There's a Lunatic on the Ship

Harry Potter / Mass Effect

This was a little HP/ME plot bunny which takes a more jovial and rather Doctor-ish Harry to the Mass Effect 'verse. Although it doesn't really matter here, I imagined the time of insertion to be somewhere around the events of Mass Effect 2, in which all sorts of odd faces seem to pop up anyway, and one out-of-time wizard wouldn't stand out that much. In the HP canon it takes place in the way distant AU future of the series, in which Harry ended up with someone who is not Ginny. Three guesses, and the first two don't count!

"You are designated as subject number forty-five."

The darkness was oppressive, almost tangible in nature, and it felt cold and numb. Through a veil of vague wakefulness, sometimes interrupted by fitful spurts of unconsciousness, little shards of sound managed to echo inward towards a shrouded figure, words which slowly coalesced into sentences. They weren't enough to make sense of anything, but they were there.

"Subject, state your designation."

"Forty-five," a second, weary voice murmured in response.

"Reaction time is adequate... Subject, please touch this object." There was a short pause, then a deep, tired sigh. "Well, shit. That counts as another failure in the biotic grafting phase. I really thought we had it this time... Neural instantiation was clearly successful, but the rest…" There was a stumbling noise for a moment, and the click of metal hitting metal. "Jesus. This is the tenth batch, and it's still the same shit! How much longer will this go on?"

A new person cut in, harsh and unforgiving. "We will continue as long as it takes! I'll get the next one ready..." There came the sound of glass against metal, and a splash of water. "Ugh, disgusting. You are subject forty-six. State your designation."

A long silence.

"Yeah, I figured as much from just looking at this one. Another damned brain-dead one. That's fifteen of these. Random chance would give us just three!"

"There's still too much variance," Thomas replied softly, groaning under his breath. "The sample is the real problem, obviously. That DNA was already badly degraded by the time when we got to it - aberrations aren't unexpected. The Eezo treatment really doesn't help the odds, either. You know how finicky that stuff is when you try to work it in a new way…"

"We're hardly working off scraps, though." The second man sighed. "Well, let's just get to the rest. You can whine if all the rest are just as crappy as these two - but if one of them actually reacts, maybe we won't get executed." He snorted. "We'll just get sent to the Luna penal center, I reckon…"

Luna?

The name sparked a memory, an image of a pale, bright-haired woman that spun around gleefully, little radishes hanging from her ears. Images of an older woman with white hair followed, sharing that same amazing smile, an amused glimmer in their eyes. There was a sudden stark awareness that followed for the nameless figure, a surge of fear as the darkness turned form comforting to overwhelming, and the sleepy nothingness felt constricting, tight. He was awake, and he only now realized he was stuck.

"This data comes all the way from 2082 - ages before any contamination on Earth," Thomas spoke again, much closer this time. "I can't explain it, but the boss says it's legitimate. We never figured humans got into contact with Eezo at all until the 2150's at the earliest… Guess the history books are a little off."

"Guess so. We might've actually had some legitimate natural users after all, after a fashion," the other responded. "That'd put us above half the other races, y'know… Still, Earth's got no Eezo, so where would he have run into any? Maybe someone discovered the Prothean stash on Mars and never told anyone?"

Mars?

Mars is bright tonight.

That thought solidified into a new, strong memory. An image of a tall man, or more than a man, reaching out with a clawed hand to a bright red spot in the heavens. He had more legs than he should've had - like a horse, but not quite. Like… a Centaur! The thought was startling for a second, as if it should have rung false, but instead it made the figure smile in recognition. His fear wafted away as quickly as it had appeared. Then other memories started popping up.

Lots of them.

"Holy shit!" Thomas cried out. "Did you hear that?" His tone was brimming over with excitement. "That beep - a definite spike in his encephalograph, even full neural activation!" He faltered, then. "Wait - it's number Forty-Nine? We haven't even started waking that one up yet."

