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 42: Inevitability

Once Wolfstar entered the room, Harry bowed to the centaur, glanced at each of his three brothers that were present, and held Dorothy's eyes for a full minute before he stepped outside into the courtyard. He took a moment to restore the sentient suit to his full size and allow him to switch back to suit mode before he climbed up into the cockpit. Fifteen minutes later, Harry's face was appearing on every single television screen and monitor throughout the known universe as he hacked into every single satellite network with practiced ease (courtesy of his brothers' many hacking lessons).

Inside Hogwarts, Heero and Trowa scrambled back into the antechamber to try and raise Harry over the laptop only to find Harry was already addressing the world. It didn't take long for several more bodies to press into the room in order to better hear Taliesin's words the moment it was made known that Harry was broadcasting.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is Taliesin Bard. As of ten minutes ago, I was informed that the terrorist group collectively known as White Fang has just threatened to attack the Earth. To prevent this attack, the men who lead the White Fang have demanded that the individual known as the Demon of the Stars deliver himself into their custody so that he might face justice. A number of you might recall that I was called the Demon of the Stars on the night when I destroyed an OZ base on the face of the moon after the other Star Pilots and I had been held prisoner within the base for four months when OZ decided to execute my fellow pilots. Those innocent men and women that had nothing to do with the execution order were warned to flee the base before I destroyed it while those who were involved attacked me."

"You see, White Fang fears me because they know they can not face me in a fair fight so they threaten those whom I have always fought to protect; the innocents here on Earth and those living in the various Colonies out in space. They resort to underhanded tricks and despicable methods to paint me into a corner where I have no choice but to give into their demands least they paint first the Earth and then the Colonies with the blood of the innocent. I surrender. I will be waiting for you in Egypt beside the pyramid that once housed Pharaoh Tutankhamen with my Gundam at midnight tonight Greenwich Mean Time."

"My suit will be inactive and I will be standing on the ground alone and unarmed since I know that if I was to attempt to enter space in order to give myself up you would take it as a sign of aggression and attack the Earth out of spite. In turn, I demand that you free those members of the Winner family that you have taken hostage in your attempt to draw me out so that they might be reunited with their family. So long as they are released here on Earth when you come to collect me and you do not attack the earth once I am in custody; I will give you my word that none of the other pilots I call brother will retaliate against White Fang regardless of what happens to me and that I will not fight."

The transmission cut out and as one those inside of Hogwarts dashed out to the courtyard only to find that Harry had left sometime during the course of his speech. Harry in the mean time was already halfway to Egypt, giving Wolfstar last minute instructions as he removed any and every weapon he was carrying except for his wand. He even removed Seth and Anubis from inside of his shirt and tucked both snakes into the terrarium that he had installed below the fold out bed so that they would be safe (much to their dismay and disgruntlement).

He also used his wand to make the elbow length glove he wore over his right hand and arm blend into his skin and feel more skin-like and less leather-like in order to prevent anyone from attempting to remove it. After a moment's consideration, he did the same thing to the pair of handcuffs that still hung about his left wrist.

"You can't let them know you're awake, boy; so once I get out you have to turn everything off except the life support and your external cameras. I want you to lock yourself up tightly too, don't let them get inside but don't use the wards to shock them either since they'll need to load you into the shuttle or ship. If they try to destroy you, go stealth and follow wherever they take me; just be careful. The last thing I want you to do is record everything that happens from the moment they arrive and patch it through to the Gundams and home. They will need to know what happens because if I don't show them they'll only do something stupid and I can't have them doing that."

Wolfstar replied with a series of video and audio clips that showed his agitation, his worry, and his compliance and Harry spent several minutes reassuring the sentient suit that everything would be alright before spending the rest of the flight in silence. They arrived at his chosen point of surrender approximately forty-five minutes early (the location chosen based upon how far it was far from Hogwarts and Scotland, the fact that the area was sparsely populated, and because King Tut's tomb sat over another large nexus of ley lines; making the area magically significant). Harry spent a good fifteen minutes scanning the area to make certain that White Fang hadn't arrived before him to set up an ambush before he slipped his wand into the hidden holster in his glove at the base of his wrist and stepped up to the door.

Wolfstar whined and refused to open the door at first and Harry sighed as he reassured the suit a second time before ordering him to open the door. Dropping down to the ground, Harry leaned against Wolfstar's leg as the suit locked himself down and began powering down those systems that were not integral to his survival. Once the suit appeared completely lifeless, Harry sat down on Wolfstar's left foot to wait for the arrival of White Fang as he had no doubt that they would come for him; his left hand absently brushing back and forth over the surface of the foot to let Wolfstar know he was still there.

