Author's Responses at the end:
Chapter Sixteen: Falling
Alarms blared all around Space Dock. Ships in orbit altered their courses. Tom could see out the bottom of his window what the alarm was for. A billowing explosion ripped through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, pushing a cloud of atmospheric gas into the lowest reaches of the atmosphere.
"Captain Straal," Paris said into his com, "are you monitoring that explosion?"
"What is the altitude of the explosion?"
"Over twelve thousand meters."
"How far over?"
"It exceeds the Earth air space ceiling of 12,100 meters," Paris said. "Just barely. The explosion itself has reached into low orbit."
"Then it's our jurisdiction," Straal said in her clipped, Andorian manner.
"Yes, ma'am."
* * *
"Son of a…!" The new jitney pilot pulled hard on the controls and sent the reporter inside tumbling toward the back. He could see through the windshields as the other shuttles that had been following the strange kid veered away as well.
Before the tumbling journalist shuttle came a ball of fire and plasma searing out faster than sound. Somehow, someway, the kid on the broomstick had simply exploded like a bomb. The shockwave of the explosion struck the jitney with lethal energy. Unlike the constable shuttles, the journalist jitney was not hardened against EM blasts. As soon as the outer edge of the shockwave hit, every control system on the jitney fried, all at once.
The pilot cried in pain as the exploding EPS conduits sent his whole chair ripping out of the floor paneling to fly back where the stunned report lay. The constable shuttles fared better, riding out the shockwave. One of the pilots saw the tumbling civilian jitney and sent an emergency message to Starfleet Control. The pilot and reporter were beamed quickly to safety while the jitney continued its uncontrolled descent. Only once the civilians were saved did the constables see the impossible.
The explosion had not obliterated the boy. He was falling boneless through the sky from twelve thousand meters.
Regardless of whatever else had happened, the constables responded with well-trained reflexes and an instinctual need to save lives. They formed up around the falling boy and tried doing emergency beam-outs with their systems. Even unconscious, somehow the boy was blocking that attempt. Next they tried using the shuttles themselves as a refining field to assist Starfleet Command, but even that did not work. It was as if the boy's body itself was resisting beam-out.
The boy was falling like a leaf, tumbling freely. He reached terminal velocity at just over 50 meters per second. His tumbling served to slow him some, but not much. From twelve thousand feet they had just under four minutes of free fall and that first minute was spent trying to beam the boy up.
Two Starfleet shuttles were dropping through the atmosphere to assist as well, but they would be just as ineffective.
It was Commander Paris, thinking of one of his wife's many hobbies, who thought of a parachute. "Captain Straal, we need a parachutist in the transporter room in one minute!"
It was a very good idea, but just the mechanics of getting the parachute on a qualified jumper precluded the possibility of it working. Paris watched in growing frustration as the tumbling body got closer and closer to the water. He watched as the constables and two Starfleet Shuttles had to break off because of the fast approaching water.
A chutist ran into the transporter room, but it was too late. Paris turned his head away just as Harry Potter struck the water after almost four minutes of freefall.
* * *
Harry was home. He opened his eyes and found himself in the common room of the Potter Tower at Hogwarts. It looked just like it did when he was young, just after he graduated and assumed the role of Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. He could see the five doors leading to each family's suite. The fire was roaring, while their runic-protected television had a Christmas program on.
He smiled even as he felt tears gathering in his eyes. "I'm home."
"You can't stay here."
He turned around and found Daphne Slytherin née Greengrass standing by the entrance. She looked beautiful in her dark slacks and white blouse. She wore her emerald ring and the Slytherin pendant he gave her. She wore her long hair pulled back from her ears but otherwise free.
"I've missed you so much," Harry said. He realized as he spoke that he was sobbing. "Even when I couldn't remember you, I think I missed you."
She nodded as she walked toward him, until she wrapped him in her arms. "Daphne," he whispered, "where are all the others?"
