Joe's Note: This chapter will touch on the bit of temporal realignment I've done in my version of the story. Even in stories where I've adjusted the timeline of one or both fandoms, I try my best to have a definitive sequence of events to work from. Not only does it come in handy for basics of writing - you can't really refer to someone as 'the older brunette' if you don't know how old everyone is at any given time - but it keeps your characters from accidentally referring to stuff that hasn't happened yet.
Dedications & Thanks: Nicolas, Alexander, Howard, MJ, Daniel, Christopher, mpop, Riley, bloodylord, Luke, Zachary, Marc, Ziryo, Elliot, Crusifikz70, Timothy, Leigh, Jason, Chris, George, Koby, Ken, Thyatira, William, Invernos, Paul, Pat, Warren, 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.

By the time Gavorn finally returned, Harry was on the verge of giving in to Luna's cajoling and wandering off to explore the club's entertainment. It wasn't like they had anything better to do; he'd already surreptitiously repaired her wand, transferred Wednesday to a carrier on his own back in case Luna did anything impulsive, raised the alien species count to eight - there were also elephantine beings and a four-eyed humanoid species that was extraordinarily fond of sneering at humans - and they'd teamed up to cast every linguistics-related charm they knew between the two of them on passing aliens. That effort met with complete failure, although Harry was reasonably certain that one of the teal-skinned space babes working at the bar could speak English. Hence Luna's desire to go wandering. Well, she wanted to go wandering in that particular direction for altogether different reasons, but the English-speaking space babe made for a good enough excuse.

Without a word, Gavorn reached out and wrapped his talons around Harry's left forearm, pulling it forward so he could force an orange bracelet onto Harry's wrist. As soon as he was released, Harry yanked his arm back to his chest, examining his new accessory warily even as he watched Gavorn repeat the process on Luna with half an eye. "It's an omni-tool. Aria refuses to type what she wants to say to you." There was a slight delay between when he spoke and when the device translated it into English for them, but they could understand him now! Wicked! It also explained why he'd had to type to them, but why they hadn't had to type back to him. "Someone will explain more about how they work after the meeting. For now, the fact that they do work should be good enough."

Harry nodded before turning to Luna as a random thought passed through his head. "I wonder if we all sound the same to turians or if our… turianese… has a British accent too?"

"Su said my Shanghainese had a distinct Devon accent. Never figured out whether she was taking the piss out of me or if she was serious. World's best Snap face, that girl." Luna brought her left hand up behind Harry's back as they followed Gavorn up the stairs, presumably petting Wednesday based on the low vibration that began emerging from the snorkack. Eventually they found themselves on an elevated platform that looked out over the rest of the club. A curved couch followed the edge of the platform, and sitting dead center in the middle of the couch was a purple-skinned space babe. Aria, presumably. "Hmm. Same question, roles reversed. Wonder what she's going to sound like to us. Do you think she'll be Irish? I do so love Irish girls…"

One of the darker purple lines running along Aria's brows twitched upward at Luna's words, but the purple-skinned woman remained otherwise impassive. After allowing Luna to natter on about Irish girls for almost a minute, she cleared her throat loudly, interrupting the blonde. "I'd heard that some humans can be uncivilized, but this is getting ridiculous. Gavorn, introduce these two so we're not here all day."

"Hmm. Canadian. It could be worse. At least she's not a Yank."

Stepping forward, Harry cut off both Gavorn's response and any further commentary from Luna. "Actually, we were expecting you to introduce yourself first. You are the hostess here, so to speak. But I suppose that's only how things are done back where we're from. Since they're clearly different here… if it will get things moving? My name is Harry Potter. This is my fiancée, Luna Lovegood. And you would be..?"

Aria's mouth opened and closed several times, and then her gaze flicked sideways to Gavorn. "Is he serious?"

"No, he's Harry. Sirius was his godfather." Luna let out a peal of laughter at the expression her joke received from Aria before making her way over to the couch and seating herself beside the woman. "Harry hates that joke too. He's more of the dry, sarcastic wit type. I'm a bit more flexible when it comes to my humor." Leaning in, Luna winked at Aria. "Flexible other ways, too."

