I don't own Harry Potter or Stargate.

Chapter 9

Knowing that the twins had much of the little details of their endeavors well in hand, Harry prepared to connect power to the Astria Porta. The farming bot was ready and already carrying the trunk full of materials, to include dragon dung fertilizer. With a wave of his hand it was connected and he began to dial. He warned the girls again not to be in front of the gate before pushing the activation button.

The unstable vortex rushed out in front of the gate and the girls gasped. They hadn't expected something so spectacular to happen. Harry smirked as he picked up his case with the three potentia inside and turned towards the twins. The bot ignored all of this and walked into the event horizon.

"Well, this is it. I'll call every day I'm away for at least half an hour. If you hear it reacting don't step in front of it. It will take you apart on a molecular level and spread you out between here and Atlantis. You're better off calling me up with the watch communicators. I'm going to get Atlantis under way as quickly as I can while scanning for the Wraith. It should take no time at all really." he said.

"Harry, be careful. I know you're not expecting anything to go wrong but years of Hogwarts and the war have taught us that you and safety don't get along. Promise us no heroics of any kind?" said Padma.

"I don't see how there could be any. She's been abandoned for thousands of years. The shields will probably have been shrinking away for a while under the stress from the ocean floor keeping the potentia under heavy stress. I'll replace them in sequence then run full systems diagnostics and then detach from the ocean floor. Once I have her floating on the surface I'll start up the deep sensor scans and set the nanites loose." he said grabbing the a second case. The one the bot had carried was had some construction materials on board as well. "Then I'll start up the sublight and get out of the gravity well. Then its as simple as setting a course for home and turning on the intergalactic hyperdrive. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine."

"Just make sure you stick to the plan then." said Parvati.

"Yes, love." he responded with a smile while walking toward the gate. "I'll keep the gate open for the maximum each time, including this one so we can stay in touch as long as possible. When I get her to Centari, I'll gate back here."

"Good luck." the twins said together before stepping up for a quick snog each. With a bigger smile he walked, still carrying both cases, through the event horizon.

The bot had been waiting for him as it had already opened the trunk and was removing building materials. He took a moment to look around. Having the layout in his memories and actually seeing it was another thing entirely. The place was darkened, of course, as it was on emergency lighting but it looked like it had been delaying with just the bot turning the lights on. They started to come up now.

Everything had a definite, gracefully high technology look and feel to it. He smiled as he looked at over the nearest console and saw that everything was written in Lantean as he had obviously expected. But first things first, he had to get to the power system.

Making his way out of the room he didn't really have far to go. The power room was just right down the hall from the gate room. What he saw when he got there was just as he had expected. The potentia were all on their last legs. Moving over to the system he quickly set down and opened his case. He disconnected one potentia and alarms started to sound. He quickly switched in one of the new ones and the alarms died. Knowing that that would likely not happen again he moved and completed that operation with the other two remaining potentia.

With that complete he packed the depleted potentia into his case so he could see if he could reinvigorate them later during the trip home. It would have been too dangerous to try it with them still plugged in to the power system. It could have caused a catastrophic failure and literally blown the ship up.

Taking his two cases with him he headed back down to the gate room and sat down at a console to pull up the diagnostics. Activating his watch communicator, he started speaking.

"Okay, loves. I got the power situation sorted, now I'm running the diagnostics. It looks like parts of the city have been under water a while while it tried to save the main control hubs and the gateroom."

"No problems?" came Padma's voice.

"I got a power failure alarm when I disconnected the first potentia but nothing after that. Smooth sailing so far. The place is going to need some serious scurgify charms to clean up some of the sections. The shields have moved back out to outside the city and pushed the water out with it so we'll see. Oh, thats good. Diagnostic says that no water actually got inside so I don't have to worry about cleaning."

"That's good." said Parvati.

"That's very good. Releasing anchors now." with that button press Atlantis began to float to the surface. It didn't take as long as he was expecting as the anti-gravity was still running and aiding the accent. Once he was on the surface he spoke again.

"And now it's time for the long range scans." he said.

"Won't those be picked up?" worried Padma.

"Only if the Wriath are really waiting after all centuries just for Atlantis to show again. I doubt that that is the case." he responded trying to placate them.

