Ch. 42 — Expansion
After seeing the Death Gliders on Nasya, training for the X-wings was moved up in priority by the Yanks, and the other governments now involved in the Stargate program. Fortunately, it would only take only a few more weeks for them to be proficient enough in space tactics to actually pilot one off-world. Their prior combat training tremendously accelerated their adaption to the new ships.
The queen had taken Harry's advice, and the British pilots were noticeably ahead of the other recruits. Maintaining that lead was not easy.
It would be months before they were really skilled at flying them, but that was alright. Based on the Death Gliders the DSF had captured, the X-wings were far superior in hitting power, manoeuvrability, and shielding. Those attributes more than made up for the pilots' relative inexperience.
Unfortunately, they had habits that were excellent for a plane, but that were disastrous for a spaceship. Those would take many, many hours of flight time to correct. As a result, despite their decade or more experience at flight combat, those habits made the DSF pilots superior in space battles. Atmospheric battles, though?
Well, they had a fix for that. They had fifty-seven of the best pilots the world could field. Making copies of their training and experiences while they slept took only a week. The XE pilots were getting the benefit of years of on-the-job training in the next seven weeks. They would be spending six weeks adapting and refining those new skill-sets, and building their muscle memory, as it were.
Three-quarters of the people proposed for the Stargate Teams and the X-wing pilots by the different governments had been denied the training. The veritaserum had forced them to reveal that they had had ulterior motives for joining. Defence of the planet against invasion, and defending the SG teams, and friendly aliens, on other planets were not their first priority.
Meanwhile, Angelina's team had been sending out drones through the Stargate to all the worlds visited by the Yanks, so far. These drones, unlike the covert ones she had used before, were much larger, and highly sophisticated recording devices. Each went up into a stable orbit, and then tried to locate itself in the galaxy. The drones looked for Cepheid Variable Stars and the compact radio source Sagittarius A, the centre of the galaxy, as markers to where that Stargate was. She planned to retrieve and return each at one-month intervals to track local spaceship activity, if any. It would take time, but they were be steadily improving their map of the galaxy.
It was a tremendous help that they no longer had to hide their activities from Stargate Command or any of the other Earth-based agencies.
There were actually three "empty" worlds that had been tentatively explored by the Yanks. A small fleet of drones were giving each planet a more thorough examination to see if the planets truly were uninhabited. Just because there wasn't anyone near the Stargate didn't mean they hadn't moved away from it for safety.
Angela's team carefully logged the real position of each Stargate visited, and marked their gates for retrieval, if it became necessary.
The new drones had already yielded results. The Su Song was in transit to the planet the Tollans had abandoned to pick up its Stargate, or, at the very least scavenge any naquadah still left. It would then head to the planet P3R-233 to do the same. They would pay closest attention to that mirror Dr. Jackson had encountered. That they planned to seal away with appropriate warnings. They would also explore the rest of the star systems in both Stagate address blocks for habitable planets. Statistically, they should find at least one that was a good possibility for people.
If they found a good candidate, they would leave the Stargate there for temporary easy access. Then, if it passed the tests and exploration showed it uninhabited by intelligent life, they could start shuttling some of the magical creatures to there with a starship. They would move the Stargate somewhere else so there weren't any unexpected arrivals after they had moved through any mundane equipment they might want or need.
The tentative plan was to move several square miles of the Forbidden Forest there as one section, and then just let it grow.
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Tracking down Firenze was simple, he was the new Divination Professor, after all. Harry waited until the last class for the day left before going in.
The classroom resembled a small meadow, with the ceiling reflecting the sky, the walls showed the trees and bushes that would normally be in such a setting, and the floor was the soft grasses and scattered flowers. The air even smelled like a meadow, with the air moving in soft zephyrs that barely moved your hair, but were warm on your face.
On the hot days, he knew from fifth year, it was a cool breeze that wafted through the room.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Potter," the Centaur greeted him, as if he had expected him.
"Good afternoon," replied Harry as he headed for the Professor's desk.
"The heavens have been quite unsettled, of late, it shocked us all that you would humble Mars." He sighed and reflexively looked up at his false sky. "But Mars is brighter than ever. Puzzlingly, though, Jupiter is even brighter." He looked at Harry. "In terms you humans would understand, conflict and great migrations are looming large in the future."
