Trigger warning again for the same, but less, as in the last chapter. To those who are concerned, don't be. This story is mostly Gen. Harry's just young.

Also, pre-apologies for butchering another language. Part of it is on purpose (linguistic shift) but I will gladly accept corrections.

Avatar

The first coherent thought Harry has, as his head throbbed and his skin stuck in unpleasant places, was 'thank God I left the unobtanium at home'. Even before memories started slinking back in like hungover students pretending they've just been out for a morning jog, he knew he must've gotten hammered last night.

He dragged a hand up to his face and frowned as it bumped against something smooth and soft. Opening his eyes seems like a really bad idea so he prodded it instead.

Soft. Squishy. Fit nicely inside his hand. …Probably not something he should be touching.

He kept his eyes closed and let his hand drop away so just the backs of his fingers were brushing the squishy thing. This, he decided, was future!Harry's problem and promptly made it so by falling back asleep.

Earth

Future!Harry doesn't have a brain trying to slowly implode so when he wakes to a view of pert breasts above and a dude snuggling near his junk below, he's better equipped to handle it.

Sort of.

It's good, he tells himself, eyes fixed steadfastly on the softly fluttering skin at eye-level, to not be a virgin anymore. Even if his de-virginisation involved 200% more blokes than he ever thought it would.

Tentatively, he reaches for any memories that might be lurking about ready to mug him. Shamus had once re-enacted a drunken mishap with his fling of the month and a well-polished broomstick that had had the Griff boys howling with laughter at the time but which not even losing his virginity would make Harry be okay with doing himself. Hmm. No? No, nothing yet. Actually, hang on… He frowned as he made a bit more of an effort to remember something. Anything.

He did… he did actually have sex, didn't he? Didn't he?

…Maybe it'd come back with time. Oh, or maybe some occlumency could help him find it? Finally, an actual bloody use for the thing.

He chanced another look down. Buddy was sleeping with his mouth open, his warm and damp breaths not-unpleasant to experience. A guy, though. That, he hadn't seen coming. He'd never freaked out at the idea the way Dean used to, but he'd certainly never imagined it for himself either.

Experimentally, almost daring himself, he let his eyes slip down Buddy's naked form. He could admit to an… aesthetic appreciation, he supposed, of the other teen's slender limbs and wiry build. It was the same sort of thing he liked in girls. He didn't care about his pecs in the slightest but the defined abs were nice enough. Hairless. He could imagine rubbing off on them anyway, which he supposed was a little gay. The other boy's wedding tackle still grossed him out though. His legs weren't as hairy as Harry's own, but neither were they shapely like Mia's - which he could crane his head to see. Mia herself was nicer to look at even if she wasn't as pretty as Cho or as smooth-skinned as Ginny. Her hair was shorter than both, an angular sort of bob that was higher at the back than the front - stylish but functional. He liked longer hair better. Her belly was also the sort of defined that came from not-enough food and her breasts were good. Soft. Hah, probably the softest thing about her.

Having calmly talked himself through the initial freak-out period, he let his head lie back again. A twist of his wrist and a particular flex had his arm-phone light up with the time and date. It was a good 14 hours after he'd entered the Wild and in that time he had missed calls (13) and new messages for his three tags (241). He let it fade, mind ticking over what he needed to get done. He was flying to Japan in a few days and wanted to pick up something both a little more functional than his current wrist phone and more portable than his computer desk so he could continue working while he was away.

The Japanese had promised there'd be a suitable charging station for Amazon waiting for him but he wanted to pick up a portable conversion unit anyway, in case he went exploring and needed to plug her into the local grid. He'd need to authorise funding for his new medical research team and hell, maybe he should take some time and pay someone to outfit him with a more modern wardrobe while he was at it. The clothes the RDA had provided for him were fine, but simple. Suitable, but old-fashioned. A comfort at the time, now they just made him feel like he stuck out in a crowd the same way old-fashioned ignorant wizards used to stick out amongst Muggles. Amazon, too, only had the one set of clothes she'd been wearing when he'd first met her and her hair and skin had been damaged by the acid rain yesterday - not to mention her hand from shooting out the hospital cameras.

Oh yeah, he should probably send some repair/apology money their way too, before they sent the police to his door.

A deep breath from the belly below his head drew his attention upwards. Mia stretched, streaks of faint colour on her skin bringing him a flash of memory - powder in the air, underfoot, on people's bodies - before she opened her eyes and blinked sleepily at him.

"Morning." He greeted. She just nodded back, one hand scritching through his hair before settling into a a lethargic stroking motion. It felt nice and certainly not at all a 'holyshit why am I naked and why are you naked, argh!' thing.