As Aria likewise leaned in toward Luna, Harry reached into his pocket and pulled out a radish earring, slipping the hook through the hole in his right earlobe. While it looked thoroughly ridiculous, he'd take the ribbing if it meant he could hold a conversation with Luna over a distance without shouting. Or in this case, listen in on her conversation. "Since you supposedly don't know who I am, little girl, I'm going to assume that you'll also claim you don't know the one rule of Omega. It's really quite simple: Don't. Fuck. With. Aria."

Displaying the trademark fearlessness that both drew Harry to Luna and made him thoroughly convinced that he'd end up a widower someday, the blonde giggled and planted a kiss on Aria's dark purple lips before disappearing with a pop, reappearing on the other side of the woman even as Aria brought her right hand up and released a rippling burst of blue energy. Passing through the space that Luna had just occupied, it slammed into the couch and… Harry grimaced, watching the surface warp and ripple before crumbling. Whether that was her species's version of magic or something else entirely, he had no idea, but he was reasonably sure that getting hit by one of those blasts would ruin a victim's day. Luna, unsurprisingly, was utterly nonplussed by the near miss, wrapping her arms around Aria's shoulders from behind. "If that's the only rule here, it would explain your mood. Everyone needs to have a little fun once in a while."

Aria let out a low growl at that, raising a glowing fist and throwing an awkward punch back over her left shoulder at Luna's head. Disapparating again, the blonde reappeared straddling the purple-skinned woman's lap and planted another kiss on her lips before apparating to safety once more. Blue energy crackled over Aria's skin wildly and then exploded outward, shredding even more of the couch and pushing Luna into a second apparition in rapid succession to escape the carnage. Their cat and mouse game continued for almost a minute, Aria wreaking increasing levels of havoc on her own domain as Luna stubbornly resisted her best efforts to hit her. At one point, his fiancée actually managed to create a friendly fire accident, apparating directly in front of a four-eyed being that Harry hadn't noticed at first just long enough to provoke Aria's wrath and popping away at the last second so a ball of blue energy passed through the space she'd just occupied, hitting it in the chest. Possibly him. The being looked reasonably male, but Harry didn't want to assume.

Finally, Harry decided that it was time to intervene if for no other reason that he was starting to worry that Aria might call in reinforcements, turning the women's little game of tag into a full-fledged battle with people who might actually be able to help them. "Luna, sweetie, please don't antagonize the woman in charge." Raising her hands in surrender, Luna apparated back to his side with a huff. "And weren't you the one who said we should keep certain things to ourselves? What happened to that idea?"

"You saw what that first spell of hers did. There was no way I was going to let it hit me. After that? Well, the kneazle was out of the bag anyway. Might as well have a bit of fun."

"If you hadn't kissed her, she wouldn't have tried to curse you."

"Semantics."

Harry sighed. He still wasn't used to it, being the calm and sensible one in the relationship. Turning his attention back to Aria, he bit his lip to avoid laughing at the sight of her standing in front of her utterly ruined couch, fists clenched as she panted and glared at the two of them. "At least I'm assuming you're in charge of Omega. Lieutenants usually don't react quite that badly to being challenged; they're used to having at least one person who's superior to them."

Continuing to glare at them, Aria fell back to perch on the edge of the sole remaining undamaged piece of couch, which just wide enough to hold her slender purple form. "I'm not 'in charge' of Omega, boy. I am Omega. I see everything, hear everything, and know everything that goes on aboard this station. Which means that I know neither of you were born here, nor did you arrive on the station through any of the docking bays. If you were smuggled aboard, that would mean you were deliberately trying to evade me and so you wouldn't be stupid enough to do something that gets my people's attention. Or… this." She spread her arms wide, gesturing to the wreckage that surrounded her. "Which then leaves me wondering among other things… who are Harry Potter and Luna Lovegood? How did they get here? What do they want? And should I kill them now in case what they want overlaps with what I have?"