Half an hour later, at exactly five minutes till midnight, bright light poured down over the desert as a large spacecraft dropped down out of the sky above Harry. He brought his left arm up to protect his eyes from the glare of the lights after spending so long in the dark with only the stars to light his surroundings. The ground rumbled as close to thirty mobile suits dropped down onto the ground at the same time, completely surrounding Harry and Wolfstar. Through the light, all Harry could make out of the suits were that they looked similar in appearance to the Taurus models that OZ created and based upon their rather ungraceful landings were more than likely unmanned dolls rather than piloted suits.

"Put your hands in the air and step away from the Gundam."

Harry clenched his jaw when he recognized the voice issuing the order as belonging to Treize Khushrenada but did as ordered without any hesitation. He'd walked about ten feet away from Wolfstar when Treize ordered him to stop and turn around slowly before being ordered to face north, place his hands on the back of his head, and kneel on the ground. A circle of guns was soon covering him as a dozen and a half soldiers surrounded him. He barely flinched when he felt hands press down over his own hands as a pair of soldiers stepped up behind him and held him securely as they frisked him in search of hidden weapons.

"I must say you have grown since I last saw you," Treize declared as he walked up to stand just a few feet in front of Harry. The man then looked to the two men standing directly behind Harry. "Strip him and search him a second time; I want there to be no doubt that he is completely unarmed."

Harry didn't say anything in response nor did he attempt to fight the hands that were systematically removing his clothes and his glasses. There was a brief moment of confusion when his wings were revealed as they removed his over shirt but it didn't last very long. He winced when one of the soldiers pulled roughly on his right wing (as if trying to remove the wing from Harry's body) but he still made no move to fight them. Instead, Harry simply held Treize's gaze.

"We found no weapons or animals any where on him or in his clothes, sir," one of the soldiers stated once the rather humiliating search was over.

"Give him his underwear back, secure his hands and feet, burn the rest of his clothes, and bind those wings of his while you're at it so he can't fly off. The rest of you start escorting the Winner women down from the shuttle and prepare the Gundam for transport."

Harry tensed as he felt his wings roughly bunched up and bound with tape that pulled painfully on the individual scales. He wasn't looking forward to the moment the tape was pulled off either as he suspected that the heavy duty tape would painfully tear out more than one scale if not removed carefully. He did derive a brief moment of enjoyment out of watching the soldiers trying to burn his clothes; the fireproofing runes a recent addition that he'd sewn into the hems of his shirts to prevent them from catching fire even when doused with gasoline (the ward runes the only way to avoid overloading the shirt with magic and necessary due to the high number of shirts he'd ruined due to his wings catching fire over the past year). They eventually gave it up as a lost cause and buried the clothes and his glasses in the sand.

All traces of humor left him though when he watched several of Quatre's older sisters being herded next to the crumbling pyramid and he easily recognized Iria's voice as she called out to him, "Taliesin!"

"Don't worry about me, Iria," Harry called out only to earn a boot in the stomach from the soldier standing over him. Doubling over, Harry closed his eyes against the pain for a moment before he craned his head up and spoke out a second time. "Quatre will send someone to collect all of you as soon as White Fang leaves."

"Shut your mouth, scum," the same soldier growled as he kicked Harry a second time, this time on his left side since he was still hunched over.

"Taliesin!" Iria called a second time, fear lacing her voice.

"Watch over my brothers for me please?" Harry asked as he looked up and gave her a pained smile.

He never heard her reply as the soldier standing guard over him cracked him in the back of the head with the butt of his rifle; sending him into his mindscape. Harry sighed as he was bowled over by a large, frantic wolf (the mental representation of his connection to Wolfstar) and wondered why he couldn't ever seem to catch a break once in a while. Shaking his head, Harry calmed Zero down before sending the wolf off to patrol the edges of his mind while Harry headed into the house of mirrors he'd built over time to sort a few memories to pass the time. As he worked, he kept his link to Wolfstar open so that he could keep an eye on what was happening outside. He got a brief glimpse of his body being loaded into a shuttle before Wolfstar's range of vision was reduced to the inside of a cargo bay.

The secondhand message Wolfstar passed to him from his brothers not long after that drew a short, bitter laugh from Harry as they'd threatened to clip his wings when they got hold of him for taking off like he did. He knew they wouldn't actually hurt him and were just upset that he'd surrendered the way he did but he also knew that they knew that he really hadn't had much of a choice. The message he had Wolfstar give them in return was for them to not do anything stupid and to watch over Crystal Valley for him until he returned. And Harry had no doubt that he would return to his home when all of this was over; he would settle for nothing less.

Harry was still trapped in his mindscape, his body unconscious, when he experienced the odd pain of leaving the atmosphere of the Earth for the second time. This time the pulling on his core lasted far longer, as if the very planet did not wish to let him or his magic leave and the pain of the connection finally breaking and his core snapping back into place was enough to wake him up. He'd have clutched at his heart in an attempt to ease the pain but his hands were firmly secured behind his back so all he could do was voice a verbal complaint in the form of a long string of curses. When the pain finally ebbed, Harry sank back into his mindscape and searched out the representation of his core (a large fountain set in the very center of his house of mirrors) and found the room overflowing.