Focusing on the voice that was now so very close, green eyes opened behind a thick pane of glass. There were wires and pipes that separated him from the outside world, and something had been shoved into his throat - something that obstructed his spluttering lungs. He gagged as he forcefully dragged the thing out, tossing it to the side in disgust as clear liquid dribbled down his chin. Before he could think things through, he had already started forward - in a single fluid movement the glass vanished before him, evaporating into thin air, and he landed on his hands amidst a tangle of wires and a slosh of water.

"What the -" the second man exclaimed in surprise, edging back.

For a few moments there was just a rush of watery vomit and thin streams of blood, followed by a blessed silence only interrupted by heaving gasps. That moment seemed to freeze, crystallize, and crisp air flooded into unused lungs to replace the canned alternative. Everything became a lot sharper with the addition of oxygen, a lot more real.

Luna, radish-earrings hanging from her ears as an ancient in-joke, crystallized in the figure's mind. The Centaurs, their wise and sad eyes turned up to the heavens that had still been out of reach in their day. And so much more. Harry. Harry Potter. That was his bore more titles than he cared to remember, and had more detractors than he'd like to admit.

He was also supposed to be dead.

"Hello again - world?" Harry managed in a unintelligible whisper. He leaned to the side a little on his aching limbs, as a few remaining needles released themselves from his flesh, flinging themselves aside as they reacted to his unstated command. He hadn't intended to make such a showy entrance, but if his captors were going to stick him in a glass box like a snake in a zoo, they should have honestly been expecting it.

The floor beneath his hands was some kind of solid metal, hard and unforgiving - definitely not something he was used to. In fact, gravity itself felt off, which told him quite a lot. The two people who had been talking stood a little ways away from him, wearing black-and-white uniforms that didn't seem familiar, emblazoned with hexagon-shaped symbols that had only one side open. Both of them stared at him with undisguised shock, which meant this whole affair was probably as much of a surprise to them as it was to Harry himself.

Harry looked to his side at last, taking in what he'd already half-deduced would be there. Next to the glorified terrarium he'd just ripped himself out of, half a dozen more tubes were arrayed in sequence. In front of two of them were people on white slabs, both with a recognizable mop of wild black hair. One set of empty eyes was staring blindly at the ceiling - the other person showed no wakefulness at all. They were more than just similar to him, Harry realized quickly. They were him - sixty or seventy years younger than he had been the last time he'd looked into the mirror, but definitely familiar. They had his face, long before he'd started turning grey or bald. He reached out for his own scalp curiously, and found a thick pack of thin strands under his remarkably smooth fingers. Huh. It'd been a while since the days of hair.

"Okay. So what did you do?" Harry inquired in a near-whisper, forcing the words from his tortured throat while disturbing suspicions were already forming. He grimaced at the barely understandable murmur that came from his mouth, and just sighed. He was supposed to be dead - not a surprise for someone that had been slowly crawling up to Dumbledore-like ages. So what the hell was he doing as a twenty-five year old, as if most of his life had never happened at all? What the hell?

No answer seemed to be forthcoming, but he was content to wait. He stretched slowly, relishing his regained strength and painless joints, before realizing with some dismay that he was wearing a skintight plastic leotard that he wouldn't have been caught dead with back home. "...I really suck at dying," he told himself in no uncertain terms - this was not the first time he'd woken up from certain doom. This time, his words were louder, clearer.

"You've - you can speak!" the smaller of the two men squeaked, revealing him to be the Thomas that Harry had heard from within his fancy fish tank. The man's eyes were impossibly wide behind his glasses as he glanced frantically towards his colleague, who was wearing considerably more military-style garb. "This is impossible! H-he shouldn't know anything! Anything! There's no personality - no artificial memories implantation, nothing! Just the instructions…" He paused. "Just…"

"Obviously, someone got creative. Sabotage, again," the second stated with quiet certainty, his rigid stance and twitching fingers betraying his disposition. He was a tall man, his dark eyes staring suspiciously at Harry from under a thick, bushy brow. "There's been no breach in months, as far as I know - an inside job."

