A/N: Neither myself, nor this story, are dead yet.

Chapter 23 Technomagi

Harry stood, invisible and frowning, wand twirling between his fingers. He was a distance away from what he assumed was the werewolf camp in the middle of the Bialowieza Forest. He assumed that fact due to the perimeter of the wards he had stumbled upon. The Polish government, at least the magical side, indicated no magical sites this deep into the forest. That left Greyback's pack as the logical choice as to the wards existence. The circumference of the ward perimeter indicating he was about a mile from the center of the camp; if all that fancy math he had done in his head was correct of course.

The wards were good. If he had to guess he would say they were Mulciber's work. The Death Eater ward builder probably did all the carving and proper sequences, and gave it to Greyback to set it up. As long as the careful instructions were followed to the letter, even a brute like Greyback could set up temporary wards. After all, Mulciber did all the hard work. All that would be needed is placing the runes in the proper places and pouring power into them. And what the werewolf alpha lacked in brains, he made up for in brawn and raw power.

Harry was eager to start the analysis of the warding scheme, and begin the process of breaking it down layer by layer, but that would have to come later. He had to set up his own camp, which would undoubtedly take several hours to set up. By then, night would be falling and he had to make sure he was up tomorrow morning and at the nearby church to meet with the Russian agent dropping off another mission's intel.

Harry spotted a nearby grouping of trees with thick crisscrossing branches. That's where he was going to set his camp, above the ground where he wouldn't be in the way of any werewolves running amok if the mission took too long and he found himself still gathering intel by the next full moon.

Plus building a tree fort would satisfy an early childhood fantasy of his. When Uncle Vernon had spent hundreds of dollars getting a professionally built tree fort in their backyard. Only for the rope ladder leading up to it to snap under Dudley's weight the first time his cousin had tried climbing it, spraining the obese child's wrist. Of course, if Dudley wouldn't, or rather couldn't, use the tree fort, than neither could Harry. The tree fort had sat unused through two summers before Vernon had hired someone to tear it down. Such a waste.

Harry looked the trees over, found the one that seemed the easiest to climb and got to climbing. He had a tedious several hours ahead of him.

Harry surveyed the inside of the church. He had only ever been in one church before, the one in Little Whinging the Dursleys dragged him to almost every Sunday. He didn't know if his relatives were actually religious, or just trying to maintain their image in the community. Given he rarely saw them follow any of the principles of being an Anglican, he assumed the latter. His forced attendance to church did nothing to appeal the religion to him, and his lack of interest in religion in any form stayed the same even upon discovering the magical version of Christianity. Despite the interest the discovery of magical religions initially peaked in him.

This church looked similar enough to it in its design. He wondered if you could say that about all churches.

There was only one other person in the church, sitting in the first pew on the left side. He assumed two things. The first was that the person was a female. It could of course also be a guy with long, thick hair who really put in the work to make sure his hair looked great, but Harry thought female seemed more likely. The second was that this was his contact because, again, this was the only other person there. He was two minutes past the set meeting time, and there was no one else in the church. Who else could it be but his contact?

Unless his contact was hiding somewhere watching him like some kind of weirdo. Or this was an ambush and he was about to be in a fight for his life. With that thought he slipped his wand into his hand, better to be safe than sorry after all.

He approached down the center aisle, eyes sweeping the area around him. He reached out with his magic, to see if he could detect any latent magic in the air outside of the simple muggle-repelling wards he had detected before entering.

There was none.

Harry moved in front of his contact, eyes widening.

"Penelope?"

Harry dropped the concealment charm he had cast on his face.

"Hello Harry."

Penelope Clearwater was an unexpected sight.

"Wait, are you the Russian agent working on the case with me?"

"Are you seriously asking if I'm a Russian agent?"

"Is that a trick question?"

"No you dolt. The agent couldn't make it. Caught up on the other assignment they're working. I am here on behalf of the Russian government though."

"So they have you in Russia?"

Penelope nodded her head, patting the pew next to her. Harry sat.

"Dolohov's extended family is part of the Russian oligarchy. Publicly they're taking a neutral stance in the war and expressing outrage at the Death Eaters' government takeovers, but we have intel they're privately recruiting and training purebloods for the Death Eater cause. My cover is the youngest daughter of a minor pureblood family. I got a job as an assistant in their Law Enforcement department, where Pavel Dolohov, heir to the Dolohov family, is second in command."

"That's your cover? What the hell, my cover was some random maintenance man."

"At the French Ministry right? I heard your cover was blown and you really messed that one up."

Harry holds up his hands in the universal hold up gesture.

"First of all, my cover was blown because I was betrayed. I got sold out to the Dragon Mafia by one of our Ministry workers for some extra galleons. Made a bit of a bollocks of the entire thing. Second of all, Voldemort showed up to the meeting. I'd like to see how you'd do in that situation. And the Don of the Dragon Mafia was captured, so the alliance between them and the Death Eaters didn't happen. That's a mission accomplished right there."

