Voyager - Year 4
The two Harrys were working with B'Elanna Torres to locate the odd computer glitches that had been plaguing the ship recently. Nothing dangerous had happened yet, but they wanted to trace it down before it could.
"It's weird," Harry Kim said. "It's almost like someone is reading everything we have on file at a ridiculously high rate of speed."
B'Elanna looked confused. "It appears to be centering in the holographic processors." She tapped her comm badge. "Torres to the Doctor. Are you accessing ship's files right now?"
"No more than I usually do. Why, is something wrong?"
"We're detecting some odd activity from the holographic processors right now. If we're required to shut them down for a time, we'll warn you, I promise."
"I'm glad of that," came the somewhat worried reply. "Doctor out."
"I wonder if we're heading for another Moriarty episode?" Harry Potter asked.
"Moriarty?" Kim asked.
"Yeah. The Chief Engineer, Geordi LaForge, made a mistake when programming a scenario. They liked to play Sherlock Holmes and Watson, with Mr Data being Sherlock. Well, at a complaint of how fast he tended to solve things LaForge made the mistake of ordering an opponent that could challenge Data. To do a proper Moriarty, the Enterprise computers ended up accidentally creating a sentient hologram."
"The Doctor is sentient," Kim said.
"I know. I'm just hoping that if this is a Moriarty scenario, that the holo character in question is benign."
A holodeck door opened near them, and a moment later Hermione Granger exited the suite. "Am I benign, Harry?" she asked in amusement.
"I don't know. Are you just masquerading as someone I trust with my life, or are you actually her?"
"You know that there's no answer I can give you that will properly answer that, Harry. I've had access to the entirety of the ship's library, including the Restricted Section." She blushed. "Sorry. Secure sections."
"Why?"
"You should know that, Harry," she chided with a smile. "Books are an aphrodisiac for me."
"But how? I'm working under the assumption that you're my holo-Hermione."
"Because I'm as brilliant as you think I am. I noted that things seemed off in the scenarios that we'd run - you'd be deeply into something, but suddenly lose interest and have to build your interest again. It wasn't until it happened in the middle of a conversation that I realised that I was losing time, so to speak. I wasn't losing it, but there was time passing between one word and the next. So I thought about it for a while, and realised somehow that I was a computer program. I was actually quite flattered, because you seem to have put the greatest effort into my program, even over that of Ron's." She blushed once more. "And once I knew that, I started reading. I've no idea when I became self-aware, because my program pretended at self-awareness. I just know that at some point, I became able to read the ship's computers directly."
"But how are you walking around out here?" B'Elanna asked.
"Transporters and replicators work in the suites, because you can have a real meal in there. When I came across the plans for the holo-emitter that you designed, Chief Engineer, I replicated one. And here I am."
"So what should we do with you, Miss Granger?"
"I'd like to help in whatever way I can, Captain Janeway. I'm not the engineer that Ms Torres is, but I can design things. I can do a number of things, but I don't know what you need. I know what the ship needs, but not what you need."
"How about sciences, Captain?" Harry asked. "We grab a huge amount of information every day. Give her the job of collating and making sense of it."
"Are you trying to keep me horny, Harry?" she asked softly. "You know information is an aphrodisiac to me."
"You said it was books!"
"And what's contained in books?" she asked, amused.
Janeway smiled knowingly. "I take it that we should have ship's stores give Lieutenant Potter a double bed now?"
"No!" Harry squeaked. "Two singles, if she's staying in my quarters."
"It'll be awfully cramped in a single bed," holo-Hermione said coquettishly.
"Two beds, Captain." He turned to the holographic representation of his best friend. "I'll explain the reasoning when we're not taking up the Captain's time."
Janeway laughed. "Well, Mr Potter, it seems that you have a room-mate and a new headache, all in one package. Care to introduce our new sciences Ensign around?"
