Ch. 2 — Where No Man Has Gone Before
The Gryffindor and Slytherin Quidditch match confrontation, being banned from Quidditch for life, and Umbridge's persecution of Hagrid drove any thoughts about a spaceship out of Harry's mind. He had completely forgotten about it by the fifth D.A. meeting. And his scar and angry temperament weren't helping him.
He probably wouldn't ever have remembered the spaceship at all if it hadn't been for Dean Thomas, and the rest of the D.A. group.
It was at lunch on following Friday. Dean Thomas left his normal spot and wedged himself between Harry and Ron.
Ron barely noticed as he stuffed more food into mouth.
"Is it true?" Dean said in a hushed tone. "The twins made a spaceship?"
Harry looked at him blankly. "What?"
Dean looked around nervously, then whispered, ". . . in the Room? You know?"
Harry frowned in thought. His expression cleared. "Oh. Yeah." He shrugged and looked curiously at the boy. "Something like that. So?"
Dean grinned and excitedly squirmed on the bench. "Wicked," he breathed. "Can I see it?"
"Uh . . . I guess?" Harry frowned again. "Where did you hear about it?" he whispered challengingly, glancing up to see the Pink Toad watching him.
Dean looked up the table at the twins. "I heard them pestering Angelina about it. Something to do with ancient runes on the walls?" he said uncertainly.
Hermione, on his other side, glanced up from her textbook. "Ancient runes? On walls? Where?" she said suddenly, acutely curious.
"The twins," Dean motioned his head, "apparently made a spaceship with the Room! It has ancient runes on the walls . . . but that's not important here, they made a spaceship!" he whispered to her.
He had her full attention now, and she darted glances at Harry between staring at Dean. "Spaceship?" she whispered back.
"Uh huh," Dean answered smugly.
"What's a spas-ship?" Ron asked, blinking. Apparently, he wasn't as invested in eating as Harry had thought.
"Shhh!" the three of them said.
Dean got up and moved over to join Neville, grinning the entire way. Neville looked happy for his friend at whatever Dean said as he sat back down.
The Pink Toad frowned and looked back and forth between the two sets of boys suspiciously. Harry devoted his attention to his lunch and ignored the whispering around him.
It spread like fiendfyre. Harry wasn't sure how, but by dinner time the entire D.A. wanted to see the spaceship. Or rather, at first and early in the afternoon, only those familiar with muggle science-fiction wanted to see it. By the time dinner rolled around, everyone else did to. After all, there had to be a reason why the muggle-born and half the half-bloods were so adamant about seeing a spaceship — so the others wanted to see what the fuss was all about.
On the other hand, Lee and the twins weren't so pleased. Lee, because he had apparently hoped to keep it to himself for a bit longer, and the twins because they didn't want anyone co-opting their time in the Room of Requirement.
They gave Harry rather pointed looks whenever they saw him as the afternoon progressed. Finally, though, they apparently decided there was nothing for it but to concede that others would want to play with the room. Fred gave him a fatalistic sigh as they entered the Great Hall for dinner, and said warningly, "I guess just once can't hurt. But just this once!" He half-glared at Harry as if it were his fault Lee had made a spaceship.
Hermione softly said "Yes!" and surreptitiously pumped her right arm when Lee and the twins promised to show the rest of the D.A. around. "Everyone wants to visit this . . . spaceship. If we do it first, tonight," she whispered to Harry as they sat down at the table, "instead of starting the regular session immediately, we can do that and it'll be out of the way and won't mess up the session too much."
She wasn't fooling anyone. She would gladly sacrifice a D.A. session to see a spaceship!
Harry looked around. A rather large number of people were watching him and trying to be surreptitious. He nodded. "Maybe we can hold the session in the spaceship? It certainly has rooms big enough," Harry mused thoughtfully as he started to fill his plate. "I guess I could cover the possibilities of muggle combat, and I can do that on the spaceship as well as anyplace else."
Dolores was watching him with narrowed eyes — well, as narrowed as she could manage.
