Monday evening, October twenty-first, Harry had another session with the Headmaster reviewing memories. Harry was unsure what he was supposed to take of Tom's attitude as a boy. He certainly hadn't improved with age! He'd been a nasty, mean-spirited bully in the orphanage, and hadn't changed much since then.
Plus, the way the Professor had acted!? Apparently setting fire to the boy's meagre possessions? That would have set Harry against the Professor right at the start. Even if it had been illusion, the boy hadn't known it was until after. Dumbledore didn't even try to play it off as a prank. Harry, himself, would have held the Professor at arm's length from that point onward! He never would have trusted the wizard further than he could throw him, one-handed.
He would never have taken anything the wizard said or did at face value, either. He would always be wondering if what he had seen, heard, or read was another lie designed to manipulate him.
It certainly made him review his own perceptions of the Headmaster. The wizard wasn't the kindly grandfather image he chose to portray. Not when he callously set fire to one's possessions! Maybe some of the "mistakes" he had made with regards to Harry hadn't been "mistakes." That is, his dismissing Harry's complaints about the Dursleys as exaggerations was because he simply didn't really care!
Maybe the Headmaster had changed over the years, but looking at his . . . lack of actions regarding protecting Harry, or anyone, from bullies, that was questionable. Especially considering how he coddled the Slytherins, giving them second, third, fortieth chances while throwing the book at the other Houses' members for minor infractions, expecting them to be saints.
Professor Snape passed Harry going in the opposite direction only moments after he had left the gargoyle behind. The wizard didn't slow down to make a snide comment, or even to merely sneer at Harry. He seemed much more intent on heading to the Headmaster's office. He stopped in front of the gargoyle barely long enough to hiss the password before bounding up the stairs.
Harry had to wonder what had the Potions Professor in such a tearing hurry. He wasn't sure the wizard had even noticed him as anyone other than just a student.
Harry had barely entered the Requirement, after Dobby had dropped him off, when he was accosted by the twins and Hermione.
"It's sorted!" Forge said happily.
"It was jolly well done, if I say so myself!" said Gred, preening a bit.
"He's gone!" Hermione practically crowed. "Hopefully for good!"
Harry suddenly realized his scar-ache was gone, and he hadn't been aimlessly angry in Hogwarts. It had all faded while he was talking with the Headmaster, but he had been too distracted to notice. A wide smile crept across his face.
"We watched him for hours," Gred said, rolling his eyes.
"We've been waiting since last week!"
"But we were patient."
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"We were beginning to think he didn't sleep when he finally left that stupid throne room of his earlier this evening."
Harry looked at them questioningly.
"Then, an hour ago," Forge said excitedly, "we decided it was time."
"He hadn't moved in the bed in an hour, so we were pretty sure he was asleep."
The two exchanged grins, almost too excited to continue.
Hermione started first. "Their first solution was a bit hair-brained, but rather elegant. Wait for Tom to fall asleep and have one of the drones drop a brick on his head to stun him. While he was dazed, another drone would portkey him onto a modified Runabout and into a room that duplicated the room in which he was sleeping, so he would be confused as to what had happened. As soon as he arrived, the ship would immediately head for Alpha Kentauri."
"But, she said," Gred interrupted, and pointed at the witch, "that simply bashing him with a brick was too chancy."
"Who knows what spells he had protecting him from physical harm?" added Forge.
"So," Hermione said, "Instead of a brick," she glared at the twins, "we used a stun-curse on a portkey-drone. When it landed, the curse was released, stunning Tom. Even if he had taken precautions against being unexpectedly attacked, the drone touching him bypassed most of them. At least, that was what I hoped."
"He had cast spells on the doors and windows the moment he walked in, and searched the room for traps or assassins," Forge said.
"But he never noticed the tiny drones hidden against the bedroom door, his own magic hid the stun spell! Otherwise, they weren't magical, which was all he expected his enemies to use, magic that is," Gred said disparagingly at the idiocy of some.
"Anyway, a few minutes was all we needed!" Forge jumped up and down excitedly.
"We had a drone slowly glide over to the head of the bed and land on his pillow."