"Who? Who did this?" Thomas hissed to Harry, who was busy trying to get the tank's watery goop out of his ears. "Tell me!"

"Hey, I swear I'm as lost as you are. Probably more so!" the wizard responded distractedly as he massaged his aching head. Babbling incoherently wasn't really all that productive, admittedly, but it couldn't hurt much. "You wouldn't happen to know what I'm doing in this place, would you? Or when I decided to start aging backwards? It's a Merlin-y thing to do, I am quite aware of that, but I figured I'd remember..."

The soldier shook his head, flummoxed. "This isn't a berserker strain, that much is clear. The other clones that were infected just went for the throat, they didn't go basket case."

"Please don't insult basket cases, they're remarkably useful," Harry muttered lightly. "Clones, huh?" he observed. "...I'm a clone? Huh." He shook his head, clearing the cobwebs a little, wondering how he got into these situations. "I've never been a clone before!"

The soldier blinked slowly. "You don't say."

"I - We can just use the instructions," Thomas said hurriedly. "Shut him off that way." He cleared his throat authoritatively. "Subject, state your designation!"

"Forty-nine," Harry blurted immediately, gasping in surprise at his own disobedient tongue, sticking it out for a moment and frowning at it. "Gah, that was weird. My name's Harry. Harry Potter. I prefer that over the other thing, if you don't mind. Numbering people is kind of creepy." He looked around again, shaking his head as he frowned. "This is some kind of laboratory, right? Where am I?"

"This is…" Thomas hesitated. "...clearly above my pay grade. Jenkins?"

"We'll have to let the techies figure it out, I think," he said nervously, his hand reaching for his hip, where a rather large pistol was all too obvious.

"You think so?" The chubby scientist rubbed his temples as he put a step backwards to the door, attempting not to come off as too nervous, though he was doing a piss-poor job of it. "Yeah. Let's just put him down before he talks our ears off, right? Subject, go to sleep!"

"Hey! Hold on a minute, now!" Harry protested as a wave of drowsiness tried to drag him under. It took a moment of concentration to ignore, but then it vanished as soon as it came. "That was rather rude," he stated dryly. "I've only just woken up, it'd be a shame to snooze again so soon. Gives you wrinkles - and I should know!" He paused, frowning. "Well, I knew."

"He's - He's showing resistance after only one command?" Thomas observed nervously. "That's too fast! The conditioning didn't take at all. We have to warn the captain!"

"The captain?" Harry stretched his arms lazily to get used again to their flexibility, not even looking at the two people still warily keeping their distance from him. "Does that mean we're on a ship?Is that's why I feel so wonky?" He jumped slightly, frowning at the slow landing. "You know, last time I took a trip into space, it was just a jaunt to the Moon - nothing too fancy. Luna decided she had to see her namesake from up close, and you can't say no to someone like her, let me tell you…" He sighed. "It was a rather bumpy ride…"

"Subject, go to sleep!" Thomas commanded again.

Harry ignored the command with even less effort than before, rolling his eyes as he strolled over to his two eerie brethren, his clones. They reminded him of his youthful adventures with Polyjuice Potion, though it was eerie to see his own features frozen in death. A distinct feeling of power thrummed just beneath Harry's skin as he reached out towards the first of the two - subject forty-five. Excellent. He glanced back to his captors, and smiled kindly.

"You know, if you want to warn your captain about all of this, feel free. Close the door on your way out, though. There's a draft, and these clothes are still wet." He gestured vaguely to his onesie. "I know that warning superiors is what you sort of people are supposed to do. Don't get in trouble on my account."

"What…?"

Harry shrugged. "I'll let myself out when I feel like it."

