Abreo Shwartz looked down at his assistant, eyes burning with hatred. She sat in the chair, chains wrapped about her torso and arms, preventing movement, forcing her to look at her accusers. She had been charged with the crime of treason. Files containing everything known about Harry Getthen's mech had been copied without authorization. Following the chain of custody, it was found that she was the one to perform the unauthorised copying. They were currently unable to find the unauthorised copy, but they did find a three hundred thousand galleon transfer into her account, giving them the motive for copying the said files, and after some digging, they were able to find enough evidence to charge her with the crime of treason.
"Why? Why did you do it?" he asked, his voice begging her for a satisfactory answer. She had been working the front desk of the ICW since she graduated from Beauxbatons. She was the eyes and ears of the chateau, and no one got in or out without her say so, She was the first line of defence. No one was more vital to their jobs than she was, so to say he was surprised to find so much hidden malice in the young woman was a surprise, to say the least.
She glared at him, undisguised hatred burning in her eyes.
"Because you're too fucking soft," she spat. "We can control the muggles, why should we bow to them? A few Imperius Curses thrown around and we control the fucking world!" She said the word muggle like it was a curse word that burned her tongue.
"So you decided to help a terrorist by giving them access to the greatest piece of technology since wands?" he asked, his calm unruffled demeanour contrasting with her fiery temper. The statement about the terrorism was conjecture, but given her apparent hatred of muggles and muggle-borns, he thought it was an apt guess.
"If you win this war you're just going to bow to them, allow mudbloods to take control, and prevent the natural balance. The Dark Lord will subjugate the muggles and mudbloods and simply restore the natural balance of things, and I will be greatly rewarded for my service to my master."
Abreo was deeply saddened to find out that a fixture of the ICW headquarters was a secret sympathiser of the Dark Lord. He always assumed, wrongly obviously, that she had kept up with the muggle news as well as he did. He was a firm believer in the idea that muggles and wizards were on a crash course, probably within his lifetime and he was doing everything he could to prevent that. Seeing the massive leaps in capabilities the muggles were making in just the last few years alone was staggering. If the wizarding world was to survive, they needed to coexist, to assimilate, otherwise wizardkind was doomed to be crushed under the weight of innovation.
"I think we've heard enough," Miklos Szobonya said, the Finance Minister of the ICW said, in a monotone voice. Abreo could see the hurt hidden beneath the mask. "I vote we move straight to the sentencing of Helena Baas," he said,
"Seconded," Michelle Alva, Minister of Health said, eyes cold. Calm and collected, she stared down at the prisoner, daring her to speak.
"Do you have any last words before sentencing?" The Supreme Mugwump said, his voice gentle, sadness evident in his eyes.
"Fuck you," she spat, vitriol lacing her voice as spittle flew from her mouth.
"All in favour of convicting Miss Baas for treason, say aye," He said. He stood firm, like a tree that refused to bow to the storm. There was no hatred in his eyes, only cool certainty.
The 'ayes' carried across the room a wave of sound, unanimous. The young assistant who stood firm just moments before, mocking her accusers slunk low in her chair, the life that animated her left suddenly, like a marionette who just had their wires cut. Quiet laughing reverberated around the ad hoc courtroom, magically amplified by the enchantments around her.
"It doesn't matter what happens to me now," she said, as a manic smile crossed her face, a fire lit in her eyes. "I have completed the job my master has entrusted to me." She bit down hard as something sparked in her mouth. Within moments a mustard yellow slime started pouring out of her mouth and nose as her eyes flipped upwards in her head as she slumped over, muscles having lost all tone.
"We need a healer!" Abreo called out. He had seen more than his fair share of poison pills during his time serving in various elite military groups, but never one this violent, nor this visible; this particular pill was designed, not merely to keep information out of the enemy's hands, but to leave no doubt that the subject was dead.
