At this point I'm predicting around 20 chapters in Earth Arc and maybe 5-10 in Pandora Arc. Frankly, Earth is a lot more fun to write about. Oh, and thank-you to charliepotter13 for being the sole person, of everyone who faved or put this fic on the alert, to review! You are a champion!

Earth

Phillip Maine, one of three CEO's of the RDA, glanced down at his pile of notes. All of them were short-term plastic-laid digital screens for security and most of them were for show.

And to disguise certain others.

One of which was a simple rendition of a brain, with colour washing through it to indicate activity and barely comprehensible information scrolling unendingly down the side.

It was a live stream of the RDA's new semi-human, one Harry Potter.

The week they'd had the boy in hospital had been more than long enough to take samples and implant a few security features. A homing beacon, which could be triggered remotely. A standard miniature health monitor, which would contact emergency services should any of a half-dozen biological processes show signs of failure.

A not-so-standard cranial net, implanted under his scalp and over his skull, constantly monitoring the most fascinating aspect of the boy. His brain.

It wasn't even the simple fact that his brain was slightly different than normal that had their chief expert, Dr Maudlin, so enraptured. It was that the entirety of his brain showed persistent activity, with inexplicable surges that seemed to have neither cause nor affect in various areas.

The brain being such a tricky thing, it was nigh impossible to test properly without the boy's consent.

Failing that, his ignorance would have to suffice.

Another sheet held a brief list of what the researchers assigned to the boy's history had found. Handily, the boy himself had added the contents of his books to his computer. The history books had been the most immediately useful but all Phil needed to know right now was contained in one curt list.

There once had existed a sentient, humanoid species on the planet which could do 'magic'. They no longer existed, save for Harry.

And Harry was very aware of his vulnerable situation

Excellent.

Earth

The muggles had colonised other planets.

Harry lay sprawled on his couch, staring at the lounge's large television with an expression probably pretty close to Dudley's whenever he watched telly.

Stupefied.

But really, who could blame him? Michael had been watching some kind of documentary channel when Harry woke up - early enough to catch the dawn, his mind just too unsettled to sleep well. Harry had washed up, tested his ability to order breakfast (he only managed some sort of soup, again. He really needed to find a manual for the machine) and sat down just in time to catch the next show, a history of man's exploration into space. He'd been looking for a distraction from the pit of grief and anger inside him and had found the show to be unexpectedly helpful in that regard.

They had colonies on the moon and on mars! Mostly for the few workers on the factories and mines, respectively, but still. In only one and a half centuries, they had people living on another planet! Two, in fact, as the show continued and Harry's barely-touched soup cooled. There was a planet - or maybe a moon, he wasn't sure - around 4-something light years away that also had a small colony of miners on it. The photos of that were incredible.

Real, actual, alien life on another world. Amazing!

The show glossed over the living planet rather more than Harry thought warranted, considering the detail it had gone into for the uglier colonies on the moon and Mars, but maybe that was just because the one on Pandora was so new? According to Michael, it took six years to travel there, even at the speeds their interstellar ships were capable of. It used to take a couple of decades, before unobtanium was discovered, mined and refined - some sort of super-ore that was only found on Pandora. Harry hardly cared about that, save that its existence made getting to Pandora easier and faster. When he asked about how much it cost to go there, though, Michael almost busted a gut laughing.

"Every grunt and their mother wants to get off that rock and you want to go!" He chuckled. "Though I guess, from here, it is pretty exciting."

Harry sat up to face him more fully.

"You've been?" He asked incredulously. The man smiled, white teeth flashing in a rarely open expression.

"Oh yeah. I was one of the first out there, which is why I got this cushy job once I rotated home. Bodyguard pays a hell of a lot more than grunt, and compared to Pandora the danger is a hell of a lot less, too."

"What was it like?" Harry asked, pulling his legs up to cross them on the couch, completely captivated.

Michael, an arm resting over the back of the couch and one ankle crossed over his knee, considered it.

"Hot. Humid. Claustrophobic. Boring." His pensive look melted into a small grin. "Exhilarating. Mostly of the pant-wetting variety. In between the boring bits."

Harry couldn't help but grin back, though he rolled his eyes.

"And when you weren't on duty?"

