Chapter 32:

I was reading reports about a computer issue, called Y2K. Some computer programs, as much as 40 years old, were still in use, and stored years with 2 digits, which could cause all sorts of problems in the year 2000. A major effort by Starfleet branches in US, Germany, and Japan were working to help their non-magical counterparts.

There was a full Starfleet R&D meeting on it. Starfleet Kazakhstan Director Morozov said, "My region not have this problem. We replace, not upgrade legacy software. Not as much legacy software to begin with, as other regions. For future, we look at year 2038 problem, and solve it for our region. Not the simple fix to extend to year 2106, but almost infinite extension to 64 bits to represent seconds since start of 1970. Want this to be ICWSO standard.

For much later discussion, but need to keep in mind for software standards now, while whole planet accept time reference local to Greenwich England, other people with other home planet will not accept. More complication of relativistic effects, unknown result of traveling faster than light, other things not even imagined by us. Eventually need time reference when Starfleet truly fleet among stars.

Minor notes, time storage now must always be local time of Greenwich England. Separately calculate timezone and local display method. Expect future need to convert Greenwich time to what might be called stardate. Make it easy for future colleagues who will need to worry about this."

I was checking my messages one night, when I got a request for a video call from Xenophilius Lovegood. The message said, call when convenient. I was in my dorm room, and setup a full audio privacy field, and also a visual field. I was trying out a new visual privacy charm, where it looked like I was studying something with a lot of numbers.

I called Xenophilius, and after some small-talk, and after he verified that we had full privacy, he said, "I was looking into global printing and wanted your opinion on what a sales representative from Global Printing Corporation told me. I'll play back the memory of my conversation with him"

GPC: "What we offer is an efficient way for you to have a global market. Yes we charge for this service, and you could do everything we do, yourself, or with people you hire. However, we have a lot of experience and skills in this area. We can do it better. You can use your time to do what you do best, create content for your publication, and have us do what we do best, handle global printing and distribution."

Xenophilius: "What if your company does not approve of an article?"

GPC: "The contract will make it very clear that we distribute without editorial control. Only an order from a Ministry of Magic would be followed by us, nothing else, no pressure, no boycotts, no secondary boycotts. It is all in the contract. Put it this way, you could slander the family of the CEO of this corporation, and we would print the article and distribute it. Of course, he'd still be able to challenge you to a duel, or sue you, but that would be completely separate from the companies contractual obligation to distribute your content.

We also offer other services. We can handle subscription lists and billing. We can also connect you to local advertisers in each local market. We'd take a cut from that, but you would get regional editions, with their own local ads. You could also decide on separate content for local editions."

Xenophilius asked me, "What do you think about it?"

I replied, "It is a good idea, and GPC seems to have the global market handled. However, there will likely be more companies emerging with a similar ability, and the prices are likely to go down. I wouldn't lock into too long a contract, or be so tied into their method of communication that it would be difficult to change vendors. That would help even if you were just trying to negotiate a better price at the next contract renewal interval.

Also, you should keep in mind on-line distribution of the Quibbler. Make sure that your printing contract does not preclude this. On-line content has had its challenges in making money, even decades later. It is difficult to make sure that ads are not bypassed, or that subscription content is not made generally available for free. It will also reduce your print sales. However, eventually, demand for print-only publications will decline."

I was reading another report from Starfleet US. "When Starfleet regularly operates in other star systems, we will need a way to organize ship operations. We maintain that operational experience of the US Navy would be the most relevant to copy from. At the present time, there is no navy even close to the size or effectiveness of the US Navy.

Starfleet ships are likely to be analogous to submarines, regular surface vessels, or aircraft carriers. With these models, there are already many operational details for how ships function together, how different crew specialties are handled, how ranks and ship discipline is handled. These can be the starting points, before customizing to the unique needs of Starfleet."

A report from Starfleet India was speculating if, for deep space exploration missions, a single starship, or a fleet of ships, similar to a US Navy aircraft carrier battle group, would be better. The conclusion, after many experiments, was that the answer could not be determined, until the characteristics of the ships were better know. How efficient were shields on small ships, versus large. Same for weapons.

The report then went into a long discussion of what is efficiency in this context. Is it cost in materials and labor to produce ships? Is it minimizing casualties? Is it maximizing the chance of winning a battle?