"R-right. That's good. We'll do that," Thomas answered, glancing to his neighbor with raised eyebrows, before the two finally made their way through the solid steel door, the only exit from the room. The big metal slab slid closed with finality, and there was the sharp sound of a lock immediately afterwards.

Harry looked to the security camera that hung in the corner, the one he'd noticed almost the moment he'd left his tube, and smirked. The thing was considerably more advanced than any he'd ever seen before, but that didn't really matter. With a slight gesture, it was gone.

"Well, that's better…" Harry sighed in relief, looking over his clones curiously. "Those two were getting on my nerves - and admittedly, so are you two." He glanced between his copies, frowning uncertainly. Forty-five stared ahead without noticing anything, his arms draped alongside him and drool leaking ever-so-slightly from the corner of his mouth. Harry reached out to click shut his jaw, smiling faintly. "There you go. You don't want us to look bad, do you?"

Tapping the clone gently on the forehead, a spark of energy lanced outwards as Harry met the eyes of his copy. A long moment of silence followed as his magic delved to find thoughts to read, a mind to invade - but the attempt at Legilimency failed utterly. There was no mind to work on. "Nothing there, huh?" he said, disappointed. "It would've been interesting to be my own brother…"

So, he had clones - except they were useless. Hell, he was a clone himself, even! What did that mean? Harry looked at the remaining two tubes, both of which contained more identical bodies with his face on them. With a simple jab of his hand they slumped forward out of their confinement as glass and tubes vanished into thin air. Neither of them was any luckier than forty-five or forty-six - two more breathing corpses in a long line. None of the clones had more than a spark of activity in their head, much less a functional soul. No magic, either.

So why on Earth - or off it - did one of them get the full package? What had dragged Harry back to the world of the living from the ever-after?

"Maybe I got bored in the afterlife?" Harry murmured doubtfully, scratching his head and unabashedly relishing in the fact that he wasn't bald anymore. "You'd think I'd remember that - I did recall plenty the last time around. Maybe Luna put me up to it? Or Professor Dumbledore! Is this his next great adventure?" He wandered by the other bodies, shaking his head. "What a mess…"

Cloning a wizard shouldn't have worked, Harry knew - duplicating bodies wouldn't do much in itself. Magic wasn't genetic - Hermione had impressed that upon him after she'd spent years studying the subject, trying to apply some logic to the debate of purebloods and half-bloods. Sure, magic itself tended to be inherited, but it seemed to pop up spontaneously too, and it was even possible that identical twins differed in that respect, with one being magical and the other a Muggle or Squib. There was no consistent pattern.

Luna had always maintained that magic was as whimsical as it was powerful, and purposely contradicted itself whenever someone was trying to figure it out. Indeed, Hermione had been quite incensed that very few of her experiments had clear results at all - magic refused to be pinned down. The only thing she'd been able to conclude was that a father or mother who was magical around during pregnancy increased the chances of a magical child by a landslide, probably accounting for purebloods. Clones, grown or raised by Muggles as they were, would be no more likely to be magical than any child born from Muggles.

Wait - did that mean he was a Muggle-born now, technically?

"Guess I'm in her shoes, for a change. Go figure." He sighed at the fact that he'd have to die again to tell her, but paused when he saw something on the ground besides subject forty-five - a black, rectangular box. On a small cushion within lay a wooden stick, gnarled and worn, almost falling apart if not for enchantments that had been cast upon it ages ago. It was his old wand.

"Huh. These people are proving unreasonably helpful for grave-robbers," Harry murmured lightly. "Guess this is what they were testing the clones with..."

Harry carefully picked up his most important possession, and in one gesture he changed his awful underwear into something more fitting: a flowing robe like he'd worn so often in his later years, accentuated as always by little half moons that lined the bottom and both sleeves. A little gesture to an old teacher, one that few had still remembered well by the end - and his wife. With a second wave he conjured himself a nice pair of spectacles, though he was fairly sure his eyesight had been fixed already. He just didn't feel the same without them.