Michael snorted. "On Pandora, kid, you're never not on duty. But, even if we were..." He moved one hand in a so-so gesture. "You're pretty much confined to base, which is only fun for the science geeks who actually enjoy messing around in the labs. It's a five-year rotation, plus 12 years transit time and you only get paid half-wages for the transit so by the time you get home you feel like you've lost a decade of time and only have a small amount of bonus money to show for it."

"So, no tourist options?" Harry checked, causing Michael to grin again.

"Naw, kid. Only geeks and grunts get to go to Pandora. Sorry."

Harry shrugged, disappointed but trying not to show it. Why had he even gotten so excited? Was it just the 'life on other planets' thing, or was it some form of escapism?

In the back of his mind, he was self-aware enough to know he was probably associating 'strange and wonderful' alien life with his exposure to other 'strange and wonderful' (magical) discoveries. Being aware wasn't enough to dampen his desire to go, though.

Whatever, it couldn't be done and that was that. Well, unless he directed his re-education towards becoming a scientist or a soldier, both of which he really couldn't see himself as.

He was just trying to remember how to tell the telly to list the channels when a small chirrup sounded.

"Hub: Show door." Michael commanded instantly. The window popped up a small secondary image showing David - freshly suited and shifting nervously - standing outside the apartment's door.

Michael relaxed somewhat, but still got to his feet and slipped back into the more professional personality he'd shown yesterday. He left to open the door, then followed David back into the lounge. Harry watched them over the back of the couch.

"Hub: TV off." He ordered.

David offered a tentative smile. "Hi Harry. Shall we get down to business?"

Harry nodded. The night's sleep had settled him a bit, especially if he avoided thinking about everything he - and the world - had lost. It was oddly easy to just live in the moment, with only the occasional sucker punch of emotion sneaking up on him.

Well, until now, that was.

David moved around the couch Harry was on and tugged the other so it was semi-facing him, with the low table in between. He rested a slim briefcase on top, out of which he pulled the same glass-like thing he'd been using that day at the hospital. It must be some kind of mini-computer, since their watch-phones were a little too small to be useful PDAs.

"Okay." David said briskly, tapping away on it. "Now, one of the RDA CEOs wants to have a chat with you after this-"

"What about?" Harry interrupted, honestly puzzled. They'd let him out of the hospital, where it would have been easy to keep him if they'd thought there was anything interesting about him. Quarantine, inoculations, a reported vegetative state - easy. So if they hadn't, then...

"Probably about your status as a semi-human." David replied absently. If Harry had been drinking anything, he'd have sprayed it all over the man. "We've been keeping that aspect of you pretty hush-hush, as I'm sure you'd understand."

He looked up finally and frowned a little.

"Is... that a problem?" He asked hesitantly, probably because if Harry looked half as horrified as he felt, he wasn't a pretty sight.

"S-semi-human?!"

David winced. "Ah. That was meant in a completely non-derogatory way, of course." He apologised. "It's just, we don't really have a word for your species yet and your blood-work was strongly suggestive that your species was an off-shoot of humanity, rather than the other way around, so..."

Harry ducked his head and waved his hands, eyes closing as he scrambled to think.

"Wait." He said harshly. "You're telling me I'm... not human?"

David's eyebrows shot up, before he closed his eyes and made a short sound of pain..

"Oh, please don't tell me you didn't know." He groaned. "I am just screwing everything up lately, aren't I?" The question apparently rhetorical, he continued. "You're not not-human, you're just... a different type of human. Like.." His eyes moved as he thought quickly. "You know how people in different areas evolved slightly differently, creating different races of humans?"

Harry nodded silently. Yeah, kinda.

David smiled like he'd found the winning argument. "Right! Well your blood work basically shows that, plus a little more. Too differently evolved to be considered just a different race, but not so evolved as to be considered inhuman. Just - different."

"...Right." Harry answered, unable to stop himself shifting slightly into a more defensive position. Why hadn't he searched for his wand last night?

"And what does my... 'difference' have to do with your CEO?" He asked suspiciously.

David blinked.

"Well.." He replied, baffled. "History, technology, culture... you name it, the RDA'd like to know about it. I mean," he started grinning a little, as though the answer was so obvious as to be a joke. "you're not a mutant or anything. Your DNA indicates a stable, established pattern of development, which means you weren't a singular event. You have indicated yourself that you didn't set up your little resting place, and that things were added after you went to sleep, implying the involvement of others."