Harry sighed and glanced at Hermione. He made a show of reluctantly handing her his fake galleon. Ron looked suitably envious. He shook his head sadly as she gleefully accepted the coin, then, under the guise of putting it in her rucksack, she made the changes needed to the coin.
A moment later, almost a score and a half of smiles broke out in the room. Several students exchanged high-fives.
The twins slumped, but then started whispering with Lee as they noticed the attention the Pink Toad was giving Harry.
Harry was sure there would be a suitable distraction after dinner, and dismissed it from his mind.
Most of the D.A. members left dinner early, rushing through or even — to Ron's incredulous horror! — skipping dessert. Harry and Hermione finally managed to drag Ron away from the table. A veteran of Hermione's enthusiasm, Ron had learned to pack his pockets with cookies before starting the ice cream and cake afters, so he wasn't too upset at missing the rest of dessert.
They took several shortcuts to throw off pursuers, and arrived before even half of the D.A. members, who had left earlier than the three, had reached the seventh-floor corridor.
Lee arrived almost at the same time as they did. "Don't worry," he said, "Nobody will suspect we're up here. The twins made a deal with Peeves, and there's a tremendous food fight under way right now. And most people will remember seeing us there tossing pies." He smirked. "The wonders you can accomplish with an intermittent notice-me-not and illusions, isn't it?" His eyes were twinkling almost as much the Headmaster's!
Harry, Ron, and Hermione all grinned.
"And even if someone does search for us, earlier in the week we put up subtle aversion charms in the corridors that lead here, so anyone who comes down those corridors thinks there's nothing important here. When they arrive at the actual corridor, only people keyed into the charms can see the wall opposite Barnabas the Barmy! Right now, all you need is one of Hermione's coins, but the twins plan to change that to match the D.A. contract, tonight, now that she's here with it." He grinned mischievously at her.
Lee walked up and down the corridor as the other members watched, and wondered what they would see. Experience had given him the skill, and he hadn't even finished the third leg of the walk when the oval-shaped metal door appeared.
With a grand wave of his arm, and a bow, he motioned Harry, and the rest, into his creation. The sci-fi acquainted half-bloods and muggle-borns giggled excitedly, and giddily hurried forward. They almost stumbled over each other with their eagerness to see. The confused pure-bloods slowly followed after.
"Soo," Ron said as he looked around the corridor inside the rather dark spaceship. "It's . . . nice?" he offered dubiously. He looked up at the ceiling four yards above them, and the metal arches that supported it. "Very . . . different?" he hesitantly said.
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Pretend you're walking into Merlin's secret and well-hidden workshop," she half-scolded him.
The pure-bloods looked around with a good deal more interest. Merlin's workshop would be amazing, so maybe so was a spaceship.
"Oh my god!" Justin Finch-Fletchley said. "It is so cliché," he continued, darting ahead and all but jumping excitedly.
Colin was taking so many pictures so fast it was almost like he was using a strobe light.
Others were not so restrained in their effusive enthusiasm.
"Hey, hey, Jordan, is there a bridge?" someone asked.
"Oh yeah," Lee grinned like a grandmother showing off pictures of her grandchildren. "Right this way, ladies and gentlemen," he said pompously.
Lee, Fred, and George had obviously been to the spaceship many times. Lee had not just a map, he a book full of the runes copied from the walls. With their translations in many instances.
Harry had to wonder how many nights they had dedicated to the ship, and how many classes they had slept through or skived off to do that.
Their walk through the corridors was like a really weird school tour, as Jordan explained things they'd so far seen and discovered. He shared the theories they, or rather he, had come up with for the various rooms they passed.
"This thing is massive," Lee said in his Quidditch announcer voice, obviously delighted to play the tour guide. "It's at least as long as a couple of football fields — quidditch pitches — and as wide as one is long on this floor, alone!" He glanced over at Harry. "And that engine room we found?"
Several muggles perked up at that, including Hermione.
"It isn't an engine room."
They looked disappointed.
He halted a moment. "I think it's a power transfer room, or maybe a spare power room. I think the engines start about ten floors below us."
