Disclaimer: Usually I write out a very specific disclaimer explaining exactly what it is I don't own but I find myself not really interested in doing so this time as it is very tedious. Suffice it to say I own nothing that was created by anyone else and I am not making any money off of this story or any of the other stories I have written.

AN: This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance.

Chapter 14: Fall Out

"Carriers arriving in less than one minute, scans show increased power output signaling activation of mobile suits," Harry announced as his voice wavered and cracked as his nervousness returned.

"Moles Zero-Two and Zero-Three are vacating the premises now."

"Guys… you need to check the news… there's some pompous army bloke on there saying you just killed a bunch of other stuffy army blokes alongside a group they're calling the peace seekers," Harry worriedly told them as his eyes were drawn to the left hand monitor that was displaying a newscast.

"The newscast is not important right now, a counter announcement can be aired once the delegates are safe," Quatre assured Harry before a loud blaring alarm cut through his transmission.

"Damn it, someone has gone and activated a self-destruct sequence," Wufei growled out.

"There are forty seven ICBMs housed at New Edwards Base and if they were to explode all at once, it'd instantly wipe out a radius of over three hundred kilometers!*" Quatre informed them with no little concern. "We've got less than ten minutes before detonation and there's no time for us to get clear of the area before they explode; not to mention all of the innocents that would be caught in the explosion. We've got to find a way to stop it!"

Harry's heart rose up in his throat and he stopped breathing as he digested Quatre's revelation even as he stared at the map of the base on the monitor in front of him. Numbness washed over him as he listened to the four pilots still on base frantically discussing their options (all the while fighting against the newly deployed reinforcements) until suddenly someone by the name of Major Po was giving them help. At the same time, news flashes from all around the world began speaking of a world wide take over by OZ troops but Harry didn't care as he continued to stare fixedly at the map of New Edwards Base on the screen.

When there was less than a minute left until the missiles detonated and it seemed as though Trowa and Duo wouldn't be able to shut down the self-destruct sequence in time, Harry abandoned his post and opened the cockpit door so he could stare down at the valley below where he knew the pilots were trapped. Dropping down onto his knees just outside of the open door, Harry closed his eyes and pressed his face to the ramp unable to watch the explosion he feared would come but at the same time unwilling to hide within the relative safety of the Gundam. He may not really trust the pilots and he wasn't certain just how much he liked any of them but they had been kind to him and he never really wished any them harm (bar Heero but that had mostly been his fear and anger talking).

A minute passed… and then two minutes… and Harry held his breath as he glanced up and peered down at the valley below to find that it appeared unchanged aside from the smoke that was rising from the still burning buildings on the ruined base and several off-site storage facilities. He worried at first that maybe his calculations of how long was left until the missiles were detonated were off until another five minutes passed by without the feared explosion. Feeling hopeful, Harry clambered up onto his feet and dashed back inside to check the long range scanner to confirm what he'd seen with his own eyes. A voice calling his name soon pulled his attention to the abandoned headset and he hurriedly picked it up with shaky hands.

"Harry? Harry, are you there!? Can you hear me!?"

"I'm here… and… you're still there," Harry choked out as he shoved the headset back over his head and clung to the pilot's seat as his knees gave out on him.

"Yes, we're all here and we're all just fine. Trowa and Duo disabled the master detonation switch with the help of a sympathetic officer within the Alliance forces," Quatre confirmed.

"OZ is trying to take over the world," Harry babbled nervously as he tried to hide the fear he'd felt just minutes earlier and his roller coasting emotions over the unexpected but greatly appreciated confirmation that everyone was alright. "They've got thousands of troops attacking various Alliance Bases all across the world. And the delegates have revealed that they are still alive and some old Duke bloke is saying it's a trick as they replay the decoy shuttle exploding. He… the Duke bloke has declared that all five of you guys are nothing but bloodthirsty terrorists."

"Don't worry about it, Harry; everything will get straightened out in the end and right now we have a mission to finish," Trowa instructed firmly. "The world will know the truth eventually and in the mean time we'll keep on fighting. Just sit tight for now and keep an eye on the long range scanners; let us know if there's anything else headed this way."

"Alright, I… I can do that."

Having something to do helped Harry to calm down and regain control of his emotions as he passed along information to the retreating pilots (which was why he'd been given the order in the first place). It took three hours for Duo and Trowa to slip away from the base and get clear of the various pursuers that discovered their presence while Quatre and Wufei dealt with the rest of the OZ mobile suits that had been sent to destroy them. Once the two pilots on foot were clear, the two in their Gundams retreated further to the north in order to keep the attention away from where the vulnerable pilots were making their way south towards Base Camp. Heero in the mean time was escorting the shuttle carrying the rescued delegates to Brazil where he'd already made arrangements for them to be met by a representative from the Darlians.

An hour after Trowa and Due had cleared the base, Heero's voice made a reappearance, "Base Camp, this is Decoy Zero-One; the pigeons have safely gone to roost. Heading to rendezvous coordinates as planned."

"Okay, Zero-One…" Harry replied absently as his mind was focusing on the patrolling mobile suits that were searching for the Gundams in and around New Edwards Base. When Harry spotted a few getting close to where he knew Trowa and Duo were passing through he quickly blurted out the information, "Three Leo suits are heading in your direction Zero-Two and Three."

"Understood."

It was well after nightfall by the time Trowa and Duo stumbled through the wards protecting camp. Harry tried to stay awake to monitor their progress but right about the time they entered the foothills, Harry slipped off to sleep as the long week of loneliness leading up to the mission and the emotional stress of the long day finally caught up with him. The two teenage pilots would find him sprawled out on the pilot's chair of Heavyarms with the headset hanging haphazardly off his head.

