Joe's Note: As you probably noticed, I've made a whole host of characterization changes. To each their own and all that, but I don't really see the point of mass character assassination especially when they're not going to feature in the plot. And I couldn't even justify Ron because by switching Harry's love interest, he became irrelevant to the first chapter. I also redid Ginny's backstory a bit, because while I can respect a desire to follow Rowling's canon for as long as possible before deviating? I think there are more reasonable ways to split up Harry and Ginny so you can pair Harry with someone new than 'Ginny's a whore'.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Alexander, Howard, MJ, Daniel, Christopher, Jason, Chris, George, Koby, Judedeath, Ken, Thyatira, William, Wil, Thomas, Jack, Pat, Chris, Mitch, and Jess for sponsoring me on , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing. Additional thanks go to the incomparable LogicalPremise for his amazing set of references covering many untouched facets of the Mass Effect universe, as well as listening to me ramble about ideas for the future of this story.

If there were any 'green-skinned space babes', Harry decided as he sat up with a groan, he hoped that they were nowhere near where he and Luna had ended up. Because wherever they'd managed to land was a truly wretched and disgusting place, and that was coming from a person who had spent years cleaning up after the Dursleys. When an air-freshening charm failed to make a dent in the aroma that had him on the edge of vomiting, Harry switched to a Bubble-Head Charm before slowly climbing to his feet. "Luna?"

"Bubble-Head Charm, if you don't mind?" It took him a moment to spot Luna through the disgusting, greenish smog that was in all likelihood the source of the foul odor, but then Harry fired off the requested spell in her direction. "Oh, that's much better. Thank Merlin you still have your wand." Rising from the ground, Luna did her best to brush her off before revealing why she wasn't trying to clean herself up with magic… or capable of casting her own protection against the disgusting smell. Her wand - her original wand, which she'd spent days searching through Malfoy Manor for after the end of the war - had been snapped in half during their journey from London to… wherever they were. "Please cast the charm on Wednesday, too; I don't want her breathing this mess. We'll save repairing my wand for later. Wherever we are, I doubt it's magical and so running around with our wands out casting spells is probably a terrible idea."

Harry nodded and added some breathing protection to Luna's furred and feathered little friend before looking down at himself. "Can I at least use magic to clean us up since there's nobody else here to see it?"

"…that would be ever so lovely, yes."

Even with the Bubble-Head Charm keeping the stench at bay, Harry was not at all sad to see the disgusting mess of mixed solids and liquids disappear as he vanished the mess from his clothes. Turning to Luna, he repeated the process before cleaning up Wednesday as best he could. It was only then that he realized that they had an audience… an inhuman audience at that. Which shouldn't have been a surprise, now that Harry thought about it, given Ron had predicted they'd end up on another world as a part of their jump into the future.

But while Harry was familiar with a wide variety of magical beings and beasts, the pack of beings slowly approaching them were unlike anything he had ever seen. It was like someone had crossbred a goblin with a dragon, mated their child with a piranha, enlarged the resulting offspring to human size, and then skinned it alive before sticking on some extra pieces just to make it look even meaner. At the same time, Harry knew from personal experience that not everything that looked intimidating actually was - Hagrid, for instance - and so he forcibly suppressed his instinct to lash out to protect himself and Luna. "Hello?"

Whether or not they could understand him, what emerged from the mouth of the leader of the pack was completely incomprehensible to Harry. Looking to Luna for help merely earned him a shake of her head; despite her greater experience with languages, she was just as helpless here as he was. When one of them drew what looked far too much like a gun for his comfort, though, Harry upgraded the situation from 'potentially dangerous' to 'quite likely life-threatening'. Sliding into cover behind him, Luna brought one hand up to rest between his shoulders as she leaned forward. "I've changed my mind about you running around casting spells, if that's okay with you."

"Yeah." Harry brought the Elder Wand up as he slipped into a combat stance, watching warily as the rest of newcomers drew guns of their own. "I'm pretty sure I'm okay with that."

While Captain Preitor Gavorn was a turian who was largely content with his lot in life, there was one thing he would have changed if he could: eliminating the regular anti-vorcha patrols he was forced to undertake. While he understood why his boss wanted them deterred before they could even reach his usual post at the front of her club, it didn't make dealing with them on their home turf any safer or easier. For a short time, he'd managed to hire a dedicated vorcha removal team to keep the neighborhood around the club clear, but eventually the funding had been pulled. It was his own fault for offering to cover medical care for those hurt on duty, he'd been told. And so now he was stuck doing the job with his subordinates, instead of dumping it off on disposable mercenaries.

