Chapter 14
Something acrid was creeping down his esophagus. It was a creeping acrid scent, mixed with a horrid sensation that seemed to stimulate and irritate his gag reflex, making him want to vomit. Something he couldn't do.
He could in fact actually vomit at the moment, but at the moment, it would probably make him choke, and here and now was not where he wanted to choke on his own vomit.
10 days ago…
Harry turned the letter over in his hands, it had come to him via a mail redirection service he'd managed to find and setup. He knew that something like it had to exist, there had to be wizards who wanted privacy but still needed an owl address and considering the service existed there were obviously wizards who needed their owl mail directed to a muggle address. Which made receiving mail quite blissful, all the letters were simply re-stamped with a charm directing it to him and sent through the British Postal system. He did briefly wonder if the Royal Mail got anything out of this, but they had to, given the proprietor's credentials he'd seen within the shop front he'd visited.
It worked, that was the main thing, no owls, nothing, his official address was somewhere in London as far as owls were concerned.
The letter, wasn't even that in the conventional sense, there was no addressee, no friendly introduction, nothing like that.
Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures
Disposal and Waste Management Sub-Division, Office of Waste Management
At your earliest convenience.
Convenience was most definitely not what it was, it looked like it had a very angry line underneath it. It probably meant something like 'I might as well get my money out of your Potter you delusional bastard'.
Though Harry mused as he grabbed his jacket and wand he could have been reading too much into those 23 words.
Walking outside his house he stared at the building that held his car and shook his head. He wouldn't mind driving to London, but parking in London was tricky and getting a parking spot near the ministry was nigh on impossible.
"The boring method it is then," Harry mused aloud, then frowned, shaking his head and with a small displacement of air disappeared.
-/
He had been directed to Level Four where Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was located down a narrow corridor, where again he'd been directed (by a sign rather than a person) down another narrow corridor and now he was walking down a narrow and steep spiral staircase.
Maybe he mused as he walked down the stairs the Minister was trying to kill him and make it look like an accident. It was possible, though Harry doubted the Minister would come up with such an elaborate method to get rid of him. Maybe Kingsley was harbouring a twisted sense of humour and sending him down to the Office of Waste Management was precisely how he wanted to get rid of him.
At the end of the stairs he arrived in a room he totally wasn't expecting. On the way down the corridors had either been brown or black, more often than not highlighted with a morose shade of grey. Down here was quite the opposite. The walls were a calming light blue, with several paintings of calming vistas, though he supposed that other paintings could communicate down here, but as they hung here they gave the room a rather open, calm feeling.
"Hello?" He said looking around. All this calmness had to be hiding a beast of unimaginable terror.
Or as it turned out a witch who had been with the ministry for 60 years 40 of them with the Waste Management department.
One that was rather concerned with the spate of house elf deaths that had been going on recently.
And she had been expecting him, or someone at the very least.
He had to ask though, considering events of the recent past and all. "What happened to you when Voldemort was here?"
She blinked looking at him for several moments, and for the briefest of moments the quiet lady whom he'd been talking to disappeared and a slightly different lady seemed to creep out of the corners of the room, or it could have just been her eyes.
"Rubbish still needs to be taken care of and there are some very loyal house elves that will remove any rubbish that happens to trip down those stairs, a pity, this room was such a nice shade of yellow. Times change though."
"And blood is so hard to wash out," he couldn't help but comment, it didn't exactly lighten the mood, but it did break the ice and the weird lighting effect she'd managed to generate with her presence alone seemed to have disappeared.
Or perhaps he'd just imagined it and it was just the power of her words that had tricked him into thinking that.
Harry decided he'd have to practise his 'skills' Magister had taught him more often.
She'd taken him over to a side office where a large map was affixed to the wall, it marked out several Xs over a space of…he couldn't actually see a key showing how large the area was.
"So this is where…" He trailed off waiting for the lady, who still hadn't told him her name, though he hadn't introduced himself either, which was a little bit odd, maybe she expected him to know hers, maybe the fact that he was expected meant that names weren't necessary.
Or maybe he was over thinking this.
"These are the Waste Disposal sites for the all members of magical community in mainland Britain," she explained.
"The isles have separate sites?" He asked looking at the map, trying once more to judge its size.
She made an affirmative noise, then said. "These sites are located in an isolated cave system, each chamber is linked centrally."
"And people have been dying there?" He asked looking back to her.
She made another affirmative noise but didn't say anything further.
