Gringotts, July 20, 1998

"We have located the soul anchor," Rendflesh said. "There may be an issue, however. It is known to the Muggles, and is rather obvious. It is the obelisk that greets visitors outside the administrative offices at Oxford University."

"Hmm, that could be an issue," Harry said. "We've got another eleven days to get the stuff from the museums swapped out. Voyager is finishing up what repairs we can manage in this time frame, and that should be done then as well. Then all hell breaks loose."

"You have another problem. Destroying the soul anchor is likely to release a great deal of energy. Destroying the ones we use would likely damage most of Diagon Alley if it were done above ground, and that is a stone roughly the size of a human fist. The obelisk is 15 klems … apologies, it is roughly 25 feet tall and 4 feet wide. The destruction of that anchor will likely destroy Oxford and the surrounding countryside for many miles, I believe your term is."

Harry stared at him for a long moment before finally managing to say, "I thank you for that information. Have your people made their preparations? Things are about to get very ugly topside."

"We have. When we get the signal, we shall withdraw from the world above and await your return. And as many species as possible shall be saved."

"Thank you. We may not be able to stop the coming disaster, but we certainly can mitigate the damage, though it might take a few hundred years."

"I suspect we shall meet again before the saga is complete, Lieutenant Potter," Rendflesh said, standing and giving him what he thought of as a Roman salute.

Harry stood and returned it. "I would like that, Rendflesh. As others say - from your mouth to God's ears." He smiled at the goblin, making sure to keep his mouth closed. It was returned in kind.

Oxford, July 29th, 1998

The group stood before the obelisk, staring at it in horror. The item itself was beautiful, but they all knew that what it housed and what it's destruction would bring about. "Captain," Harry said softly, "I humbly request that you not have anything to do with the destruction of this obelisk. I do not want the onus of starting World War III on your hands or in your Federation records."

She looked at him for a moment. "Thank you for forgiving me, Lieutenant. As for not being involved, it is my ship, and you are my crewman. I would not want either on your conscience." She looked back to the obelisk. "I keep forgetting that there was dilithium here on Earth, or else Cochran never would have been able to get his warp drive working. But to find one this big, and know that we have to destroy it?"

"It does explain why destroying the stone used as a soul anchor destroys a large area, though," Tom Paris said. "I'm surprised that it will only destroy Oxford and a few surrounding miles. Perhaps we put up shields around the thing to try to drive as much of the explosion upward?"

"Possibly," Harry said. "Might be an idea to bring some down the day we destroy it. They'll certainly be annihilated in the blast, so there won't be any worries about future tech falling into the wrong hands."

"Given they'll be at ground zero?" Hermione Ann asked. It had been decided that they would be told apart not just by their looks (which Harry had declared to be 'smoking'), but by giving the girl who had started as a hologram a new middle name.

"To make sure the son of a bitch dies, though, I want to call him out. Maybe flat out tell him that we've found his anchor and are going to destroy it? He'll show up, if only to protect it. He can't do otherwise. Trust his minions? Not in this lifetime. The very folk he uses as his inner circle are also the ones most likely to take advantage of any apparent weakness."

"How will you 'call him out', as you say?" Tom Paris asked.

"Simple. I'll place a message in the Daily Prophet telling him I know where his soul anchor is, and that I intend to remove it and destroy it. He knows that there's no way of moving it from this spot secretly, but I also know that word of my time travel has made it out amongst enough people to have made its way back to his ears. He won't want to trust that I can move it - which I can't, by the way - so he'll amass who he can in order to stop us." He sighed unhappily. "And then we phaser the shit out of it from orbit, once that snake-faced bastard is near the obelisk. And start World War III."

Hogwarts, July 29th, 1998

Harry looked out at the small group in the Great Hall. The Grangers were there, as was the Tonks family, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black. Severus Snape was on the periphery. A handful of other people who had disappeared from the records as of August first were also there. Luna Lovegood walked in carrying her trunk, much to Harry's surprise. "I've nothing to keep me here, really," she said. "I've brought all that I'd want to keep."

"Pity you're leaving that house behind," Remus said. "I hope it survives the next few hundred years."

"As I said, I brought everything I want to keep," was Luna's simple reply.

Harry blinked at that, and vowed to himself to talk to her in a bit. He hadn't had the chance to really talk to her since they'd returned, other than some passing small talk. He shook his head to clear it and looked out at the assembled crowd. "We're going into communications blackout with the rest of the world as of today. The group of you will be going up to Voyager with us, where you will remain until after August 1st. As of that date, we should be be leaving here and returning, from my point of view, to the year 2378 as you currently refer to it. If you forgot something important, I apologize, but it will remain lost." He turned to Professor Snape. "You are welcome to come with us, sir. I really doubt that you have many ties to here, and if you're willing to trust my word, I can tell you that there will be many more opportunities in a world that doesn't have pre-existing emotional baggage regarding you."

Snape looked long and hard at Harry. Finally, in as emotionless a voice as he could manage. "I do not like you and I never shall. However, you have been as good as your word in dealing with me, so I believe that I shall join you. Everything I would want to take with me is here at the school."