Harry shuffled his feet and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "Yeah, well, that's kinda what I wanted to talk to you about." He paused to think how best to start. He'd spent hours already contemplating that, but nothing seemed right. He shrugged.
"Two years ago, when you were hired by the Headmaster," he finally started, "I, and a few of my friends, discovered a . . . spaceship."
Firenze was watching him calmly.
"We discovered over the next year that we could explore the solar system. Actually visit Mars, Jupiter, and so forth. We couldn't go farther, though, because we didn't have enough fuel. Well, that changed last August, and we've visited a few stars, and their planets." He paused, but the Centaur merely looked at him.
"Well, I know the muggles are squeezing all the magical preserves and it's getting harder and harder to hide magic . . . so . . . I thought, why not move some of the preserves to other planets? Planets where there aren't any muggles . . . or wizards . . . so, you know, they'd have an entire planet to themselves?"
Firenze still had not reacted beyond looking interested.
"So, I wanted your thoughts on if the Centaurs would be interested? It wouldn't be immediately, of course, I'm sure you'd want to explore the planet a bit before committing to a move, but do you think the Centaurs would be interested?"
The Centaur took on a thoughtful expression. "Another world?" he half-whispered, gazing at the ground, and then turning to look out the window.
"We've already found a world that orbits Rigel Kentaurus that's almost all ocean, and the Merfolk have a small colony there, now," Harry said hopefully. "They're still exploring the area around their settlement, but so far they appear pleased with what they see. At the very least, it's not polluted, and noisy with muggle seacraft."
"Yes," Firenze said, "the Merfolk have been quite excited about a new settlement." He looked at Harry. "I knew you were involved, but the particulars were murky."
Harry flushed. "We gave them communicators so they could tell their relatives that are still here what they've found and done at the end of every day."
Firenze slowly nodded.
"That's also how we handled the Acromantulas." He shook his head. "We didn't move them to a planet, though, we built a space-station several times as big as all of the Forbidden Forest and put them in it. We trade muggle-conjured food to them in exchange for their silk."
Firenze frowned at him and snorted. "We centaurs know that conjured food is transitory," he stated.
Harry shrugged and tapped his comm-link. "Replicator!"
"Yes, Admiral Potter?" came the quick response.
"Please send down a small table with a ploughman's salad."
"Aye, aye, sir. One moment."
In a flash of light, a table with the requisite meal appeared in the room.
Harry gestured to the table. "No magic, all-muggle technology." He grinned. "This way we don't even have to provide an animal for the acromantulas. We just conjure, replicate, an animal that died mere seconds before we copied its pattern. The spiders never know the difference. We've been doing it for months, now."
Firenze slowly nodded, staring at the table.
"Anyway, we were thinking of just grabbing a square mile or so of the Forest and moving it to the merfolk planet and dropping it intact on one of the larger islands — it's about the size of England, and in a temperate zone. But we sorta need someone there to manage the forest, maybe help it expand, and to tell us if there are any problems."
He frowned slightly.
"We're also terraforming Mars, making it inhabitable by people? I'd like to ask the Centaurs if they could help us figure out how we should do that. I mean, no one knows the forest better than the Centaurs. Wizards certainly don't know enough about what's really in the Forest."
The Centaur just looked at him.
Harry cleared his throat. "So, I thought I'd mention this to you, and you could think about it . . . consult the stars . . . tell me what you think next week, just before I leave for Christmas hols?"
Firenze slowly nodded. "That would be wise."
Harry reach into a pocket and pulled out a comm-link. "Here," he said holding it out to the centaur. "When you want to talk with me, just tap the stone with your finger and say my name. I'll answer immediately, if I can. If I can't, I'll call you back as soon as I can."
The Centaur took it, recognizing the Othila rune-shaped stone almost immediately.
"You can place it anywhere convenient and it will stay there. It won't get knocked loose or fall off by accident. It can only be removed when you lift it by the edges." He grinned. "It's not magic, it's completely muggle, and has a battery that will last several years, so you can keep it. That way, if there's an emergency, or you want to talk to me, you can."
Firenze slowly nodded as he continued to study the apparent thin-rock.
"Well, that's all I wanted to say. Thanks for listening. Bye." He waved his hand slightly and left with Firenze watching him speculatively.
