Review responses
scorched halloween: I find pacing pretty difficult, honestly. It's hard for me to strike a balance, and I know I get carried away describing some things. I don't want to go so slowly as to make it dreadfully boring, but I do want things to happen on a realistic timescale. Chapter 1 is as fast-paced as it will get in this story. Regarding Harry being OOC, all I will say is—I would expect so after having 20,000 years of memories dumped on him. His own memories now only represent less than 0.1% of what is in his mind.
glrasshopper: I mentioned this at the start of the first chapter, but generally I'm assuming airdates = in-story dates. One exception to this is in the response below. Events in Harry Potter are timeline accurate for Chapter 1.
Andrew Lee Houghton: Apologies if it wasn't terribly clear in the A/N, but I'm basically assuming that Apophis sends his ships and the events of S2E1 happen in the 48 hour period approximately around June 26, 1998, instead of March. This is a liberty I am taking with the timeline to give Harry and co some time to get their bearings. The other thing to keep in mind is that I am not necessarily going to follow plot points and events from SG-1 other than those that were already set in motion when Harry encountered Nehebkau.
Regarding the Furlings—I'm not going to exposit on this in my story so I'll explain here. It's safe to assume that the remnant that survived the crash on Earth was just that—a population of no more than a couple dozen Furlings. So, they suffered from a founder effect, had very little tech to salvage and no way to make anything. It's been 3000 years since they crashed, so just assume that what they did manage to salvage has worn down and been repurposed hundreds of times purely for their own survival. Also, they landed amongst magic-wielding humans who were not friendly. So, they've been holed up underground in Gringotts, which is basically why they haven't been detected by the Asgard. They're underground in a magically concealed environment. Since the Asgard haven't even detected the Antarctic outpost, I doubt they're scanning Earth in that much detail.
As to why the Furlings don't contact the Asgard—when you have only a couple dozen survivors focused on surviving, it's unlikely their collective knowledge is sufficient to rebuild their tech base. Basically, the Goblins who have descended from the Furlings have regressed technologically and they have no way of initiating that contact anymore, and they've spent the last 3000 years in conflicts with magical humans and focused on developing their own esoteric/magical/psionic/whatever capabilities to defend against that.
Everyone: Thank you for reading, favouriting, following, and your kind comments. If you asked a question that I didn't respond to, please refer to the blanket response below.
Blanket response: you'll have to wait and see :)
Gradients
Chapter 3
They located Graham Pritchard and Laura Madley first—they were being held hostage in the cellar of a house in Keenbridge, a small hamlet directly south of Hogwarts. The house had been owned and registered on the Floo Network by a Catriona Gibbon since 1965, who Auror Brewster had flagged as being a possible sympathiser.
It had been extremely well-warded according to Bill, Fleur and the Aurors. A dozen layers of intricately woven wards that took them two days to find a weakness they could exploit without alarming whoever was inside.
The two teens weren't in too bad a shape, all things considered, and even seemed to have become quite close. Catriona had turned out to be not much of a zealot, but she had agreed with Voldemort enough to let her brother Cadorius use her cellar for prisoners. What she did have, however, was a Mastery in Warding—which made the whole situation make a lot of sense.
When Madley and Pritchard were reunited with their respective families, it emerged that their abduction was part of an extortion scheme Cadorius Gibbon had cooked up with some other Death Eaters. Not altogether surprising that Death Eaters had been taking advantage of their authority in Voldemort's Ministry.
On the third day after their jaunt in space with the Book, they found Duncan Pepper. The young boy had not been as lucky as the others. He'd been held in Rabastan Lestrange's townhouse in Leeds for four months. He was alive, but that was about it. Months of abuse and torture had rendered him almost catatonic. He'd been kidnapped as a means to pressure his father Octavius Pepper, a well-connected businessman. It didn't seem likely that Duncan would have known anything of value to Rabastan—who lay dead in his bed in the same house—so the torture was undoubtedly just for Rabastan's sick pleasure.
Astoria had taken Duncan's condition especially hard.
"It's not fair!" Astoria cried, stomping up the ramp into the ship. "Why were the other three so easy? It's been almost two weeks! What if she dies of dehydration? What if we never find her?"
"Astoria! The Book can still detect her. She's alive," Harry said, following her in and putting his arm around her shoulder. "I know you're frustrated and scared and worried, but from what you've told me, Daphne is resilient and resourceful. She'll survive. We'll find her."
"I don't know how you can be so optimistic," Astoria snapped, shrugging off his arm. "What if they've tortured her like poor little Duncan?"
"No matter what's happened to her, you and your family will be there to support her recovery. Hell, I'll be there to support her recovery," he said. "Whoever she was captured by probably died before they harmed her—that doesn't make her fortunate or anything—but it does mean she'll be able to survive long enough for us to find her."
Astoria sagged. "I hope you're right, Harry. And I'm sorry for snapping at you, I appreciate that you're trying to find her. It's just…hard," she said.
"It's okay, it's understandable," he said. "We won't give up, though, I promise."
Even as he said that he worried. Daphne had registered in the Book as being in northwest London. London was home to over a thousand magical families. Split into pairs and with private help hired by Mr Greengrass, they still hadn't found her despite visiting over two hundred homes.
Shaking his head, he reached out and rubbed Astoria's back. "You need to get some rest, huh? You've been up for over 48 hours now. Being exhausted won't help," he said softly.
"I'm glad we're friends now," she said. "I'll—I'll try to get some sleep."
She gave him a quick hug, then walked off to the quarters she shared with Tracey, Hermione and Luna.
Harry walked further into the ship and through into the small lab. Hermione had commandeered a bench by the wall and was taking meticulous notes in her ever-expanding journal. Luna was using the molecular synthesiser next to her to produce some amino acids for Anka that were required by Chudley's lifeforms but not used by anything on Earth. She'd become quite proficient at programming the device after Harry and Hermione showed her some Muggle chemistry.
They looked over as he walked in.
"Harry! Look at this," Hermione said, indicating the simple Muggle kitchen scale next to her.
"What about it? Looks like it hasn't been tared properly," he said.
"Ah yes! But—the cubic centimetre of iron is located on the scale," she said, wiggling her fingers at the scale dramatically.
And like that, a small cube of metal appeared, perched innocently on the scale.
"No way," he said, bending down to look at the cube. "Its mass isn't hidden? How does a secret like that even work? Does it break if I move it off the scale?"
"No, the secret is belief based. If I, as the Secret Keeper, believe that I am revealing the secret, then it actually doesn't matter what I tell you."
"What if I went away and then you moved the cube?" he asked. "I'd be thinking about the wrong secret."
"Tried that. It still doesn't matter. Once I've revealed the secret, the belief that the secret has been revealed to you becomes part of magic itself. You could be thinking about dancing trolls, and you'd be able to see the cube wherever it is."
