(Obligatory no ownership disclaimer)

AN: Hey guys. Go check out my new fic, The Sorcerer King.

This chapter will have a nice new machine being tested, as well as a birthday party.

Hope you guys enjoy this one.

Chapter 14

"So, how better do you think this fabricator is, compared to conventional ones?" Harry asked.

"Vastly better. We will probably crush Moore's law, even if we are still a little hampered by the parts we can't improve using magic." Samantha responded while she tinkered with the machine, making a few last minutes adjustments.

Samantha Campbell was a new addition to their team, and one that was probably their best hire yet. A squib born from an old magical family in the US, and a PhD in Applied Physics from Stanford, she had both the magical knowhow and the education in science that was desperately needed for their research team. Hiring her took a lot of effort, unlike many of the British squibs, she didn't hate magicals, her family helping her learn both the magic she could use, and have a top tier non magical education. But she still preferred to work in the non magical society. They were only able to hire her when they openly told her that they were trying to combine magic with science, and showed a few examples of things they had already done.

Hiring Samantha was the first major job of the new CEO, Robert Lewis. The man was hired by Sirius and vetted by Harry and the girls just a day after the meeting with the Prime Minister. He was a man on his late fifties who was previously in charge of a mid-sized bank, and was the father of a muggleborn. Robert easily accepted the offer once he heard that the company was owned by magicals, saying it was a good way to be closer to his son, who had mostly disappeared from his family after graduating from Hogwarts, something that seemed a lot more common than Harry thought.

Robert was almost perfect for the job, the bank he previously worked on did a lot of business with government departments, so he knew how to deal with politicians, he knew a surprisingly high amount of information about magical society due to his desire to be involved in his son's life, and even if he had never worked in a company like EE, one that would mostly be focused on research, he already showed how good he could be by managing to hire Samantha just a couple of days after he was hired.

In the week and a half since the meeting with the prime minister, Harry and the group spent most of their time in the temporary labs, both working on research and learning from the three scientists they had hired.

Padma and Penny seemed to always be around Samantha, they enjoyed learning physics from someone who actually knew what she was doing, instead of the books that they normally used in Hogwarts.

Hannah, Sue, Ginny, Megan and Ron, spent most of their time learning from David. Hermione's cousin was frankly obsessed with anything mechanical, particularly engines; he managed to help improve the generator design in just a few days, making it around 10% more efficient, something that made Sue extremely happy. But even if he knew a lot about mechanical engineering as a whole, his true love was engines, he even admitted that he pursued his field of education just to build engines, so Hannah was his favourite student. The two of them could usually be seen working together on a car engine, or even a massive train engine, they were currently working on an engine that was powered by hydrogen fuel cells, hoping to make use of Harry's idea of magical fuel cells as soon as that research was done, even if Harry hadn't even started it yet.

David even managed to get Ron interested in muggle things, which was a miracle. When Megan and Ginny approached him, wanting to know if he knew anything about airplane engines, he responded that he didn't knew much about them, teaching the girls what little he knew. But then he contacted one of his mates, who was a pilot in the RAF, and his mate told him of a arcade that had a pretty good simulator, almost as good as the one they used in the RAF, so David invited the entire group to go to the arcade, and while Ginny and Megan enjoyed the simulator, saying it was almost as good as riding a broom, Ron was immediately obsessed with it. Harry's redheaded friend was now focused on learning about fighter aircrafts, he was even saying that he might try for a pilot's licence once he is old enough.

Catherine didn't have much interaction with the group, most of them didn't want to learn much about computers and robotics, so while she helped a lot with Harry's laser research, as well as the group's general education, she didn't have teenagers following her almost everywhere, something she seemed pretty happy about.

Neville and Luna where mostly focused in their own botanical research. They still wanted to hire a few people with biology degrees, both to help Neville with his botany, and Luna with her desire to learn about genetics. The two of them seemed to take the last warning Harry and Hermione gave them to heart, there weren't any more troubles with their research since then, no highly intelligent killer plants, or animals that release toxic gases in the air, even after Luna received a small sample of Nundu blood. There was a planned visit to the zoo that might end up giving Luna some ideas, but Harry wasn't worried about it at the moment, Luna was getting better about her crazy experiments, she wasn't even petting her illusionary Mi-Go anymore, at least not in front of others.

