Chapter 26:

As the meeting in Dumbledore's office was drawing to a close, we each had an espresso appear in front of us. When I was at Starfleet headquarters, I was really impressed by their magical espresso machine. Its mechanism was completely transparent, and put on a show. It would grind the beans, tamp it in the chamber, and make the espresso. If a milk based drink was requested, it would steam milk, and then create on top of the beverage, the Sharp-Magic company's logo, made out of milk foam. It was similar to the Sharp corporation's logo, but with the extra letter M. The logo on the machine itself, was formed first out of match-sticks, then transformed into sewing needles, on auto-repeat. Apparently, the world over, that was a lesson beginning students of transformation had.

I wanted to get a machine for Hogwarts, but realized that the elves would be offended. They don't like the idea of automatic machines. I got a Moka pot and brought it to the Hogwarts kitchen. They were very appreciative, but let on that they already had Moka pots, but then to make me feel better, said, that the one I brought might work better. I guess I wasn't the first person at Hogwarts who wanted espresso.

I said, as we were going off topic while drinking our espressos, "The sorting hat didn't even consider putting me in Slytherin because I was not planning to use my knowledge for wealth or power. Now we seem to be acting kind of Slytherin."

The hat got our attention and answered, "You both claim to be ruthless, but I think you are trying to sound like something that you are not. You are extremely rational in your approaches, and try to use the least amount of force that seems necessary. When advocating what you claim to be ruthlessness, you do so with careful analysis beforehand. I know you do not like the term, but what motivates you is the greater good, not a desire for power. And more than the greater good, what your secret motivation is: knowledge and learning itself."

Seeing my look of surprise, the hat continued, "What actually makes you happy about your role in Section 31, is not the ability to manipulate people and events, or the respect it might get you, but the access you get to read the technical discussions of the research groups. For other reasons, I would rule out Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, as well.

Luna Lovegood, your opportunity to learn from extraterrestrials was not used to gain fighting ability, or power, or even community. It was to learn Vulcan logic. I cannot see either of you in any house but Ravenclaw.

Albus Dumbledore, despite it being over 103 years since I sorted you, I still confirm that Gryffindor is your house. Many have attributes of the four houses, and you certainly do, but the attributes of Gryffindor are what motivates you."

I overhead a Slytherin discussion at the dinner table. "This will wind up being a brilliant way of sending our type and their type of witches and wizards in different directions, which solves problems we didn't even think we could solve."

"Yes, the muggle worshipers will go and do their thing somewhere else, and I do not care if that is California, Kazakhstan, or the Moon. Our society doesn't have to absorb hostile interlopers. Everyone is happy."

"With our British Wizarding Army, we can make sure that they leave us alone to do our thing. Make the cost too high to try to tell us what to do."

"From what I've heard though, one thing that would set them off and cause them to intervene no matter what the costs, would be any open warfare in either the Wizarding or the muggle parts of Britain and Ireland."

"Then the Wizarding Army squashes any warfare before it starts."

"Maybe they don't even need to go to Hogwarts. Maybe what they are calling the Starfleet Academy can be a place that would accept 11 year-olds who are, how to put it, muggle inclined."

I noticed that Draco Malfoy was not participating in the discussion, but was listening very thoughtfully.

At a meeting of the Advanced Study Group, Dumbledore presented the almost completed pledges, "You'll notice that these pledges require you to use your best judgment. They require that no-one is blindly following orders, whether from Section 31, Starfleet Command, your regional director, or your Ministry of Magic. We are working on having all Starfleet magical personnel agree to this pledge. At that point, your participation in Section 31 would be consistent with your other Starfleet employment, including with Starfleet controlled companies.

George Weasley said, with Fred nodding in agreement, "I can agree with this. Some of our inventions, done under pledge, could make someone have a bad day. I can see the need for fail-safes and assurance that they will be used for the betterment of humanity."

Colin Creevey asked, "What would happen when humanity starts living throughout the stars?"

I answered, "That is an excellent question. Consider a historical analogy. People from Britain started a colony, under the authority of their home government, in America. Later the interests of what became two people, diverged.

Starfleet would have its first duty to humanity as a whole, second to those humans living on Earth. That would mean possibly intervening to prevent a colony and an Earth government from fighting each other, but not just ignoring the grievances involved. The potential future situations are many, and modifications of goals could be needed. For instance, what happens if we have firm alliances or even a federation with extra-terrestrials? What happens if the majority of humanity is living in places other than Earth?

So, the challenge is to make the pledge flexible enough to handle these future possibilities. There should also be a mechanism to make modifications, but require an unusual level of consensus."

By June, there was a pledge that was agreed to by Starfleet Command. We had to convince 8 regional directors, plus the 2 new directorates that were almost approved.

One new directorate was a patchwork of countries in South and Central America plus Mexico, centered in Bolivia. Bolivia was chosen as a compromise, since the larger nations otherwise each wanted to be the base. Another was a coalition of nations centered in Egypt.