"Then it simply bumped up against his neck, stunned him, then portkeyed him to the prepared spaceship."
"Where he was stunned a second time when he landed in the bed."
"They had the most powerful stunners the two of us could contrive to stay on the drones."
"We hoped the duplicate of his bedroom would fool him so he wouldn't wake in a strange place and immediately disapparate," Gred said, and grinned at his brother.
"Just in case he woke up before the ship was out of range."
"And it did fool him."
"The ship was an ugly kluge,"
"Looked like a house-sized box stuck in the middle of a Runabout with huge tanks attached for fuel that each dwarfed the Runabout in size."
"But Lee had it ready a week ago, after only a couple of hours work."
"The idea was that by the time he realized something was wrong, he would be billions of miles away, maybe trillions," Hermione said, "And we only needed three minutes to get him hopelessly lost in space."
"If we were lucky, and we were, he wouldn't realize anything was wrong until he arrived," Gred said.
"He would be stranded in a powerless and dead hulk of a spaceship," Forge said, relishing the thought.
"And if he tried to disapparate away, he would die in space."
"His wraith would be completely lost in space, with nothing to indicate where he was or where he could find Earth."
"He would be doomed to wander in space forever," Hermione said, gleefully rubbing her hands together.
"A rather fitting end for someone who is immortal, don't you think?" asked Gred.
"We weren't precisely sure how long the fuel would last, but as it turned out it was enough to get to Barnard's Star with the extra tanks," Hermione explained. "When the ship got close to the star, we vented the remaining fuel into space. We let the engines ran dry, so absolutely nothing was left to run them. The ship was at a dead stop a hundred million miles from the star. Then the ship went to battery power, and two drones portkeyed parts of both the control console and engines to outside the ship, then flew them off into space, leaving the ship impossible to repair without them. If he had stayed on board, he would have been doomed as the star's gravity pulled the ship in and burned it up in the star's atmosphere. I doubt that the wraith would be able to escape the star's gravity in that situation, if it somehow managed to not burn up on the star's surface."
"Zach preprogrammed the controls, so he couldn't have changed anything, even if he woke up almost immediately and tried that," Gred picked up the explanation."
"If he could even figure out the controls," said Forge.
"So, all we had to do was send the 'go' signal and the ship shot out of here headed like a scalded kneazle, straight for the star."
"It didn't take it more than a second to reach Jupiter's orbit," Forge said gleefully.
"It seems that the farther you have to travel, the faster you go up to a limit I haven't determined, yet," Hermione said, and grinned. "But, honestly, anything past three minutes would have left him hopelessly lost in space, at least a lightyear away from us. The ship sent us a status report on its location and a video recording of the room, from start to finish, when the batteries took over."
"And it worked like a charm," Gred bragged.
"Well, almost," countered Forge.
"He woke up precisely eight minutes after he was stunned the second time," Hermione said, regretfully. "We were hoping for at least four hours, the typical amount for being stunned, if not the twelve-hours a double-stun usually gives you. He took another three seconds to realize something was wrong, and wasted another five seconds calling for his Death Eaters. By that time, the ship had arrived at Barnard's Star, was drifting without fuel, running on battery after the drones had taken off with parts of the controls and engines, and starting to fall into the star. Then he disapparated."
"Don't know where he thought he was going because he had no clues he wasn't somewhere on Earth," Forge said, chortling as he smirked.
"The drone that portkeyed him was still on his cloak and he hadn't noticed," Gred said.
"We were able to track him for twenty apparations before he stopped."
"Wasn't more than nineteen thousand miles!"
"We think that's where he became magically exhausted," Hermione said. "So, he's a wraith now." She frowned. "Unless the ritual bound him to the body until it is destroyed." She brightened. "In which case he's trapped in a body, frozen-solid, in space."
"In orbit around Barnard's Star," Forge crowed.
"Or maybe falling into it, as we speak," Gred said, and grinned widely.
Harry nodded happily, but had to ask, "Barnard's Star?" He had never heard of that one.
Hermione grimaced. "Well, the Alpha Kentaurus system might have habitable planets, and Barnard's Star is only a bit farther away and any planets it might have would definitely not be inhabitable by anything that breathes oxygen." She sighed.