"I think you need to explain to me how this is managed," he said eventually as he began to realise he really didn't know anything about where 'waste' went.
It was actually a rather enlightening conversation, considering the topic. She led him back to her office where a house elf appeared almost the instant they walked in looked around and disappeared, reappearing a moment later with a tea pot and two cups and disappeared without a word.
It was all a little bit odd, as neither of them touched their tea. If it was tea, he hadn't wanted to pick the cup up, the tea put just sat there, steam coming out of its spout as she explained to him how the wizarding world dealt with its refuse.
Most small households composted much of their waste through various means. But each household generated some waste that could not be composted or burnt in the fire.
These items were things like magically generated packaging, potions ingredients, damaged and broken things and other 'not of use' items. These were taken by house elves (or if the house hold did not have one, taken to a waste management centre or picked up via an elf working for a waste management business) and disposed of.
Only house elves could get to the waste disposal sites through magic, due to the high levels of magical refuse. Any wizards that attempted to apparate splinched themselves, and there was no possibility of rescue. He'd asked about portkeys, but she'd said something about being smeared like jam across a large area, which sounded less than pleasant (and gave him a very odd mental image; quite disturbing).
So the waste disposal sites were the landfill, the rubbish tip for the British wizarding world.
It really wasn't something he thought about, sitting in potions, chucking out the left over potions ingredients, or clearing up Grimmauld Place and putting things aside to be thrown out, none of it really connected, back in the day for him, as to where when you threw stuff out it actually went.
'Obviously it has to go somewhere' He could imagine Hermione saying, though he wondered if she'd find it interesting that it was so simple.
"Hang on," he said speaking up. The woman looked over at him, eyes full of curiosity and something else, he wasn't sure what, possibly suspicion, he couldn't work out why though. "How long has the wizarding world," he corrected himself on that one. "The mainland British wizarding community been dumping, I mean disposing of its waste here?"
The woman leant back in her chair, a slight smile on her face. "Since wizards really began to embrace commercial shopping, around the time the Leaky Cauldron was built."
Harry blinked, he was sure he knew that, it was on the tip of his memory…but the lady supplied the information for him once more.
"1500."
If he'd been drinking the tea or whatever it was, he was sure he would have choked on it.
"1500," he repeated. "To the same sites."
The woman nodded once again.
"They must be bloody big sites," he finally said. Five Hundred Years. The number was big, really big. He'd been to a rubbish tip, he'd seen how big they were, he'd seen how much people in the muggle world chucked out. Even if that amount was half, or a quarter…it still didn't add up as he thought back to the map he'd seen, unless the site was really big, really, really, big.
Or magical rubbish broke down at an alarming rate, which begged the question why it wasn't done at the wizard's homes, which he asked the creepy lady with the undrunk tea pot and weird eyes.
"Many families do, but what is taken to the waste disposal sites is too dangerous to dispose of at their residences. Or would take far too long to breakdown." The she added. "Many potion ingredients when they pass beyond their usable period become severally dangerous and need much time to break down."
Actually Harry decided she wasn't all that creepy, it was just the very calm way she was speaking to him, almost like a teacher.
"And now house elves are dying?" He asked.
"Yes, some haven't returned from their scheduled dumps, some have been in service of house holds for many years. It has been most distressing for all involved," she explained.
"I can imagine," he mused in thought. "So some have died after returning?"
"Some, yes," she said with a nod "it hasn't been spoken of, they saw it as their failing that they couldn't continue their duty till their end of days."
"I'll need all information you have about the deaths. Have any wizards died, investigating the deaths?" He asked.
She nodded. "One, a waste management intermediary he managed a business who picked up from smaller house holds without a house elf. He was found on the edge of the site."
"Okay…what happened to him?" He asked she pulled a flat piece of parchment off her desk and passed it to him, as he leaned forward he caught a smell of the steam coming out of the tea pot, it didn't smell of anything, which was odd.
It looked to be a form filled out by someone in Magical Law Enforcement.
The parchment listed the man's name and profession.
That the body was found and transported by house elves back to his manor.
It stated that nothing could be ascertained about the man's death due to acute levels of potions residue and magical contamination throughout his body.
It stated his body was cremated due to the contamination levels in his body. This order was signed by the Minister for Magic; Minister Shacklebolt.
Which was obviously why he'd been contacted.
Harry wondered how much the Minister knew, in fact he wondered how much normal wizards and witches knew. 500 years, was a long time to be dumping in the same place.
"I'll also need the location of the waste disposal site," he said placing the parchment in front of him.
