Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

     “SIRIUS!” Harry yelled in dismay at seeing his godfather fall into the Veil of Death. Instead of standing there in shock, however, and giving Remus enough time to run up and grab him, Harry instantly rushed after Sirius to try and pull him back.

     The Veil of Death had been used for the last half a millennium ever since its discovery to execute people since they had found out that no one ever returned from it. Contrary to what current belief was though, it wasn’t that it killed people that went through it. Anyone or anything that went through it was locked on the other side thanks to a quarantine procedure.

     You could enter, but you couldn’t leave.

     This quarantine procedure was enforced on a planet that had once had a population of over ten billion individuals. Over seven hundred years ago though, a massive bacterial infection had spread throughout the entire population and quarantine measures were set up to try and prevent its spread to nearby systems.

     These measures were too late and by the time the species that inhabited the planet got it secure, too many cases had escaped and made for other densely populated worlds. What should have been an isolated disaster turned into a species extinction event for one of the largest spacefaring civilizations at the time.

     Scientists and researchers initially thought that because the disease was a bacterium, simple cleaning agents or filters would prevent its spread. This turned out to not be the case as it had more in common with a virus in that it mutated its strain constantly. It started out as a waterborne transmission, but it latched onto oxygen molecules and could transfer into an airborne vector. It also could be transmitted through physical contact.

     The only protection against it soon became to wear full hazardous material vessels and create artificial oxygen for them. These suits were expensive and weren’t readily available for every member of the species. To speed up the search for the cure, most of them were given to the scientists in charge of studying the bacteria, but due to the lack of numbers, the public panicked.

     Those that contracted the highly infectious disease, now known as “Kharaa”, didn’t show any signs or symptoms of it until two standard weeks had passed. It was impossible to tell who had Kharaa, until the characteristic green pustules had appeared on their skin. After that, the infected had around a month to live until total organ shutdown thanks to the disease’s ability to rewrite the DNA of the victim.

     People started panicking. Mass distrust soon lead way to open hostility between the whole population which soon spilled over into outright violence as people killed suspected carriers of the bacterium. If the bacterium cared, it would have been jealous it had competition in who was killing more people.

     Untold billions or even trillions of the species’ currency was spent by their government on research centers working on a cure for the disease. Exotic locations with rare flora and fauna were used in a desperate attempt to find something that could combat the rapidly mutating disease. Each potential cure that the scientists discovered would be tried but a new variant of the disease would have already sprung up and proved the prior antidote worthless.

     People were now dying in the billions as the bacteria and their own distrust of individuals worked against themselves. Society was rapidly falling apart and the added pressure on the scientists caused their own stress levels to elevate and research and production slowed down.

     Hundreds of worlds were put into lockdown hoping to contain the spread of the disease and after a while it actually worked. The downside was that it locked every planet the species inhabited. So, while the spread of the disease was contained and didn’t kill off the rest of the galaxy, the species quickly started dying off completely.

     As Harry followed after Sirius, the gateway that spat him out sparked and flashed as its power source overloaded. Because it transported two individuals through when it only had the power to safely do it one at a time, it powered down to prevent a catastrophic explosion.

     Harry landed on the ground right next to his godfather and quickly rolled over to inspect him. “Sirius!” He yelled frantically, but his godfather was unresponsive. Bellatrix Lestrange had cast the killing curse on his godfather and unlike Harry, Sirius had no miracle to save his life from that spell.

     That was when Harry had problems of his own though as his head felt like it was being ripped in two. A physical pull on his head practically yanked him back in the direction of the gateway he just exited but in its powered down state, Harry couldn’t go back.

     The pain was so much that all Harry could do was shout in debilitating agony as black sludge pulled itself out of Harry’s skull and tried to return through the portal. It met the same response that Harry had and without a host the black sludge boiled and shrieked as it dissolved into the atmosphere.

     Panting as the pain started subsiding, Harry checked on his deceased godfather and broke down in a different type of crying now for the sorrow he now felt. He spent an untold amount of time hunched over his godfather as he mourned his loss.

     Eventually, after no one interrupted his moment, Harry looked up at his surroundings. Looking around, Harry saw he was in a vast room filled with other archways similar to the one that he arrived in, each sparkling with an angry green energy.

     Hermione would have said that it was Gryffindor stupidity, but Harry felt it was courage as he approached one of the sparking archways. Placing a hand against one, Harry was violently thrown back away from it before he could push into it.

     Sirius’s body was still laying next to the deactivated archway and Harry attempted to push against that one. There was only a wall behind it though.

     That was when Harry noticed the other things in the room besides Sirius’s body. There were ancient bones scattered throughout the room, each prostrated desperately in front of at least one of the many archways lined inside. A few clusters were in the center of the room and still more were coming from a hallway that led away from where he was.

     The bones showed mechanical grafts that had been attached to the roughly centaur-like shape and Harry judged the race was significantly taller than he was if they were alive. Despite the long age that everything seemed to be dead, Harry didn’t see any signs of rust or corrosion on anything from the grafts to the walls or the ceiling and floor.

     The only thing that looked like it was failing were the flickering green archways that now that he looked at them, Harry could tell were only just staying on. Whatever was powering them was on its last legs.

     Using his wand to levitate his godfather’s corpse, Harry followed the hallway out of the room. As he explored, Harry encountered more of the centaur bones with their mechanical accoutrements in various places. Several rooms split off from the main hall, but Harry wasn’t sure as to their purpose.

     There were dull green lights that lined the floor and walls which allowed him to see as he made his way through the building. He eventually got to a massive room that finally did have windows and Harry was able to get a better idea of what his surroundings looked like outside wherever he was.

     Harry’s mouth fell open in shock as the sight of two shattered and harvested moons loomed outside the window thousands of miles closer, or perhaps they were bigger, than the moon orbiting Earth. Each moon looked to have been strip mined and then systematically taken apart for everything that was useful until all that was left was hunks of useless rock that barely held itself together with its own gravity.

     The light coming from the nearby star was also unlike what Harry was used to. Blue light washed over everything it touched and made a nice contrast with the predominantly green lights and architecture of the alien species.

     Looking around the vast hall that Harry found himself in, some similarities starting popping up. The benches weren’t designed for bipedal forms like his own, they lacked back rests, but with quadrupedal forms like these centaur creatures, Harry assumed they just rested their bellies on them when they sat.

     Along one of the walls that lined either side of the hallway exit he’d come from, Harry saw raised half walls with some kind of disabled interface that looked like it should be glowing. “They probably ran out of power.” Harry spoke to himself for peace of mind to hear something in this quiet tomb of a civilization.

     There were other smaller rooms and one that confirmed Harry’s suspicions that this was indeed some form of travel station because it had a conveyor belt similar to ones found in airports. Walking down the hallways that the conveyor belts came from showed similar locked green archways that Harry suspected were designed for transporting bulk cargo that the regular archways couldn’t.

     Returning to the main room, Harry found a door leading outside that had been smashed aside by the previous inhabitants of this planet. It was only as he stepped outside that the full impact of where he was crashed into Harry.

     I’m on an alien planet! He thought. Is this air safe? He asked himself. It was too late to cast a Bubblehead charm but the few breaths of air he’d taken outside didn’t feel poisonous. He cast it anyway just in case, but it seemed not needed as while the temperature was cooler than he was used to, nothing seemed dangerous about the environment.

     Apart from only the occasional plant that he walked past, Harry noticed a distinct lack of animals. Bones of every description under the blue sun dotted along the pathway and around the local forest. It seemed that something had caused the deaths of everything apart from the plants.

     “What happened here?” Harry asked himself as he continued floating his godfather along beside him.

     Walking along, Harry came across other buildings that showed signs of vandalism and wanton destruction. There were objects littering the streets, more strange unpowered consoles of some sort, and long sticks that lined the ground that he suspected were guns of some sort.

     Everywhere he looked were bodies of the long ago dead. There were a few bones of various birds and pests that he came across, but as he was in the city, Harry didn’t expect to see any large creatures. The occasional pet he thought might have cropped up, but with all the bones that he saw Harry was starting to grow numb to any differences that might have been noticeable.

     Harry didn’t know how long ago this race had died, but their technology, apart from being unpowered, was still in pristine condition. One thing that Harry noticed was that unlike the mundane humans from Earth, this species didn’t have vehicles. Although, if the centaur-like bodies were the predominant species, he suspected their speed was greater than the average human and so didn’t need cars.

     The Archway building he’d come from passed what seemed to be residential buildings which, after a while, started moving toward a more built-up area. Tall skyscrapers that Harry had only ever seen in Muggle London were in abundance in the heart of this city. Again, they were made out of the same dark green material that everything else was with the faint green glow of some lights that still had power.

     Figuring he’d probably find something important in a building that looked grander than the average skyscraper he passed, Harry didn’t bother searching each one that had an entrance that was open. After a couple more hours of searching, Harry finally found something that looked promising.

     The building was unlike any other structure that Harry was familiar with. It had four main “legs” for lack of a better word that supported an enormous structure above. Instead of a squat box shape on top, it branched outward and down in eight buttresses that merged back with the ground. Above the main body it swooped upward into a curved single “tail” that looped back forward into a point that looked similar to a scorpion’s tail.

     From this point, a glowing green beacon shined over the entire city. Looking back towards the base of the legs of the structure, Harry noticed an increase in the amount of bones. So deep were the piles that Harry suspected that a mass of people had attempted to gain entrance to the building but were stopped by some unknown source.

     As he climbed over the mountain of bones, Harry saw several machine-like constructs that were guarding the legs of the building. Each one had four multi-jointed mechanical legs supporting a torso that held a grouping of four, long metal bars that held viscous points on each of its four arms. Two quad mounts faced forward and two quad mounts faced rearward on ball joints that would allow the weapons to track targets that were moving.

     Mercifully, the machines looked like they’d run out of power as the deadly looking weapons did not track him as he approached. The standard green glow that seemed to power everything this civilization used was absent from the thirty-two guardians arranged around the massive structure.

     “Why did the machines kill these people?” Harry asked as he got closer to the building.

     The door built into one of the legs of the structure was firmly sealed when he approached it. Setting Sirius down on the pavement, Harry intoned “Alohomora.” A series of heavy clunks emanated from the door before it rose up into the wall.

     Beyond the doorway, Harry saw a reception area designed for the centaur-like creatures and an empty room beyond that seemed to have floating lights moving upward. Picking Sirius’s body back up, Harry explored the deserted room. Several console-like objects were behind the reception area, but they didn’t have any recognizable words or pictures engraved on them.

     Everything was clearly still powered, but touching the consoles revealed no information that Harry could understand. A quiet hum permeated the building but with nothing else to do, Harry approached the room that had the glowing lights traveling up it.

     As soon as Harry got into the room, he was firmly but slowly dragged upward. The sudden unexpected jerk caused him to let out a shout of surprise, but after the initial acceleration the ride up wasn’t scary.

     The unknown force deposited him in what he suspected was the large main body of the giant scorpion building. Several glowing lights were above various consoles and in the center of the room was a great holographic representation of what Harry assumed was the planet he was on. Walking over to the floating sphere, Harry picked out various points that he guessed were cities and each one was glowing an angry red over top of the green sphere.

     Again, Harry couldn’t make sense of what the consoles might have been able to tell him. If Hermione were here, she might have been able to have a guess, but as of now, Harry was the only living thing on this planet besides the plants.

     There wasn’t anything of note besides the complex computers and floating lights, apart from another elevator along one of the walls. Still taking Sirius with him, Harry approached the only place he hadn’t been to, and it shot him upward just like the previous one. He had to unlock another door before he beheld what was behind it.

     Three glowing green archways stood before him, but unlike the ones from the transport hub, these ones had calm, wavy lines, rather than the aggressive jagged lines the others had emitted. In front of each of the archways was another console but as he’d already discovered, Harry couldn’t interact with it in any meaningful way.

     Cautiously approaching the centermost one since he believed it might be the most important one, Harry reached out a hand. A tugging sensation, similar but still different from a portkey hooked onto his whole body and sucked him and Sirius through it.

     As with portkeys, this form of teleportation left Harry feeling violently sick but before he knew it, he was spat onto a dirt floor. Tumbling end over end, Harry eventually crashed to a halt and got to his feet. Sirius was lying in a corner of the room and there was only one exit that led out since the archway had lost power after his arrival.

     Instead of the fairly temperate climate he’d come from, the taste of salt and humidity was prevalent in the air. Bird calls could be heard above the cave system he was in, and the faint sound of lapping waves was in the distance.

     Leaving Sirius where he was for the moment, Harry ascended the cave tunnel and emerged into bright sunlight from a yellow star overhead. Just like the planet he’d left from, this new one had two moons hovering overhead. It wasn’t the astrological features that drew his attention though.

     At the foot of the cliff that he was standing on, was an infinite expanse of water as far as the eye could see. Turning his head to look in another direction, Harry could just barely make out the shape of another island some distance away, but the predominant feature was yet more water.

     “Where the hell am I?” Harry asked himself.

     I'm putting this here to make sure I don't give permission for this story to be used in any other form of media that is not posted by myself on the AO3 website. -Rubbernecking.

Chapter Text

     Harry couldn’t just keep carrying Sirius’s body everywhere, so he eventually found a location on the island that made an ideal spot with bright pink flowers around it where he could bury his godfather. With the use of his wand, the work to dig out a pit for the grave was quick work and he soon laid his godfather to rest.

     He’d kept a remarkably calm attitude throughout, but once the man was fully covered Harry broke down to cry. It wasn’t because he was alone on this planet, but that he’d now fully lost another connection to his parents. Harry didn’t know how long he spent hunched over the marker he’d placed at the head of the grave, but the needs of his body gnawed at him until they finally pushed him to go look for food and water.

     The tropical island he was on had a good deal of warmth to it, but the ocean breeze nearby kept the humidity down. Because it was a warm weather climate, many of the plants had what looked like fruits and nuts growing on them, but Harry had no idea if they were safe to eat or not.