"Can I affect it if I didn't know the secret? Say, if I tipped the scale over."
"Of course! It still experiences gravity. Otherwise, we would have started floating anytime we entered Grimmauld Place," she said. "That's the key, by the way. When the Fidelius was invented, the concept of gravity didn't exist. I mean, they knew about weight of course, but the charm makes no consideration for the effect of what you're hiding on the surrounding gravitational field. Knowing all that—Luna, would you mind?"
Luna hopped off her stool.
"I have here an ordinary, unmodified scale!" Luna announced, pulling another scale from the shelf with a flourish. "There are no hidden strings or levers, no trickery or deception—"
"Luna!"
"Oh poo—no Muggle magician routine?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Luna, I adore you, but not now," she said.
"Next time," Luna said, smiling impishly. She put the scale on the bench, then turned it on and tared it.
"Okay, Harry. Now, watch this," Hermione said, nodding at Luna.
Luna moved her hand near the scale. Maybe? Harry lost focus on what she was doing, but what he did see was the scale change to 7.87 grams—the weight of a cubic centimetre of iron.
It only took him a second to realise what was happening and, just like that, another cube of iron materialised on the scale.
"Now, what if I told you…neither of us are the Secret Keeper for this cube?" Hermione asked.
"Hermione…that is—you're brilliant! How? It's so—so…"
"So simple and obvious? Yes, but for a spell traditionally used for fixed structures on Earth, why would hiding its weight ever be a consideration?"
"But did that only work because I know the density of iron and correctly inferred what it was?"
Hermione grinned. "Luna?"
Luna moved, maybe near the scale again? Harry blinked.
The scale read 28.4 grams. A small nugget of gold materialised the moment he read it.
"You only need to deduce that there must be something where there appears to be nothing. Your true belief that something exists makes the charm think you know the secret. Of course, the Fidelius does protect against deductive reasoning in some ways—like with Grimmauld Place—you can't just see 11 and 13 and think, oh there must be a 12. You just think nothing is out of the ordinary, so you don't even know to look for a 12. That's why the Death Eaters could never find us even though they knew the street, and why we had to abandon Grimmauld Place once we Apparated there with Yaxley. Once he knew it existed and where, the Fidelius was fooled into thinking he knew the secret, so he would have been able to bring others into the secret like we did him."
"That's—wow…but…Hermione, I think…that means Muggles right now would be able to detect places under the Fidelius," he said. "Maybe even under any concealment ward, come to think of it. Any structure that's magically concealed would show up as an anomaly. This ship could easily detect any concealed house from orbit with the gravimeter it's equipped with."
"Maybe, maybe not. I don't think they have that resolution yet. And, you do have to have some idea that there's something being concealed. I don't think the Muggles would see a localised gravimetric anomaly in London and think, oh that means there's a hidden house. They'd think there's some geological reason, like an over-density of rock, before they think of that. But the good news is that we can find every concealed building in the British Isles! I mean, we only need to do northwest London for now, but afterwards we should do the whole country!" she said breathlessly.
"Hmm, it'll only take one pass to find every anomaly, but we'll need to come in closer to rule out geological anomalies. The gravimeter will be able to map out an entire building in detail if we're only a few kilometres up," he said. "We'll fly a search pattern while Astoria's asleep. Hopefully, we can give her some good news when she wakes up."
.o.
Space unfolded to reveal a covered wet dock and warehouse immediately west of Hammersmith Bridge. It had a distinctly Victorian feel, with a red and yellow brick façade and black wrought iron adornments and had a far larger footprint than its surroundings would have seemed to allow. Astoria frowned and stuck her hands in the pockets of the skinny jeans Harry had bought to help her blend in around Muggle London.
"I don't think she's here," she muttered, eyeing the Muggle construction crew milling about the bridge warily.
"I doubt she is," Harry agreed, leaning back against one of the bridge's grey towers, "but we should check in case. It won't take long."
"Let's go, then," Astoria said. She crossed the remainder of the bridge, then bounced down the stairway from the bridge to the esplanade. Harry watched her for a moment then followed. He admired how unrelentingly determined Astoria was, but it did concern him how she kept forgetting to look after herself.
They passed the threshold of the Fidelius and through the wrought iron gate without issue. From this angle Harry could see a river barge floating in the wet dock. He paused, falling behind Astoria again, and scanned around. He switched his vision to infrared then cursed softly—everything was a blurry mess. The ocular resequencing still hadn't quite integrated.
There was a prickling sensation on the back of his neck before he had a chance to switch his vision back, then he was being knocked to the ground. He yelled out, hoping to warn Astoria. The Goa'uld symbiote flooded him with accelerants, but his attacker had a knee on his neck and a hand was pressing his face into the ground. He couldn't breathe. Astoria screamed—but then it was muffled and then cut off entirely. Fuck. He reached up blindly and grabbed at the hand on the back of his head and squeezed. He felt bones crunching in his grip and heard a man roaring in pain. It drove the knee deeper into his neck, making his vision dim. He reached up with his other hand and took a fistful of cloth and heaved. The man went tumbling over him headfirst, his skull cracking on the ground in front of Harry's eyes with a look of surprise etched on his face.
Harry scrambled to his feet. His attacker lay motionless on the pavement—a huge, bearded man staring blankly up at the sky with blood pooling around his bald scalp. He looked up. Another large man was dragging an unconscious Astoria into the warehouse by her honey blonde hair. The accelerants made him move preternaturally fast, but his stupefy was a fraction too late as they disappeared behind the warehouse door.
He sprinted, covering the distance in a mere second before he impacted the steel door with his shoulder. It burst open, smacking into the wall with a resounding clang. The man dragging Astoria startled and let her fall, her head hitting the cobbles. Harry had no trouble weaving through the spells the man cast—to his accelerated perception they were as good as stationary shafts of light. Then he was right upon the man. He grabbed the man's wand arm and pulled so abruptly it tore completely off at the shoulder. The man screamed as gouts of blood erupted from his shoulder to splash on the ground, falling to his knees and staring dumbly at the exposed bone socket. Harry tossed the torn-off arm aside and cauterised the man's shoulder with a quick burst of incendio. His nostrils flared at the smell of the burning flesh. It triggered more screaming from the man and a wave of recollection in Harry's mind that he pushed aside as he seized the man's neck and pulled him up.
"Who are you?"
"P-please—agghhh—I have a family—," he begged, prying at Harry's fingers with his remaining hand.
"Who?" Harry asked, shaking him.
"Aghhh—Ch-Chisholm, that's me name—Roger Chisholm—please, don't kill me!"
"Whose warehouse is this? Who else is here?"