She looked at him worried. "You can't apparate in or…"
He cut her off. "I know."
"Muggle transport can't approach the site either, the magical residue prevents any mechanical muggle inventions approaching. Brooms and flying carpets cannot approach it either."
"Marvellous," Harry said, exhaling. "I'll think of something."
A few minutes later he had a pile of parchment and various copies of the maps of the waste disposal site in a box the lady had given him.
As he was approaching the stairs the woman called out to him.
"It was interesting meeting you Mr Potter, I do hope you can sort this issue out for us." Then she was gone, disappeared back into the depth of the office.
Weird, as Ron probably would have said, if the presence of the odd cobweb around hadn't freaked him out. That and the rather odd lady.
-/
Present...
Harry thumbed the control on his suit increasing the flow of air into his suit, he hoped that would keep out whatever it was that was seeping in. How it was getting through the suit and the oxygen mask he didn't know.
The people he'd bought this suit from had ensured him that it was protect him from nuclear, chemical and biological agents, it was acid resistant, pathogen proof (he was carrying the bloody heavy oxygen tanks just to be sure).
Yet still something, something acrid, some sort of rising stench.
If he vomited he would most likely suffocate. He couldn't pull the oxygen mask off, the air was very much toxic and that was just the less worrisome part of what the air was.
If he did vomit, then he'd need to get the gloves off, get out of the suit and get at the mask.
But first he'd have to get out of the thigh high…sludge.
9 Days Ago…
Harry leaned back in his study/workroom/office it was basically one of the larger rooms of his house where he had most of the paperwork and his computer for the League of Paranormal Investigations. On the computer screen and laid out in front of him were aerial surveys of the last 60 plus years ago right back before World War II, on the screen were further updated satellite very low resolution going back to the British space programs of the 70s and all the way up till now.
What annoyed him looking at all of this information, combined with recent within the last year aerial surveys was that the resolution never improved.
The 'magical tip' as he was calling it as 'waste disposal site' wasn't something that rolled off the tongue, or even the mind as he thought it to himself. 'Magical tip' was a lot simpler.
The site existed, behind him on the other side of the room was a large map table where he'd plotted the coordinates of the site, based on the information he'd received at the Ministry and how he'd been able to specify all this other information.
But all aerial and satellite imagery gave, quite simply bugger all. Oh he could see it, the land existed, there was probably some sort of entrance, which might have just been spec of grit on the camera.
It wasn't a very big area, but across images for the last 60 years there was this blurry blank spot.
Harry took the mug of tea that he'd left sitting next to him and leaned back sipping it, wincing slightly at its not quite tepid though far from hot temperature.
Did all magical sites look like this? He wondered pondering to himself, if that was the case there would need to be a lot of people in the ministry keeping tracks on it all.
Or was it just this site? Hogwarts looked like a run down dangerous castle to muggle eyes supposedly, but a camera wasn't muggle eyes technically so did they see the same thing as this?
He would have just gone out there, though getting there was another issue, he had already decided to take the lady at her word, no apparating and no portkeying, the last thing he wanted to do is be smeared like jam across England.
From what he could tell it was in pretty rough terrain for even a four wheel drive to get out there.
He winced again and put the tea down, it had passed down towards tepid and now wasn't all that drinkable, he grabbed the phone off the desk and pushed the speed dial button.
It only rang twice before there was an answer.
"Hermione Granger," said the slightly agitated voice.
"It's Harry Hermione."
"Oh Harry, sorry," she sounded more relaxed.
"You alright?" He asked, concerned.
She sighed. "Just school work you know." There was a pause. "Well you know I mean, more school work, university work."
Harry smiled. "I know Hermione, just a quick question I…" He was cut off.
"Why didn't you just apparate over here to ask me?" She asked curiously, cutting him off.
Harry smiled. "Aside from the fact that I'm in the middle of something. I know that you like to get work done at this time of day, in between late lunch and your afternoon class of…" Harry racked his brain for a moment. "'Comparative linguistics and contextual philosophies' isn't it?"
"That's right," she said impressed.
"I know you like to get into a groove of study before that, didn't want to interrupt you by popping in, or driving in, you know me and if I did pop in you'd feel we should go grab a drink…I just didn't want to disturb you."
"Harry, that's…sweet of you. Honestly I can do with a bit of a distraction. What was it you needed?"
"I remember a while back at Hogwarts you said something about horse riding lessons and how good your instructor was."
"Yes," she said slowly.