     There were plenty of mushrooms, but again Harry was worried that they might be poisonous. Insects were a major problem on the island as he searched for something that looked safe to eat. It was more of a tropical jungle island than the pictures of Caribbean resort beaches he’d seen pictures of.

     Harry resorted to plenty of pushback spells to knock blood sucking insects away from him as he kept up his search. Eventually he came across several melon shaped fruits that were growing on the ground and he cautiously broke one open to peak inside it. It looked like a mix between a pumpkin and a watermelon but instead of having red or orange guts it had a purple pulp.

     Giving it a sniff, Harry didn’t find anything vulgar with it and so took a small bite. The crunch it gave was closer to an apple which he really wasn’t prepared for. Now that he did know what to expect though he went about looking for more throughout the island.

     The melons were scattered everywhere he went on the island, but the size of the island left much to be desired. It only took him about an hour to walk all the way around it and it was completely devoid of any signs of habitation besides the strange arch he’d arrived through.

     There was a type of vine that grew in a cluster and had hanging fruits growing from them, but since Harry had a food that he knew he could safely eat, he wasn’t in a rush to potentially get sick if he ate something else.

     The biggest animals he found were a type of four-legged spider crab that looked like they ate slow moving targets as whenever they pounced at him, he was able to easily sidestep them and blast them away. No snakes or mammals of any kind inhabited the island, but there was a type of bird that looked like a flying squirrel.

     Not looking forward to seeing if he could swim the distance to the other island he saw across the ocean, Harry set about making a structure for himself that could keep the spider crabs from killing him in his sleep. He didn’t need to worry about finding a source of water because the melons had enough in them to keep him hydrated.

     Early the next day, Harry went out to wade into the shallows to see how deep the ocean was between himself and the other island. Placing a bubblehead charm over himself, Harry submerged on the little beach and quickly jumped back onto land in fright. The edge of the island just drops off into nothing! He realized.

     Moving along the edge of the island, Harry occasionally peeked underwater and could see no gentle slope leading ever onward like any normal coastline. Everything just dropped straight down into a murky blue abyss.

     While he’d learned how to swim in preparation and during the Second Task in the Triwizard Tournament, he had no love for endless depths with no bottom in sight. And the Black Lake was notoriously cold throughout the Scottish winter along with the ocean around Britain also being cold led to Harry never developing a fondness for water. Now, trapped on this one small island on an unknown world, he’d have to acclimate unless he wanted to live as a hermit on this one speck of land.

     There could also be people on that other island over there. He mused to himself. Although I doubt they’d be human since we’ve only ever been to our own moon as a species. Harry went on. That other island could also be hiding another landmass behind it that I can’t see from here. He hoped.

     Preparing his nerves to work himself up to, Harry stepped off what he thought was a cliff that simply went down. It was so much worse than that though. Swimming a little way away from the island to take in its scale, Harry looked down at its base to see if he could see where it started to slope downwards.

     It didn’t.

     In fact, it actually started sloping inwards to Harry’s horror until it dropped out of his sight. Was the entire island sitting on one giant column that could break off at any moment? He nervously thought. Would any sudden movement cause it to slide off into the ocean?

     Steeling his wits, Harry dove down further after restrengthening his bubblehead charm and applying it around his torso. The swim down got more nerve wracking as the light got dimmer and dimmer until a strange pink glow started dominating over the light from the sun overhead.

     Hanging precipices showed that there was actually no attachment to any land that Harry thought the island was attached to. The entire island is floating! He thought. Is it made out of that floating rock that volcanoes can make? He asked himself since he remembered one of Hermione’s numerous facts, that she occasionally vomited out of her mouth.

     But what’s causing that pink glow? He questioned. But already being this far down was a terrifying experience and he swam back to the surface to feel safe on dry land. Casting a drying charm on himself and removing the salt from his clothes, Harry simply breathed a sigh of relief being back where he was familiar with dry land.

     Harry wasn’t looking forward to swimming around learning about the mysterious pink glow that he’d seen. He’d seen several unique fish swimming by but so far none took an interest in him, and he hoped not to run into the local sharks of this world.

     Knowing that the island he was on was at least stable, Harry was content to spend a couple of days simply beautifying his house while trying to study the alien archway that he’d come through. Although, I guess I’m the alien technically. He thought to himself.

     He did eventually try out the other edible looking plants that he saw on the island and if they made him sick, they at least weren’t deadly to him. Harry had even killed one of the spider crabs and roasted it over a magical fire and found that it tasted sweet without too much of a salty texture.

     After several days of doing generally nothing, he’d finally worked up the courage to find out more about whatever made that pink glow he’d seen several days earlier. Thanks to the tropical climate, the ocean was relatively warm whenever he entered it, so he didn’t need to worry about hypothermia getting to him that quickly.

     Reaching the same spot that he’d come to earlier, Harry rounded the bend of the overhanging stalactites and beheld something truly magical. Nothing else he could have guessed would have made sense as he looked at the large pulsating pink blobs that were attached to the bottom of the island. Cautiously swimming up to one and preparing to flee if they proved hostile, Harry examined them more closely.

     They looked sort of like pink brains that were encased in a see-through blue octopus that had dozens of arms that were attached to the underside of the island. The creatures didn’t react at all to his presence and Harry couldn’t see any eyes on them that might have been looking back.

     He didn’t wish to touch the animals as he’d never seen their likeness before and wasn’t sure what might happen. The water was also colder underneath the island as it wasn’t exposed to direct sunlight and so he left the strange creatures to their business.

     Looking back over to the other island he could see in the distance, Harry judged that at least his island wasn’t drifting away from the other landmass at a fast enough rate that would have been noticeable. In fact, he didn’t feel any swaying of motion while on the island which meant that it seemed to be fairly stable for now. If a storm came, that might be different, but so far it had been calm and sunny.

     His endurance wasn’t the best for swimming in ocean currents and so Harry spent a few days getting his strength up in preparation for his swim to the other island. It wasn’t like he was doing much of anything anyway, so after testing his skills he increasingly increased his distance to see how far he could go. He didn’t wish to become tired on the journey over there and he didn’t want to have to only rely on his magic if he became exhausted.

     On the day that he decided to try it out, there was a gentle current pushing him in the direction he wanted to go that helped him out. While swimming back would be difficult, he might try learning to apparate in a safe manner so that he could cross the journey faster in the future.

     He had to swim with his face down and forward to keep an eye out for any predators and also to see if the ground changed at all beneath him. After an unknown amount of time, Harry did actually start seeing the ground rise up toward him and red grass could be seen far below him.

     That was also when the loudest bellow he’d heard while on this planet startled him into firing off several spells in all directions in fear. It sounded like a mixture of a moan, and a belly rumble that his uncle used to make but much, much, louder.

     Scanning his surroundings, Harry eventually spotted a large three tentacled creature moving in a herd with four others of its kind. They had glowing yellow sacks near their tentacles and blue glowing lights under their main body. On the top they had a smooth blue shell of some kind and what looked like entire coral reefs on their backs.

     The creatures were close enough that they should be able to notice him, but instead of investigating him they continued on their way. As they passed him, their sheer scale took Harry aback as they were larger than a London bus by several times. They had mouths underneath that routinely opened and closed and that finally clued Harry into understanding that these must be this planet’s version of whales that ate plankton or krill.

     Harry watched the massive creatures swim past before continuing on his journey to the other island. As he continued, the scenery below him changed again and got closer as well. Massive kelp grew up from the bottom and several times Harry had to use stinging and cutting curses to drive away the local sharks that he finally encountered.

     Thankfully they emitted a snarling growl before they charged him, so Harry was never caught off guard and could defend himself adequately. Once he cleared the forests of kelp, he came across a relatively shallow area that didn’t seem to have any massive predators and the animals that lived there were much more diverse than the areas he’d previously been.

     The fish ranged in size from smaller than his arm, to five times larger than him but each and every one of them seemed to be an herbivore or ate things that were smaller than him. Plants, corals, mushrooms, and more exotic looking things that he had no name for were in abundance in this shallow area. It wasn’t what Harry was looking for however, and pretty soon he stopped gawking at everything and continued on his way to the other island that he could see more clearly now.

     A massive mountain stuck up from the center that Harry judged to be at least a hundred meters in height, maybe even more. Thankfully for Harry’s sanity, this island did actually connect with the ocean floor and wasn’t just perched over an endless chasm.

     Climbing up onto the beach and resting after his long swim, Harry lay there for a good half an hour recovering and warming back up. While the water was warmer than what was back in Britain, it was still the ocean and Harry didn’t have any specialized swimwear to keep him warm if he encountered cold patches.

     “I guess I’ll have to think about transfiguring something like that if I’m stuck here for a long time.” He said to himself, before getting back up after his rest.

     Looking around, Harry saw that this bit of land had plants similar to the one that he’d left, but they were much more spread out than the jungle environment he’d originally found himself in. I suppose that’ll happen when it’s a mountainous landmass instead of being relatively flat. He theorized.

     Walking along the beach that seemed to wrap around a good portion of the island, Harry once again saw something he wasn’t expecting to see. A massive dark green and blue building rose up that rivaled the height of the mountain on the island. It was made out of the same material he’d seen a lot of the buildings on the other planet were made out of which meant that the likelihood of whoever had made the structure was probably long since dead.

     Approaching the building that jutted out into the water, Harry eventually came across a force field of some kind barring the entrance. Lifting his wand, Harry intoned “Alohomora”, and the field flickered and died allowing him to continue further in.

     That was when something completely unexpected happened again. Harry’s vision went blurry, and a series of animalistic clicks and calls preceded a creature’s face with antennae and four eyes appeared right before his eyes. A mild migraine grew as the creature finally spoke words directly into Harry’s head.

     “What are you?” The creature asked in a feminine voice before whatever connection it had with Harry seemed to slip away. The encounter exhausted Harry as well and he crumpled down unconscious to the ground.

Chapter Text

     Harry groaned as he started to regain his vision. It took his exhausted mind and body a few minutes to realize where he was. He was laying on his back with a clear blue sky above him and the sound of ocean waves lapping at a shore nearby. The surface he was lying on was warm and scratchy and he recognized it as sand after he put pressure on his hands to press himself upward.

     With his sight now fully returned, Harry saw the large alien building before him that he’d passed out in front of after receiving a vision from some creature. The force field that he’d taken down earlier had come back up and he prepared to open the door again before a thought stopped him.

     That creature appeared before me because I used magic on this doorway. Harry thought to himself. What if that happens again? He asked.

     The clearly mental magic that had contacted him from the creature caused him to remember his Occlumency training from his past year at Hogwarts. Bringing up that disaster with Snape left a bitter taste in his mouth for all that had happened at the end of the year, but it was useful in this situation.

     Whatever contacted him, Harry had no idea where they came from or what their intentions were. He’d never been able to become good at Occlumency before he’d gone on his ill-advised journey to the Ministry, but now he needed to work on it again.

     If the female voice contacted him again, he had no idea what its capabilities would be if he wasn’t prepared to be safe against it. He didn’t know if it was a predator or a simple sentient creature that had accidentally found him and was just asking questions of him.

     Leaving the building for now, Harry decided to walk around the island that it was built on to get a better understanding of what was here. He didn’t want anything else surprising him like that mental projection had and so began his exploration of this actual island instead of the floating one he’d arrived on.

     As he’d seen on his long swim over here, the mountain island had much less flora than the floating island he’d been living on. It wasn’t devoid of plant life, but his sightline wasn’t broken up every ten feet with a new tree or bush.

     It also had more of the giant crabs that he had to occasionally repel away from him, along with the flying squirrel bird hybrids that left him alone. Thanks to the lack of plants, this island wasn’t chock full of insects and the larger animals were scarcer as a result. He eventually found an extensive cave network inside of the island that had more of the crabs that seemed to like the darker environment than the sunlight outside.

     Harry came to the conclusion after he’d thoroughly explored what the island had, he was left with no other choice than to try and enter the alien building. There was another one of the arches that he’d come to this planet on inside the cave network, but it was powered down and he had no idea how to repower it.

     “Ok.” He said to himself just to hear something other than the waves and the bird calls on the island. “Clearing my mind.” He spoke out loud.

     Despite being stranded on an island on a planet no human had ever been to and with no clear way back, the sound of the waves washing up on the shore let Harry truly relax for what felt like the first time in forever. He’d never noticed just how high strung up he was ever since he’d discovered he’d been a celebrity since he was a baby for something his parents probably did anyway.

     In the gloomy interior of Professor Snape’s rooms with the threat of Voldemort peeking into his thoughts, Harry was never able to fully follow what the dour man was telling him to do. Now, with a completely different kind of worry but at a location that seemed incredibly peaceful, the stresses of his life just seemed to flow out of him with his practice of Occlumency.

     Approaching the force field again, Harry raised his wand to unlock it again and braced to see if the entity contacted him again. “Alohomora.” He said as he commanded his magic to open the advanced door.

     Almost immediately, something sensed his power, and something knocked into his Occlumency barrier. It recoiled in surprise before tentatively rapping on it the same way someone would knock on a door. The presence seemed more curious than insistent, which caused Harry to believe it wasn’t immediately hostile.

     Slowly lowering his shield while sitting back down on the ground so that he didn’t fall over again, Harry braced for the coming headache. It built up much slower this time as he was prepared for it, but the same clicking and animalistic calls proceeded the strange four eyed being that slowly appeared in his vision.

     “Hello?” It questioned slowly, as if it expected Harry to bolt away. “Who are you?” The female voice asked.

     “My name’s Harry.” He gritted out in pain at the building ache in his head. “Are you causing my head to hurt with this communication?” He asked back.

     “Oh! I’m so sorry! I’m not trying to hurt you.” She rushed to explain. “I’ve been trying to call out for anyone for so long to hear me that I’ve projected my voice as far as I can.”

     “Why are you trying to call out to someone?” He worriedly asked while fearing he might know the answer already.

     “I’ve been stuck here alone, and I can’t get out and I do not wish for my children to hatch in this enclosed space for their entire lives.” She explained. “That is why I’ve been trying to call out to anyone that can hear me, so that I may ask if anyone can help me.” The being told him.