"It's 'is, out there," Chisholm whimpered, gesturing with his eyes to where they'd entered. "Ain't n-nobody else know about this place 'sides us two."
"And who is he?"
"Heinrich H-Huber. His dad was some high up follower of Grindelwald's who stole shit an' hid it here after the war."
"His dad dead?" Harry said.
"Y-Yes! Since '75—please—"
"Good. And you and he stole things too?"
"Yes! Me an' Heinrich! I donno nuffink else I swear!"
"Alright, anything else you want to admit to?"
"No—w-well, it was only a couple o' times!"
Harry glared at him and tightened his grip.
"Aghhh! I foun' some Muggle girl—run away from 'ome, she had. Brought her back an' kept her here."
"You said a couple of times."
"Mighta bin four or five girls," Chisholm said, eyes darting about.
"The truth," Harry growled, shaking him again.
"Alrigh', alrigh'! Sixteen girls—'appy?"
Harry's eyes narrowed, "And where are they?"
Chisholm's demeanour grew bolder with the confession, almost bragging, "Where you fink? Dead now, innit? Used 'em up, tossed 'em out. They're jus' Muggles, who cares?"
Harry tightened his grip. The veins in Chisholm's face bulged and he turned an unhealthy looking puce. He opened his mouth, desperately trying to breathe, and desperately clawing at Harry's hand. Harry squeezed harder. He felt Chisholm's trachea collapse, then his oesophagus, then his vertebrae crumbled, and then he let Chisholm drop to the ground. A wave of Draco's wand vanished his body and his detached arm.
"Episkey. Rennervate," he cast. The bruise on Astoria's forehead where she hit the ground vanished and her eyes fluttered open.
"Ugh ow," she said, feeling her head gingerly. "What's wrong with your eyes?"
Harry shook his head. The gold glow in his eyes faded. "I'll explain later. How are you feeling?"
"'M'alright," she said. "What is this place?"
"The late owners used it to store stolen goods," Harry said.
"Uhh…late owners?"
"Oh, they deserved it, trust me."
Astoria arched an eyebrow at him but said nothing as she sat up. She looked around and gasped. "That's a Van Gogh. And oh, Merlin—that's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee."
"What?"
She rolled her eyes.
"Honestly…Rembrandt? One of the most renowned painters of all time?"
"Muggle, though?"
"Goodness Harry, the magical world isn't completely uncivilised. And he lived pre-Statute of Secrecy," she said. "Anyway, it's worth a fortune if it's real."
Harry helped her up. "I doubt they went to the trouble of stealing a fake painting," he said. She brushed some dust off the back of her jeans. Harry tried not to look but the jeans really were rather flattering.
"Well, thank you for rescuing me," she said, straightening her Muggle plaid flannel shirt. "Let's hurry up and check out the rest of this place so we can move on to the next one."
"Alright. I'm sorry we got attacked, I should have been more alert for the possibility," he said.
She waved him off. "Me too, really, but it's not your fault. I guess we got a bit complacent after the five abandoned buildings before this," she said, "and I was getting frustrated about how slow going it was."
.o.
Three Fidelius-hidden buildings later it was nearing seven in the evening. An otter Patronus interrupted them moments before they called it a day.
"We found her. I'm with a couple of the investigators Mr Greengrass hired at location eighty-seven," the otter said with Hermione's voice. "A healer has already stabilised her and we're about to transport her to St Mungo's."
Astoria stared wide-eyed. "Did she—was that…?" she started, grabbing the front of Harry's shirt.
"Yes, that was real. They found her."
She choked out a sob and flung her arms around Harry's waist. "Thankyouthankyouthankyou—"
He patted her on the back. "I did promise," he said. "I can Apparate us to St Mungo's if you'd like."
"Please," she said, taking his hand. A moment later they were walking through the front of the Purge and Dowse department store, emerging into a quiet reception area.
"Astoria!" a man said from behind them.
"Dad! They found her!"
Mr Greengrass was dishevelled and out of breath. "I just received Miss Granger's message," he said, sucking down air. He nodded at Harry, his dark blond hair flopping into his face, "Mr Potter. Good to see you again."
Harry nodded. "You too, sir."
"Please, it's Oscar—"
"Coming through!" a voice called. A pair of doors swung open to admit a floating stretcher accompanied by a Healer in lime-green robes and Hermione.
Astoria and Mr Greengrass rushed over to them.
"Some privacy, sir, please—," the Healer began, as the stretcher carrying Daphne floated swiftly towards the corridor that led to the intensive care wards.
"That's my daughter!"
"Very well, but family only!" the Healer said, glancing at Harry. "And keep up. Her condition is critical, but she is stable—" the Healer's voice faded behind the next set of swinging doors, leaving Harry with Hermione in the hospital's reception area.
"Was it bad?"
Hermione nodded; her lips drawn into a thin line. "I'm shocked she's alive. There were a few dead Death Eaters but no one else. The basement was pitch black—Augustus Rookwood's townhouse, by the way. The cell they put her in down there didn't even have a loo or a bed, Harry."
Harry frowned. "Did it look like they'd tortured her?" he asked.
"No, thank Merlin," Hermione said, then quietly, "Harry—I tried the infrared vision mode in the basement. My display said her skin temperature was only sixty-four degrees above absolute zero."
"That can't be right. Are you sure it's fully integrated? Mine's still wonky," he said.
"I checked my own hands—they were about ambient. And she shot right back up to ambient temperature when we found her—Mr Cargill called out for a Healer and startled her before she passed out."
"Very odd. She'd have been frozen solid," Harry said, "and warming up that quick is strange, too. Perhaps we'll be able to ask her once she's recovered."
"Healer Merrythought said she was sustaining her body on magic alone, and her core was almost depleted. I just—can't think of why or how she could possibly have been that cold. Even through her own magic."
Harry hummed in agreement. "Doesn't make sense for it to be some sort of magically induced hibernation. That's far too cold."
"Harry! Hermione!"
"Tracey," Hermione greeted as the short brunette engulfed her in a hug. "She'll be okay. They're treating her now. Astoria and Mr Greengrass are with her."
"You really found her?"
Hermione nodded.
Tracey beamed at her. "Oh, thank Merlin," she said. "I suppose they won't allow visitors for a while. I'd better go let Mum know she's okay—she's Daphne's godmother, you know."
"If we're not here, you know where to find us. It's still at Bill and Fleur's," Harry said.
Tracey nodded. "Stay safe, you two. And—thank you. Really."
Harry shrugged awkwardly. "Anytime," he said.
"See you soon, Tracey," Hermione said. Tracey stepped back and vanished with a swirl of her robe.
Harry and Hermione stood in silence for a moment.
"Tracey's right, they probably won't let anyone else see her at least until tomorrow," Hermione said.
