5th of April 1995 - Glimmerbright Hospital, Skyfall, Volstar
Technically speaking, Harry hadn't delayed his return to Skyfall without due reason.
After all the Longbottoms had needed time to prepare for an extended stay away. Frank and Alice both had to be monitored during their first week of treatment in the unlikely - though still possible - event that they had a negative reaction to the potion course. Augusta needed to make sure their estate would be well cared for during their absence, and Neville needed time with McGonagall to work through his expected study course during the impromptu and very one sided student exchange program Harry and Dumbledore had worked out so Neville could be there with his parents while they were going through their new treatment.
So really, it wasn't like he was intentionally delaying his return to Volstar.
And it definitely wasn't like he had talked himself into thinking that Sirius would be angry at him for allowing himself to get hurt.
Which, he has told himself multiple times over the last week is absolutely rubbish.
Absolutely, one-hundred percent grade A, capital R, Rubbish.
He knew Sirius better than that.
Probably better than he knew himself by now, thanks to all the times he had practically been in his godfather's mind since they had first met.
He knew his worries are irrational and objectively, logically he knew from a logical and educated standpoint that he and Sirius are slowly developing a sort of codependence that could be unhealthy if it went too far.
But at the same time he also knew that people felt what they felt, that those feelings didn't always have any real basis in fact.
And really, he didn't know why he thought all the other changes in his life would suddenly make him incapable of feeling insecurities just because he could intellectually point to them and call them 'Rubbish' and list out in the sort of bullet point format - that Hermione would no doubt be terribly proud of - why they were.
Similarly he knew that the best way to work through this particular insecurity that Sirius might one day decide that Harry was entirely too much trouble to bother with. That he would get fed up and leave Harry behind.
Leave him alone.
Back to being the Freak in the cupboard under the stairs.
Never mind that he had quite a few people in his life now. Remus, Bill, Ron, Hermione, and every other Weasley too for good measure.
He had Hildegara and Tillander and all his other friends among the elves.
He had Ruknukle, Goldhammer, Glimmertooth and the other goblins that instructed and encouraged him. That told him his heart was surely nurtured in the deep hills, because it was something precious that should be protected and nurtured.
And there was Akihito and his family to add onto the growing list of people that cared about him.
So he knew he was further from being alone than he ever had been.
But he also felt a bit like an arse for feeling like Sirius - or at least his good opinion - mattered more than some of his other friends, new or old.
Which is what got him moving in the end and got Frank and Alice both settled into their room in the long care section of the Quiet Mind ward.
It was also what kept him quiet while Remus - who had come to greet them - had ushered Augusta and Neville out of the ward behind him to help them pick out a home for their stay and to give them a tour of the city.
While Sirius stood silently to one side, staring down at the pristinely polished floor.
For a moment Harry wondered just what it might have been about his relationship with Sirius that made him at once feel terribly awkward and deeply comforted.
Then he pushed past it and wrapped a bit of his old Gryffindor courage around himself like a cloak then moved so he was standing across from the older man. "Are you mad at me?"
He had expected stern words and denials, probably a lecture or two.
But honestly he should have expected that he'd be dragged into a spine cracking hug.
"You just scared me half to death. Moony even heard my heart skip a beat when we were watching you." Sirius growled in his ear, arms tight around his shoulders. "I've been talking with 'Rick to help get it all sorted."
"Oh...I thought you'd be mad at me?" He admitted, not quite understanding for a moment why his godfather wasn't.
"You did your best and kept the others safe. I'd have preferred you not get hurt at all, ever, forever ever. But I know better than that. I know it's not a healthy expectation to try and force myself into believing you'll never get hurt. Or that I could or should wrap you up to try and keep you from getting hurt." Sirius told him, though the hard, warm band of his arms hadn't eased up in the slightest. "Even if I wish I could."
"Oh." Harry muttered again and finally brought his suddenly heavy arms up to latch onto his godfather's jacket in return. "I thought you'd think I was too much trouble."
The confession was quiet, muffled both by Sirius' light jacket and Harry's own lingering uncertainty.
