Ch. 34 — Singularity
"Aw, please, Harry?" Ginny, Luna, Dennis, Colin, and Jack were all giving him the hopeful begging eye.
Hermione was trying, and failing, to restrain her giggles.
He ran his hand through his hair.
"Why are you asking me?" he said to Ginny and Luna, "You're both better than me, now!"
Ginny sighed. "But you're the Admiral! If you ask, the Headmaster will most certainly say yes!"
Harry sighed. "Based on last year, this year will only be more popular! There's no way I can handle that large of a group!" he shuddered. The meetings the previous year had been difficult enough, even with the others helping.
Ginny grinned. "We've already planned it out . . .," she said, hand handed him a parchment. "See!"
He was impressed, despite himself, they had a complete schedule worked out, even making allowances for Quidditch practices! Monday was reserved for the Third-years, Tuesday for the Fourth-years, and so forth. He was scheduled for Friday with the Sixth-years. Which wouldn't be that hard. Hermione had been very insistent that they get ahead in their studies.
Her "rewards" for successfully completing a chapter in the books had been a very big incentive. They both had silent-casting down perfectly, and their point-casting was almost perfect. Harry had even made a little headway in wandless-casting. They had already passed on to the first-years to start whispering their incantations and to move their wands as little as possible so as not to disturb others while practicing. It also meant they could practice without others noticing.
They wouldn't realize it, but doing so would pay off for them in a big way when they reached their N.E.W.T.s, not that he would tell them that part!
The schedule kept the attendance to manageable levels, but students who couldn't make it on one day, could do it another, he noted. Even more impressive, they had planned for Ginny and Luna to work with the Sixth-years, Colin and Dennis would switch back and forth between the Fifth-years and Fourth-years, and Jack, a Fourth Year, would handle the Third-years. The crewmembers in each House would help the First- and Second-years, who spent most of their time on theory and learning the many different wand movements.
They had also made sure that there was at least one Prefect who promised to supervise each night.
"Okay," he said, capitulating. "I'll ask Professor McGonagall tomorrow to ask the Headmaster if we can go ahead."
"Yes!" Ginny and Colin pumped their arms.
He shook his head as they headed back to their House tables.
He looked at the parchment a bit longer.
"Most of the other students spent last year just catching up from the toad," Hermione said quietly, as she grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze.
He shook his head. "Still, they don't need my permission for this stuff!"
"Harry," she chided him, "During Fifth-year when the teachers, even the Headmaster, refused to help them . . . you did. You didn't have to do it, but you did. Lee told me how he couldn't get the Room of Requirement to cooperate with him, but you did. And then you gave us all a place of refuge from that horrid witch.
"On the ship, they knew they were safe. It gave them something to focus on that wasn't how miserable Hogwarts was, where you had to watch your back constantly."
She squeezed his hand in hers. "We all saw how you deliberately stayed off the ship so that . . . witch never noticed that we weren't in Hogwarts. We saw how you made yourself a deliberate target for her Inquisition Squads. Then you gave us the tools we needed to survive."
He shook his head no, "No I didn't! That was the twins, Lee, and you doing that! All I did was help them with dada, and listen!"
She shook her head wryly. "But you were the one held it all together. The twins only wanted to use the Room for making pranks. Lee only wanted to 'play' with the ship. To the rest it was just a . . . a . . . game!" She looked into his eyes earnestly. "You could have insisted we use the Room the way it was before, but when we asked to do the training on the ship, you said yes. And that gave us something else to look forward to.
"The Requirement became our reward for enduring a day in Hogwarts! You asked the twins to hide the entrance, you allowed us to use Dobby and Winky to avoid being seen after curfew, you were our inspiration."
Harry looked away, embarrassed. "I only did what everyone wanted."
"And you could have said no."
Harry harumphed. "Lee could have kept going to the ship, so could have others."