A cushion thumped down onto Buddy's shoulder, swung by Mia's other arm. The short-haired teen startled awake with flailing limbs, one tangled under Harry's legs and pulling him up short.

"Oh." Buddy blinked a few times, licking the inside of his mouth with a grimace. "Ugh. Gross. Morning. Ugh. I can't feel my hand." He wriggled his arm out, bracing his other arm against Harry's thigh and apparently still unconcerned about being in a naked pile with another guy.

"Morning." Harry rolled with it. "So, hands up who remembers anything about last night."

Nobody raised their hand. After a moment, Mia's gloved hand stretched and contorted in an oddly purposeful way. Buddy grinned.

"Mia says she remembers 'some idiot' suggesting we go to a Wild." He translated, reaching for Harry's phone arm and tapping it until words started flashing up - words being spelled out by Mia's glove, Harry realised.

"You can't tell me it wasn't fun!" Buddy argued back, releasing his arm and stretching before rolling back to cuddle against Harry's legs. "And we've all still got our own organs and everything."

Idiot. Mia signed again, fingers of her other hand moving in pleasant circles over Harry's scalp as she kept 'talking'. We should probably get out of here before the sweepers come.

"Sweepers?" Harry asked sleepily, eyes falling closed under the light massage.

"Scavengers." Buddy clarified. "They come in after raids and pick up whatever's left. Unspent pills, body parts, forgotten property - whatever."

Privately, Harry wondered if Buddy and Mia would normally scavenging right alongside them. It was this thought - the reminder of their need - that had him offering:

"I need to get some things. Clothes, computer stuff. I could really use some help, though. You guys interested in being hired?"

Buddy looked up at him with a thoughtful frown.

"You don't need to pay us." He said simply. We like hanging out with you."

Mia swung for his head and missed, her arm too short. She huffed and spelled out words instead. We're also poor, moron. Say 'thank you Harry'.

Buddy rolled his eyes. "Thank you, Harry." He parroted.

'Although we'd hang with you anytime…'

"Although we'd hang with you anytime."

'We're not too proud to accept a job from a friend.'

"We're not too- why am I even saying this? He can read!"

Another cushion was swung, harder this time. Buddy yanked it away and lunged up and over Harry to wrestle a soundlessly-laughing Mia into submission.

Harry slid out of the pile of bodies and started looking for his clothes. He'd just pulled on his shirt when Buddy looked up and grinned deviously.

"What's your hurry?" The naked teen drawled, disentangling himself from his friend to back Harry against the wall. Looking down at him, head of spiked blonde-brown hair at waist-level, Harry was struck by another memory. Caught in it, he didn't protest as Buddy dove in for a reenactment.

It was even better the second time around.

Earth

They hit a tech store first, three teens still stinking of the Wild but with no storeperson daring to cross them with an Amazon-class bot following on their heels. Buddy and Mia knew a hell of a lot more about technology than he did, even after over a year of study. They took him to a high-end specialty store and nosed through their products with the superiority of experts.

Although Harry had upgraded his phone from the 'baby's first' version the RDA had given him, he was still been pretty middle-ground, tech-wise. He'd picked his arm-phone because it looked cool, was easy to stick on and he'd understood most of what it was capable of. Now, Buddy and Mia showed him several completely different models including one that was surgically implanted under the skin and could tap into the body's neural network to respond to simple thought commands; a gauntlet-like affair that was tougher with more capacity and hardware and a combination of eye lenses and fingertip sensors that could enable him to have a sort of virtual reality around him at all times. He could read messages projected directly onto his retina, powered by the basic electrical charge all bodies gave off at all times, and type or manipulate functions through the movements of his fingers alone.

Although they all looked awesome, he didn't want any surgery ("It takes ten minutes, baby.") and wasn't enthused about sticking things onto his eyes so after a couple of hours of trying things on and asking questions, he settled on a sleek gauntlet that covered his left arm completely from shoulder to fingertips. The outside was armored, the lining was breathable and the entire thing was built to resist emp and atmospheric caustic elements that often made replacing tech a necessity rather than a choice. A coating of expensive nanite-based paint allowed him to tweak the exterior colour at will, it could go without charging for weeks and secondary screens could be unfolded in addition to the basic inner-arm screen. After it was paid for, Mia and Buddy led him outside and down about seventeen levels to where the store's garbage outlet fed into a sealed industrial collection point - where they showed him the other features of the gauntlet.