"If they are waiting we expect you to get out of there in the safest way possible. We know you can fight but we would rather you run, ok?" said Parvati.

"Yes dears." he said without any snark.

The scans went off without a hitch and the range was much better than he had on his workstation back home, but still nothing came up.

"Scans are all clear. Absolutely nothing. Not even picking up any communications. Maybe they are hybernating or something. Oh well, activating sublight engines...and we have lift-off."

"Let us know when you are underway." came Padma.

"Will do. For an old ship, there really isn't much to do to her. I'll set the upgrades in motion with the nanites in a little bit, I'll wait until I have her in hyperspace. Main thing is her transporters and I guess I'm going to spend a lot of time gardening, huh? Could really use Nevill's help in the greenhouses. Oh, and I already sent code to the construction operations. They are going to have the same security bots that you do at the house on security on each ship so we can spend more time putting people where they can do the most good, at the controls. It more fun anyway."

"Well, I'm on your workstation, while Padma is on the other because they are basically the same anyway. We can't send things like that, can we?"

"Not currently. But you'll get there. I would suggest you leave fleet design to me for now."

"Its just that you left this design up that you called a cruiser. Seems to be armed only with something that looks like missiles."

"Yeah drone missiles. Not to get them confused with the drone ships. They seem to bypass most shields below a certain power level, and beat down the rest. The problems come in finding the people to crew them. Why would people really care for learning how to fly them? They really don't know anything about the Goauld yet. Its good that I've upgraded all the ships to only work for Lantean genes and all have hyperdrive. You might find that muggleborns really like the idea of being pilots and astronauts. Ask them if they would like to go into space."

"Will do. How long will the gate stay open?"

"Probably until I start the hyperdrive. I'll come out every day to call home."

"Okay. Every day?" said Padma, hopeful.

"Every day." he confirmed. "Starting the hyperdrive now. Talking to you two is much more fun than herbology." he laughed. Then he pressed the button. The window opened and Atlantis left the Pegasis galaxy.

Going over to the pile of building materials on the floor he opened the other case and brought out a cylinder. Setting it on top of the pile he pulled out the controller he from the bottom of the case and hit the activating button there as well. The nanites would take the transporter hubs down one at a time to work on the upgrades to them, and wouldn't take long. As far as he could tell, it would only take a couple of days and be complete before he got to the Milky Way galaxy.

He went back to the control console and beamed the bot and the trunk into the greenhouse level on one of the tiers and went in search of a place to sleep. Deciding on the quarters of the High Chancellor, he went to the top of the middle tier and checked out the suite.

It was large and designed for a small family. There was room enough for children to play if need be, and he knew there would be a large bathroom, he just had to find it. He didn't need it yet but finding it would be a smart idea after all. He wandered the quarters and knew that, even if the transporter hub was down in this section, another section would take up the slack anyway, and with just him aboard there wasn't much strain on the system anyway.

The bed was large and draped in silvery sheets, well preserved over the thousands of years and he knew it was likely still comfortable. There were smaller rooms connected and he knew they would be guest rooms and children's rooms. As it was, there were three connected rooms anyway and with no children of his own, they would be guest rooms. The suite had two bathrooms, one in the master bed and one connected to the hall. It wasn't particularly opulent. It was perfect.

He thought of the upgrades he was going to make to Atlantis and of the next city ship he planned to build. He'd scrapped the idea to make a larger one because Parvati had laughed and asked if he was compensating at breakfast. No, he needed better not bigger. With that in mind the redundant shielding was a must and nanite controlled self repair systems, which he'd just installed, were a must. Then docking at each of the outer tiers was another thing being added and why he needed a week in dry dock at Centari to finish the upgrades. The drone count needed to be refreshed but it was good that the transporter hubs were all in actual working order because he'd forgot to unpack the food before he'd transported the trunk.

Then he remembered that he would have to teach the system to make things he would recognize and sighed. Placing his hand on the transported food console he concentrated and logged in. transferring the knowledge directly to the system, he knew that the taste would always be a bit off until he got samples scanned into the system. That would take quite some time to accomplish at the rate he was going.

