Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Star Wars, Predator or any of the characters attached.
A/N: this chapter would have been updated earlier, but my Internet was down.
Chapter 26: Interlude.
"You know, I'm still curious as to why she gave Daphne and me an entrapment potion." Harry asked; he was lying in bed, at 6:30 in the morning, on January the third, the morning that the students would return for lessons to start the next day, Daphne was sleeping on his left, while Blaise was sat at the desk looking over some papers for the DAI (intelligence).
"I've been thinking about that, I'd say that it was insurance; if she performed the loyalty test to get closer to them so she could spy on them for us, then getting her pregnant would drive a wedge between us, and she'd have to run, or I'd kill her. That's what I recon they thought, could have been something else, but it's unlikely."
"Okay." Harry said before drifting back to sleep.
"Sleep, love. You'll need the energy tomorrow; we're going back into compression time." Blaise said with a fond smile, before leaving for 'High Q' (High Q stands for Intelligence Headquarters) to update some files.
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"Alright, welcome to your second compression time, and the first of the new year, I hope you had a good holiday, 'cause the next month is going to be hell!" Harry started. "You're only here for a month this time, but it's going to be a lot more intensive. Su Li has convinced her father to tutor us in martial arts, and physical fitness," he said as he indicated a man stood in shadows to the side of the stage. "But first, I want to show you something the Weasley twins are making for us."
Harry then walked to the back of the stage, and levitated a box to the front. Then he stepped to the side of the box and tapped it three times with his wand, causing the box to vanish, revealing the contents: a matt black suit of armour (1).
"This suit of armour, is only a theory to the muggles at the moment, but within fifty years, the most advanced muggle armed forces in the world will be equipped with this sort of armour. But we could have had it a hundred and fifty years ago if the wizarding world wasn't so backwards about advancement."
"The armour, consists of a powerful titanium steel exo-skeleton, capable of resisting a hyper-velocity rifle, for those of you that don't know about muggle weapons, you could hit this with a powerful reductor, and it would barely scratch it…and that's without magical augmentation! The suit enhances the wearers strength by fifty percent, will completely stop all but the Avada Kedavra, and even then it weakens it to the point that it will only knock you out, that however is still a weakness, as the AK will strip it of magical shielding, making it vulnerable to other curses. It also has a casting crystal in the palm of each hand, allowing you to cast spells without a wand, and has retractable blades on the back of the wrist."
"Inside the helmet is an advanced Heads-up-display, or HUD, it shows live mapping information, unit locations, friendly, neutral and hostile. The visor has three vision modes; enhanced, which is just more defined, night vision, which allows you to see in the dark, thought everything is in a different shade of green, and thermal, which lets you see an objects heat; humans and all human variations apart from vampires appear as red and white blobs, same with all warm blooded creatures, dementors and vampires are virtually invisible to this vision mode.
"The suit even has a stealth capability, but it is nowhere near effective enough to make you totally invisible, as you still give off a heat signature or silent. However, despite the fact it sounds invincible, it isn't, if you're out numbered, you can be dragged down, and the armour pulled off, that leaves you just as vulnerable as everyone else. In a fight, your skills will protect you just as much as the armour, so, until the twins have enough armour for everyone, we practice like last time, just more in less time!"
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Harry just smiled, Mr Li, or sensei, as he had them call him, had been a godsend, the DA was fully trained, and it was now only march, compression time was only being held for the research and development group, who were now engrossed in making what they called an 'odds evening device', that he had discovered, was more commonly known as 'a whopping great cannon'.
Or more precisely, a plasma cannon, they'd experimented with plasma, energy, railgun, raw magic and lightning cannons, only to discover that the plasma one was more effective, so now they were making a small battery of them.
The DA had been equipped with, and become proficient in the use of, the armour, and were now capable of, he thought, taking on even the inner circle.
The war effort for the light side was looking up.