"But the twins only cooperated because you kept using the ship to help us with our D.A.D.A.! Which they needed, too. Otherwise, with the twins using the Room for their experiments, half of us would never have been able to get to the ship. Plus, the half-bloods would never have been as interested if they hadn't been pulled into the mystery of the ship and what it could do!"
She straightened. "Can you imagine what would have happened if the twins or Lee had been in charge? Nothing but practical jokes! And everyone else would have just fought over who was in charge.
"You were in charge of the DA, you put the DA on the ship, therefore, you were in charge of the ship!
"Then, you made it possible for us and our families to not only survive, but prosper! You gave us unlimited access to anything we might want! We can do whatever we want with our lives! You've seen how Luna's art has grown! For all that Lee likes to fancy himself as Spock on the Enterprise, he's a space engineer without peer! X-Wing fighters from Star Wars, Runabouts from Space: 1999, Star Bases, and Fuelling Depots! Alicia designed a tricorder — although it's so much more.
"Believe it or not, some of the older muggle-borns in the Marines we've recruited would conquer hell if you asked them to! Especially the weres!"
He gave her a disbelieving look.
"You could have said we should stay with what we knew in the Room of Requirement," she continued. "And that would have been it. Everything would have been different.
"She never would have been brought to justice! Neither would Sirius ever have freedom! Who knows what would have happened! Voldemort might even have been in control of the Ministry by now, and you and I fleeing through the countryside, never knowing whom to trust."
Hermione shook her head and settled back to finish eating. "You kept everyone grounded without once having to make anyone follow what you ordered. They did what you asked because you were reasonable, and what you asked for was reasonable! You never put anyone off or ridiculed an idea. You even suggested people they might want to consult with on their idea! Plus, you were always fair."
Harry just stared at her and shook his head in wonder.
She stared back. "They respect you, Harry. They respect what you've done. Because of what you did, we wiped out the Death Eaters and got rid of Tom Riddle. Both of those would have been impossible without you letting us use the Requirement as our playpark.
"So, yes, they want to clear things with you before doing anything because you're the only one who knows everything! You might know that what they propose will clash with something else, or know how to improve what they have, so they come to you."
She grinned at him and shook her head. "And you are soo clueless about it! You aren't arrogant, you don't expect special treatment, you just do what you think is right for everyone." She sighed and smiled at him. "And that's why I love you." She leaned close and kissed him on the cheek.
He just stared at her. Finally, bemused, he said, "Okay, if you say so," and turned back to his own dinner.
She stopped and looked at him. "By the way, in order to add those bays for the runabouts and X-wing fighters to the Requirement, Lee and I have had to make a few changes to the ship."
Harry gave her an inquiring look and raised an eyebrow.
"Simply chopping holes into storage bays and such isn't that great of an idea. Plus, if the ship is moving, matching velocities and entering the bays is not a trivial problem. We still haven't found any armaments on the ship, so Lee suggested we add laser-batteries like on the X-wings, as well as plasma generators, for defence. All of which require changing and rearranging things."
Harry nodded. That seemed reasonable.
"Now that fuelling the ships with Naquadah isn't an issue, Lee's changed four of the Uranus Fuelling Depots to two General Construction Units, and they're building the extra pieces there. When they're ready in November, the Requirement can go there over a weekend and get the extra pieces added on. In the meantime, the Requirement is making the internal modifications and preparing the external sections to mate up properly with the new pieces.
"It will dramatically change the ship's profile, however."
"Well," he said after a moment's contemplation, "You two know best about that stuff. If you think it's needed, then I don't see a problem with doing it." He shrugged. "Besides, why should I care what the ship looks like as long as it can't be confused with a ship the Goa'uld use?"
She grinned at him, and gave him another kiss on the cheek.
As she turned back to her plate, he couldn't help but notice that she was smirking.
He shook his head. He'd find out later what they had done to the ship. With his luck it would probably looked like Star Trek's Enterprise or a Klingon Battle Cruiser. Not that that really mattered. As long as it had room for them all, and let them travel the stars, he was happy.