The students goggled at him.
"Ten floors?" said someone incredulously.
"Yep. And the Bridge is about five floors up."
Some at the back groaned.
"But we did find an elevator!"
Some else gave a relieved, "Thank Merlin!"
"And we found several rooms we believe to be alien laboratories," he said enthusiastically.
"Alien laboratories?" Hermione said with amused scepticism.
"Well. It's obviously not a human-made ship, so . . . alien spaceship, alien laboratories," Lee said, reasonably. Someone struggled to contain a squeal of delight.
The ship's bridge was . . . well . . . bridge-like. Nearly as soon as they walked in, they were rendered speechless. No one noticed the pedestal tables they had seen elsewhere, with chairs and angled screens mounted low in front of many of them. Instead, the curved windows that took up three of the four walls dominated their attention. Floor to ceiling, completely clear, and no visible seams. The view was the best in the entire ship.
They scattered in stunned silence and looked into a view none had ever seen, or even dreamed possible. It was almost like standing among the stars themselves, when Harry stood right in front of the windows.
"Oh. My. God!" was the delayed reaction from the muggle-born and knowledgeable half-bloods. The others whispered a simple, "Merlin!"
Although he had seen a spectacular view in the lower room that first time, this still stole Harry's undivided attention. Finally, though, he began to look around the bridge, itself.
The pedestals were close together, set back from the walls, but not so close anyone walking by them would inconvenience the operators. Behind them, centred on the wall they had exited, was an elevated throne. It wasn't a chair like Harry had expected, but an actual gold throne. It made Dumbledore's chair in the Great Hall look positively pedestrian. The throne's side of the room, easily half, was mostly just empty floor space. Quite enough to accommodate the entire D.A. group, and then some, without crowding or difficulty. The only breaks in the wall were the door to the huge elevator they had just used, and the two discrete doors at the very ends.
The bridge was the most impressive thing he had ever seen from the Room of Requirement.
"Unbelievable!" Anthony Goldstein murmured. Just like Dean, he had been zapped by the window for leaning in too close.
"It's really not very realistic, though," Hermione commented disparagingly, and wrinkled her nose. "A real spaceship would never be like this," she continued, her tone unchanged. She tisked. "I won't even mention the gravity on a stationary ship."
"Yes, Hermione, don't mention it," Lee said sarcastically. "It's a spaceship. Enjoy the spaceship."
"That's in space." Fred agreed.
"For it is a spaceship," George nodded wisely.
"In the Room of Requirement." Fred finished sagely, nodding.
"Prats," Lee said quietly.
After everyone had had a chance to recover a bit from the stupendous view out the windows, Harry held D.A. session right there, in front of the throne. Lee was steadfast about them not damaging or playing with anything on the bridge. Who knew what the Room had decided the strange instruments would do?
That wasn't a problem. Harry had decided to show them a simple paint-ball spell — which splattered the victim with paint — as they practiced dodging and trying to hit each other in a round-robin tag game. There were no damages, just miscellaneous stains. Harry doubted the bridge had ever looked so colourful. A simple scourgify returned it to pristine condition.
Wizards and witches were not used to physical activity in a duel. Most just stood still, shot spells, and shielded from spells until a victor emerged.
It took time to break them of that habit. And pointing out that the less they shielded, the more likely it was that they would simply outlast their opponent. Not to mention that some spells couldn't be shielded against.
The D.A. usually dispersed quickly after Harry called a session over — no one wanted to be caught by Filch if they stayed too long and went past curfew by accident. This session had run a bit longer.
This time, in addition, they all had questions they wanted answered, and leaving wasn't of much concern despite the later hour. Fortunately for Harry, the questions were all for Lee, Fred, and George. The most popular one was to show group around on the spaceship.
"How come it's so dark? Does anything besides that elevator actually work?"
"Have you seen any planets or moons or anything?"
"If we got it working, could we actually move this thing?"
Harry shook his head at the whole thing. It was a simulation in the Room of Requirement. Did they not get that?