He shrugged.

"And we know of no other person in the world who bears your evolutionary traits, nor is there any record of any in the time in which we think you originated. So somehow a group of people existed outside of public record and had the capability to do what no-one else could - put a person to sleep for at least a hundred years and not have him age or die. We also suspect that they're the ones behind the sinking of Stonehenge and a few other unsolved disappearances."

He grinned again, open and eager.

"Frankly, Harry - we're fascinated by you. Even if all you can tell us is defunct now, we still really want to know."

Harry, for his part, just stared. Maybe some part of him had always believed that Muggles finding out would lead to disaster, because he found himself now struggling to grasp the fact that he wasn't already in a laboratory somewhere.

"And.." He swallowed. "And what purpose would that serve? What-" he floundered. "What could you possibly hope to gain? Power? Because-"

David eased back into his seat, setting his little computer down as comprehension softened his expression.

"You're afraid." He said softly. "Man, I hadn't even thought of that." He checked himself, shaking his head. "Which was stupid of me." He admitted. "I should have. If we have no records of you, it's probably because your kind were in hiding. Which would logically lead to a disinclination to be discovered."

He rubbed a hand over his face and grimaced apologetically.

"I'm sorry. Again. But seriously, you don't need to worry. Although we're burning with curiosity, we wouldn't have gone to all this trouble" he waved a hand at Michael, the apartment, Harry himself "if that curiosity was the creepy illegal type."

And, despite himself, Harry believed him.

Because he was right. As Harry himself had thought earlier, there were many ways in which they could have easily spirited him away from the hospital. But they hadn't.

And even though his first reaction to being discovered was still pretty close to outright alarm...

Well. What could it hurt? There were no wizards to punish him, or to be exploited by muggles. And even he was essentially neutered - assuming he could even find his wand - by the dying planet.

He swallowed.

"Okay." He said softly. David looked relieved.

"Great. And, uh, when you do have that chat with the CEO... maybe try to down-talk this whole foot-in-mouth thing I've got going on? I've got a review coming up."

Earth

They didn't take a car this time. David led them down to the tenth floor, which looked sort of like a glitzy subway station, except instead of walls papered in ads, there were walls covered in glowing holographic ads.

The liaison led the way to a small oval bubble-like pod, made of some sort of dark and shiny plastic. It opened automatically as they approached and David was quick to close it behind them again - right in the face of a startled woman.

Inside the pod was an oval, one-piece seating area which faced outwards. David leaned over it to tap at something in the center, then collapsed onto a well-padded seat with a sigh. Harry sat down two seats over and was vaguely surprised when Michael sat next to him, instead of looming off to the side.

Then the pod was moving, and the world lit up.

It was...

Incredible.

The carpet of lights he'd seen from his apartment was now more like an ocean. Above, below, around - everywhere he looked, images swum and glittered, words flickered and blurred together, a flock of blazing white doves morphed into a frothing, blue-green wave crashing against a golden beach.

It was crazy, and nonsensical and kind of garish. And yet, he couldn't take his eyes off of it.

David touched his arm once or twice, getting his attention. He pointed out a two-story woman on the other side of the pod, who leaned close enough to touch and pressed a perfect kiss to the outside of the plastic.

Harry swallowed. Her breasts had been... very realistic-looking.

A branded burst of cloud above them rained diamonds the size of his head. An ocean of bubbling-black pepsi-cola beneath their feet made him briefly nauseous. Some kind of animated cat bounced and sang silently. A smiling blonde woman placed a sparkling mask over a small, smiling blonde child. A tall man who shuddered and flickered, tossed a pointed ball into the air and stared at a point half a foot to the left of Harry's eyes.

By the time the pod slid smoothly into the dark cavern of another building, Harry was thankful.

The wonder had somewhat faded, buried under sheer sensory overload. Even now, as the pod slid to a halt and the three of them stood, he couldn't help but blink his eyes against the glowing lines remaining in his vision.

"You okay?" David checked, smiling a little, like Harry was either confusing or cute.

"Fine." Harry asserted firmly. He was neither, thank you. David nodded and lead the way once more as Michael fell back to shadow Harry.