A burly man came running in; his white healer's robe flapping behind him. Waving his wand in a complicated manner, he rushed over to where the prisoner lay slumped over, held up only by the various bindings holding her in the chair. Kneeling next to her limp body, his wand obscured by his body, he performed a few more diagnostic tests. Abreo already knew what the result was going to be, he assumed that the rest did as well, they were just waiting for the official confirmation.
After a few more tense moments the healer stood. "There's nothing more I can do for her, she's dead."
Abreo had known she was dead the moment she bit down on the suicide pill, but it was procedure to call in a healer. He watched as the man levitated her corpse out of the room. Moments later he heard the whoosh of the incinerator, making sure that there was not a single scrap of anything left of the person.
If there was something that wizards were infinitely better at than muggles it was healing. Wizards had solved mundane illnesses hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. That wasn't to say that wizards didn't have their own illnesses that were magical in nature that they had to contend with.
"What now?" The question came from a man named Akingbade, shaking Abreo from his musings. Leaning heavily against the table, seemingly sapped of energy, tiredly the Supreme Mugwump looked at him with a bone-deep tiredness that was only all too obvious. Abreo had to agree, the day had been something akin to a nightmare, it felt like they had been running ragged all day. Hungarian wizards had been getting angry with the Austrians because of the use of spells by the Austrian Diplomat in a no-magic zone. The situation almost came to blows over the perceived slight, with only the quick thinking of Albus Dumbledore preventing the whole thing from melting down, only for the trial to convene immediately afterwards now he was in charge of informing the most dangerous person in the wizarding world that they had lost some top secret intel, most likely to the megalomaniac he was trying to kill.
"I think, I think we'd better tell Mr Getthen what happened," Abreo said, leaning heavily on the table, shaking his head. "I have a bad feeling about this. If I had to guess, I would say that the secret of mech design is out, and we have no one to blame but ourselves."
"I'm afraid you are probably right, my old friend. Let us get some sleep, there is always tomorrow." Akingbade said.
Daphne understood all too well the implications of what was happening right now. She was picking a custom mech, only with Dumbledore's grudging approval. Harry had received an owl from Abreo Shwartz, the War Minister for the ICW announcing the selling of the mech plans by a rogue agent to a suspected associate of Voldemort. The letter detailed the loss of the plans and subsequent capture of the rogue agent, therefore validating Ron Weasley's theory of mechs accidentally falling into the enemy's hands.
Immediately after receiving the letter from the ICW Harry had gone into a conference with Dumbledore. Once they returned both looked haggard, but Harry looked like he had won a major victory, while the headmaster just looked old and worn out. Harry had announced that Dumbledore had allowed Daphne, Ron Weasley, Rose Potter and Hermione Granger to begin training for mech combat seriously.
The five of them were now situated in Olivander's "new and improved" workshop. Daphne had never been inside his old workshop, as wand crafting was a very intimate and personal process, but she didn't think that the old one had so many goblins running around, building various mech chassis.
They were in what looked to be a giant muggle aeroplane hangar. She couldn't help but look around in awe at so many larger-than-life metal humanoids all in various states of readiness.
"Who do you want to start with?" Ollivander was asking him, walking around the group, eying them like a lion trying to gauge which was the weak link, which gazelle would be his next meal. Almost instinctively they shrank back towards each other, tightening the circle. Harry was the only one standing away from the group, obviously enjoying the show.
Daphne swallowed nervously remembering her first visit to Ollivanders before her first year, this was infinitely worse. Glancing around she saw a similar look of apprehension on everyone else's face, only Harry looked unperturbed, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips, She glared at him, to which he merely returned a beatific smile.
"Yes, I think she'll do nicely," Ollivander said, pulling Rose out of the group. She looked back at the group eyes wide, a silent plea for help dead on her lips. Children grew up with stories about how odd and off-putting Ollivander was. No one, aside from Harry apparently, knew who Ollivander was. His old shop, she reminded herself, was always a bit off-putting, as if the magic wasn't exactly right, and the way he seemed to be able to stare into the depths of your soul did very little to alleviate the problem.