Three weeks later…

Harry expertly held a metal etching tool in his right hand as he sat hunched over a high powered microscope upon which sat about a dozen tiny screws. Laid out beside him, were the rest of the inner workings of a cell phone that he'd taken apart two days earlier; each piece carefully carved with a series of symbols. Watching curiously and with great interest from the sidelines were Heero and Duo. Harry did his best to ignore the two pilots as he worked, knowing he had to draw each character correctly or he'd have to start all over (yet again).

When they'd arrived back at the Winner Estate nearly three weeks ago (Trowa, Duo, and Harry getting back two days after the other three pilots), Harry had immediately asked for a radio, a phone, and a laptop. When asked why he wanted the devices, Harry grew nervous before hesitantly revealing that he might have figured out how to shield the Gundams from his magic but that he first wanted to test the wards on something that would be easy to fix or replace. That had instantly drawn the attention of all five pilots but none more so than Heero and Duo because the systems in their suits had been damaged when Harry had used his magic on them.

He'd destroyed three radios before he'd managed to successfully ward and charm one over the course of a single day (this world's electronics far more intricate than anything Harry had seen in his old world). After that he'd immediately began working on the cell phone, since it was slightly more complicated than the radio and he'd destroyed the first one in a spectacular explosion; apparently the rune scheme he'd put together had serious issues with the phone's memory card and inner circuitry.

That had been frustrating for Harry because he'd hoped that what had worked for one device would transfer over to another but that wasn't the case. The more advanced the technology the more complicated the rune scheme would need to be and Harry had ended up blowing up another four phones over the course of two days before he realized that the rune alphabet he had been using just wasn't flexible enough to handle the complexity of the technology involved.

Harry had been so frustrated by the failure that he'd disappeared into the desert on his broom for sixteen hours which had nearly sent the entire estate into a panic until he'd returned around sunset looking far less stressed and more than a little sunburnt. He'd been scolded for taking off on his own as those familiar with the area cited all of the dangers that lurked beneath the sand (if Heero had been present at the time he'd probably have used Harry's oath to prevent him from doing it a second time). When they'd mentioned the venomous snakes (and other deadly creatures) Harry had actually laughed and said he had no reason to fear the venom of any creature and most especially not the venom of a snake.

That had only raised more questions but Harry had simply smiled at them and ignored their inquiries; he had no desire to explain his ability to speak with snakes or the immunity he'd gained from a wide range poisons and most venoms after being exposed to basilisk venom and phoenix tears. An immunity he hadn't lost despite the fact that both substances no longer flowed through his blood since the magical properties of both potent substances had been passed onto his magical core giving him an even greater resistance (not that Harry was aware of the changes magic had made to his core; he was only aware of the end results). It was also part of the reason chemical based pain killers didn't work on Harry unless he'd exhausted his magical core to the point where he didn't have enough magic to fight against the drugs (something that hadn't been discovered until after Harry had regained consciousness after his bout of Space Flu when they'd tried giving him over the counter pain relievers).

A couple of days after that, Harry was taking yet another small break from all of the research he'd been doing to find a solution to the warding issue when he stumbled upon Wufei painting outside in the courtyard in the shade of the palm trees. Harry had taken one look at the Chinese characters neatly drawn down the right side of the watercolor painting of the afternoon courtyard, what he later learned were called hanzi, and just knew he'd found what he'd been looking for in the elegant and in some cases extremely complex symbols. The only problem was that it would take him years to learn the language well enough to use it to create the wards he needed; well, it would if he learned the language the normal way.

One of the memories that Sirius had left him was an impromptu lesson on an obscure (and in magical Britain, illegal) spell that allowed a person to literally absorb the entire contents of a book. The spell didn't just copy the information from the book; it literally pulled the information from the pages of the book, crammed it into the mind of the person performing the spell (permanently embedding the information into their memories), and left nothing but blank pages behind. It was a dangerous spell to use because a person could literally overload their brain or end up cursing themselves if the book they were absorbing had any kind of dark or defensive magic on it; hence why the spell had been outlawed in Britain.

It was the perfect spell for learning a new language though and if Harry had ended up some place where they didn't speak English (or been found by someone who didn't speak any English when he first arrived) it would have been imperative for him to be able to learn the basics of the language quickly in order to survive. That was why Sirius had left the memory to teach him how to perform the spell along with all of the warnings he'd need to keep in mind least he fry his own brain. The biggest warning he'd been given was to never absorb more than one book per day and to never absorb more than three hundred pages of information at a time; that meant that larger books would need to be broken down (physically) in order to be absorbed over several days. Harry hadn't used it during the time he lived alone because there hadn't been a pressing need for cramming information into his head.

Since books were a bit harder to come by in the technology-reliant society he'd ended up in, Harry had talked Wufei into printing off the entire Traditional Chinese dictionary (no easy feat), a Chinese to English dictionary, the entire history of the Chinese alphabet, the rules pertaining to reading and writing Chinese, and lessons on Chinese calligraphy. He'd also asked the pilot to print off everything he would need to know in order to understand the technology of this world; meaning a list of basic parts and components he could expect to find in any given device, the functions of the various parts and components, and how the parts and components interacted with each other. It wasn't exactly a comprehensive study of technology but it was enough to give Harry the basic understanding he would need in order to design the wards.

