The Defensive Space Force Ship Requirement

by tkepner

Harry Potter, and the rest of Dumbledore's Army in his fifth year, use the Room of Requirement to get themselves a spaceship! The problems of a tiny island on Earth don't seem so important, anymore. Wizards in Space! What could possibly go wrong with that? Eventually, this will be a crossover with Stargate SG-1.

29. Ch 29 — Cruisin'

Ch. 29 — Cruisin'

Josephine was so excited she had difficulty concentrating the week after the Hogwarts Express brought the students home for the summer. She kept eyeing the store's clock almost hourly. Time seemed to stand still!

The idea of actually seeing and visiting the other planets in the Solar System was beyond exciting for a Star Trek fan.

Then, abruptly, it was Saturday and in a whirlwind of running around, she was on the D.S.F.S. Requirement with the other parents. Everyone had either gone to the Enterprise or Return to Tomorrow Videos shops. They had used the hidden vanishing cabinets to transfer to the Requirement floating six-hundred some miles overhead.

Only when she arrived on-board with six dozen other parents did she realize that this tour was for all the Hogwarts students and their families to show off what they envisioned for their future! She knew that Dennis and Colin Creevey weren't due to graduate anytime soon, Dennis certainly wouldn't next year!

Unfortunately, Marietta had drawn first shift, from midnight until eight. On the other hand, that meant she could spend part of the day with them! An invigoration potion would take care of any drowsiness she might feel on her next shift.

It was beyond bizarre to see house-elves bustling about in such a high-tech environment. While the house-elves took their bags and luggage to the rooms they would have on the ship during the tour, their children escorted them there and gave them a chance to "freshen up" — and enjoy the view out the windows of the Earth above them!

Then they were escorted to the dining hall — and what a hall it was! Some of the wizards and witches thought one wall was a giant floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall mural of Saturn, until they realized they were looking out a window!

There, they were treated to a buffet worthy of any feast at Hogwarts, but with an incredibly diverse spread that clearly crossed multiple cultures.

After the main meal, Harry stood up and went to small stage at one end of the hall. After attracting everyone's attention by tapping a glass, he said, "I am pleased to welcome you all here, today. I'm sure your children have all told you tales about the Requirement, and you'll have the next two weeks to see for yourself what excites them so much about it."

He grinned and looked around the room.

"For the moment, I will give you a brief explanation of what the D.S.F.S. is. We defend people. We explore space. And we do what we want with our lives. That's it."

"A group of us are putting together a plan to terraform Mars and set up a colony for magical creatures only; Merfolk, centaurs, unicorns, all the endangered species that are being crowded out by the muggles. We hope to start moving them there within the next decade."

"There's a second group doing the same for Venus. Again, the hope is that it won't take more than a decade before we can move in."

There was stunned silence. Except for the relevant groups who were eagerly explaining they were part of the projects.

"Why you ask? Because we can."

The crewmembers all cheered.

"The thing is, if we don't protect our heritage from the muggles, who will? The Ministry certainly doesn't appear interested, do they?"

There were many murmurs of agreement from the audience.

"What if there's life on them already?" one of the muggle-borns' parents asked.

Harry looked over at Hermione.

"Unless it's microscopic bacteria, neither planet contains anything we might consider alive," she said, shaking her head. Then she waved her arms to indicate the ship around her. "On the other hand, the existence of this ship proves that there is very sophisticated life out in the rest of the universe. Plus, based on what we have found in the Library, not all of it is what we would consider friendly." She glanced at Luna, Ginny, and the two Marines beside them, "That's one reason why we've been so proactive in building up our Marine contingent."

She smirked. "And a bit of why we're interested in moving to other planets — insurance in case someone takes exception to our being on Earth."

After another half-hour of answering questions, dessert was served and people began discussing among themselves what the D.S.F. was doing. By the time they started to break up, it was quite late on Saturday, so they went to their rooms. Their cabins would have done an upscale hotel proud, Josephine decided! Then she and her George spent the rest of the evening talking with Marietta. Tomorrow would bring the first day of their tour.

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It started with a stunning breakfast, and a delightful view of Jupiter, giant red spot and all. After the dishes were cleared, Harry again welcomed them all to the ship. "This is more than just a graduation celebration."

