Chapter 39:

New Year 2003 approached. Xenophilius said "The best possible New Years Eve for me would be spend it with my Renée and my Jean-Laurent, and you two should go travel together."

My parents were going to a party in the area with other wine makers. They were in two different worlds, the non-magical wine region, and the magical world. They sold wine in both economies, and specialty potions in the magic world.

We went to the same parties as two years ago. This time the party was at the Potters and the rest brought their kids. We didn't think it was a good idea to subject our kids to the port-key trip around the world yet. We saw little James Potter and Gideon Weasley. Hannah Longbottom was expecting in May. Fred Weasley and Enikő were still together, but there were no announcements so far from them.

It was not a work trip, but I was talking to Hermione about her paper on solutions to the communications challenges of sending large amounts of data from the Asteroid Belt to Earth. The planned super-collider on one of the inner asteroids, was going to be minimally staffed. Experiments would be pre-planned and huge amounts of raw data would be sent to Earth for analysis. Hermione's paper was describing error correction and how to ask for re-transmissions of missing segments of data. She wrote another paper concluding that relay data transmission points would not be necessary or helpful.

Back in San Francisco, we went to a 1970's themed New Year's Eve party. We missed last years 1960's party.

In February when we came home from Starfleet, there was another scene of wine glasses all around, except Luna was back to being served grape juice. Luna just said, "Girl, September 29th."

China had a new leader, Hu Jintao. He heralded a new policy called "Scientific Outlook on Development". In reality some of the science was actually magic.

Starfleet China stepped up its efforts. China now had magic, but officially called fusion, reactors powering much of its economy. They also copied some of the planned cities that Vietnam had. They developed their own electric vehicles, and with magic powerplants, the cities of China had noticeably cleaner air.

A novel disease outbreak, called SARS, was stopped using magic healing to cure people who had the disease and prevent its spread. The public couldn't see what was being done, since the teams to detect who was sick and to cure them were all wearing full environmental suits.

China was still somewhat upset that the influence of Kazakhstan was all around them, from Kazakhstan itself to Mongolia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Laos. The only affiliates Starfleet China had were Myanmar, Singapore, and North Korea.

The Taiwan situation was not close to being resolved. The Formosans were thinking in terms of claiming the areas that had more of what were called indigenous people, but didn't even mention it, because they knew that China would not accept any small part of what it considered to be China not being under their authority. The idea of a Federation of China, scared the government of China, since if they accepted it for Taiwan, they would likely find Tibet, and the people of northwest China, and maybe other regions, each demanding their own autonomy under the same formula.

The plans for the super-collider were underway. It was going to be on Vesta, which is 500 km across and has a gravity of 0.025 g. There would first be a permanent space station near Vesta. The crew would use magic to rapidly build the loop for the super-collider. Following that would be the specialized equipment needed. Various type of magic would be used to create the objects needed, or to shrink them and then transport them from Earth.

On September 29th, 2003, Cleodora was born. Renée already picked out her nickname, calling her "Cora".

Across the world there were now many government to government negotiations and cooperation between magical and non-magical. We still feared a general conflict between the two societies if the knowledge of magic were to be made public.

The Quibbler added an on-line edition with the same articles as the print edition. It was by subscription, with a magical decoding ability for paid subscribers. Headlines and occasional sample articles were made available for free.

The rest of 2003 and 2004 didn't have much news. All conflicts were kept from becoming wars. The growth of the non-magical economies throughout the world were extraordinary in terms of their previous rates of growth.

The traditional magical societies, such as the UK gave the same level of help as the rest of the world. Having some places conspicuously less prosperous was considered a security threat to peace and unity of Earth. What traditional magical societies did, was separate more from their non-magical counterparts. There was assistance given, but that was by members of the ministry assigned that task. What it mostly meant was that the wizarding culture stayed traditional. Non-magical raised witches and wizards were given intensive acculturation lessons, and told that if they wished to change the magical society, they would find it far more rewarding to go elsewhere. At the same time, in Britain and Ireland at least, the influence of Sirius Black ensured that non-magical born witches and wizards were treated properly, and not discriminated against based on their birth. However there were standards of behavior expected of them, including a willingness to fit in to the existing culture.