"Let's tell Astoria that we're heading off for now," he said. "We've got a warehouse to loot."
.o.
Hermione had a hard time keeping her hands steady as she levitated Caravaggios and Rembrandts and Van Eycks, Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man, a Monet, a Vermeer, a couple of Turners, and no less than six Van Goghs, to name a few, into a space-expanded trunk. Alongside the paintings were various steles, sculptures, assorted artifacts and literal piles of gold, gems and jewellery. Most of it meant very little to Harry—the Dursleys weren't big on art or history or his cultural education, and Nehebkau had nothing to offer either—but Hermione had assured him that almost everything she had catalogued with her augmented vision so far was very important and very valuable. Even just returning them to their rightful owners would net them tens of millions of pounds in reward money.
In one corner was something that Harry did recognise, at least stylistically, though its function eluded him. It was a squat brown pedestal ringed by squared off columns, with a white platform on its top surface. Judging by the two antique porcelain teacups on it and the totally incongruous thrones next to it, the thieves had fancied it as a coffee table.
"Hermione! We're keeping this one," he said, picking off the teacups.
She gazed at it for a moment to catalogue it and floated it into a different compartment in the trunk. "What is it?"
"No idea, but it's alien," he said. "Made by the Ancients, if I had to guess."
.o.
"I'm sorry, Mr Potter, the material's intrinsic conductivity makes it impervious to scrying or divination methods," Ollivander said. "The magic goes right through it, as it were."
"Bollocks," Harry said, picking up the small ingot of naquadah. "It was worth a shot. Say, Mr Ollivander, do you think you could make a wand out of this? The naquadah in my blood seems to be making my spells stronger, and Ron, Hermione and I all need new wands after...well…"
"Of course," he said, grimacing. "Any magically conductive material can be made into a wand. Most metals tend to be magical insulators—noble metals such as silver, gold and platinum are a notable exception, but they are rather cost-prohibitive, and difficult to work with in a magical sense. I do craft ward anchor rods and divining rods from metal on occasion, but wood strikes a nice balance between conductivity, workability, and cost, and it also has a pliability that aids in performing delicate magic."
"Is it only the stiffness that affects that? What if you used a bundle of wires? Like the bristles on the end of a broom."
"I do mean pliability literally, yes," Ollivander said, "so you are quite right to suggest a bundle of wires to counteract material stiffness, but then you encounter another problem—you must have a wand core for each wire—and no two wand cores are precisely alike, even from the same animal."
"Ah so, each wire would resonate differently, and you'd never be able to match the wand with anyone."
Ollivander nodded, "And before you ask—yes, the core must run nearly the entire length of the wand, so you cannot simply cut up a unicorn hair, say, and put a piece in each wire."
Harry drummed his fingers on the counter. "What if there's a central wire that contains the wand core and finer wires surrounding it, all emerging from the same handle?"
Ollivander scratched his chin. "That…would be possible. One-eighth inch for a rod in the centre, one-sixteenth inch wires…say, eight of them, would be…ah…about zero point zero four square inches…should be sufficient cross-sectional area. Yes, we could certainly try that," he said, "though I cannot make any guarantees that it will function well. You will need to bring Miss Granger and Mr Weasley here so I can match them with cores, however."
Harry tilted his head, using his implanted nano-antenna to transmit a message to Ron and Hermione. The bell on the door jingled twenty seconds later. Ollivander raised his eyebrows.
"Good morning, Mr Ollivander," Hermione said, holding up another couple of naquadah ingots. "Harry said you needed us here."
"Indeed," he said. "Well, let's get on with it shall we? Follow me."
Ollivander ushered them behind the counter and into a small workshop. "Please, put the naquadah here," he said, motioning to a shiny obsidian slab on a workbench as he rifled through a drawer. There was a large circular depression in the centre of it where Harry and Hermione deposited the ingots.
"Ah! Here they are," he said, withdrawing a long narrow cardboard box. He slid off the cover and took out what appeared to be glass marbles, one of which he handed to each of them. "These are imprint stones. I want you to attempt to cast a lumos with them—your magic will be absorbed by the stone. I will then use the stone to tune the wand's dimensions and structure to your magic, and also to identify suitable wand cores."
Harry peered at the little marble as he channelled magic into it. Dozens of tiny runes etched on its surface illuminated until eventually a small point of light appeared within it. The point swelled into a chaotic, bubbling orb, filling the entire marble. It resembled a miniature gas giant, with cloud bands and swirling eddies.
"Wicked," Ron said, holding his marble up to his eye.
"Place them on these, please," Ollivander said, setting out tiny gold cups. He took the first cup, with Ron's marble, and placed it on an indent on the obsidian slab. Then, he placed his palms on the surface of the slab and closed his eyes. The naquadah suddenly liquefied, and from the pool of blue-grey metal a rod grew. Once the rod was about five inches long, it sharpened into an octagonal prism. The top of the rod—the base of the wand—flared out to form a bulbous, sharp-faced pommel. Metal melted away to produce an intricate filigree in the faces of the prism, like eight little arched Gothic windows. At each window's apex, a thin wire extruded out as the rod rose from the pool. From the centre of the base, a thick wire sprouted. The thin wires merged and split as they converged towards the thick wire, producing a simple delicate lattice near the blunted tip.
The new wand separated from the liquid pool and Ollivander plucked it from the air and examined it closely.
"Hmm, thirteen and three quarter inches," he said, placing it to the side. He repeated the process with Harry and Hermione's marbles. For Harry's, the wires took on the shape of snakes coiling around a central twisted spire, their mouths perched wide open at the tip of the wand like a venomous bloom. The handle received a repeating interlocking zig-zag pattern reminiscent of Harry's scar, and the pommel became a star-shaped claw setting.
Hermione's wand was a geometric marvel. An odd little 13-sided shape tiled the surface of the handle in a non-repeating pattern. Instead of the eight thin wires, there was a stack of 7 very fine wire fractal triangular pyramids threaded on a 7-sided central shaft, each rotated one-seventh of a turn with respect to the previous.
"Those are Sierpinski pyramids," Hermione whispered to Harry. Harry nodded as though he knew what she was talking about.
Once Ollivander had completed those, he took a small box from another drawer. "Engraving diamonds," he explained. "Allows me to engrave runes in areas I cannot reach."
With his wand, he levitated a miniscule diamond through the structure of the hollowed-out wand handles and conducted the diamond to etch tiny runes on the inside surface of the pommel.
"Strengthening and hardening runes. Wouldn't want to damage this lovely filigree, eh?" he said, handing the wands over. "Now, we must find cores for them. Come, come."
He led them out of the workshop and into a storage room.
"Sir? I brought this tail feather from a bird I recently encountered," Hermione said, holding up one of Anka's scaly midnight blue feathers. "It dropped right into my lap as I was feeding her."