Then there was another discussion saying what if an ideal size vessel was found, would it be better for 2 or more such ships to travel together? Maybe only do so when approaching a star system. Then there was speculation as to whether space battles would only happen around star systems, or would they also occur in deep space?

In the news the first segments of the International Space Station were launched in December 1997. There was a lot of attention paid to it in the non-magical news. It was still a few months before it would be habitable. Articles said things like "We are getting the foundation ready for what will be a permanent human habitation in space." "The International Space Station will have internet access with the .eo domain, which stands for Earth Orbit."

I read a research paper from Starfleet Kazakhstan, written by Hermione Granger, "Delay tolerant and disruption tolerant networking in the magical and non-magical domains. A comparison of the data link and physical OSI layers in the two domains when used in low Earth orbit."

I also read a research paper from Starfleet US, "Encryption and decryption in magical and non-magical domains. How each can be used to decrypt the other, and ways to ensure data security in both domains."

It was winter break again. Luna and I were concentrating on passing our NEWTs. We spent a quiet break at the Lovegood house. My parents stayed over also, taking a break from clearing out their house, and preparing to move their entire winery facility to Napa valley.

Dumbledore was trying to figure out how to handle Hogwarts losing students, due to competition from Starfleet Junior Academy. The consensus in Britain is that instead of trying to compete directly, by adding the types of subjects Starfleet Junior has, it should double down on tradition and the classic Hogwarts experience.

On Valentines Day, we decided to reprise the tables from 5 years ago. The three couples from 5 years ago still at Hogwarts; Luna and me, Hermione and Harry, Hannah and Neville, were each betrothed. The Weasley twins and the Patil twins didn't last long. This time we helped others plan for this in the official Advanced Study class. We wanted to show off more, and knew that it was the fine details, rather than large object such as tables that showed skill. 18 couples each had very ornate tables, chairs, items on the tables, floating chandeliers, and intricate moving objects.

Luna asked me, "From next year and always, we celebrate my birthday, Valentines day, and our wedding anniversary at the same time?"

My answer was "Yes. It would have also been the anniversary of our first date if I didn't ask you earlier. Picard Napa Winery and Vineyard?"

Luna answered, "Yes. February 14th 1999 is a Sunday. We can have everything early in the day, then our guests can have their own plans for Valentines night."

I added, "I'm sure our parents can put together guest quarters for them all, for any that want that. We can put together a guide for good places to visit, including for Valentines night, in the western US."

In April, we watched live video of the International Space Station being made operational. There were some pretty good speeches in the non-magical world. "Humanity has ended its wars, and now we are working together to establish a permanent home in space."

On May 2nd the Advanced Study Group met. I showed them memories from the movie of the Battle of Hogwarts, and also read the book version, explaining that the verbal description is the true canon when it diverges from the video. "These events would have happened last night."

Luna addressed the group, "This is what we prevented. Worse events in the future are what we are trying to prevent."

Harry Potter was stoic and said, "While I could be reacting to everything I saw, I'll fall back to my training. We need to do an after action report, in this case of the verbal description of the battle, since that is considered the closest to unmodified canon, as opposed to the video.

Our goals for this after action analysis will be to determine, given the situation at the beginning of that scene, what could we have done better? When I ask you about your own actions, try to put yourself in the frame of mind of being in that history, and try to figure out why you might have made the decisions you did.

Summary the situation at the start of the battle: The battle starts in the Ravenclaw common room, when Voldemort is called because of my presence. There were two known remaining horcruxes of Voldemort, Ravenclaw's diadem and his snake Nagini. I returned to Hogwarts to find the Diadem horcrux. Alecto Carrow notified Voldemort of my location, thereby triggering the full scale battle, as both sides then had their objectives in the same location. It should be noted that Nagini was always close to wherever Voldemort was, at this time.

The goal for Dumbledore's Army, was to first destroy those two horcruxes and then kill Voldemort. However, significantly, I only shared this information about the horcruxes with a few members of the army.

Goals for Voldemort, to publicly kill Harry Potter in a one on one duel, to then cause the surrender of the remaining opposition.

Balance of forces. The Carrows, various other Death Eaters, Slytherin students, and Snape as headmaster, were in control of Hogwarts. Voldemort arrived with a large number of Death Eaters, plus dementors, giants, werewolves. They also used acromantulas, probably not working for them, but just herded in the direction of opposing forces.