"I am happy to announce, if your children haven't already directly told you, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Lord Voldemort, also known as the half-blood Tom Riddle," that garnered more than a few disbelieving exclamations, "is gone."

"As we were building the Defensive Space Force, we saw a problem with the pure-bloods using the Ministry to protect themselves while persecuting the non-pure-bloods, especially the muggle-born and those they regarded as blood-traitors and undesirable half-bloods."

He paused and looked at the solemn audience.

"So, we did something about it. We came up with Pocket Panic Watches, and started protecting anyone who came under attack."

He sighed. "Lieutenant-Commanders Luna Lovegood and Ginny Weasley will now explain their roles as Combat Officer's, and how they did this." He stepped back from the podium. The two witches explained that they were wearing spell-resistant spacesuits that could make them invisible, demonstrated their hover boards, briefly, and then introduced the older Marines that had handled most of the actual work in tagging and securing the majority of the evil wizards and witches.

It was all quite impressive, and extremely hard to believe, considering the build of the two short, slim girls. Neither looked as if she could knock down a house-elf, never mind a full-grown adult wizard with years and years of magical experience in fighting.

Then Harry took the podium, again.

"One thing I want to make perfectly clear, though, is that we have never killed anyone. We captured every criminal, and moved them to a prison ship at Uranus. Not that the captured Death Eaters had known that. For all they knew, they were in London!" He scanned the tables, again.

"We tried to warn them. We put messages on the walls that apparition and portkeys would not work, despite them being unable to detect anti-apparition and anti-portkey spells. Unfortunately," Fred and George were up with the two witches and pretended to wipe tears from their eyes, "some of them thought we were lying. They had concealed portkeys that we couldn't find, or they tried to disapparate out. Needless to say, that didn't work. Few wizards can apparate more than a few hundred miles, much less the one point eight billion miles that separates Uranus from Earth, at the moment. The same is true for portkeys. The longer a distance you try to portkey, the more dangerous it becomes. Attempting a portkey of millions of miles has a zero chance of not being fatal, the portkey stalls out long before you can arrive. That's the explanation for all those 'Head of House Change' letters from Gringotts that you've read about."

He took a drink of water to calm his nerves. "I take that back. We did purposely kill one person. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, or, as we prefer to call him, Tommy-boy. Who, as I mentioned, was a half-blood."

Everyone broke into whispered conversation at that titbit.

"He was the son of Merope Gaunt, a squib. His father was a muggle by the name of Tom Riddle. He loved to brag that he was the only Heir of Slytherin. Which was true — he was, because he had killed the rest of his family, both the Riddles and the Gaunts back in the nineteen-fifties, just to eliminate anyone else who might have had a superior claim."

He smiled at their reactions. "Let me show you something he showed me back in Second-year." He proceeded to show them how rearranging Tom Marvolo Riddle led to Lord Voldemort, and explained how Tom even had an award from the school. He gave them a minute for that to sink in.

"Now then, you were told once that he had been killed, when my parents died protecting me from him in 1981." He grimaced at their reaction. "It wasn't me. I was a toddler. How could I have done anything except drool at the wizard?" He shook his head. "It was my mother and father who came up with a scheme to get rid of Tommy-boy if he came calling. And it worked. To a degree." Harry looked around the room.

"Unfortunately, whomever started the rumour he was dead was wrong. He wasn't killed — only his body was destroyed. Which, by the way, according to the Goblins, means I am the Head of the Gaunt family, the Riddle Family, and the Slytherin Family." Harry paused a moment. "Tommy-boy lived on as a wraith until he convinced someone to let him possess them, and then he contrived a way to return to life in a new body." He shrugged,

"He has, again, been made into a wraith."

He smiled. "I'll let Commanders George and Fred Weasley explain how they captured Tommy-boy, and sent him on a one-way trip into interstellar space."

The two happily took over the Podium, and regaled the audience with what they had done. For obvious reasons they didn't say which way they had sent him, nor where he had ended up. They only said he had been left drifting in space, with nothing within millions of miles for him except a giant flaming ball of hot gases.

Neither did they explain anything about how he had come by his alleged immortality. They did say that he was many trillions of miles away from Earth and would not be returning to Earth in any of their lifetimes, or the lifetimes of anyone in this hall! Or their children's children's lifetimes. That was assuming his immortality claims were true, and that he ever figured out where in the universe he was. In fact, they explained, he is soo far away that the Goblins can't detect him using Head of House magic!