Harry had then slipped into the trunk that held his fortune and family heirlooms and brought out a few rather large gemstones and a couple of bars of gold in order to pay for the paper needed to print everything off and to replace what he'd used up from his portable larder and supply trunk over the past two years. The pilots had been gob smacked to see the small fortune that Harry had produced and Harry wisely refrained from mentioning that what he'd brought out didn't even add up to one percent of his entire fortune.

Quatre had handled the selling of the gems and gold in addition to purchasing the various perishables and supplies he'd requested. The blonde had used the transactions to teach Harry about the standard currency used worldwide (which was based upon a monetary system that was different than what he'd used in both the muggle and wizarding world back home) and a brief lesson in basic economics. What money was left over from the various purchases was stored in his trunk where it would be safe and easy to get to since opening a bank account could draw attention to him and make him easier to find (something he desperately wanted to avoid).

Harry had then started off absorbing the history of the Chinese alphabet, moved onto the rules, and then onto the calligraphy lessons before finally working his way through the two dictionaries. It had taken him a full week just to absorb everything and during that time he'd walked around with a perpetual migraine and snapped at anyone who spoke above a whisper. He'd spent another two days recovering from the ordeal and learning how to actually access and use the knowledge that he'd absorbed before he took another day to absorb the basic technology lessons he'd requested. Any gaps in his new knowledge would be filled in through normal avenues of study in order to reduce the risk of giving himself permanent brain damage.

The moment he absorbed everything he thought he would need, he'd sat down and began designing the new wards from scratch while using Sirius's original wards and the radio wards he'd created as references for the basic properties he would need to incorporate. It had taken him nearly another full week to do so but once he finished he was almost confident that he'd finally created a ward scheme that would work on all technology; regardless of the complexity. He'd been working on inscribing the wards onto the individual part of the cell phone ever since. It was slow work because he couldn't use magic to enlarge the smaller pieces nor could he use magic to inscribe the runes and the complexity of the symbols he was using for the wards required him to pay close attention to each one he carved so he didn't make any mistakes.

While Harry had been busy working on his warding project and occasionally practicing with the throwing knives that Trowa had given him, the pilots had been monitoring the political fall out from their staged rescue of the delegates. OZ hadn't stopped their invasions; though they were far less successful than they would have been had the Gundam pilots actually assassinated the various officials that had been attending the peace conference.

More than half of the delegates and their families had been safely escorted out into space once the pilots had briefed them on the situation and provided them with hard evidence. The rest of them had rallied the now scattered Alliance troops and began fighting back against OZ on Earth. Relena Darlian, who'd finally revealed to the world that she was alive in the wake of the failed assassinations, fled into space as well after revealing that it had been OZ, specifically Lady Une on orders from Treize Khushrenada, who had assassinated her father and attempted to assassinate her.

Trowa, Quatre, and Wufei spent a good deal of that time out on missions battling against OZ troops, helping the various nations that were currently besieged; leaving Duo and Heero to watch over and help Harry (since those two were the most mechanically inclined out of the five pilots and because Heero was the only one who could keep Harry from taking needless risks).

When Harry finished etching the ward onto the final screw, he sat up and stretched; causing his back and shoulders to pop. Sighing, he turned off the etching tool and set it off to the side to cool before he shook out his hand. Leaning forward, he inspected his handiwork before turning to the two pilots and asking, "I'm finished; can one of you please help me put it back together?"

Duo nodded and didn't hesitate to join Harry at his work bench, the long haired pilot happy to help since Harry's projects appealed to his inventive nature. Heero could have helped as well but he preferred to tinker with the mobile suits and was content to sit back and watch (that and he didn't want to inadvertently antagonize the pint sized wizard now that he'd stopped being so confrontational). It didn't take very long for the phone to be reassembled and the trio headed out to the desert so that Harry could test the new ward by casting a series of harmless but powerful at the phone while it was running.

Harry closed his eyes and sighed as he sagged back against the small wall he'd constructed to protect Heero and Duo from any potential explosions. He'd spent twenty minutes straight firing spell after spell at the phone in an attempt to thoroughly test the effectiveness of the new ward. As he recovered from the slightly exhausting barrage, he strained his ears to catch the sound of ringing as Duo dialed the number of the warded phone. When the clear bell-like chimes rang out sharply, Harry allowed a satisfied grin to flash across his face before he opened his eyes in time to watch Heero vault over the wall and trot over to collect the phone.

He watched as the pilot picked up the phone and spent a good five minutes testing the various functions before he used it to call Duo's phone. Pushing away from the wall, Harry turned to head back to the workshop they'd set aside for him to use (fully intent on tearing apart the old laptop they'd given him now that he knew his redesigned ward worked) when he felt himself being lifted bodily off the ground by the waist. Growling, Harry glared up over his shoulder at Duo who simply grinned back at him as he carried him like a sack of grain beneath his left arm.

Huffing, Harry crossed his arms and said nothing; having learned the hard way that Duo was just as stubborn as Heero when it came to refusing to put him down (part of the long haired teen's ongoing efforts to break Harry out of his tendency to lash out violently whenever someone touched him). Of course, he could have simply hexed the obnoxious pilot but at the moment Harry was more than a little exhausted from the time spent doing his damnedest to overload the circuitry on the warded phone after the long hours he'd put in carving the wards on each and every piece of said phone.