New Years 2005 was similar to the previous year. This time we brought our kids with us on a trip to Kazakhstan, and a trip before that to France. My parents came along for that part of the trip, and we visited extended relatives in France. We also visited the safe parts of Picard Manor and Vineyard. Jean-Laurent was told with great seriousness that this will be his, but it has curses that make it unsafe to go to until those curses can be removed.

In Kazakhstan, Renée really liked the super-modern city. All the kids played together, including James Potter and baby Evangeline Lily Potter. Fred Weasley and Enikő were finally engaged. Gideon Weasley already was a prankster in a toddler sort of way.

The San Francisco party was, as expected, a 1980's themed party.

Jean-Laurent's first magic was actually two magics at once. His grandfather Maurice had read to him the Aesop's fable of the sour grapes. Later Jean-Laurent went to the vineyard, and was looking at a bunch of grapes out of reach and laughing while trying to jump to reach them, saying "They are probably sour", actually saying in French, "Probablement aigre". Then a grape went flying into his hand, he took a bite and yelled "AIGRE!". When Maurice ran over, he determined that there was a magical residue on not only that grape but the entire bunch, which were in fact sour.

Cora's first magic, was more of an ability than accidental magic, so we weren't sure how to classify it. While she had her animated magical creatures to play with, set for her age, she joined Renée in her hidden animated magical creature hunt, and went right up to their hiding place and coaxed them out, then turned around to where Xenophilius appeared just before his arrival and smiled at him.

We went to Kazakhstan for Fred and Enikő's wedding. Ron Weasley impressed us with his maturity. He was a minor Quidditch star, as was his sister Ginny. Ron was engaged to a British Witch working for the same Quidditch team. Ginny was married to a British Auror.

Later in 2005, the first experimental phasers were being tested. The power levels would need to be much higher before it would be an effective space weapon. Photon torpedoes were simple in theory, except the part of being usable at warp speeds. Since antimatter containment was already solved, a very slow buildup of antimatter was possible, and photon torpedoes could be made in a factory setting.

Artificial gravity was still unknown. That would limit impulse engines to only a few G's or Earth gravity equivalents in emergencies, and 1 G for long term use. Until that was solved, the plan was to use more drones for fast maneuvers and combat use, leaving the crewed ship away from the fight. A cloud of drones would both attack, defend, and block weapons being used against the crewed ships. It was understood that balance between the use of small ships and large ships would changes as technologies were developed.

In the public space programs there were probes everywhere in the Solar System, and live feeds of visually interesting places and objects available on the internet. While there were plenty of views of Earth, the emphasis was not on showing Earth as a blue island and the only place capable of supporting life. Instead, the proliferation of space stations and human activity in space was the emphasis.

In September 2005, Renée started Starfleet school. Like the rest of Starfleet education it was ability based. Students were with their own age group for part of the day, and then went off to different classes. Those with magic had a different set of classes than those who did not. Among those, there were classes for those who already showed accidental magic.

In late December, we repeated the same trip as last year. We all visited France and our relatives there. We added on a visit to Madagascar so Xenophilius could look into some legends and legendary magical creatures.

The Kazakhstan New Year's Eve party was larger than ever, and still held at the Potters. They must have expanded the interior of their house. We saw Hermione's parents, Dan and Emma Granger. They had a few houses across the world, and often stayed in Kazakhstan. They retired from Dentistry a while back. Dan actually helped his son in law Harry Potter, in developing the Starfleet Marines, and brought in some of his friends who were veterans of the Falklands and other conflicts, all as occasional consultants.

We got back to San Francisco in time for the 1990's party. They hadn't decided what to do next year, when there were no more nostalgia decades to celebrate.

We were all having dinner at home when wine was being poured and Cora yelled, "No mama, you drink grape juice!" We all could figure that one out and when getting back from Starfleet Medical, Luna said, "We are expecting a boy August 14th 2006."