"You wouldn't happen to know their name? I can get their number off the 'net."
"Oh, yes Harry of course," she paused "Is this one of your thrill seeking adventures or…" She trailed off.
"LPI business actually Hermione and I thought you knew me!" he said in mock offence. "I like much faster things than a horse."
"Got your eye on another sports car Harry, honestly that one you've got…"
"Is perfectly reasonable, it's got three seats!" He chuckled as grabbed a piece of paper to jot down the name that Hermione began to read out.
"Anything you can talk about?"
"Not at the moment Hermione, sorry. Still the start of my investigations," Harry paused. "I should let you get back to…whatever it is you're studying at the moment. Trying to memorise all the names of the Byzantine army no doubt."
"Harry Potter you…" Harry could imagine she was giving him 'that' look again. Then she said after a moment. "Whatever it is you need to ride a horse for look after yourself."
"And you Hermione, don't stuck in the stacks or find yourself facing the reincarnation of Satan, or something."
"I'll leave the dangerous threatening things to you Harry," she said a quick 'bye and hung up.
-/
Present…
Harry swallowed again, drawing in another hot breath of air as he shifted the weight of the oxygen tanks on his back and decided he needed to do some more exercising. Not enough running away from dangerous things to keep him fit.
He had considered magically lightening them, but considering how much magical contamination was around here he didn't want to risk anything. He didn't even have his wand with him.
He fumbled for a second with one of the clasps around his belt and broke and activated another of the light sticks and chucked it a short distance across the space, its glowing yellow orange glow illuminating the area ahead.
He cringed as he saw another body. It was something like the tenth one he'd seen, it momentarily distracted him from the rising stench in his suit.
It was odd, only in the way it appeared to have died, he looked at it, but decided to keep thinking of it as an 'it', he didn't want to think of it as a person at the moment. It, appeared to have had its head beaten in by one of Lockhart's books, he could just about see the git's grinning face on the cover that was buried half way into the…it was a man's skull.
"I wonder what he did you deserve that." He mused to himself, his voice a muffled noise in the deserted cave.
24 hours ago…
Learning to ride a horse hadn't been that complicated, it was no harder than riding Buckbeak. Very much easier considering the lack of wings and a dour disposition.
Getting the equipment he needed to take with him had been a fascinating experience.
The company he'd bought the suit from assured him that it would protect him against; nuclear, chemical, biological and anything else. He hoped so, it had been expensive and the oxygen tanks were far from light.
He leaned back for a moment, looking at everything he had to fit into the saddle bags that would fit on the horse and into his bigger on the inside bag. Even with that he didn't want to put it all in there, as he wanted to have some equipment to hand as he rode up to the site.
There was after all only so much he could fit into his not magical bigger on the inside bag the Doctor had given him, the opening itself was only so wide.
Present…
Harry grabbed again at his belt, this time for the Geiger Counter, one of 'just in case' things he'd brought along with him. He'd been checking it every so often as he waded through the, there was no other way of putting it, toxic magical sludge and waste. Waste that was (he was sure) slowly eating through the suit, that they'd ensured wouldn't be eaten away.
The counts per second reading was still wobbling around, even more so since he'd entered the 'site', it wasn't lethal yet if he'd read the information correctly. But it certainly supported his theory he'd come up with after entering the site that repeated exposure was probably killing the house elves.
Harry slid the counter back onto his belt and grabbed the camera off of it.
Everything, the camera, the counter and all his other equipment hanging off his belt and chest webbing was secured and protected within sealed boxes.
Probably more secure than the suit. Harry thought to himself grimly as he began to take photos around him.
He'd considered buying a digital camera for this job, and then instantly dismissed the idea, given the amount of magic and the fact he'd needed to ride a horse here he'd decided against it. Though the boxes that he'd put all the equipment inside were in theory a delicate balance between enough shielding against the magical contamination and enough to allow them to do their scanning and whatever.
Harry wrinkled his nose again drawing another breath, despite the oxygen, the filters and everything else he could still smell the stench of rotting, disintegration and whatever else. He shifted forward, shuffling his feet around in the sludge taking further photos.
He wasn't sure what he would need the photos for, they were more a 'just in case' move, considering the creepy lady's maps had been less than accurate he wanted some for of documentation.
A few hours ago.
Harry had left the horse tied beside a tree some distance from where the cave opened up. It would be a kilometre or so walk with all the heavy equipment he'd need.