"Good job, kiddo, I think da next step is ta see if others can carve da wards ya designed onta da various parts or if ya have ta do all of da actual carvin'," Duo declared as he hauled Harry across the courtyard. Harry let out an irritated growl at being called kiddo yet again and wished he'd had energy enough to string the long haired pilot up by his ankles. "The Wuff-man should be back later this afternoon and he's already agreed ta run another test with one of da extra phones we picked up after ya toasted da first three. In da mean time, it's almost lunch time and even I can tell ya tuckered yourself out. After lunch and a nap ya can go back ta tinkerin' while Heero and I place bets on how many laptops you're gonna destroy before it's time ta test da ward on one of da Taurus suits ya managed ta procure for us ta study."

Any complaint Harry would have made over the need to 'nap' was quickly buried beneath the wave of nausea Harry felt as he was reminded of the handful of suits he'd disabled and shrunk the night they'd raided his beach cave. One of the first things he'd been asked to do when they returned to the estate was to unshrink the five suits they'd 'captured' that night (which included the Leo that had attacked Heero upon entering Earth's atmosphere).

Harry had been watching the Maganacs swarm the newly restored suits when they opened the cockpits of the ones Harry had collected during the battle to discover that the pilots had not survived the shrinking of the suits. It didn't just kill the men or women inside of them and Harry would forever be haunted by the bloody mess he had glimpsed when the Taurus suit he'd been standing below had been opened. Shrinking spells did not affect living beings so when the suits shrank around the pilots, the people inside had been crushed in an instant as there'd been no time for them to escape.

"Try not to think about it, Harry," Heero instructed as he walked up and slapped Duo on the back of the head for bringing up the suits. "We both know you didn't do it on purpose and I had no idea what would happen to the pilots or I wouldn't have asked you to try and capture any of the suits that way."

Harry looked up at Heero for a brief moment before he dropped his head back down, his entire body going limp as he tried to do as told. It was hard for Harry not to dwell on the fact that he'd killed that night and his nights were still often filled with nightmares over that fact; except for the times he managed to slip away to sleep in one of the Gundams. So far he'd only been caught sleeping inside of the suits (usually Heavyarms when Trowa was at the estate) a small handful of times. Each time he was caught, he'd claim that he'd fallen asleep familiarizing himself with the various systems. He suspected that they didn't quite believe him but he wasn't about to admit that he felt safe inside of the Gundams because he didn't think he could explain what it was that he felt from the suits.

Harry ended up falling asleep halfway through lunch and sleeping fitfully through the entire afternoon. When he woke up shortly after sunset, Harry found himself back in his room. He sat up in his bed and stared blankly at the foot of the bed for a few minutes as he thought back to his success warding of the phone. A minute later, he slipped out of bed and headed for his workshop without bothering to put his shoes on (having gone almost two full years barefoot on the beach in and around his cave made it hard for him to tolerate the constricted feeling of shoes on his feet).

He paused on his way across the courtyard, his eyes automatically searching the sky for the Dog Star as his thoughts briefly turned to his godfather as they often had over the months since Sirius sent him away. After a few minutes, Harry shoved his inner turmoil aside as he tore his eyes away from the sky and ran the rest of the way to the workshop. Inside the small room, Harry found Wufei working on adding the ward he'd designed to one of the extra phones. He hesitated in the doorway a moment before he entered the room and scooped up one of the waiting laptops.

Grabbing a screwdriver, he proceeded to open the case only to groan the moment he saw how much more complex the laptop was when compared to the cell phone. He knew, after just taking that one look; that his ward scheme was not going to be practical in warding the laptop against magic. Cursing, Harry tossed the screwdriver on the bench and glared at the various cards and chips attached to the system board as if the laptop had purposefully been looking to hinder Harry's efforts.

"Something wrong?"

"Yeah, I'm beginning to understand why magic and technology don't mix very well," Harry complained after a brief moment's hesitation. "Simple things like radios and old motorbikes aside, technology is just too damn complicated and delicate when compared to the simplicity and power of magic. If there are this many stupid little parts inside of something like a laptop, then how much more complex is the inside of one of those damn robots going to be!?"

"Do you have to carve the wards onto each individual piece?"

"According to Sirius's notes and everything else I've read; yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know, the books I've read didn't actually explain the why, only the how. Sirius said Remus explained it to him when they were enchanting the motorcycle but he never wrote the explanation down in his notes and it's not like I can just phone Remus up and ask him because he's not here," Harry replied as he crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair while he gave the question some serious consideration. "I even tried reviewing the memory of that discussion but because Sirius had been bored and confused at the time, he didn't pay close enough attention to the lecture and therefore his memory wasn't clear enough to use. Although, now that I think about it; it might have been due to the simplicity of the runes Remus used to create the original ward."

"I wonder if it is possible to simplify the ward while at the same time increasing the range of coverage in order to reduce the amount of carvings needed to cover something like a system board or a hard drive; much like the wards one would use to protect a house. The only problem is that property wards require a heart stone to anchor the wards to the earth to prevent them from shifting over time and that wouldn't be possible in a mobile suit because the suits aren't always in contact with the earth."

Mind completely occupied with his new idea; Harry completely forgot Wufei was present as he snagged a pen and paper so he could began designing yet another new ward scheme. Two hours later, he dropped his pen, and collected another cell phone that he promptly removed the case from. Next, he picked up an etching tool and plugged it in so it could warm up and critically studied his new ward while absently chewing on his thumb. When his tooth cut through the skin and he tasted blood, Harry froze as he recalled something he'd read while he'd been studying wards back in his cave some fourteen or fifteen months before he'd found Heero on the beach.