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Harry and Hermione were revising their Potions homework in the Common Room when they decided to take a break. Plus, dinner was soon.
After his conversation is Firenze, Harry had started to wonder how things were going with the Merfolk. After casting the muffliato spell, he tapped his comm-link. "Lee, if you're not busy, how are things going with the colony at Rigel?"
"Not bad, not bad at all," came his quick response. "Let me check my notes . . . Ah . . . let's see . . . the Galileo excavated into the island a bit to provide them an emergency shelter, with metal doors they can close." He chuckled. "Just in case they attract the attention of something like the giant squid that thinks they'd make a nice snack. The entrance is covered with an aversion spell keyed to everything that isn't a Merfolk or one of their pets, as well.
"The power plant/communication/replicator unit is on the largest island and the Merfolk have several PiMPS. They're still a bit leary of them, but starting to really like how they can fix cuts and broken bones quickly.
"As soon as the Fuelling Depots finish replicating, we can haul one to one of the gas giants in the system. By the time the planetary unit there starts to run low, an automated Runabout can bring in the replacement fuel from the Depot. It'll have more than enough in storage by then.
"By the way, I think maybe we should move a third of our Fuelling Depots there just to spread things out a bit. In case of . . . well . . . problems with the Goa'uld.
"Other than that, things appear to be fine. They haven't given us any complaints, and seem rather pleased. They've been sampling the local plants and animals, and except for a few upset stomachs every once in a while, they seem to be finding plenty to eat. One of the Crew, a muggle-born who was interested in anthropology as a kid, has taken up the challenge to document their colony, and catalogue all the animals and plants the Merfolk can find. He's having quite a bit of fun, he says.
"The Merfolk were a bit suspicious, at first, but they seem to have decided to like him. They've agreed to grow gillyweed for him, so in another month he'll have a native supply." He paused and shrugged. "He's not exactly roughing it out there. He's remodelled one of the Runabouts into a home and office rather than building a house on the island.
"By the way, all the Runabouts have been modified to use Naquadah, now," he added as an aside.
"From what he's saying, we can probably expect a good number of the Merfolk from Earth to move there. Especially because they don't have to worry about being discovered by muggles or limit their children to not over-grow limited resources."
"Excellent news!" Harry said. "Has he asked them if we can transplant part of the Forbidden Forest to the island?"
Lee chuckled. "He said that the chief of the village said, 'As long as there are no wizards or muggles, we do not care what you do on the land.' "
Harry and Hermione laughed. "Well, next time you talk with him, tell him to ask the chief if he has any objections to the Centaurs living on the island. There's no guarantee they will, but they might be interested if the Merfolk have no objections."
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The train's compartment was rather full for the Christmas hols trip to London. Practically the entire upper staff of the DSF that hadn't graduated was there. Neville, Padma, Parvati, Susan, Hannah, Luna, Ginny, Lavender, Dean, Zacharias, Justin, and Ernie were crowded in with Harry and Hermione. It would have been impossible if not for the expansion charm.
They were all laughing over the letters Hermione had been getting from her parents. Not to mention the other muggle-borns in the group who communicated regularly with their parents.
Harry knew the muggle-born and half-blood students who hadn't yet joined the Crew would be astonished at how much had changed in the world since September when they arrived home for Christmas. The revelation of aliens and the Stargate program were the major subjects of almost every newspaper and news broadcast, according to Hermione's parents. Speculation was rampant, and stories of the different civilizations through the Stargates that had so far been encountered were eagerly devoured by the public.
Conspiracy theorists were going crazy, if they weren't already, over the pictures and sightings of the Star Wars X-wing fighters, the Space: 1999 Runabouts, and the Battlestars. Writers in Hollywood, as far as the theorists were concerned, were all aliens. Or could see the future.
The religious fanatics were even worse. Someone had leaked the story that the aliens had proof of the soul, and that people were not the only creatures to have them. Ghosts were real, too, but refused to talk about the afterlife and God, or Gods and Goddesses, as the case may be. They were split on whether the story was a hoax, or not.
Being told that the old Greek and Roman gods had been miscreant aliens had shaken many people. There were quite a few of the extreme conservatives who were saying the aliens who were supplying the PiMPS were actually devils distributing the tools of the Devil, Satan. Or simply saying the "aliens" were lying.