"In a worst-case scenario," she continued, "even if the wraith could manage to move at a mile a second, which I highly doubt because most records have them moving at feet per second, not miles, and escape Barnard's Star gravity, it would take him over a million years to return to Earth." she concluded happily. "If he could stay sane long enough to do that.
"That's if he could figure out which way to go. Even if he could somehow 'see' the stars and constellations, he would have only a tiny chance of going the right way. With a few exceptions, stars are so far away that you'd have to move dozens of light-years away to see a difference, or spend a long time studying them to see the minute differences for anything less. Plus, Barnard's Star isn't visible to the naked eye from Earth. Which means, as far as he can tell, he was still in Earth's solar system. However, Barnard's Star is definitely a red star, not yellow, which he would find extremely confusing. So, he'll probably never figure out where he is or where he should head to get back to Earth. He might even think he was transported through time!"
She grinned and shook her head. "That all presupposes that a wraith can even see or detect stars! If their 'sight'," she made air-quotes with her fingers, "is limited to physical things, well, then, the stars are too far away for him to detect them. As far as he can tell, he's just floating in a void."
She took a deep breath. "Voldemort, Tom Riddle, is not a problem anymore!" she gleefully shouted. The twins began to dance a jig, and pulled her into it. She joyfully joined them.
It was the best night's sleep Harry had ever had. Whether it was his imagination or not was irrelevant.
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"Hermione," Harry said the next morning, somewhat incredulously, after calling her on his comm, "Am I correct in thinking that we actually sent a ship to another star? In a few seconds more than seven minutes?"
There was a brief pause. "Yes? Captain?"
"So, when are we going on a tour? At only a few minutes to each star, we could probably visit several dozen on Saturday."
She sighed. "Sorry, but that was a one-way trip, considering how much fuel it took and how much the ship could carry. None of our current ships, excluding the Requirement, have the fuel capacity for anything but a one-way trip. And then only after a tremendous amount of modifications."
"Ah," he said, disappointed.
"Plus, the bigger the ship, the more fuel you need. For example, the Yanks discovered with their rockets that ninety-six percent of their entire rocket's weight has to be fuel. That was the number for the Moon landings. Our new ship will run on helium-three, so that's more efficient, but still a problem.
"You didn't want to modify the Requirement to helium-three for obvious reasons, so we have to wait for the new ship. It'll be a few weeks before it's complete. Unless we can find a source for the Requirement's normal fuel, we're not going anywhere soon," she concluded, regretfully.
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Bellatrix Lestrange was captured next. She didn't believe the warnings written on the walls. Nor those relayed by the remaining prisoners. The next time they looked in the brig, she was gone.
Neville celebrated for hours, and the wide grin on his face didn't fade for days! Even his parents seemed to perk up at the news, according to his grandma, after the Goblins confirmed that she had died. She was still celebrating a week later.
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It was Thursday, Halloween. The most dreaded day of the year, for Harry. He was already a bit morose. It had become clear since the first that Cho was not interested in him the same way he was her.
At breakfast, the Goblins sent notice that they urgently needed to meet with Harry. Unfortunately, this year, it was a regular class day, although most of the castle was too eager for the Halloween feast to care about classes. Which meant trying to duck out early was simply a no-go; the Professors and Prefects were watching too closely. While several of the prefects were crew, the rule was that in Hogwarts, they were Hogwarts students, first.
So, shortly after curfew, Harry and Hermione apparated to London and entered Gringotts.
Sharpnose stared at the two as they seated themselves. "You have killed Tom Riddle," he stated.
The two had discussed this while they waited for curfew to mask their disappearances.
"Neither of us 'killed' Tom," Hermione stated unequivocally. "He is simply too far away for you to find him."
Sharpnose gave her an incredulous look. "Our magic would detect him if he were anywhere on Earth."
She smiled at him sweetly. "I can confirm he is not anywhere on Earth."
"You have banished him to another plane," he accused.
"No. He is simply too far away, physically, for you to detect," she said firmly. "And he cannot return within our lifetimes."