A wave of relief seemed to sweep the audience. The murmuring grew a bit louder. Everyone on the platform grinned at them.

"With him sorted, we can work on our other projects," Harry concluded.

"I mentioned the Mars and Venus projects last night," he said. "Now I'll talk a bit about some of the things we're doing on Earth."

He launched into an explanation of the paired Enterprise and Return to Tomorrow Videos stores in Diagon Alley, Dublin, and Paris, and their plans for expanding into Bulgaria, India, Australia, Brazil, and Japan.

Then he mentioned their grocery stores and restaurants that they both had and planned to have: Quark's Restaurant and Grocery in Diagon Alley; Gus's Galaxy Grill restaurant in London Proper; Ten Forward Restaurant and Grocery in Dublin; The Mos Eisley Cantina and Grocery in Paris; and the planned Crashdown Café and Grocery in Bulgaria and Quark's, again, in Mumbai.

This necessitated showing them how the replicator worked to explain how they managed to get the meals in the grocery stores so cheaply. The mid-morning tea and biscuits was quite a hit and a perfect demonstration

Then came the explanation of how they were using a hidden, stripped-down version of a ship to secretly cure cancer and other diseases in the muggle world.

All that took, with two potty breaks, the entire morning. The parents had a buffet luncheon, admiring the new view out the window, and discussing some of what they had learned.

There could be no denying, they were in space! Josephine couldn't help but feel a bit smug that she had been a part of this for over a year. Marietta and her friends were going to truly be travellers among the stars — Star Trekking in real life!

After the luncheon, they moved to a room that over-looked a much larger space, a large gymnasium. Luna and Ginny put on several demonstrations showing how they had operated in the field against the Death Eaters, with several of the Marines standing in for the Death Eaters. Taking out the "Death Eaters" never took more than a handful of seconds. The parents and relatives were given special glasses that let them see the two girls as green figures, even though they were invisible to the naked eye. The girls quickly convinced their audience that, despite their age and seemingly innocent appearance, they were more than capable of dealing with a wizard, no matter how skilful he or she might be.

Everyone was impressed, especially Director Bones. She turned to her niece, Susan, "That's what happened to the Death Eaters who attacked our home?"

Susan mutely nodded yes.

The witch smiled. "And that's how you got help so quickly?" She pointed to Susan's comm-badge.

Another nod.

She grinned, "Good job." She turned to Harry. "And none of the Death Eaters you apprehended were killed by your crew?"

Harry nodded placidly. "We made sure any injuries our prisoners suffered before or during their capture were fully-healed before they awoke in our holding cells in Uranus Base."

"And the Death Eaters who surrendered to the Ministry?"

He shrugged. "We have no interest in running a prison ship." He looked at her levelly. "As soon as we knew they would receive a fair trial, we started sending them to you." He smiled. "We released them slowly because we didn't want to overwhelm the Ministry."

She looked back at him with narrowed eyes. "How did you get them to demand veritaserum? There were no traces of a potion, nor spells, either, in any of them. Although," she mused, "any spells, and any traces of spells, that might have been on them were dispelled and disguised when they apparated to The Leaky Cauldron. Then flooing to the Ministry didn't help." She paused to think.

He shrugged. "We used a confundus to convince them they had taken a potion that rendered them immune to veritaserum. Then a simple obliviate to forget their time aboard the ship to hide our activities from the pure-bloods. A mild compulsion that they should clear their names as soon as possible did the rest. The Death Eaters do have a ridiculously inflated sense of entitlement, ego, and their own abilities, after all."

She slowly nodded and turned back to the ongoing battle between Luna and Ginny, satisfied that the "Crew" had broken no laws, except perhaps kidnapping. Even then, they could claim they were exercising their rights to a citizen arrest. They had both treated the prisoners respectfully and released them to the Ministry. Even the obliviates weren't a problem, under the circumstances, as they merely wanted to protect themselves from retaliation.