Magic had tossed him another curveball, Harry decided easily as he did a few jumping jacks. He was glad to note that his body was more capable than it had been in decades, which would probably come in handy. Given that he was stuck on a spaceship who-knows-where, a lifetime after he'd last drawn breath, and his captors were attempting to breed a mindless wizard army from his corpse. Not the best situation to wake up to.

"So, they're trying to take over the world with magic - I'm sure nobody's ever tried that before," he muttered darkly, running a hand through his hair, a gesture he'd long since had to give up. "Still, it's not all bad, I guess. It's only polite that I go meet my host, wouldn't you say?" He looked at his clones and their continued silence, and frowned. "Yeah, I thought so. Come on, Potter - you've been talking to yourself for quite long enough. Yourselves. Whatever. Action!"

He turned, grasping his wand tightly, and with a single sharp jab he ripped the large metal door right out of its frame, solid steel bending with an excruciating groan before it crumpled to the side like tissue paper. It was high time to meet the Captain of this little cruise.

"Knock, knock!"

Operative Roberts was less than enthused as she set foot into the observatory, the gleaming red of a distant star washing over everything and casting it in sharp relief. At the vast room's center, seated where he always was, her leader puffed on his cigar, not even turning to look at her as he looked over his holographic displays.

"Sir?" She started, almost in a squeak. "We've - just gotten a message from one of our ships in the Hydra system - I'm afraid -" The operative hesitated for a moment. "I'm afraid that we might be dealing with a breakout situation, sir."

"I am well aware of that," her boss said without the slightest flinch, and he looked at her, then, his eerie blue eyes standing out sharply in the reddish gloom of the star. "Failsafes were activated almost ten minutes before the Captain sent his message, and I've been monitoring the situation ever since."

"Ah!" Roberts looked away. "Well, if that's -"

"There is no need to fear punishment," he said calmly. "I do not shoot the messenger. Still, despite the obvious problems, some good has come from this. Project Prometheus has had unusual results." He shook his head slowly, seeming barely aware of her presence. "I want you to alert Leng - I will require his assistance."

"K-Kai Leng?"

"Obviously." The Illusive Man smiled viciously. "Someone has to clean up the mess."

"That was disappointingly easy, you know..." Harry wiggled his wand back and forth distractedly as he looked at the tall man in front of him, currently hovering about a foot off the ground and bound tightly in conjured ropes. He wiggled back and forth as if he was certain he'd get rid of his bindings any moment now; he probably assumed they were made of actual twine. No need to disabuse him of the notion.

"Who the hell are you?" the captain blurted angrily before he cut himself off once more, glaring fiercely. It seemed the man was fighting between his instinct to shut up and keep from spilling confidential information, and his understandable ire over the fact that someone had hung him from the rafters. It wouldn't take much to convince this one to spill.

"Honestly, you can play dumb all you like, but I don't think my identity's much of a secret to you," Harry observed dryly. "Considering what I found downstairs, you'd be stupid not to know. For a given definition of downstairs. Back in my day, we had to float around for this stuff - it was actually kind of fun..." The renewed wizard leaned back in the captain's own chair with a smile, enjoying the softness of the padding as he stared at its original occupant. "I figured out a few things on my own, at least. You're from Cerberus, huh?"

"Hmpf."

Harry glanced over one of the many little screens that were visible all across the bridge, most of which displayed the same hexagonal symbol he'd noticed on the suits of the people who freed him. "I knew a Cerberus once - Fluffy was a nasty critter, but he had a rather touching weakness for music…" He grinned at the memory, rolling his wand around in his hand just to get used to the smooth motion of his fingers again. "Something tells me that you people need a little more hands-on treatment, though."

