14th of April 1995 - The Ministry of Magic, Skyfall, Volstar.
When Harry had woken that morning, with the sun as was his norm now, not a small part of him had wanted to pull his blankets back up over his head and go back to sleep.
As usual though, his mind was alert and firing on all cylinders as soon as the switch from unconscious to conscious occurred, pulling him from the comfort of his bed and out into the world.
Even now, past lunch, there was a rather disproportionate part of himself that wished his mind could be silent. That he could have those quiet moments he used to take for granted back, where he could just sit and daydream about absolutely nothing and be perfectly content with it.
Quiet moments were very much a thing of the past. They were for normal Harry with his normal problems. For the Harry that worried about his next quidditch match, who could daydream about how pretty Fleur is or how handsome Cedric is. About steadily approaching deadlines for homework and about whether there'd be roast potatoes with dinner and treacle tart for dessert.
To be fair, he did still think about a lot of those things, they'd just shifted a little to the side.
Like he'd have to tilt his head sideways to get the same sort of effect that he used to.
And it wasn't as if he disliked being busy.
Quite the contrary, he liked having things to do. Because for a long time doing nothing meant being locked in the cupboard waiting to be told to be useful.
Waiting was the terrible thing, wondering about this or that.
The final task for the Tri-Wizard Tournament was steadily approaching. Just a few weeks away in May, the last chance for all four champions to impress the judges and earn as many points as possible.
Because the thing he had had to explain to more than one person, was the the tournament was like a quidditch match. Just getting the snitch, just reaching the cup in this last task wasn't a guarantee of victory.
The only thing someone reaching the cup would guarantee would be the end of the tournament.
It was worth a lot of points, certainly.
But each challenge in each of the tasks had been worth points, like quaffles through hoops.
Sink enough quaffles and it wouldn't matter if the other teams seeker reached the snitch first and got that juicy one-hundred-fifty point reward.
Sink enough quaffles and your team could hold your victory tight and parade it about just as proud.
Maybe moreso.
Afterall a talented seeker could to a certain degree make up for the rest of the team being shaky, but it took a lot of effort and teamwork for the reverse to be true.
As things stood with the points thus far, Harry knew he was in a fairly appreciable lead. Enough of a lead that, provided he didn't have any major upsets, he could continue to build on his point lead and potentially hold onto victory even if one of the others managed to get to the cup before he did.
So he wasn't concerned. No more than he had been concerned at all since he had been given the dubious honour of competing. Not with winning at the very least. It was something that he thought would objectively be nice and it would help him look good which in turn would reflect well on Volstar. But he didn't need it.
He, unlike the other three, didn't have to worry about how his performance might be evaluated by a potential employer post school year. He didn't need the prize money or any token amount of glory.
The few things he felt he had to prove had nothing to do with how well he could weave a charm and everything to do with being able to provide a safe home for his people. And as much as he might usually want to show off a bit or otherwise do something to make his friends and family proud of him, he had been told almost every other day as of late, exactly that.
That Sirius and Remus were both proud of the things he was accomplishing and of the things he was trying to do.
That his parents would have been just as proud of him.
And according to Ruknukle his ancestors were no doubt proud of Harry's strides towards mastering himself and his battlefield tools. Which was as close as the goblin warmaster got to glowing praise.
So no, he had nothing to prove. Not really.
That didn't mean he wasn't going to do his best to win. Just that he wasn't feeling any pressure to do so.
On the list of things he did feel weighing on his shoulders was the slowly improving case of Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom who had just this morning tried to face the correct direction of Harry's quiet clapping rather than indistinctly flinching from the sudden sound. A marked improvement that even Neville understood immediately and without explanation if the wet gleam of his eyes - which Harry diligently pretended not to notice - was any indication.
Augusta Longbottom had all but beamed at Harry, a new first and one that the young king was still not sure was more or less intimidating than her disapproving scowl.
It was a significant milestone for their recovery, that much was true. But it also meant that they were getting closer and closer to what would be the absolute worst thing they would endure since that horrific night that broke them so horrifically.
With conscious mind and focused thought, facing the horror of it in therapy in order to properly address the events so they could reforge themselves from the broken pieces. To make themselves whole and safely treat those memories so they didn't plague their dreams and waking hours. So they didn't give the unkind and the malicious a weak point they could exploit to harm or manipulate.