The room they were in looked like a foyer, with a dozen black openings around the outside for other pods to glide in and out of. A round desk in the centre circled a cluster of elevators, which were only accessible once the desk personnel cleared you. The woman David led them to eyed Harry with open curiosity, but said nothing as they brushed their watches against the panel she pointed at. Once in the elevator, David explained that the security system was automated. Anyone without clearance got shocked, anyone without a watch attempting to pass was detected, security was summoned and the elevators wouldn't open.

The seven or so people at the desk were mostly just there to answer the phones and direct visitors, apparently. Harry found that difficult to believe.

As their elevator climbed, flashing past layer after layer of office space, Harry had to wonder just how much business they did that they needed seven receptionists on at one time.

Especially considering the foyer was deserted when they'd arrived.

Before long, the elevator stopped and opened onto another large open space, this one filled with tables and chairs.

"Dining level." David shared lowly, weaving through the mostly-empty furniture. An elderly waitress caught sight of them and hurried away. Harry followed David to an area sectioned off by potted plants. A handful of Michael-like men stood around like hired goons in crisp suits. Behind him, Harry felt his own Michael tense - a prickle of battle-ready energy at his back.

A bald man in a comfortable, expensive-looking suit stood up as the trio neared. He looked at Harry and smiled, a polite and welcoming expression. He ignored David and Michael both, holding out a hand to shake.

"Phil Maine, CEO of the Eastern division of the RDA." He introduced himself, his large hand warm and dry and it firmly shook Harry's.

"Harry Potter." Harry replied simply, as the man stepped back and gestured for him to join him at his table. He did so, even as he noticed the bald man's other hand flick his fingers in a dismissive gesture, something David obeyed instantly by leaving and Michael ignored utterly by staying.

"A pleasure." The man finished the greeting pattern, raising a finger to summon a waiter. "Would you care for anything? Fruit juice? Steak?"

Harry hesitated, but the bland slop of breakfast had left him hungry for something with actual taste.

"Perhaps some juice? Any kind." He answered politely, speaking more to the waiter than the CEO. He had sort of picked up the idea that in this time period, real food was an expense - and he didn't want to go and order orange juice or something and then later find out that orange trees were endangered.

"Same again for me." The CEO ordered. The waiter thumbed a thin bit of plastic the way Dudley used to text on his mobile phone - though the waiter did it with rather more dexterity - and left.

Harry glanced down at the large-ish sheets of plastic littering the tabletop. The transparent material seemed to be a replacement for paper, with each slip being interactive and digital and displaying all manner of things... but then why have so much of it? Why not just use one sturdy multipurpose one like David did?

"How do you like your apartment?" Phil asked suddenly. Harry looked up, feeling a bit awkward. His apartment suddenly felt like a very expensive gift, particularly now when faced with the giver.

"It.. it's good." Harry said weakly. "I, er, like the plants." He rallied a bit. "And the tv-window thing - that's pretty cool."

There was a pause. The waiter returned with two cold-frosted glasses containing a yellow-pink liquid, set them down and then left again.

"Uh, thank you." Harry added, wincing a little internally. He sounded like an entitled little snot, or an ungrateful one at the very least.

"I can pay you back for it, I think." He continued, whilst wondering if he actually could. If the world really was circling the toilet, an apartment in a building with aquarium walls and an indoor garden surely wasn't cheap.

"Oh no, no." The CEO dismissed him, sounded a little more at ease himself now that they were talking about money. "A little place like that is good write-off for taxes. Besides, inflation what it is right now - I'm not too sure you could, son."

"I have... some money." Harry protested. "I don't know how much, but..."

"You had some gold and gems, according to the official report." Phil interrupted, tapping one of the sheets of plasti-paper next to him. "Quite a good chunk of it too, but I'm very sorry to say that they just don't hold the same value now that they did in the 20th century. They have more value as belongings of yours than they do as raw materials in today's commodity market."

Harry deflated a little. It was one thing to wonder if he had enough money - it was another to discover that he really didn't. He found himself chewing his lip slightly, eyes lowered as he rapidly recalculated the situation.

"Son, it is not our intention to be threatening or intimidating." Phil continued, perhaps seeing the tension in him. Despite his words, his tone was strong - almost overbearing. "But the fact of the matter is, you need the RDA. You're alone here, in this time. By your own admission, nothing remains of your old world. We will gladly provide you with a home and education as part of our civic duty, but if you'd consent to helping us out a little in return, we'd gladly compensate you with a generous stipend. You wouldn't ever need to work, if you so wished."