     Harry had gotten to his feet and rushed into the alien facility with no care for caution as soon as the creature told him she was trapped. Ignoring anything that wasn’t organic of some kind, he kept up his conversation with her even though it was causing him pain.

     Strange walls, lights, objects, and screens passed by him as he ran through this deserted building in search of the lady calling him. No alien life greeted him, and it painted another dark image in his mind that the beings who created this facility had imprisoned her for some unknown reason and then left.

     “Where are you?” He asked desperately as he came to another dead end without finding her. “I’ll try and get you out, but I don’t know where you are.” He told her.

     “You’d get me out?” She asked with a hint of restored hope. “How could you get me out? The beings who created this cage made the stone impervious to anything I’ve tried.” She told him sadly.

     “I have magic, I can transform the rock out of the way so that you can get out.” Harry told her through gritted teeth as the pain in his head was becoming more unbearable. “Now, where are you?” He asked again as kindly as he could.

     “I don’t know what this “magic” you speak of is, but I felt you far above me when you first projected something that I could communicate with.” She said. “What is magic?” The being asked.

     “It’s a type of energy that can be used in multiple ways.” Harry started explaining before pointing his wand at a downward track that he could move along. However, once he cast the first transfiguration spell that would start his tunnel downward, the pain from the mounting headache caused his vision to rapidly darken and he started falling over.

     “Harry?” The creature asked. “What’s wrong?” He heard her ask as the strain of maintaining the connection caused him to lose consciousness.

     Harry awoke some time later with a dull ache still radiating in his head. Not wanting to run the risk of going unconscious again, he decided to work on his transfiguration downward before trying to contact the female creature again.

     He didn’t know what the material was made of, but even though it was resistant to his attempts at transfiguration, it still shifted out of the way with enough force. Once he got through to the bottom of the building, the dirt and stone of the planet proved much easier to move.

     The temperature also started to drop as he moved further away from the climate-controlled structure, but a warming charm here and there settled that issue. He also had to keep casting lights along the tunnel he was making or else he’d be descending in pitch darkness.

     Harry didn’t know how long he spent digging his tunnel which included many switchbacks to make sure he didn’t stray too far from going straight down, but eventually he had to stop once exhaustion set in. The creature hadn’t contacted him again and Harry wondered if talking to him might have exhausted her also.

     Climbing back up his path, Harry caught another one of those spider crab things to cook and eat before looking to see if there were any of those melons on this island. There weren’t, but one of the trees that he’d seen on the other island inhabited this one as well and decided to see if maybe something here was similar to cacti and stored water inside.

     Cutting open one of the trees didn’t immediately yield a container of drinkable fluid, squeezing one of the cuttings allowed a type of slurry to flow out that didn’t make him sick when he drank it. One of the reasons he didn’t just use an Aguamenti charm to drink water is because he wanted a bit of variety in what he drank.

     Being surrounded by untold miles of very little else but water, Harry wasn’t too keen on only consuming it if he didn’t have to. So, while he ran the risk of potentially getting a little sick, in his mind he felt more comfortable using other resources.

     After he’d had a rest from the work that he’d done, he decided to look around the alien building before he tried communicating with the creature again. In his rush to try and free her from her location, Harry hadn’t spent time looking for anything other than a living thing in that building.

     Now, with no pressing need besides working on getting to the trapped individual, he spent more time looking around the building. There were shelves and storage units scattered along various walls that he had to use more magic to open, but the things he saw inside he had no idea what they were for.

     As a human, Harry could guess at things if they made sense to him, but with a quadrupedal race that seemed to have much more advanced technology than anything found on Earth, he was at a bit of a loss at what most things were for.

     While exploring the building, he found multiple different levels, with many rooms to explore, including a giant pool that looked like it led out into the ocean, that he had to access via a floating elevator of some kind. He also found another powered down archway and a room that he could guess easily based off of the locked off tubular objects in multiple cases lining the walls.

     That room was clearly an armory of some kind with dozens of rifles, or machine guns, or lasers, or whatever weapons the race that built the facility used. There didn’t seem to be any attempt to take anything with them whenever they left, which meant they’d either had to leave in a hurry or they all died off before they could leave.

     Either way, the only sentient being he’d come into contact with was trapped somewhere and he’d prefer to have someone to talk to instead of going insane talking to himself. So, going back down into the facility where he’d started his tunnel, Harry tried to initiate the call from his end this time.

     Reaching into his Occlumency barriers, he prodded around while trying to project, for lack of a better word, his consciousness downward in hopes to reach whoever was trying to talk to him. Nothing hurt until the connection was received on the other end by the creature.

     “Harry?” She asked. “Is that you? I was worried when you suddenly lost connection. What happened?” The creature questioned.

     “While working towards you, I can’t keep my mental projection going because of the headache it gives me.” He told her. “I’ve been digging downward from the surface to try and reach you, but I don’t know how much further I have to go.” Harry admitted.

     “Wait? You’re digging from the surface?” She asked. “But I’m underwater. How will you reach me when you have to swim?”

     “I have magic that will help me with that.” He deflected for now. “Could you tell me how much further you think I might need to go?” Harry asked.

     The creature was silent at that as she tried to judge how much further he had to go. “Well, you are closer than before, but you’re still very far above me from what I can tell.” She told him. “I think you also need to move sideways some, but I don’t know which way you are oriented.”

     “That’s ok for now.” Harry told her. “We’ll work on the direction other than down that I need to go once I’m at your level.” He said before asking a question that had been nagging at him for a little while. “By the way, I told you my name, what’s yours?” He asked her.

     “Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t think to tell you.” She admitted sheepishly. “My name is Luda.”

     “Well, its nice to finally make your acquaintance Luda.” Harry told her kindly. “I’m still going to work on getting to you, but how long have you been stuck wherever you are?”

     That question seemed to suck the life out of Luda and her mental projection before his eyes drooped. “I’ve lost track.” She said tiredly. “The creatures that built the walls around me were using me to find a cure for some disease that was killing them.” Luda started explaining.

     “I tried to communicate with them the same way I’m talking to you, but they couldn’t hear me for some reason.” She sadly went on. “Over time they got desperate and stole one of my children to experiment the same way they tried on me, and I fear my child didn’t survive the process.” Luda admitted.

     “They all stopped coming some time ago and I’ve been left alone ever since.” She said. “Until you showed up.”

     Harry was disgusted at the creatures that had locked Luda up and experimented on one of her unborn children. It filled him with an even greater resolve to get to her and free her faster so that she could be rid of the heartache that came with being in a prison where she’d been made a science experiment and lost a child as a result.

     “Luda.” Harry began with conviction. “I swear to you that I’ll get you out of there so that you and your children can be free to do whatever your hearts want.” He told her. “I might go silent for a little bit as I work on my tunnel to you, but I’ll call back occasionally to keep you company. Do you have anyway to tell time there?” He asked her.

     “Only how long it takes me to swim a lap of my enclosure.” Luda said with a saddened tone.

     “Don’t count your laps.” Harry instructed her. “I’ll call every two hours unless I’m sleeping to see how you’re doing. And before I go to sleep, I’ll let you know that I am so that you don’t worry if I don’t call.” He told her.

     This Harry had no reason to come rescue her that he’d made mention of, other than that he didn’t think she should remain trapped with no way out. She had no idea how long it would take for him to dig down to her, but she’d already waited so long by herself that a relatively short extra amount of time wouldn’t bother her. Luda felt something then that she’d forgotten the feeling of after spending so long trapped in her enclosure…hope.

Chapter Text

     As promised, Harry made sure to keep calling Luda every two hours as he progressively made his way further down. He ran into a bit of a snag though when he accidentally breached a side wall, and a torrent of water suddenly blasted him backwards. If he was a regular human without access to magic, Harry could have easily been crushed against the stone by the raging waters.

     His unconscious control of his magic dampened the impact and gave him enough time to cast a bubblehead charm around his head to keep breathing. That didn’t seem to fully work though as the intense pressure of the water kept battering his torso and it became incredibly difficult to breathe. Forcing more power behind the spell, the charm slowly expanded all the way around his body and the pressure ceased.

     Harry took a calming breath of relief after the sudden scare of water hammering him had stopped. Looking around himself, he saw that he’d been shot further up his tunnel by the force of the water pressure and looking up he could see it was still rising.

     Well, that’s annoying. He thought to himself. I guess I’m working underwater from now on. Harry mused as he swam back down to where he was. Peaking out of the hole he’d created; he saw a green glow that permeated the entire cavern he’d stumbled into.

     That was when he saw a creature that looked more dead than alive and was truly a titanic size as it swam up to investigate the sound of the rushing water filling the void. The long snakelike fish emitted a high-pitched shriek that reminded Harry of the Dementors in how eerie it was.

     It didn’t make any aggressive moves towards Harry though as it simply looked at him wrapped inside of his bubblehead charm. Seemingly satisfied with its inspection of Harry, the translucent snake with a Hammerhead-style head and glowing yellow eyes, slowly turned away and opened its mouth as it swam off through the green glow.

     Smaller fish occasionally get caught in its mouth and are swallowed, but Harry sees that the larger ones aren’t of any interest to the massive creature. Keeping his eye on the largest being he’s so far seen in terms of length; Harry quietly observes its behavior.

     Most of the smaller predators scamper out of its way, which seems to indicate that they fear it, but the screeching leviathan acts more like a lazy eater and only goes after the easier fish to catch. There are types of translucent rays that are too slippery to get caught, without effort, by the apex fish and Harry wonders if he looked similar enough like one of them to fool the snake into thinking he’d be too slippery.

     The smaller predators seem to have no issue wishing to attack Harry though and he has to defend himself from bus sized creatures. They are nowhere near the size of the multiple train car length of the translucent snake and so he has an easier time beating them off. If he tried to dissuade the ghostlike fish, it might be like facing down the Basilisk from his second year only this time he’d be completely out of his element while being in the water.

     Each gelatinous see through predator that he injures or kills draws more from the nearby surroundings, but they seem more opportunistic and simply finish off the weakened ones instead of going after him again. The train sized snake also smells the blood in the water and casually scoops up other pieces.

     Finally able to sneak away from the feeding frenzy, Harry swims a distance away before using his wand to propel water behind him to increase his speed. It’s at this time that Luda decides to call him back on their shared mental projection.

     “Harry?” She starts off. “Do you have a minute?” Luda asks.

     “Not now Luda!” He quickly responds and grits his teeth as the strain of casting magic and communicating with her spikes into his head. “I’m a little busy at the moment! I’ll call back later!” Harry tells her and the line blissfully shuts off.

     That’s when the noise of his shout attracts the giant translucent blue fish again and it lets out another ghostly wail in his direction. Crap! He thinks to himself as he dives down to try and avoid it.

     In the distance Harry sees another structure similar to the alien building above him and makes his way toward that. He’d managed to get a decent head start on the giant fish but his prediction of it being a seemingly lazy predator comes true after only a short chase after him.

     Catching his breath as there don’t seem to be any more of the smaller predators in this area, Harry is able to more slowly head towards the building which he can now see has heavy damage to it. As he approaches it, purple squid-like beings slightly larger than himself are able to be picked out in the dark green gloom of the cavern.

     These creatures also look like predators with their massive sword hands that are almost as long as Harry’s entire body. He holds his wand out defensively as one of them takes an interest in him and floats over towards him. It stops a couple meters away and something unexpected happens next.

     It’s glowing pink eyes project a spotlight onto him which travels from his head to his toes before shutting off. Did it just scan me? Harry thought before he quickly had to cast a Protego as it suddenly lunged toward him.

     The shield held against the sudden attack, but a series of clicks could be heard from the swarm of around two dozen surrounding the building. All of them turned their eyes towards Harry and suddenly started moving towards him.

     Bullocks! He thinks as he looks for an escape route away from the creatures. That’s when the creature attacking his shield gets bored and does something that surprises Harry…it teleports behind him!

     Hearing a distinctive snap and a displacement of water to his rear, he barely has time to raise another shield before the two massive spikes come zooming towards him. The other creatures are still making their way towards Harry, so he has to deal with this one fast before he’s overwhelmed.

     Bludgeoning and cutting the creature doesn’t seem to deter it and it shows no signs of caring for the injuries he’s giving it. It has a single-minded purpose of wishing to attack Harry and so he keeps going until it’s no longer able to continue. That’s when sparks bizarrely erupt out of the creature causing Harry to believe it was part robot.

     The reprieve is short lived, however, as he immediately propels himself as fast as he can to avoid the closing jaws of the trap the other purple robot creatures are attempting on him. Ducking through a small gap in the damaged building, Harry transfigures the walls closed around him to prevent them from coming inside.

     Whatever allows them to teleport doesn’t seem to work through solid objects as none of them manage to follow him inside. Relaxing his heart rate, Harry looks around at the room he finds himself in.

     Thanks to being exposed to the outside world, plants of some sort have grown along the walls, ceiling, and floor of the alien building. There doesn’t seem to be more than just basic fish swimming around and so Harry is able to peacefully explore what’s in this place.

     Dozens of specimens of rays, fish, snakes, crustaceans, and many more types of animals are pinned inside display cases. Some of them have been smashed open and are little more than skeletons at this point, but those that are still inside have been perfectly preserved.

     Harry finds a large skeletal fish that could easily swallow him whole inside another exhibit before almost having a heart attack when he notices another one of the purple creatures in the next room. Thankfully, it hasn’t been fully assembled and it’s more proof for Harry to think that they are a type of biological machine.

      Now that he’s in a relatively safe spot, Harry opens back up the communication with Luda. “Ok Luda. I can talk to you again.” He tells her.

     “Sorry for interrupting you earlier Harry.” She contritely apologizes. “I didn’t know you were busy and wanted to talk again.” Luda explains.

     “That’s alright.” He replies. “I had to swim away from some enormous fish that wanted to eat me.” Harry goes on. “Do you know anything about the ghostly blue snakes?” He asks her.