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The next morning, at breakfast, Harry managed to catch his House Head before she reached the Head Table. "What can I do for you, Mr. Potter," she said, and smiled.
"Several of the students have asked if we could set up a Duelling Club like last year," he said. He shook his head wryly. "They even drew up a schedule!' He handed her a duplicate of the parchment. "Would you ask the Headmaster if I could meet with him about setting it up?"
She glanced over the schedule and her eyebrows raised at the detail.
"I will be happy to convey this to the Headmaster, Mr Potter," she said. "But I don't think Professor Flitwick can handle a meeting every night of the week."
Harry shrugged, "With at least one Prefect in attendance each night, he wouldn't have to attend the entire meeting, just pop in once in a while to check on things."
She nodded approvingly, still looking at the schedule. "I'll discuss this with Professor Flitwick and then give it the Headmaster." She smiled warmly. "Considering how well your club members did on their year-tests the last two years, I'm sure this will impress the Headmaster."
"Thank you, Professor," he said, and headed back to his table. He didn't see her raise her eyebrows as he left, or realize he hadn't waited for the Professor to turn away, but had left when he considered the conversation finished.
At lunch, a Prefect came over and handed him note from the Headmaster. It requested a meeting after his last class of the day.
He stood in front of the gargoyle and couldn't help but think how stupid it was to have a password before anyone could talk to the Headmaster. Locking the office when he wasn't there was only prudent. There were important papers and items kept in the room, such as the Sword of Gryffindor — which should be on display for everyone and not a personal trophy for the Headmaster to admire.
But when he was in his office? A student could die in an emergency while someone was trying to guess the password to get the Headmaster
But he had his temper under control, now. The Headmaster wasn't a bad wizard, but he enjoyed his games, plots, and schemes too much to be a good wizard. For two years after discovering the diary was a horcrux he had sat on his wand, doing nothing. Even hearing the prophecy that the rat would raise his master more terrible than before hadn't had much of an impact on his plans. Only after Tom Riddle had been reborn did he attempt to discover the other horcruxes!
That didn't even begin to cover his mis-steps in Harry's life.
But that was over now.
Tom was gone, Harry's life was his to live — and his life was on the Requirement.
Dumbledore, for all his political power, couldn't make Harry do anything he didn't want to do.
Harry heard Dumbledore call out, "Come in, Harry, my boy," just as he was about to knock.
It was a stupid game. A simple alert spell, set to project an image of who was addressing the gargoyle would easily do that. Dumbledore could just as well have had the gargoyle automatically admit anyone he was expecting. This entire thing with passwords while he was in his office was just an absurd little show of dominance — I'm so great that not just anybody can interrupt me! You have to have special permission to meet someone as great as I am!
He shoved his anger down, took a deep calming breath, and walked into the office.
"Would you like a lemon-drop, my boy," Dumbledore said jovially, his eyes twinkling.
"No, thank you sir," he said politely, sitting in the chair in front of the Headmaster's desk.
It felt odd, and relieving, not to have Snape sitting in the corner on his stool, sneering at him.
The Headmaster smiled at him, and tapped the parchment on his desk. "This is quite an ambitious plan you have here." He looked at Harry over his glasses. "It's almost like you don't think Professor Johnson will do a good job of teaching everyone," he said reproachfully.
Harry shook his head. "It's not my plan, sir," he replied. "It was put together by Ginny, Luna, Dennis, Colin, and Jack, the ones who are volunteering their time to teach the lower years while learning with their own years."
The Headmaster looked vaguely surprised at this. "They did, did they?" he said softly.
"Yes, they felt that while Professor Johnson is a great Professor, he doesn't have enough time to devote to the individual instruction that some students need. Plus, he has his hands full with teaching each of the current year's classes their curriculum. Ginny and the others felt that they, and the others, need much more help with their previous years when they had more . . . problematic . . . professors who did not live up to their expectations." He paused, then added, as a dig at the Headmaster. "It says something that the best teachers my class has had were a werewolf in Third-year and a Death Eater in Fourth-year."