He narrowed his eyes and glared at her. "It has something to do with this Enterprise, doesn't it?"
The two just smiled at him.
He grumbled under his breath as he opened a drawer and took out a box. "Here is your trinket. I return it to you as unneeded by us. The contract is complete."
Harry and Hermione looked at him, puzzled. "Your last communication said there were two other fragments in existence besides that one." Harry nodded at the box. "Tom was obviously one. That leaves one other. How can the contract be complete?"
The Goblin settled back in his chair and gave them a wide, vicious smile. "You are correct, wizard," he growled and then smirked. "If Tom Riddle is still alive, as you profess, then there are currently two other fragments in existence," he stated as he tapped a long finger on the box. "This locket, this trinket, is one," he continued as he stared hard at Harry. He slowly extended his long finger to point at Harry's head. "The last is there," he said with certainty.
For a moment, Harry was confused. He was the last soul fragment? That was absurd! Then he heard Hermione gasp. He looked over at her and saw her staring at his forehead. He felt his eyes go wide. He looked back at the Goblin in shock.
The Goblin chuckled, a sound like a chain being dropping on metal. He leaned forward, opened the box on his desk, and, slowly, with his knife through the neck-chain, lifted the locket. Harry's scar began to ache. The Goblin gently stroked the metal with a finger, mirth filling his eyes as Harry jerked back at the sudden spike of pain.
Sharpnose looked at Hermione. "You owe us another gold bar on confirmation that I have found the last soul fragment." He stroked the locket again, enjoying Harry's pained expression. "Yessss, confirmation."
Harry seemed to be looking at the Goblin from the end of a long tunnel. He was so very far away, his voice echoed strangely in Harry's ears. He vaguely heard Hermione ask, in desperation, her voice muffled by the distance, "Is there a way to remove it, safely?"
The Goblin slowly shook his head. "Not safely. There is a ritual to transfer the fragment from one anchor to another." His grin never left his face. "But it is very expensive. More than what you have paid for the soul anchors. But that shouldn't be a problem for you, should it?" he said shrewdly. He again leaned back in his chair. "There is no guarantee of success, however. The ritual cannot differentiate between souls. It might seize upon the wizard's soul; it might seize upon yours. There is a chance that the soul in control of your body would not be yours, at the conclusion of the ritual."
I have a piece of Tom Riddle in my skull, Harry thought dazedly. No wonder his scar had hurt and he had had frequent headaches whenever Tom was upset or a soul anchor was close. How had he not made that connection regarding his scar!?
Somehow, Hermione managed to get them back to the castle, as the next clear thing Harry could remember was Hermione steering him into the Requirement.
She stayed the night in his cabin, just holding him.
It marked a turning point in their relationship, although he didn't recognize it as such until later.
He wasn't the most sensitive soul at the best of times.
It didn't help that he had no idea of what his feelings meant. The Dursleys hadn't shown him enough affection for him to realize what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that. Nor how he could, or should, reciprocate to show he liked it.
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The dementors continued to plague the world, attacking both wizards and muggles with abandon. The Requirement's marines' biggest problem was just locating them. Every attack was seemingly at random, and their "panic-button" watches were only useful if there happened to be a muggle-born or half-blood in the vicinity. Plus, many attacks were not reported until long after the fact, with the muggles reporting strange cases of drug overdoses, or people mysteriously found dead after friends or relatives called constables saying they hadn't heard from the victims in days.
The plasma hand-cannons turned out to be impractical. Those never got out of the testing stage. They were like trying to light a cigarette with an over-powered flame-thrower — the collateral damage was far too great to be acceptable, especially if the dementor somehow dodged the bolt. Burning down half a town to get one dementor seemed a bit excessive, especially if you roasted-alive the person you were trying to save from the dementor. Not to mention the problem of people that might get trapped in burning buildings.
Fortunately, the next possibility, port-keys to a sealed room, had a chance of working. Dementors couldn't go through solid objects, they required an entry or exit point: a door, window, vent, flap, or anything else they could open with their hands. Thus, hiding in a closet kept you safe from a dementor if you could secure the door from the inside. Unfortunately, merely holding it closed would fail if you weren't strong, or their fearsome aura caused you to weaken or pass-out. So, hiding from dementors was usually not a good idea.