     “Oh, the Soul Snares.” Luda recognizes from his description. “They mainly eat whatever floats into their mouths because they’re incredibly lazy.” She tells him. “Although, they are easily disturbed by loud noises and will defend their territory until you leave them alone.”

     “And what about the purple creatures with the sword arms that can teleport?” Harry asked. “They seem like they’re part robot and they attacked me also.” He told her.

     “Purple teleport creatures?” She asked. “What’s teleport mean? And what’s a robot?” Luda voiced her incomprehension.

     “The beings who imprisoned you probably made them after you were already contained.” Harry theorized. “The act of teleporting is moving from one place to another instantly without physically traveling the distance between the two points.” He went on to explain.

     “My kind have a similar ability called “Apparation”, but it requires us to have been to a place before we can teleport there.” Harry told her. “I was too young to learn it, so it won’t be much help for me to find you.” He said. “And a robot is something that’s not a natural creature that beings can make to imitate life.” Harry explains.

     Luda tried to picture how a creature could make something else live that wasn’t one of its offspring. Then something Harry said caused her grow worried. “Harry…how old are you?” She asked.

     “I’ll be turning sixteen years old soon, but I don’t know the rotation period of this planet.” Harry explains.

     “Is a year a complete seasonal rotation?” Luda asked. “How many years does your kind live for?” She questioned.

     “Yes, to the first question, and most humans with magic, that’s what I am, tend to live for around a hundred and fifty years to two hundred years.” Harry told her.

     “But that would mean you’re still just a child!” Luda exclaimed in shock. “Where are the adult members of your species? Or do they kick you out of the nest early?” She asked concernedly.

     That seemed to have struck a nerve with the human she was communicating with as he grits out, “My parents were killed when I was a year and a half.”

     “Normally humans stay with their parents until they complete their education, which lasts on average until they are eighteen.” He goes on. “I was living with other relatives and learning magic until the man that killed my parents lured me into a trap and I fell through a portal to another world.” He explained.

     “What is a portal and what’s a world?” She asked, trying to deflect away from the sore subject he had.

     “There was an arch that had glowing light in it that my godfather fell through, and I went in after him.” Harry told her. “We were in the middle of a fight, and I didn’t realize he was already dead until I followed after him.” He went on.

     “A world is a giant circular ball that things live on that usually floats around a star.” Harry tells her. “If you’ve ever looked up at the sky above the water, the brightest object up there is a star, and the duller ones are this world’s moons.” He says.

     “Moons are smaller worlds but don’t typically have life on them. I fell through a portal that someone created, and it sent me to another world before I eventually found another that sent me here.” Harry told her.

     “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the bright ball in the sky and I’m afraid I can’t quite recall the details.” Luda sadly informs her talking companion.

     It’s Harry’s turn to feel saddened at Luda’s plight now. “If you see something yellow and attach it to something round, imagine that but burningly bright to look at.” He tells her before adding on another thing. “And I swear I’ll get to you to get you out so you can see it with your own eyes again.”

     “But you’re just a child of your race.” She despairs. “You shouldn’t be burdened to do something like this.”

     “I’m doing it because it’s the right thing to do Luda.” He firmly tells her. “No one else is around in a position to help you, and I’d feel like I’d failed you if I didn’t do everything in my power to help you.” Harry then adds on a bit of levity. “My friend calls this my “Saving People Thing”.”

     Taking a breath to calm the emotions, Harry asks Luda, “How far away from you am I?”

     Luda takes her own moment to compose herself after feeling the conviction of the human’s vow to help her. Sending out a pulse, she judges the distance between them. “You’re still roughly right above me, but it looks like you’ve come more than half the distance already.” She told him.

     “That’s good to know.” He says. “Any advice you have for any creatures I might meet along the way?” Harry asks her.

     “Well, I don’t know precisely where I am, but I do hear Melter Throwers occasionally roaring outside.” She tries telling him. “They are extremely dangerous because they spit burning rock out of their mouths, but I should be able to pacify them for you if you call out to me when you see them.” Luda explains.

     Underwater dragons?! Harry panics. “You can calm them?” He asks.

     “Yes. My race, Matriarchs, can emit pulses through the water that tell other creatures that we are friendly to them, and it prevents them from wishing to attack us.” She tells him. “Can you tell me when you are close so I can view them through your senses?” Luda asks Harry.

     “View them through my senses?” He asks. “What do you mean by that?”

     “Can I demonstrate?” She requests. “You should be close enough that I can try it now.” Luda tells him.

     “It won’t hurt me, right?” Harry asks.

     “It might add to your headache that this conversation gives you, but I’ll stop if you start to lose consciousness.” She tells him. “I won’t be taking anything away from you, it will simply allow me to view what you are viewing, and it will give me an extension from your end to use my pulses.”

     Taking another calming breath, Harry decides to give it a go. “Alright. I’m in a safe place right now, so go ahead.” Harry feels a pinch in his eyes like he’s got allergies and rubs them several times before he hears back from Luda.

     “Can you move your hands?” She requests. “I can’t see past them.”

     Harry does as requested and moves around a bit to show her his movements.

     “Why are you so sluggish in the water?” Luda asks.

     “I’m a land creature.” Harry explains with a smile. “I’m not normally down this deep in the water.”

     “So, this isn’t natural for you and yet you’re still willing to free me?” He hears intense emotion from her.

     “As I said earlier Luda, I promise I’ll do whatever it takes to set you free.” Harry tells her.

     “Thank you, Harry.” She cries out. “Could you swim around a bit so that I can see more of the world through your perspective?” Luda asks after a bit.

     Harry does just that, not noticing that the color of his eyes have shifted to blue as Luda looks through them. “Where are we?” She asks. “Is this inside one of the creature structures that put me here?” Luda asks him.

     “Yes.” He responds. “I had to come in here because there were dozens of the purple teleporting creatures outside that were wanting to kill me.” Harry explains.

     “That’s mean of them.” Luda says. “Do you want to see if I can pacify them? Or do you think it is too dangerous for you?” She asks.

     “I have a shield that I can erect that prevents them from getting to me.” Harry tells her. “If you want to try, go ahead.” He says.

     Moving up toward the entrance he’d blocked off, Harry prepares to transfigure it out of the way. He hears a slight gasp from Luda at the magic displayed before she attempts what she wanted to try. A strange cool warmth builds up in Harry’s core before an energy erupts from his mouth in the direction of the purple robot creatures.

     Leave Harry alone. He feels permeate throughout his body after the energy gets released and he suspects the very core of the message is carried to the creatures before him. Indeed, slight shocks are visible emanating from them before they go dormant instead of charging toward him like they were.

     “Well, it looks like it worked. Great job Luda!” Harry congratulates her.

     “Thank you for willing to try it, Harry.” She responds. “Are you still good to continue talking, or do you need a rest?” Luda asks.

     “I think I’ll take a break for now as the pain is starting to be too much now.” He tells her.

     “Ok Harry. I’ll let you call me when you are ready next time.” She informs him before cutting off.

     The release of pressure is an immense relief and Harry attempts to find the tunnel he came from. As he’s passing one of the purple creatures though, the creature’s pink eyes illuminate him again in spotlight and it shrieks a battle cry at him.

     Uh-oh! I guess it has some kind of core programming that forces it to look for something and it then attacks them. Harry thinks as he blasts the creature back while hurrying back towards his tunnel.

     The shrieking teleporters attract the attention of the Soul Snare though which issues its own challenging roar before heading towards the commotion. It doesn’t seem angered by Harry though and instead batters the chasing robots until they give up their pursuit of him for preserving their own frames. Their sword arms do very little to the massive creature as they aren’t long enough to penetrate into the vital areas of its body.

     Thanks to the unasked but not unwelcome assistance, Harry is able to find his tunnel and swim back towards the surface. Once he reaches dry land again, he cancels his Bubblehead charm and scratches his itchy arms. A slight cough comes from his throat, and he wonders if he spent too long relying on the charm.

Chapter Text

     Waking up the next day, Harry struggled to raise his head off of his transfigured pillow. He felt extremely warm, warmer than he’d grown used to on this tropical island planet, and it surprised him because he’d slept in the climate-controlled alien facility.

     Rolling over onto his side and propping himself up on his hands and knees, a wave of vertigo gripped him, and he fell sideways back down. An intense headache, similar to the ones he’d had after prolonged mental communication with Luda, also made its presence known.

     Lying still and hoping whatever it was would calm down if he sat still, Harry groaned as he tried to adjust to it. Taking deep breaths alleviated some of the pressure in his head, but that just led to other things that he hadn’t noticed until then.

     His skin was incredibly itchy and as he set to scratching it, he saw small flakes of dead skin peel off. Stopping took a great deal of effort, but looking down at the angry red skin that was underneath was enough to force his arms to cease.

     Compiling everything that was wrong with himself took longer than he thought it should have. I have a major headache, vertigo, itchy skin… “CUGH! CUGH!” and a bad cough as well. Harry added on at the end after it interrupted him.

     “Urgh!” He moaned. “What did I eat that didn’t agree with me?” Harry asked himself, only to have another cough after his question. And I can’t even talk out loud without that cough coming back.

     It took Harry around two hours before he’d gained enough energy pull himself away from the relative comfort of his transfigured bed. Food didn’t agree with his stomach at the time, so he settled for what little water he could get down.

     The trip down the tunnel he’d made in the basement of the alien base took longer also, and he had to keep forcing his arms not to scratch himself or else the redness got worse. He’d brought a tree branch with him that he was using as a cane, so the vertigo wasn’t too bad, but the headache hadn’t gone away which limited his concentration.

     As such, once he got to where the water had flooded the tunnel from where he’d broken through, it took until he was up to his chest before he realized he needed cast a full-body Bubblehead charm. Taking a shallow but long breath to not overexcite his tortured lungs, Harry adjusted to the close feeling as the magic clung around his body.

     Still not feeling anywhere close to one hundred percent, Harry nonetheless plowed on in his mission to free Luda. Luda, which way do I go from here? He tried mentally projecting to her instead of speaking out loud. All previous methods he’d talked to her out loud, but speaking was out of the question for now and he hoped this way would work.

     The moment he felt the connection, his headache flared into an agonizing spike once Luda began talking. Harry? What’s wrong? You don’t sound so good. She pointed out.

     Wait? You can tell I’m not feeling good? He mentally projected back. I’ve been talking out loud in our previous conversations and figured this would be more private. Harry admitted.

     Out loud? Luda asked. I can’t tell a difference between now and when we previously talked. She told him. I’ve just been talking to your life force, it shouldn’t make a difference how you talk, only that you are. Luda said. But don’t try and change the subject! Why do you sound sick? She demanded.

     Feeling properly chastised, Harry admitted that he woke up sick.

     And you’re still trying to work while you’re sick!? She worried. Harry get some rest! Luda ordered him. You can work on getting to me another day.

     A rack of coughs worked their way up through his throat and he had to take a pause in the connection. It took a couple minutes to recover his strength before he reconnected with Luda. I can’t stop until I get to you Luda. He told her. One more day in that prison isn’t acceptable to me if I have the power to get you out, then I… “CUGH! CUGH! Hugh, hugh, CUGH!” He was interrupted again by his coughs.

     Luda was silent for his part of the conversation, but since he hadn’t managed to cut the link in time, she heard his hacking and wheezing. Harry… She began slowly. One more day won’t hurt me if you need to get better.

     What she wasn’t telling Harry was that in his pain, he didn’t notice her jump inside his head again like she’d done previously and was viewing things through his own senses. It felt like she’d swam into a cliff face near melted rocks when she interpreted what his sense of touch felt like.

     That’s a lot of pain he’s going through right now. She thought to herself as she looked through his eyes and listened through his ears. The coughing sounded horrible, like he was about to expel one of his insides but that wasn’t the only thing wrong with the human magic user she’d been talking to. His skin is also really red. She observed.

     Harry? If you aren’t at your best, one of the larger swimmers might eat you if you aren’t paying attention. She warned him. You’re incredibly small and most things wouldn’t see you as any kind of threat if you’re clearly sick and small. Luda told Harry.

     I have magic though. He stubbornly replied. That will make up for any physical deficiencies I have against the larger predators down here. He said before holding in another cough.

     All the power in the world won’t do anything if you’re not focused enough to watch out for things because you’re sick though. Luda tried telling him. You need to… She began to continue before Harry snapped back at her.

     I’m getting you out of there! He angrily proclaimed. If I need to conserve my strength, I can’t talk anymore until I get there. Harry said before severing the link.

     Did he just cut me off?! Luda fumed…before realizing something. Wait? Why can I still see through his eyes? She asked herself. Not wanting to alert the clearly irritated sick human, Luda knew that things could get annoyed when they are sick, she continued monitoring Harry’s surroundings by using his senses.

     Harry was wanting to be stubborn in getting her out, which was quite heartwarming to her, but he was also much smaller than a vast majority of the life that swam on this planet. He’s gonna get himself killed by doing this, and if he does, then I could be trapped here for even longer. Luda fretted.

     The plan flew through her mind quickly as she watched his progress towards her. She knew she couldn’t reopen the communication with him because he’d get mad at the wasted energy, but if she could send nudges in the right direction, she hoped to help him in a small way.

     Being careful to not give word to her thoughts, Luda pointedly looked in a specific direction until Harry’s attention slowly drifted subconsciously in the direction she’d indicated. Harry’s headstrong attitude for the most part kept the more inquisitive predators away with his magic, but watching the sick human, Luda could tell that it was still exhausting him, and he’d get sloppy soon.

     He stayed clear of the teleporting purple things that attacked him last time, so Luda didn’t need to worry about expending energy to protect him from them. The number of Soul Snares wasn’t particularly high in this area, but Harry’s slow swimming would make him a tempting target if they spotted him.

     As he swam past remains of long dead creatures from even before her own time, the sickness gripping the human started taking its toll. He spent longer and longer on breaks to recover his strength before he commenced.

     It was right as he was about to begin his next break that a four finned purple fish swam in front of Harry. The creature seemed more like prey when it splayed its four fins out in an attempt to look bigger, but then it started something unexpected when lights started glowing on the surfaces of its fins.