Slowly making his way down one of the back streets that allowed privileged individuals to come and go from Afterlife's VIP section unnoticed, Gavorn was pulled from his thoughts as a handful of vorcha went tumbling through the air in front of him, forcing him to lean backward to avoid getting raked across the face by one's claws. They hit the wall across from the alley they'd come flying out of with a series of dull thuds, slowly sliding their way down to drop to the ground in a pile. As the vorcha at the top of the pile began climbing to its feet, Gavorn reached back over his shoulder and drew his Phaeston, the assault rifle whirring softly as it expanded in his hands. Before he could so much as bark a warning, though, much less take a shot, a bright red bolt of energy slammed into the pile.

The vorcha exploded.

The barrel of Gavorn's rifle dipped as he stared at the bloody smear that had formerly been a half dozen vorcha in disbelief. That… had been no weapon he was familiar with, and he was familiar with a great many thanks to his years working security on Omega. Neither a grenade nor a missile, and while most mass accelerator weapons could be modified with explosive rounds, that didn't explain the size of the explosion… or the red glow. His sense of disbelief only grew when the culprit emerged from the alley: a young human male who appeared to be armed with nothing more than a stick that was glowing at the tip. Trailing behind him was a slender blonde woman who appeared to be unarmed… but who was transporting some sort of bizarre animal in one of the child carriers that Gavorn had sometimes seen human females use to ferry about their young.

Well, Gavorn thought with a sigh, at least it wasn't the Collectors again. Humans were something he knew how to deal with. Raising his free hand, he issued a series of commands to his subordinates via hand signals before bringing his assault rifle back up to point at the human. "Stop right there! What did you do to those vorcha?"

Well, he was still facing unfamiliar beings armed with futuristic-looking guns but at least these ones seemed more civilized than the last batch. Granted they only seemed defensive rather than aggressive because he was projecting his own human mannerisms onto them, Harry mused, but at least they weren't lunging and trying to bite him. So even if they were aggressive, they were at least a civilized aggressive. That being said? Until he figured out exactly what he was dealing with, he was keeping Luna safely behind him. While she was far from helpless most of the time - and had even saved his arse a few times with her far wider repertoire of spells - all the knowledge in the world couldn't save her as long as her wand was broken.

Running his eyes over the group, Harry noticed something interesting. Despite consisting of at least three species, their armor all matched and their weapons looked similar too. Hmm. He had just killed a bunch of… somethings. Perhaps this was local law enforcement, responding to the situation? If so - and assuming they weren't terribly corrupt - they might even be able to help him and Luna figure out where - and when - they were. There was just one problem. "What did you say? I can't understand you." The armored, avian-like being that seemed to be the leader of the new arrivals spoke again, but its language was just as alien the second time around. "I… don't… understand… you." Getting desperate, Harry tried a gentle wandless legilimency probe toward the being, but found himself running into the same barrier as with verbal communication: a complete lack of comprehension. Its mind was completely foreign to Harry on a level he hadn't experienced even with magical beings from Earth, preventing him from making heads or tails of what he was finding. Something strikingly similar to the word 'aria' seemed to feature regularly and prominently, but what did opera have to do with anything?

After a few more fruitless exchanges between them, the avian being gave up and reached around to attach its weapon to the back of its armor. With its companions covering it, it pressed something that caused a glowing orange construct to materialize around his left forearm. Another poke materialized a keyboard, and then it began typing away at the keys. A decidedly artificial voice emerged that, while no more understandable, was at least recognizable. "Chto vy delayete chtoby te vorka?" Russian, or a similar Slavic language. They were getting closer to something Harry could understand. Then came a phrase in some variety of Chinese - quite possibly a Wu dialect, since it reminded Harry of listening to Su cuss when things went wrong at work - and then finally… "What did you do to those vorcha?"

At least now Harry had a name to go with his attackers. And he was starting to lean more and more toward this group being law enforcement; while the voice was obviously emotionless, the question was a simple interrogative rather than an accusation. Hopefully that meant he wasn't on the verge of having to fight for their lives… again. "Self-defense. I tried to drive them off but they wouldn't stop trying to attack my fiancée and I. I thought maybe giving them a bit of a harder push would put some fear into them, but when they started getting back up…"

"Vorcha are too stupid to feel fear. Or learn things. Putting them down for good is the only way to deal with them." The being's words elicited noises from its companions that were - while not laughter by human standards - unmistakably noises of good humor. One look quelled them, and the leader of the group returned to typing on his glowing arm… computer… thing. "I don't care why you did it. Killing them means six less vorcha I need to take care of. I asked how you did it. I've never seen a weapon like that before."