Harry felt himself both looking forward to and shying away from that time in equal measure. Because it would mean that Neville would have parents back that would remember him and be able to listen to the story of his day. They would be able to hug him back and wish him a happy birthday and joyous yule and all things beyond and in between.
But it would mean all but forcing them to think on and relive the worst night of their life over and over again. Certainly they would have things like calming draughts and carefully regulated doses of dreamless sleep and the Healing Serenity to help cushion the pain and discomfort, to take the worst of the snarl off the jagged edges of those memories. They would have safe spaces and warm blankets and the unavoidable knowledge that it was old pain and that they were protected, that they had survived.
That they had a nearly grown son that needed to know his parents beyond the backhanded stories of people that wanted to avoid thinking on them at all as if by not thinking about Frank and Alice they could somehow pretend their pain and the gaping hole in the world where they should have been, didn't exist.
Beyond that there was also the unavoidable problem that was the tiny hunk of foreign, blackened soul still latched in part, onto his own soul.
As many things he had learned during his brief stay in Japan about mending broken mind and body, about soothing scars that went soul deep, there had been nothing he or Akihito - or his librarians - could find on the matter of removing parasitic soul fragments.
The same was true of the team he had been permitted to send to the great libraries of India. Ancient as they were and as deeply studied in the topic of soul health, death and reincarnation, it seemed Harry's particular situation was without precedence.
At least as far as those two pools of knowledge seemed to be concerned.
But Harry wasn't overly concerned.
Afterall it wasn't as if those two magical civilisations dated their years in centuries and millennia of esoteric study and celebration.
Oh, right.
They absolutely did.
So maybe he was getting a little frustrated with the lack of results thus far in his quest to find an answer and better still, to find a solution to the problem he hadn't been aware he even had for the majority of his life.
The Black Library had contained a grand total of three books that contained the word Horcrux at all. Just three. Of those three, two of them merely alluded to their existence as a nebulous thing, while the last had contained slightly more. Including a particularly vague how-to guide that was by and large mostly theory and would need a great deal of experimentation and logical leaps in order to make anything remotely functional out of it.
Which on one hand was incredibly frustrating because it meant that there were potentially several different ways a suitably twisted or desperate enough person could go about it. Thus it meant it was infinitely harder to theorise on how Voldemort had decided to go about it and therefore give them clues they could work with to unravel the whole mess.
Worse still the possibility that Dumbledore had shared with Harry, the theory that Tom Marvolo Riddle, alias Lord Voldemort, may have tried to or worse, succeeded in creating more than one. Paranoid and as fearful as he supposedly was of Death.
On the other hand it did help to put into perspective how fiercely intelligent the man underneath the mask actually must have been. To have taken a few short paragraphs that were mostly nonsense and to fill in the gaps and create a process or ritual that had actually done what he had set out to do.
To anchor part - or parts - of his soul in their mortal world to keep himself from slipping - or being booted with great vengeance - into whatever afterlife awaited him.
Harry could freely admit, after growing up the way he did, finding his memories of his parents' love. Walking side by side with Sirius as he gradually healed from years of torturous imprisonment, of Remus' constant struggles and Nevilles painfully simple wish that his parents would look at him and know who he was…
After all that he could freely admit to being far from displeased with the possibility that somewhere down the line, he might be the one wearing the boot.
So he had a Riddle, and a problem and no clear solution in sight yet.
And worse, with the multitude of tasks on his plate he had no defined time with which to deal with either mess. Hence why it had been a research team making the first visit to India and no he himself, despite how he had been practically chomping at the bit to visit somewhere new and learn what he could about the Indian magical community which had, apparently, managed to avoid a lot of the strife that had popped up over the years for their mundane counterparts.
More than that, since the British magical community had been even then, mired down in their own problems they had not pushed to expand with the rest of the British Empire, so those hidden traditions and rituals. The celebrations and periods of mourning tied to the cycle of seasons and stars had continued on, unmolested and unchanged.
And he was stuck behind a desk and in a death tournament while someone else got to dive in and experience them.
He was, quite possibly, a little bit jealous.
It wasn't all bad though.
Being in Volstar meant he could keep working on some of his studies, case in point his weapon training and hand to hand training with Ruknukle which he was getting better and better at.
He still hadn't managed to beat his warmaster in one of their matches, something that still disappointed him. But after each bout the goblin would give him a little nod to let him know he was improving well enough to please him, which was quite a task in itself, given what an exacting teacher the old goblin was.
