15th February 2001 (68:9:23)
— Contact plus 05.05.13:05.30
Given how monumental of an historical event the arrival of their new visitors was, it seemed that very little was actually happening. As though all the world were holding their breath.
Their new visitors spent a couple days in the Jupiter system, a few ships zipping off into the asteroid belt or the environs of Saturn now and again. The common assumption — they couldn't simply ask, thanks to the language barrier — was that they were thoroughly removing every remaining trace of the invaders' biotech, to prevent any possible contamination from lingering anywhere in the solar system. Hermione had read theories that there might be simple life on some of the icy moons, so that was a reasonable precaution to take, she thought — the environment on Ganymede, at least, had likely already been thoroughly ruined, but regardless. After finishing their operation out there, most of the visitors moved on, leaving behind only the flagship orbiting the moon and a much reduced fleet lingering in the Jupiter system.
As an explanation, Ambassador Shar had presented a brief video, which had clearly been cobbled together on short notice. There was some room for interpretation, but it seemed that they'd been scouring the region for remnants of the invaders — from the hints they'd gotten from these new aliens, it seemed that the war was already over, this fleet part of an effort to hunt down groups who'd refused to honour a peace settlement — and had abandoned their search grid to head straight for Earth when they'd caught radio signals, some light-years out. (Presumably, they'd believed a less advanced, planet-bound society would be especially vulnerable.) The video suggested that the rest of the fleet had gone back to continue the search, a few ships left behind in case elements hiding in nearby systems slipped in after they were gone.
Having advanced military craft lingering in their solar system could seem quite threatening, even after watching them destroy the aliens who'd been intermittently attempting to invade Earth for five years now, responsible for billions of deaths — the enemy of one's enemy was not necessarily one's friend, after all. But it seemed like their visitors realised that: the flagship was the nearest ship to Earth, and it remained in orbit around the moon, the rest of the visitors keeping their distance far into the outer solar system. Hermione guessed this was technically an occupation — there were foreign military craft within what a spacefaring civilisation would likely consider their 'territory' — but at least it seemed they were trying to be polite about it.
Hermione had spent most of the days since the arrival of their new visitors at the office — not that there was really much to do, just discussing what little they knew about these much more friendly aliens. They didn't have a lot to go on, the observations they'd made of the fleet in the outer system, the occasional ship coming in toward Earth, the aliens they'd made direct contact with, tinkering a bit with with the supplies or technology they'd been gifted. Some useable data, yes, but it quickly came down to speculation, some grounded, some fanciful — all of it fascinating to think about, even if it wasn't immediately useful.
It seemed the representative the General Secretary had negotiated with was as good as his word, so far. (They weren't certain what the proper means of address should be, exactly, but Beth had told Hermione that his language seemed to put surnames first — she'd taken to calling him Ambassador Shar, simply to have something to call him, the rest of her colleagues quickly picking it up.) The shipments of food aid had started almost immediately, practically before the meeting with the delegation in the Gobi had even finished. Shuttles would move into orbit above Earth — civilian shuttles, coming in from the flagship out over the moon — and wait for a signal of where they were wanted; they'd follow their escort down to the landing site, unload the pallets they had on board, sometimes a few bits of technology seemingly just because; they'd trade a few bows with whoever had met them, before boarding their ship again and leaving. The operation was very smooth, they'd undoubtedly conducted similar relief efforts numerous times in the past, following a well-trod protocol.
They had analysed the foodstuffs they were being provided, both chemically and magically, before beginning to distribute them — after all, it wouldn't do any good if they accidentally poisoned hungry people with something not fit for human consumption. They'd considered it a low risk, since apparently their visitors were already familiar with the human species, but the precaution was still worth taking. They couldn't quite identify what it was all made out of — the protein-rich sauce was completely unidentifiable, and so far they hadn't been able to detect the chemical reaction that seemed to instantly cook the meal — but it was very calorie- and nutrient-dense. Hermione believed that someone could live indefinitely on a single bowl of the stuff a day, as the visitors suggested.
That these aliens seemed to have very similar nutritional requirements to humans was interesting, though it seemed that overlap wasn't universal. There was documentation that came with the food supplies, and while they couldn't read the text, there were pictures — one section featured images of individuals of multiple different species, then another group of images in greyscale, and a final group where each of the images were stricken with a curling glyph in bright, warning red. Their guess was that the unaltered pictures were of species who would be able to survive on these supplies; the greyscale ones would be able to safely eat it, but wouldn't have all their nutritional needs met; and the stricken-out ones could not safely eat these rations at all, for whatever reason. Presumably, their guests would have supplies suitable for those peoples as well, but there was obviously no need to present them.
The odds that life would evolve independently in entirely separate environments and somehow end up with nearly identical nutritional needs were, frankly, impossibly miniscule. After discussing the matter around in circles for a time, they'd come to the conclusion that life in their galaxy must not have evolved entirely independently — it was possible that very primitive organisms, or at the very least complex organic molecules, might have been distributed across space by various means, providing countless suitable environments with similar building blocks, resulting in varied but chemically-compatible biospheres. It seemed to Hermione that the theory was plausible, at the least, if absolutely unfalsifiable. Out of the lack of any other reasonable explanation, she supposed they'd simply have to accept that for now.
Though, that was a much less controversial question than a different problem they had to deal with, even if this one came with a far simpler explanation. While convergent evolution might explain aliens having a similar body plan, to a degree, some of their visitors simply looked too familiar. Ambassador Shar, for example, looked perfectly human in almost every identifiable way — the only visible difference seemed to be his exotic colouration. His people were suspiciously familiar, yes, but that wasn't the worst of it: in some of the videos they'd prepared, in some of the documentation here and there, there were images of people who were, undoubtedly, human.
And that presented a serious problem, for what should be obvious reasons: they were absolutely certain that humans had evolved on Earth. So what the hell were they doing in space?