"Indeed? An auspicious sign—see that ramp contraption? Place the feather on the gold pedestal at the top."
She did, then Ollivander placed her marble at the bottom of the ramp, perched on top of a pair of gold rails. Immediately, the marble rolled up the ramp and fell into a little gold cup at the top.
"Oho, it's a match! Congratulations, Miss Granger," he said, picking the feather up carefully. "What a remarkable feather. Now, Mr Potter, Mr Weasley—take your marbles and feel for a pull when I open each case. We'll start with the more common cores—here, dragon heartstrings."
He opened a tiered case; each tier contained a row of glass tubes with a single heartstring pulled taut within. Ten minutes later, Ron had found his match: a hippogriff tail hair. It took another fifteen minutes and increasingly obscure cores until Harry matched with an occamy feather. They returned to the workshop, where in surprisingly short order, Ollivander used a different obsidian slab inscribed with a four-pointed star to ritualistically merge the cores with the wands.
"Fascinating," Hermione said, "I was wondering how you were going to insert the cores. I couldn't see a hole in the centre for them."
"Oh no, one must fully integrate the core with the wand matrix to achieve resonance," Ollivander said. "Rituals are not the only way, but I have found they are the most effective. Here, give them a wave."
Their wands all let out a shower of colourful sparks. "Whoa," Ron said, looking impressed, "that felt a lot more intense than my last wand."
"How much do we owe you, sir?" Harry asked, twirling his wand. It was nicely balanced.
"Oh, nothing for you three, I should think," he said, cheerfully. "It was my pleasure, truly. Although…if I may be so bold, I would like to explore out there—" he gestured up at the ceiling "—on occasion for new materials to experiment with."
"Of course. We established a little base on another planet a few weeks ago—and Hermione's already demonstrated that the wildlife there works for wands."
"Aha! I suspected so. Wonderful, perhaps in a few weeks' time, once I have my shop more in order," Ollivander said, clapping his hands together.
"Mr Ollivander? Does that mean the bird I got the feather from is magical?" Hermione asked.
"Absolutely, Miss Granger," he said, "it must be to have any effect on your wand's resonance."
.o.
"May I make a couple of suggestions, Harry?"
Harry swallowed the bit of steak he was chewing. "Of course, Cissy," he said.
Narcissa put down her cutlery and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. "I think you're too focused on trying to find this Stargate. You've already mentioned that it's similar to Floo travel, so why not build your own, magic-based network of gateways? The theory behind Floo is well established—I believe the Malfoy library has a copy of Ignatia Wildsmith's work, if you'd like to peruse it."
"That…was not something I'd considered," he said, looking into her steely grey eyes. "I would like to be able to access the Stargate network eventually, but it would be nice to have a completely segregated network. More secure."
"Forgive my candour, but I don't think looking for a Stargate is a good use of your time. If the danger from these Goa'uld is as imminent as you believe, you need to scale up your activities by several orders of magnitude. Forget about the Stargate. Focus on building an industrial base. You have the technology and the knowhow at your disposal," she said, tapping her temple with a manicured finger. "You just need to set your ambitions higher. You've already shown me that you're a capable leader, but you're not fully utilising your resources."
"You're right," Harry said with a frown. "All these memories, sometimes it feels like they're drowning out my own thoughts and feelings. Makes it easy for me to slip into a Goa'uld way of thinking, focusing on planets with Stargates and the Stargate network itself. But…you're right. We need to be scaling up massively if we're going to stand any chance of fending off the Goa'uld. Stargates are convenient, but if we can get Floo-like portals to work, they're less relevant. Access to the network is the most valuable aspect, but we only need a single Stargate further down the line for that."
"Are you realising now?" she asked, eyebrow arched. "You told me the Stargate was the pinnacle of Ancient technology. From the sounds of it, it took them millions of years to get to that point. We—technology averse magicals—have developed no less than three methods of travel that according to you is the same phenomenon over the span of a few thousand. On top of that, some children even perform accidental Apparition! If we can recreate their finest achievement without even intending to, albeit on a smaller scale, think of what we can do if we combine this technology with magic," she said.
"You're very passionate about this, aren't you?" Harry asked, eyeing the slight flush on her face.
Her lips quirked, "Magic is capable of whatever people believe it's capable of. All of this technology," she said, gesturing at the walls of the ship around them, "simply expands the realm of possibility. You have power, knowledge, fame, access to the galaxy, and too much potential to be allowed to go to waste. I have a lot of unfulfilled ambition, a lot of ideas, and access to you. And, I have enough sense to see where our world is heading without intervention."
Harry almost blushed, "I have no desire to be famous—"
"Bollocks to that," she interrupted. Harry's eyebrows shot into his fringe. "You're famous, it's not going to change. Get used to it, then use it. It always boggled my mind that you never leveraged your fame, especially during the past few years. Wars, conflicts, whatever—they're as much about public opinion as they are about actual fighting. The public rolled over and took it up the arse because they were fed the Ministry's horseshit for years and your counters in The Quibbler were too little too late. Your fame is a platform to get your ideas out there. Take advantage of that.
"Actually, that leads me to my next suggestion—colonise a planet," she continued, "open it to public migration via a Floo-derived gateway. Use your fame to draw people in."
"Whatever for?"
"Don't you see, Harry? Do you think there's any chance of magical society ever reintegrating with Muggles?"
"Honestly…? No," he said, "not now. A lot of Muggles are still fearful and intolerant. I experienced that first-hand."
"From what you and Miss Granger have indicated, it's only a matter of time until we're discovered."
"I would say it's getting more and more likely," he said, resting his chin on his hand, "even with the technology they already have. Muggles have put up security cameras all over the place, recording everything. They're bound to capture footage of magic being performed, if they haven't already."
"It's the ideal solution, then. A planet where witches and wizards can be out in the open, where our culture can thrive. Did you know that a full thirty percent of our economy is devoted to maintaining the Statute of Secrecy? I expect that will only increase as Muggle technology becomes more sophisticated, at least until it becomes an exercise in futility. Do you think that burden on our society is conducive to progress?"
"Definitely not," he admitted, "and authoritarianism is baked into our governments out of necessity, which puts a damper on things."
"Once you free the magical world from secrecy, we can stop looking inwards and look out instead," she said. "Think—a whole society burning to capitalise on their newfound freedom, and you as the one who grants it to them sets the tone and direction of new society. Obviously, you'll need people to build industry. This is where you get them, because frankly, as talented as your friends are, a dozen people and one spaceship are not going to liberate the galaxy by yourselves."
"It makes a lot of sense, but what's the incentive for witches and wizards to get involved with the affairs of the galaxy? Why would they care if the Goa'uld are enslaving Muggles?"