The crew settled on trying portkeys and placed a sealed box, a dozen yards on each side, a short distance from Requirement.
Because the wizarding communities and homes were extremely rare, compared to muggles, the crew had to rely entirely on listening into the Aurors' communications. For those communities that did have someone with a "panic" watch, the marines had a chance of arriving soon after the dementors arrived. The dementors were usually gone by the time Aurors arrived at the muggle communities.
The first attack the marines were able to appear at while the dementors were still there, they discovered the drawback to trying to fly portkey-drones. The drones could not locate the dementors. They simply did not appear on their sensors.
The twins came up with a solution. It was dangerous, but workable. They built "drone-guns." The things looked like flare-guns. The idea was that if you got close enough to the dementor, you could "shoot" him with the portkey stone. The port-key was primed as it went through the barrel, and hitting something triggered the portkey. Each gun had several dozen dormant portkeys stored in its "grip."
Their first use was more than a bit terrifying, but it worked perfectly. After that, the marines came up with an incredibly dangerous game. To prevent any accidents, that is, sending a person instead of a dementor to the box, the marines would charge the dementors to get their attention off their victims. Then, when the dementor was at almost literal point-blank range, fire their portkey-gun into its face.
Portkeys worked only on the person or persons touching it. Thus, even if the dementor was holding someone, only the dementor would be sent to the box.*
The marines quickly began ranking themselves, not on how many dementors they shot, but where they shot them. The prime location was dead centre between the eyes — which placed the marine at arms' length from the dementor, in a position of where they could have their soul sucked out if they weren't fast.
Not to mention they were well within the radius of the Dementos' debilitating aura.
Harry tried to order the marines not to do that, but they insisted that they had to get close to prevent any mistakes, and that was the best way. Plus, they always wore their helmets, and the dementors could not bypass the faceplates. Which meant they were never in danger of having their souls sucked out.
Hermione tried to tell them that that wouldn't work, that the faceplate could not block the passage of their soul.
Their response was that it hadn't happened yet.
Harry was convinced that to be a marine meant you had to have a screw loose somewhere in your head. That everyone agreed that their Combat Training Officers, Ginny and Luna, were both not exactly the most tightly wound of personalities seemed to reinforce that belief.
Ginny's excuse was that she had been possessed by an evil Dark Lord for the better part of a year. Her point-of-view was definitely skewed as a result.
Luna had always danced to the beat of a different drummer.
The marines adopted the technique of sending a member to every town in a certain radius from the last attack. Their hope that the creatures were simply drifting from place to place was correct, and they managed to head off several attacks.
It didn't stop the attacks, but as they crowded more and more dementors into their "safe" box, the number of incidents began to drop as the number dementors available dropped. The cloud of dementors that had abandoned Azkaban was slowly evaporating.
Which left the Ministry very, very nervous as they couldn't figure out to where the dementors were disappearing!
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Harry, Lee, and Hermione were on Uranus Station's bridge looking at the ship being built. The on-station brig would be empty in another week. It was amazing what an obliviate, a confundus, and a simple compulsion charm could accomplish.
Added to the Death Eaters' already inflated egos, it hadn't been difficult to convince them that they could easily beat veritaserum and outwit the "incompetent" and "weak" aurors, with the help of a special potion from their Master.
By the time the Death Eaters arrived at the Ministry, the confundus and compulsion spell had already expired. However, also by that time, they had firmly convinced themselves of their own inherent superior magical competence. With the assistance of their Master's undetectable potion — which actually was water — they felt that they were invincible.
Which they weren't, to their immense surprise.
In only a few more days, all the captured Death Eaters would be out of their hands and in the Ministry's.
Harry could only say, good riddance!
In addition, Dumbledore had let it be known to members of the Order of the Phoenix that the Dark Mark on Professor Snape's arm was no longer visible, at all. While he didn't release that information to anyone not a member of the Order of the Phoenix, the crew had no such limitations. They began to hint to their non-crew friends that Voldemort had been vanquished, yet again. Just look at how all the mysterious deaths and muggle-born raids had stopped!