Meanwhile, Lee preened under the attention. Eventually, he and the twins gave their increasingly interested followers an extended tour of the ship. Or, at least, the places they had already scoped out.
"So," Ron said as the others left. He turned to Harry, "What's so interesting about this place? Besides the view, I mean."
"It's a muggle thing," Harry explained, and looked out the windows. "You really should ask Hermione. I don't know much about this stuff, myself," Harry shrugged. Was the bridge's . . . front window a windshield? Probably not. The view outside was fantastic though. He would visit just to look at the Milky Way that stretched across the windows, a magnificent stretch of billions of stars across the stark blackness of empty space.
"Well," Ron said. "It's quite a change from the usual room. And a bloody spectacular view, too." He pulled another cookie out of his pocket and started to eat. He'd been doing that all evening, while resting between bouts.
"It is at that," Harry agreed. It certainly put the Dursleys, and all the problems at Hogwarts, into perspective. Staring out the windows, here, his scar didn't hurt. He wasn't angry. Everything was . . . serene. Something he hadn't felt since the last time he was on the ship. And hadn't felt in years before then, either. Certainly not since his first year at Hogwarts. Or before.
In fact, he wasn't sure he could remember a time when he had been so relaxed. No dodging Dudley, no avoiding his aunt and uncle, no students staring at him in fear or loathing.
The twins taught everyone a quick set of spells that silenced everything (footsteps, clothes rustling, breathing too loud, and so forth) and hid their scents, and they made sure everyone knew the notice-me-not spell before setting them off. All spells, Harry told them, which were excellent to use when avoiding Death Eater or other villains. The ones not capable of doing them all were temporarily bespelled by the twins and Lee.
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He should have expected it, but he didn't notice until lunch on Saturday that he hadn't seen Hermione. Nor, once he thought about it, a number of the others in the D.A. Once he did, he realized they must have snuck back into the spaceship to explore and experiment. He considered following them, but then if the Pink Toad realized he had disappeared, she was sure to make things difficult — more difficult — for the others. So, he made sure she saw him, and that he wasn't having a good time. The vicious smile she had indicated his success. He wanted to rip her lips off.
Instead of holing up in the Gryffindor Common Room all weekend, he made sure to wander the halls at periodic intervals where people, especially the Toad's spies, could see him. And as far from the seventh-floor corridor that housed the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy as he could reasonably be.
The only real disappointment had been that Cho only appeared at mealtimes.
Hermione was waiting for him Sunday before dinner. "They want a meeting tonight. Okay?" she whispered as they headed for their spot at the table. He sighed, but nodded. They had barely sat down when his galleon heated up in his pocket. He looked at her in surprise. That fast?
Looking around he saw that most of the members of the D.A. were smiling. Yeah. They must really want that meeting. He frowned and sighed again as he filled his plate. What should he try to teach, this time?
He spent most of dinner mulling it over. Hermione, as usual, spent her time with her nose in a book — runes, he noticed — and eating mechanically whatever he placed on her plate.
Again, he really should have expected it when he arrived later at the Room's corridor to find a metal door. Once inside, the group told him they wanted the rest of their sessions there, too, if he didn't mind. He didn't. In fact, he preferred it. His scar didn't hurt when he was behind that metal door. Thank god, or Merlin, for small mercies.
By the end of the week, and another session, Harry discovered that there was an informal club inside the D.A, dedicated to exploring the ship. It was no surprise to Harry to find that Hermione was an avid member.
"It's the most fascinating thing," she said. They were in Hogwarts' front courtyard, enjoying one of the few sunny days left before winter firmly set in, doing their potions assignment. "Ancient runes are, of course, the primary language of written magic," she lectured. "Spell circles, magical artificing, and persistent spells are all explained with runes, of course. Hogwarts was built on that written language, after all — the castle, the spells, the Room of Requirement itself, of course." She wriggled happily on the stone bench.
"But here's the amazing part. The runes on the ship seem to be older! And the ones in the ship are being used to spell mundane words!" she said breathlessly.
