Chapter 3
Hello, Goodbye
The girls split up in hopes of finding someplace to relax. If anything, the meeting with Professor Sinistra had increased, not eased their anxiety. They were ensnared in a cruel conundrum. On the one hand, they wanted an answer to ease their troubled minds. On the other hand, they were scared of what they might find if they kept on seeking that answer…all of them, except for Luna, who was actually excited by the whole thing.
Hermione sat in a common room chair trying to divert her mind with a book. Fortunately for her, it was sufficiently boring enough that she nodded off and got some needed sleep.
Cho had returned to the Ravenclaw common room and managed a short nap in her bed. Padma and Pavarti eventually found a couch in the library where they could lean back. Being Saturday, it was exceptionally quiet in there.
Luna, on the other hand, was out by the greenhouses looking for gnomes and blibbering humdingers. Suddenly, a group of three men in long robes, one in red, another in blue and the third in yellow, approached her. All three of them were about six-foot tall and slender. They had straight, blond hair, soft, blue eyes and the pale skin of a person who did not spend much time in the sun. Her first thoughts were they might be Swedish. They might be brothers, even triplets.
She stepped back apprehensively as they walked up and stopped in front of her.
"Can I help you, sirs," she said, a bit of fear marking her voice, instead of her usual calm demeanor. She was alone and they obviously did not belong here at Hogwarts. Who were they?
"I don't know," said the stranger in the blue robe. "You called to us last night. I am Bimeer from the Alnitak Homelands. In the red is Arger. He is from the Mintakan Worlds. And this is Multhon in the yellow. He is from the Alnilam realm. Together, we represent a confederation of peoples who all originate from one of the Mintakan worlds. We are here to answer your call."
Luna was speechless for a moment, and then she said, "I—I am Luna. Luna Lovegood from here on Earth."
"We are pleased to make your acquaintance Luna Lovegood from Earth.
"Please call me Luna."
"Now, how may we be of service to you, Luna?"
"Ohhhhh my," gasped Luna, still finding this all outside of the boundaries of her admittedly eccentric sense of reality. "I don't know. I believe we owe all you an apology. I think we called you by accident."
"How so?" asked Bimeer.
"A group of my friends and I were talking about aliens and the stars last evening. We talked about how ancient Earth civilizations may have been visited by aliens. Some people believe that many ancient structures were built to communicate with aliens. We talked about the idea of how we could communicate with the stars. One boy made a kind of a joke about it, but it gave me an idea. I pointed my wand at the stars in Orion's Belt and said 'Accio Mintakans'. The star Mintaka lit up bright red."
"Yes, Luna. That was us signaling back that we heard your call. Then you called Alnitak and Alnilam. We all heard your calls. Our council sent the three of us to meet with you."
"You are not mad we called you here by mistake, sirs?"
"No, of course not. We are excited to speak with you," replied Bimeer.
"Should I gather the others?"
"Do you mean the others who know about your call to us?"
Yes, Mister Bimeer, sir."
"Yes. Please gather all of the people who know about this. We would like to talk to all of you."
"Okay," said Luna, uncharacteristically a bundle of excited, confused, concerned all rolled into one. "I will find them, right away. But we must find a place for you to rest and wait."
"We can wait here in your gardens. They are very beautiful."
"Okay, sirs. I will gather the others as quickly as possible."
Luna raced off, her long blond hair flapping behind her. She did not know what she was going to say to the others, but she needed to find them and bring them back to the garden. It was all very exciting.
The first place she went was the Ravenclaw dormitories. Cho had just gotten up from her nap. She ran to her, nearly out of breath.
"Cho," panted Luna. "Cho, we need to find Padma…and Hermione and Parvati. We need to go to the greenhouses right away."
"Calm down, Luna," said Cho. "What is the problem, Luna?"
"It's about last night and aliens," she said, starting to catch her breath. "We all have to go down to the greenhouses. I have to show you something."
"Okay," said Cho, still not getting the same sense of urgency. "Padma and Parvati like to hang out in the library. It is sort of their family common room. Let's go look there."
On the way, Cho tried to get more information about this urgent matter out of Luna. Luna said little more than, "I think this is more of a matter for you to see than talk about. We should wait until we get there."
They made their way to the library and started searching. They found the girls napping on the couch where they had sat down a while ago.
Padma! Parvati! Please get up. We have to go to the greenhouses. I have something to show you."