The Headmaster stared at him. "Surely you count Professor Snape as an excellent D.A.D.A teacher." Harry stared at him, then snorted. "I dare you to take a memory from any of my classmates from last year of him 'teaching.' His 'instructions' were minimal, and he spent more time insulting the Gryfindors' accomplishments and praising the Slytherins' pitiful efforts than he did any actual teaching."
The Headmaster shook his head. "There's no need for that, I know that Professor Snape has a deep knowledge of the Dark Arts."
Harry clinched his teeth, then forced himself to relax. "He might know the Dark Arts, but he hasn't the skill to teach them to others."
He took a breath, and before the Headmaster could say anything, he said, "Still, the others feel they really need the extra time to make sure they thoroughly know both the theory and the practicals taught by the less than stellar professors — such as a Tom-Riddle-possessed-Quirrell, an incompetent celebrity in Lockhart, and an incompetent ministry official who didn't even pretend to teach what the classes required." He shrugged. "I agreed to help them if you give approval to the club."
The situation was clear. Dumbledore couldn't use the threat of saying "no" as an argument to win any control over Harry. The only ones he would disappoint would be the other students. Most of whom, after his failures last year in protecting them, didn't have that much faith in him in the first place. Even if he thought it wasn't his fault
Harry didn't feel the need to add that the crew would just use the three Houses' secret passages to go to underground meeting room at the edge of the school's boundaries, and conduct the classes there. They didn't really need the Headmaster's permission. The permission just made the Club official and out in the open.
The Headmaster slowly nodded his understanding and stroked his beard.
"Why are you proposing it, instead of your friends?"
"I have a bit of a track record in helping students with their problems in the D.A.D.A.," Harry said. "If I'm listed as the organizer, the other students at Hogwarts are more likely to take the club seriously. Which, in turn, will make it easier for the others to run the club. All I really have to do is come in to each meeting for a short time, maybe spend half-an-hour helping out. The others, the prefects, Ginny, Luna, and so on, will do the heavy-lifting."
The Headmaster kept stroking his beard. Finally, he said "Well, then, if the students truly feel this is necessary, and Professors Flitwick or Johnson don't object, I see no reason why the Defence Club can't proceed. When would you like to start?"
Harry shrugged. "We'll put up notices this weekend, and start on Monday. Professor Flitwick will be able to tell us where we can find a suitable room."
He waited a beat, then said, "Thank you for your time, Headmaster. I know the others will be very happy that you gave approval for the club to get started." He stood up.
"You may tell them they did a very good at planning the club arrangements."
Harry nodded. "I will, sir," he said, making his way to the door and leaving.
After turning the corner at the end of the corridor, Harry stopped and leaned against the wall.
He had managed to keep his temper with the wizard, which he counted as a major accomplishment. To think, once he had looked up to the man. After a few more calming breaths, he straightened, and headed for the Gryffindor Common Room. The others would be delighted with the news.
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The beginning of October was typical for England: Cold and cloudy with far too much drizzling rain. Scotland was the same, just colder.
Dobby shaking him woke Harry out of a sound sleep. "Master Admiral Harry Potter, Sir! Wakes! Youse needed!"
"What?" he said sleepily, rubbing his eyes.
"Lone-prank-wiz," he said breathlessly, "says it's emergency!" he handed Harry his comm-link.
"Lee?" Harry said muzzily, taking the stone.
"Sorry to bother you Admiral, but this is one I don't want to call myself. Can you come on up? Over."
Harry laid there a moment. "Yeah. Give me five minutes. Over."
"We've got about an hour before it's too late. Over and out."
Well. That didn't sound ominous, now did it?
Harry wearily slung his legs over the side of his bed, and pushed the curtains open. He took one step towards his trunk when Dobby snapped his fingers and Harry was fully dressed in his spacesuit, robes, and trainers. He blinked, still not quite awake.
Dobby said, "Here, Master Admiral Harry Potter, Sir," and shoved a warm cup into his hands.