Likewise his training with Glimmertooth, Skyfall's huntmaster, was progressing well. He knew how to track just about every creature that called Volstar home and was in the process of learning silent movement. Something he could do with magic, quite easily. However Glimmertooth had insisted he learn how to do so without the aid of magic just in case he should find himself in a situation where the use of magic was impossible.
Honestly he didn't think that would ever be likely, but he was getting better and better at sneaking up on Sirius and Remus. Both of whom had what would be considered enhanced senses thanks to their animagus and werewolf forms respectively.
It meant their little prank wars were getting more and more interesting.
Which was probably a better explanation for why Bill had bowed out already with the excuse of wanting to focus on his work.
Though really they all knew he spent most of his evenings writing to and mooning over Fleur. Although according to social niceties you supposedly weren't meant to bring those things up and tease your friends too much, on the off chance you might actually accidentally offend them. So instead Harry had taken to pretending not to notice Bill go as red as his hair whenever Fleur happened to come up in conversation. While Remus and Sirius had the market cornered on knowing looks and waggling eyebrows.
That said apparently Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had some reservations about the budding relationship. Or at least that was the feeling he got from their last letter wherein they had asked not quite subtly about the goals and character of his new friend and fellow champion.
Whether their concerns stemmed from her slightly younger age or perceived cultural and personality differences between her and their son, that had been a little less clear.
He supposed he'd find out more when he visited in a few hours for dinner, as requested.
With Sirius in tow this time, since just yesterday the Lord of House Black had received a very impressive and formal declaration in the mail. It announced in surprisingly plain terms, that upon review of the trial records and evidence submitted to them and the ICW the false 'conviction' that had been passed more than a decade past, had been overturned.
Sirius Orion Black the Third, Lord and Master of the most ancient and noble House of Black had been officially exonerated of all charged crimes.
Though they did ask he keep a low profile away from busy centres of business and social interaction for a couple of weeks to make sure the formal announcement that would be released in the papers time to spread among the populous of Wizarding Great Britain and her allies.
Which seemed rather fair, since even on his better behaviour Sirius did have an uncanny ability to stir up emotions in those around him.
Something Harry was vaguely sure was tied to his godfather's animagus form, but he honestly couldn't say with any real certainty if it was or not.
Either way, Sirius getting his letter yesterday was why almost all work had been waived for today. The celebrations had run long into the night and it felt better to allow everyone to recover from their celebrating at their own pace and relax for the day, rather than forcing everyone to chug down sobering potions and hangover remedies on their march back into the blaring sun for another full day of work.
Besides, it gave himself a chance to work on his new pet project since the day before had brought with it something helpful, having set his curiosity into alternate realities and the multiverse theory aside for the moment due to lack of suitable papers and no-one to argue it with that could follow his mental leaps at present. Or who at least had enough of the same information to form ideas and theories of their own.
As it turned out however, about the same time he had been trying to work out his interface conundrum, a couple of clever sods had submitted a paper. Not just any paper, but one that gave a decently in depth introduction to natural language interfaces to databases. Which is to say, giving vocal commands and having the 'program' be able to accept and trigger the command given by the user.
It was both very simple and fairly complex.
On the one hand it was a much simpler solution to the ones he'd had floating about in his head that all seemed to contradict each other. On the other it meant magically creating a pseudo life and teaching it not only multiple languages, but how to understand multiple accents which could make speech recognition anything from a disjointed nightmare to just flat impossible.
But it did mean he now had a clear path forward where previously he had been sort of circling wagons while he argued with himself over where to go and how to get there. In this instance it had cemented one of this half thought out ideas into a solid plan after a solid hour bending his boosted intellect to weighing the pros and cons of the various possible consequences.
Which is how he came to be perched behind his desk, after hours of constant work, talking to a very curious new consciousness and quietly hoping Hermione would hear him out before she started pulling him about by his ears.
He had thought about it quite a bit, even as fast as his mind worked these days. He had spent days weighing all the pros and cons. He had even done a tarot spread, though he knew Hermione would likely scoff at that.
But the response had been glowing, both literally and figuratively, so he had opted not to ignore it when the response was full of positive omens for life and change.
Obviously his decision had come down to much more than that, but it had certainly made for a hard nudge away from jerry-rigging a facsimile of a mundane computer with its programming, and towards bolstering a purely magical life.