Harry and Hermione were having a lot of fun jumping from topic to topic, while most of their friends stayed focused on things they liked, the two of them were always jumping around from lab to lab, learning from David, Catherine and Samantha in equal measures whenever one of them had the free time to teach. Hermione was really interested in high end physics, and some of the things that she and Samantha talked about were a little too much for even Harry, despite the fact that he had almost the same education as Hermione, and the help in memory retention from the occlumency Penny was teaching them. That was the difference between someone who was just a little smart, like Harry, and a true genius, like Hermione.

David taught them a lot about engineering. Hermione seemed a lot more interested in the theory, while Harry liked the more practical aspects, David said it made them a good team, just like with magic, Hermione excelled in theoretical work, while Harry was better than her with the practical side, so Hermione could do the designs, while Harry worked on actually building them, not that they weren't good at the other side of things as well, they just preferred to play to their strengths. They could usually be seen leaving David's lab with grease stains in their clothes, far more so on Harry than Hermione.

And Harry and his girlfriend were the only ones that actually showed an interest in Catherine's work. Harry put in a lot of effort in learning about computers and robotics since Catherine was a major help with his laser research, and Hermione just wanted to learn anything she could, so the two of them were the only ones from their group that spent time in Catherine's lab. They learned a lot about computer hardware and software, how quickly that field of research was advancing, how the internet was starting to be accessible to the vast majority of the population and how much it could change the world. And learning about industrial robots was even more fun, Harry never realized how automated some industries already were, like the fact that car manufacturing was one of the most automated industries and it would get even more automated in the near future.

But it wasn't only learning that they did. The group also worked on their research, and while most of them didn't have many large improvements, Harry and Hermione made some good progress on their projects. Hermione had a lot of help from her cousin in improving her pressure chamber, David was still learning about runes so he couldn't help much there, but he already knew a lot about how pressurized spaces worked, so he was able to help Hermione a lot by showing her different materials she could use to make the pressure chamber, and with his help, Hermione was finally able to build the first prototype of her superconductor wiring. The only problem was that a regular size wire needed a box almost two meters wide to work, the cooling and pressure runes took too much space. So now she was working on miniaturization, finding a way to carve the runes in a smaller size, or finding a new runic array to use.

Harry's also made a lot of progress in two of his projects. He finally had access to more rare metals, so he was able to make a new alloy, one that didn't exist before. It still wasn't the vibranium that he wanted, but the alloy had some similar properties so he thought he was getting closer to his objective. The alloy was made out of Tantalum, Niobium and Iron, and it already showed some impressive results, the few samples that Harry made were used by David and Hannah to reinforce some parts in an engine, and it managed to improve the performance of said parts by around 25% which was a huge deal. Harry was still focused in getting vibranium right, so he was now using this metal as a base and adding small quantities of other metals to see if he could finally finish this research.

And his work on lasers progressed even more.

Catherine had helped him test his magical crystal laser, and they found out that it was four times stronger than a traditional ruby laser. It was a massive achievement, even if they only used it to carve runes. There was also something weird going on with the laser, some type of radiation released by it. The radiation was completely unknown, never before being recorded, mostly because it was so weak, almost inexistent. It might have been something interfering with the equipment, but they also had a theory that this exotic radiation might have something to do with magic. The laser worked with direct magical input, a lumos charm powering it, so it might be a more direct way of measuring magic than just taking it from the environment.

And that wasn't even talking about his Excimer laser, which they finally were able to build a prototype with the help of Catherine and Samantha. It took a lot of effort, and quite a few things that Harry didn't even know were needed, and some he just couldn't build in Hogwarts, he didn't have troubles with the high pressure needed for the gases, Hermione research helped him a lot with that, but things like the amplifiers were a little bit too large to build inside their workshop in Hogwarts, the RoR could grow in size, but it had some issues with a project the size of Harry's lasers, which were massively inefficient since he didn't actually know what he was doing at the time.

But Catherine and Samantha helped a lot with building everything needed for the laser, they actually knew how it worked and how to build it since Samantha used a lot of lasers in her physics research, and Catherine also knew a little about lasers. The first thing they did was help Harry change the gases used, instead of diargon, the final build of the laser used Argon fluoride, it made for a higher wavelength, but it was actually slightly better for what they wanted it, and it was easier and cheaper to build.