"I - swear -" the captain growled. "It's always you goddamn biotic rebels!" he burst out, his veins bulging at his temples. "People like you are shot on sight in half the galaxy, and for good reason!" he declared hotly. "I got the word out before you arrived, so nothing you can do to me will prevent Cerberus from taking you into custody and locking you away forever!"

"Ah, so we've descended to taunts and empty threats now?" Harry sighed. "Boooring." He gestured vaguely behind him, and raised an eyebrow. "Have you seen the piles of soldiers back there? It's sort of ridiculous. They'll get back up - eventually - but they didn't take much punishment, did they? Went down to stunners of all things. What do you think another bunch of those types will do?"

"That's - I don't -" the man sputtered. "You have nowhere to run, you... you lunatic!" he added. "They will blow this ship apart with you in it, if that's necessary!" He attempted something of a threatening expression, though his spread-eagle floating didn't make it too convincing.

"You really believe that, don't you? Don't trust your superiors to care for your safety much, do you?" Harry wondered as he leaned back, closing his eyes. "This isn't the first time I've been called on 'lunacy', either. My wife always thought the description was fairly flattering." He sighed, rubbing his chin distractedly. "Anyway, I've figured out that I'm some sort of clone, and that this is the future - exciting stuff, I'm sure! Mind telling me a little more, though? Half this computer malarkey is gobbledygook to me, and I don't have a Goblin around for translating…" He tapped the screens to his side, shrugging. "The 'autopilot' should work, I guess. I wonder what 'Omega' stands for?"

"No!" the captain blurted in a high-pitched squeak, paling dramatically as he shook his head. After a long moment, he let out a defeated sigh. "...Alright, you got me. I'll talk. Just - don't make us pirate-bait, please?"

Harry smirked. "Yeah, I totally called that bluff. Go me," he cheered lightly, and he lowered the man from the ceiling until the ropes reoriented themselves, strapping him to one of the navigators' chairs instead. "Omega means space pirates, I'm guessing? I never met a pirate before - do they still have peg legs and eye patches?" He paused, frowning. "Hold on - I guess I have met one before…"

"Omega's - bad news. You don't want to go there. Ever," the captain offered, shuddering. "Look - I was just hired to transport things, and Cerberus pays well. I'm not involved in whatever they were doing down there in the cargo hold. Biotics experiments and such - I really don't care about that. I don't ask questions, and I get paid. Can't a man have an honest job?" He winced. "Semi-honest, at least?"

Harry wasn't impressed. "Hey, I was busy being dead, and you don't hear me complaining that I got rudely interrupted!" he complained. "What is this 'Biotics' thing I keep hearing about, anyway? The scientist guy back at my pod said the same thing, and I've got no clue what it's supposed to mean..."

"Biotics," the captain repeated, frowning. "It's… you don't know?" He looked blankly at Harry, and the mostly ethereal ropes that were still tying him to the spot. "You're some kind of freak natural, aren't you? Biotics means Eezo-control by people, you know? Moving things with your mind, making barriers, that sort of thing… Pretty much what you are doing..."

Harry looked down at his wand, raising his eyebrows. Biotics meant magic? "Eezo? That's what they're calling it these days?" he murmured, bemused. "And everyone knows about that sort of thing, I suppose?"

The man stared at him. "Of course! How can you not know about it?"

"Words change over time, I guess," Harry drawled, smiling warmly. "So, there's no Statute of Secrecy anymore! The politicians must've finally pulled their heads out of their collective…" He paused, clearing his throat. "Well, Hermione really should've been here to see this." He whirled his wand around merrily. "I was a bit afraid I'd have to obliviate the whole ship, so that's a load off my back!"

The captain grimaced. "You were planning on blowing up the ship? With yourself on board?"