There are three basic kinds of wards; spelled, runic, and blood. Spelled wards are
the simplest types of wards and are far more flexible since the spells can be cast
over a wider range with little effort. They are also the weakest wards because they
have no set structure and are easily overpowered if cast by a weak wizard.

Runic wards, on the other hand, are no where near as easy to set up as they require
a level of precision that is unnecessary in spelled wards. These types of wards are
designed for a single, specific purpose and as such they tend to be far more rigid and
less forgiving of even the smallest of mistakes. Runic wards also require careful
calculation to design, since you have to account for everything inside of the wards as
well as what you are protecting against.

Finally, blood wards are actually an advanced form of runic wards that are given a
measure of flexibility through the magic in the blood when combined with the power
inherent in the runes. It is believed that the living magic in a wizard's blood imparts
a degree of sentience to the wards allowing them to make minor adjustments in order
to recognize and counter minor fluctuations. The biggest drawback to using blood
wards is the level of sacrifice (whether willing or unwilling) that is required in order
to fulfill the requirements to create and power the ward.

"It can't be that simple," Harry murmured as he pulled his thumb out of his mouth and stared at the blood welling up from the cut he'd made. "Only one way to find out I suppose."

Grabbing an empty paper cup from the water cooler that was kept in the lab, Harry began squeezing out a bit more blood from his thumb until he had filled the cup up about a quarter of the way. He then stuck his thumb back in his mouth to stop the bleeding as he grabbed a second phone and removed its case before he picked up the etching tool and began carving the new ward scheme onto each corner on the inside of all four sections of the two phone cases. Once he finished with that, he set the tool aside and used the bottom of his pen to carefully paint the runes of one case with the blood he'd collected.

Once he was finished, he folded the top half of the cup down (so the blood inside wouldn't be contaminated) and replaced both covers on the two phones. Unaware that Wufei had been keeping an eye on him while he was working, Harry dropped down off the stool and gathered up both phones to head out to his testing range with Wufei following along behind. After turning on the two phones, he set them both down on the same patch of desert that had held the phone he'd tested earlier that morning (leaving several yards in between them) and backed away from them as he pulled out his wand.

He hesitated for just a moment as doubts filled him before he shook his head and fired two rather high powered stunners at the pair of phones. One of the phones exploded rather spectacularly the moment the stunning spell hit it and Harry winced as a piece of the plastic case sliced through the side of his arm before he ducked out of the way. He soon forgot all about the new cut though as he noted the second phone was still in one piece. Worried that it might still explode, he sent out a third stunner and hit it a second time and ducked down before it landed only to grin when nothing happened.

Trotting forward, Harry picked up the phone and the first thing he noticed was that the display was still functioning despite being hit with two spells. A quick peek inside of the case confirmed that it was the blood warded phone that had survived the experiment and Harry instinctively knew that the same ward would work for the laptop. Darting back inside to the workshop, eager to confirm his findings, Harry never noticed Wufei calling both Heero and Duo on his personal cell phone as the young Asian watched Harry disappearing back inside the squat building; his dark eyes filled with concern.

It took Harry a little longer to apply the blood runes to the laptop as he'd needed to pull a bit more out from inside of the machine to reach the inner case. He'd also decided to ward the system board, hard drive, memory cards, and processor separately since they were so complex. Once that was done he quickly painted them with the rest of the blood he'd collected earlier before he struggled to put the laptop back together in the proper order.

"Here, this needs ta go back in first," Duo quietly instructed as he handed Harry one of the components he'd forgotten as he walked up behind the shorter teen and glanced over his shoulder.

"Thanks," Harry absently replied as he accepted the piece, set aside the one he'd been trying to replace, and put the new piece into place before screwing it in.

Once he was finished securing that piece, he quickly put the rest of it back together with Duo's guidance before turning on the machine. The minute it began loading up, Harry pulled it off the bench and darted back outside so he could test it right away. He never noticed the worried looks that Duo, Heero, and Wufei were giving him as he settled the laptop into place and prepared to cast a few high powered stunners at the machine.

Eight stunning spells later and the laptop was still clearly working as the screen saver played across the screen and Harry gave a shout of pure joy as he spontaneously punched the air several times before running up to the laptop to check it for structural damage; it was completely unharmed. On a whim, Harry cast several protective charms on the outer case of the laptop (including an unbreakable charm) before throwing it up in the air and hitting it with a high powered blasting curse. As it hit the ground he felt himself lifted off the ground by a slightly irate Heero while Duo walked up and toed the apparently unharmed laptop before picking it up.

"What in the world were you thinking?" Heero demanded tightly as he gently shook Harry.

"I solved the warding problem," Harry replied slowly. "I even fixed the issue of who carves the wards; meaning that I don't have to do all of the carving on my own. If one of you can strip every single piece of the outer armor from one of the Alliance suits that have been repaired I can have it ready for testing by this time tomorrow night and if it works, which I'm pretty certain it will, I can start warding the Gundams by the day after. That is what you wanted, isn't it? To protect the Gundams from my magic?"

"Not at the expense of your life," Heero countered as he frowned at Harry.

"I wasn't at any risk with the laptop because I already knew it would work," Harry pointed out as he folded his arms across his chest and half glared at Heero.

"How could you have known that? Chang told us you'd blown up another phone tonight when Maxwell and I both saw that your ward scheme had worked already."

"I knew because the other phone would have blown up as well if I'd been wrong and I used a new ward scheme that is ten times more effective than the one I used on the earlier phone. I won't even need to make any changes to the ward before I apply it to the suits because I took into account the complexity of the mobile suits when I was adjusting the ward to work on the laptop. Now, can you please let me down? I have a long night ahead of me if I'm to prepare to ward a suit tomorrow."