"Muggle?" queried Ron looking up from his Potions essay.
Hermione frowned at him. "No, mundane. As in using them to spell 'closet' or 'corridor fifteen ansuz or hagalaz. Their use on the spaceship suggests runes were an actual written language well before early-German, but just as versatile as English or French are today!" She sat straight and frowned. "But why haven't we seen runes used like that in the castle? That's the real mystery. And why, if the Room used them on the spaceship in that manner, why weren't they used in the same manner in the Hogwarts? Why is our use of them so stilted and limited? And theirs, so mundane, yet more extensive?"
Ron looked at his potions essay like he was contemplating turning it into a paper dart.
Harry had been surprised to learn that pure-bloods knew how to do that. Turned out that the art of paper planes, which they called paper darts, went back to before Roman times.
"So?" Ron said dismissively.
"They are so different from how we use runes todays," Hermione said giddily. "The ship is using runes as an actual extensive written language!" She stopped a moment. "Of course, we've only managed to translate a small portion of the ship, generic things like naming floors and rooms and their purposes and whatnot. But they're written in a style that's not used anymore. These are really ancient ancient runes!"
"You're translating them, too?" Harry said absentmindedly. He knew Dean and Lee were. He studied his essay and considered adding a bit of stuffing by repeating in different words what he'd written earlier in the scroll. Snape was going fail it anyway, so it didn't matter what he wrote. He just wanted to get the appropriate length and call it done.
"It's good practice," Hermione answered with an exaggerated shrug.
Harry didn't mention the rings under her eyes that indicated she was spending more than just a little time in the spaceship. He wondered if she was sneaking out at night after curfew. Maybe he should loan her his cloak?
At least this year she didn't have a Time-Turner.
No much later, everyone in the D.A. could call forth the spaceship door. Most were spending at least some extra time there. At first Harry didn't share their enthusiasm. Not that there was anything wrong with the spaceship, but it was dark and cold — everyone was getting quite experienced at making warming charms that lasted for hours and keeping their wand lit while they did other things.
Plus, he didn't know anything about runes, much less ancient runes, nor engines, earth-bound or not, nor even spaceships in general. It just didn't have that much of a draw for him.
Except the serenity he felt. That was a powerful magnet. But he knew if he indulged in it too much, the Pink Toad would become even more of a problem. And not just for him. He couldn't do that to his friends. So, he tried to draw her attention to keep it off them.
And then one night, after the D.A. session let out, he laid down on the floor and just looked out the windows. And fell asleep. It was the best sleep he had had in far too long for him to remember.
At the end of a corridor on the next floor down they discovered a large lounge with its own floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall window. On one side of the lounge a door led to a large ensuite with the biggest bed Harry had ever seen, and a normal-sized window to space, Even the bathroom had a window. On the other side of the lounge was an obvious workroom, with another window.
That end of the corridor ended in an elevator to the Bridge.
The next two rooms back from the Captain's Room were similar, but smaller in all dimensions. Then came another dozen ensuites with attached lounge-workroom combinations lining the same wall in the corridor.
The other side of the corridor was blank wall, and Harry assumed behind it was the machinery and equipment for the bridge above. The access was probably from the other corridor on the other side of the ship, which had its own set of smaller bedrooms like these.
They were larger than the single bedrooms they had discovered elsewhere in the ship. Which made it a simple decision on his part. He'd wait until after curfew, then sneak across the castle and into the ship to sleep. A few pillows from the Room of Hidden Things — they would need several thorough sourgifys — a cushioning charm or two, and he was good to go — asleep, that is.
Plus, as Ron said, the view was bloody spectacular.
Everyone wholeheartedly agreed on that part, even the pure-bloods.
"Evening, Luna," Harry said as he entered the bridge. He smiled. She, too, had taken to sleeping aboard the ship. She said the nargles no longer bothered her. A discrete mention of her issue to Dobby had brought about the rapid return of her missing property.