Finally ready on that front he went instead the the nearest transporter and went to the greenhouses. The bot was already working diligently. He had programmed in all he knew of herbology and it was making a lot of progress as it was. The idea was to grow what was needed for medical potions in house and maybe a few other types besides. Some potions needed animal parts but that could all be ordered and stored. Shaking himself he rolled up his sleeves and got to work as well. He wouldn't keep mandrakes for the restorative draught because of the lethality of their cries but most every other medical potion could find at least its start in these greenhouses.

He worked until lunch before transiting to the master suite and having lunch. He had been correct that the taste would be off. The chicken sandwitch and crisps weren't quite chicken and potato. It had the same nutritional value, and digested the same but it just didn't taste the same. He sighed. That would be the downside to space travel for now. They would just have to put some effort into correcting the problem.

He went back to the main system and puttered around in the electronic library a bit trying to find anything that didn't match his memories. Some things were locked out, even to the Supreme Chancellor, as he was coded in as. With another sigh he went back to the gardening tier to work with the bot. He knew through the system and his memories that it was really called the botany labs but he intended to use them constantly for potions ingredients.

The day ended with him dragging his tired self to the Chancellor's Suite again and washing up. He'd gotten his things out of the trunk and taken them with him this time so he could actually enjoy what he was eating and change after his shower. Atlantis's water reclamation was top notch and he could see no room for improvement, and he was looking. Anything he could upgrade he would.

He settled into a routine of taking the ship out of hyperspace and calling the girls early in the morning for about thirty minutes and then jumping back into hyperspace. There was little to talk about at the moment other than the demonstrations he was missing.

The aurors really loved the personal shields and stunner pistols he'd designed. They would changed the way magical law enforcement did things certainly. They broke shields and stunned so hard that enervate spells didn't do the trick to wake a fallen comrade. The shields would stop anything, including the unforgivables but only once for those. Then they would have to recharge. Not absolutely perfect but life saving.

Saint Mungo's also loved the medical scanners. He didn't introduce healing machines because spells were more specialized and much more mobile. You could get someone with a wand just about anywhere to work on just about anyone while the machines were a little bulky and more than a little slow. The scanners, however, could tell you what was wrong without fail. They picked up on foreign substances and magic no mater what. They had to be programmed with every known foreign substance but after that it could tell you what potion or poison and what spell effect someone was under before they left the lobby. No more guess work was involved in treatment. They had tested it on Frank and Alice Longbottom and found the real cause of the problem, apparantly there was an old spell effect on their brains that needed to be treated and the amount of foreign magic present had evaded wanded scans.

Nevill was ecstatic and was ready to promise Harry his and Hanna's first born in repayment. Harry told Parvati and Padma to offer him a job instead. He would be working the greenhouses in Atlantis and keeping them up to date. They needed a manager and Harry's time was better spent elsewhere.

Weasly Wizard Wheazes took to selling the toy ships with gusto, selling out of their first stock in two days, then ordering five times that as they opened up owl orders for them on the international market.

Nothing was capable of being tampered with, as the Ministry had found when they tried to crack open the shields and pistols to see if they could do it themselves for free. They found very bad diamonds and some gold saugter and wires. But it refused to work again, no matter what they did.

He'd been surprised at the effeciency of the nanites again as they finished the transporter upgrades in only twenty-four hours and moved on to adding a second layer to the shield which he was sure would be done before the first drone ships were ready. It would be close but he could see what nanites could offer and was thinking about increasing the amount allowed at the construction site at Centari. Seeing as he would be arriving at Centari today he could just see how the operations were going and make adjustments there. That line of thinking reminded him the the Orion had completed days ago and was waiting on him at Centari. He thought about putting the anti-gravity to the test and parking it just above the roof at Grimald Place.

He'd already stopped for updates so it was on to Centari anyway. The trip hadn't been so bad after he'd stopped eating transporter food. Of course there was something to be said about food that had gone trough the transporter as well. He'd taken the time to run certain things through the system to get a jump on the programming of the replicated food anyway and was happy with the small selection available.

When he finally entered the Centari system he began with the long range scans again. He could actually see Earth and another system besides that. He didn't detect a planet there though. He could see his mining and ship building operations on the scans quite easily and short range brought great detail. The two Destiny II's were obvious for their size. The old FTL drive that took up that half disk back portion had been replaced with a hyperdrive so that space was again used for power storage. They still used solar matter for primary power but the cutting back of crew decks for space for weapons and armor and power had made them into primary fighting ships. He kept the shape though, it was kinda cool.