"What?" Harry inquired incredulously. "Of course not… Where'd you get that idea?" He ignored the spluttering in response to that. "Anyway, that's one problem solved. On to the next!" He fumbled with the controls on the side of the chair, tapping the buttons in hopes of getting some results. "Look, I don't know much about how to fly spaceships, much less where I should take one of them. Astronomy - well, there was a commotion during my exams, and I never really studied much beyond constellations anyway..." He scratched his chin nervously. "Seeing as you guys cloned me, and I sort of incapacitated everyone onboard, would you mind dropping me off somewhere comfortable and calling it even? Preferably before your friends arrive? If you get twitchy, I can add an 'or else'."

The captain swallowed. "Or else?"

Harry grinned deviously. "I can get pretty creative."

Despite his obvious reluctance, the captain didn't have much choice in his current situation, and he probably didn't want to get blown up by his allies. It didn't take much to getthe huge ship slowly rocking into gentle motion again, ostensibly towards a 'relay'. The pilot, the only person he'd revived from a stunner, was shaking like a leaf and glancing repeatedly over his shoulder towards Harry, but it seemed like there was more than just residual effects of the stunner that were keeping him rooted in place.

"So you're the one who flies this birdie, huh?" Harry asked lightly, glancing down at the man as he leaned in to have a look - the man seemed to freeze in place. "I'm a bit of a whiz at flying myself, actually - though I wouldn't dare touch the controls on this ship. Way too complicated." He nodded slowly, puzzled by the fancy controls but trying not to show it. "I'm a few decades out of date, I admit, so I figured you could get me up to speed?"

The man just whimpered as he ducked away.

"Hey. Hey - I'm not going to hurt you," Harry assured him. "The only reason I had to slap some sense into people back there was because they brought out their guns first - trigger-happy, the lot of them. That's what you get with the military - you just jumped out at the wrong time and got a face full. I fixed it, though! Forgive and forget?"

There wasn't much of a response to that. Harry studied the large video screen behind the pilot's controls, trying to see if he recognized anything there, but it wasn't very clear. It depicted the galaxy, speckled with bright blinking dots here and there across the disk, as well as a single persistently shining dot which was the brightest of all. They weren't stars, but the lights had to mean something. What was he looking at? Colonies, maybe? "You people carved out quite an empire," Harry murmured slowly. "Halfway across the galaxy in less than a century…" He paused. "Well, I suppose Cerberus probably didn't do all that much. You guys just desecrated my grave."

"G-grave?" the pilot asked carefully, staring up with wide eyes.

"Yeah, seems like even Muggles are getting into Necromancy these days. Ask the - well, they're stunned, but there's some scientist-types somewhere in the back of the ship." Harry sighed forlornly. "I guess my final resting place ended up being the Moon of all places. A certain someone's choice, definitely. Probably thought her namesake could keep me safe." He shook his head as he smiled fondly. "And then, well - I suppose someone got greedy."

Harry stretched, enjoying his newfound youth as he looked back towards the captain who was still strapped in a chair and scowling viciously. He didn't speak, probably aware that his temper would just make it more likely that he'd blurt something sensitive, so he was probably a little more involved with 'Cerberus' than just being a space trucker. Not that he'd admit that.

A change of topic was probably in order, just to get the awkward silence out of the way. "So, how many of us are there, exactly?" Harry asked curiously, gesturing to himself. "You know - um - Biotics? Is that how you say it?"

"How many…?" The captain frowned in confusion. "What, in total? I don't know - a few hundred thousand, maybe? I don't keep count…"

"Still a minority, huh?" Harry observed calmly. "That figures."

"Yeah. Except those Asari witches," the Cerberus captain murmured, and he looked as if he'd smelled something noxious. "Is that what you are, then? Some kind of fucked-up crossbreed?" He pulled on the ropes that kept him tied up. "This kind of fancy Eezo-control seems like their work. Too damn artsy by half!"

Harry sighed. "I don't know exactly what that means, but I can guess. I am currently a Muggleborn, I'll have you know," he said, shaking his head. "I guess there will always be bigots…" He waved vaguely at the man, conjuring a gag into existence. "When you're ready to be civil, just yell. Loudly, obviously, there's a gag in the way."