"What is it that needs to be done and what can we do to help?"

"If someone could strip just the outer armor from one of the suits I could show them how and where to place the runes on each piece and then I'd just have to prime them tomorrow. The only other thing that needs to be done I have to do by myself."

"Chang, Maxwell; are the two of you up to stripping the armor from a Taurus and etching some runes tonight?" Heero asked without taking his eyes off of Harry.

"Sure, sounds like fun," Duo replied as he joined Heero.

"I would not mind helping," Wufei agreed.

Heero nodded and set Harry on the ground before ordering, "Go with them and show them what needs to be done and then I will go with you to do whatever else it is you need to do."

Harry glared up at Heero for a few seconds before he darted off to grab the new ward scheme and the etching tools. He just knew that Heero was going to give him fits about what he would need to do to prime the runes so that they worked properly. Not that Harry was all that thrilled with needing to draw enough blood to paint the runes on a single suit, let alone enough for all five of the Gundams, but it was either that or spend another three weeks working out a new ward scheme for the suits since the alternate ward he'd been trying to design wouldn't work without the blood.

He was just picking up the two etching tools when the three pilots stepped into the workshop and Harry glanced up at them before grabbing the paper with his new scheme on it. Following the three pilots towards the hidden hangers, Harry felt his stomach churn over the memory of the fate of those that been piloting the suits when he'd captured them before he buried the memory in the back of his mind. Trotting up beside Wufei, Harry passed him the paper with the new scheme on it so he could study it.

When they reached the area where the OZ suits were being kept, Harry for once ignored the adults working with the various suits as Duo stopped to speak with one of them about dropping one of the suits onto the ground and lending a hand taking it apart. Hearing them talk, Harry realized he needed to make certain they didn't take too much off the suits and that they placed them around the suit in a certain order so that the wards could be added in a specific sequence.

"It's only the outer armor or casing, whatever you call it, that needs to come off and it needs to be placed upside down on the ground beside the suit where it goes so that I can tell where it is supposed to go to make certain each rune is placed properly. It's important because if the wards aren't placed right then it will go boom; just like the phones and radios. And make certain you pull the casing from the head, feet, and hands too. Don't bother doing anything in the cockpit because it will be better if I carve those runes myself since that is where the protections need to be the strongest to protect the computers and stuff."

Harry stayed to watch them start pulling off the cover, occasionally directing them on placing the pieces on the floor. He also showed Wufei and Duo the order in which to carve the runes and exactly where each rune needed to be placed in relationship to each other based upon where each piece of the metal plating sat on the mobile suit. If the adults helping thought it strange that the two pilots were allowing Harry to supervise and instruct them, they said nothing as they calmly and efficiently stripped the suit.

As they were doing that, Harry was also making several mental calculations in order to figure out just how much blood he was going to need in order to paint the runes on each section. Just before he left, he made certain they knew not to put anything back on the suit until Harry could prime the runes. He then headed back towards the mansion and his bedroom where he had plenty of large crystal bottles and blood replenishing potions; both of which he would need. He hunched his shoulders when Heero fell in step beside him but didn't say anything hoping the teen would forget about him.

Harry's luck was never that good though and they'd barely stepped inside Harry's room when Heero spoke up, "What exactly is it that you need to prime the wards, Harry?"

"It might be better if you don't know," Harry murmured softly as he walked up to his supply trunk.

"Answer the question, please."

"Blood. Specifically, my blood," Harry replied as he paused with one hand on his trunk. "And before you pitch a fit about putting myself at risk; I'm not. I have potions that will help me replace what blood I draw quickly and safely."

"Blood… you're going to draw enough blood to coat each of the runes they are going to carve on that suit? Have you seen how fucking big that suit actually is!? Do you have any idea exactly how much blood would be required just to do a fraction of what you are suggesting!? Are you suicidal!?"

"Told you it would be better if you didn't know," Harry replied as he lifted the lid and prepared to head down into his trunk. He'd just lifted his foot to climb down inside when he felt himself being lifted off the ground and he nearly growled as Heero carried him over to the bed and tossed him down onto the mattress.

"No… just no… find another way."

"There is no other way… the suits, hell; even the damn laptop was too damn complex for a standard runic ward to work. It isn't feasible and the damn suits are so big that it would take years if I had to carve all of the damn runes myself and that's even if I managed to build the proper ward scheme because the one I used on the first phone won't work. By rights the one I put on the phone this morning shouldn't have worked because it was far too rigid."

"Harry…"

"Don't you dare use my oath, Heero," Harry hissed angrily as he rose up on his knees and glared at the taller teen. "I don't need you to play nursemaid and hold my hand over this. Either you accept what I need to do to ward the suits or you forget about warding them entirely."

"Harry, you don't have enough blood in your body to even do one suit let alone all five of the Gundams as you planned," Heero countered tightly as he glared back at Harry.

"I'm not going to be painting the entire suit, Heero," Harry dryly pointed out. "All I need is enough to cover each rune in order to power them and give the ward enough sentience to function properly. And I told you, I have potions to take so that I don't die of blood loss. Unless you know where I can find another couple of wizards willing to donate a gallon or so of blood each, you're going to have to let me do what I need to do in order to fulfill my part of the deal. Because if you go back on our deal you can guarantee that I will make your life miserable because there is no way in hell I'm going to allow you to keep me locked up indefinitely while you're off trying to get yourself killed."