The girls slowly stirred. Luna kept urging them to move faster. They looked at her like she was more loony than usual.
Luna eventually made enough of a commotion trying to get them up so they could find Hermione that Madam Pince shooed them out of the library, inadvertently helping Luna's cause.
Fortune smiled on them as they started up toward the Gryffindor dormitories in hopes of finding Hermione. It was close to lunch time. Hermione was on her way down to get some lunch to fill in after her almost non-existent breakfast.
A moment later the five of them were headed out to the greenhouses. Hermione looked puzzled at the situation, having been more or less shanghaied with little explanation.
"Where are we going? What's going on?" asked Hermione.
"Just follow me," said Luna. "You will see in a minute."
As they made their way outside and into the direction of the greenhouses, the four girls following Luna had a collective look of this had better not be a wild unicorn chase. None of the felt top-notch after last night. They did not need to be dragged out there to see crumple-horned snorkack tracks or a nest made by a family of weetimorousbeastie.
They made their way past the first couple greenhouses to the open garden area. Bimeer, Arger and Multhon were looking at a hybrid of a rose bush and a tentacula plant as the brilliant red flowers on the end of each vine danced and waved. Other than their brightly colored robes, they did not arouse the immediate concerns of any of the girls.
Luna walked right up to them and said, "Excuse me, sirs. I am back with the others."
"Thank you, Luna," replied Bimeer. "Could you please introduce them to us?"
"Of course, sirs," she said as she turned to the girls. "This is Cho Chang.
Cho smiled and gave a slight nod, not knowing what she should say.
"A pleasure Cho Chang," said Bimeer.
"This is Hermione Granger," she continued as she held out her arm in the direction of Hermione.
"Pleased to meet you," responded Hermione with a cautious smile.
"And we are pleased to meet you, Hermione Granger."
"This is Padma Patil…and her sister Parvati Patil," concluded Luna.
"Pleasure," responded the girls in unison.
"A pleasure as well Padma Patil and Parvati Patil."
The girls waited for the introductions of the men as the three of them stood quietly for a moment. They all thought it was kind of weird the way Bimeer said their full names in greeting them. Who are these men?
The features on the faces of the men were smoothed down, not pronounced. They did not seem very expressive, but they did give off a calm, almost serene vibe that seemed soothing to the mood of the situation.
Finally, Bimeer, the apparent, by now, spokesman for the group said. "It is a true pleasure to meet all of you. I am Bimeer. I came here in response to your call from the Alnitak Homelands.
A stunned silence fell over the four girls. No one was saying it, but they were all thinking the same thing. "Did he just say what I think he said? Is he an alien who came here because of what happened last night?" They stood, frozen.
"I am Arger. I am also here in response to your call. I come from the Mintakan Worlds. It is an honor to meet all of you."
The girls were still mostly paralyzed. The best they could manage was some small nods and weak smiles.
Multhon was the last to speak. "I am Multhon," he said. "I am here from the Alnilam Realm. I am also honored to make your acquaintances."
An awkward silence followed. Luna finally broke it by saying, "We are all excited that you have come here to meet us. What would you like to talk about?"
There was some uncomfortable shuffling among the girls as they waited for the response to Luna's question. They were really meeting aliens. They were about to have a conversation with them. The crazy situation started by Ron had opened a door between our world and another group of world hundreds of light years away.
"Luna told us about last night and that she thinks you called us by accident. If it was an accident, then it is a happy one," said Bimeer. "You may not know it, but our culture has been aware of you for many thousands of your years. We have observed you. We even visited here on occasion, but the last visit was very long ago.
The girls were all listening intently, even more intently that when Dumbledore would speak to them from the lectern in the Great Hall. If these men were truly aliens, this could be a monumental moment for the worlds, both wizarding and muggle.
"In the early visits by our culture," said Arger, taking over the conversation, "we saw great promise in you. We carefully shared little bits of knowledge and technology meant to help urge along your development without altering or damaging it. Think about early calendars, writing, and the unusual math skills of some cultures. We only seeded these things. But they took them forward, often in grand manners."
"So you helped develop our current culture," said Hermione, finally finding her voice.
"Not quite so much, Hermione Granger," said Multhon, taking a turn at talking. We planted a seed like math and writing. It grew on its own and became what it is, today."
"But you did know the type of seed you planted," replied Hermione.