But he hadn't wanted to take the horse any further. It was as though someone had 'salted the earth'. Everything leading up towards the cave entrance wasn't quite dead but it certainly looked toxic.
He'd set up the wash down shower and other facilities he'd brought with him a short distance away from the horse but not so close to where the devastation started. That was where he'd sealed up the suit, unpleasant as wearing the suit was he didn't want to get very close to the site unprotected.
The path, which he didn't want to think what it was under his suited boots was slick with a complex slime, despite it having been a relatively dry week. The area directly in front of the cave was very sick and very dead, a skeleton of a tree beside it seemed literally that, not just dead but devoid of life and structure it seemed to hang in the air and looked like it wanted to crumble to dust, but couldn't.
As he'd begun his way in a house elf had appeared.
"No, yose shouldn't be in here, youse in danger, youse go now." It had started towards him shaking its head.
"I'm from the Ministry." He'd tried to say in his normal volume of voice but the mask and suit made it sound like "'M on tree." The house elf stared at him and he shouted it again.
The house elf opened its eyes wide and shook its head again squeaked at him and then disappeared.
He quickly discovered the Ministry's maps were well and truly incorrect. The linked cave systems were not linked, or maybe they had at one point and now only one was accessible, the others seemed….full. There was no other way to put it, sludge and detritus oozing out. Then he'd found the open entrance, and that's when his devices started making noises.
It was a device he'd borrowed from Sarah, which she said K9 had helped her build. Which presumably meant it could be built from Earth based materials, hopefully she'd let him take it apart and work out how to build his own. But she'd been happy to lend it to him "as long as you bring it back intact." It was a 'standard' energy detector. Exactly what made it standard he didn't know, but it had started making noises as soon as he'd walked into what he guessed was the largest chamber.
Not large enough even combined with the other 3 chambers to hold rubbish for the last 500 years. No matter how he'd worked it out it even with Ioan's input, it didn't add up, the population of the mainland United Kingdom based wizarding world and the rubbish it generated, even at a conservative count didn't add up. Not by a long shot, but he knew that before he got here, but it was still confronting to see what was disposed of.
Present…
His energy detector device was making noises again as he shuffled his feet around, he was becoming very conscious of a smell, that may have been his imagination, but his imagination would have to be very over active and in a very wrong place to come up with this smell.
He really didn't want to slip down into the muck, the radioactive, magically contaminated muck that was getting closer to his waist the more he moved around. He was becoming increasingly thankful he'd bought all the various clothes he was wearing under the suit that was supposed to shield him against the 'interesting' radiation as he'd termed it in his mind. It was better than the 'dangerous' or 'deadly' radiation names that also sprang to mind when he had read up on such things and to think, he'd been hoping there was just something mundane and boring killing the house elves…maybe a serial killer or something, not something horrible like radiation or other odd forms of energy.
He snapped the camera back onto its tag and grabbed for the detector, sucking in another breath of air, fetid stale air mixed with the oxygen. Harry gritted his teeth as he fumbled for the detector, he was beginning to sweat more and more he realised as he blinked.
Definitely more exercise, he decided, making a note to himself.
It was blinking, beeping and making an odd warbling noise, or these could have all been one noise translated through its protective covering and bouncing around the vomit inducing swamp of rubbish and the detritus of a civilisation, and the odd dead body and then heard through his protective suit.
Harry shifted his weight from foot to foot shifting around pointing the device carefully in all positions around him.
The whatever it was that had a high and boarder line dangerous energy signature was below him, he was either standing on top of it, or he was standing just in front of it and then below him.
"Like standing on the nose of a beast," he murmured to himself, it probably hadn't sounded like that to anyone around him, but it made him feel better talking aloud to himself, at the moment he didn't really care about being silly and talking to himself.
Harry gazed down at the slime and sludge, the residue that was floating on the thick viscous not quite liquid that he was wading through.
What he really needed was to see underneath and maybe get a look at the…the dangerous energy emitting radiation belching 'something'.
Before he'd really had time to think it through twice he was grabbing at several of the light sticks from the pouches about his suit and snapping them to activate them and began to shove them down through the soup of fetid syrup, down, down towards where all his instruments said bad energy (literally) lay.
"This is a bad idea Harry Potter," he said to himself, again it was muffled and again he didn't really care. If he didn't work this out here and now he'd have to trudge all the way back, back to the wash down shower, rinse off the suit and then pack it all away, get on the horse ride back, get checked over and then do all of this again, wade through the dead bodies, the stench (imagined or not) and go through all this crap again. Something he didn't want to do.