After the demonstrations, the two witches had gone on to use both technology and magic in a battle to see who of the two was best — an ongoing competition. It was their tenth "official" rematch, and each had been wilder than the previous. Succeeding against each other as they faced-off was phenomenally difficult. The hoverboards allowed them to use every surface, including the ceiling and walls, as support structures to glide across at full speed. Apparition just made things more confusing.

Director Bones shook her head. "I wish more of my aurors were this skilled at duelling," she said dryly after a few minutes.

Harry sighed. "First, you'd have to convince them to use muggle equipment like the hand-shields, hoverboards, invisibility cloaks." He glanced up at her. "It's an uphill battle for the pure-bloods, I'll tell you. They simply can't seem to understand that the non-magicals are fully capable of wiping wizards out, should they so desire." He pointed at the two duelling witches. "Each of them has taken out multiple Death Eaters in seconds, without the Death Eaters even knowing they were there."

He took a deep breath. "The non-magicals have bombs that can vaporize Hogsmeade from well outside the spells that protect it. They'd send a wall of heat, at fiendfyre temperatures, a thousand yards wide, and twice as high, rolling over the village. What isn't destroyed by the heat would be blasted to the ground by the force of the explosion. It's not just a wall, it's a several-second blast of heat that not only melts rock, but instantly vaporizes it a hundred yards from the detonation site. They're powerful enough to destroy all of London in less than two seconds. Not even fiendfyre can do that. Do you know a spell that could stop that?"

She slowly shook her head.

"You need to stomp down hard on wizards and witches who break the Statute of Secrecy. If you don't, it's only a matter of time before the wizarding world is outed to the muggles in the worst possible way." He paused a moment. "Have one of the muggle-born," he gestured at the parents around them, "explain how cameras are going up on every street corner, and why obliviators aren't the solution, anymore."

Josephine spoke up. "He's right. The muggles in London are putting video-cameras . . .," she saw Madam Bone's expression. She started again, "Video-cameras are visual recorders like the regular cameras wizards use, that are about this big," she mimed something the size of a shoebox, "and send what they see to the muggle Auror headquarters, miles away. They are putting them on every street corner. If a wizard were to shoot a spell, the muggle Aurors miles away would see it and have a recording long before any obliviators could get to the scene." She paused. "Do your obliviators realize that once they clear the scene, they still have to track down the Auror building where the recording is stored to erase it? Plus, some recordings are stored in multiple locations."

She frowned. "The next time the obliviators tell the muggle witnesses it was a gas explosion, the muggle Auror at headquarters would have proof otherwise."

Bones looked back at Harry. "Can they really do that?"

He nodded. Then tapped his comm-link. "Angel?"

A moment later her voice replied, "Yes, Admiral?"

He rolled his eyes. "Do we have any recording from the Requirement of a Death Eater action on the ground?"

"Yes? I think so. Let me check."

There were a few more moments of silence.

"Yes, I've got several."

"Good, send the files to my console on the bridge." He turned to Bones. "We'll go to the bridge after Luna and Ginny finish, and I'll show you what we've recorded with muggle equipment, and you tell me what you think."

She nodded. "Okay."

After Luna and Ginny concluded their latest fight — they ended in a draw, two each — the rest of the group went on a tour of the ship. Harry and Director Bones headed for the bridge. Because Josephine had already had a tour of the ship, she tagged along with them.

Once there, he went to his console, moved the control stones, and one of the windows turned opaque. Then, Angelina's voice started narrating what they were seeing. "This is a view of an attack on a muggle house, September last, with visible light. You can easily see the incendios being cast on the house by the Death Eaters. The weather was especially clear, that night. Unfortunately, you can't see the Death Eaters, just their spells. It's too dark to pick out their black robes."

The one recording appeared to be hovering on a broom about a hundred yards up directly over the house in question. They could see other houses to either side. The houses were illuminated by street lights.

"And now you can see our Combat Team arrive." Green figures abruptly appeared across the street from the one targeted by the Death Eaters. "This recording includes the communications between the team members."

Commands were quickly issued, and the images just as quickly dispersed. Less than ten seconds later came someone's voice announcing, "All clear."

The fires that had been started were put out. Nothing happened for almost ten minutes, then they could see people walking up to the houses on either side of the house that had been attacked. They were sometimes accompanied by the flashes of light that indicated an obliviate had been cast.