"Should you kill us?" Harry arched an eyebrow at that one curiously before mimicking Aria's previous gesture with the one arm not currently wrapped around Luna's waist in an attempt to contain the blonde. "I would think the question running through your mind right now would be more along the lines of… can you kill us? Because you did a bloody terrible job of it with Luna, and I would class her more in the range of 'horny minx' than 'clear and imminent threat'."

Her look becoming almost petulant, Aria crossed her arms over her chest defensively as she continued to stare up at them. "I suppose it all depends on your perspective and what you think I mean by 'me' killing you. Can I kill you with my biotics? Clearly not. Or at least not with any of the tactics and techniques that I'm used to. Can I kill you by ordering one of the snipers up in the rafters to put a bullet through Lovegood's brain while she's in the middle of kissing me?" There was a brief pause and then she tilted her head to the side consideringly. "Would that actually kill one of you? It'd kill a human, but clearly you're not human."

Harry gave Luna's waist a warning squeeze to preempt whatever witticism she was about to offer in response. "If there's a doubt in your head that it would just piss us off rather than killing us, you're not going to order someone to take that shot. So I'd have to be daft to tell you one way or the other, wouldn't I?" After a moment's thought, Aria conceded that with a reluctant nod, allowing Harry to continue on to address the obvious fallacy that he'd noticed. "Also, for the record? We're both human. Entirely human, even, unlike a few others I know. Just… not quite like other humans."

"Uh… huh." Aria unwrapped one arm from across her chest so that she could gesture to the devastation inches to her right. "Because normal humans are completely capable of what Lovegood just did. And I'm a priestess of Athame." She let out a derisive snort before flicking her wrist, conjuring up the same blue energy around her hand that she'd used to try and defeat Luna. "She's clearly not a biotic, either, so don't even try that excuse."

A biotic? Is that what Aria's species called their witches? Wait, from the way Aria had phrased things, it almost seemed as if being a biotic was a potential explanation for Luna's abilities that she was dismissing. Which in turn meant that humans could be biotics. So then what were biotics? And what was Aria's power? So many questions, and there was no way Harry was going to get answers to any of them - or help with any of his myriad of problems - if he kept evading and playing games with this woman. For better or worse, they were stuck on Omega… whatever and wherever that may be… and if she wasn't the actual seat of power around here? She was doing a damn good job of convincing everyone around her otherwise.

Harry unwound his arm from around Luna as he stared at Aria consideringly, rubbing his hand over the wand holster hidden up his sleeve. Should he just be honest with her at this point? If the wizarding world was truly dead and gone, then there was no harm in it. If his people had survived this long but remained in hiding, maybe Aria was actually aware of them but not the particulars of their abilities, and so she thought she was doing her job by upholding whatever secrecy statutes existed in this time and place. Not to mention that anyone who ran a… whatever Omega was… probably had a fairly well tuned bullshit detector. It was highly likely that they wouldn't be able to get away with lying to her about anything significant. Being honest with Aria right out of the gate might even earn them a few brownie points, he reasoned, which they could sorely use after what Luna had pulled. "Since you don't seem to recognize our names, especially mine? I'm guessing that whenever and wherever we are, humans are still hiding certain things from the rest of the galaxy. And so the truth might be a bit unbelievable to you."

"Try me."

"We're a… I guess you'd call us a subspecies of humans. I think that's what we are; nobody had ever really looked into the science of what makes us magical, at least last I knew. The best way to explain it is that we're born with the ability to manipulate an energy field that we call 'magic'. I thought maybe you were something similar from your species based on what you did while fighting Luna, but I'm starting to realize that what you are is something completely different." Harry paused; Gavorn's reaction to his wand and spellwork when Aria used her powers openly and freely only reinforced that. "A long time ago, my people separated ourselves from the rest of humanity, hiding away in our own communities to keep from being persecuted by the rest of our kind for being different. Our own towns, our own schools, our own governments even. Although that might not be true anymore; our information is a little out of date because we're from 2006. We worked for a British magical government department that dealt in the strange and unusual. One of our coworkers accidentally activated some sort of gateway, and it threw us through time and space to… well, here. And now."

"…that's ludicrous."

