchemy supplies, familiars shops, flying brooms and magic sweets over the span of the last weeks. They had bought almost everything except for the fake and fraud stuff the shop keepers had tried to mix in between, cleaning the shelves in the morning and they always came back the next day to get more. Some other customers had already complained when they were unable to get Floo Powder or Squid Ink™ because Harry and Alabastor bought it all.

Harry was sure that the four of them (including the robot) were putting up quite a show for the wizards and the few not magical people that passed by, standing there and marveling at the people in front of the Ministry Telephone booth entrance for non-magical or mundane visitors. There was a long waiting line of former Ministers and higher up employees of the Ministry, mixed with the odd former member of the Wizengamot. Harry loved the sight so much, but nevertheless he avoided to get too close to the people because his magic began to overcharge almost immediately when he drained the wizards from such a short distance. The wizards were sending him murderous looks when they finally figured out it was him, most of them had only seen him in his transfigured old wizard look when he had his first reign of chaos in the ministry of magic a few days back or from his appearance in front of the Wizengamot.

"Ten Sickles that you will not be able to find a single one of the former Ministry wizards who is not currently plotting to arrange your sudden and most gruesome death, Harry. They can all feel that any ounce of magic is drained from them because of the bloody oath their moron Minister took in their name. I would bet that you are number two of the most wanted dead wizards currently." Sirius had changed back into his human ghost form and had retreated into his robot. He was most certainly highly amused.

Harry raised a questioning eyebrow at him. "Number two?"

"I guess Minister Bladdermole would be number one. I have heard that he has barricaded himself into his office for three days now. There is no toilet inside, no food, …

I wonder when you stop to eat, how long it takes your body to finally stop needing to go to the toilet? The stench in his office must be quite taking by now. I bet he has used his Fireplace for that."

"Sirius is it the lack of any digestive organs of your own that drives your fascination with the human feces in any aspects?" Alabastor inquired.

"Shush, let me enjoy the view. Too bad we can't stay here much longer, it is almost time for the next elf to show up at the manor. I would like to stay and tease these poor idiots here some more. Maybe we can name them 'Wiggles'? Or 'Wuibs' - since they are almost Squibs now. It sounds better than 'Mugglards' or 'Squizards'. Although I must admit, that each of those names expresses the wizard stupidity in its's own, unique way." Before Sirius could draw even more angry attention on them by shouting out his opinion across the street, Harry grabbed the robot and Alabastor by their arms and sidealong-apparated them away.

Entering Gringotts had lost it's creepy feeling since the guards and most of the Goblins were on friendly terms with Harry and his friends. They knew that it was this wizard who carried loads of gold out into the wizarding world to spend it on low key goods like potion ingredients, so that the next morning all those small business owners would return with the same gold and bring it back into their Gringotts vaults. Before the weekend the same shop owners would take it and buy Quidditch supplies and paraphernalia or a new flying broom from one of the many Potter owned stores and the next week at least half of the gold was back in the Potter vaults.

There were even rumors that Gringotts would open up a new branch or even more than one, something that hadn't happened for more than 200 years now. Nobody outside of the Ragnok Clan knew what they were up to. So every Goblin preferred to be on Harry's god side. Especially the guards that were traditionally from the Ragnok Family Clan bowed deeply to him and often enough joined him, chatting excitedly about family matters while accompanying him into the inner sanctum of the Gringotts war room.

New elves were showing up every 5 hours now, it was like a doomsday clock for the stupidity shield. 36 days left, the world map was full of yellow needles, about 50 were green already and only 3 of them were red. The Goblins had reported that only three wardstones were not yet prepared with an acorn, one was apparently submerged deeply in the Pacific Ocean and the other one was somewhere under the ice shield of Antarctica. The third not yet rigged wardstone was something the Goblins had to negotiate with another party, they were very secretive about. Harry was thinking that the wardstone was maybe on dwarfs territory and the Goblins did not want to go at war with them yet again. Harry had met a real Dwarf only once in his life and this particular fellow had been an outcast kleptomaniac with an impressive collection of stolen Oscar statues - but still a likeable enough fellow, who had forfeited his magic to become a burglar. He had told Harry that there was bad blood between the Goblins and the Dwarfs.

Harry and Alabastor voted to get to Antarctica first and have a look, but before they left the protesting Sirius at Potter Manor.

"Harry! I am a ghost for fucks sake! If I get shot or 'killed' in action you will just need to arrange another robot frame for me and I am back in the game. We could even bring a spare frame for me! Ohh pleasepleaseplease, it is boring around here. Admittedly it is much more entertaining than in that ghost prison of yours but pleeeeease. It can't be long until the next elf will show up, I will just forward him to the Moon and then we can go, the other elves can take care for a while here." He morphed into his dog form and made teary eyes and whimpered.

"Oh come on!" Harry gave in, he could imagine that his restless godfather had a hard time just waiting for elves to show up and send them on. Winky agreed that she would be able to deal with the incoming elves for a while and that she could reach out to Luna and Fenchurch if a case was more complicated.

~oo~

Authors note: I had a quite bad time recently and could not really keep up my regular posting shedule, sorry for this. No sassy remarks either.