He furrowed his brow since he couldn't think of any reason for his core to be overcharged with magic until he recalled what Obduro had told him about humans being the only magical beings born with a magical core capable of producing magic and that the Earth drew its magic from the wizard (or witch). And because he'd just left Earth, that portion of his magic that the earth drew on was no longer being siphoned from his core. A wave of nausea washed through Harry as he worried what the loss of that magic might mean to those left on earth and he prayed that it wouldn't have a negative effect on any of the children (no matter what species they were).

Knowing there was nothing he could do about it right now; Harry focused his attention back on the flooded room and wondered what he should do with the excess magic. After a while he decided that he should enlarge the room, deepen the pool that held the fountain, and create an overflow tank (or two) to collect the excess magic to prevent it from spilling out into the rest of his mindscape. Harry's impulsive decision to modify his core (since the representation of his core in his mindscape was tied directly to his actual core) would have far reaching consequences for the young mage.

A normal magical core in a healthy wizard can be compared to a small drinking fountain or a forest pond which holds a set amount of water or, in the case of the core, magic; that is fed by an underground spring (the core producing said magic) that only flows when there is room available in the fountain or pond (endlessly maintaining the set amount of magic each core holds). That means that the small amount of magic that the Earth siphons off from a witch or wizard is constantly being replaced in order to keep the fountain or pool topped off to maximum capacity. When a wizard casts a spell he is drawing upon the pool which means that the core has to produce more magic to replace what was lost.

The amount of time it takes for a wizard to replace that magic varies from person to person depending on their age and gender. Children usually take longer to replace the expended magic because their cores are not being exercised regularly and they have no control over how much magic they use and so tend to exhaust themselves each time they have an accidental outburst. Fully trained adults, on the other hand, are constantly using their magic so their cores are constantly producing more magic so that it seems as if their magic is replaced instantly but that isn't actually the case since if they suddenly stopped casting for a longer than normal period of time their cores would overflow before their core realized it had produced too much magic.

When Dumbledore bound Harry's core as a child, what he basically did was restrict the amount of magic that Harry's core could produce at one time; like partially plugging a faucet to cut the flow of water through it or changing a two inch pipe out with a one inch pipe to restrict the flow of water (or in the case of Harry's core the magic being produced). That means that instead of taking a full day to recover from magical exhaustion it would take two or more. Because he was still a child at the time, Harry's core adapted and since it couldn't increase the amount of magic it produced it increased the speed at which it produced the magic in order to make up the difference.

Each time Dumbledore further restricted Harry's core it would be forced to work all that much harder to replace the magic that Harry used; exercising Harry's core and pushing him to his limits even before he reached Hogwarts (a foolish thing to do, really, if Dumbledore's end goal had been to keep Harry weak but few wizards back then had known how the core actually worked). After nearly thirteen years of constant restriction and conditioning, the sudden removal of those bindings when Sirius gave him the magical purgative caused Harry's core to literally flood his entire body with magic; one of the reasons the unbinding had caused so much pain.

If Harry had been a girl it would have been worse because a woman's core typically replenishes faster because their bodies will one day nourish the next generation and while the baby grows in her womb her core is providing her child with magic since the magical core is one of the last things to develop. Harry's core was similarly providing excess magic to the clones in the clinic as the fetuses had latched onto the nearest source of magic needed to sustain their lives once they could no longer draw sufficient magic from the atmosphere as they had during their first trimester.

That meant that he had a total of fifteen siphons (his link to Wolfstar counting as one) drawing magic from his core at all times but he never noticed the drain because his core was constantly replacing the magic the instant the magic was pulled from his core. When he left the atmosphere, fourteen of those links were forcibly snapped due to the distance involved and the fact that he was no longer bound to the Earth's gravitational pull (Wolfstar's link while similar was different enough that it wasn't affected and the fact that the suit wasn't that far away helped keep it going as well).

The pain came from the sudden flooding of excess magic over the unexpected cessation of what had up until that point been a constant drain on his core. A drain that was far larger than any previous wizard could have maintained simply because the constant pull on their core would have drained them dry within weeks since their cores wouldn't have been able to produce the magic needed fast enough. The only reason that Harry's core could cope with the constant draw was because of the conditioning Dumbledore had forced upon his core since Harry was still in diapers.

When those links draining off his excess magic were removed without any warning, the magic that was being drawn off by them was still being replaced by his core and because that magic was no longer being drawn out of the pool that was his core it overflowed (much like a clogged sink would overflow if you leave the faucet on). There was more pain involved this time because the amount of magic that was being steadily replaced had been larger (the first time he'd gone into space he'd only had one link to the earth that was so small that breaking it had only hurt for an instant whereas this time he had been dealing with fifteen such links and the one remaining link didn't pull enough magic from his core to make up for the sudden absence of the fourteen other links disappearing).