"As you can see, it took quite some time for help to arrive, and the obliviators to do their jobs," Harry said quietly. "In that time, if there had been a camera recorder on the street, London would have been sending police officers and firemen to the scene. The next day they would have reviewed what was recorded, and seen Death Eaters using magic."

Then the scene changed. "Here's an attack that took place in the early morning, just after dawn," Angelina's voice said.

It went much like the previous one, except they had a brief view of the Death Eaters.

Harry turned to Amelia. "If there had been a camera on either of those streets, it would have caught the spells cast by the Death Eaters. The muggles would have proof positive of magic, and the wizarding world."

"It wouldn't even have needed an official recorder," Josephine said. "What if someone on the street had had a security camera on their home or a nearby business? That does happen. They could have recorded it and shown it to their friends and the bobbies days later." She sighed. "Plus, if they had been obliviated and then stumbled across the recording? They would have proof of a conspiracy."

Amelia shuddered, and stared mutely at the scene as it replayed.

"Once the military is called in," Harry said dryly, "it's only a matter of time before all our secrets become public. The Witch Trials of the 1600's will look like a child's play-date." He gave her a bleak look. "There was a reason wizards and witches went into hiding rather than confronting and trying to take over three hundred years ago. When you're outnumbered a thousand to one, you will lose any fight you start with the thousand, no matter how powerful you may be."

Harry looked down at his console and moved the control stones. A picture of a castle with a small rural village nearby appeared, clearly taken from several miles away, and at a slight angle, based on the shadows. "This is a picture we took of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade with a standard muggle camera attached to a telescope on the ship." He looked back over at her. "If we can do that, the muggles certainly can, too." He shook his head. "The muggle aversion spells have a limit to their reach. That limit is well below six hundred miles." He gave her a wry smile. "Or no one would remember where Scotland was, or want to visit it."

He sighed. "Hermione tells me the muggle governments routinely spy on each other with cameras looking down on their enemies' territory from space." He glanced at Director Bones. "I don't know how they do it, but it's something like television, I've been told. The only reason we haven't been found is because they simply haven't started to look." He paused. "Perhaps we could cast wide-area illusion spells to hide our buildings? Maybe use fidelius charms to hide them from non-magicals? Would those charms even effect a camera, or the person watching the camera thousands of miles away?" He shrugged. "I don't know the answer or solution to that problem."

They stood in silence for several minutes.

"Well," Harry said. "Let's re-join the tour. I think they're getting to the part where we make them spacesuits."

Both witches gave him incredulous looks.

He grinned. "Didn't anyone tell you about that?" he said innocently.

"Spacesuits?" Josephine asked sceptically.

He nodded. "A trip into space wouldn't be complete without at least stepping outside the spaceship, once, right?"

Shaking their heads, they followed him as he headed into the rest of the spaceship.

The rest of the day they spent acclimating to the spacesuits, and getting an outside view of the Requirement using several drones!

Monday and Tuesday, they spent learning about their spacesuits and how the hoverboards worked. One of the larger rooms — another gymnasium? — had been converted to a race track.

Then they spent a day in zero-gravity — stomach soothers were handed out first.

Mercury, Josephine discovered on Thursday, was a lot like the moon. They were nearly the same size, and both were heavily cratered. The difference was that Mercury was much, much hotter. They landed at the North Pole of the planet, and wandered around for some time just getting used to the idea of being on another planet! Not to mention the sheer size of the Sun that dominated the horizon, nearly three times as large as the sun appeared from Earth.

The hoverboards allowed them to travel quite a distance in their exploring, but each of them always had their child escorting them, and they travelled in groups with a Marine.

Then it was on to Venus the following day. The crew chose Maxwell Montes, the tallest mountain range on Venus, to land on. It was about seven miles, eleven kilometres, above the average radius of the planet. Due to its elevation, it was the coolest spot on the planet, about three hundred and eighty degrees Celsius, or seven hundred sixteen degrees Fahrenheit, she was told. The pressure there was only about forty-five times that of Earth, or the equivalent of about four hundred and sixty meters, almost fifteen hundred feet, underwater. Josephine couldn't imagine what that was like, and now she and her George had actually experienced it! Just taking a step was a major chore, and the hoverboards could barely move them faster than a crawl.