However, the sheer number of lives the devices saved, in more ways than one, made that a difficult argument to make. A lot of people were saying that if the aliens were emissaries of the Devil, they certainly weren't doing anything that could be considered evil! Plus, unlike many of the "faithful", they weren't going around killing others simply because they disagreed with them!
Several of the theocracies had refused to allow the PiMPS into their countries, and then tried to bully their neighbours into doing the same. Their terrorist attacks on hospitals had not helped their cause. In fact, one neighbouring country had retaliated by bombing the governmental building of the other country while it was in full-session. When the attacked country had tried to launch a counter-strike, the Requirement had used its dematerializer to "confiscate" the fuel for all their planes and vehicles.
And then warned the attacking country to settle down or their air force and army would be neutralized, as well. When they complained about defending themselves from suicide-bombers, Lee came up with a "high-tech" bracelet that could detect the presence of explosive materials on anyone within ten metres not wearing a similar bracelet.
It wasn't fool-proof, but then what was?
The PiMPS had everyone else in the world simply slack-jawed. Daily, there were stories of people moments from death being cured. Every day, reports were being made of where the latest deliver of PiMPS was taking place. The hospitals with a unit had to set up triage wards, insisting that those in most danger of dying be treated first, then taking the patients in order of the severity of their problem.
Nursing homes were being emptied as formerly frail and bed-ridden occupants were discovering they felt thirty and forty years younger.
With an average of 40,000 people served per hospital in England, it was going to take a year, minimum, to treat everyone. And that didn't include the people who didn't feel it necessary to visit a hospital every year. For example, people with glasses! On the other hand, by the middle of next year, only accident victims and newly-sick or injured people would be showing up.
For other parts of the world? It would take years to treat everyone.
India and China topped that list! They simply didn't have the infrastructure or trained personnel to do the job any faster. It takes time to train people, and with populations of over a billion, each, they needed a hundred-thousand people trained. Even then, it would still take at least two years, or more, to treat everyone. Which disregarded the time it would take just to get PiMPS to those hundred-thousand doctors! Adding in travel-time to the hundreds of thousands of small and remote villages all across China and India? In some cases, it would take weeks just to get to the areas that needed the units.
China had already been warned once about trying to restrict usage of the units to only party members, and deliberately ignoring sections of the country. It would be interesting to see if they tried to keep the units from groups that were out of favour with the officials. The next time it happened would see the party-members getting their recoveries reversed until the government was changed.
Several dictators in smaller countries had already been deposed when the populace had discovered they had been banned from using the units because their leaders had tried to limit the benefits to their friends or supporters, only.
The other newsworthy item that was making headlines was from the astronomers reporting the obvious signs that Mars was being terraformed.
With Stargate Command temporarily off-line, the DFS was using the Stargates on Mars and Venus.
The Martian and Venetian teams were working together, Harry knew. A runabout had been modified to hold a Stargate in a vertical position. It was currently flying a pre-programmed course through the atmosphere of Venus at supersonic speeds — or, rather, the equivalent in that planet's dense atmosphere. The carbon-dioxide blasted out of the Stargate on Mars at eight-hundred-plus degrees Fahrenheit, four-hundred-fifty-plus degrees Centigrade. The second Stargate was mounted horizontally, pointing down, on its roving Runabout on Mars. It was several miles above the surface so that none of the speed of the carbon-dioxide coming out of the gate would accidentally rebound any of the gas away from the planet. With a pressure of over ninety-times that of Earth, the hurricane force of the cone of air as it blasted down created a dust-storm that was clearly visible through any telescope that resolved the planet as more than a tiny dot.
According to the Library, Hermione had told Harry, the rapid infusion of carbon-dioxide from Venus in this manner, for two months, would raise the global temperature significantly, and help maintain the temperature through the gas' heat-trapping properties. With the methane they had already brought to the planet, it would be a tremendous jump in shortening the timescale to get a useable atmosphere. Plus, such a carbon-dioxide rich environment would cause much accelerated plant growth until the oxygen levels stabilized. After waiting a few months for the atmosphere to calm a little, they would start bringing nitrogen in from Titan and oxygen and water from some of the planetoids in the Oort cloud. The goal was to end up with a normal Earth-type atmosphere and a significantly-sized ocean in about a year. Then they would start moving plants and animals to their new home.
