I'm rather amused by some of the comments I'm getting about Chakotay. He might never have been my favorite character, but I'm making him likable, which some people thought impossible? (By the way, for those who know the origins of this story idea, they'll know why a Chakotay/Seven of Nine pairing is impossible. *grin*)
Voyager - Year 3
"How goes it on the Delta Flyer?" Harry asked into the apparently empty room. If not for the noise coming from the shell of the shuttle, he'd have assumed that the shuttle bay was empty. Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres popped their heads up out of the shell of the section they were in, making him snicker to himself, because they looked as if they had just been caught snogging, based on the surprised looks on their faces.
She spoke first. "We finally settled on tetraburnium for the Flyer's external skin, because it should give us the best ratio of weight and strength. Light enough to be useful, but tough enough to need Voyager's phasers to pierce."
"That's some of the hull material we've already got, right?" Harry asked.
"We're going to need it if we want this shuttle to stand up to things, Starfleet!" she barked at him.
He raised his hands. "I was just asking." He intentionally put on an over-the-top Lockhart attitude. "Remember, I might come across as this confident - and dare I say handsome? - Starfleet officer, but I'm still merely a ruggedly handsome 20th century human who got shunted forward." He posed dramatically, and wished he knew the spell that Lockhart had used to give his teeth that special shine.
She was the one to snicker this time. "I'm sorry for snapping at you. I'm still fighting with myself and wondering how the Maquis are doing."
"It's probably sacrilege for a Starfleet officer to say this, but I hope they're all right. I've read up on the conflict - I didn't live through a lot of what led to it, remember - and I probably would have been fighting alongside you. I'm used to having a government you thought you could trust turning on you." He sneered, but it was clear that it was not at either of them. "You were lucky. 'Maquis' were the foe for your government. Mine wanted me in prison or expelled from our wizarding world." He paused. "Ought to be interesting to see if Voldie has made a public appearance since I've been gone."
He shook his head. "That's neither here nor there. My real question is one of simple curiosity. How long before I get the second flight?"
"Second?" Tom Paris asked. "I'd figure as senior pilot on board, you'd likely get the right to fly her first."
"Yeah, but which one of us is going to know her inside and out, Tom? Who's going to know all her little quirks from having had the chance to run all the simulations, and will be better equipped to recover from them if needed?"
"You'd actually let me get the first flight?"
"I've already talked to Captain Janeway about it," he said. "Gave her just that reasoning as to why you should fly the Delta Flyer's maiden voyage."
"Why?" B'Elanna asked bluntly.
Harry thought for a long moment. "Can you guys take a break from this for a few minutes? The best way to explain a lot about me is to show you something."
Their eyes met and they appeared to talk with just their eyes. Simultaneously, they stood and brushed dust from their uniforms. "Lead on, MacDuff," Tom said.
"'Lay on, MacDuff, and damned be he who cries 'Nay, enough!''" Harry said, raising his hand into the air as he turned to leave. He heard a distinctly female snort of laughter behind him.
He led them to an empty holodeck, and pulled out an isolinear chip once the doors closed. A moment later, the scene changed to a Scottish countryside. "Computer, open picture Shuttle One in front of us." A moment later, the photograph that he had been shown when he was posted to Voyager appeared in the air before them.
"Damn, that's the Delta Flyer!" Tom said. "And pardon my saying it, but that's quite the babe you've got your arm around there."
"Pity she won't survive much past the photography on that picture. She and her parents, along with several thousand others, are vaporised on August 1, 1998, in Oxford."
B'Elanna surprised him by walking over and hugging him quickly. "Losing people you care for hurts. I'm sorry."
"I'll get to see her one last time, though," Harry said with a sad smile. "That photo proves it, since I'm in my Starfleet uniform." He turned to the two of them. "And that photo explains one more thing. I need to return to the 20th century, and I need Voyager to do it. If it were the Maquis who could have gotten me back to my right time, then I'd have joined them. I am a good little Starfleet drone because I need Starfleet to get me back. After I go back and kill Voldemort, I'm through. I'll visit her headstone - she'll have one because I'll pay for one - and then join her."
"Do you really think she'd want you to do that?" B'Elanna asked.
"No, she'd tell me to live. Why? It's bad enough that it took me 'til the 24th century to realise that I'd fallen in love with her somewhere along the way, but to know that she won't survive long after I finally see her again?" He shook his head. "'You'll find someone else,' they always say. I'm not so sure that's true. It makes the first one seem like she can be replaced."
"You need to tell her when you get back, you know," Tom said. "That you love her, I mean. The other is a bad idea."
"No, she's with my other best friend. That would just make her feel bad."
B'Elanna looked long and hard at the photograph hovering before them. "Computer, focus in on this section." She motioned with her hand around Harry's posterior.
"Checking out Harry's butt, B'Elanna?" Tom asked with amusement.
She ignored him as the computer enlarged that area. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Harry, but that looks like her hand on your butt there. And the way her fingers are, I'd say she's got a good grip on it. She ever do that to you before?"
"Uh, no," Harry replied, stunned.
"So," Tom said with a grin, "looks like you might be wanting a conversation with her anyway?"
"Looks like she'd die knowing you returned the feeling," B'Elanna said. "Sounds worthwhile to me."
"Oh-ho, look where you primates have gotten to now," said an amused voice that the crew of the Voyager had only ever heard in recordings from the Enterprise.
"Can I shoot him, Captain?" Harry Potter asked with annoyance.
"I welcome the attempt," Q said. "It would be trés amusing."
"Well, he did offer you the chance, Lieutenant. Are you ready for the consequences?"
"Couldn't be worse than listening to this git prattle on with his superiority talk." His wand shot from his sleeve and he yelled "Stupefy!"