When she was younger she had wanted to discover the mystery of Ollivander. As far as she could tell by 'interviewing' as many people as she could at the time, Ollivander just showed up one day and quickly became the premier wand maker in England, if not Europe. He claimed to come from Germany, but given the ease and familiarity with which he made his way around the workshop, talking quietly with the girl as he walked her through choosing the various chassis and armaments of a mech, she thought the idea of him being German was laughable at best. An idea began niggling at the back of her mind. If Harry could traverse worlds, who's to say that others, such as Ollivander, couldn't do the same? She sidled up to Harry and pitched her voice low enough so as not to be overheard by the others
"Ollivander is from your world, isn't he?" she whispered. They watched in silence as Rose practically skipped around the room listening intently to the various things Ollivander was saying to her.
"This is my world," Harry said, a sly grin playing at the side of his mouth, "I am sworn to keep my friend's secrets."
"Aha! You're not denying it," she said, her voice vibrating with excitement. Internally she threw her hands up in celebration, having potentially solved, at least in part, the mystery of Ollivander. Ollivander, it stood to reason, he decided was probably a mech creator, given the familiarity he had with these machines, an almost instinctual understanding, not something that came from months working with them. She couldn't help but feel a bubble of excitement well up within her, a dream she thought impossible until he dangled the possibility of it happening. The ability to pilot her mech. She found herself looking at the various mechs, imagining herself nestled in between various machines, working in tandem with her mech, splitting the enemy forces, causing them to cower in front of her, bowing and scraping.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a peculiar-looking mech, more akin to a bird than a human; long metal wings flowed gracefully from the back, reminding her of a bird in flight. A weapon she didn't recognize flowed gracefully out of the place where her right arm would be located. Captivated by the artistry of the piece, she could almost see herself flying through the air, the undisputed queen of flight, firing beams of death and destruction down upon her enemies.
"Do you like it?" She jumped as she heard Olivander's voice whisper in her ear. Whipping around, she spotted Rose standing there silently admiring her mech; not too dissimilar from Harry's mech, except a little daintier, standing at seven and a half feet tall it was built like a muscular ballerina as compared to Harry's much stockier version. It wasn't hard to see the almost childlike wonder that adorned her face, a look of almost reverence as she caressed the outer hull of her mech. Daphne saw Harry lean down and whisper something quietly into his sister's ear before turning towards her and shooting her a genuine smile, a glint of mischief unmistakable.
"I- I do, yes," she felt her face grow warm, feeling a little sheepish for letting her mask drop, and being so transparent with her desire. Even here amongst allies, she was taught to keep her guard up. The lessons that her father taught often in, not so kind ways, to never let anyone see what you were truly thinking, and always keep the other person off guard, echoed around in her head.
"It's an extremely experimental model," Ollivander said. "Never been tested before." She stared at the matte black finish of the mech longingly. She was never a huge flyer, she never understood the near obsession especially boys had with Quidditch. Flying on a broom just didn't hold the same thrall over her as it did some of her friends. Even still something about this mech inflamed her imagination and called to her. She knew this was her mech.
"I don't care if it's never been tested before," she said, head held high, projecting an aura of strength "Someone has to try it, so why not me?"
"I like the way you think," Olivander said. "This is the A10 Firefly Class, A10 for being the tenth iteration of this particular mech. It has a magically enhanced railgun that spits out projectiles at eighty-two thousand feet per second, virtually guaranteeing penetration through any but the absolute toughest of armours and wards." The glint in his eye as he said it sent shivers down Daphne's spine.
She imagined spewing kinetic rods down at the Malfoys' manor, leaving nothing but a crater of ash and crumbled brick in its place. She couldn't help but grin at the image in her head, finally shutting up that little ponce Malfoy. She knew that he was betrothed to Pansy Parkinson, yet only an idiot couldn't see him lusting after her. There had been several close calls over the years.