From those friends, the knowledge that Tom was gone was slowly filtering out to the wizarding public. Lord Voldemort, they said, was no longer a threat. The more times they said that without any response from Voldemort or his Death Eater followers, the more accurate that statement seemed to become.
Harry knew Dumbledore was not convinced, however. The Headmaster knew that the disappearance of the mark on Snape's arm meant Voldemort had once more been reduced to a wraith. With the knowledge that the evil wizard had created horcruxes, it was simple to conclude that Voldemort would be back.
It was merely a matter of time.
Meanwhile, however, for Harry, their good-luck streak seemed to be continuing. Gryffindor had won their first Quidditch game in November! Ron had managed not to make too big of a fool of himself, with the help of a little sleight of hand by Harry with his vial of Felix Felicis.
Harry counted both of those a win.
Currently, they were on Uranus Station.
"What'll we name it?" Harry asked.
The other two looked at each other, then him.
Lee shrugged as Hermione said, "I don't know."
Harry smirked. "I suggest the D.S.F.S. Hermione."
He watched her reaction from the corners of his eyes as he stared out the window at the new construction under way. It was very difficult keeping a straight face as Lee burst out in laughter. Especially at her appalled expression.
"What! No!"
Her expression was too much, and Harry lost control right, then. He doubled over laughing.
Once Harry and Lee sobered back up, which was hard as Hermione's glare tended to set them both off again, Hermione finally said, "Absolutely not! I think we should make it a rule that no ship, base or anything else," she glared at them through narrowed eyes, "be named for anyone alive." She folded her arms under her breasts and glared at them, daring them to refuse. Then she smirked, "Or else. I know I'd get everyone's support to name a ship Potter. And another Harry. And a third, Harry Potter. A fourth could be Harry James Potter . . .."
Harry took a deep breath and slowly let it out. "I agree," he said, shuddering at how many would agree with her. He could end up with a fleet of ships all named some variation of his name. "I think we should stick to respectable names from mythology. For example, something from Greek mythology, would be appropriate."
Hermione stared at him with narrowed, suspicious, eyes. His capitulation had been expected, his quick replacement option had not.
Lee watched and listened curiously.
"Such as," Harry blithely continued, "the daughter of Menelaus, King of Sparta, and Helen of Troy, from the Iliad, would be a good choice — that would make it the D.S.F.S. Hermione." He turned to look at Hermione. "Don't you agree? I think it has a nice ring to it . . .."
Lee again burst into laughter.
She hit Harry on the shoulder. "Absolutely NOT!"
Rubbing his shoulder, he said, "Right, right. How about famous names of literary characters? They aren't alive, and have never been!"
She regarded him suspiciously. Lee listened eagerly, waiting for the punchline he knew had to be coming, grinning like a mad man.
"Maybe someone from Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale? Perhaps King Leontes' wife . . . that would make it the D.S.F.S. Hermione."
Lee pointed at Hermione's displeased expression and again burst into laughter.
She again hit Harry on the shoulder. "Absolutely NOT!"
Harry took a step away, again rubbing his shoulder. "Alright, alright! Geeze, there's no need to get violent." He paused, as if in thought. "Actors and actresses? Er, dead ones?"
Hermione stared at him distrustfully through narrowed eyelids, fists on hips. Ominously, her wand was in one fist.
"Like the English actress Hannen, for example, a famous actress from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She was on the stage from 1932 until 1980. That would make it the D.S.F.S. Hermione," Harry said earnestly.
He successfully dodged her swing at his shoulder, but wasn't so fortunate in avoiding the string of stinging hexes she sent at him.
Lee was sitting on the floor, holding his sides, laughing.
From behind his protego, that Harry finally got far enough away to successfully cast while dodging, he called out, "Okay! Okay! Great names from astronomy and physics? How about Galileo?"
Slightly mollified, and still staring at him with narrowed eyes, she grudgingly lowered her wand and said, "Right."