Harry just smirked as he remembered sensei explaining that he wanted to see some proper discipline, and that he'd decided that the easiest way to get that was to teach them drill. Or, as he explained the purebloods, marching in perfect unison and precision. It had taken an entire month in compression to teach them how to march properly, but now they could do it in their sleep…well, almost.
The DAs potions stock had gone up immensely, each person had twenty-four hours worth of Felix Felicis, in four vials each. On top of that, they all had a minor healing and major energy potion each, kept in pouches on their webbing belts, the combat healers had more specialist healing potions as well.
The only thing of worry was the fact that Voldemort had gone silent, which meant something big was going to happen.
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"My lord, perhaps we should launch some raids, it will keep the ministry on their feet and pushed to the limit." A three and a half months pregnant Bellatrix LeStrange asked 'her' lord.
"You are lucky you are pregnant, Bellatrix, if you weren't I would have punished you for questioning me. You still haven't told me who impregnated you." A high pitched hissing voice enquired.
"I am sorry my lord, I am just worried about the preparations the ministry is pushing into place. I don't know who did it, I didn't see them."
"I don't care about the ministry, they are nothing, they are fools, they don't stand a chance against us. Potter, however, is something else, he must be stopped."
"My lord, don't you think you are becoming obsessed with the boy, you will kill him sooner or later, but if you had control of the ministry, then you would be able to order the people to hunt for him, we could then swoop down and kill him."
"HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME!" the dark lord bellowed, which, despite his high pitched voice, was scary. He raised his wand, and was about to curse her, when he remembered why he couldn't, so he turned on his favourite toy; Wormtail.
After holding him under the Cruciatus curse for a minute, he released it and turned back to Bella. "You do raise a good point though. Hmm, our forces are ready for a large battle, yes, but before we act, we must draw out some Aurors to deal with, to test that our worst are good enough."
The dark lords fortress was filled with a terrifying cackle; the two big players in the war were about to lock horns.
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"I hereby call this meeting of the order of the phoenix to order." Dumbledore said, bringing the fifty people that were crammed in the specially enlarged kitchen of Number 12 Grimmauld Place, to silence. "First thing on the agenda, is Severus's report."
"The dark lord is preparing for a large scale offensive, I don't know the target, but I would guess the ministry."
"Professor, how large are Voldemorts forces?" Harry asked.
"Huge, he has around ten thousand werewolves, five thousand vampires, a thousand dementors, around seven hundred death eaters, five hundred trolls, eighty giants, and uncounted thousands of inferi."
"Christ, there is know way he would gather that many for an attack on the ministry, that'll be Hogwarts." Rose said before turning to Ron. "Can we defend against that?"
"Not all out. An all out attack, we'd rip most of them to shreds, but, he'd still have enough to wipe us out and still have enough to take the ministry out. But, if he plays it safe and attacks with, say…half, we could beat them, with all the stuff we've got, OEDs, armour, etc. we could beat them on paper, in practice, I can't say." He answered gathering shocked sounds from the rest of the order.
"No one could defend against that, I agree that the target is Hogwarts, but the only way to survive that is to retreat and take them out a few at a time."
"We can do it, we've been working on a shield, that, when raised, will block absolutely anything. The problem is the power drain, we've grown thousands of energy crystals, but they'll burn out within three days of powering this shield." Hermione explained, telling a half-truth, they had been working on a shield, but the DA would be able to out fight a few thousand inferi easily, just hit them with incendio.
"Nothing can block the Avada Kedavra." Snape sneered at the girl, confident that he could pick apart her wording if nothing else.
"Actually, there are three ways of surviving it. One, get out of the way, two, conjure, transfigure or hide behind a physical object, and three, the blood shield."
"Harry, how did you transfer the blood protection you are under into a shield?"