Using the workstation at Atlantis he went ahead and ordered even more nanites to construct an set them on one Aurora II class ship. He'd crew this one and Atlantis first before he worried about building more of them. With Atlantis joining in in the construction of more ships as well he was hoping to pump out even more hulls in no time. He just hoped the Americans could hold off of pissing off the Goauld for a while yet. He already knew that they didn't have a dialing device, the star gate network could tell that much so they could actually dial dangerous gates that a dialing device would not allow. Sighing once more, which he found that he did a lot in last few days, he was resigned before he realized that if he really needed to he could use Atlantis's sensors and transporter to take the gate. Then again, they hadn't done anything with it yet so he really shouldn't assume that they would muck it up quite yet.

He landed Atlantis near the Destiny II's, made a mental note of the new address, and dialed Earth once more. After the gate stabilized he grabbed the trunk, empty of all but the cases he'd carried with him, and stepped through.

The twins were there to greet him with snogs and news. Snogging came first of course.

"We missed you." said Padma as she released him. She was wearing a nice summer robe.

"I can tell." he said as he was captured by Parvati. She was wearing a muggle tank top and skirt.

"Good." said Parvati as she released him. "We just got back the replies from the muggleborns. As soon as I mentioned space travel the overwhelming response was 'If you're not pulling my leg about magic technology and space travel then I'm in'. You were right about the support of a wizard space program and that they were taken out of the running for being astronauts by going to Hogwarts. They also find it funny and strange that wizards rejected technology at some point and could actually be living in spaceships right now. I didn't even have to explain spaceships to the muggleborns at all. They some asked, of course, if we had big space guns. When I said yes they asked the pay scale. That was the one that we just got. They want to know what we pay. What so you want me to say?"

"Set it at two thousand a year. The mining operation seems to be gold rich. How many on the list?" he responded.

"I've got thirty-five, one hundred and twelve if all of their friends reply with positive responses." she answered.

He stared in astonishment. One hundred twelve people in less than two weeks of this? He was rethinking the decisions he had made about the Aurora's. Well he already had one building and most of these people were simply wanting a job after all. Working greenhouse and crewing ships would be one thing after all. He got an idea.

"Tell them its first come first serve for commercial space. No rent on commercial lots for the first year. That will bring in buisiness. The city ships aren't really for combat anyway. They are cities first and foremost. How are we on our own commercial side?" he turned to Padma as he followed the girls inside.

"Everything is selling well. If the Wizengamut in two days tries to shut us down they are going to have a lot of unhappy people." said Padma.

"Especially as I intend to sell recording and playback devices to the Wizarding Wireless and fans. How are the profits?"

"We've made fifty-two thousand galleons, fourteen thousand sickles, and two thousand seven hundred and three knuts. The Hedwig dropped off another hundred thousand galleons and twenty-two thousand sickles yesterday. You're definiely making back what the goblins took." Padma was smiling.

He smiled back. Creating gold with a philosopher's stone was one thing. Mining out more on the other hand was another thing entirely. Keeping some for building materials and some for currency seemed to keep him in the black. But did he have enough coming in to fund an entire nation if it came down to it? As it was everyone was being paid by him. He though about that for a moment.

"Anyone going on board the ships will be paid only fifteen hundred. Meals and lodging are provided. Let them know that it is a militia of sorts. That there are more dark lords in space and we need to be ready. Thats almost more than I want to say to them but if they are going to be aboard ships in defence of Earth and Centari they should at least know some of why." he said after a while. They nodded.

"So how was the trip, I mean really?" said Parvati.

"Most of it was pretty boring. A lot of staring at hyperspace and working the greenhouse with the bot. Last I checked it was still working. And even more cat people bots are going to be built. Did you find out what happened to Potter Manor?" he responded.

"Yes and no. Yes in that it burned down. However the land is still unplottable. The exact location is unknown at this time. Anyone that would know is dead. I have a general area in Wales that you could likely scan for though. Maybe you can detect the wards. Its the only wizarding property in the area so that should work, right?" she responded.

"Have you tried it yet?" he asked.

"No. Your station is organized differently than ours. And you had so much more running. I left it alone for the most part and I was working a lot on getting the people to run this thing."