The CEO paused, looked at him thoughtfully.

"It could be that you're worried that if you admit to being different from normal humans, we'll have you cut open in a lab before you can blink." He said calmly. Harry flinched.

The man chuckled.

"Son, I don't know what sort of things went on in your time, but we're a bit more advanced in this day and age. We already know that there's something about your DNA that isn't like everyone else. We also already know we can't replicate it. And there is nothing that cutting you open would solve."

He leaned forwards, hand clasped together on the table. Harry sat back a little.

"We just want to learn about you, about your history and your people." The man continued cajolingly. "It could be that what you know or what you can do can help us now or in the future. It could be that it can't. But regardless of that, or when you were born or your genetic makeup, you are still a citizen and have every right as such. We'd really like it if you could help us out, but we don't have any right to demand it. All we can do is ask - and offer incentives."

Harry sat completely back and wrapped his hands around his glass of juice. What the man across from him was saying sounded really good on the surface, but...

There was just something about him that rubbed Harry the wrong way. Something in the way he spoke too much, maybe. Something in the practiced body language but awkward words - though that might be just a total lack of needing to speak to teenagers prior to now.

Still, whatever was putting his back up, the fact remained: Harry wasn't in a lab somewhere, being promised freedom in exchange for co-operation. He was in a nice apartment, fully set up with access to food and education and being promised extra money for co-operation. He had been assigned a bodyguard who, despite working for the company, was dedicated enough to ignore one of the CEOs silent commands and stick around.

Maybe they were trying the 'honey over vinegar' approach, but the fact that they were even doing that was a point in their favour, surely?

And, in the end, what did Harry really have to lose in cooperating? Maybe, by sharing what little he knew of the situation, he could even help - even if it was only adding impetus to the muggles' own attempts to reverse the damage they'd caused.

Lifting his glass, he took a slow sip. It was a weird mix - something like pineapples and maybe strawberries or raspberries. More sharp than sweet.

"I was born in 1980." Harry said slowly, glancing from the plastic sheets to Phil Maine's sharp eyes.

"When I was eleven, I was invited to attend a boarding school for witches and wizards."

The man's eyebrows went up slightly, more in encouragement than surprise or disbelief.

"We learned all sorts of things." Harry continued carefully, testing his way along. "How to make potions that could re-grow all the bones in a limb overnight. How to turn someone into an animal. How to turn someone inside out."

He stopped, watching the CEO's expression. The man had years of experience over him, though. Harry couldn't read anything.

"We were a pretty small people, I think." He changed the subject a little, skirting the more violent aspects of magic. "We were hidden from the normal world by law, but we were governed by a ministry that was technically part of the muggle - the normal - government. I think. In reality, though, our ministry did whatever the hell they wanted."

"You sound a little bitter." Maine noted, leaning back himself and taking a sip of his own juice - apparently enjoying it more than Harry had.

"Well." Harry said quietly. "Corruption and incompetence were rife, though I didn't realise it till recently." He frowned. "I-I mean.." He stumbled over the words, as his treacherous brain reminded him that 'recently' was over a century ago and the ministry would never again be a problem.

"I know." Maine said quietly. "Please, continue."

Harry took a deep breath and obeyed.

"When... before I went to sleep. Like, just before. We were in a war, sort of. Not all-out like with armies and such, but there was a man who had a large group of followers and every one of them was as murderously evil as the next. They considered wizardkind to be the supreme beings of the world and resented having to hide. They wanted the muggles to either serve them or die or.. or something. I don't know. They didn't exactly put out a pamphlet."

The CEO's lips twitched.

"Not the most organised of terrorists?" He asked wryly. Harry looked up, considered, and smiled.

"No." He agreed. "But, maybe that was the way Voldemort wanted it. All 'pureblood' this and 'filthy muggle' that - nobody actually thinking about it, just obeying in the expectation that whatever they personally wanted would end up happening."

He shook his head.

"Anyway. This sort of thing was apparently normal for wizardkind. The wizards - in England, at least - were very insular. Not just living in secret but living entirely separate from the normal world. Their magic made everything easy - even the poor could live well, if not extravagantly - so they never really had much need to advance. Whilst the outside world made strides towards social self-improvement - using other nations as allies and competitors - the wizarding world just got more and more narrowly focused until they were basically blind to anything other than themselves."

