Chapter 21:

At the same time as various unusual world events were occurring, it was Draco's third year at Hogwarts. After his dramatic rescue of Luna, Daphne started to notice him. She later said, "I felt jealous towards Luna, and that led me to realize that I fancied Draco. It was apparent that Draco had no romantic intentions towards Luna, but his dramatic declaration in her defense was amazing."

They went to Hogsmeade together. During the Yuletime ball, Lord Greengrass and I had a word together and agreed that Draco could formally court Daphne and that we would meet again during the summer.

During the spring term the combat training for Hogwarts was in high gear. Draco's group each proved themselves, especially in being willing to dive into the mud for some of the dodging exercises, despite some of them, such as Draco and Daphne having refined backgrounds. The instructor told me that he thought that the group of about 10 third years plus Luna, a second year, could hold off and maybe even defeat a typical auror team of two.

At a Hogwarts professor's conference in the spring Dumbledore asked, "How have the third years been?"

McGonagall said, "It has certainly been interesting. I cannot recall a better set of third years. Their focus and their abilities have been outstanding."

Sprout said, "I do not think I have seen a better year for inter-house relations. Virtually no conflict, and great cooperation."

Slughorn said, "I see three potions prodigies, Dagworth-Granger of course, and Malfoy and Greengrass. Potter is not far behind, he might yet emerge to that level in the following years."

Sinistra said, "Are you going to address the Hippogriff in the room? They are training an army."

Flitwick said, "Their focus on fighting muggle soldiers is frankly disturbing. What is being planned?"

Dumbledore said, "They are within their rights as specified in the Hogwarts charter. I am going to have a private word with Lucius Malfoy this week."

At the start of the summer 1994, despite being busy taking over the world, I still found time to attend to family matters. The Greengrasses were invited over to Malfoy manner. I was trying to ignore my knowledge that in another timeline it was Astoria, Daphne's younger sister who Draco would marry.

There was no real question of both sets of parents approving the match. In the other timeline they approved of Draco even after him having been marked and part of the losing side of the war and I having lost much of my wealth, although Astoria was not the heiress.

We were all sitting around in the drawing room. I asked if I could have a word with Daphne. We stayed in the room and I setup a silence ward around us. "Daphne I would like us to speak with complete candor. Not answering everything, but stating that forthrightly if needed, instead of prevaricating.

What does a future with Draco look like to you?"

Daphne answered with no emotion, "I know what is expected. Clearly your negotiation with my father will state that I will be contracted to have at least a son, who will be the Malfoy heir, and another child of either gender who will be the Greengrass heir or heiress. I know my role in society, I have been trained for it since birth."

I answered, "Yes, but that wasn't really what I was asking. I have some unusual enterprises. If you are to marry Draco, I want you both as advisors and participants."

Daphne said, "I can see the trajectory to being a princess of the world, or of the whole thing crashing down and it goes without saying that I would not be in a good position were that to occur."

I said, "This is the wisdom that would make you such an ideal wife for someone of Draco's role.

You do not have your betrothal pledges yet, but I know if I tell you some things now you would never reveal them. I know that your occlumency is perfect. Even if I were not told that, I can see it by your studied neutral expressions even when surprises would cause emotional displays in others. It would be unusual to master that skill without also mastering the skill of protecting your thoughts and memories.

The whole thing crashing down, as you put it, could have been an outcome of my business partner Khan Noonien Singh's plan. I had access to a future timeline where witches and wizards were wiped out soon after taking over a portion of the non-magical world. I convinced him of that and got him to modify his plan and to accept my oversight.

Being in command or in the trenches would have been equally dangerous.

I want you not just to be a princess in privilege, but to help rule this planet. You and Draco will be partners to carry through this endeavor to the next generation."

Our earlier planning was based on 1993 intelligence. This is what we had for Eastern Europe.