He checked the camera again.
The suit was waterproof, but pressure proof he couldn't quite remember the statistics on that, it was something he should have remembered, but when he'd purchased it he'd been more focused on it protecting him when he was walking around in whatever detritus had been around for 500 years of wizarding civilisation, that had been poisoning house elves, old chocolate frog packaging didn't do that (or shouldn't, if it did the manufacturers would need to have a stern word said to them).
He breathed in two full lungfuls of air before plunging down under the swamp of sickness and vomit inducing disgusting horribleness.
It was if anything worse under than above, eve with the reduced visibility.
For a moment, with the oxygen tanks on his back Harry panicked as he felt himself 'falling' or sinking downwards, but below him wasn't very far, he could sort of see what they were sitting next to. He slowly, fighting against the sludge grabbed at the camera, taking a stream of shots as he felt the pressure pushing at the suit, and the smell and sensation of the slime and sewer pit liquid pressing the suit against him and the rising bile in his throat threatening to leap fore and disgorge itself into his mask.
He didn't know how many shots he'd take but he started to kick and push away from the bottom without being half conscious of the noise of both the Geiger counter and the energy detector going off.
Now, now he was just focused on leaving, he was sure he could hear, could feel or smell the suit bubbling, rotting like so much in this cave, it wasn't just sickening him it was making him recoil, recoil from himself in the disgust and shock of the experience.
Much or the trudge away from the cave, away from that place was a blur to Harry, he only really came back to sensation, to conscious alive thought once the water cascaded over the suit, hissing and steaming as it hit the excrement that had been excised along with his exit from the reeking depths he'd endured.
-/ - \\-
Harry looked over the preliminary medical workup. He'd asked Ioan for a GP who knew about wizards and what not, he'd had a checkup before he'd gone on his 'journey', and as soon as he'd returned from his 'journey' he'd got a medical workup. Who knew what had got through his suit, it hadn't as far as he'd found breached anywhere, but it was very thin and possibly porous in places.
But it looked like he'd come away mostly unscathed, on his upper back he'd received an odd chemical burn which the doctor had taken to with a medieval looking contraption and removed, painfully and then sprayed something equally painful on it.
He'd told Harry it would scar, the whatever it had been wasn't from the radiation just a peculiar potion derivative, his doctor had said it had too many unknowns, but it had been necessary to remove quickly.
Harry looked in the mirror the doctor was holding up so he could see the area more easily.
"One more to the collection of scars." He muttered, he'd needed prior to his departure given the GP a full medical history so he was fully aware of the multiple scars that littered his body. One more didn't worry him.
-/
Harry breathed a sigh of relief as he drove to Sarah's house.
Sarah had offered to develop his photos for him "As a job Harry, we're both professionals," she'd said and added. "You have your investigations that I won't get involved with okay?" Harry had nodded, she'd added that he could however borrow things from her, that was something friends did she'd said.
It suited him, it was at least a skill he didn't have to learn straight away. It wasn't as though he could go to the local photo shop and ask them to develop them for him.
"Did you look at them?" Harry asked as Sarah passed him a thick envelope of photos.
She shook her head. "No, just to check they came out. Not the details. This is business Harry." Then she smiled softly. "How are you, after it all?"
"Relieved." He sipped the cup of tea. "Medical tests came back clear." He shuddered. "That wasn't something I hadn't been expecting, I mean I expected something but the…sensation."
"Next time you should take someone with you, as back up."
Harry smiled. "I'm just starting at this Sarah, anyway who have you got to watch your back?"
"I've got K9," she said defiantly, a little smile on her face.
Harry drained his cup. "Thanks for the tea Sarah, done me a world of good. But…"
"You need to go an analyse those photos. I know," she said with a knowing smile.
"You know?" He asked.
"It's what I would want to be doing," she said.
"Solving the mystery." They grinned at each other.
-/ - \\-
The second thing Harry did after quickly looking through the photos was scan them all into his computer and put the originals into his safe, just in case.
It wasn't much, there was a lot of murkiness going on, he could see even less than he could when he'd been there. But there was definitely something in several of the images.
After a few hours of looking through the images he turned the computer off, it had been a long day and the images were beginning to look all the same.
The next morning and slightly more awake he stared, freshly at the photos, a chill of memory trickling down his back as he stared at several of the photos he'd run various image enhancements over.
There was on the side of the black, blocky brown 'something' a long way down at the bottom of the image a series of symbols, that he recognised, or recognised the description. Round symbols followed by rounded oblongs and U shapes.