Penelope rolled her eyes. She held out a folder she had been holding.

"This is all the info the Russian government has on the anti-pureblood group. Pavel Dolohov is the one working the case for Russia. He's in charge of Russia's version of the Areani. I'm technically here on his behalf."

Harry took the folder. He browsed through the photos and pieces of parchment. The intel was rather slim, if he did say so himself.

"Am I going to be meeting the Russian agent anytime soon? I'm assuming we'll be coordinating on this?"

"Yes. They'll be reaching out to you shortly. As you can imagine, Dolohov is worried about an anti-pureblood technomagi group as well, so while he's a Death Eater, he's technically an ally on this assignment."

Harry shuddered.

"Calling a Dolohov an ally makes me feel dirty."

"It's only for a bit. Now, in the back of the folder is a contract that you'll have to sign. Our agent already signed it. Just so you guys don't betray each other, or reveal your identities to anyone else; things of that nature."

Harry opened the folder from the back and gave the contract a once over.

"A blood contract? That's extreme."

"I looked it over. There's no hidden agendas or anything like that in there. It's short and to the point."

"Not that I don't trust you, but I'm going to give it a once over myself."

"Be my guest."

Harry carefully read it over. It was as Penelope said, short and to the point. Just to make sure Harry and the Russian agent worked in each other's best interest and did nothing that would compromise the identity or health of the other.

Penelope held out a blood quill, which Harry took. He signed his name, his messy scrawl going below the much neater script of the Russian. His signature tearing into the back of his hand made him wince. Once done, the quill and contract were both taken from him.

Penelope stood and brushed off her clothes.

"My portkey back to Moscow leaves any minute. I'm going to be whisked away soon."

Harry stood as well.

"Will I be seeing you at the Weasleys for Christmas?"

"I don't know. Do you even know if you'll be there?"

"Unless some serious shit is going down, I'll sneak away for the day. Does Percy know what you're doing?"

Penelope shook her head.

"No. To him I'm on a three-month assignment for the Department of International Magical Cooperation trying to drum up Eastern European support for the war."

"Good luck."

Penelope vanished from his sight.

Harry looked down at the folder he holds. Time for some light reading.

The first thing Harry took away from the papers in the folder was that technomagi was some complex stuff and a lot of it went right over his head. The theories and intricacies of it all was enough to put anyone not named Hermione Granger to sleep.

Muggle technology and magic did not mix well. The energy of magic messed with not only the natural flow of electricity and electromagnetic waves but chemical reactions as well. So while some muggle-borns and half-bloods, and Harry could rope himself in this group, thought it was as simple as just scribbling some runes and weaving some enchantments over the muggle technology, it took a lot more than that.

Every spell, rune, and enchantment gave off its own unique energy. Each of those unique energies reacted differently when introduced to the electricity, electromagnetic waves, and chemical reactions prominent in most muggle technologies. Just noting how one single spell reacts with the most common of muggle technologies took months of observations. That's why technomagi was such a little studied area. You could invest years of your life into it and only have the workings of a handful of spells. Breakthroughs were either rare happenstance, or was the result of years of back breaking work from previous scholars whose names would never be mentioned in the articles written about the discovery.

Honestly, Harry had a newfound respect for Mr. Weasley. The Ministry cars, with their expanded interiors, barely touched on the actual workings of the car's engine and wiring. The magic was on the frame of the car and just made it so more people could fit inside of the damn thing. By keeping the magic regulated to the back half of the car, the only things affected were the Ministry cars had crank handles to roll down the window instead of a power button, and the locks were manual instead of power as well.

For Mr. Weasley to be able to weave magic on the entire Ford Anglia to not only fly, but turn invisible as well, and not completely mess up how the engine worked, well that was extremely impressive. It must have took years of toiling away in his garage to get the magic just right. Harry was positive if he went into the shed Mr. Weasley toiled away in, he would find several books on techomagi. It demonstrated an intelligence he had never figured the man to have. Not to say he thought Mr Weasley dumb, but he now knew where Percy and Bill inherited the intelligence necessary to score 12 OWLs each.

It was Mr. Weasley's love of muggles that kept him in the Misuse of Muggle Artifcats office. It also showed the Dumbledore promoting the man into the Minister of Magic support staff, a position he was allowed to keep under Diggory, wasn't nepotism but a recognition of the intelligence the man had.

Outside of the technomagi information provided, the folder gave him a snippet of info on the suspected leader of the anti-pureblood group; Yulia Novikova. Formerly Yulia Grushanina, she was the squib daughter of a Russian oligarch. She was disowned and forced to take a new last name when her inability for accidental magic could no longer be attributed to her being a late bloomer like Neville was. She had spent her teenage years living in a foster home for disowned squibs, since apparently oligarchs disowning squib relatives was a common practice.