Their space suits were more than up to the challenge, although there really wasn't much to see. It was far too dark under the thick clouds. About the only thing she could say, later, was that the Venus was red — like, dark-red.

Their next stop was the Moon. "Now," Dean Thomas quipped, "You can all say you know what the Darkside of the Moon looks like." They spent some time there playing with the hoverboards. It was weird thinking that below her feet, thousands and thousands of miles away, was home, Earth. The stars had never been so clear. Then they took a short excursion to the North Pole, and took wizarding pictures of themselves on the moon with the Earth hovering above the horizon behind them.

They spent the sixth day, Saturday, at Mars, visiting both the Mars 3 and Viking One and Two landing sites. They were shown the pictures of what the vehicles had sent back to Earth, and could compare them to what they were seeing. Josephine vaguely remembered hearing about all three, but it was another thing to actually see them and realize how difficult a feat it must have been!

And the pictures? She had to smile at seeing the other wizards and witches being amazed at seeing incontrovertible evidence that the muggles, the lowly muggles, had actually guided three machines from Earth to land on Mars — and sent pictures of what was there. Which was something no wizard had ever thought to do! Or even, could do.

Maybe, just maybe, she heard some of the pure-blood and more wizardly half-blood parents saying, the muggles needed to be taken seriously.

They carefully stayed away from anything that might record their presence. As the crew explained, they planned to put all the spacecraft that the muggles had successfully landed on Mars under protective domes when they started making atmospheric changes that summer. They were of historical importance, and should be preserved.

She saw the Director Bones was shaken at seeing the pictures. If the muggles could take pictures of the Mars surface, and send them back to Earth, they could certainly do the same with pictures from close Earth orbit. The things that Harry had shown her took on a bit more of a reality. She couldn't put it off as him exaggerating their abilities based on the Requirement.

The flight through the asteroid belt had several interesting stops at different asteroids, including one that was solid iron. "It has," as Dean Thomas said, "more iron than has been mined from Earth by mankind, period. Even us." All the asteroids they visited were the size of mountains, miles across in every direction, slowly and eerily rotating in the sun's light, some quickly, some slowly. Many even had smaller asteroids orbiting them!

Jupiter was amazing, its moon Ganymede was about a quarter larger than Mercury, but only half as massive. Callisto was nearly as large as that planet, but only one-third as massive. They were told that was because they had far more ices in their makeup than anything else. Neither had an atmosphere worth mentioning. Still, she walked on the surfaces of two of Jupiter's moons.

Saturn was spectacular, and its moon, Titan, was quite boring. It was larger than Mercury, but not by much. Like the moons of Jupiter, though, it came in at only forty-percent the mass of Mercury. The moon's orange atmosphere was . . . depressingly like the smog she sometimes saw in London — only orange all the time. You could only see Saturn because it was so large and close.

Then it was on to Uranus, where they were given tours of both Uranus Base, the greenhouses, and a Fuel Depot. Discovering that there was an entire village of werewolves living there set the pure-bloods and many of the half-bloods back on their heels. Especially when they were told that many of them hadn't had a transformation since the beginning of the year!

On the other hand, she had to admit the werewolves were looking much better than she had ever seen one. None seemed to have the eternally tired air that she had heard they had always seemed to project. They were also so much more cheerful. Not being despised and discriminated against would raise anyone's mood, Josephine knew.

By this time, they had all had a chance at the X-Wing fighter simulators. Some of the muggles and muggle-borns had to be almost forced to leave the simulators on-board the Requirement to tour the various planets and moons when they arrived at each, which made her laugh.

Boys and their toys, as her mother used to say. Except some the witches had been just as difficult to drag away.

The pure-bloods had been unsure of the appeal at first, but the enthusiasm of the fighter aficionados soon had them convinced.

Neptune and Pluto rounded things out.

Finally, the two weeks were up and they had to return home. This was when Harry, once more, surprised everyone. Before they were transported down to the surface, by either the vanishing cabinets or apparition, Harry had the crew hand out to the parents of each crew member a long, rectangular box.

"This," he said, "is your souvenir of the tour." He held up an unboxed picture frame. At one end was the slim curve of what was clearly the sun. Then each of the planets was indicated. Mercury and Venus were represented by small rocks sealed in glass, which, he explained, were rocks actually from those planets. Earth was a realistic, rotating picture, but the moon was a rock from the moon. Mars had its representative rock. The gas giant planets were incredibly-detailed pictures like the one of Earth, but the moons they had visited were highlighted with . . . rocks from their surfaces!