A couple of home-brew programs were copied over and a thin cord connected from the gauntlet to the hi-tech dumpster. The program ran, the codes were lifted and the seal cracked open. Inside, all kinds of tech garbage - whole, broken, boxed and unboxed - were revealed.

"There was a problem with the homeless and theft." Buddy explained, running a practiced eye over the contents as Mia kept a look out. "So locks became standard and most companies sell their garbage now - even food scraps. It doesn't make enough for them to sink serious credits into their security though, not so long as people like us don't get caught and don't make a mess."

"What do you do with it all?" Harry wondered, reaching up to take what Buddy handed him.

"Sometimes we fix 'em but mostly we just extract the metals and chems of value. It takes a while to get enough to be worth anything and you gotta be careful when you do it, but. It's a living."

Harry just nodded, accepting and glad to be let in - even just that little bit. He felt closer to them in this moment than even waking up naked together - and not just because he was probably now an accessory to a crime.

This was how it was, to be alive in a time that didn't care about you. This was what survival looked like. This, was what trust looked like.

He helped them carry the choicest selections to a stash and followed them on throughout the city. The smoggy sky overhead brightened and darkened and brightened again as his feet ached and he learned how to cut digital, mechanical, closed-loop and even old-fashioned locks in every way his friends knew how. They cut through sealed-off under-ways and slipped into prohibited areas like ghosts. Sometimes they stole things but mostly they just taught him what to watch out for, who to skirt and when to run - what security looked like in the modern day and how to block or evade it.

Another homebrew program taught his gauntlet to generate disruptive radio waves that would stop his face from being recorded, even if the resulting garbled image was so completely unsubtle that it would draw attention immediately. They showed him how holograms could store underlying messages used by street people to stay in touch out from under the government's ever-watching eye. A woman advertising a string of pearls might have blue eyes instead of brown - a sign to someone watching for it. If a hologram flickered it could mean physical damage to the projector, sloppy use by amateur cutters or a nesting virus that was degrading the original data. He learned when and how to safely 'plug in' (even wirelessly, which had fallen out of fashion among the security-conscious) and how to protect himself from inevitable attacks - at least until he could get to a professional cleaner.

They stopped by a bot repair shop and got Amazon's skin and hair replaced at steep cost while the three of them browsed a holographic catalog for new clothes to outfit her. Mia leaned towards slutty, Buddy to conservative and Harry just laughed as they bitched at each other and tried to win him over.

He wasn't laughing when it was his own turn. With basically unlimited credit, Mia and Buddy both went a little crazy. They relished in their power over the staff, sending them scurrying for this item in that size, no, a size smaller, no, a different colour, no, don't you have it in spun carbon-leather what is this, a ten credit store? The only saving grace was that Harry hardly had to try anything on since a 3-d hologram of himself could swap clothes instantly and he just had to test for comfort once he saw something he liked.

In amongst all this, he found time to put his new gauntlet to use and organised funding for his new researchers, appointed a manager and answered their questions. As evening fell and he finally caught up on the most urgent parts of his workload, he treated the three of them to the most expensive spa in the city. It was a first for all of them and as they lay on beds of warmed, tumbled gemstones with gold-flecked ointments painted onto their bodies and inconspicuous masseuse limbs curling up from the floor to melt their minds and bodies, secrets spilled freely.

Buddy told him about his mother, a woman who'd worked as a prostitute and taught herself to cut on the side, using her clients' digital wallets as practice. Buddy had spent the first several years of his life in her tiny room at the brothel until management had gotten insistent about him earning his keep. He'd never told his mother that the manager had been 'charging him rent' for years beforehand.

Before they could force the issue, she'd caught something serious from one of her clients. They were supposed to be screened first, but money or human error had let one through and per company policy, she'd been given a small bonus for her trouble and turned out onto the street, her son in tow. She'd rented their section at first and worked the streets to make ends meet, only to find it was a much rougher scene than she was used to. There was no health screening, no security against violent clients and no 'pay upfront' mentality. She was knocked around, robbed and raped more than a few times. She was stubborn though, and eventually she taught Buddy how to cut wallets and started bringing him with her. He'd hide nearby and, while his mother serviced some stranger just meters away, he'd hack into their funds and siphon as much as he could before the automated security caught him. It was terrifying, Buddy recounted, he could remember how his hands shook and made him mess up sometimes. The sound of his mother being used made him flashback to his own abuse and sometimes the mark's wallet would shrill and alarm - and his mother would take the brunt of their anger as Buddy fled with the evidence.