Turning back to the map of the galaxy, he just stared blankly at the blinking dots. To say he was out of his depth was an understatement. He knew little or nothing about this weird future, except for the stray bits he'd picked up from the people on board, and he doubted that Cerberus would be that interested in giving accurate information to their escaped test subject. Making any sort of plans wouldn't do much without some quality time with a history book. Still, he knew a few places that should be safe enough.

"Could you take me to Earth?" Harry asked the pilot, keeping his distance in case the man was going to freak out again. As it was, he already jerked nervously. "Please?"

"N-No," the man answered at length, clearly terrified at that answer. "Not without losing our charge first," he answered haltingly, gesturing to an unlabelled indicator at the side of his screens. "We're - only a few hours from saturation."

Harry stared. "Charge? You need to lose electricity?" he tried, cocking his head to the side. "But electricity is what's running the ship, right? Losing it seems - counterproductive."

Okay, now the pilot was staring at him as if he'd said the Moon was made of cheese. Good job sounding smart, Potter.

"I don't know this stuff," Harry argued defensively. "It's a small miracle that I know how anything works, after skipping Muggle school since age eleven." Maybe Hogwarts should've added some math and physics to the curriculum? Or Muggle Studies covered that? Not that he'd ever cared to find out… "Okay, what do you need to do in order to get me to Earth?"

"We need to land," the pilot answered immediately. "On a planet, a moon, a space station…"

"To lose electricity," Harry repeated dubiously. "Merlin's beard, I feel like Mr. Weasley with his rubber duckies right now…" That comment just got him another incredulous stare. "Okay, how about you tell me where this electricity is, and I see what I can do about losing it?"

That look was going to very infuriating, that much was obvious.

"Just explain it to me like I'm five. Assume that I can casually break all the rules of physics, but that I need to know which ones to break. Can you do that? Right. How do I fix things?" Harry waved his wand surreptitiously, trying to calm the man down a little, though his spell didn't really work too well without some focus. Making elaborate gestures and speaking faux-Latin would probably just make the pilot more nervous, though. "Trust me, I want to help."

"There's…" The pilot tapped some buttons, bringing up a cross-section diagram of the ship, which showed a rather large and luminous object towards the back of the vessel. "That's the drive core - it gets charged over time, and if it gets too high, it discharges into the ship. It'd - it'd kill everyone, and fuse the ship to a lump of metal!" He grimaced at that. "We have to land within three hours, now. We were set to arrive half a day ago, but…"

"Delays, traffic, bad space weather?" Harry guessed idly, studying the diagram. "Right, so you've got so much electricity you don't know what to do with it. Too much of a good thing, huh? I admit, I've never actually vanished energy before, though fire probably comes close…" He smiled jovially. "Well, there's a first time for everything!"

"What… What are you going to do?" the man demanded fearfully, staring at the raised wand. It seemed to have jarred him from his stupor, too.

"Ah, don't worry - I'm pretty good at this sort of jiggery-pokery thing," Harry assured him. "I admit, I'm about twenty years out of practice…" He frowned. "Maybe more like a hundred-twenty, technically. Still, a young brain and a young body makes me nostalgic." Harry wondered why the man was paling despite the calming charm. "I'll have this ship flying in top shape before you can say 'Quidditch'!"

"Q-Quidditch?"

"Ah, now you made a liar out of me," he said dramatically. "I'll have to make up for it with speed. Keep this place flying for a while, will you? I'm going to work a little magic."

Harry smiled all the way to the door as the distraught cries of the pilot, trying to clamber out of his seat on half-stunned legs, were joined by the muffled curses of the captain. Sometimes, it was entirely too much fun to rile up the Muggles. He could see the appeal, even if he mostly saved it for particularly unfriendly examples, like the Dursleys.

Now, how about that 'drive core'...