Harry looked at the steaming liquid and took a small sip. It was fresh, hot tea. The steam helped clear his head as the hot liquid hit his stomach. Dobby waited patiently for a moment as Harry took a longer sip. The next moment, Dobby touched his hand and said, "Dobby takes you to ship."
Harry barely had a moment to prepare as Dobby's fingers wrapped around his wrist and they suddenly appeared in the Apparition and Vanishing Cabinets Room on the Requirement. "Thank you, Dobby," he said quietly.
Dobby vanished with a pop.
The walk to the Bridge was long enough for Harry to finish off the cup of tea he still held. He shoved the empty cup into a pocket. He felt more alert, now.
"Hi, Lee," he said walking into the spacious room. "What's going on?"
There were four people on the Bridge. Cho Chang was at one of the Navigation consoles, seated beside an older man. Harry expected he was a past-Hogwarts graduate whom Josephine had managed to recruit for them. He certainly seemed pleased to be on the Bridge and not all offended at learning and taking orders from someone who was obviously years younger than him. Cho gave him a brief wave. From the way he was moving stones on the console, Harry thought the man was probably in the middle of a simulation.
Beside Lee was another older man, wearing the insignia of a Healer on the breast and shoulders of his robe.
Lee rubbed the spot over his right eye. "Right, well, here's the situation." He stopped and took a breath. "SG one was checking on a planet called Hanka where they have set up an observatory. Apparently, it's close enough that they can get a good look at the accretion disk of a Black Hole." He looked out the windows at the Earth below.
Harry nodded. Hermione had told him about those. Black Holes were things in space so massive that their gravity wouldn't even let light escape. The only way you could "see" one was by what it blocked you from seeing, and the disk of debris that orbited it like the rings of ice and debris orbited Saturn. The debris was the remains of nearby planets and even stars that had gotten too close. Because of the massive amount of gravity, and the interaction with other sections of the rings, the debris was slowly being pulled into the Black Hole. Doing so gave off lots of radiation, some of which could be seen in the visible spectrum.
As mysterious as Black Holes were — no one really knew anything about them, it was all mathematical theory — it only made sense the muggle scientists would be interested in seeing what they could learn by direct observation.
"Anyway, when SG-one got there, everyone was dead — natives and observatory personnel, both."
Harry gave him a disbelieving look.
"Yeah," Lee said, glancing back at Harry. "But there was one survivor, a small girl by the name of Cassandra." He sighed, "To make a long story short, a Goa'uld somehow discovered that the muggles were interested in this star and set up trojan-horse situation." He looked at Harry bleakly. "She's a living bomb. She's got naquadah in her, and something is turning her into a powerful nuclear bomb by accumulating the potassium from her body and putting the two together. She's going to explode in," he looked at his console, "fifty-five minutes. They were gonna take her through the Stargate back to her home-world. I was going to beam her to the ship just as they reached the Stargate, and Healer Mason Halle," he nodded at the man beside him, who nodded to Harry, "would use one of the Portable Medical Problem Solvers to send the bomb-part of her into space and save her life."
That was when Harry noticed the black device sitting on the floor beside Mason.
Lee flashed a quick grin at Harry. "As far as they would be concerned, she somehow got lost in transit." He sighed. "After we were done, we could obliviate her and have her 'fall' from the gate a few minutes later. They would never figure out what had happened.
"However, just as they were getting ready to go, they found out that the bomb would detonate when she entered the Stargate, destroying the whole Cheyenne complex. That was the Goa'uld plan, apparently. Destroy the gate on this side and solve their problem with us." He looked back out the windows.
"Now, however, they're taking her to an abandoned nuke facility. They plan to take her deep underground where the explosion won't cause too much damage."
"I want to save her; I know we can. The problem is, if I take her now, I'll give away that we're watching them." He stared at Harry. "That's not my call."
Harry rubbed where his scar used to be, and thought.
"Unless one of them wants to commit suicide, they'll have to leave her alone," he mused. "What if Mason were to portkey down to her with a medical unit instead of bringing her here?"