As mildly embarrassing as it was, the conversation making Hermione and some of her peers rather self-conscious, the only reasonable conclusion was that a population of humans must have been removed from Earth, at some point in the past. Undoubtedly not the recent past — if contact had been made with alien visitors at any time in the last couple centuries, they would almost certainly know of it — it would have to have been at some point before the proliferation of early modern record-keeping. There were multiple competing theories of when that contact had been that were being passed around — she'd heard secondhand that certain conspiracy theories involving alien influence in, for example, Egypt and Mesoamerica were suddenly being talked about with a seriousness they'd never been treated with before.
In only certain circles, of course, no legitimate scholar Hermione had read a statement from gave that sort of thing any credence whatsoever. These were still the early days, but the most reasonable theory she'd heard was that humans must have been removed from Earth in small numbers deep into prehistory — well before the agricultural revolution, even. Alien visitors could have, theoretically, scooped up a band of hunter-gatherers and spirited them away with very little effect on the trajectory of human development, deep enough into the past to leave absolutely no cultural memory of that sort of contact behind.
She'd heard speculation that oral history of such events might have evolved into prehistorical religions, or influenced the development of stories of powerful nonhuman beings (like faeries and the like), but there's no serious reason to believe that would be necessary. A muggle theory of the latter she'd heard was that stories of such other peoples might have started with faded cultural memory of a broader human family — neanderthals and the like — and in more recent millennia could simply be referring to nymphs or goblins or whoever else. (As far as they could tell, the currently-existing diversity of beings on Earth was a relatively recent phenomenon, branches off of anatomically modern humans only dating back to the agricultural revolution at the earliest.) The psychology of religion was a more complicated matter, but Hermione thought that the suggestion that there would need to be some outside influence to inspire such a thing was absurd. It seemed more reasonable to her to believe that any prehistoric contacts that might have happened had left absolutely no trace behind whatsoever.
After all, they were talking about something that might have occurred fifteen to fifty thousand years ago — that was a very long time for anything to endure. Given how profoundly society could change even over tiny fractions of that time scale, Hermione believed any suggestion that these old aliens might have influenced early humanity had an extremely high burden of proof to clear.
The more fanciful theories aside, where their visitors believed humans originated from had gone on the list of questions they were accumulating for when the language barrier was no longer an issue — given that they'd seemingly had no idea Earth was here at all, their answer was likely to be interesting.
(Hermione's personal theory was that those events had been too far into the distant past for them as well. She wouldn't be surprised if these alien humans were a diaspora population with absolutely no idea where their homeworld was, or perhaps believed whichever world they'd been relocated to to be their natural environment. They had no idea what sort of time scale their visitors' society existed in, however, so she couldn't prove or disprove that idea at present.)
Curiously, from what they'd been shown, it seemed that there was an advanced, spacefaring civilisation active all throughout the galaxy — which raised the natural question of why they here on Earth had been left in total isolation. That had seemed an interesting question at first, perhaps wondering if they'd been left alone by design, but further analysis of the few materials they had had given them a reasonable answer very quickly. From the maps they'd seen, it seemed it would be more accurate to describe known space as a three-dimensional web: settled systems acted as the nodes, charted routes between them stitching them together, but leaving the space between these nodes largely unexplored. They did tend to shade in these gaps on some maps, but, talking to Beth about it, she'd described this shading as representing a polity's area of influence, or perhaps an exclusive economic zone or their airspace (or space-...-space) — just because it was shaded in didn't necessarily mean it was developed, or even explored. Earth happened to be on the very edge of explored space known to their visitors. As best they could guess, it seemed to be only chance that their visitors had stumbled across them at all.
That was a reasonable enough of an explanation, but that explanation itself raised additional questions. How did their faster-than-light engines work, precisely? They'd observed ships accelerating into and dropping out of FTL a number of times now. Each time, the ships seemed to orient themselves first; then there was a pause, often the glow of their engines even cooling somewhat; and then there was a flicker of motion, the profile of the ship seeming to stretch as it accelerated; and in a blink they were simply gone. The effect was reversed when they came out of FTL, a peculiarly distorted-looking streak appearing out of nowhere and then abruptly resolving — seemingly, instantly dropping from hyperluminal speeds to a practical stop, the engines even kicking on a moment after they appeared. They'd been able to plot a few complete trips, between the Jupiter system and the asteroid belt or the Saturn system and, as best as they could tell, each trip through FTL seemed to follow a perfectly straight line.
Their working theory was that, however the physics of their faster-than-light travel worked, it could only function on a straight line: they disappeared from one spot, and then appeared somewhere else, directly ahead. That did begin to explain why they'd spread out in sort of a web. Hermione guessed it might be relatively simple to pick a star out of the sky and fly straight in that direction, but any observations you might make will still be limited by the speed of light, so it might be practically impossible to tell what was out there without travelling there and seeing it for yourself — and there were hundreds of billions of stars in the galaxy, so it was reasonable to assume that checking every single one simply wasn't feasible, at least not on short timescales.
There were theories of other limitations their transportation technology might have — after all, if they were travelling in a straight line, what happened if there was something directly in their path that they didn't know about? — but at this point, those were only theories.
When it came to their visitors' technology, all they had were theories, or even open questions. They seemed to have an ability to manipulate gravity and momentum, similar to but less versatile than the invaders' — there appeared to be artificial gravity inside their ships, and they could make manoeuvres that should splatter passengers into a pulp, the shuttles that came to Earth approached their landing sites in a weightless hover, but so far they had not observed any examples of that manipulation being directed outward, to push or pull objects the way the invaders could. There were even occasions when it might have been useful — directing the wreckage from the visitors' ships into the sun, for example — where the visitors had physically attached booster rockets instead. Mages who'd been near enough to the shuttles while they were actively hovering reported that their gravity-manipulation had a magical presence that was similar to the invaders', though presumably it was produced by different methods — the visitors did seem to exclusively use industrial technology. The best theory that had at present was that these gravity-manipulating effects were magic, achieved by some means of enchantment, but they had no explanation for it at present.
Though perhaps they would get some answers to that question soon: the pieces of example tech the visitors had gifted them had immediately been handed over to the Commission to be analysed, and hopefully reverse-engineered. Those pieces had included a couple small vehicles — the cabin enclosed but not properly pressurised and with no visible engine nozzles, presumably some kind of flying car — which seemed to propel themselves entirely with these gravity-manipulation techniques. They were still in the early steps of the process, it could be weeks before they would come to any conclusions...assuming they could successfully interpret the functioning of the hyper-advanced alien technology at all, there was no guarantee of that.