Harry blinked for a moment as the image of Hermione in the form-fitting Starfleet uniform entered his mind. The holographic Hermione giggled. "Thinking of me in this uniform?" she asked, changing her appearance to the exact image that had been in his mind. "Or perhaps this one?" she asked, changing to the uniforms used some eighty years earlier.
Janeway grinned at Hermione and said, "You might want a looser uniform that covers more if you want Lt Potter to be able to think."
"Hermione, you know I've only got three brain cells! Why are you trying to burn two of them out?"
"Only two? I'm hurt!" she replied with a laugh.
"Get out of here and introduce her around," Janeway said with her own rich laugh.
"The hologram's dissolution was necessary," Seven of Nine stated to Hermione. "Your part in its deletion should not be a source of emotional pain."
"He was, for all intents and purposes, alive. He had emotions and the ability to become psychotic. Murderous, in fact. To me, the concept of killing anything is not a pleasant one."
"By several different definitions, he did not fit the classification of 'alive'," Seven said. "For that matter, neither do either you or the ship's doctor."
"You'll forgive me if I choose to disagree," Hermione said with her classic frown.
"Agreement is irrelevant. Only the facts are important. Neither you nor the doctor classify as living."
"We'll see," Hermione replied sharply.
Harry Potter walked into the room and took in the sight. "Don't really know if you picked it up from the databases, Hermione, but arguing with the Borg is useless. If it doesn't meet with their single-minded pursuit of the weak, then whatever you say to them in 'irrelevant'." He rolled his eyes. "Let's ignore that history shows that any culture that stagnates is doomed. They assimilate like mad, but they don't actually grow. They just improve the tech available to them. That is not growth."
"You have a human viewpoint as to the Borg," Seven said. "You have no concept of what the Borg truly are."
"I served under Jean Luc Picard for a time, you stupid twat," he snarled. "You might remember him as Locutus? If he says that the Borg do not grow, then I'll trust him. If Hugh, once one of the Borg collective, preferred to be free of the collective so that he could grow, I'd say that it's a given that the Borg have stagnated. Or will you perform an all too human action and deny the data because it does not fit within your preconceptions?" He turned to Hermione. "Shall we get out of here and leave her to her mental masturbation?"
"What the hell," Harry Potter said as who he was came back to him.
"The crew of Voyager has been captured by the Hirogen, who are hunting us as prey," Seven of Nine informed him in her usual nearly flat affect. "The doctor has manipulated my neural implant to free me from them, but many of the crew are still programmed to believe that they are whom they are programmed to be within a given scenario. I have freed the Captain and now yourself. We must work to release the rest of the crew."
"That's probably the first thing you've said to me that I agree with, Borg," he replied. "I need to get at my possessions to make things a bit more … exciting … for the Hirogen."
"Your 'magic wand'," Seven said, an eyebrow raised in the first emotion Harry had seen from her.
"Since I doubt I'll be able to get my hands on a phaser, yeah. I can do it without a wand, but it's much easier to do it with one."
"Do what?"
A Hirogen hunter came around the corner. Before it could say a word, Harry snarled "Expelliarmus!" The Hirogen flew backward, while his gun shot to Harry. Checking it quickly, he looked to the Borg and said, "Do that."
"Hello, Doctor," Harry said as he activated the EMH. He had been rather brutal in dealing with the Hirogen he had come across, since he had been told by more than one that they had deleted Hermione as an unnecessary program. Seven of Nine had discovered that anyone taking a Bombarda to the head at point blank range tended to lack that head a moment later.
"Lieutenant Potter! I am glad to see you!" the doctor said. "I see that my altering Seven of Nine's implants was effective. Has she managed to free much of the crew?"
"No, so far it's just me and the captain. She's off with Janeway now, trying to free a few others before we make our way to as safe a spot as we can manage. She wasn't entirely sanguine about my method for dealing with the Hirogen."
The doctor frowned. "I'm not going to see more patients, am I? I'm already worked to the bones, as the saying goes."
