Chapter 33:

From London we went to the Lovegood house. My parents already completed their move to California and sold their house in England. They didn't have any longstanding ties to England, and visiting is easy enough. Xenophilius is keeping the Lovegood estate maintained at all times, and will sometimes go back and forth.

They kept the original house that was on the property, which was set well back from the road, and added new wings to the house in the air above the original house, invisible to non-magicals. They put some good magical protections against non-magical drones, helicopters, ladders, or any other means of discovering the additions. Xenophilius would get a wing of the house until and unless he decides to build his own house, as would we. There was also a below ground potions lab, as they were planning to scale up their potions business.

They picked a location that has many different directions one could drive from, so neighbors wouldn't notice if we use magical transport, and don't seem to pass them by car. There was of course top level wards against magicals, in addition to all the precautions for non-magicals to not notice anything to be curious about. Initially the winery would only sell wholesale to non-magicals and magicals, but they reserved a location for a tasting room and winery tour, near the road entrance, in case they ever decided to add that.

The next day, Luna packed up in shrunken storage whatever she wanted to bring, and then the three of us made the international port-key trip to MACUSA and then to my parents floo address. We all had a big meal when we arrived, dinner for us, brunch for my parents, then we did a grand tour of the buildings and vineyard.

A few days later, Luna and I arrived at Starfleet Headquarters. Our badges show us each as Assistant Director, Section 31. This is different than in canon, where the organization was secret, although the people assisting the organization, while working in other Starfleet directorates, will have that connection hidden.

It was time for our first meeting with Dumbledore during the summer. We had a port-key path to Hogwarts that bypassed all national ministry access control. We would start from Starfleet Headquarters, and would need to stay within transit points on the way, and stay within Hogwarts territory when we arrived. Before the trip, Luna asked Dumbledore to bring her boggart friend to the meeting.

When we arrived at the floo in Dumbledore's office, after talking about where we live and the arrangements for us at Starfleet Headquarters, Dumbledore looked at the shaking cabinet with the boggart and said to Luna, "An interesting approach, to use the boggart to find your true fear with a greater clarity than you can do yourself. Of course it might not be generally applicable, and might be related to your seer abilities." I indicated that I didn't want to face the boggart, and neither did Dumbledore, so we stayed in the back of the room, while Luna approached the cabinet. She knew how to release and re-cage it.

The boggart became some sort of history professor giving a lecture, "Around the turn of the millennium, the help the magicals provided became more obvious. They responded by releasing knowledge of some magic, as a type of technology, and magicals as technicians who tend to that technology. It didn't fool people for long.

Soon it became public knowledge that the magicals were not only helping us, but controlling us. We found out that they divided the world into regions, and that some regions were getting more help than others, and some were being controlled more than others. A few parts of the world suddenly revolted and attacked anything and anyone that seemed magical. The revolt spread. In the end, some very advanced technologies, which we are not allowed to talk about even today, caused massive deaths among only the magicals, and they were driven from visible locations. For decades afterwards, hidden elements were hunted down, and similar to 1692 Salem, probably mostly falsely accused were killed."

Luna said, "Thank you boggart." and sent it back into its cabinet.

I said, "So, we can prevent wars between magicals, wars between non-magicals, and we still wind up with a war by non-magicals against magicals. One other alarming bit of knowledge, Neville Longbottom's research in Kazakhstan, will almost inevitably result in Morosov having the same type of spaceship, with perhaps the same name and appearance, that his counterpart in Star Trek canon used to evacuate about 100 of what they called augments, who were leaders around the world, after they were defeated."

Dumbledore said, "Your unique abilities to see upcoming issues, does not mean that you are uniquely able to find solutions to prevent these events. That is a lesson that I have learned over the last seven years, that while I have unique strengths in learning about hidden magics, my solutions to the problems I discovered were not as ideal as others could discover. In Starfleet, we have put together a large organization of some of the world's experts. Perhaps if we show them this particular possible future, they may have some solutions that the three of us have not fathomed."

Luna answered, "Some of the relevant information, we have not shared with many others. Q likes to give hints. The odd similarities of Morozov and Khan from Star Trek are perhaps a message to us. Q directly telling us about the crucial role of our future daughter is another."