The twins had managed to come up with something to put on her bed in her dorm that made everyone think she was there after curfew when she wasn't. It imitated the normal sounds she made while sleeping, and simulated a body under the covers if someone should peek past the bed's curtains. In the morning, it turned off.
With Winky's assistance, it wasn't difficult to sneak back and forth, fooling their roommates into thinking she had spent the night there.
Harry was thinking of asking for one for his bed. Seamus was the only one in his dorm room that wasn't in the D.A., and he was oblivious — pointedly ignoring Harry. But who knew when a prefect might take it into their head to do a spot check extremely early in the morning?
Those two Weasleys really were geniuses.
"How goes it?" he said to the Ravenclaw sitting cross-legged in front of the windows.
"There's a shooting star," she said happily, pointing as he joined her. "It has a long tail. See?"
The bridge's front window had a sea of pillows from somewhere — probably the Room of Hidden Things, like he had done — placed before it. Harry took one and sat beside her. "Yeah," he said as he looked at what she pointed at. "Very pretty."
"It's not actually a shooting star, though," Luna said serenely. "Those hit Earth or burn up in the atmosphere. This one's not anywhere near Earth."
"Huh," Harry said. "It must be a comet, then. Looks like one, at least, with that tail and all. Odd how it looks like it has two tails, though. One a spread of blue and then the other white."
Luna nodded and hummed a moment. For a long while they watched the comet. It was moving too slow for them actually to see it move, but after a long time Harry realized a star in front of the comet was now hidden by it.
"Have you ever wondered why we learn astronomy, here?" Luna suddenly said.
Startled out of his thoughts, Harry said, "Uh . . . not really? I just thought it was a prerequisite for something else."
"Perhaps. But it's a bit much just as a prerequisite for an elective course, don't you think?" she said. "After all, we start learning astronomy as firsties," she added. "Eleven-year-old kids, awake in the middle of the night to watch the stars. And I haven't heard of any course or job that requires it, have you?"
Harry just shrugged. "Not really. Never looked, though. Maybe it's to teach the pure-bloods mathematics and art? You know, calculating the planets' positions, and drawing what we see through our telescopes?"
She nodded slowly, looking at him. "Possibly. I hadn't thought about that." She turned to look back outside the ship. "I think I could navigate by the stars, now." Luna mused. "Could you?"
Harry considered it. Astronomy wasn't his favourite class, but it was far ahead of Divination — easy grade or not! He was decent at it; he knew all eighty-eight constellations and the secondary stars in them. He couldn't always recognise a star by the looks of it, though Hermione could. "Yeah, I think I could," he said thoughtfully. "At least on Earth, I could," he qualified. "Out here," he waved his hand languidly, "there are just so many more stars to see, it's hard to recognize the patterns."
"Can't see the forest for the trees," murmured Luna. She sighed. "Astronomy doesn't make much sense as a course," Luna said thoughtfully. "Astrology does, but that's Divination. Astronomy is just stars and celestial objects and planetary mechanics. And there aren't really . . . any occupations that use it, either. Yet it's taught the full seven years. As a required course."
She turned to look at him, tilted her head slightly, smiling, and said, "Isn't that interesting?"
"It is, it really is," Harry agreed thoughtfully.
She turned back to the stars, nodding happily. "It's that way in every magical school, you know," she said. "All of them start out with Astronomy in the first year. Do you think they're hoping we'll spot a space nargle?"
"Huh," Harry said. "You know what?"
She looked at him curiously.
"We should bring telescopes here."
"Stellar idea," Luna agreed.
He frowned at her. Had she just made a joke?
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Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe had been thinking about stars and astronomy, also, Harry and Luna discovered at the next D.A. session. Which was held in one of the larger rooms rather than risk damage to the bridge. Or the seating area in front of the windows. Plus, it didn't have any of those pedestal things for them to accidentally damage, set-off, or crash into.
"And we're pretty much sure we're here," Cho announced finally with triumph, pointing at a place on one of the star charts they had brought. The scrolls of calculations were stuck to the walls for the rest to examine. "Or the spaceship is anyway."
Harry tried to hide his blush as she looked at him, smiling broadly.