Now, the size of a wizard's core (or the size of his magical reservoir) unlike the rest of his genetic make-up, is not determined by the size of his parents' cores; a magical core can not be copied or split after all. The size of a magical child's core is determined by how much magic he or she is exposed to during the course of his or her mother's pregnancy. One of the reasons that muggleborn children tend to be less powerful than those children born to magicals is directly related to the amount of magic the baby is exposed to during gestation (especially in the last trimester of the pregnancy); though there are occasional exceptions.

In Harry's case, his mother was in the middle of the war and throwing around large amounts of magic as she was constantly fighting for her life and the lives of her friends and family even after she knew she was pregnant and so Harry was constantly surrounded by large amounts of magic which resulted in a larger than average core.

A wizard's core rarely ever grows once he has been born though it is possible to force a core to grow through trauma and an excessive overflow of magic. When Voldemort attempted to kill Harry as a baby, his killing curse combined with whatever magic his mother had used to protect him on top of the magic inherent in her willing sacrifice flooded Harry's core and body to the point where his core had been forced to grow or he'd have died from the sheer amount of magic that had flooded his tiny body. Something similar happened when Sirius gave Harry the purging potion and sent him through time; the forced removal all of the foreign magic inside of his mind, body, and core (most especially the bindings on his core that limited the amount of magic it could produce) caused his entire body to be flooded by an enormous excess magic in an extremely short amount of time (much like a pressurized water pipe bursting from the stress).

The fact that the purger mistakenly treated several outside sources of magic (the basilisk venom, the phoenix tears, the magic of the time traveling device, and the remnants of Voldemort's magic that clung to the soul fragment in Harry's scar) as part of Harry's magic didn't help because it essentially multiplied the amount of magic that his core and body were trying to contain. Once again, his core was forced to expand in order to contain as much of the magic as possible least the sheer volume of free flowing magic kill him or turn him into a squib (much like a power surge would trip a breaker, burn out a fuse, or fry a system board).

In both cases (the night Voldemort tried to kill him and the day Sirius fed him the purger), his core simply doubled its size which really only meant that his magical stamina had increased since the size of the core only determined how much magic you had available to cast and not how well you could cast a spell or how powerful the spells you cast would be.

When Harry was first born, his core would have been represented by a four foot by four foot room with large pool in the center that was about three and a half feet in diameter and approximately three feet deep (if he'd been born with a fully functional mindscape). On the night when he had been surrounded by the power of his mother's protection and sacrifice and hit with Voldemort's overpowered killing curse; the pool that was his core hadn't been anywhere near large enough to handle both the magic his core was producing and the magic that was flooding his body (the fact that most of the magic was foreign was inconsequential at the time since there was no purgative in his system to separate the foreign magic from his own magic).

In order to survive at that point, his pool needed to be larger but since Harry was still basically an infant the only way it could expand was downwards, so his pool of magic went from three feet deep to six feet deep; three times the depth of an average wizard's core. When the blocks on his core were removed and the foreign magic drawn into his core, the same thing essentially happened, only because he was older at the time it was the actual room that held his core that doubled in size along with the diameter of the pool making the room eight foot by eight foot and the pool seven feet in diameter and still six feet deep with a small fountain in the center.

When Harry set about modifying his magical core intentionally, he first doubled the size of the room again, making it sixteen feet by sixteen feet. He then enlarged the circumference of the original pool to an even fourteen feet and multiplied the depth by two which gave it a depth of twelve feet. In addition to increasing the size of his core a third time, he went on to create a second reservoir to hold the excess magic – something that no other wizard had ever done (though there had been more than a few that had modified their cores out of necessity or greed). Furthermore, because he had not thought to limit the amount of magic the overflow could hold (having no true understanding of how a wizard's core functioned other than it produced magic and held the magic his core produced) meant that he basically created a bottomless well of magic that he could potentially draw upon.

With no limit on how much magic his core could hold, his core would simply continue to produce magic instead of only producing enough to replace what was siphoned off or used (since there was now nothing to tell his core – oh hey, buddy slow production down, the pool is full). And because his core had been conditioned to produce as much magic as it could as fast as it could (due to the thirteen years his core was bound and the large amount of magic he'd been casting since he had found Heero on the beach) he was now producing a steady overflow of magic and the large fountain in the middle of the room ended up becoming a rather steady, if small, geyser.