"Magic, professor, we used magic." He smirked. "Nothing is impossible if you look at the problem from all points of view and with all the information. Me and Rose are blood descendants of two of the founders, that gives us total control of Hogwarts wards, and, allowed us to attach the shield into them, using mine and Roses blood to seal it. And when she said it would stop anything, she meant it. The most powerful weapon in the world is the muggle nuclear bomb, this shield will withstand a direct hit from one of them."
"What's a 'new clear' bomb?"
"A 'nuclear' bomb is a weapon so powerful, that one could wipe London of the face of the earth. Now, were getting off track, are we agreed that the main target is probably going to be Hogwarts? Yes? Good, we can move on."
"Remus, your report on the where werewolves loyalties lie."
"They are loyal to no one, three of the bigger packs have joined Voldemort, bringing the total in his forces up to 10,207. Several other packs are thinking about joining, only because he's offering them equality, while the ministry just passed a bill that will make it legal to hunt werewolves for sport."
"That is bad news, we must do everything in our power to stop the rest from joining. Next, Kingsley."
"There are one hundred and fifty Auror recruits that have just been put through training, so we now have two hundred and fifty."
"Not good, add to thatthe fifty non-Aurors in the order, and we have three hundred people to fight off an attack on Hogwarts."
"Professor, do you know the location of Voldemorts fortress?" Harry asked, directing the question to Snape.
"No, it's under Fidelus, he doesn't even know whom the secret keeper is to protect the secret from you."
"Okay. Headmaster, what plans are in place to defend Hogwarts and Hogsmeade?"
"Why do you say Hogsmeade?"
"If you want to attack somewhere, you have to have somewhere nearby for the fighters to prepare and rest during the siege. I've looked at the maps, and the closest place to Hogwarts is Hogsmeade, add to that the fact that the easiest, and quickest way to get a large army to Hogwarts, is to go straight up the road from Hogsmeade." Ron stated, causing Dumbledore to become thoughtful.
"And then, just to sweeten the deal, the place can be easily fortified, hell, we've done most of the work for them by putting the apparition and portkey wards up. It's in the bottom of a valley, with Hogwarts on the top of one peak, and broken rocks on the other, making a substantial attack on the village from that quarter almost impossible. Down the valley on one side is Hogsmeade station, it seals most of the valley up, and would slow down an attacking force by forcing them into a bottleneck, where they'd be massacred."
"On the other side, it is mainly open, allowing a large force to attack almost unimpeded. Our only real problem is getting the people out of Hogsmeade and to safety. I'd suggest the shrieking shack, but we sealed that a few days ago."
"The Honeydukes passage," Harry said after a moments thought. "We can seal it off with two feet thick titanium doors, when we lock them we'll use a transfiguration lock to turn them into a part of the wall, add an alarm onto that, so if they are breached, we'll know about it then, not when they are inside Hogwarts. We can do the same with the shrieking shack."
"Harry, you seam to be dealing with the defence quite well, why don't I leave the details up to you?" Dumbledore asked in humour, meaning it to be a joke, shame that Harry has no time for humour in these sorts of situations.
"Okay, when word arrives that Voldemort is about to attack, I need the Aurors to evacuate the Hogsmeade residents to the secret passage beneath Honeydukes, Padma Patil will be there to let you through. I'll deal with slowing down Voldemorts forces long enough for you to do that."
The meeting went on like that, with information being supplied, and plans made and changed, when they were interrupted.
"KINGSLEY! WE NEED BACK UP!" a voice bellowed from Kingsley Shacklebolt's pocket.
"What is it?" he asked as he drew the two-way mirror out of his pocket.
"Diagon alley, under attack, fifty death eaters left, twenty Aurors left standing, thirty down." The voice said, making everyone in the room panic.
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(1): I'll put a picture on my yahoo group for everyone to see what I used as a reference (I got it off the internet myself, so you don't have to put up with my bad drawing skills), but for now, imagine a suit of armour like a (Star Wars) Storm Troopers, except black, more elaborate, and with a Predators helmet and wrist blades.