They were even discussing a plan to repeat the two Stargate-equipped Runabouts with the transmitting one at Rigel's planet. Putting a magic-field over the Stargate to only let through water would prevent any accidental cross-contamination from the water-world. It would significantly reduce the Oort cloud trips, and effort.
With the Magnetic Shield Station in place, Mars would no longer be losing oxygen to the solar wind. In addition, the natural planetary processes that helped create an atmosphere would no longer be fighting a losing battle against the solar wind. They should have an inhabitable planet that would survive another billion years, at least.
Meanwhile, Venus was losing a bit of atmospheric pressure while removing heat stored in the atmosphere. It wasn't much, by comparison, especially given that Venus had an atmosphere that was nearly two thousand times the mass of the one on Mars — ninety times as massive as Earth's. However, every ton of air that the Venus team didn't have to deal with was a gain for them.
Both teams wanted the process to go on for a longer time, but two months was all they were going to get. Dealing with the Goa'uld took precedence. Once the SGC teams were trained and ready, the two Stargates would be returned to the Moon for exploration runs.
In the meantime, Ginny and Luna were quite eager to visit the Star Gate teams in training and show them what combat on a hoverboard was really like.
It took Lee most of the trip to bring them up-to-date on the various projects the DSF was running, and the progress the muggles were making at getting the PiMPSes distributed.
Firenze had asked for more time to talk with his compatriots.
The werewolf population at Uranus Base had nearly doubled over the last month. Their "hamlet" had grown to be more of a village with a market, school, two pubs, restaurant, and a mediwitch-in-residence. It even had a tiny auror force to keep small arguments from spiralling out of control.
There weren't any werewolves left in England, and the number still in Europe was dropping fast. Remus said that they had tripled the number of werewolves over last Christmas! Almost all were now taking classes in wand-usage, and were thrilled at the prospect. Plus, many of the women were reduced to tears of happiness at the prospect having menstrual periods, something he had been told no woman really enjoyed. Remus had explained that having periods meant being able to have children. Children who wouldn't have to fear their parents.
Several women, Remus told him, wanted to have Harry's children, as a way of expressing how happy they were. Harry was appalled . . . and a bit flattered. He resolved to stay as far from the Base as possible, just in case.
Unfortunately, there had been some diehard fanatics who didn't want to live in peace, the wolf was just too much in control, even when it wasn't close to that time of the month. Being on the station did nothing to diminish their aggressive and violent tendencies. Those Weres had been relegated to second Prison Base where they couldn't harm anyone not already a Were.
Neville was pleased to hear that the increased population had meant the greenhouses could, and had been, expanded to nearly a hundred acres in size, each. They would be able to supply all but the rarest of ingredients for their potions in another couple of months.
Having something that would be commercially available outside the DSF would not be possible for quite some time, unfortunately. Even though the acres they had allowed them to grow nearly ten-times as much as they had expected, selling to the muggles would require far more acres than they could reasonably be expected to have under tillage.
The stomach-soother and headache remedies would have to wait until they could find an Earth-like planet they could easily reach with a spaceship.
Which seemed to have been done!
The exploration team on the Galileo had had great hopes for Epsilon Eridani. At a distance of only ten-and-a-half light-years it would have been quite convenient. Its habitable zone is large enough, it has an asteroid belt that covers about the same range as their solar system's, and left the inner area clear. Unfortunately, at only a billion years old, the planet in the habitable zone was too young for a really stable surface, and it was wracked with severe earthquakes and frequent volcanic eruptions. The final strike was that the atmosphere was unbreathable and the outgassing from the volcanoes made it doubtful that would change anytime in the next billion years.
The Galileo was currently at 61 Virginis, about twenty-seven-point-nine light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. It was a G7V main-sequence star only slightly less massive than the Sun, with a composition nearly identical to the Sun. It also had a planet in the habitable zone, but a bit further out proportionally, than Earth was, but not nearly as far as Mars. The planet was older and larger than Earth, somewhat, and teaming with life, but nothing intelligent had yet shown up in their inspection. It had almost fifty percent of its surface under water and an axial-tilt that provided a variety of climates, just as did Earth. The tilt wasn't as much as the Earth's, however.