Now, contrary to what many would assume, having a near limitless supply of magic did not make Harry some kind of super mage; after all, his skill level and control over his magic hadn't changed one wit. What it did mean, was that Harry would now find it much harder to magically exhaust himself when performing low to mid-level spells that used an amount of magic that was less than the amount that his core produced in the same amount of time. He could still over exhaust himself if he cast a large number of high-level spells back to back and in the process managed to drain both the reservoir and his main core; it would just take him longer to do so and his recovery time would be far shorter because his main core would only be drained once the overflow had been used and he'd only have to refill his main core to regain his normal energy levels (the bottomless reservoir he created to hold the overflow having no bearing on the functions of his original core since it was there only to catch what his core couldn't hold).

Once he was finished modifying his core, Harry traced his link to Wolfstar and nudged the sentient suit into allowing Harry's consciousness to piggy back on their link so he could speak to one of his brothers. Being inside of Wolfstar's consciousness was disorienting for Harry at first, because the sentient suit, while based upon human thinking and knowledge, did not think the same way a human thought. It also took him a while to get used to the alien environment due to Wolfstar giving his avatar the form of a wolf but once he did it was fairly easy to move through since it was far better organized than Harry's inner mind. In no time at all, Harry found himself looking up and out of a window at Heero and Trowa as the two of them argued.

"How the hell was I supposed to know he was going to surrender without even discussing it with us?" Heero barked as he threw his hands up.

"You still didn't have to paint such a grim picture when you told him what was going on," Trowa snapped back with a wild arm swing. "You should have known he'd throw his life away the moment he knew there was a chance that doing so could potentially protect someone. Despite everything we've done to instill a sense of self-worth in him, Taliesin still sees other people as more important; you knew that!"

"Can the two of you stop arguing for about fifteen minutes or should I go find someone else to talk to?" Harry asked before Heero could give a rebuttal. As one, both Heero and Trowa swung to face the screen and Harry sneezed a wolfish sneeze of laughter as confusion filled their faces the moment their eyes found him. "Thank you… now could one of you please go find Obduro for me? It is very important that I speak to him immediately."

"Heero… is it just me or is that wolf speaking to us?" Trowa asked.

"He sounds quite a bit like Taliesin," Heero commented absently as he leaned closer to the screen.

"That would be because it is me," Harry dryly pointed out as he scratched his ear with his hind leg before he realized what he was doing and immediately stopped. "This is how Wolfstar sees me so this is the body he gave me when I piggy-backed on our link to speak with you since my body is a bit… tied up right now."

"And whose fault is that?" Heero asked snidely.

"Um… Treize's because he's the one that ordered me bound? Not important… can one of you please go get Obduro for me? I don't have much time because I can't leave my body alone for too long."

"Not until you tell us why you took off the way you did without even giving us a chance to put together a plan," Trowa insisted making Heero glance at the other teen in surprise.

"Trowa," Harry growled, his eyes glowing ominously as his wolfish face snarled. "This isn't the time and so help me if any of the children die because you wasted my time here, I will never forgive you."

Both teens blanched and Heero took off running while Trowa dropped down into the chair, "I didn't… I wouldn't…"

"I know, Trowa," Harry sighed as he dropped down to his belly and propped his chin on his forepaws. "This is another of those times when the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. Only this time, instead of bringing a suit to life or giving myself wings I might well have killed all of the clones or worse."

Harry would have said more but at that moment Heero returned with Obduro and several other people in tow and Harry jumped to his feet and pressed his forepaws to the screen the moment he caught sight of the centaur, "Obduro, please, will the children survive to be born? I didn't know… the first time it happened I had no idea what had happened so I didn't think twice about it but this time… it felt like my magic was going to be ripped out of my chest. Please tell me the loss of my connection to the earth isn't going to kill them. Please don't let me have killed my… my son."

Harry's wolf ears had pressed flat back against his skull and he had practically been whining in fear by the time he finished addressing the centaur. He dropped back away from the screen and scrubbed at his face with both forelegs as he sat back on his haunches before he spoke once more, his voice sounding weary, "I only surrendered because I didn't want to risk anything happening to the future of the magical world or threatening the safety of the children and to find out I might have killed them myself because of this would kill me."

"There is enough ambient magic in the air to sustain them all for the time being, young mage," Obduro rumbled after giving the matter a few minutes of serious contemplation.

"Thank Merlin," Harry breathed as he sank bonelessly to his belly once more.

"They can not survive on ambient magic forever though and the longer you are gone the greater the risk there is that they will slowly begin to fade. The young magelets will survive either way because they will have an immature core to draw magic from to sustain themselves but if they drain their cores to the point of exhaustion they will damage their core and they will be born as ordinary humans."

"How long?" Harry demanded as he sat up and swung his ears forward, his entire body tense and alert.

"Five days for certain… but they may last as long as seven days. The magelets will have nine days before they exhaust their immature cores."

"One hundred and twenty hours from now or from the moment the link was severed?"

"From the moment the link was severed."

"I will be back. I will not allow your sons and daughters to die because of my mistake," Harry declared with a rumbling growl as he turned around and vanished; instantly sending his consciousness back to his body.