And they were finally ready to test it, a small semiconductor fabricator entirely built by them, using their own excimer laser for deep-ultraviolet photolithography. This device alone cost almost half of the money they had set aside for EE, and that was with Harry using alchemy to make a lot of the metals they used, even needing the help of the others to power the transmutations when he couldn't do it anymore. They really needed to make that magical replicator thing a priority.

"So, are we ready to start?" Hermione asked when she saw Samantha stop messing with the machine.

"Yes, we are ready to start. Let's go to the safe zone and turn this thing on." Samantha responded.

A lot of their friends decided to come and see the machine turn on for the first time, even if some of them didn't actually realize how big of a deal it could be. Penny and Sue seemed to know how big of a deal it was, and were consequently really excited, but Luna, Neville, Padma, Parvati, and Ginny had no idea what was going on, they were just there to support their friends, and Hannah, who unlike the others was a half-blood, still didn't seem to realize how big of a deal it was. She wasn't that interested in computers, she knew they were important but didn't realize how they were used for almost everything, and would be used even more once the new millennium started.

The group left the room, following clean room procedure was a bit of a pain with the amount of people there, it took a bit of time but they were able to do it. Leaving the room, they all went to a reinforced observation room at a safe distance since this was the first test and it was quite possible for things to explode. The fabricator was a lot bigger than the things they usually built, even the generators were smaller, and something that big using magic and electricity at the same time, could easily end up exploding.

They walked inside the room and saw Catherine and David already waiting there. Harry took a spot on the right, near David, and Hermione joined them, while the others all looked for other places to watch. Looking out of the reinforced glass with unbreakable charms in them, Harry saw the fabricator in all its glory. It looked quite unique when compared to other fabricators, the silver lines covering it, all filled with the runic array, made it look quite magical, even if it was only used to make things that were as anti-magical as possible. That machine was built to make computer processors, and if there was one thing that Harry didn't even need to conduct an experiment to know, is that computers would have trouble with magic. There is no logic to magic, and computers, being logic machines, would not understand it.

"Turning it on... Now." Samantha said, and Harry saw the machine turn on.

"It seems to be working." Hermione said excitedly after a few seconds of silence.

"Let's wait another minute, it could still blow up." Catherine said, with a little anxiety showing in her tone. Her research was the one that would gain the most if this thing worked.

They waited for another minute in silence, hoping that it would work and not blow up. The seconds seemed to pass slowly. If it worked it would be a big achievement for Harry, even if he mostly just worked on the laser, this thing would be revolutionary if it worked. As they got closer to one minute of the machine working perfectly fine, they started to get excited, but still remained a little bit cautious, it was only when two minutes passed and it still worked that they started to celebrate, Hermione hugging Harry and giving him a kiss.

"Don't get carried away, you two. Remember there are others in the room, and I don't want to see my little cousin kissing anyone." Harry heard David say, and immediately stopped kissing Hermione, blushing a little and seeing that his girlfriend's face was also a little red.

"David, stop it!" Hermione said trying to control her blush as their friends laughed at their embarrassment.

"Uncle Dan isn't here, so I have to fill in for him, and stop Harry from 'stealing his daughter'. It is what a good nephew should do." David said in an innocent tone, making the others laugh even more.

"So, how is the fabricator working? And what should we expect in term of products?" Harry asked, trying to move the conversation along and take the attention away from him and Hermione.

"Everything seems to be working perfectly, there is no magical interference in anything, and it seems that our calculations were true, this thing is a lot quicker than traditional fabricators, we should have the first products in about a week, instead of the many weeks it normally takes." Catherine said in an excited tone while looking at a few screens.

"When it comes to products, I imagine that once we perfect the entire process, we could build processors in the 65 nanometres range. Like I said before, completely crushing Moore's law." Samantha added, and Harry realized why Catherine seemed so happy. It was a massive improvement on the current tech, and it would be a huge thing for her research. Hardware like that could improve her computers by a lot, and the improvements in robotics would be even better.

"Is that really such a huge deal?" Padma asked, not really knowing anything about processors.