"Oh Harry," she whispered, "this isn't your home. This place is just an illusion. You could die, but then you really would fail. We all knew the end was coming—how could Hermione not have a plan? That plan was you, Harry. And while they all moved on, secure in your love, I chose to become a ghost. I haunted my brother until his last day, and then I remained, waiting for the day when you would come again." He saw a shadow of her wry humor. "Naturally you would come surrounded by five beautiful girls."
"I didn't…"
She shushed him with a finger. "You're doing what you were created to do, Harry," Daphne said. "You're doing what you must if magic is to survive. You are creating a new family. And they have my blessing, and if the others had joined me I know they would bless you as well. They are good women for you, Harry. Strong and smart, just what you need to make sure you don't do anything stupid. So much of our culture has died. There are no more Purebloods. Only Muggleborns. So you can start anew. Create new traditions."
"I don't know how," Harry confessed. "The magical world is completely gone."
"Not completely," Daphne said. "Remember, Harry. Hermione always had a plan. Look in the book."
"But it was burned!."
"Was it?"
Daphne stepped away. "I'm sorry, Love. My time has come. Everything I stayed on Earth to do I have done. I am tired. I am ready to move on."
"Please don't leave me," Harry whispered.
"I'm not, really," Daphne said with a sad smile. "My magic lives on through Susan Chamberlain, Harry. She will be your new Lady Slytherin. They all have wands, now. All they need is to know how to use them. Teach them, and any others you find. Protect them from the hammer's blow that awaits them."
"Daphne," Harry wept. "I love you."
"I know, Potter," she said with that Slytherin smirk. "And I love you. I have loved you for four centuries, and I will love you for another ten thousand. When at last you truly do come home, we will all be waiting for you."
* * *
"Well, this is interesting," Prime Minister Jean-Luc Picard said as he walked into the VIP waiting room of the Geneva General Medical Center flanked by his security and secretary.
He found his wife keeping company with five attractive young women, one older woman who looked to be the red-head's mother, and Beverly's own security guards.
"It's been an interesting couple of days," Beverly said dryly.
"Starfleet has been asking to get access to him," Jean-Luc said as he sat down. He turned to his aid and guards. "Thank you, may I have a few moments?"
The secretary looked slightly affronted but left with a nod. The security guards, including Beverly's two, broke into two parties to cover each entrance.
"So, introductions? Of course, I know you, Doctor Wildman."
"It's an honor to see you again, Jean-Luc," Naomi said. "May I introduce Susan Chamberlain, Katherine Dunningham, Mary Cavanaugh, Diana Boxing and her mother Carey?"
"A pleasure to meet you all," Jean-Luc said with a pleasant smile. "I'm still a little unclear on the individual circumstances, but I understand that all that is less important than the fact that Mr. Potter somehow survived a 12,000 meter freefall? What is his status?"
Beverly shook her head. "Broken bones and a concussion. If not for the events of the past two days, I would say it was impossible."
"His magic protected him," Diana said with absolute certainty.
Jean-Luc looked at her for a long time. "His magic?"
"Mr. Potter is a wizard," Beverly said. "I have a tricorder recording of some type of holographic message left by Colonel Phillip Green to Harry Potter, in which Colonel Green acknowledges the existence of witches and wizards, claims to be related to them by birth, and then claims credit for their eradication."
"Fascinating," Jean-Luc whispered. "And you five are?"
Naomi looked over the other four girls. They ceded the role of speaker to the eldest of their members. "We are, for lack of any better word, his wives."
The Prime Minister must have choked on something. He started coughing until his wife patted his back. "I see," he said delicately, once he stopped coughing. "How did your Auntie Kathryn take this news?"
"Not well," Naomi admitted. "It's hard to describe, Jean Luc."
"In scientific terms," Beverly said, "the five of them are dripping with anaphasic energy. We initially had difficulty identifying the energy field they generate, but once I met him for the first time, he reminded me of Ronin. So we tried programming the tricorder to detect anaphasic energy. It's such a rare energy type that we don't normally scan for it."