The rest of the tech they were looking at were mostly personal electronics. They'd been given a couple dozen of some kind of mobile phone — functional, but superfluous, since they'd developed their own that worked just as well — a few devices which could be used to make video calls — Ambassador Shar had personally handed one to the Secretary-General, preloaded with the frequencies for the captain of the flagship and Shar himself (not that it would be much use, given the language barrier, perhaps the principle of the matter) — as well as a stack of what seemed to be hand-held personal computers, which were also largely useless to them. They were still doing preliminary tests, cautious of jumping straight to attempting to dismantle the pieces, concerned that they might accidentally damage the presumably delicate internal mechanisms.
So far, they had more questions than answers. They'd been cautious of exposing the electronics to magic, but had quickly discovered that was unnecessary: either these devices were sufficiently shielded, or they simply weren't electronics at all. Given how durable the materials were — one team had intentionally tried to crack one of the computer touch screens, and had surprising difficulty doing so — the former option did seem plausible, but the latter was a far more intriguing possibility. If the devices functioned by some other means than electric potential, it was possible they might not be vulnerable to interference from magical fields in the first place. Given that their own gravity-manipulation tech did seem to produce magical radiation of its own, they might have needed to develop technology that circumvented that problem — or, perhaps, these devices functioned through some advanced alchemy and/or enchanting that was beyond their abilities to analyse. The materials seemed to be a mix of unfamiliar metals and ceramics, which could be alchemically produced, but perhaps the visitors' materials science was so much more advanced than theirs that they were misinterpreting it as magic, it was hard to say...
Regardless, while the mobile phones and computers were interesting example pieces of the visitors' technology, they were largely useless to them. Presumably the computers were more powerful than the ones they'd developed in recent years, but the language barrier made them virtually impossible to use, so any advantage was theoretical at present. It was curious that the telephones didn't seem to broadcast through any medium that they could detect — multiple teams were attempting to decipher the faint electromagnetic, gravitational, and magical radiation the devices emitted while in operation, but they hadn't come to any conclusions yet — but they were less versatile than the PCRT tech they were already using, especially since they'd begun integrating what were effectively personal computers into the devices. Their own "mobile phones" possessed the same features as the visitors' radios and handheld computers combined — perhaps that might change once the language barrier issue was solved, but Hermione personally suspected they wouldn't be adopting the visitors' version in the foreseeable future.
(She realised she'd had a significant part in inventing the technology in question, but that wasn't just pride speaking.)
The video calling devices were curious, though. The mobile phones they'd been given seemed to have a more limited range — at the least, if they could transmit up to the visitors off-world, they hadn't been given any means to test that — but the Secretary-General could, theoretically, call up Ambassador Shar or the flagship captain at any time, despite the distances involved. Interestingly, there didn't seem to be any transmission delay either. The flagship (including Shar) had left the system (temporarily, to pick up more food aid, they believed), so they'd called the Secretary-General to inform him two days ago. (They'd already returned just a couple hours ago, faster-than-light engines clearly making travel times very short.) The delay at that distance should be minor — about two and a half seconds round-trip — but the somewhat awkward exchange had passed without any sign of it. Observing the actions of the visitors' fleet during the battle, they did seem to coordinate instantaneously, over significantly greater distances than that between the Earth and the moon. Their current assumption was that, however their communications devices worked, they were not limited to the speed of light.
Of course, they had absolutely no idea how that could possibly work. There was a lot of speculation, teams attempting to disassemble examples of the tech, but at this point Hermione suspected they'd have to wait for someone to get around to translating the documentation for them. As far as their science knew, transmitting anything faster than the speed of light, objects or information, was simply impossible. Even apparation wasn't instantaneous...
She'd gone into the office every day so far, and the ongoing discussions were fascinating, but she couldn't pretend they were making any real progress. They'd only accumulated more questions than they'd started with.
Around noon, she'd received a message: Beth had returned home, having been away translating for diplomats since early Saturday morning, and the decision had quickly been made that they'd be having dinner at Rock-on-Clyde. More messages came in over the course of the afternoon, as more people were invited and they discussed what would be on the table — Beth had started the cooking (presumably with help from the elves), but it sounded like Dad, Molly, and Andi had joined in since. And no surprise, it seemed like the guest list had bloody well ballooned, cooking for that many people would be seriously difficult for Beth to do on her own...
Also, her personal tastes could be a bit peculiar, so someone should be watching over her shoulder anyway.
As the afternoon passed into the evening, their group discussions at the Commission beginning to crumble as people left for home, Hermione stepped outside and apparated straight to Rock-on-Clyde. She appeared in a small walled courtyard, connecting the guest wing to one side and the core of the manor to the other — it'd been chosen as a convenient spot for an apparation point, the wards tweaked slightly to allow it. She immediately turned toward the family rooms, the powerful multi-centenarian wards brushing over her skin an almost physical sensation, and stepped inside.
Hermione was unsurprised to find the family lounge quite crowded. From the sound of it, the original idea had been for a private family dinner, but exactly what counted as "family" for Beth and Sirius could be quite complicated. The only close living relatives Sirius had left were the Malfoys, the Tonkses, and, unexpectedly, the Weasleys — Molly, Andi, and Narcissa Malfoy were all Sirius's first cousins. (The purebloods had some very peculiar family dynamics sometimes.) Obviously Sirius wasn't going to be inviting the Malfoys to a family event any time soon, but the Weasleys and the Tonkses were frequent guests. He might not otherwise invite the Weasleys on his own, since he and Molly didn't get on very well, but that Beth was friends with Ron and Gin made up the difference.