Heero slowly stepped back as his face closed off and Harry watched him distrustfully as he wasn't certain what the pilot was thinking. After a few minutes, Harry slipped off the bed and walked back towards his supply trunk while watching Heero out of the corner of his eye.

"Get what you need," Heero ordered in a dead voice. "And bring it back up here where I can at least watch over you to make certain you don't stupidly drain yourself dry and so I can stop the bleeding in case you pass out."

Ten minutes later, Harry was lining up six crystal bottles that would each hold approximately one pint of blood once they were filled. Sitting beside each bottle was a crystal stopper, two vials of rust colored potion, a bottle of butterbeer, and a half of sandwich. Off to one side of the line of bottles was a vial of disinfectant, a silver knife, and a roll of gauze. Heero, meanwhile, sat stiffly in the chair beside the table where Harry was setting everything up; the teen watching Harry's every move with a stony expression. Once everything was ready, Harry picked up the silver knife he'd brought out and cleaned it carefully with the disinfectant he'd brought up with him before carefully cleaning his left hand as well.

He then glanced over at Heero for a split second before he deftly sliced open his left palm. As the blood began welling up in his palm, Harry held his hand out over the first jar and tipped it sideways so that the blood poured down into the bottle. When he began filling lightheaded, about when the bottle was half filled, Harry picked up one of the blood replenishers (the rust colored potion) and choked it down while trying not to spill his blood all over the table. He gagged a bit over the metallic taste of the potion but otherwise ignored it as he felt the dizzy spell pass just a few minutes later when the potion kicked in, temporarily tripling the number of blood cells that his body produced.

As the level of blood in the jar reached the top, Harry clenched his fist to slow the blood flow and fumbled with the roll of gauze only for Heero to snatch the roll of bandages out of his hands, cut off a large section, take hold of his hand, and apply pressure to stop the bleeding. The pilot then shoved the second vial of potion into Harry's right hand without saying a word before picking him up and dumping him on the bed. Harry huffed but obediently drank down the potion as he watched Heero seal the first bottle of blood and clean up the messes.

The disgruntled teen then shoved a half of sandwich and a bottle of butterbeer at Harry and ordered him to eat and drink before telling Harry to sleep for at least an hour before filling another jar. Harry was tempted to tell Heero to go to hell but refrained from doing so because he didn't want to provoke the teen at the moment since he still had five more bottles to fill. An additional hour of rest was added on after each subsequent jar that Harry filled as the blood loss slowly began affecting him despite the potions and food.

Once the final bottle was full, Harry swayed a bit on his feet as Heero wrapped up his left hand a final time. He ended up passing out immediately after taking the final dose of blood replenisher from the combination of blood loss and magical exhaustion. He'd been channeling his magic into each drop of blood that left his hand knowing that he needed the wards to be as powerful as he could make them. It was an undertaking that affected him thrice over because the human body was not meant to house free flowing magic, though blood could act as a focus, which meant he had not only drained his core and seriously depleted his blood supply; he also strained his body by channeling excessive amounts of magic through it.

He wouldn't wake up again until well after suppertime the next day and even then he still felt groggy and lightheaded. The first thing he did upon waking up, was stumble into his trunk to grab several potions and a change of clothes before disappearing into the bathroom to take a nice, long, hot shower. When he emerged from the bathroom nearly two hours later he felt much better and hungry enough to eat a hippogriff (a rare occurrence since he rarely ever had much of an appetite).

He wasn't surprised to find Heero in his room once more at that point but he was a bit shocked to see all four of the other pilots in the room; each one of them glaring at Heero angrily. Harry knew instinctively that they were angry about the six rather large bottles of blood sitting on the table and blaming Heero for their presence. Harry had half expected the pilots to be less than pleased once they learned how Harry was going to be warding the suits. What Harry hadn't expected was to feel angry over the discovery that the other pilots were blaming Heero.

"If you are going to be angry with someone, then by rights you should be angry with me, not Heero, because it was my decision to use blood wards," Harry announced bitingly as he dropped his dirty clothes on the floor and cleaned them with a negligent flick of his wand. "Heero tried to talk me out of it, no that's a lie; he tried to order me to find some other way to ward the suits but as I explained to him blood wards are the only viable way to protect the suits."

"The technology used in the stupid rob… in the mobile suits is far too advanced and complicated to use a standard runic ward; which are far too rigid to encompass the full scope of the technology involved in a laptop let alone something as complex as a mobile suit. Not to mention the fact that it would have taken close to a year, if not longer, to carve the runes into every single part of just one suit since the wards would not have worked otherwise."

"You could have died," Trowa growled irritably. "And Heero should have stopped you."

"I was not in any immediate danger because I took steps to prevent the worst of the blood loss and filled them up over the course of the night and not all at once. I might have been overly weak for a short period of time but as you can seen, I am perfectly fine. The wards will be stronger for my sacrifice as all blood magic requires a willing or forced sacrifice as well as blood in order to function. Sacrifices for protective magics must always be willing while those for destructive or unnatural magics are always unwilling. I willingly sacrificed the blood needed to create the blood wards therefore the wards will be far stronger than they would have been otherwise."

"You still could have died, Harry," Quatre pointed out softly. "We could have helped you collect the needed blood safely over the course of a month or so without placing you in any danger."

"And the blood would have been worthless and the wards would not have worked," Harry countered with a trace of frustration over the lack of understanding the five pilots had for the basic principles of magic. He knew it wasn't their fault they didn't know what he knew but it was frustrating that they couldn't at least trust him to know what he was doing. "There are rules to magic, even if those rules defy logic for the most part. Blood magic requires sacrifice and a certain measure of risk or it is useless; that is how blood magic works."