"I believe that the current processors are around the 350 nanometres." Hermione said, and Catherine nodded her head in agreement. "So it would be like a broom five times faster than the Firebolt." Hermione added, using the closest analogy she could find, it wasn't perfect but it did the job, judging by the looks on the faces of the purebloods around the room.

"That's impressive." Ginny said, while the others nodded in agreement.

"It is, and I already have a few ideas about how to use these new processors." Harry said. Hermione, Samantha and Catherine looking at him with clear curiosity.

"What Idea?" Hermione asked.

"I was thinking that with a processor like that we could probably do something similar to what we are planning for the second generation of the mirrors. A cell phone that also works like a computer." Harry explained, and he could clearly see impressed looks he was getting, as the ones who knew what he was talking about started to get his idea.

"Of course, for something like that to happen we would need a lot more advances in both hardware and software, but I think that is something we could do quite easily. With a few more fabricators we could build all the hardware we need for our computers. And I imagine that you would like to lead a team developing the software we would need, Catherine?" Harry asked.

"I'm at your service, boss." Catherine said, giving him a mock salute and making everyone laugh. But even with her joking response Harry could see she was looking forward to work in a project like that.

"I think that if we expand our production and gather a good team to work on this project, we could have something commercially viable in about a year, a year and a half at the latest. And with a product with that kind of advantage over the competition, we could be looking at billions of pounds in profit. Enough for us to have the cash flow to build a supercomputer of our own, something that would be a massive help for our research." Harry finished explaining his idea, and Hermione gave him another one of her signature hugs, which told him that he had another amazing idea.

"That's a really ambitious plan, Harry, I'm impressed." David said, not even joking about the fact that Hermione was still hugging Harry.

"A supercomputer could help a lot with my research." Samantha said in a contemplative tone. "Not to mention the simulations that could be run by that astrophysicist that you're planning to hire. I still can't believe that there is a room in your school that can make an actual millennium falcon, even if it doesn't work." She added shaking her head a little. The three scientists had almost revolted when Harry and Hermione told them about the RoR and its capabilities. The fact that something like that existed, but it wasn't accessible to them, seemed to almost be a crime against humanity in their eyes.

"That will be the major project that Hermione and I will be working on this next school year, trying to find a way to build a copy of the room outside of Hogwarts." Penelope said. She was returning to Hogwarts as an assistant to professor Flitwick, it took quite a bit of negotiating from Harry and Sirius to get Dumbledore to allow a professor to take an apprentice, but they managed to do it in the end, mostly because Dumbledore seemed to be trying to apologize for the wrongs he did to both Harry and his godfather.

"Give me a room like that and I will give you a humanoid robot in about a year." Catherine said, in a tone that showed how much she wanted to work with a RoR. "So, what is the next major project?" She asked.

"I don't know about the others, but I want to focus on getting my alchemical vibranium right. After that, I will probably start working with Hermione on her atomic transfiguration idea; transmutation can help with resources, but the cost in magic is too high, we will never be able to mass produce basic resources using alchemy." Harry responded.

"Remember, I want you two to tell me when you start working on that project so I can work with you. We don't need to blow up half of the isles because you two are splitting atoms without knowing what you're doing."Samantha said in a tone that reminded Harry of professor McGonagall.

"We know, we promise not to break the planet in half, even if we could do it if we wanted to." Hermione responded in a teasing tone, making everyone laugh at her joke.

"Nice joke, Hermione, but I don't think anyone could break the world." Neville said, after the laughter died down, and both Harry and Hermione turned towards him with an innocent look on their faces. "That was a joke, right guys? Tell me it was a joke."

"Of course, Nev. It is not like we could burn the entire atmosphere, or create a black hole that would eat the entire planet, that would be impossible." Harry responded in a perfectly innocent tone that wasn't fooling anyone, and then they all laughed at Neville's terrified face.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Harry dodged another random old man that wanted to talk to him and went back to his task of finding a drink for his girlfriend.

He was currently in the ballroom of Longbottom Manor, where a combined birthday party was being held for both him and Neville, and the night was pretty fun, despite the random old people that wanted to talk to him just because of his fame.