Additional frequent guest at family events were Deryn and Letitia, and their children Olwen and Ceri. Sirius had adopted them into the House of Black a couple years ago now, but Hermione didn't know what their story was exactly. It never felt quite appropriate to interrogate the matter too closely — partly because it wasn't her family and not really her business, and also she suspected Sirius was (or had been?) sleeping with them. (She even had a suspicion that Olwen or Ceri might actually be Sirius's, but that was absolutely not her business.) It didn't seem like Sirius had any plans to marry at all, she fully expected he would ultimately hand off his position as Lord Black to Deryn and wash his hands of it.
Remus had been a common presence once upon a time, but not for some time now — he'd been killed working for relief efforts somewhere in south Asia nearly three years ago.
Beth didn't have any close living family, of course — besides the Dursleys and the Malfoys (a little more distantly than Sirius), but she was hardly likely to invite either of them to anything — but that didn't mean she didn't invite guests to family dinners. It wasn't unusual for her to bring a girlfriend along — which was Katie, the last couple years. (Hermione wasn't sure exactly how long, and they'd split up for a bit in the middle...) But Katie had her own enormous extended family, so sometimes she wouldn't be able to make it.
While she was in the country, they tried to have a family dinner every weekend, and since reorganising the Potter lands into an independent microstate she'd instituted a sort of lottery system: every week, one family was selected to be invited to Rock-on-Clyde (by means the locals considered appropriate), which village they were pulling from on a scheduled rotation. It'd originally been Sirius's idea — inspired by an old tradition where magical lords would regularly invite vassals up to the house, to keep up to date on developments and maintain relationships between the various families involved — Beth had brought the idea to the Speakers and they'd tweaked it into the routine they'd had ongoing for years now. Sometimes her guests had serious concerns they actually wanted to talk about with the highest authority in their tiny country, but other times it was a more laid-back social occasion, without any serious discussions of politics. It was typical for the family to be put up in rooms here overnight, if Beth wasn't too busy the next morning they'd have a private breakfast with her — Hermione had never sat in on one, but her understanding was that serious issues came up then much more consistently. And then they'd be sent home, sometimes with a promise to look into whatever concerns they might have come with, the children with little gifts Beth kept at the manor for just these occasions.
(For how much Beth claimed to be uncomfortable being retained as the mostly symbolic head of state of their little constitutional monarchy, she really was very good at it. Hermione was personally a republican, obviously, but she had to admit that, at this point, it seemed very, very likely that the Councils would be keeping their Princess indefinitely.)
Despite not actually being related to the Potters or the Blacks at all — or not closely, at least — Hermione and her parents were also almost always invited to "family" dinners. That had made perfect sense back when Hermione had been living at Rock-on-Clyde, but that wasn't the case anymore — she'd had a house in Reims for years now. (A modest little thing in a development of terraced housing built after the bombardment, she'd converted at least half of the available floorspace into an enchanting/alchemy lab. It honestly hadn't occurred to her how odd that was until the first time she'd brought a man over.) Her feeling was that Beth's concept of her family included Hermione, in sort of a sisterly spot. She'd even offered to officially adopt Hermione at one point, years ago now, which was sweet but unnecessary — the Commission covered her expenses well enough to live quite comfortably, and by this point she was well-known enough in the field that she'd always be able to find employment, she was fine.
Besides, being adopted into what was technically a royal family, even if it was that of a very small state, would just make her uncomfortable. Still sweet, though.
At most family dinners, Hermione and her parents would show up — or some combination of the three, depending on how busy they all were — but according to the messages she'd been sent they would have several more of her family coming than usual. Her aunt Sébastienne wasn't a rare guest, and she'd be bringing a boyfriend. (Hermione honestly couldn't remember if this was the same one she'd met, er, whenever that was.) This time she was also bringing Hermione's grandmother, who did come to family dinners from time to time, but much more rarely. Samiya and Latifa and their families would also be coming, which was less unusual.
Her uncle Eugène and Anis (Latifa's husband) had been killed early on in the invasion, and as the famine and unrest in the Maghreb worsened over the next year they'd evacuated Samiya's entire family — Hermione's job had allowed her to get special permission and a portkey, which was lucky for them. They'd been hosted on Black property at first, before long relocated to France, where the rest of Dad's side of the family lived. As the situation in Tunisia settled down some, Samiya's relatives had dribbled back home, eventually leaving only Samiya and her sister and their children behind. Samiya and Latifa were a pretty common sight at family events, but some of Hermione's cousins (and cousins-in-law) were more inconsistent, as they got older and grew more independent, with their own schedules that might not line up with the rest of the family's.
Hermione had arrived late, by the looks of it — everyone who could be expected to show up was already here. There was a little bit of sudden shouting when she was noticed, greetings flung her way, Ron appearing to hug her first. He'd always been tall but rather scrawny, a bloody beanpole, but he'd filled out a bit since puberty had finished having its way with him, very fit now, noticeable curves of muscle visible through his shirt, face clean-shaven in the muggle fashion, bright red-orange hair in a shaggy mess long enough to hide his ears. After going back to school to finish his OWLs — the only one of the three of them to bother, though Hermione had taken the French equivalent of the NEWTs on principle — he'd joined relief and construction teams in Britain, which, while utilising magic, also required a fair bit of manual labour as well. It'd done him good, honestly, both when it came to his confidence and general attitude and, well, physically too.
(They'd actually slept together a handful of times, a couple years ago now. It'd quickly started to get weird, so Hermione had called it off — Ron had taken it personally at first, but they'd gotten through it, things were mostly back to normal now. Only mostly thanks to the occasional lingering gaze because, just, look at him...)
Once Ron backed off she was mobbed by her cousins, Hassan and Mohamed and little Mariem. Though not so little anymore, she was, what, eight years old now? (She'd been a toddler when they'd left Tunisia, but sometimes Hermione forgot how much time that'd been.) Fatima and Naima weren't here, which wasn't unusual — Fatima was Hermione's age, and busy with her own things, Naima was a couple years older and newly married — and neither was Karim, he'd begged off dinner tonight in favour of some school project instead. Jamila didn't show up to greet her, but Mariem 'reminded' her to go find her in the kitchen to say hello. Once her cousins had backed off a little, then she got another hug, from Gin this time — nearly as fit and hard as Ron, squeezing her unnecessarily tightly, her hair even shorter, little fluttery wisps around her head. She'd gone into similar work after her OWLs, and was actually playing football now, those leagues quicker to pick up steam again than quidditch, for whatever reason.