Dumbledore said, "Perhaps we could more freely give out information about the results of what you see, including with the boggart, but more vaguely package the information of Q related information in the context of your unique seeing abilities."

Luna said, "Another issue, is would it be advantageous to look like we know what we are doing? Would expressing our own doubts to the rest of Starfleet leadership make us less credible for when we actually do know what needs to be done?"

Dumbledore answered, "Before meeting you two, my approach was to seem infallible, always having a plan that no-one else could even comprehend. Not necessarily the true situation, but what I let be perceived. Tom, you showed me that my former approach would have resulted in many deaths, including my own, and a narrow victory over Riddle, that required an enormous amount of luck. For that I am extremely grateful to you."

I answered, "You mean a life debt?"

Dumbledore answered, "No, at that point we were de facto allies, and allies do not incur life debts for saving each other. To continue about seeming infallible, remember that I had the public accolade of personally ending the war against Grindelwald. Of course, as you probably already know, the true story is more complex than that, but that was the public perception, and one that I helped cultivate. That gave me the ability to have people follow my advice with the assumption that I have a good plan behind that advice. You two, on the other hand, while actually responsible for the ending of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, have chosen to work behind the scenes and have taken none of the credit. You might consider, allowing, at least selected people in the Starfleet leadership, to know about your role in those matters."

Luna said, "Before we plan our next steps, I think we should have a very frank discussion, and get out of the way some previously unasked and unanswered questions."

Dumbledore answered, "I would agree, but not in an unlimited way. We should agree to answer honestly, but reserve the right to answer in generalities, or with a statement that a question will not be answered, if one should feel that to be necessary."

Luna and I both said that we agreed.

Luna started with, "Why are you assuming the role of mentor to us, and helping us learn how to build a persona the way you did?"

Dumbledore answered, "A few reasons. You have knowledge that needs to be turned into action through leadership. That leadership will be needed for many decades to come, and while I could just learn the information from you and provide the needed leadership myself, I do not know how much longer I will be capable of doing so. Another reason, is your goals are fundamentally compatible with mine, so I feel comfortable with eventually passing leadership to you. Finally, the stakes are very high, more than the fate of Wizarding Britain, but of our entire planet, and even possibly the existence of this timeline, meaning that Q expected first Tom and then both Tom and you to guide this timeline, and we don't want to disappoint."

Luna asked me, "Tom, I arrived on the scene one year after both of you started working together. I know you already told me reasons, but I want Albus to hear it and hear his reactions. Why did you agree to work so closely with Albus?"

I answered, "When I arrived in this universe, I knew I was basically on a mission to improve the timeline over what it was in canon, not just hide from it, escape from it, or just survive it. Besides an immortal villain could perhaps eventually be a danger anywhere that I could go to. If the canon war against Voldemort was narrowly won, even slight unintentional effects of my presence could have changed that.

In my original universe, this universe was a popular work of apparent fiction as was Star Trek. Many people had speculated on what could be done with fore-knowledge in what was called the Harry Potter world. Often, in fan written fictions, that character was Harry Potter himself, or another main character, coming back from the future, but sometimes it would be an outside character, such as myself. Sometimes the character had essentially magical super-abilities, sometimes not. In many of those stories, the characters would hide their activities from Dumbledore and the Ministry, while, on their own, destroying the Horcruxes, and then fighting the Death Eaters and finally Voldemort. Usually they allied with the Goblins, and had a limited number of allies. I did not think any of those approaches would have been effective.

Then there is the question of Albus Dumbledore. The fan theories started from the facts of the mistreatment of Harry Potter, and the difficult situations he had that seemed more engineered than random, with the only possible person engineering them being Albus Dumbledore. Some said that Albus considered the greater good and treated its achievement as a chess game, willing to sacrifice any chess piece, but himself. Others said that he had too much confidence in his own decision making and planning abilities, thereby making mistakes. Others said that he had evil intent, for instance to ensure that Harry Potter did not survive the war, and to claim credit for killing Voldemort himself. Others said that while not having evil intent, he was not quite rational, due to his history with Ariana and Grindelwald, leading to odd decisions like sacrificing allies to give enemies a second chance, even if with that second chance they would kill more people.