There were two small moons orbiting it, one that was almost a thousand miles in diameter and the other only five-hundred. It would an interesting experiment to see if a werewolf on the surface of the planet would react to either, or both, of the moons being a "full" moon.
Even better, it was outside the address-block with Earth! Plus, as luck would have it, there weren't any Stargates in its block!
Before they started moving in, though, they wanted a thorough scan of the planet. They didn't want any surprises to pop up and bite them later!
Speaking of werewolves, they now had four full squadrons of the X-wing fighters. Their mock dogfights in space were a great way for the Weres to deal with the enhanced aggression, brought by their wolves, that they all had to deal with. And that was despite not transforming any more.
Having their lives back under their control made them extremely loyal to the DSF. Plus, no one was forcing them to cooperate. If they just wanted to live on the Base and be a craftsman, merchant, or even a chess-player, they could. The older Weres regarded the Base as heaven in space.
It was lunch-time when Lee finished.
Angelina chimed in at that point. She was happy to report that they had managed to scan-in most of the Hogwarts Library, with only the Restricted Section not yet done. The books were all available via their tricorders. That would make their research efforts for their assignments and exams, especially their NEWTS, much simpler. Nothing could beat the convenience of the indexing provided by the Library on the ships — especially considering the abysmal lack of any indexing or a card-catalogue of the books at Hogwarts. Not to mention the complete lack of an index in the books, themselves.
She expected that now that they didn't need the Room of Requirement for connecting to the DSFS Requirement — the Vanishing Cabinets took care of transferring the non-apparition-capable crew — the Restricted Section books would be done by the time the seventh-years graduated in six months.
After a wonderful meal beamed down to them, the rest of the trip they just talked and relaxed. With Draco at Hogwarts, to help his mother financially, it was a nice, quiet, pleasant, trip.
With no signs of any activity from either Voldemort or his Death Eaters, the Christmas hols in Diagon Alley were a delight. Everyone was in a cheerful and happy mood. People who had been in hiding last year, were out in force, this year. Enterprise was doing a booming business, Harry was happy to see, when he went through looking for Christmas presents. Josephine was still finding half-bloods and muggle-borns who were interested in . . . star traveling. Or working in one of the many restaurants and shops they now operated, she said, when he talked with her briefly.
Both Luna and Lee had contributed new pieces to sell, as had a few of the other Crew-members. The travelling cloaks were still a favourite, he saw.
However, as far as he was concerned, the best part of the break was spending time with Hermione and the "girls" without classes or studying to interfere.
Hermione certainly seemed to agree!
While it was too cold for swimming, her being seventeen and considered an adult in the wizarding world, she could cast a warming charm that kept her and Harry toasty-warm — and clothes-optional for the two teens when her parents were at the office
Her parents were not stupid. They knew.
But she was a grownup, now, so they kept their silence and were relieved that when they got home that there were no signs of any impropriety.
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Josephine had been stunned when she first arrived in Bombay, now called Mumbai.
She had known that India had over a billion people, which, naturally, meant they had a proportionally-larger number of wizards and witches. She just hadn't realized what that meant: The magical shopping district in Mumbai, Asmaan Galee (Uneven Alley), was insanely crowded! The other three magical districts in the country, Viṣama Galee (Irregular Alley) in New Dehli, Tirachā Galee (Oblique Alley) in Chennai, and Vikr̥ta Galee (Distorted Alley) in Kolkata, — the new name for Calcutta — were equally crowded, she had been told. Each city was the destination to nearly five times as many wizards and witches as was Diagon Alley!
And the competition? Unbelievable.
Even with all the stores using extensive expansion charms, they were crowded.
What dismayed her, though, had been the obvious caste-discrimination at work. There were a number of stores with signs that said "Only Brahmin" and many more that said "No Dalits". Only after learning the language herself did she understand that the name, Asmaan Galee, also translated to Unequal Alley!
And she had thought the pure-bloods were awful bigots!
On the other hand, did the Crew really want to recruit people who wouldn't frequent a shop that allowed a particular group of people? Or would only frequent a store that restricted to their caste? Or thought that such treatment of other wizards and witches, regardless of their abilities, was somehow, fair?