"Of course," Jean-Luc said. "And you think Ronin might have been related to them?"
"He might have been what was classically known as a ghost," Beverly said. "He's haunted the Howard women for centuries, from our origins in Scotland. And Scotland is where Mr. Potter was found."
Just then the physician stepped into the room. "Mr. Prime Minister," the man said in surprise. "An honor, sir. I didn't know you were here, though with Dr. Picard's presence I suppose I should have expected you."
"She does tend to drag me into her affairs on occasion," Jean-Luc said. "How is our patient?"
"Inexplicably alive," the doctor said. "At the altitude he fell from, he should have been suffering from hypothermia and hypoxia. He is suffering from neither. Every bone in his body should have broken upon impact, including his neck and spinal cord, with other severe internal trauma. Instead, we have broken extremities, a few broken ribs and a pierced lung. His brain should have suffered intense trauma. We can find none, though he is unconscious. If not for that energy field he is producing, we would have him completely healed. As it is, it will be two weeks before he is completely well."
"Only two weeks?" Beverly asked.
"He is healing at a vastly accelerated rate," the doctor said. "It appears to be an effect produced again by that energy field of his. I've never seen the like."
"May we see him?" Beverly asked.
"I don't see why not," the doctor said. "We took the liberty of placing him in the VIP suite. There is space."
The large group made their way through the hall of the hospital until they came to one of the VIP suites. Picard found himself looking at a young man with tousled black hair. His face was smooth-shaven, his eyes sunken with exhaustion and injury. Old-fashioned casts immobilized both legs and arms.
Other than a pair of sensors on his forehead, there was nothing else to indicate his poor health.
Instantly the five young ladies rushed to the bed, almost gasping with the need to be by him. They put their hands on him with varying expressions of concentration. "Beverly," Jean-Luc asked quietly.
She reached into her purse and removed the tricorder. "Look at the readings. They're pouring their own energy into him, and if this reading is right, it's having an effect."
Beside her, the attending physician started in shock when he looked at the wall monitor. "Mon Dieu," he whispered. "They're healing him!"
"So it seems," Jean-Luc said.
The young man's eyes opened and blazed for a moment with green light. The light faded quickly back into a normal hue and he blinked. He looked slowly from one face to the other, reaching out both hands to grasp all of theirs. "I'm sorry," he said in a hoarse voice.
"You should be," the young red-head said. Diana, if Jean-Luc remembered correctly. "You left us, Harry. You said you would take care of me. But you almost left us!"
"I'm sorry," he said again. He reached up and caressed her cheek. "Daphne was right. I can feel them in you. I can feel Susan Bones' magic in you."
Hesitantly, Diana pulled the wand from her pocket. "The ghost told me to take this."
"She was right," Harry said. "The wand chooses the witch. It's only right that Susan's wand should pick you. You would have loved her so much." His voice cracked.
Loathe to interfere but compelled to nonetheless, Jean Luc stepped to the bed. "Mr. Potter, my name is Jean-Luc Picard. I am the Prime Minister of Earth and Beverly's husband."
"Mr. Prime Minister," Harry said warily.
"I am here because Starfleet Command has requested custody of you. Evidently your display crossed the jurisdictional boundary into orbit. However, I am rather reluctant to hand you over without a better understanding of your specific circumstance. Can you tell me what is happening?"
"Three hundred and fifty years ago," Harry said, "Colonel Phillip Green used World War III to wipe out a society of magical beings that had co-existed with you since the beginning of civilization on this world. I was his last victim."
"You were?"
"I…" Harry paused. Sensing his need, Naomi and the others again placed their hands on him. Jean-Luc noticed his flush with interest. "Did Beverly tell you what Green did?"
"She mentioned him shooting young women."