There was a sudden bark of laughter over his head and the arms around his shoulders squeezed him tight before relaxing a little. "Oh there's no chance of that. We Marauders live for trouble. We love Mischief."
The last little bit made Harry smile despite himself.
"Now, do you want to talk more about this now, or did you want to wait until later tonight when we have dinner?" Sirius asked, raising one hand to cup and gently squeeze the back of the teens neck as he pulled back a little so he could look down at him.
Harry thought about that a moment before tipping his head back just enough to meet his godfather's eyes. "Later tonight please. That way we don't have to be worried about me being dragged off or distracted by whatever else I have to do today. Speaking of which, I should check my desk and see what's been waiting."
"Not too much, Remus and I have been able to handle most of it while you've been gone." Sirius informed him as he finally released the teen. "Oh, speaking of, Remus has his book club tonight."
"I remember. They usually meet up for dinner so that means we can catch up over dinner then actually talk about the hard stuff after." Harry said quietly.
Sirius hummed. "You do know that he doesn't have to be there when you let your walls down, it can just be you and me if you want it that way."
"I know, and sometimes I do like it when it's just you and me." Harry told him with a small smile. "But I like having him there when we talk about some of the stuff that's harder to talk about, he's really good at giving me different perspectives to help me get my head out of my arse."
"Pfft." Sirius scoffed and offered the teen a lopsided grin. "You just like watching us bicker about like a couple of withered old witches with too much time on their hands."
"You said it, not me." Harry shot back with a matching grin before finally pulling back a little to gaze around the small ward common space, meant primarily for guests, they were standing in. "I asked Poledra and Elegain to take shifts watching over Frank and Alice just to make sure there's always someone with them. Even with the monitoring charms and the constant monitoring from the staff, I feel better knowing someone can find me and get to me wherever I am if there's a problem."
At the mention of the Longbottoms, Sirius' expression dimmed a bit, gray eyes flicking to the door that separated their room from the common space to give them a modicum of privacy.
"How are they doing?" Sirius asked quietly.
Harry followed his gaze and hummed softly. "Well. Neither were overly bothered by the move so we were able to get them cleaned up and settled into their new room without a fuss. They've been on their new treatment for a week now and they're responding well to it, they've started responding more to external stimulus like noises and light changes."
"That's good right, it means they're mending?"
"It's very good. It'll still be a while before their conscious minds are ready to properly rejoin the here and now and even after that the damage to their brains means that they'll have to relearn a lot of things you and I tend to take for granted. How to speak, how to read, how to wash and dress themselves." Harry told him quietly before catching his godfather's eye. "They're going to need a lot of patience and consideration as they improve."
Sirius nodded seriously.
Reaching up to pat the older man on the shoulder. "Come on, let me tell you about my new project."
"Another one?" He asked, tone incredulous. "At some point, pup, you're going to reach critical mass and just explode ideas everywhere."
"You know...I'm not sure if that sounds disgusting or not."
Sirius grinned.
7th of April 1995 - The Great Library, Skyfall Outskirts, Volstar.
The last few days had been particularly peaceful for Harry.
The Longbottoms had settled in well, though most of their first two days had been spent in the hospital going over the different plans and procedures that had been drafted for Frank and Alice's healing period and the difficult time that would follow after.
Neville for his part was actually taking it all a lot better than Harry had originally feared he would. He was adapting to the change of both residence and schooling very well and after one quick round of relieved tears when Harry had announced his parents were taking to the potion well and were beginning to show signs of recovery, he had been rock steady.
It honestly amazed Harry, more than a little, how much Neville was changing from the boy Harry had first met just a few years ago.
But then, he supposed Hope was a powerful motivator for growth.
He supposed both Neville and himself were interesting examples of that.
Nevertheless, Neville was doing rather well and apparently getting on with Madam Hubbard like a house on fire, which had been nice to hear.
Draco for his part had been largely keeping to himself since he had settled into a flat with Snape, which was just fine with Harry.
And Snape was spending all his time on his current research project in the bowels of the Ministry. So Harry didn't much have to deal with him either aside from scheduled check-ins, most of which Remus handled.