Olivander was in the process of slotting a ball of plasma onto a hole in the chest of the beast. As soon as the core was inserted, the mech purred to life, cerulean lights shining through the eye holes. Its belly opened up, beckoning her inside. She found herself cocooned in a comfortable cockpit. She slid on the helmet, a circlet that had a projection of all the necessary information on the HUD, that went over her right eye, leaving the left unimpeded. Her arms were wrapped in a surprisingly comfortable material, she saw the red targeting reticule follow where she pointed her arms, with the ability to swap between various targets, done with only a thought.
"Are you ready to try flying?" Olivander's voice was tinny and hard to hear as it came through the circlet. Idly she wondered what kind of enchantments were being used.
As Olivander walked her through the procedure to begin flight, she was surprised at how responsive the mech was, it wasn't long before she was as comfortable in the air as she was on the ground in the mech. As she flew around the top of the hangar where they were located she saw Ron Weasley select his mech, an extremely bulky one that towered above the rest, a large halberd held in one hand and a Roman-style tower shield on the other side. She could tell by the slow plodding movements that the mech in question had almost no agility. Oddly enough she spotted Hermione Granger, her instantly recognizable bushy brown hair seemed to be getting into a ball. Did it roll? She wondered, what was the purpose of her mech? Deciding that it was a question best left to other times she bought her mech in for a landing.
As she exited, she couldn't help it as a smile split her face in two, smiling from ear to ear. Harry was there with a smile almost equally wide, splitting his face. "You were amazing! Olivander said he was working on something like that, but I didn't think that would work, but you made it work!" he said, unable to keep the amazement, and pride out of his voice. He wrapped an arm around her waist and placed a gentle kiss on her temple.
"Is that a control mech?" Harry asked, indicating the ball thing that Hermione Granger was controlling.
"What's a control mech, would that mech control me? Or us?" Daphne asked, gesturing to the few others around the space. "Is she the boss? The war controller?" A hint of nervousness laced the last few words.
"It's a mech that, hmm how to put this? A control mech is a bit of a misnomer actually, a better name for it might be a collector mech. A control mech allows you to send all the battle schematics and plans and the controller is there to help collate and distribute data to all mechs in range, it's not a fighting mech, it's a support mech used to collect and analyse huge amounts of data, allowing individual mech pilots to make better decisions with more data; her job is essentially a dedicated secretary slash research database" Harry said in a placating tone.
Why do you even need a separate mech for that? Why can't you just have all that done by the mechs themselves?" Daphne asked, "and why does she need to be here, in the mech, I mean at all?"
"All good questions, I'll grant you," Harry said, grinning, as he watched his little sister pirouette, before neatly slicing an apple in half with her unnaturally sharp legs before spearing each half with flechettes. The apple fell to the floor, the double flechettes still quivering.
"That was impressive for a first-timer. Now back to your previous questions regarding Granger and why a mech and also why she had to be here. So mechs are mechanical constructs enhanced by magic, right? So it turns out that there is a lot of maths involved in figuring out how to move these hunks of metal around. Now line of sight targeting is pretty easy to do computationally speaking but for extremely intensive stuff? You need a dedicated computer for that, and that's what the controller mech does, it controls the incoming and outgoing data, and Granger is in there to help facilitate that."
"I get that part, but why does it need to be a mech, on the battlefield? Why can't it be, for example, a box in an empty office somewhere?"
Harry started laughing. Daphne looked at him nonplussed, unsure of why he was laughing so hard- "What's so funny, I don't get it." she said.
"Remind me to - to take you to a computer store sometime," Harry said between bouts of laughter. After a few more minutes of him holding his stomach from laughing so hard - every time he would almost get himself under control, he would look at her and break out into laughter again - he started talking seriously.