She seemed to handle the situation better than most. She received an education in the muggle world and graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1986 near the top of her class after six years with a specialist degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics. Quite the accomplishment given only like twelve percent of the Moscow Institute's students were female. Shortly after her graduation, Yulia dropped off the face of the earth for about eight years. Neither the muggle world nor the magic world had any trace of her until she resurfaced with her lover, magic provider, and second in command, Martin Jänes a little over two years ago.

Martin was a suspected half-blood. He was a bastard born to an Estonian muggle woman who claimed to have been raped by a man who controlled her using a stick and weird lights. Of course the muggle authorities thought she was insane, but it was obvious a wizard had used his magic to take advantage of her. The rape took a bad toll on Ms. Jänes' mental health, as the folder included a list of child protective service visits to the house based on concerns from Martin's primary school due to what was listed as suspected neglect at home. The reports indicated that Ms. Jänes, while functional enough to provide Martin with his needs, was emotionally distant to the point of potentially being emotionally abusive. Weekly meetings with a state sanctioned therapist didn't turn up enough evidence for Martin to be removed from the situation.

Upon Martin discovering his magical abilities Ms. Jänes saw that her son had the same abilities of the man who raped her, and whatever was left of her fragile psyche shattered. She killed herself when he was away for his first year of magical school, and Martin was placed in foster care. What followed was a long list of behavioural issues; half from the various foster homes he was a part of, and half from his school.

Reading the backstory on the two of them, Harry could definitely see why they would be anti-pureblood. He could also see the sympathy it would stir up in people with similar experiences. The suspected members of the group was a hodge podge of disowned squibs, half-bloods whose magical parent abandoned the family, and muggle-borns who lost family members to Death Eaters during the 1970s.

What the folder didn't provide him was possible locations to where this group was. A handful of suspected members were from the United Kingdom, which is why the Russians had reached out to the Ministry, but nothing indicated a base of operations in the UK. It was just a guess from the Russians. The only thing that was known was that Martin had been spotted recently in Poland, hence Harry's inclusion into the investigation. The folder didn't say anything about the groups capabilities, or even how far along they were in their techomagi work. For all Harry knew, he could walk into a base and be faced with a magic resistant tank that shot dragon fire.

Harry was interrupted from his reading by his cell phone going off. He looked at the piece of muggle technology for a moment, wondering how many years of research went into getting this thing to function around magic. The cell itself was a few years old, as it looked like the one Uncle Vernon had after his first year of Hogwarts. That meant at least five years. Did the magic used to make this one work, work on the newer designs? Or did each new phone that came out need its own years of research in order to work like this one did.

"Hey Godric!"

"Potter if you call me Godric one more time, I swear to Merlin I'm going to tell Voldemort where you are."

"Noted."

"Did you meet the Russian agent and get the information?"

"I got the information, but I didn't meet with the Russian agent. They were delayed with another case so they sent a member of the Ministry."

"Anything important in the folder?"

"Not really. Lot of speculation, nothing concrete."

"We have Auror pairs following the suspected members here, but nothing has turned up."

Harry held up the photo of Yulia Novikova and studied her face.

"How sure are we of this being an anti-pureblood criminal group? Seems like the Russians are making something out of nothing."

"They could be, but that's what you have to find out. If you do happen to stumble upon something, bring back whatever pieces of technomagic you can. We can use whatever help we can get."

"I'll make sure to nab a few things."

"How's Operation Full Moon going?"

Harry places the photo down.

"I found the werewolf camp. They got some decent wards set up but as long as this techomagi mission doesn't take away too much of my attention I'll be through them within the week."

"Anything to report?"

"Not really. They're deep in a forest and away from civilization. Outside of that attack on the muggle hunting party, doesn't look like anyone has had any interaction with them. That includes both human and wolf forms. Not sure what the plan is."

"Could be they're sitting tight unitl You-Know-Who has need of them in the Balkans."

"Maybe but I have doubts about that. Every report I've read on him says Greyback isn't one to sit around doing nothing. I've got some maps and books on magical Poland, going to see which places make sense as potential targets for a werewolf attack. If I can get past the wards, I'll try to get close enough and see what I can hear or find."

"Don't get too close. Last thing we need is you being mauled to death by werewolves."

"Oh ye of little faith."

Harry didn't need to see Rick to know he just rolled his eyes.

"Keep in touch Potter."

With that Rick was off the line. Harry put the phone down and went back to the folder. He was determined to go over all the technomagi intel one more time. Trying to see if he could find the connection the Russians did that led one to look at Yulia Novikova and Martin Jänes, and see a potential terrorist organization.

The motive was certainly there, but if motive was all it took to turn someone bad there'd be a lot more violence and crime in the world. One of the things he learned from the comics he read in the primary school library was that while a tragic backstory was step one in creating a villain, it could also be step one in creating a hero.