While there was no agreement on an "official" language for India, Hindi-Urdu was the most prevalent in the Mumbai region. English, however, was surprisingly common, she discovered. With so many dialects the only common-ground the Indians could all agree upon was English! As a foreign language, even if it had been imposed by the United Kingdom, it favoured no one religion, clan, group, or tribe. Most educated Indians spoke it quite well, and even the uneducated learned enough to get by.
For the other store locations, Bengali and Tamil would be more commonly encountered. Fortunately, learning the languages well-enough to converse fluently had been remarkably easy — for adults.
Unsurprisingly, in retrospect, India had developed special charms, combined with duplicated memories, to "teach" the basics for a new language. With so many languages and dialects it had been a necessity to develop something like that! It wasn't overnight, but in two weeks' time — alternating one day learning with one day practicing — they could easily carry a conversation with only a small trace of an accent. Diligent work, she was told, could even eliminate the accent. She intended to be diligent. All the Enterprise and Return to Tomorrow Videos store managers, and senior clerks, completed the courses while the dickering for a location was ongoing.
They didn't get any of the nuances, but those would come with time. Nevertheless, they were thoroughly grounded in the meanings of several thousand words, and educated in the grammar to a post-grade-school level. The written forms were also learned in the same manner during the same two weeks.
Which meant she and the others could read and write in Hindi better than nearly forty-percent of the Indians who spoke it as a first language!
Already, several of the Crew were experimenting with and adapting the Indians' techniques to make a Memory Learning Set for Runes. Those would be especially important for any non-European Crew members. Otherwise, they faced a long and difficult time in learning the runes. The goal was to have a set that would give them NEWT-level skills in only a week's worth of effort.
Unfortunately, using that learning technique before or during puberty interfered with brain development, the Indians had told them. The suggested minimum age for using the technique was twenty-one. Sadly.
So, there would be no easy way to skip the years of learning wand usage, history, potions, and so forth.
On the other hand, any new hires from India could be brought up to speed to nearly perfect English rather quickly.
Even with the help of the Patil's family, just getting a location for their stores had been a trial. There was a months-long waiting list for even the worst locations, and years for acceptable ones. Limiting their options, of course, was that they wanted to have their Enterprise store backed against a Return to Tomorrow Videos store on the Muggle side.
After reviewing their options, Admiral Potter had simply asked, "Why not just buy a good location? We certainly can afford the gold." He had shrugged. "Sell a dozen tons of replicated muggle-gold to the Chinese muggles, convert it to rupees, then convert that to whatever the Indian magicals use."
The twins had face-palmed.
"Just look for a good location where we can locate a Quark's nearby. He paused. "In fact, buy two locations, one can be an Enterprise/Return to Tomorrow set and the other a Quark's/Gus's Galaxy Grill." He frowned. "Considering the population in India, perhaps the muggle sides need to be much larger?"
Which was what they had done.
The Patils had helped them hunt down nineteen squibs, male and female, for the muggle-side of the stores. The new-hires were given strict instructions that they were to treat everyone who came into the stores as if they were their best friend's mother.
The store-front in Asmaan Galee was a matter of an over-night cleaning and rearranging once they had the purchase agreement. The door connecting through to the Return to Tomorrow store was hidden behind a tech-cloak, of course.
Arranging the muggle store would take a bit more time as doing everything magically overnight would raise quite a few questions with the authorities — despite any bribes they might toss around. They would still use magic, of course, it would just be a little at a time to give the impression they were doing the work by hand. The Patils managed to find even more Squibs for them, from several castes, and their work with cleaning and arranging the shop helped camouflage what they were doing quite nicely.
Providing all of them with fully-furnished apartments over the store for themselves and their families got them dedicated hard workers — use of expansion charms was not limited! Between the free-meals from Quark's/Gus's Galaxy Grill and high wages, the new-hires were fiercely loyal almost from day one!
Then she added in that they would be using magical learning to teach them all a college-level knowledge of Hindi, both spoken and written, as well as English. That left the Indian Squibs wondering if they had fallen into paradise. The new-hires' were ready to worship her as a new deity when she brought out a PiMPS and restored them and their families to perfect health.
They almost cried when she picked five and handed each of them one-thousand quid worth of Indian Rupees with instructions to go out and buy the best Indian movies on the video market. The only caveat was that the specific ones they bought had to be the best versions, so no used or poor copies.
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