He was drawing heavily from Hermione's rants, by this point. Once the 'war' had heated up, his best friend had been quick to point out that killing Voldemort would only stall it. Her passionate assertions that the real conflict was in their society breeding such extremists had fallen on mostly deaf ears.

The wizard-raised really were simple people at times. Good and Evil were reason enough for people to do what they did, now pass the pumpkin juice if you please.

Anyway, all that was neither here nor now. Literally.

"I ended up destroying Voldemort, with a type of magic that only I could access." Harry admitted in a rush. "And from what I understand, the leader of my side of the war had a contingency plan in place for when I did. Because I was the only one who could access that special power, I was..."

"Put on ice." Mr Maine concluded. "For the next time some evil wizard showed, I'm guessing?"

Harry nodded slowly, watching the man more closely than ever. This would be the time when he'd most expect to be carted off by needle-happy scientists.

"So why did you wake up now? Or was it our interference that caused it?" The man continued thoughtfully.

"It could be." Harry shrugged, unnerved by his almost disinterested tranquillity. "Although I'd wager that the only reason you even found me was due to the concealment spells failing. And they failed because..."

He hesitated, then continued. He wanted all cards on the table, right now. He didn't want to live in paranoia, always watching what he said just in case he hit the tipping point that got him locked away.

"Because all the magic in the world is failing." The words felt like rot, falling from his lips. It felt like there should have been some sort of leach of colour in the world around him as he spoke, some acknowledgement of the horror of what he was saying.

The CEO took another sip of his juice.

Harry continued, speaking faster now, angry at the man's unconcern.

"Magic is more than just a force we used to change the world and each other - it was more than glamours and sentient plants and unicorns and dragons - magic was... is..."

"'The excess energy of a thriving world.'" Maine recited calmly. "Or, so my top scientists have theorised... after being convinced that no, seriously, magic is real." The man cracked a small grin, inviting Harry to relax a little. But, on this topic, he just couldn't.

"That's right." He replied sharply. "The excess. Extra energy that wasn't needed for anything else. But, something happened to the world - something upset the system and the world stopped making excess energy, or rather - it started using everything it had just to survive."

"And so the plants and animals of the world that needed that energy to survive - including wizards - started dying, huh?" The man concluded again, as though he knew the subject just as well as Harry himself - or more.

"How do you..?" Harry began to ask. Phil just shook his head sympathetically.

"We've seen this before, son. Over and over. Somewhere in the world, something happens. I dunno, a heavy rainfall causes a lot of plants to grow. Or flooding leaves lots of patches of still water. Suddenly, all the plants and animals that feed or breed in that water don't have to fight for space anymore. Suddenly they have all the food and breeding space they could want, and their population skyrockets.

This might happen for only a season or it might go on for years, but one year the rain doesn't come. The floods don't repeat themselves. The water is all used up or dries out and suddenly there's too much life trying to exist on too little resources. Most of that life just dies out."

Harry stared at the man, wondering if he was honestly trying to sell the extinction of his race as just 'one of those things that happens'.

"Aren't you worried?" Harry blurted, unable to hold it in.

"About what?" Maine raised an eyebrow.

"About your own lives - your own species!" Harry stood sharply, his chair sliding back in a shower of angry red sparks that he didn't even notice.

Everyone else did.

"My kind died first, but yours will follow us eventually!" Harry raged. "You might not need the energy of the world to survive, but almost everything else on the planet does! Trees, animals - your food and air and drinking water are all part of a system that is dying, do you understand?"

The man just looked up at him, inhumanly calm - even a little bored.

"Yes, I do." He replied quietly. "Quite a lot of us 'muggles' do, in fact. Oh, we might not use the words 'magic' or 'energy', but we know very well that our planet is dying. We know that it has reached the point where it struggles to maintain basic ecological systems - we have survived as long as we have because we can build our own. We can import energy, in a way, to our world. It might not enter the planet, but it enters the systems that keep us alive."

Harry swallowed tightly and sat back down, not even realising that Michael had pushed his chair forward for him.

"Don't you care?" He whispered. "Don't you care that the world is dying?"

The CEO was expressionless. Harry waited for an answer that never came.

"Then what do you want from me?" He asked finally, utterly defeated. "That power I can access is nothing more than the energy of the world - not the excess on the surface, but the core of it. There's nothing I can do to fix this, not that you apparently even want to. So what do you want from me?"