"Yes, sir." Harry sighed softly. "While my feelings for you are pretty much the same as you hold for me, I do hope that the Mark is simply a communications device. You have fought the no-nosed bastard, and I really want you to have a chance to get your life under your own control, when or not I like you."

"I find myself in the unusual position of being in agreement, Potter," came the droll reply. "But if I do die, I will die opposing him."

Harry simply nodded and turned back to the rest of the group. "If everyone could get all their things together and return here within two hours, we can begin the process of loading you onto the Voyager," he finished.

He walked over to Luna. "Since I don't see anyone here referring to himself as your father, would I be out of line to offer my condolences?"

"No, but he's with mother now, so I'm happy. I've brought the house with me."

"You must either not have had much, or had some serious packing spells," Harry said with a chuckle. "I don't think I could fit a lifetime's worth of things in a trunk."

She smiled. "No, silly. I brought the house." She opened the trunk and moved the cloth that was immediately visible. There, amidst more soft cloth, was a chess rook just a bit smaller than the trunk. "Daddy's been buried with Mummy, and he'd hate it if the house was destroyed, so I activated one of its ultimate defenses and brought it with me."

Harry blinked at her. "When we get to the future, Luna, I really want to talk to you. I see that I missed getting to know an amazing person by being gone all this time."

Voyager, July 31st, 1998

"Is everything ready?" Janeway asked Harry as they looked at Oxford. They could see that some people had already begun to arrive, so it was highly likely that most, if not all of the Death Eaters would be there. Snape was currently being held unconscious in Sickbay since his arm was burning from the summons.

"As ready as we'll ever be, Captain," he replied. "We've got a circle of ninety-six shield generators buried at a radius of about fifty feet from the obelisk. They'll vaporize fairly quickly, but should last just long enough to channel enough of the blast into the upper atmosphere to prevent most of England and Wales - and parts of the continent - from becoming radioactive glass." He looked down at the chronometer running on the panel and said, "He'll have to show up, based on the challenge I issued, but he's either waiting until he sees me, or is waiting to make a grand entrance or something. That explosion happened some time in the early hours of the morning, according to Starfleet records."

"Can't we just destroy it?" Harry Kim asked.

"Not unless he's in the blast zone. If he survives the destruction, he can build a new anchor, if he finds the dilithium." He scowled. "Captain? If I have to go down there to make Riddle show up, then can I take our most powerful phaser rifle with me? Maybe two?"

"I doubt shooting him will help," she said in a dry voice.

"No, but I'm betting that if I drain that rifle battery, I can punch through any anti-Apparation wards they might put up." If not, then it's a mutual take-out, he thought, but wasn't about to put voice that one. "Plus, they're likely to open fire on me, and I'm betting that a magical shield powered by a phaser rifle's battery will stop just about anything."

Oxford, August 1st, 1998

Harry Apparated from the ship to the surface, but was a little sneaky about it. He'd taken one last look at the records before deciding that he needed to draw Riddle to the spot, and found that, inexplicably, there was a surviving report about a loud explosion just before the detonation that started World War III. There were no records of who reported it, or how they might have survived the explosion to be able to report it, but it was useful nonetheless.

The reason it was useful was that he drew a great deal of power from the ship's engines to Apparate down, and converted that into sound upon arrival. Most people tried to soften the noise, but Harry wanted it as loud as he could get. For safety's sake, he cast a Deafness Charm on himself.

Since he could see them on the Voyager's viewscreen, he chose to appear between Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. It was then that he learned firsthand a lesson that had been purely speculative before - loud sounds cause damage. Malfoy and Lestrange fell, as did several others he had no names for. Blood started to flow from their ears after they hit the ground. As he looked around, canceling the deafness as he did and raising a shield, he noted that he seemed to have either knocked them all unconscious, or at least stunned all of them around him.

"Well, Tom, I think it's time you showed up, since I seem to have dealt with all your sycophants. Or are you doing your usual cowardly bit of not bothering to show up until you have the upper hand?" He waited for several moments without seeing any movement. "Huh, must've done like you usually do, and run away. Is that how you keep your title of 'Most Powerful Wizard' - by waiting until your opponent can't fight back?"

That got him what he was after - he saw the yellow beam coming toward him and moved slightly while pumping some extra power into the shield he had up. It ricocheted upward, and he heard an exclamation of surprised from the direction the beam had come from. One quick Accio later, and Riddle was on the ground in from of him, having slammed bodily into a Protego so strong it was physical.

Harry reached out without using rifle battery to see if he could Apparate away, and smiled inwardly as he realized he'd been right about the wards, but he could also tell that the rifle would give him more than enough power to get away. "Well, Tom, it's been fun, but it's time I finished this. Your anchor goes bye-bye now." He shot Riddle with the first rifle, and then raised the rifle with the full battery and aimed it at the obelisk, but rather than fire, he put everything into punching through the wards. "Goodbye, Tom," he said as he disappeared.

He appeared on the bridge, far quieter than his landing on Earth had been. "Now, please," he said quickly, seeing that Riddle was still there and actually starting to rouse. A beam lanced from the Voyager to the obelisk, and the screen went white.