In convincing the 10 directorates, we thought that Director Morozov would be the difficult one, but he actually agreed with its goals. The part of the Star Trek timeline, in the next few decades, that we described, actually scared him, and he agreed that every effort was needed to prevent it.

After suitable pledges were made, Luna, I, and Dumbledore were finally able to talk to Harry Potter, along with Hermione Granger, about his career plans. We asked him to describe his plans, which he answered, "I am being pulled in a lot of directions. Many want me to be the symbol of British Wizarding and to lead it into a modern age. I'm not sure I want that role. There are much more interesting things going on around the world, and soon off the world, than the question of whether Britain will remain traditional or go modern.

My fight was getting rid of Voldemort, and it could be argued, the Death Eaters. Done. Now I do not want my future to be playing politics.

My place is with Hermione. She has the chance to be one of the leading inventors of magical computing, and that is not going to be happening in Britain. There are three places now, Kazakhstan, USA and its affiliates, and Japan. She likes her job in Kazakhstan and that is where we will both be.

What will I do there? I've been trained to fight for years now. I also like teaching, and I also like Quidditch. I actually am going to be doing all of these in Kazakhstan. I will be helping to start and train the Starfleet Marines. Our place will be air, land, sea, space, with our emphasis on space.

We are going to devise how defend spaceships from boarding, how to board spaceships, how to attack or defend a space station. How to quickly get marines to a planet. Broom skills, spells while in motion, a whole variety of advanced non-magical weapons enhanced by magic, all will be part of what we will be learning, and then teaching. Of course we will have something better than Quidditch brooms in space."

Dumbledore said, "I have to say that I am impressed by your plan and wish you the best of success. Of course, my offer to have you teach Advanced Study at Hogwarts is open at any time."

I added, "One thing that comes to mind from canon is that a similar role was called security officers. They wore red shirts, and were constantly being killed while saving other members of landing parties to planets. Sometimes their only useful role was making it clear that there was a hidden danger, by falling to it, so others could escape or counter the danger.

I like that you are creating a more militaristic organization. You might want to add an ideal of no marine left behind, within reason of course. Something that gets across the point that the marines are not expendable canaries in coal mines."

The students in my year had our OWL exams this year. I won't go over the specifics except to say that I did well, and almost all the members of the Advanced Study Group in 5th year did well. So did a bunch of the Slytherins. Actually Professor Marchbanks said that this was the best OWL year ever, counting the years since the last major revision of the tests.

All of us were going to continue our 7 years at Hogwarts, even as many of us were already working part time at our Starfleet jobs.

Fred and George Weasley did very well in their NEWT exams, and they were going to move to Kazakhstan almost immediately after graduation. I asked them about their older brothers. Percy was working at the British Ministry of Magic, similar to canon, except he was not estranged from his family, as he was in canon. Charles was a dragon handler in Romania, same as in canon. Bill was still a curse breaker working for Gringotts, mostly in Egypt, but there was a possibility that he might work for Starfleet Egypt and find a way to make warding and curse making and breaking be useful on spaceships.

In reading Starfleet R&D reports, I found out that there was also research, by Starfleet India, in using the Fidelius charm to make objects, and locations secret, in space combat. They finally found a use for the location under the Indian Ocean, to test out what happens if you fire non-magical weapons from a Fidelius protected spacecraft, and then the same for spells. Also, to see what happens when an entire area is fired upon, that happens to contain a Fidelius protected spacecraft.

Starfleet US branch was combining some sophisticated non-magical development of drones, computer controlled flying machines, with magical charms. They were also looking into a concept in outer space, of space drones, that could be duplicated with magic, or conjured. One idea was to flood an enemy vessels with incredible numbers of small drones, each of which would explode near the ship. It was assumed that enemy beam weapon defenses would have some limits to how many drones they could destroy in the time it would take for the drones to reach them.

Starfleet Headquarters was developing a way to share research between the, now 10 directorates. Since they expect, within the next year, to have a fully functional magical internet, they'll wait until that is available to fully implement the idea. At that point, they want to encourage more research that includes people from multiple directorates. They certainly do not want to see the same research reinvented because one group did not know what another group was doing or already did.

They also want a more scientific way of sharing the results of magical enhancements of the non-magical economies. They expect various studies of what interventions were done, and ways to measure the results.

Another area Starfleet Command was studying were the ways to link magical and non-magical companies. There were different approaches. Starfleet Kazakhstan started companies that are in both the magical and non-magical economies. Starfleet Japan added additional magical branches to what were already large conglomerates, called Zaibatsu. Starfleet US ordered the non-magical parts from non-magical companies and then added the magical enhancements themselves.

There were planning studies comparing these different approaches, and looking to the future of different scenarios from the Statute of Secrecy remaining as is, to it being completely abandoned, and many approaches between those. The ICW agreed to leave the question alone for now, but to allow planning and studying of what would likely happen if the Statute of Secrecy were changed.