Gin had brought Luna again, Hermione noticed, she almost always did. At the first opportunity, Gin had moved out of her parents' house, and Luna had moved in with her straight away — their behaviour around each other could be rather curious at times, but Hermione was pretty sure they were just close. Gin did date men now and then, so.
Hermione started her way through the room saying hello to everyone, starting with her grandmother, leaning over for a kiss on the cheek. Sometimes squibs aged more like mages than muggles, but it was clear Grandmother would have a more muggle-typical lifespan, nearly seventy now and showing it. She was healthy, though, and she'd be getting the best magical care available — thanks both to Hermione having the connections to make it so, and Sébastienne herself being a healer now — so she could easily still have two or three good decades left. But that didn't stop the noticeable signs of ageing from making Hermione feel vaguely worried. Mum and all three of her aunts were gathered nearby, so Hermione quick made the rounds — confirming that Mum still looked well, having recovered from the serious injuries she'd suffered in India years ago now (Hermione could be paranoid of some complications coming back unexpectedly, she wasn't a young woman anymore) — managed to get all the way through the conversation without giving away that she'd completely forgotten Sébastienne's boyfriend's name (Levi, apparently)...
Sirius was here, of course, and so were Dora and Ted and Deryn, but she didn't see Letitia or the children. Letitia and Deryn's children, of course, but Dora's boy wasn't here either. Sky — pointedly not short for Skyler, because Dora could be peculiar sometimes — had been conceived during the celebrations after the decisive defeat of the second invasion attempt, and Dora had surprised everyone by deciding to keep him. (Hermione understood it was actually quite difficult for a metamorph to carry a pregnancy to term, she'd needed to be very careful to not accidentally interfere with the natural processes.) He'd be turning three in a couple months now, had inherited his mother's metamorphy, and was already a bit of a terror — he was a frequent presence at Rock-on-Clyde, at least in part because Dora had asked Beth to be his godmother.
Beth had been rather bemused at the thought of someone actually trusting her with their child, but Hermione hadn't been surprised at all. She'd always been great with children, even just the younger students when they'd been back at Hogwarts. Hell, Beth was still trading letters with and sending gifts for birthdays and holidays to some random little girl she'd encountered in Vietnam, going on five years ago now, sometimes dropped by while she was in the area...
She said hello to Arthur quick, moving on to the last group — Bill and his girlfriend were sitting with Liz's guests for today. Bill and Tam had first met in Vietnam going on five years ago, though as far as Hermione knew the relationship was relatively recent. She didn't know the details, but she thought they'd incidentally bumped into each other at some event in the last year or two and gotten reacquainted? Tam, which Hermione was definitely mispronouncing, was a Vietnamese mage, normally wore the local robes — cut in a different style from the European ones, and made of real silk, dyed in vibrant colours and faintly shining in the light — and colourful embroidered ribbons through her hair. She didn't speak English at all, though she spoke some French, with a rather thick accent. According to Beth, she was very sharp and playful and sarcastic when speaking in her native language, but it didn't come through in French very well.
Molly didn't approve of Tam, which should be a surprise to absolutely no one. She would prefer her eldest son settle down with a nice British girl...though honestly she could be unreasonably judgemental about them too — according to the Weasley children, their mother hadn't liked hardly any of any of their romantic partners. Hermione personally suspected she might be less annoying about it if someone got properly married and gave her grandchildren, though there was honestly no telling how long that would take.
Hermione's money was on Percy being first — he hadn't shown up today, too busy with work, but Amber had, supposedly helping out in the kitchen at the moment. They'd been living together for nearly a year now, she expected an announcement of their engagement would be coming pretty soon. Amber was from one of the magical families who'd defected to the muggle government generations ago, who didn't tend to be very popular with purebloods, but Hermione was willing to bet Molly would be willing to overlook that.
The introductions with Beth's guests were somewhat difficult, thanks to them only speaking a peculiar, rural dialect of Cambrian — Hermione's Cambrian had lapsed a bit since she'd stopped attending Hogwarts, but she suspected she might have had trouble understanding them even if she'd kept up with it. Bill managed to translate decently well, but it was still a little shaky. They were nymphs this time, specifically forest nymphs — mostly human in their proportions and features (slightly elongated, limbs just a little too long) but with skin in varying shades of brownish-green, their hair snowy white — who made up the single largest demographic in Beth's little principality, though somewhat short of a majority. They tended to dress peculiarly, draped in lengths of lovingly-embroidered but somewhat rough-looking linen, the dagged ends plaited with beads — sometimes rather ineffective at thoroughly covering themselves, but Hermione understood that body modesty was something of a foreign concept to nymphs.
As part of their efforts to enrich the populace, Beth had offered to provide modern clothing, but the greater majority had rejected it. These communities, isolated from much of the rest of the country for so long, had their own particular traditions and social mores that they would rather retain — which was fair enough, of course. Instead of trying to force Western dress on them, Beth had simply made sure whatever materials they might want would be made available and moved on, which had definitely been the correct decision.
Sometimes the people invited to dinner at Rock-on-Clyde would send the entire household, which could often work out to a large number of people, but this time they'd elected to send a young married couple and their children alone. The man was named Glynaul, the woman Celyn. The infant half-hidden in the blankets in the woven basket just there was Gwydon — a masculine name, Hermione was almost certain — and Bill said they had two girls who were playing with Sky and Deryn and Letitia's children, wherever they'd gotten off to. Celyn and Glynaul had heard of Hermione before, were all pleasant smiles through the brief talk. Not a big surprise, on either count — Hermione's was a somewhat well-known name these days, especially so in their country, and nymphs tended to be very gentle, peaceful, pleasant sort of people.
(Which had only made it all the easier to effectively enslave them, of course, but that was quite beside the point.)