Not that all the old people were annoying, there were quite a few fun conversations that Harry had with the old guard earlier in the night. Augusta Longbottom had quite a few fun stories to tell about his parents. Harry's favourite was about his birth, how he and Neville were born just a few hours from each other, Neville being born a little over eleven PM on the thirty of July, and Harry being born close to five AM on the thirty first. Harry's mum was actually in the hospital to visit her new godson when her water broke.

Horace Slughorn also had a few stories to tell Harry, mostly about his mum in her school years. The former head of slytherin and potions professor seemed to love talking about one of his favourite students, he told Harry about how Lily Evans was brilliant in all of her classes, but in charms and potions she was above all others, Harry really liked hearing how his mum had more talent for potion making than the grease stain he now called a professor. He knew Snape used to be friends with his mum, Sirius had said they were friends until fifth year, but that was all he said, he seemed a little reluctant to tell Harry how that friendship ended. But even hearing from another person how close Snape used to be to his mum, he still couldn't like the dungeon bat.

Another person that Harry really liked hearing stories from was Cedrella Weasley.

The Weasley grandmother was a nice old lady, and she had a lot to tell Harry about his grandmother, Dorea. Harry spent around half an hour talking with Cedrella, Andromeda and Tonks, and the old lady told both Harry ant Tonks a lot about the Blacks and all the families they were related to, with Andromeda telling a few stories of her own every once in a while. From the two women casted out of the house of Black, Harry learned that Sirius might have been a little biased against his family. His godfather always said that one could count in one hand the number of Blacks that were good, but both Cedrella and Andromeda were a lot less harsh on their family than Sirius.

They talked about how Lucretia Black, Sirius' aunt, wasn't that bad, despite being a blood bigot. And how Cassiopeia Black was actually a pretty good person overall, even if she was incredibly vain and liked to throw dark curses everywhere, she even somehow found a way to create a cruciatus curse in enchantment form and used it in a book, a book that was now somewhere in the library at Grimmauld Place. Harry made a mental note to never let Hermione stay alone in the library when he heard that. Andromeda even said that when they were young, her sisters weren't that bad. She only mentioned Narcissa by name, it would be extremely disrespectful to say Bellatrix's name inside Longbottom manor, but the fact that she said sisters instead of sister was quite telling.

Harry dodged another person that wanted to talk to him, this one he knew to be a reporter called Rita something, he didn't want to talk to reporters, especially someone that Luna didn't like. As the mass of people cleared and Harry could finally see the table that held the drinks, he also was met with the half-moon glasses of Dumbledore, knowing that this conversation was one that needed to happen, he prepared himself and approached the table.

"Good evening, Harry, and happy birthday. I hope you're enjoying your party." Dumbledore said once Harry got closer to him.

"Good evening, professor. The party has been quite good until now." Harry responded in a cold tone, while he gathered a pitcher of juice and a few glasses.

"I wanted to talk to you in Hogwarts, but you seemed unavailable at the time. I need to apologize and hopefully explain my actions to you." Dumbledore said in his usual grandfatherly tone. Harry didn't believe in his act, not anymore, he had learned from both Andromeda and Sirius how much of a politician and a master manipulator Dumbledore was.

"I'm sorry Harry, but I truly believed that staying with your aunt was the safest place for you, and I still do. Your mother's sacrifice created a powerful protection for you, as long as there is someone else with your mother's blood in the place you call home, you will always be protected from the one who killed her, and all those who serve him. I truly believe this is the best way to keep you safe." Dumbledore said, and Harry almost believed him.

"That would imply that I haven't been protected since first year, professor. I considered Hogwarts as my home from the moment I got there." Harry responded, still in a cold tone.

"Yes, I believe that is quite true. When I visited your aunt's house last week, the protections seemed a lot weaker than they should be, even with you not returning there this summer, it should still be holding strong for another month before it started to fail." Dumbledore said in an embarrassed tone. "I can only ask for your forgiveness and I hope to atone for the many wrongs I did to you." Dumbledore added, bowing his head in apology.

"You want my forgiveness, professor, then be better. Don't treat people as pawns in a game of chess, and don't think I can't see that you haven't said anything about Sirius, and how you could have given him a trial. Only when you truly right all your wrongs, all of them, only then will I forgive you, not before." Harry said, and then he turned around and left.

Harry walked through the mass of people still annoyed with the old goat, the headmaster could really get him these days, but his anger immediately went away when he got back to his friends and saw the smile Hermione was giving him, she looked beautiful in her blue dress.