"Its okay. Ill run it myself in a little bit. Its funny. We've been at this for twelve days and we have so much done. The Destiny II's launch today. First of the line."

"Do they need crews?"

"No. Completely automated. Can crewed if necessary. But they shouldn't need them."

"And they won't go crazy and kill us all will they?" said Parvati, half joking.

"Not a true AI. They do what they've been programmed to do. There should be one cloaked in orbit of Earth in three hours. I've got four more and a Aurora building already."

"Good. You just keep the ships coming and I'll find you the crews." Parvati said with a smile.

They sat down to a late lunch. Tipsy was enjoying an unlimited food budget and getting fancy. Today was something French. The girls let him know that the little elf was pouring over cookbooks to do her level best for the house of Potter-Black.

"Actually reading cookbooks?" he asked.

"Yeah. And its really cute too. She reads it almost as well as she speaks it. She hasn't messed up yet though. It's been really impressive at mealtimes. We've made sure to thank he every time." said Padma.

"Good. Looks like she's putting her little heart into it." he smiled as the little elf popped in. "Thank you so much for taking such good care of my fiancees for me while I was gone."

"It being no problem for Tipsy Mr. Potter-Black sir!" she said enthusiastically before popping away. Harry chuckled.

"Well, lets look up the property now. You got coordinates or what?" he asked.

"Its just an old map. There are some close coordinates included though." said Parvati.

They went to his workstation and pulled up one of his scans of England and zoomed in on that area. Then scanned for organized magics. An area of almost two square kilometers lit up. They knew they had found it. He immediately called up the controls for the Orion and had it beam up two construction drones both of which he sent new instructions then told it to pick up enough materials to build a kilometer square building in place. He took the travel time from Centari to Earth to put together a manor house that stretched the kilometer and housed a hundred easily with computers for everyone set up in the downstairs. It would obviously be two stories high and lit with 'magic lights'.

The girls didn't ask him what he was up to because they could see the results on his screen and they knew what it looked like when he was in design mode. It didn't look like a bad house, overall comfortable looking. If they weren't mistaken, and they weren't, he was going to build a training facility. The old Potter wards were still in place and he could tell that whoever had burned the place down had simply bypassed the wards instead of pulling them down.

"There," he said when he was done, "A training facility. Now the learning programs and simulations..." he trailed off already programming.

They smiled at him as he got right back to work. They knew he missed his workstation when he was gone and they were currently building another one with the downtime between orders for themselves. It was slow going because that downtime was lacking but now it was down to making backup crystals and then programming them then transferring them to the new machine. It would help if there was another constructor as well so that was on the to-do list as well.

They brushed their fingers across his shoulders before moving on to their station to finish the new computer. The crystals were ready so they inserted them and began to copy the files and operating system, basically making a second backup that they would soon remove when it was done. When done, they made the tranfer and stared it up. Now with two workstations they went on to start on he parts to a constructor table. They didn't know how to assemble it yet but they could order up all the pieces.

That was not to say that Harry didn't notice what the girls were doing behind him, he did. He was just busy in the design of the training programs that were required for the recruits to his space program. He pulled down the information he'd hacked from the Goauld and the information on the Wriath from historical data and built a combat simulator program that would go well with the bridge simulator being built, even now on the Potter property.

Dinner came around before he was done and he'd stepped away for a rest before then anyway to help them assemble the new constructor and hook it to the new computer.

"I'm so proud of both of you. You built a quantum computer all on your own and programmed it and were doing good with the constructor until I helped. None of that was specifically in your repositories." he said. They blushed.

"We just paid attention to you. You basically taught us all of his when you did it before and we haven't been slacking on the learning programs. After dinner, we sit down with them and work until bedtime." said Padma. Parvati nodded he agreement.

"Oh...well good job anyway. This will help with our production effeciency as well. Soon enough we'll get orders from other countries for most of our products and not just the calculators. Oh and let the muggleborns know that they rooms will be provided for the training at the facility" he responded. Parvati was already writing the draft in her head.

Dinner was also French tonight, so lighter than English fare, and maybe not as hearty but filling anyway. After thanking the elf, in French for Padma, they set back to work for a while. The owls were all working tonight carrying correspondence to the recruits they had for sure who would spread the word to their friends.

Bedtime finally came around and the showed a more heated edge as they let him know just how much they had missed him