To everyone's surprise - especially Harry's - the nigh-omnipotent being fell over backwards to the deck with a thud.
He was back on his feet a few moments later, staring at Harry. He then spun on Janeway. "Why didn't anyone tell me that you're a precursor race?"
"Maybe because it's none of your business?" Harry shot at him.
"Excuse moi," Q said loftily, "but precursors are the business of the Q Continuum. We must guide those races capable of transcending mortality into becoming proper examples of what it means to be omnipotent."
Harry was sitting at his console with a sour lemon look, flapping his fingers as if to imitate Q's talking. "Heard it before, shorty. Didn't like those jerks either."
"Wherever would you have heard such talk before?" Q asked in a disbelieving voice.
"Pureblood terrorists when I came from. Called themselves Death Eaters. Wanted to kill anyone who wasn't a pureblood - by their definition, mind you - or who helped the 'blood traitors'. Your rhetoric is just a different type of bigotry, Q. You just like playing with your victims, rather than just killing them mercifully."
"I'd like to talk with you later, Mr Potter," Janeway said through clenched teeth.
"Oh dear, you seem to have angered the captain of your ship!" Q said in his melodramatic way. "Whatever shall we do?"
"Well, my thought is to ignore you and keep course for the Alpha Quadrant, but you've undoubtedly got something far more annoying and potentially deadly in mind, as another of your . . . 'tests'."
Q laughed. "I was going to bother your captain for a while, but you intrigue me. Potter, was it? You're a sign of being a precursor race. We're supposed to guide you people into becoming one of us."
"We're after you," Harry said. "Wouldn't that make us the 'R'?"
"Aarr!" Harry Kim said from the science panel further up the bridge. "Pirates! Inter-universal pirates, making off with curvy wenches and drinking nebulas of rum! I like it!" When he noted that everyone was blinking at him in confusion, he said, "What? In Old Earth calendar, today's September 19th! It's Talk Like A Pirate Day!"
Harry Potter's head shot up, and then he started snorting his laughter.
"Excuse me!" Q interjected. "Omnipotent being here!"
Harry waved him off as completely irrelevant. "Hermione's birthday is Talk Like a Pirate Day?"
"Yeah!" Kim said. "One of the few holidays that really kept on through the centuries." His eyes twinkled. "I've seen a picture of that girl you left on Earth. Can you imagine that girl in pirate queen garb?" Potter stopped laughing suddenly, and his eyes glazed slightly. "Yeah. Enough to make you adjust the fit of your jib, I'd say." Harry Kim's eyes were twinkling madly, which was highly unusual for him.
"Hmph," Q snorted. He snapped his fingers and suddenly the crew were standing on a ship. He held Harry's wand. "You seem to be a second level precursor, since you don't need those cumbersome rituals any longer. But you do need a wand. So, I still get my fun and games." He took in Harry's thunderous look.
Harry pointed a finger at him. "Oh, he's pointing at me. Whatever shall I d-" He got not further because a red beam shot from Harry's finger and knocked him flat again.
His wand flew into his hand, and he growled "Finite Incantatem." To his surprise, they found themselves back on the bridge. As Q came back around, Harry pointed his wand at him. "Try anything more, Q, and I start getting nastier. How well will you heal when I blow off an arm or a leg? I've shown that I can hit you, and I'm tired of us humans being your playthings. Not gonna happen to me, if I have anything to say about it."
"Fine," Q pouted. "Try to brighten your day, and -"
"Evanesco," Harry interrupted. Q actually disappeared, although only for a moment, although his return involved the most amazingly awful smell permeating the bridge as . . . things . . . dripped off Q.
"Do you have any idea where you sent me? Millenia of garbage and slime!"
"Oh, so I sent you back to the Q Continuum?" Harry asked with mock brightness.
"Augh!" Q yelled, and disappeared. He didn't seem to have reappeared anywhere else yet.
"Mister Potter, my ready room. You too, Mister Kim." They followed an obviously annoyed Captain Janeway into her ready room. After she had seated herself, she rounded on Harry. "Do you mind telling me what that performance out there was?"
"May I, Harry? I want to see if I understood you out there," Harry Kim said.
"By all means, Harry," Harry Potter replied with a smile, fairly certain that his namesake had, in fact, figured out what he was doing.
Harry Kim looked to the captain, who motioned for him to speak. "Potter was trying to keep him off guard, I think. From what I've read in the records, every time Q has shown up, he made it clear that he had the upper hand. Once Harry showed that he can somehow go around Q's protections, he decided to keep the guy off guard. Q dislikes being ignored, so when we started talking and waving him off, that annoyed him."
"Annoying highly powerful beings is not always a good idea, Lieutenant Potter," she said, still somewhat frosty.
"I've had one trying to kill me, and when I get back to the 20th century, I still have to deal with the plonker. Q never kills that I've seen, no matter what I said out there. He might not worry if someone dies in the midst of one of his games, such as when he introduced the Borg to us, but he won't openly kill someone just for the 'fun' of it. Basically, I took that precursor nonsense that started to keep him off-guard and used it. I'm tired of bigots, and if he sees us as some race that might someday become like his people, then he's not going to get us too annoyed at him, or else we might not let him 'mentor' us. Or me, specifically." He shook his head. "Will I ever be normal?"
"No," Kim said helpfully. Harry glared at him momentarily. "Sorry, Captain," Kim added.
"I'd have appreciated some warning, Mr Potter, but I suppose that you couldn't exactly warn me without giving yourself away to him."
"Exactly, Captain," he replied, and then smothered a snort of laughter. When she made it clear that she wanted him to explain, he simply said, "Excuse me, sir, but can I talk to my captain for a moment while I explain my plan to drive you insane?"
Her amused look was applause enough. "Nicely done, gentlemen. With luck that's the last we'll see of him."