Dumdedore's Army, which is this group plus some others, commanded by Neville Longbottom, were mostly hiding in the Room of Requirement until the battle. Also on our side were most teachers, commanded by Professor McGonagall, Hogwarts suits of armour, Order of the Phoenix, house elves, centaurs, Gawp the giant, Peeves, Buckbeak, Thestrals, and ghosts.

My first criticism goes to Luna Lovegood. Why did you only stun Alecto Carrow? It was already a full scale war at that point, and anyone on her side could have revived her."

Luna answered, "Probably lack of training. Also Panic can cause apparent irrational behavior."

Harry Potter replied, "Exactly. That is why we train. Under panic, you tend to revert to the level of your training. Just afterwards, I used the cruciatus on Amycus Carrow. While it has its uses in a non-lawful duel, it left Amycus in the fight. I should have followed up with another attack. I also had a lack of training. I thought I had learned from fighting Belatrix Lestrange, but didn't really understand her doctrine on the use of cruciatus, and was imitating without understanding."

Harry continued, "There is no need to go over Professor McGonagall's decisions, since she was acting in her role of acting headmaster, not a general in a war. So, letting the older Slytherin students leave to join the enemy army, rather than putting them in protective custody, might have been something she felt obligated to do.

Voldemort gave a midnight deadline to turn me over. Our side felt that preparing, and then fighting within the defenses of a castle, rather than engaging in a preemptive attack would make sense. Note that only 3 of us knew the need to destroy the horcruxes first. I'd like to address the issue of withholding needed information. I'll start with Albus Dumbledore. Why did you withhold the information I needed to win the war?"

Dumbledore answered, "I think my reasoning was that you had no significant ability in occlumency, and had a mind link to Voldemort. Therefore you would need to learn, or be able to figure out, exactly what you needed to know only at the time it was needed."

Harry Potter replied, "Apparently I was doing the same thing, in not telling the entire army about the horcruxes, but I felt I was doing so following your final orders, and that you had a good reason to issue those orders."

Harry asked, "Why did I save Draco Malfoy's life? Normally in war, you only should save an enemy's life if you can also make sure that they will be out of the fight. That could have been as simple as demanding a magical oath before saving him. However, in canon, at the point, I owed a life debt to Draco Malfoy, and was magically compelled, as well as honour bound, to save him, without any pledge.

Next we have to examine the battle which killed Fred Weasley. First, in an all out war, many on our side were still using stunning spells. It could be due to these spells being the only combat spells they were competent in using. The main fault, was in grouping together when the enemy was using explosion related spells. Fred was killed, and several others were stunned and out of the fight for at least several seconds. Only after some seconds did we start to take cover from apparently long distance bombardment.

We did handle the arrival of acromantulas well, instantly attacking them from under cover, and then retreating. Hermione and I also successfully prevented Ron Weasley from doing a berserker charge, telling him that only the three of us knew about the need to kill Nagini. I still cannot understand why everyone on our side wasn't informed of that.

Another aspect to note during the battle, is while too many on our side used stunners and binding hexes during a deadly battle, some fell back to what they know best to good advantage. Neville Longbottom used poisonous plants to good effect during the battle.

When the dementors attacked, Dumbledore's Army was very effective in instantly sending patronuses at them, since they did train for exactly this scenario. This shows again, why training is essential.

Then the enemy called a one hour truce. There was no decision made by commanders as to whether it gave a tactical advantage to accept that truce.

Finally, after I finally get rid of Voldemort, the enemy army just gave up or escaped. That shows that they were not actually an army, but were minions. They had been winning the fight, without Voldemort's actual participation.

So, what are our lessons?"

Hermione answered, "Training, organization, and needed information to the soldiers."

Dean Thomas added, "Redundancy. Too much that succeeded that day depended on individuals completing their missions."

Susan Bones added, "Better coordination. There were allied groups fighting together on the same side, but didn't coordinate much with each other. Meanwhile, the enemy allied groups were well organized together, at least until they lost their leader."

Harry Potter added, "I think Voldemort expected something similar would happen with my death. That our side would just give up as an organized group, and any individuals still fighting would be made an example of."

Finally, the term wound down. All of us in the graduating year were spending all of our time studying for the NEWTs. When the last one was over we all relaxed. The graduation ceremony, which included Luna a year early, was nice, and the we rode the Hogwarts train, leaving behind that phase of our lives.