Silence, then:

"I would like for you to continue living." The man answered at last. "I would like for you to learn as much about this new world as you can. I would like for you to work with us in the future, to hopefully find a solution that neither of us has right now."

There was another silence. Harry just felt hollow now, resigned. He may have slept through his people's death, but it seemed to be only a matter of time before he joined them. Then, only the muggles would be left - clinging to a dead rock in space, kept alive by their technology, their caricature of cleverness.

The man shifted a little, adjusted his expression into something resembling kindness.

"Try not to worry about it for now." He said soothingly, voice deepening. "The world might seem a bleak place, compared to what you're used to, but really we've made some pretty good strides towards repairing it already. Get McGregor to show you the Eco Activist Network - they've got a lot of groups working on preservation and restoration. Once you've settled in, you might find an area you can really make a difference in."

The CEO stood then, adjusting his suit and collecting his little plastic files. Harry just watched him, caught somewhere between utter contempt and bleak disinterest.

"Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today, Mr Potter." The man said formally, his bodyguards shifting around him in preparation to leave. "If there's anything else I can do for you, just let McGregor know."

Harry watched him leave, angry and upset and apathetic all at the same time.

David sidled back into view, visibly anxious.

"So, how'd it go?" He asked.

Harry closed his eyes and the glass held loosely in his hand shattered spectacularly.

"Oh." David said faintly. "That good, huh?"

Harry sighed, trying to ignore the juice soaking into his jeans.

"I just wanna go home." He muttered. He opened his eyes to David's understanding expression.

"Home it is." His liaison agreed, helping him up and brushing the fragments of glass to the floor, quickly checking his hand for cuts before leading the way to the exit. Harry didn't correct the man as to what he meant by 'home'.

He followed David silently out through the still-empty dining floor. The elevator that took them down was empty too, but the foyer was reasonably crowded when they exited at the bottom. Michael stepped up then, one hand wrapped around Harry's arm, the other ready to shove people out of the way (or snap their necks, whatever it was bodyguards did), following quickly behind David who skipped the queue for a transport pod and managed to snag them one to themselves again, this time to a chorus of angry voices.

The ride home was silent. The glare of holographic light made Harry feel sick, so he pulled his legs up onto the seat and tucked his head down until they reached their building.

As soon as they reached his apartment, Harry nodded apologetically to Michael and David both and went to his study, locking both men out. Alone inside the large room, he crossed to his desk and sat down behind it, eyeing a holographic image protected above the black glass surface. It was a replica of Hermione's letter which had, just as Harry had predicted, crumbled to dust at some point the night before.

Brushing his fingers through the intangible thing, missing the original already, Harry felt a contrary sense of peace.

There was freedom in resignation. Knowing that death was inevitable was sad, but it was also a relief. Knowing that there was nothing he could do for the world removed a weight from his shoulders that he hadn't even known was there. If there was nothing he could do, then it wasn't his job. Wasn't his fault. Wasn't his responsibility, last of wizardkind or not.

He was really about five seconds away from just curling up on the couch and letting himself go, something he was barely aware of and yet somehow knew he could do. With the world like it was, even a 'special' breed of wizard such as himself, fed directly from the core, could be cut off if he so willed it.

It was only an absent thought, a desire to see something green and living that had Harry make a command which would change his life - and the lives of everyone else on the planet.

"Hub: Show image: Pandora." He ordered. The hub chirruped as the window-tv displayed multiple images - only one of which was the moon-planet Pandora he had intended and not various boxes, women or advertisements for perfume.

Harry stood from his desk and moved to the window, tapping the image he wanted.

"Full-screen?" He asked, smiling a little when the hub obediently flooded the entire window with the insanely high-resolution image. Now, instead of looking out over a dying world, he was looking at a slightly-stretched image of a very much alive one.

He moved to the small one-man couch, pushed it against the far wall, then sat down to enjoy the view.

"Only scientists and grunts, huh?" He mumbled to himself. He'd spent 148 years sleeping - what was six more?

Earth

Yeah, I know that 'race' is now being argued to be a social construction and not a biological result of differing evolution (in any way beyond having red hair or brown eyes makes you part of the same race) but as a term that groups cultural and physical traits, I don't think it's going to fall out of fashion.