Snapping his eyes open, Harry had but fifteen seconds or so to take in his surroundings once more before another blow to the back of the head sent him right back into his mindscape. Harry wanted to scream because every minute he spent trapped inside of his mind was one less minute he had to find a solution that would both end the threat of the White Fang and get him back home before time ran out. Knowing there wasn't much he could do about his situation right that minute, Harry asked Wolfstar to hack into White Fang's mainframe through his connection to Harry's external laptops and copy everything he could find. Having some idea as to what they planned to do with him could help him figure out how to use their plans to his advantage.

Seventeen hours. He was out for seventeen hours and Wolfstar had been unable to find anything anywhere that could tell him what they were planning to do with him; though he had collected a wealth of other information that might be useful at some point down the line. When Harry did finally wake up it was to find himself securely strapped to a chair, an IV hooked up to his left arm feeding him some kind of paralyzing agent that made it impossible for him to do anything but speak in a slurred mumble and move his eyes.

He was at least pleased to note someone had dressed him in what looked like a pair of gray hospital pants and wished they'd not taken his outer shirt because his wings were feeling sore from the tight binding and the fact he was pretty much sitting on them at the moment. Sitting in front of him were three men; one was a soldier wearing the blue and red uniform of OZ with a white band tied around his left arm, one was Treize, and the last one was a white haired man with a receding hairline wearing thin round wire frame glasses that were too small for his face and gave the man a perpetual pinched look.

"Jou ook ike ssomeun juss toll jou to kisss a sskunk'ss butt," Harry slurred when his eyes fell on the third man who he figured was the real leader of the White Fang; Quinze Quarant.

"I see he is as charming as you said he was, Treize," the spectacled man drawled in a passingly good imitation of Snape's silky yet oily brand of mixed sarcasm and disdain.

"I'm a bit shocked actually, Quinze; he's actually being rather polite," Treize corrected with an amused smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Not worff mah time to smake an effert to impresh shcum," Harry stated simply as he closed his eyes and tried to see if his magic could filter the paralyzing agent from his blood stream faster.

"Don't fall back asleep just yet, boy, we're on a tight schedule here and you're going to need to answer a few questions."

"Cannah smake me… jou…"

"Oh but that's where you're wrong," Quinze interjected before Harry could think of an appropriate insult to hurl at Treize. "Treize graciously told us of your inordinately high tolerance to various drugs, such as tranquilizers, so when you first arrived we used more barbaric methods to gain your cooperation while we sent a sample of your blood to our labs for testing. It took them far longer than I had hoped but they managed to discover that by feeding your body a steady and constant supply of certain drugs and poisons; we would have no problems securing your cooperation with or without your help."

Harry mentally cursed as his eyes rolled down to take in the IV securely taped in place on his left arm and the tube that disappeared up behind him somewhere. When he glanced back up it was to see both Treize and Quinze smirking in satisfaction.

"I see you realize the significance of the IV in your arm now; don't worry it's not a permanent fixture," Quinze continued as he leaned forward and let his eyes slide beyond Harry to address someone standing behind the wizard. "Please open the flow to the sodium pentothal* now and insure that the flow of curare* is not restricted. Make certain to keep the oxygen mask on hand as well in case he goes into respiratory arrest at any point during the interrogation. It would not do to lose our star actor before he plays his part, after all."

Harry's eyes widened as he realized exactly what they were giving him (Duo had spoken of it often enough during his early lessons nearly two years ago that there was no way he could have forgotten what it was even if he wanted to). It was no where near as reliable or potent as Veritaserum but if given in large enough doses it could override his magic's ability to neutralize the drug. By the amount of burning iciness that was flooding his arm, he guessed that they were planning on pumping enough of the drug into his system to kill an elephant which would in turn be too much for his magic to clear away quickly enough to protect him especially since his magic was already fighting against the poison or drug that was paralyzing him.

Dizziness soon set in as the drug began flooding his system and Harry closed his eyes to fight against the effects as he used Occlumency and his link to Wolfstar to lock his mind away to prevent them from drawing forth any information that would harm his family or the magical world. Unfortunately, he wasn't as successful as he'd hoped he would be but it was better than nothing and he would not be any where near as chatty as a muggle would be under the influence of the drug though he would talk more than he'd normally be inclined to in this type of situation.

"What is your name?" Treize asked once some sort of signal had passed between the person standing behind Harry and those seated at the table.

"Arry Pottah," Harry slurred as his eyes flicked open and he tried to focus on the man.

"When were you born?"

"Rong… rong ago," Harry answered, intentionally blocking the real answer from his mind to prevent them from learning of his time traveling whereas his name would gain them nothing because there were no records of him in this time.

"Increase the dosage," Quinze ordered as he scowled at Harry and Harry wished he had enough control of his muscles so he could smirk in response.