     You look tired. A melodious voice was heard, and Luda was surprised that she heard it in her own head as well. Come, rest with me where you will be safe. The voice enticed.

     “Rest.” The exhausted human spoke through his mouth. “Safe.” He said as he started moving to within arm’s reach of the beckoning fish.

     Wait! Arms?! Luda mentally shook her head and looked at what had become of the fish before Harry. Instead of the beautiful display of glowing fins, there was now a set of four claw-tipped appendages extending outward with a mouthful of carnivore teeth waiting behind.

     Harry, don’t! She screamed into his head. It’s a trap! She tried warning him, but he continued his slow movement forward. LEAVE HARRY ALONE! Luda tried emitting outward into the water from his body, but it had no effect on the creature drawing him in.

     Not knowing what to do in order to save Harry from this new threat, Luda desperately thought as fast as she could while looking around the environment. She didn’t have many options besides her connection with Harry, but that gave her an idea.

     I’m effectively inside Harry right now. She thought. His “magic” can be used as protection for his own body, so it wouldn’t want its container to be harmed right? She theorized. Reaching inward instead of outward, Luda sent a pulse straight into Harry’s chest. HARRY IS IN TROUBLE! She emitted.

     Almost immediately, a spell launches out toward the predator that’s just about to lay its claws into Harry and disintegrates the fish. A small explosion of parts spread out before Harry’s body goes limp.

     Before Luda has time to process the new danger that Harry is in, something latches on to her mind and expands a connection that she never had before. Deep in her prison that the aliens studied her in, Luda looses feeling in her own tails and fins while gaining this new connection.

     All of her focus is now centered on Harry’s perspective. Her eyes can only see through his, her hearing is his, her touch is his, taste, and smell. Harry? She vocalizes to him…but gets no response.

     This is weird. She thinks, but the sound comes through his own lips which startles her. “This is weird.” Reflexively shutting her mouth to halt any sound from coming her…his mouth? The feeling of flat teeth clacking together travels though her sense of touch.

     Reaching an appendage to touch Harry’s mouth, Luda watches in amazement as she sees his arm follow her order and touches his lips. Looking down, she can see the redness that has grown on his arms before feeling the warmth and headache typical of something that’s sick.

     It isn’t affecting Luda’s control of Harry’s body, but she knows that the more use his body expends, the more exhausted he’ll become. Withdrawing the stick that Harry sometimes used to launch spells to move through the water, she speaks through Harry’s mouth the word that corresponds to it.

     She can feel something in his chest link up to her original body and guesses that is the magic the spell requires but doesn’t know what it’s doing. After a very short pause that couldn’t have been more than a second, the spell launches Harry upward and away from the creature trying to trick him.

     It takes her some time to find where he originally came from, but he’s spent too long working down here trying to get to her. It feels strange and unusual to use his legs to walk on dry surfaces before she finds a type of nest that she guesses must be where he was sleeping while he worked.

     That nest looks terribly small. Luda observes before continuing her walk with Harry’s body to look for more suitable additions. There is nothing interesting or soft looking in the alien building that Harry was living in, so she walks him outside and sees for the first time, dry land above the surface of the water.

     Gaping in shock, Luda tells herself that she can’t spend long while Harry’s body is suffering from the disease. Sifting through her options, she immediately discards the rocks as they are too hard for his body. Some of the sand is soft, buts its actually the plant leaves that are the best, and prettiest in her opinion, for additions to help expand the comfort of his nest.

     Gathering up as many as his hands can support, Luda carries them back down to the spot he’d positioned his nest in and arranges everything to be much more comfortable. It already looks much better and so she settles his body down for a relaxing sleep and fiddles with trying to cut the connection she has with his body.

     Come on, LET ME GO. She sends out another pulse and what she suspects was Harry’s magic, finally lets her go and she’s sucked back into the awareness of her own body. Shivering a little at the weird sensations, Luda looks around her prison while hoping that Harry can recover better now that he’ll get proper rest.

     Several hours later on the surface, Harry does indeed wake back up after one of the most relaxing rests he’s had in recent memory. “Wait, where am I?” He asks himself as he looks around. There are bundles of giant leaves nestled around his makeshift bed which confuse him because he knows he didn’t put those there.

     One thing he does notice though, is that the pounding headache, the vertigo, and the itchiness of his skin are all greatly reduced. They’re still there, but they only bother him about a quarter as much as earlier. How did I get here though? He asked himself.

Chapter Text

     The next day while Harry was working toward Luda’s location, he reached out as he normally did to engage in conversation with her regardless of the pain it gave in him. He instinctually knew that whatever he had was bad, but he couldn’t force himself to rest and recover with the thought of Luda being trapped in her prison.

     Reflecting back on the previous day, however, Harry realized that he’d been rather rude to her thanks to his irritability from being sick. He resolved to make it up to her this day by apologizing whenever she picked up his call.

     Luda? Harry cautiously called out to her with their shared mental magical link. I’m sorry for how I was acting yesterday.

     The response came almost immediately. Harry! Everything is forgiven, I was just worried for you. Luda told him. I thought you were pushing yourself too hard and I don’t want you to hurt yourself or get killed in a lapse of judgement getting to me.

     Harry felt his heart clench at the pure worry that was transmitted through their connection. Again, I’m sorry for how I treated you. He reiterated. I’ll try and pace myself and to not work as long hours in getting to you.

     That’s acceptable. Luda affirmed. You’re sick and I don’t want you to get worse by pushing your body past its limits. She told him.

     Moving onto different topics, Harry decided to talk to her about their past experiences. Explaining growing up in a society that used vastly more advanced technologies than anything Luda had knowledge of was certainly an interesting endeavor.

     I understand the concept of a home inside a large cave-like structure, just above ground instead. Luda began. But you say that you use these “cars”, “trains”, “boats”, and “planes” to travel long distances. She went on to ask, Are they other creatures that you convince to take you places faster? Or something else?

     Harry didn’t laugh at Luda curiosity as he knew he was speaking to a large fish essentially who would have had no need for any of those things. No, they aren’t creatures. He started. Humans are relatively unremarkable when it comes to our physical abilities. Harry continued.

     To make up for that, and to explore more of our world, we’ve built things that can overcome those shortcomings. He told Luda. Wizards and Witches are able to do extra things that regular humans can’t, but to conserve our energy, we don’t always use magic for everything and that’s where nonmagical creations come in handy.

     Harry continued talking to Luda about the various creations that humans had made to make their lives more interesting and convenient. As the pair conversed and explained, Harry was making steady progress downwards until he reached the flooded portion of the tunnel and had to cast his bubblehead charm to swim farther down.

     The headache that was fairly minor until then, along with the general feeling of being slightly sick, suddenly made its presence known with a renewed fervor. It wasn’t as bad as it was in the past thanks to his restful sleep, but it was a constant reminder that he promised to himself that he wouldn’t go too hard on himself.

     Conveniently, it seemed that the underwater tunnel sloped downward as well, and he was able to follow it instead of using his magic to continue the excavation. Whenever a particularly aggressive fish swam up to him to try and take a quick bite Harry blasted it away with a forceful deterrent of magic.

     This slower method of traveling the distance to Luda let Harry conserve his strength until he got to an area that suddenly dropped into a pit that that led straight down. There was another Soul Snare floating above the entrance catching dozens of smaller fish that were lazing about what Harry soon found out to be a warm patch of water.

     Do you think this will lead far enough down? Harry asked Luda before risking getting close to the truly titanic creature above the hole.

     Luda thought about the question while measuring the distance between the two of them. You’ve moved a little bit away from me, but if the tunnel goes far enough down then you might be able to just loop back towards me once you descend. She told him.

     Taking that for the affirmation that he thought it was, Harry skirted around the edge of the large snake-like creature before swimming down the hole. Almost immediately, Harry was hit by a wall of warm water the closer to the hole he got. When he actually descended into the hole itself, it forced Harry to cast a cooling charm once it got to the temperature of a hot tub.

     The gloom from the green liquid that dominated the previous area was replaced by a pitch-black darkness that caused Harry to have to cast a Lumos to be able to see which way he was going. Continuing down, the water would have felt like it had gotten even warmer if Harry hadn’t already cast his cooling charm. The cause for the increase in temperature presented itself when the darkness gave way to a dull orange glow of active magma battling against the cooling forces of the water.

     Never having actually seen magma up close before, Harry still had the sense that everyone who’d ever heard about knew that it was incredibly hot. Why it hadn’t cooled down and solidified, he had no clue, but getting closer to it was out of the question when he noticed the bubbling water that formed a sort of loose dome around it.

     Luda? Harry called out to the lady he was trying to rescue. Are you inside an active volcano? He worriedly asked her. There’s magma starting to appear and it’s making the water very hot.

     Well…what’s a volcano? I don’t recognize that word. She asked. If you mean the red glowing stuff that’s very hot? That’s all over the lower reaches of the Spitting Dragon’s territory. Luda replied to his question. I don’t really know where I was taken after the creatures took me to study, but if there is that red stuff then I guess I could be in what you called a “volcano”. She went on. At the bottom of their territory is a massive field of the “magma” but I never spent much time down there in the past because it was too hot for my liking.

     That bit of news was a bit of a shock for Harry. He wasn’t sure how much magma would be in this field that Luda mentioned, but it was probably a whole lot more than this little trickle he came across. Also, he’d learnt in their conversations that most fish were smaller than Luda with only a couple of the larger Soul Snares coming close to her length but not her mass. Those only lived in the depths of the deeper parts of the ocean though and so he needn’t worry about running into one of those.

     Wait, what are Spitting Dragons? He asked already dreading the similarities in naming conventions between worlds. If they were what he feared, then getting to Luda might be a more difficult task.

     They are a little bit smaller than me, and they have two arms and a bunch of tentacles that propel them through the water. Luda started explaining. My kind call them Spitting Dragons because they spit rocks similar to the red glowing fields they live in to heard prey animals into the depths and injure or kill them from range.

     Harry’s fears started sinking into his gut as the information was slowly confirmed.

     They can still bite and tear with their claws and teeth, but they prefer to injure their preferred prey, the Claw Screamers, before risking getting injured in return. Luda went on. Judging by the size you are, they shouldn’t see you as anything interesting, just don’t try and get close to them or they’ll chuck a blast of rocks at you.

     She then warned, They are very territorial and the only reason they don’t hunt my kind is because our hides are too tough for them to penetrate. That, and they like a bit of fun if the prey is dangerous to them.

     Gulping, Harry found the confirmation words to double check with Luda. So being small is good, just keep my distance from them and I should be fine.

     You’ll be fine with the hotter temperatures? Luda asked. I don’t want you to pass out in the heat if it’s too much for you. She worried.

     I’ve got cooling magic so that shouldn’t be too much of a concern. He replied before continuing his journey downwards.

     The gradual stream of magma soon gave way to a wider river along with creatures more adapted to the hotter climate. Scaled lizards, rays, and shriveled-looking fish inhabited this area, but it was the Teleporters that drew most of Harry’s attention since he had to avoid them. There weren’t as many as there were near the other alien facility and the area was more wide open that he was able to skirt around the edges of their range.

     He eventually entered a wide-open chasm that was dozens, if not hundreds of meters tall. Everywhere he looked he saw the dull orange or red glow of slowly shifting magma mixed with the still shapes of cooled clumps that formed mountains, stalactites, or stalagmites.

     That was when he heard the sound that was hauntingly similar to the Hungarian Horntail from his fourth year. A deep bellowing roar that could only come from a creature of truly monstrous size came from above the large structure dominating the center of the cavern.

     Quickly ducking down behind a pillar of cooled magma, Harry listened as the roar tapered off. Feeling like his cooling charm wasn’t being as effective as earlier, he cast it on himself again to calm his racing heart. Another exhalation from the massive dragon came immediately after his spurt of magic.

     Unbeknownst to Harry, it wasn’t just Luda’s race that seemed to have a trace of magic in them on this planet. When he cast the spell to cool him down, it was like a beacon had flared into existence in the underground cavern that drew the attention of the Spitting Dragon.

     Snapping its head in the direction of the flare of power, the adult Spitting Dragon gave a territorial bellow. Waiting a moment for the trespasser to reveal themselves or acknowledge the challenge, the wait turned out to be too long its patience. Now giving a roar of anger, the Dragon charged the pillar that the trespasser flared their power behind.

     The ear piercingly loud shout of anger was five times louder than the first two casual roars that Harry had heard. Clamping his hands over his ears, Harry’s senses went haywire as his equilibrium was thrown off by the sickness and the deafening noise. Cringing behind the pillar, Harry didn’t notice when the Spitting Dragon turned the corner and glanced down at him.

     It was only when a dark gloom covered the little light that Harry had when he finally looked up to see what was blocking it. He looked up into the eyes of something that Earth had no equal to.

     The face was similar to a crocodile’s, but no crocodile had glowing internals deep in their throat. An armored chest with bioluminescent scales dotting it on the way back to an assortment of tails that stretched longer than a dragon’s wingspan back home. It also had two massive, clawed arms that were thicker than an elephant’s body and sail fins along its back like a sailfish.

     Four, glowing, yellow eyes looked down at Harry in obvious anger as it locked its gaze on him. Opening its mouth for what Harry assumed would have been another bellow, he was taken by surprise, although he really shouldn’t have been, when it launched a volley of molten rock in his direction.

     Gasping in panicked shock, Harry raised a hasty Protego spell which blocked the first impact, but which also sent him flying backwards. This did have the benefit of launching him out of the way of the dozen other projectiles following it, but that just seemed to spur the giant dragon on.

     Moving with more grace than anything that big should have any right to be able to do, the Spitting Dragon closed the gap that Harry started to make with his propulsion magic. With great sweeps of its powerful arms, the Dragon reared its neck back to launch another volley of magma at Harry.