Boxy had come along nine months after they finally got enough to buy their section. His mother had never said, but Buddy had a suspicion that someone had paid her to deliberately bear their child for them. One of the ways to avoid the laws against 'excessive' childbirth but still leave your genetic legacy was to adopt an unwanted child of a prostitute. If they grew up to look just like you, nobody ever commented on it. Another, cheaper way was to deliberately impregnate a worker without bothing with compensation because prevention of children was legally the obligation of the carnal service provider. Failure to do so would financially ruin the mother while the father was given first choice to accept the offspring.

He didn't know why no-one had ever come to collect his little sister. Sometimes he worried that one day someone would. His mother had died not long after childbirth, her body worn away by the lifestyle and the pollution. She'd left him with a baby sister and a section to live in, some middling skill at cutting wallets and more experience at working the street than any kid should have.

It should have been no surprise that he found himself following in her footsteps, using his body to get what he and Boxy so desperately needed. He'd been thirteen and on his knees when he'd met Mia - a wild thing with tangled hair and a knife she'd sunk deep into his customer-of-the-moment before pulling him away. It turned out that the guy was a serial murderer of streetwalkers - one who wasn't fussy about witnesses. The police sure didn't give a crap about him so those in the know just avoided him and those who didn't, died. Mia had saved his life and put her own at risk if she was ever caught.

He'd taken her home, hidden her. With her hair cut and cleaned up, she looked different enough to her description that they managed to stay off the radar. As time passed, his cutting worked less and less - basic security was outstripping his knowledge - but Mia knew people who could teach them to keep up or sell them pre-made programs. It cost, a lot, but between the two of them they brought in enough money to make it worthwhile.

The rest of their life, up until meeting Harry, had just been a drive to survive. They'd gotten better at cutting and scavenging both, until they hardly ever needed to sell themselves anymore. Buddy worked especially hard to get Boxy access to the edu-programs that he'd never had as a kid, hoping to get her the qualifications necessary for trade school or even general schooling if he could save up enough or she could get a scholarship. His dream was for her to never need to live like he had, like Mia had.

Mia, being without her glove and thus unable to talk, had waved her permission for Buddy to share what he had but refused to even try adding anything extra. Harry wondered if her dream was to be able to afford basic medicine or surgery to fix her voice. He resolved to deposit a lump sum into their accounts before he left the country, something he should have done months ago instead of dithering over how it would change things or worse.

In return, he shared bits of his own life. Not everything, not by a long shot but for the first time in his life he gave voice to what it was like to be so actively despised every day of his young life. How he used to live every day in fear - fear of making noise, of having done a chore wrong, of doing too well or too poorly in school, of eating too much, of drawing attention from well-meaning teachers or even going outside because his cousin and his gang had free reign to attack him.

He talked about how wizard school had been an escape, at first wonderful but like a creeping nightmare, increasingly terrible. First year had been an adventure but second year - with Lockhart so quick to obliviate - had given him chills about what might have been done to him and concealed after the fact - and not just by Lockheart. Plenty of adult wizards had hated him and had him alone in a room with them at one point or another. Could he ever trust his memory again? It was something he'd had to avoid thinking about, not having anyone close enough he could go to with his concerns and not daring to ask to be tested - just in case they found something. Now, of course, that option was closed to him forever. He'd always wonder and, if something had been done, there'd never be any justice because everyone but him was long gone.

He spoke about the murder of Cedric Diggory and his Godfather, the war that had followed swiftly after and his own betrayal by the grandfatherly puppetmaster who saw him as a thing to be used for the good of all, at cost of his own life.

He even spoke about the Rebirth Project Madeline had shown him and his instinctive rejection, his continuing conflict over it and the shame he felt at having compromised himself so easily the second he wanted something - even if that something was medical help for a friend.

There wasn't much Buddy or Mia could do or say to make that shame go away, but Buddy sympathised and Mia reached out to hold his hand.

As the ointment was washed from his body and other treatments steamed, vibrated, massaged and soaked impurities away… he felt like the weight of his past was taken with it. As he left the spa with light steps and tingling skin, Mia and Buddy both taking his hands in theirs, he felt better about his present and even his future too.

He felt good.

Earth

The plane to Japan had been smoother and faster than he'd expected. His chair had converted into a bed and the next thing he knew, he was waking up to brilliant sunlight out the window-wall and actual stretches of blue sky.

He stepped out of the plane and down wood-lined steps, flanked by aircraft staff and followed by Amazon. Ahead of him, at the end of a small carpet and before a glossy car with no visible wheels, the Japanese Ambassador - Kenji - was waiting. Slightly behind him were two Japanese ladies, one dressed extremely formally in what seemed to be a classical Japanese outfit and one in a more modern suit-dress.