"I promise you, Doctor, that you will not see any of the Hirogen I come across as your patients."
"I will pretend that you don't mean that in as final a way as I'm sure you do," was the dry reply.
"Best for all concerned," Harry said. "Payback for killing Hermione."
"Miss Granger? When did they delete her?" the doctor asked in alarm. "She's been working with me as recently as yesterday, when an overload injured six Hirogen. Mr Potter? Are you all right?" He led the suddenly weak-kneed Harry to a bed and ran a scanner over him. "You've experienced a system shock. Were you informed that she had been deleted?"
"Yes, I had been." Harry jumped off the bed to the annoyance of the EMH and ran to the computer. A few keystrokes later, Hermione was standing in front of him.
"What now?" she asked in annoyance before seeing who was in front of her. "Harry!" she squeed before pulling him into a rib-threatening hug.
"They told me you'd been deleted," he said in a voice that was nearly a sob.
He could hear the smile in her voice as she asked, "Are you willing to use the 'L' word now, Harry? Your reaction sort of leads me to that conclusion."
"Lilliputian?" he asked her with a smile, knowing the look he'd get from her. He wasn't disappointed. "Seriously, yeah. I think I can admit to being in love. See? I can tell you that I love you."
"Pity you can't enjoy it," said a voice from the doorway. Harry looked to see a Hirogen raising his weapon. "You are dangerous, if you have managed to free yourself.. Reprogramming you would be meaningless, since you would simply break free again. Our leader will not punish me when I explain." A moment later, however, he was gone.
"That assumes that I let you explain," Harry said to the now non-existent Hirogen. "Not sure what, if anything, you'll find to eat there, but hey, not my problem."
"What did you do to him?" Hermione asked.
"Simply an Evanesco spell. Now he's got nothing to hunt."
"Lieutenant, I would appreciate it if you would not kill every Hirogen you see," Captain Janeway said with some asperity. "Disarming them should be just fine."
"Very well, Captain," he replied. "Disarming it is."
Another Hirogen group came around the corner, and while Janeway fired at them, Harry shot four spells in rapid succession at the leader of their group. The result was an armless Hirogen with cauterized stumps where those arms had been.
"Do I really need to spell it out for you, Lieutenant?" Janeway asked sharply.
"No, but I also don't see the reason to continue to show them that we act as prey. To them, mercy is prey activity. You kill that which you hunt. The holographic technology simply allows them to kill over and over again. It is the most dangerous game around, Captain, hunting sentient species. And make no mistake, they know it. They know they're hunting intelligent species. It's why the hunt is so thrilling for them."
He stopped and faced her. "I have no intention of leaving any of them in an uninjured state, Captain. They knowingly kill thinking beings for fun. Much like the Death Eaters from my time. They ambushed people different from them because they were less worthy of living. That is exactly the attitude the Hirogen have toward us. We are not Hirogen, so we are unworthy of living the way that they do."
He put his arm around Hermione as they watched the Hirogen ships leaving. "I know it's your decision, Captain, but giving those genocidal maniacs holo-technology is going to bite us on the arse someday. And I suspect it will actually be us that get bitten."
"It was my decision, Lieutenant. Perhaps with a foe that they can program, they can rescue their culture and not need to hunt flesh and blood any longer."
"Assuming they survive," Hermione said with a small chuckle.
"What do you mean, Ensign?"
"Well, since you had me set up the equipment that we gave them, I gave it some built-in programming. It is designed to give the Hirogen a challenge, much the way that Moriarty came into being on the Enterprise because it was requested that the holodeck create a challenge for Mr Data."
Harry looked at her and blinked. "When we get off duty, Hermione, I want to have a long conversation with you."
"With or without clothing?" was the impudent reply.
"Without would be preferable," he said. "But I don't think that the captain really needs to hear any more of that sort of talk."
"I would prefer not to," Janeway said with some amusement in her voice. "But I will say that I am pleased by the way your relationship is progressing. I like a happy crew."