"And if ya had died?" Duo asked quietly.

Harry laughed softly without any trace of humor as he glanced at the long haired pilot before meeting the gaze of the others as he stated, "Death has been stalking me since I was eighteen months old; it would take far more than a little blood loss to kill me off now. Especially when you take into account everything that happened to me during my years at Hogwarts."

"I think I speak for all five of us when I say that I'd really appreciate it if you could explain exactly what you mean by that," Heero declared with a frown as he vividly recalled Harry's reaction to the first time he'd threatened to kill him.

"I'll do one even better," Harry replied as he walked over to the bed, pulled out the wooden box that Sirius had given to him from beneath the mattress, and took out the small stone bowl. "I'll show you."

Harry transfigured a pillow into a large bowl before transferring all of Sirius's memories from the pensieve into it so that they wouldn't see them (those memories far too precious to share). He then placed the tip of his wand against his right temple and began pulling out the memories of each near death experience he'd had over the course of his life. He started with the night Voldemort killed his parents and ended with the night he'd woken up on the beach after Sirius sent him away and included over a dozen incidents in between.

Once he pulled the final memory, he told the five pilots to grab hold of him because it was the only way for them to join him inside of the pensieve (ruthlessly quashing the spike of panic he felt as five hands grabbed hold of him). Inside of the memories, Harry played narrator; introducing the various participants and explaining the various spells that appeared as the memories played out in startling detail. He did his best to ignore the various reactions of the pilots as they watched bits of his life unfold starting with his mother sacrificing her life for him as a baby.

They then witnessed him nearly fall from the sky as Quirrell jinxed his broom, as he stumbled upon Voldemort's shade in the forest tracking the injured unicorn, and faced a Voldemort possessed Quirrell in his first year. In second year, he felt numb as they watched the elf enchanted bludger try to kill him in midair, saw his close encounter with hundreds of pony and car sized man-eating spiders, and faced an incompetent teacher armed with a defective wand. There was also another shade of Voldemort and the sixty foot basilisk beneath the school. Harry was silently thankful that none of the pilots realized that he spoke parseltongue when he'd spoken to the magical snake since his memory translated his words into English since that was how he'd heard them – meaning the pilots thought the snake could speak English like the giant spiders).

It felt as if his heart was being torn from his chest as the memories from his third year played out; his first encounter with dementors, the time he fainted while on his broom (because of the dementors), and the night he learned the truth about his godfather. And then he came to his fourth year and he nearly broke as he woodenly gave them the background information about the Tri-wizard Tournament as they watched him trying to out fly an angry mother dragon, his struggles beneath the water to rescue his hostage and the other little girl when he didn't even know how to swim, and finally the various deadly creatures and spells he'd faced in the maze.

That memory sequence ran right into his kidnapping via portkey, Cedric's death, Voldemort's rebirth, that last desperate battle with the dark lord, and his daring escape. It continued on to show the fake Moody dragging him off, Barty Crouch Junior's unveiling and subsequent confession, and the scene in the hospital ward as Dumbledore faced down the Minister. The final memory was a rather confusing blur as Harry woke up in Sirius's arms as his godfather strapped a strange device to his chest and sent him away before the memory blacked out until he woke up on the beach alone, in pain, and obviously half the size he had been at the beginning of the memory.

Once the last memory finished playing out, the six of them were thrown out of the pensive where they landed in one big pile on the floor. Harry unsteadily climbed back up onto his feet under the weight of all five pilots' eyes as he calmly gathered up his memories and returned them to his mind before returning Sirius's memories to the pensieve, shrinking the pensieve back to the size of a marble, and returning it to the box.

Harry then turned to stare at the pilots for a long minute before he collected the six bottles of his blood and left the room without saying a word.

Notes:

*Not quite an exact quote from Episode 8: The Treize Assassination (Japanese version with English subtitles)

ICBM – stands for intercontinental ballistic missile

AN: The only thing I ever regretted about cutting out the scenes from the GW verse where Duo shoots Heero as he tried to blow up his Gundam was the fact that I essentially cut out Sally Po's first meeting with Heero as Sally is one of the women from the series that I really liked because she is strong, compassionate, and intelligent. I'd wanted to bring her in sooner and give her far more screen time but the chapter just didn't pan out that way and I didn't want to take too much from the anime since I dislike copying too much. Sally will not be completely ignored though but it will be a while before she pops back up. For now, bar her association with Heero and the other pilots, you can consider her playing her canon part in the background.

Harry is finally finding starting to adjust to his new life; part of that is the fact that he has a purpose and part of it has to do with the company he'd been keeping. There is more to it than that but Harry will bring that up later. As you can see, despite how un-confrontational Harry was in the last chapter, he hasn't completely lost his fire. The pilots also got blindsided with an up close and personal view of Harry's past; specifically the major events that shaped him into the person he is now (minus those he couldn't bring himself to share). And while the pilots had read about those incidents in the journal entries and had read the reports of the injuries incurred, seeing something happen is much different than reading about something happening.

The next chapter will finally see Harry getting some more of his promised training and another couple of heart to hearts as Harry unintentionally reveals yet another secret. No promises on when it will be posted as I have to prepare for some unpleasantness here soon. Depending on how things go, I maybe able to resume my former update schedule after the thirteenth but it depends on the outcome of the aforementioned unpleasantness. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter and a big thank you to all of my readers. ~ Jenn