     Throwing up an Aguamenti in the path of the hurtling liquid rock, the two forces clashed briefly before the greater size and power of the Spitting Dragon’s magic overwhelmed Harry’s hasty attempt. Despite this momentary setback though, the Spitting Dragon seemed to grin down at the still terrified Harry.

     While not as smart as Harry or Luda, the Dragon still could acknowledge the idea of fun. It was one of the reasons why it only chose to go after Claw Screamers, they put up a fight if they managed to get close. Everything else was a boring meal to go after and it would have gotten bored of Harry after a couple minutes of scaring him out of its territory if Harry hadn’t fought back.

     Now, with the prey managing to hold its own against it, the Spitting Dragon grinned in joy. It wouldn’t be anywhere close to being even a snack once it ate Harry, but the thrill of the hunt was now on, and it wouldn’t stop for anything.

     With water spells not having any noticeable effect, and many of his others simply bouncing off the Spitting Dragon’s spell resistant hide, Harry was relying on transfiguration to try and force the creature to back off. Unfortunately, whenever he thought he might have had some success, the Dragon showed its combat experience and quickly adapted to the new magic Harry threw at it.

     Throwing caution to the wind, Harry decided on a new course of action and pushed himself right toward the Dragon as fast as he could. After chasing after him for the past while, the new approach took it by surprise when the prey charged it. The momentary lapse was just what Harry needed to be able to juke out of the way of a massive claw arm and spiral out the underside of the Spitting Dragon.

     Turning around to look at where the small creature had went, the Spitting Dragon suddenly felt a small pressure on top of its head. Curling its eyes upward, it saw the small being pointing one of its arms, the ones that could launch things at it, directly at the top of its head.

     Recognizing it had been outmaneuvered, the Spitting Dragon relaxed its body to show submission to the creature that had beaten it. Normally this behavior would only be shown towards others of its own kind, but this would be a fight that the Dragon would eagerly look forward to winning next time.

     Seeing no more hostile moves from the Spitting Dragon, Harry chanced a step away from the creature’s head. When it made no move to follow him, he swam as fast as he could up the slope of the cavern entrance to the comparatively safer waters of the underground river.

     Harry’s entire body hurt from the exertion of the fight and the sickness that had taken a hold of him. When Luda checked in on him, it took him a little while before the connection registered in his brain.

     Are you alright Harry? She asked. Spitting Dragons don’t normally go after small prey, and I was just as shocked as you were when it attacked you. Luda told him.

     Calming down his racing heartrate, Harry found what he suspected the answer to that question was. I think they can sense magic and that’s why it went after me. He replied. That just leaves the question of how I’d get past them to get to you. How close am I to you? Harry asked her.

     During the fight, I’d say you were only a little bit higher than me, but still a slight distance length wise before you’d get to the enclosure. She informed him. It’s the closest you’ve been so far, but again, we need to somehow get you past the Spitting Dragons. Luda told Harry.

     With that dilemma to think over, Harry made his exhausted way back towards the alien facility on the surface to recover his strength before they’d try again the next day. It gave them plenty of time to think up something useful or tricky against the titanic Spitting Dragons.

Chapter Text

     Arriving back into the lava zone, Harry kept his eyes open for the massive Spitting Dragon that had intercepted him the last time. Keeping up his mental communication with Luda, Harry used it as a waypoint for the rough direction he needed to go in. Whenever he made a wrong turn and started drifting away, Luda would inform him to turn back.

     The constant dull gloom that the lava was lighting up the underground caverns with was creating an eerie atmosphere that wasn’t helped by the seeming absence of the Spitting Dragon from the day before. It was utterly quiet in the colossal space, and it was starting to drive Harry paranoid just waiting for something to happen.

     Robotic Teleporters occasionally spotted Harry and he fended them off with extreme prejudice, but they were small fry in comparison to the true apex predator he wasn’t looking forward to seeing again. Green-scaled lizards that looked like a distant cousin of the larger Spitting Dragon roamed the lower reaches of the caves but wisely kept away from the wide-open spaces that Harry was inhabiting for fear of the same creature he did.

     Harry himself didn’t wish to stick to the edges of the caves as the vast majority of the other creatures seemed to do. If he did that then he’d have to contend with those same smaller predators that he’d compared to the Spitting Dragon. And they were clearly predators when they actively hunted the rays, smaller fish, grubs, and spat smaller versions of the fire rocks that their larger cousins spat.

     So far, the lack of distinct roars coming from said Spitting Dragons was getting increasingly worrying. It was too quiet for something that large to simply not make any noise. Spotting a large mound in the center of one of the caverns with alien technology poking out of it in various places, Harry went to investigate it.

     There was a corridor that was showing signs of imminent collapse, but which was clearly artificially created which led deeper into the mountain. Using his magic to reinforce the walls and ceilings, Harry ventured deeper into the alien structure. The temperature spiked up noticeably even through his cooling charms and Harry was soon drenched in sweat as his magic kept what was likely an instantaneous death from heat if he wasn’t shielded.

     Luda had no idea what the structure he’d come across was for, and so couldn’t contribute much other than that Harry was still some distance away from her and that this wasn’t where she was being held. The alien hallway eventually ended in a perilous bridge over a lake of lava that connected to a building which was suspended over it.

     There was a see-through shield that looked similar to a doorway, but which was different to the forcefields Harry had gone through in the other facilities. Swimming over to it, Harry gently pressed is hand, still covered in the full-body bubblehead charm, against it. The shield had no resistance, and his arm went straight into the building.

     Harry was shocked at the instantaneous relief at feeling a temperature that was drastically different than the outside that he had been swimming in. Quickly swimming inside, Harry’s cooling charm, combined with his drenched in sweat body proved too cold and he canceled it so that he wouldn’t freeze in the airconditioned alien building.

     The sound inside was deafening compared to the unnatural quietness of the lava fields. Machinery of all kinds were either moving, humming, scuttling, or hissing as they performed their various duties. Small spider-like robots scuttled back and forth lugging materials or fixing various pieces of technology that needed maintenance.

     Nothing actively prevented him from going further into the facility, so Harry started exploring the ramp downwards. Luda was watching through his eyes inspecting the pieces of technology that were so much more advanced than she’d ever seen. Stuck as she was in her aquarium, Luda had never got to see much more than the few gateways or computer consoles that the aliens used before they left her alone.

     Even though Harry himself had never visited one before, the alien structure was very reminiscent of what he remembered factories being like back on Earth. There were assembly lines creating all sorts of things that neither Harry nor Luda had any clue as to their function, but there were no actual aliens themselves besides the robots.

     Exploring the facility eventually yielded an impressive room with arcs of lightning snapping between pillars behind an actual locked forcefield. Deeming the room to be slightly too dangerous and unnecessary to go in since he could see it was a dead end, Harry left it alone and prepared to head on back outside.

     While what the aliens were making certainly seems interesting, I think I should just focus on getting you out before I fiddle with anything else. Harry told Luda as he made his way out of the factory/power station.

     They do seem to have made many things when they were here, but I do agree that we will have time for them later. Luda agreed.

     Putting up his full-body Bubblehead charm and casting a full-strength cooling charm, Harry swam out into the boiling water surrounding the facility. Swimming up the now reinforced hallway that he’d fixed earlier, Harry was soon at the exit of the central cooled lava pile in the middle of the cavern. That was when he looked straight into three sets of four eyes and the grinning faces of three Spitting Dragons.

     Shit! Harry swore along their bond as the center Spitting Dragon launched a barrage of molten rock in his direction. Jetting himself to the side to avoid the initial blast, Harry felt his heart skyrocket before dropping when he looked into one of the other Dragon’s jaws just before it snapped closed around him.

     Mercifully there was no glow of incoming fire from down the throat of the Spitting Dragon as it seemed to want to swallow him whole. The tongue was incredibly rough as it tried to push him further along its neck to start the digestion process.

     Pointing his wand at the rear of the Dragon’s throat, Harry cast a Bombarda at it which had immediate results. The creature coughed, propelling Harry at great force out of its mouth which he took to his advantage to propel himself upwards and away this time. That seemed to have been a move that the other two weren’t expecting since they had formed a circle around him but hadn’t considered blocking off the top exit.

     Furious roars came from the three Dragons as they gave chase and spat more balls of flaming rocks at him. Defensive spells were barely able to handle one dragon, so having three after him was a hopeless situation if he tried to shield himself. Instead, Harry was using all of his skill and experience as a Quidditch player in this underwater arena to dodge the multiple deadly Bludgers sent his way.

     Despite his skill however, it was still three on one, and these Dragons had home field advantage. They knew where they could box him in to get him to an area where they’d be able to pin him in place. Harry was eventually cornered in a small crevice with the three grinning Dragons blocking his escape.

     Unbeknownst to the four combatants, but known to Luda, Harry had been unintentionally herded closer than he’d ever been to her, and as a result, her mental projection could be emitted much stronger than normal. Tapping into Harry’s own unique magic to give her an audible boost, Luda shouted at the Spitting Dragons.

     “LEAVE HARRY ALONE!” Her voice echoed around the cavern as a visible wave of energy left Harry’s mouth. Grabbing at his throat at the unnatural feeling of his muscles being used for a feminine voice, Harry was also pained a little at the force of the unexpected magic that came from him. Bending over in a fit of coughs, Harry couldn’t directly see the results of Luda’s spell/shout.

     Harry!? Are you ok!? Luda quickly asked in concern at the human’s reaction. She’d seen the magic actually physically propel the three massive Spitting Dragons away from Harry, so she figured she’d have a moment to check on Harry.

     It took a moment for Harry to recover but he responded positively. Yeah. Thanks for your concern, Luda. He told her. Grinning sardonically through their link, Harry asked, Maybe a little warning first would be nice?

     Oh you! She sent back. I was getting scared, and I had to try something, your own spells weren’t having much impact, and you were outnumbered. Luda told him. I’d rather you get injured than have to see my savior get killed without me being able to do anything about it. She confessed.

     Harry was quick to reassure Luda that he didn’t mind what she’d done. Hey, I’m glad to stay alive as well. He said before taking stock of his surroundings to be on the lookout for where the Spitting Dragons went.

     Looking up, Harry could see all three of them had been launched into the sides of the cave walls and that gave Harry enough room to make a break for it. The Spitting Dragons may have been taken by surprise by the attack, but the sight of their unique prey making a break for it shook them into action.

     Quick! Luda, which way? Harry frantically asked. He was starting to feel the strain of the sickness eating away at his reserves as he desperately used his magic to defend himself.

     Luda didn’t hesitate as she already felt just how close Harry was. Forward, left, and down! She sent to him as Harry began his escape.

     Harry slipped into a massive depression in the cave floor and through a gap before the cavern widened out again. Immediately after though, the sweltering heat he’d felt from the walls surrounding the factory hit him full force as he entered a vision from hell.

     A massive lava lake was being fed by enormous streams of molten rock that formed their equivalent of a waterfall. The angry roars of the Spitting Dragons could be heard in the distance behind him as they found the gap too small to fit through. That didn’t give Harry too much room to relax though as the very environment itself seemed to be trying to actively kill him now.

     Casting cooling charms since his life now depended on it, Harry swam through the boiling water away from where he’d come. Luda kept guiding him deeper and deeper into the pits of Hell as she encouraged him that she could feel him getting closer.

     There was one final obstacle between him and her though. A nesting Spitting Dragon was lying directly in front of the alien facility that Harry could see at the other end of the cavern. And judging by the eggs incubating in the lava around her, Harry had just stumbled across a mama, and he was the intruder.

     Releasing a furious bellow at the creature that wasn’t her mate, the Spitting Dragon rose from the lava and launched a volley of rocks at Harry. From the greater distance though, Harry was able to easily dodge them and that was when he noticed something.

     The mother dragon would not stray more than a body’s length from her eggs and the cavern was wide enough that Harry was able to skirt along the edges to get to the alien facility. Dodging the occasional volley of molten rocks was easy compared to the three creatures he’d just escaped from and pretty soon he’d reached the entrance.

     There were two forcefields blocking Harry’s path. One of them was the standard one that led into the factory that seemed to keep temperature and water out, and the other one was the type that kept solid objects out and which he needed to use an unlocking spell to open.

     Rushing up the ramp to give no time to any potential aliens that might respond to the break-in, Harry ignored the lights coming on around him as he searched for Luda. Various other hallways branched off to his sides, but the most prominent entry was directly in front of him. That seemed to have been confirmed when Luda informed him of which direction he needed to go in. I should be right in front of you and a little bit down. She sent as he encountered another forcefield that he disabled.

     The hallway led down a ramp which Harry then saw led into a pool of water. Wasting no more time and suspecting this was what he was searching for, Harry jumped in and was met face to face with a creature that was almost twice the size of one of the Spitting Dragons from outside.

     “Harry!” He heard in his mind and from the creature’s own mouth in front of him.

Chapter Text

     “Luda?” Harry gasped at the sight of the creature before him. Her face took up his whole vision, but it wasn’t because she was so close. Well, she was close for a being of her size but that was still over a dozen meters away from him. That was when she did something totally unexpected for Harry.

     “Harry! You’re real!” She shouted with joy before collapsing the metal balcony that he was standing on and rushing toward him. Harry had no time to react, thanks to the close distance, before he had a multi-thousand tonne leviathan crashing into him.

     Despite her enormous size, Luda knew instinctually that she’d have to be extremely careful of Harry since he was so small compared to her. The raw emotion of seeing another sentient being instead of a hallucination though was testing her restraint.

     “You’re real! You’re real! You’re real!” Luda kept sending over and over again as she snuggled the small human against her snout. Pushing him toward the sandy hill in the center of her prison, Luda deposited the smaller creature before curling around him as tight as she could. “You’re not a hallucination!” She let out in relief as she saw him interact with the environment of her enclosure.

     “Of course I’m real Luda.” Harry sent back. “I’ve been talking to you for the past couple of days, haven’t I?” He asked her.

     “You don’t understand how happy I am to see you.” Luda sent. “It’s been, I don’t know how long since I’ve talked to another person besides myself.” She cried out in relief again. “Several times I’ve thought I’ve found another sentient being to talk to and it just turns out to be a hallucination!” Luda told him.