"And yet here we are."

"Yes you are. Clear on the other side of the galactic core from Earth, and a hundred and seventy-five years in your future. I'd assume you were lying or insane - or possibly both - and have you shot where you stand for wasting my time…" Trailing off, Aria shrugged out of her white bolero jacket before blurring forward in a streak of blue light, reappearing in the middle of the platform on her feet as a wave of energy sent Harry, Luna, and Gavorn stumbling back. "Except that was the kanquess. It's one of many ways that my people can use our biotics. And as flashy and mysterious as it seems? Every last aspect of the kanquess - and every other biotic technique - is scientifically quantifiable and explainable. What your girlfriend does… that's nothing like anything we biotics can do. Which means there's definitely something different about you. And I want to know what."

Harry slowly and carefully drew his wand, holding it up for Aria to see. "Like I said, we're magical. I'm a wizard and Luna's a witch. Our kind has existed almost as long as humanity itself but as time went on, they gradually went from valuing or even revering our abilities to fearing them. Eventually, they began hunting us down and killing us. Doing the math… it's 2181? So we're only a decade away from the five hundredth anniversary of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy being enacted, which was when we officially separated ourselves from the rest of mankind." An idea came to mind as to how to further demonstrate their powers in a way that Aria hopefully wouldn't find disagreeable and so Harry flicked his wand gently, tossing a Mending Charm at the nearest section of damaged couch. The woman's eyes went wide as the spell quickly undid the damage that she'd caused, returning the area to its original - or perhaps even better - condition in a few seconds. "And now you see why."

"Yes. The rest of it. Fix it." Aria doubled back to retrieve her jacket before moving out of the way, watching intently as Harry moved in a slow circle, repairing the couch section by section. He could have done the entire thing with a single spell but for some reason, he felt that continuing to downplay the full extent of his abilities was a good idea. When he was done, Aria held out her jacket as well and arched a brow. "It's my favorite but it's starting to show its age. Maybe with your help I can get another two or three hundred years out of it." Harry blinked but obliged her; was she planning to hand it down to someone or was she saying that she would live that much longer? It made him wonder… he'd assumed her to be in her late thirties or perhaps her early forties, or maybe in the sixty to eighty range if she aged at half-speed the way more powerful magicals did. But if she was looking forward to another two or three centuries of life, how many years did she already have under her belt? Was there a polite way to ask? He knew that it was impolite to ask human women their age, did that apply to aliens too? Shrugging the jacket back on, Aria retook her seat on the couch and stared up at Harry curiously. "I feel like I could spend a decade or two doing nothing but talking to you, and the end I'd still have questions that I'd want answered."

While he and Luna would age slower than normal humans, as much as he wanted to work with this local power rather than against her? Harry wasn't exactly keen on sacrificing such a large portion of his life just to satisfy someone's curiosity. "Well then maybe we should stick to the most pressing questions for now? I'm sure there's a lot you want to know, mind you, but what do you actually need to know before you… let us go? Help us? I'm not entirely clear why we're even here, to be honest."

The corner of Aria's mouth quirked upward at that. "You're here because I want you here. I am Omega. My desires are your existence." Wow. And here he'd thought the Malfoys had an ego on them. "Honestly, I wasn't expecting any of this when Gavorn brought you to me. I thought he'd stumbled onto some particularly indiscrete AIS agents who would need to be stripped of some new toys and then escorted to the docking bay. You're something else entirely. Something new. Something powerful. Part of me wants you off my station and as far away from me as possible. A bigger part of me wants you under my thumb, because that power could be useful to me." Harry's hackles rose at that; after spending years being manipulated by Dumbledore, he had no intentions of serving another master - knowingly or unknowingly - ever again. "A third part of me wants to lock your girlfriend there in a room with this one matron who's been trying to seduce me for the last century, because I feel like it'd be hilarious to watch. But all the parts of me despise making uninformed decisions. So I'm going to give you two choices: one of you melds with me so that I can see your memories and decide whether or not you're telling the truth… or I have my people shoot you and toss the remains out an airlock just to be safe. What's it going to be?"