"The asteroid belt?" Lee said, and nodded. "Makes sense, there's an asteroid nearby, after all."
"How did you figure this out?" Fred asked.
"Locating the constellations out the windows on all sides, and comparing them to what we see from Earth. Then locating which constellation Astronomy class said Saturn was in. And then Jupiter. Which led us to locating," Marietta motioned at a nearby window, "Earth from the ship, and that gave us a pretty accurate distance."
"Where are all the asteroids, then," Dennis Creevey piped up, "if this is the asteroid belt?"
Hermione shook her head. "The asteroid belt is pretty sparse," she explained, "nothing like what they make it look like on the telly. The average distance between objects is around twenty-four times the circumference of the Earth. It's a surprise we can see even one asteroid from here, really." She tisked. "If there were as many asteroids as the movies show, you'd be able to see the asteroid ring from Earth with your own eyes, like Saturn's rings — no telescope needed."
"That's a pretty impressive amount of work," Fred said approvingly, "If you ignore that the whole place isn't even real," George tapped a finger on Cho's and Marietta's navigational chart.
Harry had taken to naming the first twin to speak as Fred, in his mind. That made the other George.
Lee rolled his eyes. "Prat. Still, pretty cool that we have an actual location for where the Room placed us."
"Is anyone trying to fix the ship?" someone asked. "Does anyone know what's wrong with it? It would be so wicked if we could fly around. I mean, the asteroid belt! Aren't there like dwarf planets here?"
"Only one — Ceres. Then a few really big asteroids, and thousands of smaller ones," Hermione said.
"Still . . .."
Lee shrugged. "Don't know what's wrong with the power situation, yet." Lee said thoughtfully. "Best we can tell is that we're out of power, broken, or just . . . turned off and we haven't figured out how to turn it back on."
George apparently couldn't help himself; he had to add, "Then there's the whole thing that, you know, it was created by the Room of Requirement and it probably never had power in the first place." He was promptly booed by everyone except his twin.
"Well, if it is a magical construct," Fred said thoughtfully, ignoring how someone hexed his twin.
"Maybe magic can power it? Somehow?" George said, rubbing his still tingling arm.
"Possibly, possibly," Lee agreed, nodding.
Harry shook his head at the silliness and stood up. He couldn't exactly deny he was curious, but the whole spaceship situation was a distraction from the D.A.'s purpose. An interesting distraction, admittedly, but a distraction, nonetheless. "It's getting late," he said. "It's almost curfew. If we don't stop now, no one will get back to their common rooms in time. And we can't depend on luck to keep from getting caught . . . yes, I know, we have those spells, but someone's going to notice you aren't in the common rooms or your rooms when you should be, before curfew. So, how about we call it quits for tonight?"
There were some groans and moans. Someone actually asked, "Do we have to, Professor," which made lot of people snicker.
Harry rolled his eyes. "I'm the only teacher in Hogwarts who has to kick his students out, I swear," he muttered, shaking his head. "Keep it up," he said louder, "and I'll give you all assignments for the next class."
Everyone paused on their way to the door and looked at him expectantly. Several took out quills and notebooks — even Hermione.
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" He rolled his eyes and sighed resignedly. "Well, okay then. Ten inches on magical fuels, power systems, or engines, if you know anything about them. If not, then . . . general theories on getting the ship powered."
"Just ten inches?" Hermione said in dismay. "I have so many theories!"
Harry gave her a flat look under his eyebrows. "Of course you do, Hermione. You have theories on everything! Consider it a personal challenge: how much information you can cram into ten inches." He stopped a moment to reconsider what he had just said, then added, "And I have to be able to read it without a magnifying glass, too!
"And I swear to Merlin," he threatened, "if you write more than that, I will tear off and burn every extra inch . . . right in front of you. And I will enjoy every second of it, very much!"
Hermione whinged a little and gave him a hurt look.
The rest of the D.A. laughed and began to disperse.
Harry shook his head and wondered, how on Earth had the D.A. turned into a spaceship club?
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