Once Hermione had gotten all the way through the guestlist, she left the sitting room to make her way to the kitchen — she should say hello to Beth right away, if only so she'd know she'd made it today. Unsurprisingly, the kitchen smelled amazing, the air thick and rich with the scent of baking bread and some kind of roasted meat and herbs and spices. She'd arrived at the manor just in time, by the look of it: there were dishes and bowls scattered across the available counter space, Dad and Beth and Molly and Andi and Letitia were circling around the room with bowls or pans or platters, assembling the dishes. Hermione noticed most of the plates were either in blue or red, with different items on them, a couple of them labelled with illusions of floating names or initials — keeping an eye out for dietary restrictions and the like, maybe?
She was startled by a shout of her name before she could quite get her bearings. "Ah, Maïa!" her dad called over the bustle in the room, pointing at her with a large serving spoon. "Perfect! French or Arab?"
"Er, what?"
"Which do you want today?"
"Oh!" They must have made two entirely separate meals, to accommodate the different people they had here today, right. "Let me see first," she said, edging closer to the counter.
On closer examination, it was obvious which plates were which. The blue plates had some kind of stew — duck, maybe — thick and rich, vegetables and herbs and black pepper, a serving of...some kind of savoury porridge, maybe, like polenta, she wasn't certain. Each plate had a little bowl on it, they weren't all filled yet, Molly going around and scooping a thick, creamy-looking, off-white sauce into them — some variation of béchamel or velouté, maybe? (Hermione was not an expert.) The red plates held a larger bowl and a smaller bowl, some pieces of flatbread directly on the plate, the smaller bowl some kind of shakshuka, maybe — a thick sauce of thoroughly-cooked vegetables, tomatoes and peppers and onions, smelling strongly of garlic and cumin and harissa, surrounding a single poached egg — the other bowl filled with chickpeas in sauce, mixed with peppers and roasted nuts and topped with baked fish of some kind, flaking apart where it sat...
"A red plate for me, please — the lablabi smells amazing."
"Called it!" Beth said. "I'll take that bottle of cider whenever, Molly."
"Yes, yes, there should still be a few in the cellar at home..."
In addition to the main dishes, separate for each person — some plates noticeably smaller than the others, presumably for the children — there were larger bowls and platters, communal things. Mostly salads and the like, bread rolls, a tray inexplicably set with bits of cheese and little sausages — for lingering at the table after dinner and nibbling at over drinks, Hermione assumed. A few different kinds of dessert, even a frosted cake setting on the counter over there, and—
"Ooh, is that samsa?" Hermione leaned over the tray, holding her hair back to make sure it didn't get anywhere, breathing in the air over the pastries. Thin, crispy layers of dough interspersed with some kind of paste, looked almost like baklawa, except these were folded over and partly sealed in a way baklawa normally wasn't, and dusted with sesame seeds — and the smell was different, hints of citrus and rosewater...
"It is!" The answer actually came from behind her, near the door leading out into the courtyard garden — Jamila was there, along with Amber and a smattering of young children. Hermione recognised Olwen and Ceri, and the nymph children must be Celyn and Glynaul's girls, and the last one with funny greenish hair (approximating the nymphs' skin colour) could only be Sky. All the children were holding bowls of berries or herb leaves, picked out in the garden, carefully carrying them with both hands deeper into the kitchen. Grinning, Jamila said, "I didn't know Beth could make samsa, I don't even know where she got the syrup."
"That wasn't a problem," Beth called, finishing up assembling some of the blue plates over there. "Mages here traditionally make all kinds of things with rosehips, it was easy to work up a substitute. Sesame seeds are actually harder to get here. And Naima taught me how to make them nearly a year ago, as a favour for Latifa — I made a batch as a surprise for her birthday, but I don't think you were there for that."
With a fake little gasp, Jamila said, "I'm offended, Beth, I can't believe you would leave me out like that." She sidled closer to Hermione, gave her a slightly awkward sideways hug. "Sorry, Maïa, Beth is my favourite cousin now."
"What, even after she left you out?"
"I'm getting samsa today, and that's what matters." Jamila stepped away, reached up to quick tug at the edge of her scarf — oops, must have nudged it in the hug, sorry... — before joining Amber and the children around the cake. The herbs had been set aside, meant for some of the dishes here, but it looked like the berries were for the cake. Approaching the group, Jamila scooped one of the nymph children up off the floor and set her down on one of the stools, the group started arranging the berries on the cake, Amber working at slicing off the inedible stems of the strawberries...
By that point, they were starting to move things over to the dining room, so Hermione volunteered to help. It was easy to carry several things at once with magic, carefully levitating up multiple plates and bowls, she followed behind Dad and Molly. Dad wasn't carrying anything, but he had worked out a seating chart, marked up with who was having which meal. When they got to the room — someone had tweaked the space somewhat, moved around to create a couple tables in parallel, so their oversized group wouldn't be quite so terribly spread out — he glanced over the things Molly and Hermione were carrying, this one went here, and that one went there, and...
Hermione was just returning from her second trip to the dining room when she heard childish shrieks and giggles. There was a bit of a scuffle going on around the cake, blobs of frosting on noses or smeared across cheeks — Olwen was pinned in one of the stools, Beth tickling her with one hand, lightly batting away Sky's attempts to grab at the cake with the other, occasionally swiping past to paint more streaks of frosting on the boy's cheeks. It looked like, once Jamila and Amber weren't actively keeping an eye on them, the children had immediately started making a mess.
Her heart jumped into her throat as one of the nymph girls toppled off the counter, her hand going for her wand — but Beth was quicker, an almost careless wave of her hand catching the girl in some kind of charm, the rest of her fall as slow and light as a feather. Disaster averted, Beth went straight back to playing with Sky, as though nothing had happened.
Hermione smirked to herself — and Beth had been confused when Dora asked her to be Sky's godmother.
It took some minutes, but eventually all the dishes had been relocated to the dining room, a moment of loud chaos as everyone made their way to their seats. Drinks were broken out, wine and cider, tea and fruit juice. Hermione noticed some of the children were already poking at their food, too impatient to wait for the adults to get everything straightened out. Eventually everyone was sitting down, the drinks had been poured, and they were ready to start.