"The reason why she needs to be in a mech to do the work is twofold, Number one is the speed of communication. The second reason dovetails nicely into the first. Data travels at limited speeds, currently, about 1 kilobit per second, the computations the controller mech is doing? It would take…" Harry paused as if to figure out the best way to describe it, "Let's just say it would take years to get the necessary information, but you see a controller mech has special enchantment that lets you spew data at the intended target much, much faster, but again line of sight is the issue, so that's why the controller mech has to be there-"
Harry was interrupted from his monologue by none other than Hermione Granger running at him and all but tackling him to the ground, hugging him tightly around the middle. Her face was splotchy and red as sweat poured down her face. Brushing a clump of hair off her face, she let him go.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she cried, "this is the most amazing thing I've ever done, between my data gathering and Ron's strategy model, it's- it's amazing! You-Know-Who doesn't stand a chance!" Her vocalisations got faster and faster until she was tripping over herself to get the words out. She was dancing up and down, almost literally bouncing out of her seat, excitement evident in every movement.
"Slow your roll there, Granger, Voldemort is still a threat, so let's not get ahead of ourselves," he said in a placating tone, trying not to be rude as Daphne saw him try to gently extricate himself from the girl's rib crushing hug. She refused to be moved and instead hugged him even tighter. He began to look more and more uncomfortable, as the hug went on for too long. She knew he tended to get uncomfortable with prolonged periods of contact.
Daphne could see his eyes contract as his breath came in shallower and shallower gasps. Deciding this was her moment to step in, she gently pried the girl's fingers apart and lifted her away from Harry whose breath was slowly returning to normal. She saw him shoot her a grateful look, and he took a deep breath.
"Come on, Granger," she said, pulling the other girl towards the other end of the room, back towards the ball-like mech. "Show me this thing, I'm actually extremely interested in it." And she was, Harry had a tendency to go on and on about the technical specifications, but the actual usefulness to her was at times limited. She nodded in all the right places, at least she thought so, when Hermione began yammering on about even more technical stuff than even Harry, replete with more jargon and acronyms than she thought possible.
Glancing behind her, she saw him give Rose a quick little side hug as he animatedly discussed something with his sister. She couldn't help but smile at the growth she had seen in him this last term. She excused herself from speaking with the other girl who only gave her half a wave goodbye, as she was already preoccupied with another project as she dived back into her mech and began twitching uncontrollably, no doubt trying to locate something in that walking library tank.
Making her mind up, she made her way back over to him, just as he was finishing up with Rose who looked radiant, as well as sweaty.
"Can I talk to you?" she asked, pulling him to a secluded corner.
"Sure, what's up?" Harry asked absently, wiping his grease-stained hands on an old rag. She felt her cheeks heat up as his eyes locked on hers, as she almost shied away from embarrassment threatening to overwhelm her.
"I'm done playing games, Harry. I'm sick of playing this 'let's not label what we've got bullshit,' we've been dancing around the facts for far too long, and for what? So we can be the cool hip kids, so we could pretend like we don't care?" she asked, beginning to flush.
Harry just stood there, not saying anything for a minute. Daphne began to squirm internally, the prolonged silence beginning to get awkward. Finally, after what felt like an eternity he spoke up, his voice implacable, giving nothing away.
"Are you sure that is what you want?" Harry asked, "Warts and all? You are aware that there is a not insignificant chance that I don't see the end of this war?" The way he said it, not a threat, not a hope, but merely a fact of life, like gravity, or magic.
She nodded emphatically, "Yes, I don't care, I want you, Harry Potter, I want you, damn the consequences." The next thing she knew she was kissing him, her legs wrapped around his waist as they began kissing, feverishly. Daphne could feel the eyes of the whole factory on them. She didn't care, she was deliriously happy, finally, Harry was all hers.
A/n Hey guys, sorry about the delay, last week was insanely busy for me involving a lot of travel, but I'm back now, so…