Five minutes later, he was asked the same question again and when he gave the same answer, Quinze sharply ordered Treize to skip it and go onto the next question. Over the next ten minutes, Quinze's face went through an assortment of shades and contortions that Harry had once thought only Uncle Vernon could achieve as Harry continued to give sporadic and misleading answers. Harry knew he was only making matters worse for himself each time he laughed giddily under the influence of the drugs but he couldn't help himself. There were some answers that Harry couldn't avoid given though; such as that he'd been born on earth, that his parents were dead, and that Wolfstar was his Gundam. He did at least not mention Wolfstar's sentience, his true age (four hundred and eighty-nine), or where the other Gundam pilots could be found.

It was at that point that they dosed him a third time with the truth drug and moved onto those questions Harry really didn't want to answer. By now, the amount of serum in his blood was giving his magic a seriously hard time and Harry feared he wouldn't be able to continue his misdirection for much longer. His growing worry in turn made his heart rate speed up which circulated the serum and the paralyzing agent faster through his blood stream which in turn made it harder for him to hold back on his answers; though a good portion of his mind was still locked behind his Occlumency shields.

"Who created the Star Suits?"

"OZ… deed jou shend Dororfy and Toedo home jet?" Harry answered and asked as he ignored the pang in his heart at the mention of Dorothy which brought to mind those heated kisses they'd shared just a few days earlier and the unresolved tension the two of them felt around one another. "Aye'd ashk jou iffn da shcarecrow gotted hish brain but aye've alreddy met Trayz and knows he dinnit."

"The stolen Taurus suits," Treize mused as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Who modified the Taurus suits?"

"Lodda pea… pee… peepoles."

"Who created the security and defensive systems for the Star Suits?"

Harry bit his tongue intentionally to keep himself from answering and rolled his eyes up to the back of his head in the hopes that he'd pass out to escape the rest of the questioning but escape was not to be had as Quinze leaned across the table and slapped him out of it before snapping his fingers. Immediately after that two new floods of burning ice shot through Harry's arm while an armless hand shoved a wad of gauze into his mouth to prevent him from downing on his own blood.

A sharp pain in the side of his neck had him trying to jerk his head to one side without any luck as clarity suddenly returned to him and he immediately realized that one of the drugs he'd just been given would prevent him from passing out. The other two must have been yet another dose of the truth serum and the paralyzing agent since the dizziness swept over him once more only a minute later and his body was once more beyond his control. The gauze was removed from his mouth shortly after that and Harry's tongue throbbed where he'd bitten it and he nearly gagged on the coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

"Who created the security and defensive systems for the Star Suits?"

"Nnn… nnnoo…" Harry forced out with difficulty.

A picture of the Sanc Kingdom was held up in front of Harry at that point and Quinze smiled sadistically as he stated, "You will answer the question or I will drop a nuclear warhead on the Peacecraft's royal palace. Any further attempts to avoid answering our questions will carry the same result. Now, who created the security and defensive systems for the Star Suits?"

"Aye deed," Harry hissed as his stomach churned sharply over the threat and his inability to risk calling the man's bluff since he didn't think the man had it in him to bluff.

"How?"

"Wif magic."

"I'm going to ask you again and I want the truth this time; how did you create the security and defensive systems for the Star Suits?"

"Wif magic… inna blud," Harry rasped out as he closed his eyes, his body seeming to sag wearily even though he couldn't move.

"Captain, ready the missiles…" Quinze began to order only for Treize to stop him.

"Wait," Treize murmured as he leaned forward. "Magic in whose blood?"

Harry opened his eyes, the mismatched blue and green boring into Treize's ice blue eyes with undisguised torment as Harry muttered a single word, "Mine."

"You can't seriously tell me that you believe that tripe about magic?" Quinze demanded as he spun to glare at Treize.

"It would explain so much… if he believes his Newtype ability to be magic, then it stands to reason he'd believe that he could actually perform magic and we already know he has some control over fire and snakes. Do you have everything you need to implement our plan or do you need the rest of your questions answered? If we keep him under the curare much longer we might end up killing him regardless of his body's ability to filter the poison from his system."

"Ask him about the Zero system interface and whatever else you think might be helpful. I can't stomach the little monster any longer; come find me when you're finished."

"Aye'm a monshter but jour da bashdards freatening to blow up da earff."

Quinze sneered at Harry but didn't respond as he climbed to his feet and stalked from the room. Harry would have called out a parting shot but found his attention brought back to Treize as the twenty-six year old addressed Harry.

"I've seen what you can do and there is no denying you are a true monster."

Harry snorted but the disdain he was trying to express was lost somewhere between the effects of the truth serum and the paralyzing agent. He was more concerned about what else Treize was going to ask him because any information regarding the Zero interface could potentially open an entirely new can of worms. He was therefore caught off guard when the man continued with an earlier line of questioning first.