     Harry reached out to one of Luda’s massive tentacles and gave it a firm squeeze. “Luda.” He began. “I’m real and I’m getting you out of here.” He firmly told her before breaking out in a fit of coughs.

     “Harry?” She asked him concerned. “Do you need help?” Luda offered. “If you’re suffering from a sickness I can try and give you a bit of a cure, but my ability to give full doses was damaged earlier in my life.” She told Harry.

     “Wait, so you’re hurt also?” He asked her. “I’ve got magic though, maybe I can help you?” Harry offered.

     Luda gave her species’ equivalent of a smile toward him. “It’s a kind offer, but we’d have more luck just getting you the full dose from one of my children if you can help me hatch them.” She told him. “I don’t know all the details since I’ve been stuck in here, but the prior aliens that were studying me brought in plants and animals from all around the area to provide for my needs.” Luda then went on.

     “There are several plants that my young need to be in the presence of in order to hatch. If you could bring some here, my young will be able to give you a full cure for whatever is ailing you.” She told him.

     “Ok, what kind of plant am I looking for?” Harry asked before giving a lesser cough than before after Luda had breathed a watery orange mist at him. He still felt sick, but it wasn’t as bad as before. Now it just felt like a minor annoyance.

     “I’ll try and show your mind what the plants look like.” Luda offered before Harry felt a slight increase in pressure on his head as she showed her memories of what the plants looked like. She also showed where she last remembered seeing those plants.

     Harry was shown a blue and purple bush, mushrooms growing on trees, black and purple stems with yellow growths on them that looked like eyes, glowing green stems, and a transparent blue plant being held up by green roots. “Ok, and your kids can’t hatch without these?” He asked.

     “No.” She confirmed. “I wasn’t aware I was carrying young before the aliens brought me to this facility.” Luda started. “Normally I would have gathered a collection of the plants and brought them to a nest for my eggs to absorb their properties, but I couldn’t do that from in here and the aliens couldn’t understand my communication attempts with them when I tried to explain that my young couldn’t hatch without those plants.”

     “Alright, well, I’ll be back with some samples of each as soon as I can.” Harry told her and began swimming up toward the surface of the water. Before he could get far however, Luda swam up in front of him.

     “Harry, before you go!” She interrupted and opened her massive mouth before extending a tongue that would make any dog jealous of how big it was. Again, Harry wasn’t expecting Luda to do such a thing and he was thoroughly licked before she backed away.

     Grimacing at the slime coating his body, Harry looked back at the bashful face before him that wasn’t looking him in the eye. “What was that for?” He asked.

     “My mental abilities might not be able to extend further than the cave outside this structure, so I won’t be able to protect you as well.” She began. “That lick should be a big enough warning to other creatures out there that you are mine!” Luda possessively snarled.

     Harry blushed a little at that before thanking Luda. “Thanks. I’ll try and make this quick.” He told her and went back to swimming out of the body of water that Luda was contained in.

     Emerging back onto dry land, Harry was able to take in more of the alien building he’d rushed through on his way to get to Luda. Just like the other buildings, this one had intricate designs in its walls, floors, and ceilings, and it seemed to function as more than just a facility to house Luda. He gave a quick look at the stored items behind thick glass before looking through the rooms along the sides.

     Nothing was of note besides a few rooms with arches similar to the ones that had originally sent him to this planet, but which were powered off. Another thing was a massive set of pipes delivering fresh fish to Luda’s enclosure, but the final thing was what made Harry’s heart clench.

     An enormous room filled with eggs of all shapes and sizes in various states of forced hatching. It was clearly forced because there were lines along them that were too straight to have been broken open by a newborn and instead looked like a machine did it.

     Thankfully Harry didn’t see any of Luda’s species’ eggs in that room, but that was before he encountered the final room above the entrance he’d ran up through. Inside a glass case was something that utterly infuriated Harry.

     A miniature Matriarch, which Harry instantly knew had to have been one of Luda’s children, was lying dissected on an exam table with robotic arms still poised above it. Wielding his wand with venom he hadn’t felt in a long time, Harry obliterated the tank holding the unborn child and reverently picked it up.

     Finding Luda’s plants could wait until he delivered this precious treasure back to her. She deserved to know what had happened to one of her children and he’d make sure to inform her. He also found the remains of the child’s egg and picked that up as well.

     “Luda.” Harry cautiously sends over the telepathic link the two of them have. “I found one of your children in another part of the facility and I’m returning them to you.” He tells her.

     “Oh, well thank you Harry!” She excitedly tells back. “I was wondering where they’d taken the sixth one that I’d laid and now we’ll be able to hatch all of them together once you bring the plants back.” Luda told him.

     “Luda…the aliens forcefully removed your child from their egg.” Harry regretfully informed her.

     “WHAT?! Why would they do that?!” She exploded in rage and jumped into the connection to look through Harry’s eyes at the sight of her child being carried back to her. Instantly, she wished she hadn’t seen what remained of them.

     Luda let out a choked noise through the connection and Harry stumbled as the feedback smashed into his body. “Harry… I need you to stay with me for a little while before you go looking for those plants.” She requests through the link.

     Harry, still connected deeply to Luda through the telepathy, could understand exactly how she was feeling and had no difficulty agreeing to her request for company. Luda doesn’t quite break down dramatically with the return of her dead child, but there is a somber atmosphere in the room as she hovers over the corpse that had been preserved for hundreds of years.

     The only sound heard is the quiet hum of the alien pumps, Harry’s breathing, and Luda’s deep rumbling breaths through her gills that sound strained. After a short while, Luda turns back toward Harry.

     “Thank you for returning her to me, Harry.” She tells him. “If you could go find those plants now, that would cheer me up to see the rest of my children break free of their shells.” Luda reminds him of his original quest.

     “I’ll be back quick.” Harry nods to her and heads back out of the enclosure. There’s nothing besides various alien computers in the rest of the building which Harry has no idea of how to interact with. With the arches powered down and with not a clear way to open them, Harry steps past the glowing green center pillar and the scuttling robots to head back into the Lava Lakes.

     Looking out into the boiling water above the shifting melted stone, Harry can see the nesting Spitting Dragon still curled around a couple of eggs. The facility forcefield that keeps the water and temperature out isn’t soundproof though and the Dragon looks up at the sound of his footsteps approaching.

     Preparing himself to make a wide berth around the protective mother again, Harry slowly makes his way outside. Immediately, the heat of the environment smashes into his cooling charm and he can start to feel sweat buildup again. Quickly using his Aguamenti spell to propel him as fast possible, Harry keeps far enough away from the Spitting Dragon that it only turns its’ head to keep a set of eyes on him as he departs.

     Emerging through a break in the cavern roof, the temperature drops significantly now that Harry is no longer in an oven. It’s still hot but his cooling charm isn’t failing every other minute and needing to be recast now.

     There is no sign of the three Spitting Dragons that had attacked him earlier and Harry doesn’t wait around for them to make an appearance. Getting out of the cavernous room, however, turns into more of a task as he looks for the location he came in from. He doesn’t wish to spend longer down here than he needs to and propels up a valley that is sloping upward.

     The valley shows no sign of ending, so Harry assumes it is just another way out of the lava zone. There are still aggressive lizards that attempt to go after him, so Harry has to blast them away while continuing his journey upward. Several teleporting robots turn in his direction but other creatures that are more along in various states of sickness draw more attention than Harry’s partially cured state that Luda had given him.

     As he goes up, the light from the lava starts to dim and he’s forced to cast a Lumos charm to see where he’s going. It doesn’t take long before a different and much calmer light begins showing up before him. Instead of the angry reds and oranges of the lava zone, a relaxing blue glow from a type of liquid waterfall emerges before him.

     Upward ever onward, Harry finds himself in a room truly majestic and deserving of the term alien for he’d never seen anything like it on Earth. A massive underwater tree stretching hundreds of meters from floor to ceiling stood before him surrounded by hundreds of wailing blue rays.

     The tree had glowing pink studs along its branches in place of leaves and nestled throughout were huge transparent blue shapes that had something inside them. There didn’t seem to be any predators in this peaceful location, so Harry investigated the tree closer. Inside the blue transparent shapes were snake-like beings that looked like smaller versions of the Soul Snare creature that roamed the halls of the green river he’d been in.

     Without any evidence of the type of plants he was looking for, Harry soon left the calm tree room before abruptly finding himself back in the river area he’d just been thinking of. Now knowing that he could go into the lava zone multiple ways, Harry searched about the river for the plant that Luda needed.

     It didn’t take long before he did find one and he carefully extracted it from the ground together with its roots so that he wouldn’t kill it in case Luda needed a live sample to hatch her eggs. After that, Harry wandered the river for a natural exit which he suspected the place to have since the creatures hadn’t died of starvation if they were actually trapped in a cave. That was when he turned the corner and saw one of the Spitting Dragons chasing an enormous eel with claw mandibles on its face.

     The two creatures were roaring ferociously at each other, but the Spitting Dragon was the bigger fish. Despite its size advantage, the Dragon was being careful of the white eel and instead launched fire balls at it in order to herd the eel deeper into the river. The eel kept trying to lash out at the Dragon but had to dodge the fire balls that were launched at it and pretty soon Harry lost track of them as they descended to a deeper depth, likely going back to the lava zone.

     “ROOOAAARRRR!!!” Came from directly behind Harry and he swiveled about with his heart hammering at thousands of beats per minute. Looking back, Harry caught sight of a massive mouth of teeth that would engulf him whole before suddenly slamming shut.

     Harry sped away from the mouth that hesitated to eat him which he recognized as another of the Spitting Dragons. Surprisingly, the Dragon didn’t pursue him and was instead casting its gaze about the hall as if looking for something. It was then that Harry remembered that Luda had coated him in her scent, and he figured that the Dragon recognized he was under a bigger creature’s protection.

     Or would I be considered her property? Harry joked in his head. Still, he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth and quickly sped away from the creature that looked so much bigger in the river than anything else. If not for Luda, these Dragons would be the largest creature he’d seen, followed up by those eels and then the Soul Snare.

     Speaking of the Soul Snare, Harry encountered it again on his way out of the river, but just like the Spitting Dragon it didn’t take any interest in him. Once outside he found himself in a dark environment with exactly the kind of plants that Luda asked for.

     The purple and blue bushes were in many different sizes ranging from a house plant to bigger than a house. A type of electric eel swam about the area but wasn’t interested in investigating Harry, so he picked up one of the smaller bushes and attached it to a conjured rope that he’d tied the first weed to.

     From there, Harry spent the rest of the day searching for the remainder of the plants in the shallower regions of the planet above the lava zone. He found the eye stalk-looking plants as well as mushrooms and crown-looking plants in areas near each other and he saw more evidence of the incredible diversity of creatures this planet had to offer.

     Whale-like fish with tentacles and actual reefs growing on their backs swam high above him and he also saw more of the white eels that the Spitting Dragons were hunting. Rays of all kinds and innumerable fish swam past in massive colonies and Harry had to remind himself that he had to free Luda and her children first before he could take in all the wondrous sights of the planet.

     With all the plants he needed, Harry made his way back toward the entrance to the river he’d exited from. At its entrance though was a Soul Snare that was three times the size of the one in the river and Harry had to adjust his size guesses he’d made earlier. Luda was still the biggest, but the Soul Snares and eels had swapped who was bigger now that he knew what an adult Soul Snare looked like.

     Luda’s protection still held strong for him up until he made it to the lava zone. There, the Spitting Dragons were busy eating several of the eels but stopped as they felt his magical presence in their territory. After not finding any evidence of the creature that had laid claim to the interesting prey, the Spitting Dragons had a bit of a rethink.

     The human magic user probably faked being under a bigger creature’s protection so that they wouldn’t bother him. But they hadn’t seen that kind of creature in hundreds of years and had forgotten about it. So, emboldened at realizing their prey should be easy again, the Spitting Dragons abandoned their meal to once more go after Harry.

     Luda, feeling Harry’s presence coming back to her after she’d sent him on his quest, realized her hope for her children was in danger again. Reaching out through her connection with the human magic user, Luda exhibited her maternal rage at the beings indirectly attacking her children.

     “I’VE ALREADY LOST ONE CHILD! I WILL NOT BE LOSING THE REST OF THEM!” She screamed through Harry’s voice and sent a combined blast of her magic and his own which slammed the titanic creatures into the walls to clear the path. That just left the nesting one which left Harry alone since he wasn’t coming close to it.

     Once Harry was inside, he ran straight up to her pool and jumped in to go swimming up to the location of where Luda’s eggs were. Planting the plants in a semicircle around the eggs, Harry looked up at Luda.

     “How long do you think it will be before they…” He began only to be interrupted by the sounds of cracking. Emerging through the eggs that were as big as him, Harry saw one of the cutest sights he’d ever seen… baby Matriarchs emerging from their eggs.

Chapter Text

     Harry was spellbound as he watched the little creatures breaking the shells they’d be dormant in for several hundred years. Well, calling them “little” was all in one’s perspective. Comparing them to himself, the babies were massive but if you compared them to their mother, the babies were tiny.

     Luda herself couldn’t withhold the joy at seeing her children finally hatch after so long and gently lowered herself to nuzzle against them. Chirps and clicks native to Luda’s species were exchanged between the six of them as Luda was too distracted by her children to provide translation for Harry’s benefit.

     Harry’s attempt to sit down and let the overjoyed mother have her time with her children was noticed right away, however, and Luda snapped out of her tunnel vision. “Harry! You have no idea how thankful I am for your help!” She gushed her praise toward him. “You’ve given me more than I could ever imagine after I’d resigned myself to being trapped here forever!” She cried.

     Feeling a little hot under his collar at the praise, Harry attempted to deflect a little. “I mean, I couldn’t just leave you here when it was within my power to help you.” He then remembered his original goal of getting down here as well as the more concentrated cure that the hatchlings had available. “Do you think I could get that cure for the sickness I’ve got?” Harry asked.