"…Like the city of the Exxilons…"
Harry recalled the Doctor, one more than one occasion talking about how the Exxilons had visited Earth influencing the Mayans among others, and then there were the Osirians, visiting Egypt and Aztecs, except that was Ian, Susan the Doctor and of course Barbara.
But this certainly looked like the symbols that Sarah had once described both when he'd first met her and when they'd subsequently chatted. It had supposedly been an amazing city, then there were the Daleks of course, and her nearly being sacrificed, that always puts a downer on the whole experience of travelling to another planet.
-/ - \\-
"Well?" Harry asked, it had been several minutes since he'd given Sarah the photos to look at and she'd been steadily frowning ever since.
"K9," she called out.
"Mistress," It, He trundled in.
"Is this Exxilon?" She held the photos up to its 'eye'.
This K9 was looking a bit more worse for wear than the K9 he'd met when the Doctor and Romana had visited…it felt like ages ago.
K9's ears waggled back and forth as though it was thinking.
"Next image Mistress." Sarah swapped the images, and again through all of them. The K9 went still, his ears twitched for a moment.
"Well K9?" Sarah sighed after a moment.
"Processing Mistress, do you require translation?" He asked matter-of-factly.
"That would be excellent K9 and is it Exxilon?" She asked sharing a look with Harry who smiled slightly amused at K9.
"Affirmative Mistress," it said.
"Why didn't you say that immediately? Or do you just like keeping up the tension?" Harry muttered, K9 didn't answer him, Harry suspected K9 had actually heard his question and ignored him.
"Unable to translate directly Mistress," it said.
"Oh well K9," Sarah idly patted his head.
"Partial translation possible Mistress."
"Fine what does it say K9?" Harry asked finally. K9 remained silent. Harry looked at him and back at K9. "Oh come on, what have I don't to annoy him?"
Sarah looked down at K9. "Well K9?"
"Sensor readings of individual, Harry Potter; friend, reveal random trace amounts of chronon, artron and unidentifiable energy."
Sarah looked back to Harry, Harry sighed. "Which means I've travelled in time, been in close proximity of the Doctor and his TARDIS and been around other unknown things not in your database. The previous K9 was less uptight than you are you know."
"Harry!" Sarah berated him.
Harry chuckled. "Sorry, but he hasn't been that welcoming. What is it you want to know K9?"
K9 seemed to go silent for a bit. Then started "Rough translation is a description of function; power management, transmigration, output."
"Transmigration?" Sarah asked.
"Suggestion Mistress. Transmigration means…" But Harry cut K9 off.
"Teleport, transmat, matter transmission," Harry said rising from where he was seated, and stepping over K9 to get the photos.
"This explains a bit, I remember the Doctor saying something about the Exxilons using some exotic radioactive stuff to power their ships…" Harry said thinking out loud. 500 years of waste…a transmat breaks down matter into energy…so, this thing was breaking down the magical rubbish and…but something was going wrong and…now it wasn't working.
Harry began to mutter to himself. "And what happens when you push radioactive material beyond…oh crap."
"He's like the Doctor," Sarah muttered to K9 as she watched Harry as he paced, his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.
"Oh crap on a big scale. K9 can you estimate given the approximate dimensions of the Exxilon device how large the power source might be," Harry asked.
"Estimation only 60% accurate," it said before giving him the answer.
Harry's frown increased.
"Oh. Theoretically what would happen if that source was fed with energy for the last 500 years and it broke down 80 percent of that, retained the rest, what would the size of the energy discharge be like?" Harry asked a very worrying idea forming in his head.
K9 went silent his ears waggling for several minutes.
"Harry? What…?" Sarah looked to him.
"It's a magical dumping ground," Harry explained "and I think this thing has been processing the waste into energy, it's all been bouncing around in a closed system, but it's now reaching critical mass."
"Affirmative. Critical mass will create an explosion of…" The number was big, big enough that Harry was worried.
"But we haven't got there yet?" Harry asked slowly.
"Negative, based on your theoretical statistics," K9 replied.
"Oh crap." Harry sat down heavily. "I think we'll need to do what they do with all problems."
-/ - \\-
"This is your solution Potter?" The creepy lady asked looking at the sheet of printed paper, he couldn't tell if she was angry at him or what, maybe she didn't like the paper.
"Yes, or we can keep going and end up with a new lake the size of Wales in the middle of Britain."