"They won't, but that part is just politics, Harry. You always have a bogeyman to unify your people against, and if there isn't a real one, invent one, then paint your premiership as the only way to overcome them. Entrench the Goa'uld as the enemy of your society from the beginning and let it be known that they will subjugate us all if we don't take the fight to them—imagine how that sounds to people when they've only just gained real freedom. And, of course, the Muggles get emancipated as a side effect."
"I see," Harry said, "but that sounds awfully like replacing the burden of secrecy with military."
"Perhaps, but at least it's a burden with purpose," Narcissa said. "Secrecy doesn't really benefit us."
"Point taken," Harry said. "Okay, you've convinced me. We don't have enough naquadah to build any Stargate-esque Floo gateways at the moment, so in the meantime, would you start planning with Hermione and Luna what we need to start a colony?"
Narcissa smirked. "Oh, I've already been talking to them about it," she said.
.o.
"C'est magnifique," Fleur murmured when they dropped out of hyperspace a million kilometres above Proxima's ecliptic plane. The viewscreen framed the agitated pale orange globe of Proxima and the glowing crescent of Chudley and its atmosphere. Filters prevented Proxima's light from blowing out the image, but it was still too bright to be able to see any stars other than the Alpha Centauri binary pair.
"You let Ron call this place Chudley?" Bill asked.
"We've got billions of planets to explore. One of them was bound to get named Chudley," Harry said.
"Whatever you say, Harry. You checked out the other planet?" Bill asked, pointing at a small rusty grey blob in the corner of the viewscreen.
"Too hot," Harry said, as he vectored the ship closer to Chudley. "Suits could probably handle it, but there's no life. Might be able to strip mine it for raw materials, but none of the planets in this system have any naquadah as far as I'm aware."
"You know, it's remarkable that the Goa'uld rely on slave labour to mine minerals by hand," Hermione said.
"They see no need to change things, and they have no desire to give the slaves access to any sort of technology," he said.
Hermione snorted. "Well, that's ridiculous," she said. "With this level of technology alone, they could easily build robotic mining equipment that could do the work of a thousand slaves and work around the clock. Add in some magic, and we could probably match the output of an entire planet's slave population with one of those huge excavators that the Muggles use on Earth."
"New project for you, Hermione," Harry said, looking over his shoulder at her with a cheeky grin. "Design an excavator that literally chews up the crust of dead planets like that—" he waved a hand at the rusty grey blob as it slipped out of view "—and separates the minerals into their constituent elements."
Her eyes unfocused—clearly, she was accessing a file in her augmented vision. "I'll add it to the list," she said.
"Can we visit the volcanoes?" Luna asked as Chudley filled up more of the viewscreen. "Magmatic Choralquorbs live on the underside of Earth's crust, but sometimes they get ejected in volcanic eruptions."
"Sure Luna, we can do that once we're settled. Everyone got their suits on and pressurised? We're about two minutes out."
"Uh Harry, which button was that?" Neville asked, holding up the panel on the wrist of his suit.
"Blue one, second from the left," Harry said. The viewscreen switched to a low-visibility mode, showing the world augmented by bright outlines, as they descended further into Chudley's inky black night.
A few minutes later the ship came to rest with its nose thirty metres from the huge circular entrance, the warm white light from inside the base piercing the darkness through the Gothic windows.
"I'll be damned," Bill said as he admired the windows, "those are gorgeous."
Fleur sniffed. "Gothic," she said flatly, "of course you made it Gothic."
"Come on then," Harry said, "let's unload."
They filed out of the bridge to the cargo area at the rear of the ship, where there was a stack of trunks awaiting them. A few of the trunks contained the entire contents of Nehebkau's Egypt and Moon bases—though the bases had remained untouched thus far, he didn't fancy his luck that would be the case for much longer. Consolidating everything into The Cannon was more convenient anyway.
The rear hatch hissed, then lowered to become a ramp, and one by one they levitated a pair of trunks each and left the ship. Narcissa was the only one to not take a pair of trunks as she was carrying Delphi in a magically protected bassinet.
Harry, Ron and Hermione led the others through into the entrance chamber. It was gratifying to see them look around in wonder at the floating crystal chandelier and the decorative architecture—even Fleur seemed grudgingly impressed.
"Alright guys, first order of business—life support," Harry said. "Then we can ditch these suits. I'm going to cut a room out for this Goa'uld life support system off the big hall. Bill, Fleur, can you two cut a basement to place the ward anchors and the wardstone? That'll get our magic-based atmosphere regulation going. Ron, can you take Neville up to the greenhouses, then start on the quarters like we talked about? Hermione, I think we should put the labs above this cavern—could you take Luna and Narcissa to do that?"
"Let's get to it," Ron said, grinning broadly. Harry hadn't seen Ron this keen to be doing literally anything since the Quidditch World Cup. Strange how owning a planet changed a man.
A few hours later, Ron and Hermione had cut the stairs branching off the foyer further around until they met again above the other side of the entrance chamber. Into the central column of rock, Hermione and Luna excavated three levels the same diameter as the entrance chamber—40 metres. The top of the three levels they turned into office spaces and meeting rooms, complete with crystal partitions. The bottom two they set up as the labs. All three were accessible from both stairways and were connected to each other by a spiral staircase in the centre.
Meanwhile, Ron had dug in the other direction, creating eighty living quarters that followed the outside curve at the back of the inselberg. Each one he gave a fairly generous five by seven metres, enough space for a bedroom, a small bathroom, a desk and a little lounge area. Each of the quarters also had a simple floor-to-ceiling window covering the entirety of the exterior-facing wall that overlooked the vast plain leading to the foothills of the volcanoes. From the outside, the windows of the ten floors of living quarters and the hourglass shaped windows of a yet-to-be assigned eleventh floor merged together to form one gigantic Gothic edifice.
Bill and Fleur had set up an elaborate ward scheme to repel the local fauna and weather, maintain ideal temperature and humidity, eliminate all dust and pollutants, prevent people with malicious intent from entering, and provide powerful protection from kinetic and energy impacts. They hid the entrance to the basement behind a false wall in the cavity Harry had left for a Stargate.
On the plateau at the summit, Harry had erected Goa'uld sensor equipment to monitor everything he could think of—communications signals, neutrinos, interstitial space, subspace, hyperspace, high-energy photons, axions, gravitons—the lot. Infrared, ultraviolet and visible light he wanted to monitor with a magical all-sky planetarium, like a supercharged variant of a Black family heirloom Narcissa had talked about that displayed the celestial sphere. That would take a while to perfect, so for now he just laid out a stone foundation for it.