Evidently Luna had been right in her assumption that areas should be considered non-magical until proven otherwise. So much for his hopes that here in the future, the wizarding world had integrated into society as a whole and magic was now known to the general public. After all, these people clearly knew what humans were… just not what he and Luna were. Harry thought for a moment before deciding on a way to simultaneously deflect the question while finding out more about where they were. "To be fair? I've never seen someone who looks like you before." Someone rather than something, because if there was one thing Harry had learned over the years, it was never to refer to something smart enough to converse with you as a 'thing'.

Except for portraits and mirrors, but that was a whole other kettle of fish.

The question seemed to catch the being off-guard. It stood there staring at Harry for almost a minute, mandibles twitching, and then began typing furiously on his computer. "You've never met a turian before? Or at least seen one of us? Even if you're from some isolated human colony, you would have run into us the moment you set foot on Omega."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Inwardly, Harry was cursing up a storm. While on one hand, he now had a name for one of the three races he was facing… he had evidently just exposed exactly how unusual he and Luna were. Bugger. Maybe he would have been better off admitting to being a wizard? No helping it now, though. Best to keep moving. "Well then, I'm sure just calling you 'turian' would be awfully rude. My name is Harry Potter. My companion's name is Luna Lovegood. And you are..?"

"Captain Gavorn. One of my jobs is to patrol this area and keep the vorcha pushed out of where the civilized beings lived. Or what passes for civilized beings here on Omega." That elicited another round of laughter from Gavorn's associates, making him look back at them and bark out something in his native tongue. Their fun brought to an end, the group drew their own weapons and began spreading out through the area. "Now… I don't know who you are, what you're hiding, how you got here, or why you don't have any kind of translator on you. But since dealing with you is above my pay grade, I'm not even going to try and find out. We're going to see Aria."

And this was why they weren't supposed to read the minds of people who thought in foreign tongues, Harry mused, much less the minds of other species. He'd assumed that Gavorn was a music buff. He'd quite obviously assumed wrong. "And if we don't want to go see 'Aria'?"

Rather unexpectedly, the question just seemed to amuse Gavorn. "You're somehow ignorant of basic facts of life, don't have a translator, probably don't have any money… do you have somewhere better to be?" Point. "Now let's go. Sooner I drop you off, the sooner I can get back to work, and the sooner I can go home to my mate."

With that, conversation came to an abrupt halt as Gavorn turned and walked away. Harry exchanged a look with Luna before giving chase, the blonde easily matching his pace as they followed their guide through the streets of 'Omega'. Whatever - or wherever - that was. "No green-skinned space babes so far, but we do have armored space chickens, lizard people, and T-rex turtles. Oh, and the vorcha. That's got to count for something, yeah?"

"I suppose. I can't wait to get a translator of my own, though; I wonder if the turtle people are as brutish as they look, or if there's more to them than meets the eye. Oh! And there's at least two species of lizard people; I spotted a different kind moving behind Captain Gavorn while you two were talking. None of them really strike my fancy, though, so…" Luna trailed off as her head slowly turned to the right, following the progress of a scantily-clad woman with blue skin and tentacles where her hair should have been. "Well now. That's more like it."

Chuckling, Harry wrapped one arm around Luna's waist and used it to keep her moving both forward and on course as she continued following the blue woman with her eyes. "All in due time, dear. There will be plenty of time for blue-skinned space babes after we deal with this 'Aria' person. Aria. Hmm. Aria. Something about that just screams 'Mediterranean' to me. Do you think this place is run by humans, then?"

Finally giving up on her optical molestation of her first ever space babe, Luna turned her attention forward and then let out a low whistle as Gavorn led them through a pair of sliding metal doors and into a giant club. A giant, three-storied club that was positively teeming with a mixture of human and blue alien women, all of whom were wearing very little while dancing provocatively for the patrons' enjoyment. "If it is, they have amazing taste."

Despite preferring to be a bit more discreet than Luna when it came to his appreciation of the fairer sex, even Harry couldn't keep his attention from wandering as Gavorn led them around the lowest tier of the club. Coming to a halt at the base of a staircase, he signaled for them to stay behind as he ascended a set of steps before turning a corner and disappearing from view. "Just out of curiosity, since you passed through the arch first… did you have any control over our destination?" Luna turned to look at him, arching one fine blonde brow inquiringly. "What? We just so happen to land near a strip club? That's a little suspicious."

"Is it, now?" Smirking, Luna leaned in and nibbled at his neck gently before trailing her lips up to his earlobe. "If I'd been in control, don't you think we would have landed in the dressing room or some such? Perhaps a brothel full of lovely alien ladies?"

Point.