"That was a pensieve. A magical means of preserving actual memory. Those were his personal memories of shooting my wives. He sent those memories to me at our last stronghold. The explosion…it is accidental magic. When I saw the women I loved murdered, I lost control. When the haze cleared, I realized that I had destroyed Hogwarts and killed all its inhabitants myself. I completed personally what Green had started. After that I…I willed myself to die. And I did."
"And yet here you are," Picard said.
Harry told Picard about his first death and rebirth; of the unique circumstances that ensured he had to die for a dark wizard to perish, and how he went to that death willingly for those he loved. "The horcrux provides an anchor to my soul," he explained. "And Hermione knew it. So she and Ginny performed a ritual on Ginny's youngest granddaughter, Margaret. It hid Margaret's magic. She was limited to just a few compulsion charms and that was it. But the effect of redirecting her magic was extremely long life. And so Margaret waited until she could find enough muggleborn witches to perform that rebirth ceremony again."
"That was us," Susan said. "I always thought she was a grandmother. We called her Grams."
"Margaret essentially tricked them into performing the ceremony," Harry explained. "And in so doing, she set the stage for our bonding. If not for the ceremony, they might have never bonded to me."
The young ladies started to protest, but Harry stopped them all. "Trust me on this," he said. "I've been through it before. The first time I was young and ignorant, but in the fifty years I spent with my wives, we studied our bonds and gained a better understanding of what they were."
"And what are they, Harry?" Beverly asked.
Harry held up a hand and green strands of energy flowed between his fingers on the edge of the cast. "I am a magical being. What you call anaphasic energy is integral to my very being. I was part of a society of millions who shared this magic. In my world, there was such a thing as love at first sight. Though rare, it did sometimes happen when a wizard's magic bonded to a witch's. Even if they did not know each other, if their magic was compatible, they would have almost no choice but to fall in love. Usually our magic adopted to whom we loved, reinforcing the existing bond. But sometimes with the truly powerful, magic could form bonds on its own. Those who resisted their magic were rarely happy. Divorce was almost unheard of, as were unions with non-magicals, and when it did happen the results were often tragic."
He slowly looked at the five women around him. "I was unique even among my kind, Mr. Prime Minister. I was an heir of both blood and magic to the four most important magical lines in Great Britain. They were known as the Founders. My magic compelled me to form four separate bonds with four separate witches to reinitiate the Founder's lines. I formed a fifth bond to continue my own family name. It was the only time it had ever happened that we know of, save for Merlin himself. My first wives were all familiar to me, and we all were already fond of each other. But our magic affected our emotions, and because of the bonds we were soon madly in love."
He took Diana's and Susan's hands. "When I woke up after being reborn, at that moment I was the strongest magical entity on this planet. I still am, for that matter. These four had latent magical cores that had never been awakened because they had never been around magic. When exposed to me, their cores woke up, and bonds started forming immediately."
"Are you affected by these bonds as they are?" Jean-Luc asked.
"Oh yes," Harry breathed. "I love them all. And they all love me. They have no choice, really. Their magic latched onto me as the only magical core available. The magic compels them to mate with me, to continue the lines. If it had been any other wizard, the result would have been similar. It is our magic that makes us love each other."
"It sounds almost as if you have no free will in the matter," Jean-Luc noted.
"It's not like that," Naomi said quickly. "It's…the bond fills me with such happiness, Jean Luc, that I don't want to be away from him. If there is a compulsion, it is a compulsion with only positive reinforcement. I've never, at any point, felt such joy as the first time we slept together. Physical, spiritual, magical. It was an absolute experience that I would never give up. The bond may have compelled my love, but now that I have it I don't want to ever give it up."
"And we haven't even had a chance to sleep with him yet," Susan pointed out.
Jean Luc turned to Carey Boxing. "And your take on this, madam?"
"He makes my daughter happy," Carey said with a timid smile. "I believe he is a good man."
"I have a question, though," Mary asked. "Why didn't you have any memories?"