Surveying the local region of the galaxy was a major priority. Nehebkau's computer had the Stargate addresses and locations of only 374 planets, as well as a summary for each, but Nehebkau's information was five thousand years out of date and had very little to say on planets without Stargates. It didn't even have anything on Proxima Centauri—that had come from Nehebkau's own memories of briefly surveying it with Ra before they found Earth. Abydos was the closest habitable planet that was listed, and that was around the Sun-like yellow dwarf star Nut about 50 light years away.
The magical planetarium they would use to survey the nearby sector of the galaxy, though since the magical world had no concept of the speed of light or lookback time, it merely displayed the sky when light reached the observer. The magical raised among them were puzzled by the notion of there being a cosmic speed limit, especially having already broken it in the spaceship, but Hermione suggested that they could send out little magical probes to other stars and use the Protean Charm to relay their observations to the planetarium. It was a promising idea, and magical astronomical equipment could be enchanted to have ludicrous resolving power. Plus, they could add a runic Notice-Me-Not—not that they would be noticed anyway, but it wouldn't hurt. However, they would need to make a lot of them and figure out how to get them out there. Hermione added it to her list.
The last thing Harry did was carve a channel from the outside descending below the inselberg. The space got completely hollowed out, then magically expanded ten-fold in every direction. The resultant cavern was vast, stretching a kilometre across and two hundred metres high. Fleur cast a charm to allow the entrance to magically widen, allowing it to accept objects too large to physically fit much like the mouth of Harry's Mokeskin pouch. The two-metre wide opening barely tall enough for Bill's six foot three inches inflated almost comically to swallow Nehebkau's custom Al'kesh, emitting it a good ninety metres above the hangar floor, as much as one could call it a hangar. The ship looked kind of stupid parked by itself at the outer rim, which alone could accommodate another 55 ships of the same size, but hopefully they would be changing that soon.
By the end of it, even Narcissa looked happy. "It's nice to be building something," she said when Harry tilted his head at her, but Harry knew she was mostly pleased at their more aggressive timeline, and maybe a little bit at being around people who entertained her ideas and weren't just vapid social climbers.
Likewise, Neville was nearly vibrating with joy when he rejoined them in the library lounge, his knees muddy. "The soil outside is great—really loamy and friable," he said. "Should be fine for the simulated Earth greenhouse. Oh, Bill helped me add a second Earth-like greenhouse for our food crops—best to keep them separated from the other plants—and some climate zone controls, by the way."
"Fantastic," Harry said. "Were they expanded enough?"
"Oh, absolutely. Bill went a bit overboard," Neville laughed. "There's a few square miles of land in there now. Stone is all switched out for soil—Merlin that was tiring—and I already sowed all the seeds and planted all the seedlings I packed. Barely covered a couple acres. Still need to get some Fertileze Solution and Fast-Grow Potion too, but even without that it'll be enough to feed us once everything matures. When things start blooming, I'll release some pollinators and set up some magical beehives."
"That's wicked, Nev, can't wait to try some Chudley honey," Ron said, flopping onto a couch he'd just summoned out of one of the trunks. "I reckon this place is turning out pretty well. What should we do next?"
Hermione burst into a ramble, "I'd really like to get started on Floo-like portals. Floo powder is genius, you know—it absorbs all the energy from the burning flame to establish the wormhole, which simultaneously allows one to stand unaffected in the flame. Anyway—Ignatia Wildsmith also developed a method to create untethered wormholes. As in, you don't need the fireplace on the other end to be connected. Actually, it doesn't even need to be a fireplace, but part of the magic anchors the free end to the nearest fireplace so the operator can inscribe the Floo portal runes on the target fireplace remotely. That's why you have to go to the Ministry to join the network. Naquadah would be ideal, but I know we don't have any left and obviously stone or brick and a burning fire can handle short distances. Oh! Also, you know how you spin with portkeys and Floo? They use rotating wormholes because they're easier to stabilise, but they also were designed without any actual understanding of wormholes—so like with Apparition, they're unnecessarily long. They should be able to be instantaneous; save some power. Anyway, I'm thinking maybe we could combine Floo theory and portkey theory and make the gateway out of gold and a more potent energy source…I haven't quite worked out the numbers, but my rough estimate says we should be able to cover the distance from here to Earth. Oh, and also, Floo doesn't appear to have a limit to the number of connections in a region of space, which is a clear advantage over Stargates. Oh, and people have had Floo conversations lasting hours, so somehow the wormhole can be maintained longer than the Stargate's 38 minutes. I'm not sure what's wrong with Stargates that make them require more power the longer they're open, or even what prevents them from being a two-way wormhole…wormholes don't technically prohibit two-way travel, so that's really perplexing—oh, did you know—"
"Hermione, that's all really interesting but we ought to discuss the rest of our agenda as well," Harry said, though inwardly, he couldn't believe how few breaths she'd taken during her rant. "I'll get you some gold, though. And I want you to work on the excavator slash refiner vehicle as well, okay?"
Hermione blushed and sat on the couch next to Ron, "Oh, yes, sorry—of course! I've got lots of ideas for that too but…I did get a tad carried away, didn't I?"
"It's okay. I'm glad you're excited about all of this," Harry said. "And honestly, the Floo gateways and the excavator are very high priority. We desperately need to find and extract some naquadah, so those would help immensely. Otherwise, setting up our observation array and the planetarium is what I want everyone else to be focused on. We need to know what's happening out there. Neville—keep doing what you're doing, we need to make this place self-sufficient. Narcissa, can you brew the potions he needs?"
Narcissa nodded. "As long as he doesn't mind watching Delphi while I do," she said. Neville opened his mouth…then closed it…then opened it—
"Excellent," Harry said. Neville closed his mouth and looked around at the rest of them wide-eyed, then shrugged. Harry continued, "Ron, are you going to keep working on fitting out the base? Merlin knows there's a ton of small jobs to do to get it somewhat close to finished."
"Oh yeah, I've got a whole trunk load of furniture to arrange," he said, patting the couch's armrest.
"Alright, well I'm going to take the ship out and do a more thorough survey of this system and Alpha Centauri. Luna, I'll take you to see those volcanoes while I'm at it if you'd like."
"Yay!" Luna said. She skipped over and looped her arm around his.
.o.
"Luna, you can conjure another seat if you want," Harry said.
"That's okay, your lap is very comfortable," she said. It was fortunate she was as petite as she was—the top of her head fit below Harry's chin, so the viewscreen and readouts were unobstructed.
"I'm sorry we didn't find anything like a Magmatic Choral…um—"
"Choralquorb. It's okay, finding a Magmatic Choralquorb is mostly luck. Well, bad luck for them I suppose. I expect it's the same for any mantle-dwellers here," she said. "The view from the top of that volcano was nice."
