CHAPTER 126: Interlude
Dawn saw the train at Hogwarts waiting to collect students. What extra aurors could be gathered were massing here and at Platform 9 and 3/4 in case of an attack. Britain was already lost and they knew it, but the children would be protected and returned to their parents. This was likely a suboptimal choice but it was easy to coordinate. Portkeys to Azkaban were being quickly manufactured as it was already being converted into an emergency fortress, and unlike Hogwarts would not be a tempting target.
With fiendfyre being the death eaters primary weapon all of a sudden, even the hit wizards were afraid, and it was beginning to show. The counter for fiendfyre had not yet been found through the centuries but the fact of the sacrifice being negated was now obvious. Magic was, or so they thought, perfectly balanced, but something had slipped.
So when a death eater approached the train alone while all the students were being gathered into it there was great cause for alarm. Yet the greatest of the aurors urged a cautious approach. This did not look at all like an attack.
The death eater spoke first. "Stand aside and let me pass, for this day the Dark Lord has a message for the ears of Lestrath Lestrange that is worthy of Merlin. This is a parlay and not a battle and I invoke the ancient right of safe passage. Hear and observe, but at your peril for the words for him are double-edged and the receiver well-chosen for your benefit." In fact the death eater did not know that half of this was true.
The auror blinked. These were not the normal words from any death eater, and he could conceive of no message that was fit for the ears of a first-year student worthy of such a warning. Nevertheless, it was a bad idea to turn away a messenger of parlay. The dark lord was prone to rants but did not speak for no reason at all, and there could be no leverage upon this boy he could use to great effect.
So it was that the death eater was conducted to a car of the train where Lestrath Lastrange and Theodore Nott were. "Lestrath Lestrange, the Dark Lord bids you consider this. The patronous may be cast with the happy thought of the earth among the stars and the people within reaching outward to defy death itself. Such a patronous has the power within it to raise the dead and destroy dementors. The dark lord knows you want the power to destroy dementors. He has seen this cast with both effects with his own eyes and bids you learn it if possible. So great is the power and advantage to all wizards that he, even he, gives this knowledge freely though it be used against him. No mere occulmentry barriers will suffice. You must believe in your bones that death can be defeated."
That was unexpected. Yet the timing of things was far better for the light than the death eater had reason to fear. For as soon as he finished speaking a patronous taking the form of a human female appeared before them shining almost as bright as the sun. "Theodore Nott, this is Hermoine Granger. We have a starship and Harry Potter bids you to join us against the Dark Lord if you are willing." This quickly yielded a "Yes" answer.
The crowded train was ill-suited for private conversations. Somebody had overheard from the next cabin and it didn't take long for the rumors to get started. "Harry Potter is fighting the Dark Lord" is already something terrible to consider. And when they remember the rumor that Harry Potter can cause anything to happen by snapping his fingers they will consider the Dark Lord to be in trouble. The second rumor developed from the first was "Harry Potter has resurrected Hermoine Granger." This morphed into "Harry Potter will end death." The rumor "Harry Potter has a starship." spread slower until it reached the first muggleborn, then all the muggleborns found out so fast one would swear the rumor was being spread by a starship. On the other hand if a certain young woman by the name of Millicent was for some reason spreading the rumor this is what one would expect to find.
So it was with jubilation the train pulled up to platform 9 and 3/4 despite the certainty the Dark Lord had returned. And the implausible thing happened in that it was the kids telling the parents everything was going to be all right because Harry Potter was the hero and he was going to save them all. Again.
Severus Snape laughed long and loud and clear, despite his injuries. The Dark Lord would get his just desserts after all. Not by the cunning of Dumbledore, but by some wildcard out of nowhere. Hope unlooked for.
When the death eater had returned an hour after he delivered his message, he asked Lord Voldermort "What's a starship?" He saw Lord Voldermort appear to tremble for an instant before gaining control of himself and saying "Tell me everything."
The names the Dark Lord could count for that group ought to have given him no fear, but they gave him fear anyway. Alastor Moody. Minerva McGonagall. Michael Evans-Verres. Harry Potter. Hermoine Granger. And now Theodore Nott.
He had hoped that his triumph over the ministry would draw power to him to replace the numbers he lost. It had, but all the new volunteers would need to be trained all over again, and that would take some time. Not one competent wizard had joined. Of course it was those would seize any chance for power and not the ones already well off; he knew the effect, but he hadn't expected it quite this hard.
But the starship rightly gave him new pause. For only the second time he feared for the safety of his horcrux on escape trajectory out of the solar system.
Satosi Yamamoto was an intern at the neutrino observatory. This was the pride of Japan, for here they were first in all the world observing the core of the Sun, and had just added directional capacity that would permit them to monitor not just the sun but the whole sky all at once. 1987 had been an embarrassment. It would not be repeated. Next time, they'd be able to announce the supernova in advance and tell the astrononmers where to point their telescopes. Because of this, and because of his shift schedule, he was the first to see a wondrous thing. Somebody was using a warp drive. Of course nobody "sees" this live. They read off the detector data and plot it. But this was the second time only a few hours apart the same ridiculous signature had shown up in the output. Once, perhaps the instruments were acting up, and he'd checked them. Twice; same inclination with respect to an orbital plane and not synced with earth's rotation. That had to be real.
It took about six minutes of explaining the graphs to get to the point with his supervisor. "Somebody's gotta be using a warp drive" is just not a message that is going to be easy to believe. "Life is commonplace." is a thing most people believe to the point of expecting it on every star. But the experts know the equations. The Drake equation famously sets a really high probability of encountering another civilization, but when you replace L with 100 years (which is about how long it took for Earth to go effectively radio quiet again) you get 1 for the expected number of civilizations and then think something like "That must be us." More than that, there are about 50 different paramters for a planet being capable of supporting life, and most of them don't depend on each other. Even with really good odds for each one, the odds work out to be something more like less than one star per galaxy being capable of supporting photosynthetic life at all.
Of course his supervisor said "Let's see if that happens again."