Chapter 2:
First Contact
Pillows normally went under a persons head, and yet for some reason when Harry next awoke it was to find one on top of his instead.
The daze of recently waking combined with the disorientation of his blown-out eardrums stalled his efforts to decipher the mystery of the pillow placement. A mystery confounded by the incredible discomfort of where he was laying.
Pebbles. Branches. Crushed glass. These things a good mattress does not make. The uncontained fire not five feet from his head didn't make for a particularly safe nightlight either.
"Hedwig, I'm not an owl chick." He chided the bird as his brain caught up to reality.
His ears were still ringing and he could barely hear his own words as they left his mouth. Now he had hearing to match his vision. Great.
Hedwig didn't budge an inch from where she was nestled on his neck and chin. Her feathers ruffled and prickled as she attempted to puff up and appear larger than she really was. She continued her guard over him, swerving her head every which way with a glare that dared any potential threat to approach her prone master.
It was actually rather cute. And touching.
She barked in annoyance as he tried to sit up, catching her in his arms as she slid down his shirt. He didn't feel any of the increasingly familiar pain attributed to broken bones as he did so. He felt plenty of pain, to be sure, but it was pain of the body-wide bruise forming alongside his sprained... Well, everything.
"I know I've told you this before." Harry said to the bird in his arms. "But you're the most brilliant owl in the world."
His compliment did not sate her protective rage and she continued clicking her beak threateningly at the world around them. If only he could get her to understand how amazing it was that she'd managed to track him down in the aftermath of such an apocalyptic event.
Still. He appreciated her more in that moment than ever before
She was acting like a nesting mother. Now that Harry thought about it, he had to wonder if she'd mothered any chicks before. She did sleep in the school owlery. With hundreds of other owls... Did they?
Probably. But he had more pressing concerns at the moment than Hedwig possibly getting it on with Malfoy's Eagle Owl.
"Accio glasses." He said, or presumably said.
He made the motions with his mouth and hoped for the best.
His glasses flew to him in seconds and he snatched them with the same hand his wand was held. He caught them more with practiced reflex than actual hand-eye coordination.
He didn't bother checking them. They were surely damaged beyond non-magical repair.
Still holding Hedwig in one arm, Harry kneelt down and placed the ruined spectacles on the ground before tapping them with his wand.
"Occulus Reparo."
Funny thing about the reparo spell and it's variants; It can only repair something using the physical material present. It did not conjure or transfigure new material for the task; that was a more advanced repairing spell learned in NEWT year. For example, if you were to use it on a broken window with a few of the shards missing, the end result would be much thinner than the original window as it would recreate the original shape using the remaining glass.
His glasses were little more than a twisted frame, but with concentration the spell allowed him to use the glass from around him as substitute, and there was plenty of the stuff.
With step one of his master plan complete he donned his sensory aid and got his first good look of London post- alien invasion.
"Yup. That's about what I expected." He mumbled to himself, ears still ringing but slowly coming around.
The city looked like hell. Actual hell.
Every one of the classical London homes on the street was either demolished or burning. Mostly burning. Every tree was either uprooted or vivisected as if struck by lightning. More likely they were simply torn asunder by the great winds.
Trying to traverse the previously flat terrain was made all but impossible by the brick and timber innards of the identical homes spilled along the road like confetti. And also burning.
What really stopped him dead in his tracks was the jagged fissure cutting through the park he had landed near and the street he stood on where it had uprooted a few homes. He was on the half of the world that hadn't been lifted by the cosmic impact and could see water pooling on the fractured earth below him from a waterline that jutted cleanly from the cliff just three feet from him.
Circumventing this latest barrier, Harry soon discovered the sky was an even more confusing mess.
Great, black roiling clouds told of a hurricane intent on swooping down and scooping them all up, but there was little accompanying wind beyond a gentle breeze. Stranger still was how alight the world was. Vibrant reds, oranges and yellows painted the clouds like during a sunrise.
How long had he been unconscious?
It was sunset when Harry'd made his daring escape. So either he'd only been unconscious for a few seconds or it was dawn already. Or dusk of the following day.
A longer examination of the city around him proved that it was, in fact, late in the night. It only looked like daytime because of the roaring fires rampaging across the city. Did he mentioned there was a lot of fire? Because there was.
"Right. I should probably get moving, eh girl?"
Hedwig had finally started to calm down and was nestling into his stomach. No doubt just as exhausted as he was, if not moreso. He decided to let her be.
Tiptoeing through the park so as not to disturb the resting bird, Harry kept an eye out for any Aurors or Hit Wizards. There was a chance that nobody detected all of the magic he'd used thus far, but his usual luck wouldn't allow for that. They probably just had bigger issues to tackle than reprimanding him for his use of underage magic.
Somewhere on that list had to be helping underage witches and wizards who, like himself, probably thought to use a spell or two hoping officials would detect it and track them down with the trace and who like him were in desperate need of rescue.
He didn't bother using another summoning charm for his firebolt. There was zero chance of it being in any better shape than his old Nimbus. Sirius would be so disappointed. Well, probably not, but Harry would feel a great deal of shame next time he saw the old dog.