Between Sirius, Harry and Remus, the man seemed to tolerate the werewolf most at present. Although admittedly he didn't seem to know how he should react around Harry since his ingrained inclination seemed to be snide but the fact of his change of status and the fact that Harry was actively protecting Draco despite past unpleasantness from both sides seemed to be giving him pause for thought.
Which the young king couldn't help but hope was a positive sign.
He wasn't holding onto any hope that they would one day become friends and form a knitting circle, but if they could manage to avoid snapping and spitting when they passed each other in the street…
Well, it was a work in progress.
And thinking on works in progress, his latest project was coming along rather well, he thought.
He had worked out how to store a wealth of information upon a crystal core without it all getting jumbled up and even better how to create an illusionary - or he supposed holographic if he was using a more mundane term - interface that would allow people to search through a database of sorts. Something that had required him to take multiple crash courses in computer sciences and quite a lot of brainstorming on his part since there didn't appear to be anything in the muggle world as yet with the capabilities he was trying to implement.
The closest muggles had to mass storage devices as far as technology was concerned were computer harddrives. In the instance of computers was concerned the information was stored on the harddrive component and the operating system that a person used was the interface that would accept commands to search for additional information - if connected to the World Wide Web - or call up information that had been previously stored for use.
In mundane technology, each system was a collection of different parts that performed a separate function that would work together for an end goal.
What Harry was doing however would utilise - at present, at least - the same physical space to house a collection of weaved and layered spells on top of the other information contained in the crystal form that would register intent to help trigger the different interactions and commands.
For example, search for this, play that, halt, stop, and so on.
By making it focused on specific intent rather on specific types of interactions, like wand gestures or even finger taps, Harry hoped it would be more accessible to everyone. Even people that had for example lost the use of their arms - or had none to begin with - and those without magic.
It would still require ambient magic to power it. There had been no getting around that since it was technically a magical device, however with the people living there and the seasonal rituals they had been performing since they had started living there, Skyfall was already well on its way to developing a heady aura of power around it. One that all of its residents would tap into and feed into in small ways.
The problem however, particularly when trying to work off intent alone was that a conflicted being could confuse the system and make it play two or more things at once. There simply wasn't enough of a guiding rule to differentiate between, for example, two movies that a user wished to watch in equal amounts.
It was looking more and more like a certain amount of awareness would be required to help deal with that sort of user related error.
After all a certain sort of sentience would be able to reason and in more evolved cases communicate enough to help resolve indiciscion.
Of course then he had to consider the fact that trying to craft an awareness was in essence the same as crafting an artificial intelligence, or A.I for short. At least according to what he had read.
He had tried talking it over with Sirius and Remus to see what they thought about the whole situation and had gotten a lot of slow blinking in return. So for the moment he was at a stall while he tried to weigh the pros and cons regarding what could be considered the creation of life.
Though that said there were other things that needed to be considered for that route to be taken such as how large the base entity would actually be, what sort of crystal configuration would be required to house such a consciousness.
In the case of the artificial intelligences that had featured in some of the books he had read, they had required a vast array of servers. A massive hub of harddrives to contain all the programming data that all together allowed the mechanical consciousness to form and function.
Crystal, while easily discarded by most people as a simple tool or medium or decoration, could hold a surprisingly large amount of energy. And as he had learned in some of his earlier experiments into the nature of magical and mundane energy sources, energy was everything. Air, earth, fire, his favourite shoes. Everything.
Including information.
Crystal, when measured against just about every other substance he had had ready access to, could hold billions of tiny bits of information if he processed them like muggles might in some point off in the future. Etching the information into the crystals in a permanent fashion would mean the information would survive as long as the crystal did - until it was destroyed by external forces - and would be the means Harry went about storing the information that was the movies, television shows and such. But it was also too inflexible for some of the things he had in mind.
That said, magical infusion rather than mundane etching had its own drawbacks. It was more fragile in a certain sense and could be erased and redone over and over without physically affecting the medium it was bound to. In this case the crystal. But as such, there was a greater chance that information might be lost over time or removed accidentally - or intentionally - by this or that individual.
He would need to find a happy middle ground between permanent and semi-permanent recording.