The chatter tapered off as Sirius stood up, a glass of wine loosely held in one hand. "Hello, everyone! Thanks for showing up on such short notice. Our hostess here had just gotten back from being important—" There was a little bit of chuckling, Beth — sitting at one end of Hermione's table, Celyn and Glynaul at her right and left — rolled her eyes. She looked away from Sirius and sipped at her wine, seemingly ignoring him. "—and I thought it would be nice to welcome her home good and proper. Besides, who doesn't like a party?
"But I'm bloody well useless in a kitchen, so, I may have had the idea, but I didn't do any of the actual work. We have Beth, Andi, Molly, and Daniel to thank for all of this — I'm about dying of starvation just smelling it, so let's all—"
Beth jerked, the sudden motion sliding her chair back, interrupting Sirius with a loud scraping noise. "Sorry, my phone's going off..." Leaning back at an awkward angle in her chair, she managed to worm the device out of her pocket, took a quick glance at the face — she grimaced, visibly gritting her teeth. "Ah shite, I have to answer this. Back in a minute." She stood up and turned to walk away from the tables, a swipe of an illusory display (invisible to everyone but Beth) answering the call. "Yes. Corporal Potter, sir." (Hermione guessed the caller had just called her Princess.) "No, I'm at home, I was just sitting—" She stepped out into the hallway, and a wave of her hand cast some kind of paling over the threshold, the sound of her voice abruptly cutting out.
It really was very impressive how she could cast spells like that wandlessly, Hermione was jealous.
"Well!" Sirius chirped after a beat of silence. "The price of being important, I guess. I'm sure Beth wouldn't want us hanging around until the food gets cold — so that's quite enough blather from me, let's eat, then."
The lablabi was, of course, excellent — but she'd expect nothing else, with Dad and Beth both in the kitchen. At least, she assumed Molly and Andi had had nothing to do with the Tunisian fare...
Beth was only gone for a minute or two, Hermione had hardly had enough time to do more than stir around the shakshuka and taste the lablabi and sort out her flatbread, top the lablabi with a bit of the basil salad over here. Distracted with straightening out her dinner the way she liked it, she didn't notice right away when Beth stepped back into the dining room — she was cued by the noise of chatter in the room softening somewhat, she glanced up to see Beth slipping toward her seat, frowning down at the device still in her hand. "What was it?" Mum asked, her voice raised a bit to carry over the noise "Anything we need to be worried about?"
The chatter in the room died off to almost nothing, only a few childish voices left babbling over at their end of the table. Beth tucked her phone back into her pocket, sank down onto her chair with a sigh. "No, not really. They're putting together a group of omniglots for the language programme — I was just told I'm going to be on it. No big surprise, really, I kind of expected that..." Her voice trailing off to a mutter, Beth shook her head, picked up the bowl of her shakshuka to pour it straight into the lablabi.
There was a brief moment of quiet in the room — and not just because Beth's taste in food continued to be a bit peculiar. (Having both of those flavour profiles at a single sitting, sure, but mixing them together just seemed strange to Hermione.) Probably, like Hermione, considering the implications of what she'd just said. That initial meeting between the Secretary-General and Ambassador Shar had been broadcast internationally — mostly over the radio, since the adoption of visual displays was still in the early stages — and had been thoroughly analysed over the days since. Legally speaking, as far as they could tell, the visitors would essentially be keeping Earth under some kind of protectorate, until such time that they could negotiate and sign a formal treaty. Of course, they had no shared language, which made writing a treaty they could both agree to in good conscience rather difficult — so a group of Earth natives would be ferried away somewhere they'd be given intensive language lessons, so they could do the necessary translation. Their visitors hadn't needed to come up with this scheme on the spot, either, it was obvious that this was a routine they'd worked out dealing with however many previously uncontacted peoples they'd interacted with over however long they'd been around.
(Hermione had a feeling the process would proceed far more quickly in Earth's case than their visitors were accustomed to — it seemed reasonable to assume that they didn't know about omniglots yet...unless they also existed somewhere else out there, she supposed...)
They didn't know exactly what this language programme would look like. But they did know that a selection of people would board an alien ship, and would leave Earth. That they would be gone for however long it took for them to learn the language well enough to negotiate the treaty.
There was a sudden storm of chatter as everyone asked questions all at once — Hermione included, though she only got a few words into her question (if Beth knew when she was leaving) before she cut herself off, realising there was no way Beth was going to hear it through the noise anyway.
After just a few seconds, Beth called, "Hey, hey!" getting back up to her feet, raising both hands. It took a little bit, but the room eventually quieted down enough for her to talk. Sounding a little exasperated, she said, "We don't know where we're being taken — some facility they already have set up to do this kind of thing, we think. On some alien bloody planet, of course, which no, we know nothing about. I don't know how long we're going to be gone, but probably a couple months, at least — I pick up languages faster than most omniglots, but they're trying to cover as many languages as possible with the people they're picking, so we'll have to wait for everyone. I can't tell you much more than that, so, sorry."
There was some more chatter, for a moment Hermione couldn't make anything out. Then she heard Molly (voice also raised) ask, "When are you leaving?"
"The shuttle is coming on Monday, we think — obviously we don't run on the same clocks, so, figuring that out was iffy. They're going to get all the omniglots together for a briefing and whatever before that, I'll have to leave home on Sunday afternoon."
Sunday afternoon. Today was Thursday, she'd be leaving in three days, less.
And Beth would be leaving Earth, would be gone for who knew how long...
Beth glanced over at Hermione, looking a little bemused, her lips twitching. "Yes, Miss Granger."
She hadn't even realised she'd raised her hand until she heard the snickers rippling through the room — she dropped her hand, feeling the warmth on her cheeks. (Old habits.) "Ah. Are you going to... Will there be some means of communication available, or are you going to be out of contact the whole time?"
"I'm not sure," Beth admitted with a little shrug. "I think Shár-ÿḳl-korlåe was suggesting we'd be able to talk to people back home while we're there, but I'm not sure how that will work, exactly. Crystal radios don't work with whatever their shite uses, so. Now, I know this is a big deal, but I've had a long day. We can keep talking about it, but, I'd like to just..." She gestured vaguely down at the table in front of her. "...have dinner, and... I'm only going to have a couple days, so. Can we do that?"