I concluded that Albus could be the best possible ally against Voldemort, if only he could set aside his need to be the chessmaster. I was given mental abilities, by Q, that gave me a little more leverage than most characters in my place would, and nature of Q's relationship to this timeline and myself, as additional leverage. So, I told him information that could help. I implicitly, not explicitly, let him know that I did not care how bad, or not, he might have been in the past, but was looking to work cooperatively with him in the future.

Albus, in turn, signaled back, that he was going to work cooperatively with me. If he had known that Quirrell was actually Voldemort, or not, either way he got rid of him. Same with Pettigrew, and doing so in a way that Sirius Black was freed and not trying to force Harry Potter to go back to the Dursleys.

I suppose you could say that I, and you also Luna, believe in the greater good, but we two do not believe in sacrificing people for the greater good. You can see how we are trying to drum into Starfleet, no marine left behind, instead of expendable red shirts."

Dumbledore said, "Then we appear to agree that we all look for the good one can do in the future, rather than look towards punishing the transgressions one may have made in the past. However, I was perhaps blinded in not considering the effects, on others, of giving second chances to likely repeat offenders."

Luna said, "Now that we've cleared the air, let us move on to fixing the timeline. Perhaps Tom and I need to have the credit given, within those parts of Starfleet that already know that we have some sort of seeing ability. Then we can solicit opinions, without looking incompetent."

I added, "Also, keep in mind our apparent ages make it less likely for others to respect us. Taking that credit could help with that. Still Albus' role is essential in providing the credibility for Section 31, rather than two recent graduates of magic school."

We had a meeting with the Starfleet directors and their top advisors. Dumbledore started our presentation, "I would like to show you two videos, one of which was a vision by Tom Picard, and one of which happened after his and Luna's effects on the timeline."

The scene of the graveyard battle in the Harry Potter movie was shown, ending in Voldemort's resurrection. Then the actual scene of the Death Eaters being summoned and captured was shown.

"Tom Picard provided extensive information about the nature of the magic used by Voldemort, enough that our researchers were able to duplicate the effects of the summoning of his supporters. He also, came to me 7 years ago, at age 11, with a thorough background and knowledge of the challenges facing British Wizarding society, and an understanding of how to fix it. Luna Lovegood, betrothed to Tom, has her own knowledge of timelines and understanding of how our world can navigate through them with decisions made, and her own unique seeing abilities.

Without their knowledge, I would not be here today, and the world would be in a far different place.

I will now show you a vision by Luna Lovegood, which uses her unique way of having a boggart, which shows us our greatest fears, manifest a vision of hers."

The memory of the boggart was then shown.

Dumbledore continue, "We would like to hear your reactions and thoughts about how we can avoid this scenario."

Associate Director of Starfleet Germany, Christof Mueller, from Switzerland said, "I am afraid that our own research might lead to the weapon against magicals being discovered. We have been studying the genetic makeup of magicals, non-magicals, and squibs, trying to find the differences. A targeted bioweapon would become feasible from this research."

I spoke up, "We should not discount the possibility of traitors among wizard-kind that could make that possible. They could hide a research facility, even from us, and do their own research into genetics, and create a global virus that would specifically target magicals for death, while only having minor effects on all others."

Mueller then added, "As long as I still have the floor, I'd like to bring up another planetary safety issue. There are a number of what are called supercolliders, being planned, to discover previously unknown parts of physics, and the makeup of matter itself, using high energy collisions of subatomic particles. We are putting a stop to further increases in the energy of experiments in an area overlapping Switzerland and France. Some physicists warn that a black hole could be created. We also worry that space warping will start to be discovered. We are not ready for the alien contact that discovery of warp fields would trigger. Also, these experiments would be better done in places other than an inhabited planet, since the hazards could be over a wide area or even the entire planet. I propose that all such experiments be halted, and then be resumed on an asteroid, perhaps in 20 years, when we anticipate it being feasible to do so there."

I answered, "In another timeline, while there was no black hole created, some people believed that there was a splitting of the timeline. Keep in mind that no reputable scientists agreed with this hypothesis, but a sizable number of people believed that they remembered a different history than what actually existed. While there were a number of differences that people perceived, the most notable was whether Nelson Mandela died in jail, or was released from jail. The phenomenon was called the Mandela effect. Those who believed in its effect said it started when the Hadron Collider that Assistant Director Mueller was talking about, started doing high energy experiments."