"Ah, Harry!" Kenji greeted with a grin, familiarity coupled with a deep bow. "Nihon e yōkoso. Welcome to Japan. It is good to see you in person. Thank you for coming."

"Good to be here." Harry bowed back. "I have to admit, I'm excited. The idea of colonising Pandora is head and shoulders above what the RDA are doing and I can't wait to see how I can help make that happen."

Kenji beamed. As the flight staff fell away from them, he stepped slightly to the side and gestured the formally-dressed girl forward. The girl was about Harry's age, maybe a little older, with long blue-black hair pulled up into a complicated-looking style with several long pins stuck through it. Some of the pins had dangling glittery things on them that chimed softly as she moved.

The girl shuffled forwards with dainty steps before bowing deeply.

"Hajimemashite. Yuuki to moushimasu. Douzo yoroshiku onegai shimasu."

Before Harry could do more than begin to bow back, she looked up, dark eyes shining slightly with mischief. He straightened along with her as Kenji stepped back in.

"Harry-sama, tsumaranai mono desu ga, this is Yuuki. She represents the grace and sophistication that is Japan. Please accept her. Yuuki, kore wa Harry Potter desu. Anata wa kare ni zokushite imasu. Kakuninshitekudasai."

"Kakunin sa remashita." The girl replied. "Owner recognised and encoded. Good morning, sir. I hope to serve you well."

"Nice to meet you, Yuki." Harry nodded, looking at her in a fresh light as he realised she wasn't a girl at all - she was a robot, like Amazon but somehow… more human.

"Kojin-bo?" He questioned expectantly. Yuki nodded, heart-shaped face dimpling with a slight smile. "Yes sir. Kojin-Bo Line 18, custom build nadeshiko-12. I have been customised with a range of nodes for your convenience and can adapt to any need you might have."

A perfectly-calculated combination bow and dainty step to the side and the beautiful girl-robot slid away from the centre of his attention, falling back to flank him the same way Kenji's kojin-bos flanked him. Attentive and beautiful yet somehow invisible.

"Thank you." He accepted Kenji's offered hand, half bowing over it as they blended greetings from a different time and place. Kenji's bow was fractionally, precisely, lower. "I'm honoured by such a thoughtful gift." He rose, stifling the urge to bow lower in response to Kenji's subtle deference. He was British, competitive courtesy was practically their national sport.

The two of them chatted easily as they moved away from the airdeck, Harry completely at ease in his skin and position. He'd come a long way from the shunned and stunted boy of Privet drive, in no small part to the now-global infamy that made his Boy Who Lived status look like a high school popularity contest.

They took a sleek flying craft - more like a sports car than the wasplike duo-copters back home - over the city as Kenji proudly pointed out his country's many achievements.

Japan had lost a great deal of coastal land after the sea level rose and had literally fought a war to keep their territorial waters (and thus exclusive economic zone) at a pre-rise distance. Their cities, already at critical mass, had expanded in the only directions they could - up and out over the ocean.

What used to be four islands was now artificially one, ringed by a glittering construct of sea-resistant alloys, high-tension wires and not-glass that housed the majority of Japan's population - particularly those who didn't inherit a family home on the mainland. Anchored to the seabed in some places, floating on the surface in others and even suspended in mid-air, UmisoraPrefecturewas a marvel of engineering and determination.

In amongst the glittering blue-black metal, greenery was frequently visible. Rice fields filled connecting semi-circles that stabilised corners or ran alongside long stretches of walls and open areas like gigantic, terraced garden beds. In some sections of the ring, it would be possible to stand under open sky or look out the window and never even see the ocean.

Kenji pointed out sections of deeper water that contained hydro-power plants and raised sections that caught wind and solar. Japan was one of many countries that was still dependent on nuclear power but they supplemented it wherever possible with anything else they could get. Large sections of the ring were designed to be self-sufficient, even detachable in case of emergency or attack and all of it was designed to negate or reduce the damage done by tidal waves.

On land, most of the habitable areas had been turned over to food production with the exception of some historical areas and most capital cities. It was in Japan, Kenji boasted, that today's hyper-skyscraper technology had been developed. Seeing the massive, interlinked monolithic structures coming swiftly closer, Harry believed it. Older than anything he'd seen back home but also cruder for it, the upright expansion was less glamorous than the oceanic expansion by far. Resembling some sort of insecticide hive because of all the interlinking supports, it cast a deep shadow over everything to the west of it and was lit from within by tens of thousands of tiny glowing windows.

The aircraft flew under and over the connecting tunnels, affording Harry a view of glass-topped parklands in almost every one, before gliding to a halt in an interior hangar.