"Point me." He mumbled as he reached the foot of the hill/plateau/catastrophically raised shard of earth.
Following his wand's directions, Harry kept east until he spotted a twisted and crumpled street sign jutting out of a brick wall. The thin metal sheets declaring the names of the cross streets he stood upon hung limply. Or at least he hoped they did. For all he knew this street sign could have been flung here from halfway across the city.
If his mental map was correct he was about an hours walk from Diagon Alley. Unfortunately his feet were already beginning to drag in protest of the pain in his joints from the crash. His aching muscles were even more insistent that he be still. Perhaps he ought to listen to them for a change?
He didn't want to disturb Hedwig but he had nobody else to rely on at the moment. Oddly enough she seemed altogether nonplussed by being prodded awake and placed on the jutting pole. She was being especially calm today.
"Alright girl. I need you to get help." He told her as he glanced around at the singed newspapers and plastic bags billowing down the streets. "Hang on."
Disregarding any chance of writing a proper message he struggled to detach the placards indicating the names of the cross streets. One piercing hex and some McGuyvering a bit of wire from a demolished streetlamp later and he had an oddly proportioned pair of dog tags indicating exactly where he was.
"Okay. Take this to Dumbledore, or Sirius or whoever is closest. I'm sure they're bright enough to figure out my meaning."
She grasped the wire of the streetsign necklace and flew away without any protest.
And so Harry was left alone in the barren street. His only company was the sound of emergency helicopters overhead, crackling flames and the rustling of debris in the light wind.
The occasional lightning bolt would streak across the black sky, with smaller sparks dancing silently from within the dark masses. Red and violet lightning bolts, dyed unnatural colors by the chemicals in the air.
With nothing better to do he pondered how this could be. Nothing was up there but dust and smoke. It wasn't a natural stormhead. How was it producing lightning, and so much of it?
He reasoned that the raging fires all over the city, and likely beyond it, were releasing a great deal of moisture into the air. There was also the impact itself, which must have outright vaporized several square miles of matter. So that was all probably up there too.
So with the cold moisture up there and hot fires down here there was definitely the temperature difference necessary to make lightning. And plenty of conductivity too. Hell, there was so much raw elemental energy that it was amazing the clouds themselves weren't spontaneously combusting.
Harry took a deep breath.
Thinking helped to keep him calm. Helped him relax and ignore bodily pain. Most of it was his attempts to simulate Hermione's company in his own head. Her habit of throwing verbal diarrhea by expositing trivia or contemplating out loud could always put him at ease, especially when it came from a place of concern. He really could have used one of her lectures in the previous weeks. Even a written one. Something to keep his mind off of Cedric, or Voldemort or Fudge. But she, and worse Ron, had not deigned to send him a single letter.
He realized with a pang of guilt that he didn't care about any of those things anymore. Or at least not in that moment. He couldn't bring up the boiling terror at the memory of that THING rising out of the cauldron, the steaming hatred for Pettigrew nor the icy remorse for failing to save his fellow champion.
He felt all too empty. Not in shock from the cataclysmic crash. He certainly wasn't too tired to feel emotions, which was a level of exhaustion he'd experienced more than once.
No. He simply felt empty.
The events of the last few hours knocked something loose. Seeing all of the death and destruction around him made all of those other things seem so ... minor.
With a stir, he realized what it is.
Perspective.
Harry Potter had been bequeathed by fate a truly gargantuan frame of reference to compare these past tragedies to.
How many millions of people died in that impact? How many millions more were injured? How many millions more still will NEVER be able to see their homes or worldly possessions ever again? That crater will in all likelihood be there forever. If not because of how unfeasible the prospect of filling it and repairing the rest if the destruction would be, then at least in memorum to the tragedy.
From that point of view, with that perspective in mind, was the ending to the Triwizard tournament really all that traumatic?
One person died. Harry got a few injuries. He survived ten minutes or so in hell but survived relatively unscathed. Bruised, but alive. That was nothing. All of that was nothing.
This was the real deal. This is what all other things to come would be compared to in his heart and mind. He prayed whatever form the coming conflict with Voldemort and his forces took, that it would seem as pitiful in comparison to this day as that day in the graveyard did.
Somehow he doubted it.
Harry shook himself to rid his mind of that malaise.
"Better to take stock of my blessings." He mumbled to himself as he emptied his pockets and yanked the increasingly uncomfortable clothes from inside his shirt.
Four hand-knitted sweaters, his father's invisibility cloak, the Marauder's map, the sneakoscope, the toy dragon, Sirius' knife, the omniocculars, a few galleons and his wand. That was it. That and the clothes on his back. Thiswas now everything he owned. He hadn't even thought to grab the photo album gifted to him by Hagrid. That one hurt the most. But hopefully the loveable half-giant could recreate it for him. Hopefully It was replaceable. Most of these things weren't.
And neither was his life.
That thought brought him out of his funk.
Harry, ignoring the cracking protests of his body, stood back up and wiped away the offending tears from his face. He needed something to DO! Something other than mope and wait to be rescued.