Eastern Europe in 1993 was not yet part of NATO, nor was it even decided in NATO countries whether to pursue that enlargement. It might have seemed an easy target to take over, but it was not. My takeover of Albania was slow and deliberate and based on building businesses to help the economy and then gaining influence. In a tiny economy it was relatively easy to be a large part of it and gain outsized influence.

Czech and Slovakia had just became separated from the combined Czechoslovakia at the start of 1993. There was a wave of development to support tourism. There was no niche for the type of tourism businesses I built in Albania. The government in the Czech capital of Prague did their own pre-computer version of renting out homes for tourists. Residents could register their apartments and then government tourist offices would sell stays in apartments. The residents would have already cleared out or locked up any valuables and stayed elsewhere during summer tourist season.

Poland still had Soviet troops, even though there hadn't been a Soviet Union since 1991. They were gearing up for elections later in the year with many political parties, and expecting to need a coalition to govern. How do you take over something this chaotic? Most of Eastern Europe had similarly chaotic politics.

Throughout the region there was enthusiasm for Western Culture, but not the same culture as found in the west. 1970's Rock, sung in English was popular. Westerners were discovering folk music of Hungary and Romania, while in those countries it was mainly in tourist venues that those could be heard.

They had just collectively overthrown their governments, and typically having a chaotic change of governments with new elections. Trying to control them at this point would be about as easy as herding cats.

Meanwhile, large Western companies were buying up the more productive enterprises in these regions. Skoda had been the center of Czech industry since before WW2. Now it was being purchased by Volkswagen.

We had more success a little east of there. Moldova wanted to distance itself from Romania. They, like many of the former Communist countries had a planned economy in free fall with only a small free economy taking its place. We managed to get control of the ruling political party, but knew that we had to dramatically improve conditions before the public would want another change.

The breakaway region of Transnistria was easily taken over by controlling General Lebed and President Igo Smirnov. Our control of Moldova led to an agreement to respect the cease fire lines and deal with each other as neighbors who will trade normally. Formally Transnistria was now an autonomously governed region of Moldova.

For the rest of Eastern Europe, we decided to use my operations in Albania as a model. We would build up profitable businesses and take over organized crime, which was rapidly emerging. Eventually we would build a parallel economy based on magic combined with technology that would have an increasing influence.

In other areas, Indonesia and Philippines were taken over by taking over their leaders. Insurgencies were solved by taking them over also. We stayed away from close US allies and interests such as Japan, South Korea, NATO, Caribbean, and other places at this stage.

Southeast Asia and South America was going to be in a future stage. There were some magical ministries that needed to be influenced first.

We made quick progress in Israel. It just happened to be a time when agreements were being made. Arafat was making interim agreements with Rabin. Jordan was ready to sign a full peace agreement. We got these agreements expanded. To do that we extended our briefings with opposition parties.

I had remembered that Rabin was assassinated soon after, but I didn't remember when, so we gave him a magical security team. We did the same for Arafat and also used magic to stop any of the other myriad of potential rivals from either taking over or starting their own terrorism to derail pending peace agreements.

One challenge was the close relationship between Rabin and US President Clinton. We could not yet talk to him, until issues with MACUSA were resolved. Rabin was very wary of what Clinton would think of essentially having Mongolia be the mediator instead of him, but it was strange enough to seem legitimate.

We promised Israel a domestic high tech military industry in case these new alignments resulted in a loss of US high-tech arms. Our long term planning had them being one of the centers of inventing and making weapons to be used in space.

We wanted to solve the Yugoslavian wars, but it was too close to NATO, and had too much momentum to be solved by turning leaders. We had to put in on the list for later.

Mongolia, China, Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Myanmar, Libya, and Chad announced the formation of the Technology Alliance. We let the West think that this was some sort of coup by China. It would distract them from find the actual answers.

We would have the rest of the controlled nations join in groups after we showed the benefits using those nations.