"How much blood does it take to protect a single suit?"

"Differnt fur eech won."

"How much did it take to secure Wing Zero?"

"Doan amember… mebbe too pieant?"

"How does the blood protect the suit and where must it be placed?"

"Inna hart… blud go inna hart."

"In the heart? Where is the heart of a suit?"

"Whare jou fry."

"Where you fly…? The cockpit?"

"Yesh. Payent da hart wif blud," Harry agreed even as he cursed his loose tongue for talking. At least he hadn't been any more specific and he hadn't mentioned any of the runes needed to activate the blood but still; that information could be dangerous in the wrong hands (like White Fang's). He was almost thankful when Treize moved onto a line of questioning he had been prepared to fight against.

"How is it you have managed to avoid being driven insane by the Zero interface when every other pilot to fly the suit before you succumbed within twenty minutes of activating the system?"

"Aye'm alreddy inshane," Harry replied with solemn sincerity that was in no way feigned.

"Somehow that doesn't surprise me," Treize muttered distastefully. "What does the Zero interface show you when it is activated?"

"Wuffies… we howl da hunt t'gther," Harry slurred out before he gave a rather realistic howl that raised the hairs on the back of the necks of those who heard him; it started low and rose in pitch before dropping back down and cutting off. It quite clearly wasn't the lonesome cry of a wolf looking for companionship but the hungered cry of an alpha wolf calling to the rest of the pack as he spotted their next meal and his eyes began glowing red and gold as he pulled on his connection to Wolfstar.

"I'm finished; there is nothing more we'll learn from him now. Knock him out before he manages to break free from the drugs completely," Treize ordered as he rose to his feet, his eyes locking onto Harry's once more as he added, "I hope you burn in hell like the demon you are for killing Lady Une."

"Is that what this is about?" Harry asked in a far clearer voice as the excess magic flowing through him from his active his connection to Zero began clearing the drugs from his blood far more efficiently. "You sold your soul to the ones that would see the Earth destroyed simply because you were too full of pride to ask Zechs what had happened to your whore?"

Treize back handed Harry hard across the face as he loomed over the restrained mage and hissed, "She was worth ten times more than any other woman in the world and I'll not have you disrespecting her memory. And never again mention that traitor's name in my presence."

"She is a cold hearted bitch that sanctioned the brutal raping of a child on your orders," Harry spat back as he jerked forward against his bindings while ignoring the pain of his muscles spasming as the paralyzing poison was leached from his system. "She'd have willingly murdered millions of innocents just to capture one of the Gundams and even that would not have quenched her bloodlust. Despite that the evil bitch is still well and truly alive. And why do you call Zechs a traitor? Because he opened his eyes and saw that what OZ was doing was wrong? At least he isn't trying to destroy an entire world out of some misguided sense of revenge!"

"You lie!"

"No… I don't and you know it," Harry shot back as he jerked against the bindings a second time. "One word of advice Treize; find a way to stop Quinze before he attacks the Earth or you'll be helping him to murder your precious Une. I could have left her to her well deserved desserts but unlike you people; I'm not in the habit of leaving defenseless people to die. Don't believe me? Contact Zechs and ask him yourself or better yet, call my brother, Quatre Winner and ask him about Une."

Anything else Harry might have added as lost as he was once again knocked out with a strategically placed knot on the back of his head. He was really beginning to get tired of having his head pounded on by heavy handed imbeciles and thanked Merlin that he'd inherited a hard head from one or both of his parents otherwise his brain would have been turned to mush already. Cursing over how much information they'd managed to drag out of him, Harry once more traced his connection with Wolfstar so he could inform his brothers of the most recent developments.

Notes:

Sodium pentothal – truth serum also known as sodium thiopental

Curare – is the common name for the arrow poison that comes out of South America which is known to cause paralysis

AN: I thought I'd toss this chapter up early to make up for the long wait for the previous chapter; after this you can expect no more than one chapter a week being posted to this fic…

The only remark that I'd like to make about this chapter was that it was full of important information on the way a magical core functions in Banished Destiny's universe. I was also setting up the stage for the confrontation with White Fang and dealing with one of the major threats still active within the universe. It was also a chapter that shows that Harry is still the ultimate Gryffindor as he continuously sacrifices himself for others and runs headlong into the fray in order to protect his family.

Anyway, thank you all again for your patience and for your wonderful reviews (I'm ignoring the unpleasant reviews; as far as I'm concerned the heat from the flames is paltry when compared the temperatures of the desert I live in and therefore not worth my time). I know that I've not replied to any reviews in ages but that doesn't mean that I haven't appreciated receiving them. There's a plate of donuts in the lounge (courtesy of Gizzy the house elf); feel free to help yourself. =)

Expect the next update on Monday or Tuesday of next week. ~ Jenn