There was another small delegation waiting to meet him, one white-haired old man with a younger one standing at his elbow. Kenji made introductions then fell back with practiced ease. The elder man, Nao, was the chief of the Interplanetary Colonisation department and Ryo was the planned successor.

Unlike the GLF that took him on only the most cursory tour before getting down to what they wanted, Nao showed him dozens upon dozens of projects his division was working on with apparently genuine - almost boyish - delight.

"The greatest obstacle to colonisation, the RDA claim, is Pandora's air." Nao lectured as they walked over a section dedicated to large-scale atmospheric processing. "In truth, this is a trifling matter. It already possesses as much oxygen as Earth - it just also contains as much carbon dioxide and toxic levels of hydrogen sulfide, both of which we can easily filter."

They moved on to a lab full of various types of materials and long, rifle-like machines.

"The true problem of course, is the radiation." A touch of his hand and a nearby screen began to silently demonstrate the purpose of the rifle machines - they shot concentrated radiation beams at various materials to measure the result.

"Iodine supplements are a flawed solution," Nao continued "causing as many problems as it solves and while this might be the only choice for soldiers tramping through the undergrowth, it is not a reasonable, sustainable strategy. The RDA's base is also… clumsy. It incorporates little shielding beyond thick concrete walls and its people suffer for it. They scurry underground when the radiation storms hit and rotate their people out before minor lesions become life-threatening sickness. If we are to colonise Pandora, we must solve this problem before taking even one step off-world."

They moved on to scaled examples of ideal structures. Each was built with different materials, each was designed to pair beauty and function. Only one was built under a dome-like construction similar to the GLF's Utopian design but a few had smaller 'bubbles' built around all windowed areas "So that people may open their windows and feel a breeze". They were arranged from least to most expensive to build and transport, from polyethylene-lined ("secondary radiation is a problem") to large-scale magnetic shielding ("exceptionally expensive but it tests very well. Of course, it is easily disrupted by mundane means"). Some designs called for every surface, including windows, to be 100% resistant to even rad-storm level radiation which only happened once or twice a year. Others were almost comical with large shielding 'umbrellas' designed to take the brunt of heavy radiation so that the dwellings below could be made more cheaply. One even offered retractable buildings that could sink below-ground during storms or when under attack from larger wildlife.

"The problem facing all possible solutions, has become transport." Nao finished up regretfully. "Concrete, the poor man's choice, requires almost nothing to be brought from Earth. Most ingredients can be sourced locally, even if it does not provide the best protection. Every ounce of weight can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of transport and of course, the RDA has exclusive mining rights so there will be little to no end profit to balance such a venture. It is… difficult."

"So why build from scratch?" Harry asked absently, certain there was a reason. "Why not build underground or inside a mountain? Then you'd only need shielding for the windows and entry points, right?"

"Nazenai tashikani?" One scientist asked another.

"Kiki o yusō suru tame ni amarini mo kōkadeshita." The other replied before turning to Harry. "That would be ideal. We have also considered sub-oceanic residences anchored in the seabed. Unfortunately, the costs of transporting the equipment needed to build such things would be… impossible."

"Also, the RDA control all transport." The first man chipped in with the strongest accent Harry had heard thus far. "They would not permit any machinery that could potentially be re-purposed to mine."

"So, how can I help?" Harry wondered. As impressive as the whole tour had been, it hadn't really had anything to do with his magic or his resources. He didn't have the money to finance such a trip and none of the researchers seemed particularly interested in the plant samples the GLF were obsessing over. Probably other departments would be, but then why had the Interplanetary Colonisation department elbowed their way to be first in line to meet him?

Nao grinned broadly, eyes wrinkling almost enough to obscure them entirely.

"Let me show you."

A silky-smooth train took them down several levels and over to a secondary supporting tower.

"My niece, Hana, works here." Nao explained. "She is, hm, intern. Unpaid. She hopes to prove herself to earn a paid position. As intern, she has no head of department to speak to you of her findings but I think you will wish to see them."

As Hana's Uncle, Harry gathered, the man could bridge the odd cultural barrier that would otherwise prevent the two from meeting.

Hana was a round-faced girl with the odd smeared scarring that Harry had come to learn was from being caught out in one of the more severe acid rain showers. Japan, he was vaguely aware, often suffered fallout of the pollution of their neighboring countries. It was a polarising topic that had tv-pundits predicting an Asianic war within the next decade.

Hana herself seemed extremely shy, bowing almost constantly like a nervous tic. Her eyes jittered away from meeting Harry's and after after squeaking out a polite greeting, she seemed content to fade into the background as her Uncle espoused her work.