"I saw you dodging anyone that wanted to talk to you, Harry. This is your birthday party, even if it is being held in Neville's house, you are still one of the hosts, you should talk to people." Hermione said in her old bossy tone that she hardly used anymore, but the smile never left her face.

"I already talked to them, even Daphne said it was enough." Harry responded as he passed around cups filled with juice to his friends. The group was quite large since weren't only his closest friends from the research group, but also a few other more distant friends like Susan, Lavender, Dean, Seamus, Tracy, Daphne, his quidditch teammates, and even Justin Finch-Fletchley, who came with his father, mother and sister, a sister that would be starting Hogwarts next year. There were also a few adults besides Penny in this group, the scientists, as well as Tonks and her friend Hestia Jones, even Sirius was around earlier, but he left to flirt with Gwenog Jones somewhere else.

"I said you did the bare minimum expected from someone of your station, Potter. You could certainly do more." Daphne said, causing Hermione to give him a look as if saying 'See, I'm right.'

"It's not my problem if they want more, I'm more than happy to do the bare minimum." Harry responded, not even entertaining the notion of spending more time talking to people that only cared about his the Boy-who-lived.

"By the way, wonder boy. Control your pervert." Tonks said pointing at Hermione, making an embarrassed look appear on her face while the others laughed. "She keeps asking me to turn into a bunch of different women."

"I'm not a pervert!" Hermione complained.

"Hermione, you do remember that you once forgot one of your 'entertainment books' open on your bedside table, right?" Lavender said, and Parvati nodded her head in agreement, while Hermione blushed a little. "Parvati seemed scandalized when she saw it, and I don't think Harry can give you what you want, he is to nice for me to see him doing that at the moment, but maybe you can train him to be a bit more... assertive. I'm sure you can find that torture room in the dungeons that Filch is always talking about, it should have quite a few things for you to use." Lavender added and Hermione went almost gryffindor red, while the adults in the group looked at her in shock.

Harry couldn't understand what they were talking about, he knew it was something about sex, Sirius had told him a lot about it, but he still couldn't understand why Hermione would want to use a torture room, nor why Tonks kept calling Hermione a pervert, she just wanted to compare herself to other women, that's what girls always did.

"We should talk about something else." Hermione said a little too quickly after containing her blush, and Harry decided to help his girlfriend escape from embarrassment.

"Luna, we should be hiring a few biology experts, including a genetics expert, this next week; so you can finally start learning what you want." Harry said, and Luna gave him a large smile before tackling him into a hug.

"I still can't believe you want to teach genetics to the animal obsessed girl that thinks lovecraftian horror is fun instead of scary. That seems like a disaster in the making." Samantha said shaking her head a little, while both David and Catherine nodded in agreement.

"We already told her that she is forbidden from making any dinosaurs before we find a way to control them." Hermione said, finally getting her blushing completely under control.

"Yeah, we are more worried about this one making another killer plant. I don't think Ron can survive another encounter with one." Harry added while pointing at Neville.

"That plant was scary." Ron said, making everyone laugh, while Neville lowered his head in embarrassment, but Harry could still see a little smile on his face.

They stayed talking for a long time, people coming and leaving from their group and the conversation changing topics all the time. They didn't talk about research or work, just getting to know more about each other, even Oliver didn't talk about his quidditch career, which Harry knew to be a massive achievement. Towards the end of the party, Hermione grabbed Harry's arm and dragged him out of the ballroom. While walking through the corridors of Longbottom manor they saw Sirius snogging Gwenog Jones and immediately went the other way, they walked in silence, just holding each other's hands until Hermione dragged Harry inside an empty room, closed the door and said.

"I'm going to give you another birthday present." She then threw her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss. They spent a lot of time snogging, until Tonks found them and said the party was dying down, so Harry walked out of the room thinking that this was the best birthday he ever had.

AN 2: I messed up the timeline, so the ball will happen next chapter.

And maybe Harry will finally understand why Hermione always wants Tonks to turn into other girls.

Chapters 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 are already out on the pat re on. If you guys think my work is good enough to support and want to read ahead you can find me at pat re on .com (slash) TheUnseenScribe

I will see you guys in the next one.