Lee stood straighter. "Ah!" He rolled his eyes. "The obvious solution. I was too stuck on bringing her here! Then he can obliviate her, leave, and no one ever suspects we were there! It'll be perfect." He gave Harry a big grin, as did Mason.
"I don't think Healer Halle should go alone," Harry said while they were waiting for the SG group to move the girl to the abandoned facility. "I think I'll go with him, just in case someone tries to interfere . . . like someone that a Goa'uld might have tricked or blackmailed into helping them."
The other two agreed. Halle spent the time preparing the P.M.P.S. for this specific situation. He had the Requirement download the molecular description of the naquadah, as well as whatever other information he had gleaned from the recordings of the drones in the base.
Although the facility was only twenty minutes away, the Stargate people lost time getting the girl from Stargate Command to the surface, and then getting from the entrance of the isolated facility to the front door of the building.
Waiting for the girl and her guardian, Captain Carter, to reach the far underground bottom level of the facility, level twenty-eight, was nerve-wracking. Especially as the timing was going to be extremely close. With only four minutes remaining, both were in a room with a steel door equipped with a wheel lock.
As she headed for the door to seal the girl in, Harry and the Mason both prepared two-way portkeys. The moment the door closed, and Carter started turning the wheel to slide home the locks, Harry and Halle said, "Activate!"
Although fast, portkeys still take time. However, both he and the Mason arrived within a few seconds. Harry was well-practiced, now, with portkeys, so he didn't even stumble as he touched down. He sent a stunner at the scared and trembling girl, just as they had planned.
He understood why the Captain had left, but it was still a terrible thing to do to a frightened child. Halle was just as skilled, and didn't break stride as he cast a levitation spell to catch the girl as she fell.
He straightened her out into a more comfortable position as Harry looked around the dusty abandoned room. There were concrete columns affixed to the walls, which became angled wedges protruding into the room as they approached the floor. The Captain had taken the only light with her, and both he and Mason would have been blind if not for their suits' helmets switching to infrared and providing their own light.
"Problem," said Mason, looking up from Medical Problem Solver. "The unit says attempting to remove the naquadah by beaming will set off the device. It suggests physical removal."
"Do we have time, can you do it?"
"Admiral, Captain Carter has stopped the elevator and is apparently returning. Over," came Lee's voice over the comm.
Halle shrugged. "I can try a switching spell. If it doesn't work, we'll have to give up."
Harry wanted to curse, but they didn't have the time! "Go for it," Harry said tersely.
Mason was already pulling a fist-sized jar out of his pocket. It appeared to be full of some sort of paste or salve.
He moved the medical unit until it left her abdomen uncovered. He stared intently at the medical unit, then slowly waved his wand over the girl, muttering something that only vaguely sounded like the switching spell that Harry knew.
The speaker on the wall crackled to life and Colonel O'Neill's voice said, "Captain Carter!"
Harry thought it was rather optimistic of him to assume the woman could answer while she was still in the elevator.
The jar Mason was holding sparkled for a moment, then he relaxed a bit. "Got it all," he said succinctly.
"Captain Carter!" O'Neill repeated.
"Now for the rest of it!" Mason pulled another jar of the same salve from his pocket
The metal wheel on the door started to turn. Harry spun and cast an impediment charm on the door. The spinning wheel abruptly slowed to crawl.
"Sam! Can you hear me!" O'Neill repeated testily.
Halle repeated what he had done before, and the second jar sparkled. He waved his wand over the girl one more time and stared at the diagnostic lights that resulted. "Done and done," he said quickly. We can go!"
"On three," Harry said. "You wake the girl and I'll finite the spell on the door!"
Mason grabbed the medical unit by its handle and stepped back from the girl, pointing his wand at her. "Confundus," he said as Harry said, "One!"
Harry hadn't thought about that. When the girl woke, even if she had heard or seen something, she would be too confused to think anything about it, or tell anyone.