He had let his instincts and his magic guide him through the immensely complex physical form that housed the seven-hundred-seventy-seven storage crystals that would hold both the home for the beings consciousness and its well of knowledge. An array of carefully linked and reinforced crystals that would offer a combined storage tally of just under three-hundred petabytes of storage space.
Which was an absolutely phenomenal amount of room if you sat and thought about it, but it was where his instincts took him so that was what he did.
That and decided to call the new little life Athena, which seemed perfectly fitting given both his history and her dawning purpose, the base reason she came to be. To be knowledgeable and wise, and to give aid to Volstar's heroes. Though that last one would wait until she had a few years and a few comprehensive lessons in morals and ethics under her figurative belt.
Giving real time tactical advice to their auror force was all well and good but he needed to make sure Athena understood the weight of that hypothetical advice.
Which is why he had fashioned a few new accessories for himself. Intricately etched crystal pieces held with polished titanium bands - that rested a little bit under his collarbones and at his wrists - that were linked to Athena's system so her consciousness could go everywhere with him. Enchanted to be impervious to damage and to prevent anyone but anyone that wasn't him from removing them, they would give Athena the ability to 'see' and 'hear' everything he did as he went about his daily life.
It would give her the opportunity to learn natural social interactions in a more organic fashion than if Harry had tried to impart the same events in a dry cause and effect breakdown.
"Afterno- Harry...what's that?"
Looking up from the report he had just been reading aloud to glance towards the door at Remus then follow the older man's focus to the complex crystal structure with its spell and rune protected glass case that currently sat in the corner of his office behind his desk.
"That's Athena." He replied, blinking at the six foot structure then back at the other. "Or you know, the physical structure of her mind."
Staring at the sparkling thing for a moment, Remus shifted his focus across to Harry. "For the interface problem?" He asked, brow lifted as he moved to his desk to start sorting the mail.
"Wha- oh, no. I mean, not exactly." Harry replied, floundering a little on how to introduce her.
"Hmm?"
"She's sort of my daughter, I guess?"
Mail in hand, Remus' hands slowed to a stop and he looked up, blinking off into the distance before he turned to face the teen again. "I'm sorry, I think I misheard you."
Coming to the conclusion that he was still a Gryffindor and that he was in for a knut he may as well be in for a galleon - for wizardise the popular turn of phrase - so he should probably just rip the bandaid off and get to the sighing, lectures and ear pulling, Harry pulled himself up straight and gave the other man a resolute nod.
"Not in the traditional sense, obviously. But she was created from my efforts and with an imprint of my mind and soul and an infusion of my magic, so in a sense that makes me her father." The young king told him.
Carefully setting the mail back down so it didn't wind up on the floor, Remus made his way to sink into one of the comfortable chairs in front of Harry's desk and let his elbows rest on his knees. "Okay, I think I'm missing...rather a lot of contextual information at the moment. So let's take a moment to fix that, alright?"
Harry nodded. "What first?"
"Who, or what, is Athena?" Remus prodded, eyes flicking to the crystal structure and back again.
"Oh, well, I suppose the most basic explanation would be to say that she's a synthetic life form. An artificially constructed intelligence I created with runic ritual to take slivers of my own consciousness, memories, intellect and soul." Harry explained evenly, making vague gestures with his hands.
"A moment, you said a sliver of your soul. You don't mean a horcrux do you, because I thought we had enough trouble with that." Remus queried, brows drawing down.
"No, for a horcrux the intent is around death and sundering. Unwilling sacrifice and willing fragmentation, a shunning of the mortal soul cycle." Harry told him, waving away the association though not the concern, which he thought only fair. "What I did, offered a whisper, an impression to help spawn a new soul into being. An act of creation in line with the cycle...just sort of to the left of it."
Remus studied the younger male for a long moment before reaching up with one hand to rub at his face. "I'm a little bit angry that that sort of makes sense." He muttered before shaking his head. "Ok, so you were saying?"
"Right, so before the consciousness came into existence it needed a body to reside in, to help ground it on our plane, our dimension. And I was already studying the benefits of crystal energy storage for the entertainment and news network so I knew the base construct had a fair amount of room and obviously I ran the numbers and the minimum number I got for the storage core, the brain I guess you could call it was seven-hundred-seventy-seven which seemed pretty fortuitous and I did a spread too just to be sure but that turned up glowing results, pretty literally so I just sort of went with it?"