"Because there were only four to perform the ceremony," Harry explained. "You provided enough power, combined with the spiritual energy of all the ghosts, to recreate this body. Margaret knew that in time my soul would return fully and my memories would reintegrate over time. Only an act of strong magic on my part could accelerate the process." He looked down. "When I saw them die again…"
Jean Luc watched as the young man cried, and then ground his teeth. "I still didn't have all my memories, but the emotional impact was there. Of seeing them die like that, and knowing that I loved them all. I could feel the bomb inside of me, and I had to get out. I was afraid if I stayed I would hurt somebody, and I couldn't stand that thought. There was a racing broom on the wall, so I took it and flew out. I would have just flown until the anger was gone, I think, except someone attacked me."
"And you dropped a whale on them," Beverly said.
Harry shrugged. "I liked Douglas Adams as a kid," he explained.
Jean Luc was apparently the only one who understood what he was talking about. "And then?"
"The anger came back, and I knew that I was losing control. So I flew up. I wasn't thinking about anything other than getting away from people. That's when all the memories came back. It started with just a memory of my first wife drinking coffee. It just always struck me. Then I remembered burying my oldest daughter. She wasn't even two yet. Khan had her killed."
"Khan?" Beverly said. "I don't understand. What does Khan have to do with anything?"
"Everything," Harry said. "You see, I'm the reason his Empire fell. I'm the reason World War III began, and I'm the reason Phillip Green was able to convince all the nations of the world to commit genocide. It's all my fault."
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Author's Responses
First of all, thanks as always for all the reviews. As you can see, we have many more answers coming for what happened in the past.
Questions and Answers
Q: I think you should get an award for the best use of a sperm whale in fan fiction that I've yet read.
A: I gladly accept the Best Use of Sperm Whale Award. Thank you ;)
Q: Are Section 31 going to be the offshoot of some darker agency?
A: That will be directly addressed in the next chapter.
Q: Wizards are at most a sub-species of humans. Defined as freely interbreeding and creating fertile offspring with each other in their natural environment. Captivity doesn't count.
A: Freely admitted as a FUBAR on my part. Insufficient research. Thank you for the clarification.
Q: He refers to the broomrider as "that witch". So either assassin craft are going after more than just Harry (which of the girls may be crazy enough to jump on a broom?!), the speaker doesn't know the proper terminology, or it's religiously motivated ("suffer not a witch . . ." and who or what is "Malleus"?)
A: In the parlance of the speaker, "witch" is not gender specific. So there is a disconnect between Harry's world and the speaker's understanding of it. The details will come.
Q: I hope there is a sequel, and the second half of this chapter was amazing with "What I've Done" cranked to eleven.
A: If there is a sequel, it will not be a direct one. In fact, I've been trying to write one, but I can't tell you if it'll be finished or not.
Q: It's a bit puzzling that all those ghosts would sacrifice their essence in order to bring Harry back if he was the one responsible for the destruction of Hogwarts.
A: That is dependent on whether 1) they are vengeful spirits; and 2) they believe Harry did it on purpose. Fortunately, they aren't, and they don't. Instead, they recognize that Harry could single-handedly revive all of wizarding kind. So they sacrificed their existence for that hope.
Q: Does Kahn know about Julian and his enhancements and does he consider Julian a threat?
A: Khan has been dead for a while now.
Q: This is great but if I had 5 wives I was in loved and the were killed then killed my children in my greif their is no way I could go on with that lose and take 5 new wives and hope to be happy. If anything he should be trying to use his massive powers to turn back time to save his wives.
A: 1) Keep in mind that Harry woke with no memories. The bonds formed before he recalled his world. 2) There is no time travel in this fic. Time travel is a plot device that for the most part I don't like. It can be fun and useful, but I do not as a writer want to ever use it. Doesn't mean I won't because it's stupid to box myself in, but I'm going to resist it as mmuch as possible.
Well, thank you all again for reading and reviewing!