"Two!" Harry continued. "Three! Finite!"
Mason used a softer, medical version of rennervate to gently wake the child.
"Activate," they said at the same time.
On the screen projected by the drone with Major Carter, they saw her go into the room, argue with the Colonel, and then go to the scared girl.
Mason gave a big sigh. "I don't think she saw or heard anything, and the Captain's return has her full attention." He took the jars out of his pocket, one at a time, and placed them on a nearby console. He pulled out an empty jar, and with two swipes of his wand emptied the two jars of the salve into the new one, leaving the naquadah in one and a pinkish lump in the other. He handed the naquadah to Lee.
"Here you go, sir," he said, "I'm not sure what you'll do with it, but it's all yours."
He held up the other jar. "This one I'd like to keep to figure out how it worked."
Lee nodded, after giving Harry an inquiring look. "Sure." He added, "Just make sure there's no naquadah anywhere close to that if you're going to add potassium to it, you saw the mess it made with just one microscopic bit of naquadah.
Mason nodded. "You bet your arse I'll be careful, sir" he said emphatically.
"What were you doing there, at the end?" Harry asked.
Halle smiled. "Well, the salve I was using is for protecting open wounds, and leaving that inside her would have caused some questions when the muggles noticed it. I just sped up the absorption process a tiny bit. The surrounding tissue where that was will be . . . swollen a bit with extra fluids. There's also some naquadah still left scattered in her body." He hefted the jar he was holding. "With this, here, there's no longer any danger.
"With luck, they'll write it off to her not-quite human biology."
They nodded.
"Excellent work, Mason! I never even thought of that!" Harry said.
Halle smiled. "I'm just glad we could save her life." Then he stopped and scowled. "I just wish we could do more for the muggles."
Harry sighed. "Me, too." He shrugged. "It's all a matter of people. If we all worked all day on nothing else but curing sick muggles, we'd only save a tiny fraction because there aren't that many of us. We can only do what we can when we happen on something we can do." He looked out the windows. "Right now, we've whipped cancer in the United Kingdom, and we've moved onto the continent. But we're quickly getting to the point where we can only cure them as fast as new ones fall sick." He looked back at Mason. "We do what we can, no matter that it isn't as much as we want. We have to be satisfied with what we can do."
He looked at them both. "Is there anything else? If not, I think I hear my bed calling." He glanced out the windows again, this time towards the dawn-light that was just starting to cross Europe on the planet below. "I think I can get a few more hours of sleep."
They both shook their heads and said, "No."
"Well," he said clapping his hands together, "Congratulations on a job well done, gentlemen!" He looked at Lee. "Lee, be sure to express my gratitude to the weres responsible for getting this the attention it deserved. Well done, to everyone." He grinned.
"Dobby!" he said.
A moment later came the pop of the house-elves arrival.
Less than a minute later, he was back in bed. Tomorrow, he would tell Hermione and the others of his late-night excursion.
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Try-outs for Quidditch went about what he expected. The turnout for prospective positions was nothing like what he had seen the previous year — thank Merlin! Ron being the Captain made all the difference in the world, it seemed.
Then it was regular Quidditch practices with his assignments shoe-horned around them. Not to mention the D.A.D.A. club meetings. He made it a point to show up for at least half-an-hour each time to make sure everyone was working well together.
There were a few Slytherins, but they were mostly the quiet ones who hadn't participated in the actions that had brought the House into such ill-repute.
Then it was Halloween. For the first time ever, for Harry, it passed as uneventful, and, actually, kinda fun! Most of the fun part he put to Hermione's efforts at keeping him from pranking Dumbledore any harder than he was already. The house-elves were remarkably compliant in helping him. Especially after Dobby and Winky explained some of the more intrigue-ridden details that had been kept quiet. It seemed that the House-elves had a rumour-mill that was even more efficient, faster, and accurate than the one that served the students. Plus, they detested what had happened with the pink toad — and that the Headmaster and other Professors hadn't done anything about it.
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