People did go back to their meal, at least pretending everything was normal and nothing out of the ordinary were happening — though Hermione could feel the tension on the air, occasional mutters and glances in Beth's direction. If Beth noticed, she was clearly trying not to let it bother her. She spent a little bit huddled up with Celyn and Glynaul, by the look of it explaining what was going on to them. (They didn't speak any English, after all.) And other business too, presumably — whatever issues they might have to talk about, of course, but someone would need to be empowered to make executive decisions in the event of an emergency while she was gone. They did have village councils and the like, but it wasn't always feasible to get everyone together and discuss the matter. It wouldn't be the first time they'd done something like that, there were occasions Beth had been away for long enough that it'd seemed practical — the first and longest had been during the second invasion, when she'd been busy being popped all around the world fighting for however long — so they did have a process worked out, there should be time to do that...
Some of the little time she had before her departure would be eaten up by politics. That wasn't unexpected, but it was a little... Hermione didn't know exactly. She'd probably want to spend time with Katie too, she didn't know how much time Beth would get just with the family.
And then she'd be gone. For months, maybe — far away, possibly out of contact...
The thought did make Hermione a little nervous, but not really too badly. These new alien visitors had given every indication of acting in good faith — if they harboured ill intent, they could have simply started their own invasion. It did seem as though this was simply standard procedure for them, there likely wasn't anything to worry about.
And even if they did try to harm the omniglots, Hermione had a feeling they would regret it. Their technology was very advanced, yes, but they hadn't yet seen anything that would suggest they had any response to magic — and Beth was a very dangerous mage. Getting back to Earth might be difficult, should the worst happen, but Hermione didn't doubt that Beth would have a damn good shot of pulling it off, somehow.
Not that she thought it would come to that, of course. These aliens did seem to be friendly, there was no reason to suspect they weren't simply educating a group of translators so they could legally formalise Earth's admittance into galactic society. She was able to logic herself out of feeling too anxious about it, but she wasn't able to prevent the feeling entirely — emotions weren't fully rational, after all.
She would worry while Beth was gone. But she had enough projects to keep herself occupied, she'd be all right.
But it wasn't solely worry for Beth she was feeling right now. On the other hand, it...
Well, to be perfectly frank, she was a little jealous.
Beth was going to space. She wouldn't only be leaving Earth, she wouldn't only be travelling past the orbit of the moon — the outer limit of human space exploration thus far. She would be leaving the solar system, she would, as soon as next week (depending on how long their travel times were), step foot on an alien world.
That was, just, amazing. Hermione couldn't even imagine...
(Beth didn't even like Star Trek...)
There had been times in the past — when she'd observed how quickly Beth could absorb information from other people, like some sort of knowledge sponge — that Hermione had wished she'd been born with Beth's gifts. She wouldn't want to trade places with Beth, of course not, she was well aware of how difficult of a childhood she'd had. But omniglottalism was, just... Sometimes she felt like Beth didn't even appreciate it properly, that she simply hadn't the interest in academic pursuits to fully exploit the ability. What Hermione wouldn't give to learn like she did, it...
As unnerving as the thought of Beth being so far away from home for an unknown span of time was, perhaps even out of contact for the duration, Hermione had never envied her as deeply as she did in this moment.
But, she knew, if everything went well, she'd be free to take her own trip out there, in time. Hermione could try to swallow her impatience for however long that would take.
It wasn't very long into dinner before Hermione decided to dip by the toilet — she hadn't gone since before leaving the office, but also she wanted to say something to Beth before she forgot. She walked over to Beth's chair at the end of the table, crouched down closer, so they'd be able to speak at a comfortable volume and still hear each other over the chatter filling the room. Before she got the words out, though, she gave Celyn a double-take, startled — she hadn't had an angle to notice from her chair, but Celyn was, just, openly nursing the infant boy (er, was it Gwydon?) right here at the table. She looked around quick, and while a few nearby people were giving this end of the table an occasional funny glance (Ron's ears were rather red, pointedly not looking this way), nobody seemed inclined to say anything about it. Um, okay then...
She wasn't surprised Celyn was completely unselfconscious about it — nymphs were like that — she was a little taken aback, was all.
"Hermione? What is it?"
Physically shaking the moment off, "Nothing, sorry. Um. I was wondering, do you think they'll let you bring a camera with? I want to know everything, and that'll be easier than simply trying to describe everything you'll see out there."
Beth let out a little huff, rolling her eyes. "I do own a pensieve, you know." Oh right, she'd almost forgotten about that...though, memories weren't the best medium for most applications... "But sure, get me a camera and some extra rolls of film, and I'll take some pictures for you."
...She'd been thinking of video, but that may not be feasible, on reflection — even the smallest complex image recorders were still quite bulky at the moment, and only marginally portable. (Recording video and audio in a format that could be easily retrieved and edited was quite complex, they were still working on miniaturising it.) Hermione wasn't certain how to get her hands on a quality camera, but Luna considered herself something of a citizen photojournalist these days, she'd be able to help. "I can do that." One hand settling on Beth's shoulder, her voice dipping a little, "Take care of yourself out there, Beth. Please."
"I'll be fine, Maïa," she said — sounding a little exasperated, but reaching up to squeeze Hermione's hand with one of hers anyway. "Shár-ÿḳl-korlåe assured Yuri João that the trip would be perfectly safe. You know, as well as he could. Honestly, I think I might get bored waiting for the other— Hey, I'll translate some textbooks for you in my downtime, how's that."
"Oh, honestly, Beth, I'm not that bad."
"You're exactly that bad, and you know it," she teased, smirking.
"Ugh, you're impossible."
"I try."
Letting out a scoff, Hermione straightened — and ruffled Beth's hair as she left, getting a little yelp of protest.
(She was going to miss that little idiot while she was off visiting alien planets...)
Jumping back to TGW for a scene, and then we're going to space, bitches.
How many tens of thousands of words did it take to leave Earth in this Star Wars fic? lol