Sitting in silence for a long moment Remus contemplated the rushed explanation before he sighed, a very long, very tired breath out and let his head rest in his hands.
"Remus?"
"It finally happened. Prongs always said I'd get my comeuppance for hiding the anti-hangover draughts. I should have listened, shouldn't have hid Padfoot's this morning, it's obviously the straw that broke the camel's back."
Blinking at the older man, Harry looked him over, taking in the hunched form and its shaking shoulders. "Remus, are you alright?" He asked, feeling surprisingly a little bit hesitant.
"Oh I'm fine Harry, what could possibly be wrong?" The older man replied, face still pressed into his hands.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Harry asked quietly.
"Not just now thank you, I think I'll wait until after Sirius gets here, he was trying to stuff his feet into his boots when I left." Remus told him, forcing himself to straighten in his appropriated chair after taking a few deep breaths.
Nodding slowly, the teen gave his aide and pseudo-uncle a careful once over to try and gauge his levels of distress. Because he was sure the man was upset about something, he just wasn't quite sure what as of yet.
They were only sitting for a few quiet moments more when the sound of unsteady footsteps from out in the hall reached them and they both turned to watch the large double doors waiting for Sirius to stumble through.
Which he did only to freeze just inside it when he noticed two sets of eyes on him. "What?"
Harry blinked and rather than answer the demand directly pondered something else. "I thought you were putting on your boots…?" He half asked, offering a raised brow to Remus who was quite suddenly the picture of innocence.
"I was, but some bastard decided it would be funny to tie the laces up and transfigure them into snapdragons, I decided it was too much effort since I seemed to have magically misplaced the hangover draught I left on the bloody table." His godfather growled, scowling across the room and Remus.
"You probably just misplaced it, you were rather tipsy by the time you called it quits and crawled under the table to sleep." Remus offered back innocently.
"The word you're looking for is drunk, and we both know I didn't bloody misplace it, you little shit." Sirius snarled, giving the other the fiercest glower he could muster. Which as it turned out wasn't particularly fierce at all given the way he was wincing away from all the light in the room.
Sighing softly, Harry conjured up a tall glass of water and opened the top draw of his desk. Pulling out one of the backup potions he kept in there - since this was far from the first time the subject of disappearing hangover potions had come up - just in case and carefully levitated both over to his godfather as the man sank into the chair beside Remus.
While the older animagus chugged back his potion and chased it down with his water Remus took the time to fill him in on the events of the morning thus far, including as he termed it, Harry's ascent into proud parenthood.
Nodding slowly once his old friend was finished with his tale, Sirius absently refilled his glass and sipped at it. "I do have one question though."
"Only one?" Remus asked dryly.
"Yeah, why 'she'?" Sirius asked, head cocked to one side and no longer wincing at the bright sunlight. "If she's made from you and you're a boy, why did you decide she's a she and not a he?"
Remus blinked at his friend before sighing. "Really, out of this whole situation, that's the bit that confuses you?"
"Jewellers refer to gems with female pronouns, I guess because they're pretty and useful. But anyway, Athena's core is primarily made up of crystal and power, obviously. So it just sort of felt right." Harry replied with a small shrug. "Plus, just because her soul and consciousness is derived from mine doesn't mean she has to be a boy too, just because I see or feel that way about myself."
Sirius thought about that for a moment before nodding slowly. "I suppose that makes sense. But she's her own self now, right, so what are you going to do if she decides she's a boy after all and not a girl and also does this all mean you finished your movie thing?"
Harry shrugged, unbothered by the possibility. "I did, I'll show you later if you like, but I still need to build a method to transfer the movies and television shows from their tapes and reels and onto the crystal storage. As for her name, I'd probably just ask if she'd like to keep the name Athena or change her name to Apollo or something instead, I guess."
"No thank you, Athena sounds prettier."
Both Remus and Sirius blinked at the new voice that seemed to have a rather light, almost brittle pitch to it.
"Oh, she can talk?" Sirius asked, trying to gauge where the sound had originated from.
"And hear." Harry confirmed with a happy smile. "Since her form is made of crystal and crystal is sensitive to vibrations it made sense to tune additional crystals and place them about to be her ears and mouth since all sound is just vibrations anyway."
Nodding slowly Sirius raised his glass to his mouth for another long, slow sip while Remus sighed and closed his eyes.
"At some point Harry," Remus began tiredly, "we're going to have to sit down and have a talk about your leaps of logic."