And her work… oh, Merlin.

"Arithmancy." He breathed, dusty memories of Hermione pouring over number charts and predicting the future with a certainty she'd mock were it based in any other method coming to mind. Of course unlike with entrails, fire or crystal balls, Arithmancy was also used in the calculation of new spells and rituals. It could be used to help build new ones from the ground up or (as more traditional wizards scoffed) a new spell or ritual was created first and then refined or tested through arithmancy to reduce the incidents of casters randomly turning themselves inside-out. Most commonly, it was used in the creation of ward schemes to ensure that all runes, anchors and lines were mathematically stable and synergetic.

That last one was the direction Hana was going in.

So far as Harry was aware, there had been almost no interest in the little bits and pieces of knowledge about ancient artifacts and anchored spells that Harry had let slip into the world. After all, when there wasn't enough magic to power them - who cares? They may as well be pure fiction. Hana, by contrast, seemed to care about nothing else. Notepads, books, datasheets, PDAs, portable floating holograms and even scribbles on the walls - it was everywhere. Here, a blueprint for a obelisk with scribbled notations in three different languages all over it, links drawn between runes and hieroglyphs and what even Harry could tell was speculative calculations on the significance of their placement. There, a 3-dimensional holographic model of a Celtic knot, the numerical meanings of each measured twist and turn floating around it. There was even, he was startled to see, a spread of pictures and information about Stonehenge - both as he knew it and as it was now.

"It began as a study on how you were preserved." Nao nodded, following his gaze. "But the more Hana uncovered, the more possibilities there seemed to be. Look, here, this one. Do you know it?"

Harry tore his gaze away and looked where directed. It was another stone circle, nothing like Stonehenge except for the 'stone' bit. This one was a physical miniature replica, surrounded by digital and physical images of hundreds of other stone circles. A frustrated hand had scrawled 'Nine, nine, nine! Why nine and not seven?!' over a series of pictures stapled together. Another picture of what seemed to be just an empty field said something incomprehensible but with '18 = 9 x 9?' scribbled at the end.

"Not really." He had to admit. "We studied some major magical landmarks in History of Magic but so far as I know, we haven't actually used any of them since the Dark Ages."

"Yes!" Hana broke out of her wallflower state for half a second of enthusiastic contribution. "I read-!" Seeming to realise her mouth was open and sound was coming out, she shrank back.

"You read?" Harry prompted. He felt a smidge of irritation at the whole shyness routine. Ginny had used to invoke the same thing, to a lesser degree. He just hadn't dared act on it when her big brother was his best mate.

"A-ano… I read in your biography, the history of your people…"

Harry stared at her blankly, waiting for her to specify what she meant. Like he'd had time to actually read his own biography? He'd skimmed the personal stuff to make sure nothing too embarrassing went out but that was it.

"It… it mentioned the previous time this happened…" Hana continued haltingly, eyes cast down. "When the magic… stopped. The Dark Ages."

Harry carefully controlled his expression. That was news to him.

"'Many peoples vanished. Many gateways closed.'" The girl quoted. "'Wisdom and trade were lost. Muggles suffered without their Masters and Wizards became few and fleeting things.' I thought, ano, if magic lost now means Wizards are gone and you cannot perform magic like before - maybe things were lost last time too! This word, 'peoples'. And the one 'vanished'. Not dead, 'vanished'." She faltered, cheeks flushing red around the white of her scarring.

"I… I thought, maybe, the words were important."

"Yes…" Harry agreed absently, moving forward to scrutinise her work more closely. "They tend to be. With Wizards."

Holy buggering Merlin. If there was ever a time he could just kick himself for sleeping through History, now was that time. It hadn't all been Goblin rebellions of course and he actually did remember a little something of what she was talking about - but not enough to be useful. Just that there had been other peoples, once upon a time. They were lost, things were bad and then BOOM! The age of Hogwarts and the millennia of 'modern history', coincidentally full to the brim of turmoil and rebellions they'd be tested on later.

And words were important. A mispronounced spell could have hilarious and terminal results which put most surviving wizards into the habit of verbal precision in all things.

And these stone rings… he'd known there were hundreds in the UK alone but on the walls were pictures of places all over the globe. His gaze slid to the more detailed examination of Stonehenge. The runes were gibberish but ironically, his Muggle education was coming through for him. They'd done a project on it in primary school and from that, he knew that innermost of the ring was a circle of chalk pits. There were a lot of theories about why which just meant nobody really knew.

But most importantly… he knew that what he was looking at, was wrong.