"Yes, yes we knew that," said Bimeer, stepping back up. "We planted things like a math seed, much like planting an apple seed. But how it grew and the type of apple it would produce was your work, your creation. A farmer can take only so much credit for the outcome of what he plants."
"But a farmer can control some things by fertilizing and watering," noted Pavarti.
"That is very true, Pavarti Patil," replied Arger. "However, in our case, once the seeds are planted, we let nature take its own course."
"This is fascinating, sirs," said Luna, starting to find the real Luna that had been hiding inside of the excitement and wonder of their meeting. "Will you be planting any new seeds during your visit?"
The other girls looked at Luna with a mix of expressions from 'Do you know what you are asking?' to 'Are you completely mental?' Luna stood quietly, awaiting an answer.
"No, Luna," said Bimeer. "We will not be planting any seeds this day. The Council ceased the practice of seed planting after what we call the Core Seeding. It was decided that the Great Engineer, as we call the Supreme Being, would not be pleased with that level of manipulation."
"The Great Engineer?" asked Cho.
"Yes, you use many names here," said Multhon. "You say God, Allah, יהוה, Yahweh, Jehovah, Tianzhu, Elohim, Lord and many more. Those names all refer to him, the master of all engineers who sparked the creation of the whole of the universe, the creator of the elements, the creator of the rules governing all that happens and how it happens. The builder of your Earth and its environment. The designer and overseer of the maintenance plan you call Evolution. The ultimate ruler of all races on all planets around all of the stars in the entire universe."
This left the girls aghast. The can of worms that had been opened with what they thought was Luna's eccentricity following Hermione's pique at Ron's humor was far bigger than they imagined. And the worms that were crawling out of it were of epic proportions.
"We want to gage and report back on the progress and changes made since our last visit," said Bimeer. "Our views from our home monitors say you have progressed a lot since our last visit, but are not yet ready for true first contact. No one has visited here since the Core Seeding. A visit is the only way we can garner high-quality data."
"What was this Core Seeding you are referring to?" asked Hermione. "If I may ask that question."
"That is an interesting situation," began Arger. "Do you remember our description of the other events we called seeding?"
"Yes, sir," answered Hermione as she and the others nodded in the affirmative.
"The Core Seeding event occurred several thousand of your years ago," continued Arger. "Our people had gathered representatives of cultures from all over Earth. They felt it was time to prod the evolutionary processes naturally happening inside the people of Earth. Each of these representatives was touched by one of them to implant a Core Seed in them. You refer to the results of this planting as your Magical Core. It is the source of your powers as witches and wizards. It all evolved from this seeding. That is what makes you different from, as you say, Muggles."
"That is fascinating," said Luna as the others once again found themselves standing in stunned silence. "So there were no magical people before this incident."
"They were very rare," said Multhon. "That is why our people chose to do what they did. They felt they were just speeding up a process already in motion."
"How does that affect Hermione, sir," asked Luna. "Neither of her parents are magical people. Where did she get her Magic Core?"
"That is one of the things we will be investigating for our reports," said Arger. "She is certainly an instance of the natural evolutionary process outside of the effects of the Core Seeding. Are there are others like her in the school? We want to gauge how fast the natural generation of Magic Cores by the people of this planet is now occurring verses during the time of our last visit."
"It is now time for us to take our leave of you," said Bimeer. "We very sorry, but we are not going to be able to allow you to keep your knowledge of all that has happened here today. Your planet, as was said before, is not yet ready for a first contact event.
"Think of your planet as this school," began Arger. "Each continent is a house. Each dormitory room is a country. Each person in a room represents some of the people of the country. First, they must learn to get along with each other. Next, they can work and learn to get along with other countries. Eventually, the people of all the continents can unite in a peaceful, productive culture."
"The Great Engineer provided you with a wondrous planet," said Multhon. "It can provide a wonderful life for all of you if you treat it with love and respect."
"Unfortunately," said Bimeer, "you are still a planet fraught with conflicts. You are also abusing your natural resources and the environment. You are not ready. That is why we must leave without making first contact."
"Are you going to erase our memories, sir," asked Luna.
"No," said Multhon. "We will fog your memories. All of the knowledge we have given to you this day will reveal itself back over time when it is appropriate. We will continue watching you. We will return when your planet is ready. Until then, keep looking up to the stars and dreaming."
Bimeer waved his hand as the three of them disappeared along with the conscious memories of the girls.