We hired many magicals. We also hired those of limited magic, called squibs. We placed advertisements that only they could see. We also recruited families of new magicals. Anyone authorized to know about magic.

Many non-magicals were also recruited, given roles that kept them from directly seeing magic.

The Technology Alliance had uniforms. A big patch saying "TA" and in smaller letter Technology Alliance. The official language was English. They also had a patch of the flag of the TA nation they were operating in. They had a badge that had a visible number. They also had two tone uniforms, with one part of the uniform being a color that represented their role.

Roles included: Development Assistance, Public Order, Medical, Security, Command, Research and Development. The roles, colors and uniforms were going to evolve. Q had said that resembling Star Trek would work better, so the uniforms would have a similar theme.

Water was such an important part of the economies in the areas that we controlled, that it would be hard to overestimate its importance. While Libya had a large scale water project already in progress, in which it was easy to add magic to it, the rest of the world mostly did not. We simply used magic to build deep aquifer wells everywhere. The water appeared in ways that non-magicals would not be able to see and actually appeared by magic.

Within weeks similar scenes happened everywhere in the Technology Alliance. In the outskirts of Mandalay Myanmar, a security district was setup with factories and warehouses built. Out of those trucks and helicopters dispersed throughout the nation.

A convoy arrived in Ayadaw, a small town in a dry region of Myanmar. An area was blocked from view. The next day there was a pumping station, distributing large quantities of water. In a follow-up visit, pipelines and irrigation canals were built almost instantly after being hidden from view. Security team members would keep curious people from trying to look into what was being done.

I also scaled up my enterprises to each new country. There was an unlimited demand for what we could do. Our first priorities were products that had no magic, but used magic in their production.

Other big needs were energy. We had a basic design for a solar array that used magic to get an absurdly high efficiency. It needed renewing every two years. Similar small projects used all over were ground source heating and cooling with the electricity to run them using solar and wind, each magically enhanced. We were pushing what the ICW might complain about, but made good use of notice-me-not charms, and various charms to make non-magicals not see where the energy was coming from. They were cheap to build, since they weren't real, but mostly the appearance of these systems, actually powered by magic. With production so local, we didn't need long distance transmission lines.

For our part of the world, we completely stopped building telephone lines. Instead we started building out mobile phone coverage. We got some good basic designs of 1993 technology and built them in China using magic to make that production incredibly efficient. We skipped the analog 1G phones and built GSM or 2G which was just getting started in Europe. They didn't yet have cameras or internet access so we didn't need to worry about discovery of magic yet. When 3G would eventually be introduced we wanted to have a magic chip in every phone.

Another update meeting. Khan said, "Why don't we think boldly at this stage. Make the Philippines as prosperous as South Korea, Pakistan much more prosperous per capita than India, develop Siberia without using Chinese workers. Make, Made in China, mean not just lower cost, but higher quality and the leading technology. Let the West deal with that. If Volkswagen is buying up factories that we want, let us have one of our enterprises buy Volkswagen.

Eastern Europe has enormously talented researchers now doing little. Why should they need to move to the US or Germany or subcontract from them, when they could build our technocratic future right where they are from?"

I added, "We'll need to move these trends within a year or two to not lose momentum. We can do these in parallel. Food, water, energy, communication. We can continue to build these fundamentals, but then also organize the best of the best for world class industries at the same time."

Khan said, "You are referring to the potential for a revolution of rising expectations. We will take care of basic needs and suddenly all of these populations expect to be as wealthy as the West. If it doesn't happen soon, they start to blame, to be ready to listen to those who want them to rebel."

I added, "Value added, that is where wealth comes from. If an average person can work in a factory, helped by magic, that adds a lot of value, then they can receive a part of that as pay. We urgently need to fix Russia and other post-communist factories. Many of those enterprises have a negative added value. Meaning that at world prices they pay more for their inputs than their outputs are worth. We will need to fix those and keep the workers disciplined, a difficulty in this era."