"It's changed." He realised.

"Yes!" The girl spoke up again. "Our own historical records almost never mentions it and when they do, they call it vandalism or damage from seismic disruption - but the changes are too distinct. Many pieces are missing, yes, but those that remain? No chips or cracks or evidence of damage. Almost all the lintel stones are present but no longer rest upon the standing stones. It is as though the site was deliberately changed. De-constructed. Or maybe… reconfigured."

Reconfigured. A site of magical power, adjusted to do something different.

"You were right, Nao-san." He folded his hands behind his back to stop them trembling. "This is very interesting. Thank you for showing me." He turned, taking in the girl's - Hana, that was her name - blossoming delight and Nao's cat-got-the-cream satisfaction.

"Miss Hana. I would be very grateful if you could forward your research to me as soon as possible and please, do not hesitate to let me know if there is anything I can provide you to assist. Nao-san, thank you for drawing this to my attention. Again, if there is anything I can help with… please let me know."

Nao nodded, eyes gleaming.

"I most definitely will, Mister Potter."

Earth

Three months later and Harry was lounging back on the top deck of an ocean-skimmer. Sort of a cross between a high-speed luxury yacht and a mass-transit system, it ran as smooth as a broomstick even in the height of a storm. His private section was like a stretched glass bubble of unparalleled sky and ocean views with mixed garden beds and daybeds lining the edges, spa and entertainment units in the middle.

He shifted to lean more against the glass, data pads scattered around him and an old-fashioned book in his lap. Yuki knelt on the floor beside him, reporting on all accounts she was linked into and converting his resulting orders into various emails and internal phone calls as her impossibly delicate fingers stroked and massaged his bare feet. Somehow, she made a normally slogging chore into something easy and fun, making him laugh as she turned dry statistics and revenues into interesting facts. Her voice slipped from formal to familiar, flirty and demure and so perfectly human that Harry found himself forgetting she wasn't for hours at a time.

He'd have thought her chameleon software would have made Amazon look even more the soulless Terminator-esque bot she was but somehow even Amazon seemed to have unwound a little. Part of that was probably because Yuki had obtained permission to 'maintain' her, which meant Amazon was sitting on the daybed with him in short-shorts and a shiny tank top instead of her factory-standard clothing. Her feet were bare too, one tucked between him and the window (knee poised to shove him out of the way of an attack)and the other slipped under his leg. He knew Yuki could be slaved to Amazon in an attack, her body wielded as an extension of his bodyguard's to preserve his life, but he wondered if there wasn't a touch of the same thing going the other way, softening Amazon's razor edges.

Now, when he slept, one or both bots 'slept' at his side. If the other stayed active, they moved or shifted like a real person instead of just standing stock-still like Amazon used to do. Yuki had a hobby for Merlin's sake, folding delicate pieces of paper into various shapes - not following a pre-programmed pattern but teaching herself through trial and error. The sound of the paper rustling beneath her fingers as she sat plugged into her charger became a familiar lullaby sending him to sleep.

After Japan, he'd made pit stops in multiple countries. In Russia he finally gave the green light for labs to attempt to clone-grow some magical species for the purpose of finding the 'magic gene' and as a side effect, procuring some extinct potion ingredients. They'd sold him with the idea that if they could isolate what made a species magic, it might be able to be tweaked to require less and thus all sorts of species could be returned to the world.

Including perhaps his own people.

China took a solid two months of his life, showing him around places where they believed there may have been magical people at one time. If there were, they'd been better at hiding than the British. Harry hadn't found anything but the occasional haunted building, doors that opened into nightmare reflections of the dwelling he'd been trying to enter and what could only be termed 'echoes' of power.

Fuxian Lake in particular held the ruins of what might once been home to Wizards, but long long before even his time. A variety of 'magic mirrors' that reflected impossible patterns also proved to react strongly when he fed magic into them but despite all of their best efforts, nobody could work out what their purpose was. Part of Harry wondered if the magic of China had just never been hidden the same way as in Europe, so when it dried up, the Muggle country had just grown into the space it left without pause.

From there he'd boarded the skimmer that took him out through the UAE (which had been amazing, nothing but sophisticated island-arks of self-sustainable housing, commerce and industry) and over the Saudi sea that now covered the linking land between Africa and Asia. He'd touched base in what was left of France and hunted for Beauxbatons without success before finally starting the last leg of his journey.

Home.

Earth

Next chapter will be a bit shorter than this one and should be out in another week or so, depending on if I'm moving house. Please don't hesitate to provide genuine criticism, I am well out of practice and know that I need to get better. :)