He turned back to the window and smirked again. After several minutes silence, he asked, "Didn't Galileo have a daughter by the name of Hermione?" At Hermione's aggravated yell, he took off running with Hermione in close pursuit, throwing hexes.
It was several minutes before a smug Hermione returned, floating a subdued Harry behind her. It took another ten minutes to undo the hexes, before which she made Harry promise not to ever name a ship Hermione.
After several minutes of silence, and glowering looks from Hermione, he asked, "There's something I don't quite understand."
The other two looked at him curiously. Hermione's expression was more suspicious than curious.
"I've brought this up before, but I haven't been given a good reason why we can't do it. You've told me the normal fuel the Requirement uses isn't in our solar system, and the nearest source in the records is extremely far away, thousands of light years. We haven't a chance of getting to it, even with helium-three, anytime soon."
The other two nodded.
"Is it stored as a pattern in the library?"
They looked at each other, then back at Harry. "Well," Hermione said thoughtfully, "A usable molecular description of it is there, but it's pretty useless. It's about ten thousand times more efficient as a fuel than helium-three, and would take a thousand times more than that of helium-three to make it."
Harry nodded. "Yeah, but like I mentioned before, to Lee, don't we have quadrillions of tons of helium-three right there?" He pointed at Uranus. "So, who cares if it takes ten million tonnes of helium-three to make one ton of this . . . fuel." He looked at them. "It's not like we're going to run short of helium-three anytime soon, is it?"
They slowly nodded.
"It's the time it would take, Harry." Lee said as he walked over to a console and moved the controls. "It would take about a month to make just an ounce of fuel, if we did that." He looked up at Harry. "We need tonnes for star travel, if we want to travel any real distances."
Harry shrugged. "So? Are we on a deadline?"
"But then we can't build anything else," he whinged, looking soulfully aggrieved.
"So, build a Fuelling Depot," Harry said flippantly. "Streamline it just to make other stations and the fuel we need — no greenhouses, warehouses, apartments, nothing but the bare minimum for a supervisory staff to stay in, if it is needed — and make it completely automated. Then have it build a duplicate, then the duplicates build more duplicates." He stopped and frowned a moment, looked at his fingers and did a bit of calculating. "We could have a thousand stations by this time next year, and a hundred thousand in less than two years. Stripped down like that, you'd only be out the use of Uranus Base for a month instead of two."
They had decided that because the completed unit wasn't a ship, they didn't want to call it that. But calling it a station gave the same initials as a ship, which would be confusing. Thus, they had decided it would be a Base — Defensive Space Force Base Uranus.
He smiled. "Making three-plus tonnes a month, in two years, should be sufficient fuel for all our needs for a very long time." He looked back out the window. "And even taking a ten million tons of helium-three a week from there instead of thirty- or forty-thousand," he nodded out the window, "is a drop in the bucket considering how many quadrillion tons of it there is. It should last for millennia." He looked back at them and smirked. "And if we run out here, I'm sure Neptune, Saturn, and Jupiter can be used as well. Not to mention sources in other star systems.
"I don't mind waiting until I graduate next year before going star-trekking," he said with a smirk.
Lee and Hermione stared at each other for several moments, their expressions changing and morphing as they silently argued.
Lee took a deep breath and started moving more controls on the console. "I'll halt the construction on the new ship in favour of the first Fuelling Depot. No need to build it with a reactor if we're just gonna use the fuel it was originally designed to use. We can just use the same system we have in the Requirement while we wait. It'll give the ship's crew plenty of time to get used to it, and their jobs, before we go anywhere."
Harry smirked. "Once we get that sorted, when we start producing fuel in quantity, we can start on a fleet of ships to explore the galaxy."
His two friends stared at him, slack-jawed.
"Wouldn't it be great to find a planet just for the unicorns?" he said, staring out the window. "And perhaps another for the dragons? I'm sure the Goblins wouldn't say no to planet without wizards."
He gave the other two a sunny smile.
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A.N. * In canon, they insist everyone using the portkey must touch the portkey. The option to hold onto or touch a person touching the portkey is never mentioned. And, honestly, it's easier to hold onto someone's arm than keep a finger on an old boot or similar scrap, as they do in canon!