There!
Not three blocks away, jutting over the surrounding rubble, was the office building he almost died under. The place where the smaller spaceship crashed.
If not to sate his curiosity, then at least the prospect of rescuing someone - or something - would make the trip worth it. Right?
He left everything beside where the street sign would have been save for what he'd need for the small adventure. His wand, the invisibility cloak, and the omniocculars. He brought the map too, even though it was completely useless outside of Hogwarts.
Then he began the short walk. A walk that turned out to be even shorter than he expected.
He soon came upon a long, jagged wound in the earth leading to - or more likely away - from the building in question. It was already starting to fill with ashen water. A bit of mental calculus told Harry that his target would no doubt be at the end of this artificial river bed.
He followed the trail for a good quarter mile, stomping in the puddles and miniscule streams along the way, before he found another one. A smoother one. One made by a falling rock. A falling rock he could see.
"Wait. So the asteroid was a spaceship too?"
Hanger bay doors and other mechanical miscellany jutted out of the rocky surface every which way. All of it either scorched or melted, just as the duplex-sized meteor itself was. So the asteroid wasn't a ship in and of itself but a mobile base of sorts. A base with hanger bays and likely other necessities like a barracks and kitchen.
A space station then?
Whatever it had once been it was rubble know. Rubble scattered all over the country if not the continent. He was more interested in an actual spaceship.
He finally donned his invisibility cloak, feeling rather uneasy about being seen by an alien before he saw it, and continued along the gouged earth until he reached a place where the water collected into a shallow pool.
There was nothing there. Unless you count a half-crumpled flower shop something. Which Harry did not thank you very much.
Maybe the ship hadn't survived the impact? No. That didn't pan out. There would have been bits and pieces of the black and red projectile and he hadn't seen any on the way here.
There was the rather obvious possibility that the flying ship had, shockingly, flown away. He went to school in a place where no position in space was exactly fixed after-all. So that should have been his first guess. This idea didn't pan out either. If a jet crashed into that building before taking off then surely it would have had to lift and then drop at least some debris. Or dragged some backwards. Or at least scuff the crater.
It certainly wasn't sunk beneath the waist-high puddle.
He took out the magical binoculars and looked for anything out of place, reticent to approach such a suspicious site. He couldn't quite put his finger on why, but something about the scene was off. The way the support beam for the florist sat at an angle. The way the timber of the building was bulging upwards into the ceiling. How pieces of glass and wood seemed to float in the air...
"It's invisible!" He gasped before slapping a hand over his mouth.
Something about advanced aliens developing with technology what was exceptionally rare to the magical world, not to mention near and dear to his heart, was just too mind-blowingly cool for Harry. The sudden hiss of steam and glittering rays of white light coming from where he knew the ship to be was even more awesome to behold.
A landing platform dropped in the puddle revealing the inside of the - still invisible - spaceship. It was dark inside, save for the runway-style lights along the ramp leading up the ramp.
Out stepped two people. A man and a woman judging by the comparative shape of their waists and shoulders. Even this was hard to ascertain due to the heavy black and red armour they wore. The full body regalia, to say nothing of the pointy bits sticking out of it, did not speak highly of their possible friendliness. Neither did the jet packs or side-arms they carried.
It was silly to think that maybe, just maybe, their alien visitors would be peace-loving beings. Maybe even justiciars from a world where knowledge of magic wasn't so esoteric and who were willing to fight the looming threat of Voldemort.
No! Clearly that was asking a bit too much.
"The seismic scanners picked up something moving towards our position." The female, and her voice was definitely female, told her possible superior.
Seismic scanners? Ignoring the obvious mystery of how these visitors spoke flawless English, Harry scoured his mind for what that could mean.
Seismic... Seismic... Earthquakes?
Harry certainly hoped there wasn't one of those coming along. There was also a seismograph which detected earthquakes. So maybe that's what it was?
"What type of being and from what vector?" The male said.
Well no, seismographs just detected vibrations in the ground. Probably. So if they have seismic sensors, they would be much more advanced. They could pick up much smaller movements in the earth. Like a nearby crash... Or footsteps.
"Bipedal. Less than a hundred and fifty pounds. Southeast." She answered, pointing in Harry's general vicinity.
Yup. Footsteps. They have sensors that can pickup footsteps. They have sensors that picked up his footsteps.
"I don't see anything. Are you certain you calibrated the sensors correctly, Kast?" The male said
"I assure you, Commander. My engineering droid has gotten all of our sensors back into top shape. The ship proper will be likewise functional again soon enough." The female, Kast, snipped back.
Harry wasn't exactly sure where she ranked in comparison to a Commander of whatever military force these two hailed from, but these two certainly weren't in equal standing.
"Well. When in doubt..." The commander said, lifting what was clearly some kind of gun.
"Light it up." Kast finished his sentence, drawing an identical firearm.
And so they did. Harry hit the ground as fast as gravity would let him. Just as a hailstorm of bright red bolts scoured the world around him.
All in all, first contact with alien life was going about as well as could be reasonably expected.
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