"You can't really tell anyone these are real, they wouldn't believe you, but the next time you walk outside at night and look up to see a planet, you can say to yourself, 'I've been there!' You are all members of a select group of people who have visited every planet in our solar system!" He paused a moment to let them think that over. "I hope you enjoyed yourselves over the last two weeks, and the spacesuits and hoverboards are yours to keep. Wear them to your next Halloween party!" He grinned and waved at them, and started to leave the room.

"Oh," he said, snapping his fingers, and turning back. "Before I forget, Dobby?" A table shimmered into view piled high with small coin bags. "Here you go, one per family. Inside each is a hundred galleons and a key to a Swiss bank deposit-box, with instructions. Inside the deposit box is a muggle four-hundred troy-ounce bar of gold. My gift to each of you to celebrate the permanent banishing of the Dark Lord! The Hogwarts graduates have already received my gift to them."

He coughed; a bit embarrassed. "They aren't pure gold, though. The Goblins get quite testy about that. So do the muggles. So, the bars actually weigh a bit more than that. By an ounce or two. If you want to cash them in, go right ahead, the officers at the bank will be more than happy to help you, without charge, it's already been paid-for. You can say a rich relative left it to you in an unmarked box." He grinned. "The safe deposit boxes also contain a thousand galleons, more than enough for a trip to Switzerland for a week for the family."

The crewmembers were facepalming.

He clapped his hands together. "So, on that happy note, Goodbye." This time he turned and walked out.

Josephine shook her head as she looked at her George. "That boy has no monetary sense at all, does he?" she murmured. George nodded.

He sighed and shook his head. "I fear that all of the crew will end up like that." He looked at her and smiled. "They can make almost anything they want."

She slowly nodded back. It was a paradigm shift in thinking.

She sighed. Too bad the boy was so taken with Miss Granger, or she'd hint to Marietta that he would be a nice boyfriend. He might be a year younger than her, but he had some other, quite sterling, qualities to offset that. He did seem to be remarkably mature for a wizard his age.

Except for his lack of money-sense.

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After the planets' tour, the rest of the summer was rather boring for Josephine and her George. They quickly traded-in the gold bar, and put the money in a muggle interest-bearing account. Considering they were already making triple what they used to, they didn't need any more income. They would save the money for emergency use, or their retirement. Which, it looked like, was going to be a long time coming, and only when they wanted it.

Besides, what they were doing with Enterprise and Return to Tomorrow Videos were essential to the D.S.F.. Quitting to stay home or travel seemed so . . . selfish. Especially as she knew they were trying to build a new home for wizards and witches far from the muggles who might try to harm them.

Not to mention it was so much fun watching the new Hogwarts muggle-borns go wide-eyed and slack-jawed at what the store offered. They had thought magic was amazing! Magic and space was simply mind-boggling. Unfortunately, she knew, it would be a decade until they started to see any larger numbers of muggle-borns coming into the Alley, now that the Death Eaters weren't going to the locations of muggle-born accidental magic and killing the families.

Still, the half-dozen or so muggle-borns and half-bloods who had never seen the store before, each year until then, would make it worthwhile.

She knew she would miss it if she left.

The Alley had changed for the better — a lot better — over the last year. It was like she remembered it from long ago, when she was a little girl. The Alley was alive with laughter and joy.

Sometimes, there was a pure-blood, or pure-blood wannabe, scowling in the background, but they kept their mouths shut. Just because the mysterious disappearances had stopped didn't mean they couldn't start up, again, if the pure-bloods were indiscrete. The conservatives had noticed that wizards hadn't disappeared because of what they said, but what they did. On the other hand, none of the more stuck-up wizards and witches wanted to take the chance the mysterious vigilantes might decide to change their criteria for action. All the grumbling took place behind closed doors, and only with close friends or family.

The best part of the summer for Josephine, however, was having her Marietta home almost every night for dinner. She might occasionally sleep on the ship in her cabin, but that was the exception and not the rule.

Now, if only that girl would start mentioning a boyfriend, and not simply a boy friend or a crew friend!

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