"Fill it with the muggle concrete and hope for the best." 'That's your solution' seemed to be an unsaid statement in the gaze she gave him.
Harry shrugged. "Works for nuclear power plants." The words didn't seem to mean anything to the creepy lady. He could have said 'works for dolphin kitten treadmill power plants' for all the words 'nuclear power plant' meant.
"You're sure Potter, about what it is that's doing this?" She turned the paper over and then looked at him.
"I'm not sure you'd like the answer. It falls within the purview of the operation I represent," Harry answered diplomatically.
She stared at him for a moment, her eyes shooting spikes at him. Then suddenly she said "Very well. I will have to speak with the Minister."
"I can wait. I'm sure he'll want me away as soon as possible," Harry offered.
She was gone barely ten minutes, he'd heard her muffled voice talking in the fire.
"What do you suggest we do now, with the rubbish, now that you intend to seal up our only good site." She demanded when she returned.
Harry felt like saying 'well that's your problem, creepy unnamed lady'. But he didn't. "Look for a new one," Harry said. "That's what the muggles do." He added then asked. "The Minister?"
"Said to deal with it."
Harry nodded. "Fine."
-/ - \\-
Getting the concrete trucks hadn't been too complicated. Ioan had agreed as part of being a paid up member of the League of Paranormal Investigations to get some of his mates to help.
They'd also discovered something else that the creepy unnamed lady (Ioan laughed at his description and her lack of a name) had been wrong about.
They'd been able to drive an old four wheel drive closeish to the cave before it stalled and died, close certainly enough to get the concrete pump and hose near enough to it.
So much for preventing muggles from driving up to it. Though he wondered what 'mechanical' meant in wizarding terms if not the internal combustion engine.
He'd got the job of donning a (new) protective suite and dragging the hose for the concrete pump back into the cave.
Once he got inside the vomit inducing caves, bodies and all (he had made an executive decision to leave the bodies where they'd been dumped given how much magical slurry their bodies would have absorbed. Making sure the hose was set firmly in place he hiked back to the cave opening and made a start up motion to Ioan. Harry watched for several moments, the noise of diesel engines drifting down to him. Once he was certain of the flow he hiked back up the hill towards the sound of diesel engines and oddly the sound of instruments being set up.
Harry walked over to where Ioan was manning the concrete pump. "Where'd you find these people?" Harry gestured with a gloved hand to where some of Ioan's friends were setting up some instruments under the tree Harry had tied his horse to.
Ioan smiled. "Here and there, you needed people to drive the trucks, you got them Harry. Some of 'em were curious, others like an odd interesting time."
"And hanging out by a magical tip filled with semi-radioactive waste is their idea of fun?" Harry asked.
"Beats playing at a pub," Said a female someone behind him. Harry turned around.
"I'd shake your hand but." He turned his hands upward, gesturing the gloved hands, he'd only pulled off the top of his suit, in case he needed to go back in.
"Just got word, we've got 10 more on route and can have five more after that if need be."
Ioan nodded. "That 10 more after these 10 should be enough if you measured correctly Harry."
Harry refocused on Ioan. "That should be enough."
"It has to be, other wise apocalypse," Ioan joked Harry smiled. Ioan looked at him.
"You don't know, when the apocalypse happens do you?" He asked quietly leaning in to him. Harry hand't really begun to tell him everything about his life but…
"Not the zombie one," Harry said with a chuckle as the band behind them started to play a competing tune to the noise of the concrete pump and mixers.
Harry turned and looked across the afternoon, despite the stench rising from the cave it was still a nice day.
-/ - \\-
A/N:
No Doctor again in this chapter, but I have been plotting out future chapters where he will appear.
I've had some questions in reviews about when the Doctor is going to be seen again.
Harry won't be visited by the Doctor again for some time, but will meet the Doctor again and he will also see the Doctor again several more times.
These are different things.
To put all this into perspective Harry has met the Ninth and Tenth Doctors in his past, but given how the Doctor visits Earth those visits are in the Doctor's future, but Harry's past (however also Harry's future as defined by when the Doctor visits Earth).
So Harry will not interact with either of those two Doctors until they come to Earth in the natural flow of their timeline.
I have also been thinking about Ginny and the development of her character. Ginny isn't going to disappear æther never to be mentioned again (which would probably be easier, though not as interesting).
I have worked out some of the issues about her character (not just the ones I've generated for myself), she's still going to go through some hard roads. But I think I've come up with a path that is going to help reshape her character.
Thanks for reading.