Or at least figure out a happy divide where each would be used for separate things to form a happy medium of a different sort.
Permanent etching, he had decided, would have definite uses however as it would allow them to record the contents of the Great Library in a more durable format that would assist in its safe keeping. It might also make for an easier means to disseminate books to the masses without being limited by a physical number of copies.
Theoretically, he knew if he could work out a few more pieces to the puzzle, he could in fact create the world's first magical computer. Something that would - if he could get people using it - would lead to even greater advancements.
Though honestly he didn't foresee a complete - or even near complete - cessation on the usage of owls for mail and parchment and quill for letter writing and note taking.
People liked what they liked and sometimes the slower more tangible methods were soothing in their own ways.
Plus, a great many owls were also familiars that were bonded to their wixen partners and helped calm and boost their magic, so for those reasons alone they would remain an integral part of wix culture and daily lives.
Which suited Harry just fine, he wasn't in any way eager to be pecked to the moon and back by a jealous and insecure Hedwig.
One of them dealing with self-worth issues was frankly one too many.
Although on that note the last few nights since that first night back he had been able to spend quite a lot of time with Remus and Sirius both, and Bill too last night. Remus had the bright idea to institute mandatory 'family' time every night, which of course had translated to board games or figurative dog piles for story time.
So far the former had had an interesting start with Sirius and Remus getting into a particularly heated debate about whether card games should be included. The animagus had been all for it while Remus had been reluctant.
As it turns out, Harry was now very,very good at poker.
Sirius had decided after they had both soundly lost seven games in a row to the teen that maybe they would revise what gets added to their play selection on a case-by-case basis.
Which meant that a lot of games that relied more heavily on luck and chance - which Sirius assured Harry were two different things no matter how much they might seem the same - were in. Along with cooperative games that made all the players work together to achieve a common goal.
Though really any game that didn't boil down purely to averages and statistical strategy was on the table as far as they were all concerned since Harry had too much of an advantage for them to be truly enjoyable.
Although at this rate the boy king was tempted to see if he could get them to play Dungeons & Dragons just to see how they'd react. Though honestly the desire did come partly from having overheard his aunt Petunia rave about it with one of the society ladies she liked to have tea with. Full of wickedness and freakish things.
Not a small part of Harry wanted to try it just to spite her.
Maybe he could even include actual magical creatures so it was more relatable for Sirius and Remus who had mostly grown up in the magical world with actual magical creatures in their stories.
Harry finished up the last of his sandwich and reached for the cup he had been sipping water from.
They had been on break for nearly a half hour now, having decided to call the lunch break after they had completed the walls of the first floor since it seemed to be a pretty decent milestone given its size.
The basic framework had been completed two days ago after they had split into two groups, one to continue on the frame, the supports, and the other to get properly stuck into properly focusing on the walls so they could wrap up the level and push up to the next one.
The goblin team that had been working on the underground levels had informed him that morning before they had all gotten started for the day that they had also finished with all the supports and reinforcement and had started in on properly building the levels out. Usually, particularly when dealing with mundane construction, any basement levels had to be completed first and foremost.
The inclusion of magic to reinforce parts and bear weight during construction phases meant they could split their focus and as long as the above ground team didn't get overly ambitious and push too far ahead of the lower levels, the overall construction time went that much faster. That was of course on top of the added benefit of not having to rely on heavy machinery, being able to move vast weight around and quick dry things like cement…
Honestly speaking, a construction project like the library would typically take mundane folks years to put together. There were so many benefits to building with magic that cut down time drastically.
Shaking his head, Harry finished the last of his water and climbed to his feet.
There was still another two hours in their planned workday before he needed to head off to check on Frank and Alice and administer their lunch time dose of Serenity.
From there he would be stopping by to check on Neville then Draco to make sure they were doing well enough with their school work and their day to day lives in general before he had to head to his office to deal with whatever correspondence had come in that day.
The teen sighed again.
He wondered if his daily life could be considered business as usual.
Probably not.
That'll teach him to run away from his little room and it's catflap.
Grinning to himself Harry stretched out the muscles in his back and shoulders and went in search of Mr. Bolder.
Time to get busy again.