"It was rather pretty," Harry said, trying to ignore how much her hair was tickling his neck and how she shifted about. He deployed the gravimeter to start the survey. From a relatively empty region of the Proxima system so as to avoid large bodies swamping the detector, the ship would be able to distinguish anything larger than a couple of tonnes out to a distance of about three billion kilometres. Since each scan took about a minute, followed by a hyperspace jump of about a second, that really limited the practicality of this surveying method—it would take 2 hours to record the orbital parameters of everything substantial within 15 billion kilometres of Proxima, including out of the system's ecliptic plane—but then, the Goa'uld weren't typically that interested in the level of detail Harry was aiming for. With Ra, they had only done a single five-second scan from near Proxima itself. Being so close to Proxima limited the detector's sensitivity, and so it had only revealed three planets and the presence of a wide, dusty asteroid belt from 150 million to 600 million kilometres. In his first scan, Harry had already resolved most of the asteroids in the belt, and the trojans occupying the 8-Earth-mass ice giant's orbit at about 1.9 billion kilometres out. This would undoubtedly be the most useful data, but half-arsing the scan of their secret base's system felt like poor form—so…one down, one hundred and twenty-four to go.
Notes:
Fidelius Charm: There are lots of inconsistencies with the Fidelius in the books. Here's how it works here: anyone can be the Secret Keeper. Anyone within the location when the charm is cast automatically knows the secret but is not necessarily the Secret Keeper. If the Secret Keeper dies, then whoever knows the secret becomes a Secret Keeper. If all people who know the secret die, then the secret dies with them, and the concealed location is lost forever (or until Hermione ruins the Fidelius charm ha). For Harry's parents—Peter, Sirius and Voldemort all know the secret. Harry was present when the Fidelius was cast on his parents' house in Godric's Hollow, so he already knows the secret and became the only remaining Secret Keeper for his parents' house when Peter and Voldemort died, presuming that Peter didn't tell anyone else. When Voldemort tried to kill Harry as a baby, Sirius was there first and went to retrieve him, and then gave him to Hagrid along with his motorbike.
Hammersmith Bridge: it was grey in 1998.
Proxima Centauri and stars in general: For some reason, stars in sci-fi media (including games) or artist depictions are often very colour inaccurate. Proxima has a spectral class of M5, which means it's equivalent to a blackbody radiator at around 3000 K. If you have one of those smart bulbs with a decent CRI, you can set it to a colour temperature of 3000 K to give you some idea of how not red Proxima is. It's more like a pale orange-white. Through an atmosphere, this could be more orange, and especially low on the horizon it would be much redder like the Sun is at sunrise/set. The red you see a lot of media is more like the temperature of an oven heater element or red-hot iron—more like 800-1000 K.
Abydos/Nut: ForAbydos' star Nut I chose Mu Arae, an actual G3 type star that is 50 light-years away. This is closest to Nut's canon-ish spectral type (G4 according to Stargate fandom wiki), and a reasonable distance to be the nearest gate.
The Stargate Network [edited 3 July for big calculation boo boo and to address a reviewer's comments]: The canon explanation that the 6 symbols represents a 3-dimensional volume of space is so illogical I don't even know why they tried. Like, if each symbol is a constellation…well the constellations are only valid for one star system's night sky. And the constellations for that planet are made up of the brightest few hundred stars in the sky i.e. supergiants or really close neighbours, many of which would not be visible from most of the galaxy. Then constellations being the coordinates is so arbitrary and vague. I know they fixed it with Stargate: Universe, where the glyphs are just dots and squiggles, which is how I think the Milky Way and Pegasus ones should be viewed—the constellations are just convenient unique shapes that they use in place of a number. Yes, the glyphs are the exact same on every gate except for the point of origin symbol. Otherwise, you'd have no idea how to dial home once you dial somewhere else. The difference between the Antarctic gate and the original is onlythe point of origin symbol.
So anyway, that's why in my story the 6 symbols are simply an address—like a telephone number—and glyphs can be repeated (unlike canon). Similar to telephone numbers, the first symbol divides the galaxy up into 38 region volumes (39 minus point of origin glyph for the Milky Way), then the next symbol subdivides those 38 regions into 38 subregions each, and so on. So, if the Milky Way is about 90,000 ly across and its thick disk is 9,000 ly, that's roughly 57 trillion cubic lightyears. That volume accounts for the vast majority of stars in the galaxy. Then, the first 5 symbols successively divide that volume into cubes of space that are about 90 ly per side. That encompasses quite a lot of stars, but obviously a lot of them will be uninteresting planet-wise, so no need to have a gate. The main (first symbol subdivision) regions don't have to be equal in size. The core could have smaller main regions, and a single main region could be set aside for the entire very diffuse halo of stars that are way outside the bulk of the disk (like if a lone star is 20,000 ly above the plane of the galaxy). The sixth symbol can just be allocated to the stars within the specified volume however one wishes—this enables the use of 38 gates in one region of space, even on the same planet if you want. Really depends on how many suitable planets there are in a region. This system also makes the eight symbol addresses make more sense—and I think this was mentioned as an analogy in the show—the eighth symbol becomes a literal galactic area code. As for the nine-symbol addresses, well SG:U made it like a key combination, so we'll just say they're special use addresses. Pegasus having 35 glyphs also makes sense as it's supposed to be the Pegasus irregular dwarf galaxy—much smaller galactic volume.
Okay that's all well and good, but it neglects that stars move a lot over the timescale that the network has been in existence. Like a star that was near us 50 million years ago could literally be thousands of light years away now. In Stargate canon, this is a problem too and it is revealed that addresses are indeed dynamic—Daniel says he tried the addresses he found on Abydos and they didn't work in the first episode. However, I think they exaggerate its effect. Over a 5,000-year period drift is not too significant except for a relatively small population of stars with high peculiar motion (velocity that is substantially different to the galactic rest frame or "average"), but over a few tens of thousands of years, your address database would start to become kind of useless. Obviously if you're actively using the network, you just keep track of what a Stargate's address should be. The "calculations for stellar drift" they always talk about in the show are to figure out just that. In my implementation, the addresses are similarly dynamic, but in a different way—basically if a gate is the nth gate in the most granular volume of space, it gets assigned the nth glyph. So, if a gate enters a new volume and there are already 10 gates in the volume, it gets assigned the 11th glyph. Yeah, there is a problem if 38 gates move into the same volume of space, but let's pretend that there aren't enough gates for that to ever happen (there are probably only like a few tens of thousands of gates anyway). Really the only thing that changes between my implementation and canon is how the symbols map to galactic coordinates, and then how the sixth coordinate symbol is assigned.
Updates: Lucky you, this ended up taking a lot less time than I expected. I won't make any promises for next chapters, because finding time to write is difficult and I'm just particularly inspired at the moment.