     “Oh! Yes, of course! Children, I need you help Harry here, he’s done an awful lot to help us, and it would be only fair that we thank him properly. He’s got a sickness that I need you to help him with.” She told her newly hatched children.

     “Are you sure they can understand you?” Harry asked. “I mean, they are only a couple minutes old. Don’t they need more time to develop?” He asked Luda.

     “Oh no, we can understand you and Mother just fine Uncle Harry.” A new younger girl’s voice said in his head. “We can hear things in our shells before we hatch and while we don’t understand all the things in the world at our hatching, language is intrinsic to us when we first break free.” She told him.

     “What Thelxinoe said is true, but we really should be helping you as Mother said.” Another girl’s voice stated. “Uncle Harry, please stay still for a bit.” She asked him as the five baby Matriarchs circled around him.

     They then released a bit of orange goo from their mouths, which Harry, having grown accustomed to potions in the Magical World, could recognize the intention behind the act. Letting the potion or salve sink into his skin, Harry’s remaining lethargy evaporated almost instantaneously, and he felt rejuvenated.

     “Thank you so much for the clean bill of health.” Harry earnestly told the baby Matriarchs. “However, there’s one more thing I need to do for you before I can rest myself.” He began.

     At those words, Luda’s eyes grew wide, and she asked, “Wait, you mean?”

     “Of course.” He replies. “I meant what I said when I told you I’d be getting you out of here.” Harry told his audience.

     “Are you sure you can?” Another of the Matriarch hatchlings asked. “Mother spent so much time and energy trying to break out and she never even made a dent in the material.” She told Harry worriedly.

     “Aglaonoe don’t question Uncle Harry’s abilities!” One of the other Matriarchs chided. “Obviously Uncle Harry has powerful magic to get down to Mother for a creature that lives on the surface, so let him do his thing…whatever that might be.” She trails off uncertainly.

     “We may have heard a couple of your conversations with Mother, but we couldn’t jump in fully to see what she might have seen through your eyes.” The fifth and final Matriarch added at the end.

     Having been called “Uncle Harry” by the newly hatched children, Harry was feeling pretty self-conscious but now he felt he had to show off a little bit for his “nieces”. “Well, you’ll be able to see what I can do in a minute.” Harry told them. “But first, what are all your names?” He asked. “I heard Thelxinoe and Aglaonoe, but what are the rest of you called?” He asked them.

     At being asked what their names were by their wonderful “Uncle”, Harry was mentally bombarded by excited squeals. “I’m Pisinoe!” One of them stated while pointing her flipper at herself. “I’m Raidne!” Another stated before the final one told him her name. “And I’m Himerope, Uncle Harry!”

     “Well, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you all.” Harry smiled at the younglings which inspired more squeals of delight from them as they attempted to match his facial muscles to smile back at him. “Now, I need to make a channel to get you all out of here. Are you all able to withstand high temperatures and will the Spitting Dragons attack you?” He asked the group and Luda in general.

     “Our hides should protect us from the melted rocks and my own presence should deter the Spitting Dragons as I’m much larger than them and I’m not quite in Death’s Cave yet.” Luda told him.

     “Even against multiple?” Harry asked. “I can try and tunnel a different way out of here.” He offered.

     “Just make the hole for us and then the six of you can ride in my tentacles.” Luda began. “That will also help with speeding up our travel if I don’t have to limit myself to my hatchlings or even your own speed, “Uncle” Harry.” She teased him at the end.

     “Mom!” The voices of the quintuplets groaned as one. “Uncle Harry wouldn’t be that slow and neither would we.” Thelxinoe boasted.

     “I don’t doubt any of you could swim quite fast, but can you do this?” She stated before swimming away so fast that the sand that had been piled evenly around the room was washed away in her wake to be flung against the far wall. The current nearly pulled the six of them with it if not for the alien incubator that they’d managed to hold onto at the last moment.

     “Well, maybe we can’t.” Raidne began. “But I’m sure Uncle Harry can do just as impressive things as you can Mother.”

     “That’s what I’m here to do now.” Harry told them before approaching the wall that was closest to the exit into the Lava Zones. Going more towards the top of the wall because he didn’t wish to open up a tunnel straight into the lava, Harry began weaving his Transfiguration into shifting the alien structure aside.

     Luda, who’d only ever seen this magic second hand, gaped at seeing it in person. The indestructible alien facility that she’d spent so long trapped in was no match for Harry’s spells which seemed to melt the material away.

     The Matriarch children, however, were not quiet in their awe at their “Uncle’s” powers. Cheers and exclaims of “faster” and “what about this? Could you melt this also?” were badgered toward him as he made his slow progress out of the building. He would have gone quicker if not for the interruptions, but he didn’t mind taking the time to indulge in the children’s curiosity. Besides, Harry still had to make it wide enough for Luda to squeeze through as well.

     A couple hours later, Harry finally broke through into the Lava zone and the seven of them were blasted by the intense heat coming from the new source of water that flooded and mixed around them. Harry had to recast his cooling charm and when his “nieces” asked what it was Harry indulged them with a cast as well.

     Luda swept the lot of them into her tail tentacles and Harry knew that they wouldn’t become unstuck from the suckers unless Luda herself let them go. She made good on her promise of going fast through the Lava Lakes and the Spitting Dragons could only squawk in surprise when she went thundering past them. Harry hadn’t managed to widen the tunnel he’d originally made to come down into the Lost River, but Luda was able to find an alternate exit and they soon arrived in an area littered with ghostly trees and electric eels.

     Suddenly stopping at seeing the open ocean for the first time in centuries, Luda almost doesn’t hear it when Harry asks, “What’s wrong?” Slowly turning around to look at the little creature that granted her freedom and her family in such a short time without expecting any kind of reward, Luda broke down fully as the emotions hit her hard.

     “For the first time in forever, nothings wrong!” She lets out before cuddling with her children and Harry in her tentacle coils. The children, loving the care and attention, squeal and laugh at their Mother’s playful actions and demand to be let go.

     “Stop it Mother, that tickles!” Pisinoe whines.

     “Never!” She playfully jokes back before nuzzling even harder into them. Luda notices a Soul Snare hastily making its retreat at the sight of her size but pays it no more attention as she lavishes her children and Harry in her love.

     After a while of that, Luda eventually lets the six of them go and they lazily swim around for a bit, finally free of the underground space they’ve been trapped in. Luda herself pledges that she’ll never go near another cave again for the rest of her life unless it happens to be one of her children or Harry’s homes.

     The quintuplets, not having much to do at the moment, insist on seeing more of “Uncle Harry’s” “cool magic” and the group of them are given quite the show as Harry runs them through what magic he’s learned so far. Most of the spells he went through were Transfiguration and combat Charms that he used extensively while on the planet and it took him a couple tries before he got the more mundane spells to work since he’d been out of practice for a while.

     Overall, the rest of the day proved to be a relaxed experience with the children playing around in the water and Harry creating various toys or interesting things for them to play with. Luda was swimming back and forth while finally stretching out her muscles for the first time in hundreds of years by being in an area that was big enough for her.

     The group didn’t stay just in that ghostly Blood Kelp zone and wandered around the different unique areas that existed above the submerged volcano. They couldn’t go visit the very shallow areas because Luda was too big, but for the most part the quintuplets were able to explore everywhere with Luda acting as a big deterrent towards the local predators.

     Eventually the group stopped off at the massive floating island that Harry had first come from. Luda was able to cling on to the underside as her children peeked their heads out of the water to observe Harry walking on land. Embarrassingly for Harry, he’d spent so long swimming underwater that he was all unbalanced when he put his feet on land and fell over.

     The quintuplets giggled at him, and he playfully made a show for their entertainment of hoisting himself back onto his feet. Once the five of them had finally tired themselves out for the day and nestled back in Luda’s tentacles with the various toys Harry had made for them, Luda asked Harry a question.

     “What are you going to do now?” She quietly asked him. “You’ve done everything you said you were going to do to help me and even helped hatch my children. Is there anything I can do to help you now?” Luda asked Harry.

     The question took Harry by surprise. Ever since he’d come to this planet and encountered Luda’s mental projection, Harry had been single-mindedly striving towards the goal of getting her out as quickly as possible. It was very similar to the end of year adventures he’d had at Hogwarts before he went home for the summer.

     Now, however, he’d done what he set out to do. He’d rescued Luda and her children but there wasn’t a magical train to take him home this time. For the first time in weeks Harry could think about what had led him to this alien planet and the realization that he was stuck here.

     “I…” He began. “I don’t know.” He admitted to Luda. “I came here in a rush because my Godfather had fallen through an alien portal, and I jumped in after him.” Harry told her. “The thing is though, that portal doesn’t work anymore and so I’m stuck here because I don’t know how to fix it.” He finished.

     “And he’s dead.” Luda voiced. “Otherwise, he’d have been with you.” She surmised.

     Harry felt tears well up in his eyes at the reminder, but he’d had enough time to process his Godfather’s death that he didn’t break down. “Yeah.” He choked out in a voice he thought would have been more stable.

     Luda pulled one of her tentacles onto the floating island and pulled Harry into the water. Reflexively, Harry cast his Bubblehead charm before his head touched the water before Luda looked him right in the eyes.

     “Harry, you can have more than one home.” She offered. “The good will that you’ve given for my family and I will never run out and I’d be happy to share this world with you to make a home on.” Luda told him. “Whatever you need, I’ll help you get it if its within my ability to help you.” She told Harry seriously.

     Harry finally felt the tears breaking out a little more forcefully and grabbed onto Luda’s face to pull himself into a hug with it. Letting out shaky breaths, Harry only kept mumbling “Thank you” over and over again as Luda wrapped one of her tentacles to keep him pressed up against her.

     The next few days, Harry spent more relaxed knowing that the family of Matriarchs wanted him with them, and they took to exploring the areas of the underwater volcano that Luda hadn’t seen in several hundred years. This included visiting the large alien facility on one of the permanent islands that Harry had initially started digging down from.

     “Everything looks weird in here.” Himerope commented as she gazed through Harry’s eyes at the interior of the alien building. “What’s that thing in the corner there?” She asked as he ascended one of the walkways while looking for anything worthwhile.

     Turning toward it, Harry walked up to it and attempted to understand what it might be. “Well, it’s a machine of some kind, those are artificial constructions that allow species to have things done that would be more time consuming if they did it themselves.” He replied. “It sort of looks like a console of some kind, but none of the buttons do anything when I press them…” Harry started to say until another of the quintuplets interrupted him.

     “Wait stop!” Aglaonoe requested when he started to turn around toward. “Go back up to it, I heard something.” She told him and he dutifully went back over to the alien console. “Press that thing again.” Aglaonoe asked him.

     Harry went to press it but he himself couldn’t hear whatever the Matriarchs seemed to have heard when he did. “What did you hear?” He asked them after they’d been silent for a while.

     “It said Quarantine Enforcement Procedures are no longer required as Kharaa levels in local environment have decreased by five hundred percent.” Raidne told him. “What are Quarantine Enforcement Procedures?” She asked.

     “And what’s Kharaa?” Himerope bluntly tacked on.

     “Quarantine Enforcement Procedures probably have to do with keeping things contained or keeping things out.” Harry told the passengers looking through his eyes. “As for what Kharaa is, it might have been the thing that was making me sick before I got to your Mother and you five hatched.” He guessed.

     “So now that my children have hatched and are spreading their general healing globs out into the water, this “Kharaa” is dying off.” Luda summarized. “Would that change anything with regards to the alien building you are in?” She asked Harry.

     “Ooh! Go press more buttons!” Thelxinoe excitedly demands of him. Harry’s body jerks as the five eager Matriarchs push their own magic through the mental connection trying to get him to go find more alien buttons to press.

     “Girls don’t be pushy!” Luda reprimands them and Harry quickly regains control of his body after the initial struggle.

     “Sorry Uncle Harry…” The quintuplets apologize.

     Harry chuckles at the excitement they had before responding. “I forgive you, but in the future just ask nicely and I’ll try and show you things if they are safe.” He tells them. With that, Harry adventures around the alien facility while pressing buttons for the Matriarchs to listen to whatever signal is being sent out that he can’t hear.

     Several times the information that gets relayed goes well over even Harry or Luda’s ability to guess what it means. Scientific readouts or research information that is much too complicated and which Harry would probably need Hermione hear to make heads or tails of what it might mean. Eventually though, he reaches a pillar in a place that looks like a throne room of some kind.

     On that pillar is a single button that Harry goes up to press to see what message the Matriarchs will be able to pick up. An alarm accompanies the message that Luda reads out for him.

     “Quarantine Enforcement Tower shutting down.” She tells him as the lights in the building start going dim.

     “Ooh! Use your light magic now!” Raidne exclaims once the room is almost too dark to see in.

     “No, press the button again and see if it does anything!” Pisinoe requests.

     Harry does both instead. Casting a red Lumos, Harry does a short circuit of the room before pressing the button again. The message of the facility powering up this time comes before Harry figures it probably isn’t needed if the disease that was probably being quarantined here is on the decline.

     Walking back out of the building, Harry is met by the family of Matriarchs that are inspecting the darkened exterior of the building from underwater. There are not many more interesting things to do here besides look at some unpowered portals on the outside and one inside. Without anything further to do, the seven of them swim off to go do more fun things with the children.

Chapter Text

     “HARRY!” Neville and the members of the Order of the Phoenix shouted in horror as they saw the young boy jump into the Veil of Death after his Godfather. Everyone that had been fighting in the room paused as the realization that someone had willingly jumped into the Veil.

     The fight proceeded much more aggressively than it might otherwise have happened once the Order of the Phoenix members realized that Bellatrix Lestrange was the last Death Eater still mobile. Instead of escaping relatively unharmed, a beaten and battered Bellatrix stumbled out into the entry hall of the Ministry of Magic as her pursuers were hot on her tail.

     Voldemort arrived just as he planned to in order to show off his return to Wizarding World at large, but instead of the grand spectacle he hoped to show off, he was wracked by an immense pain. Doubling over in a similar way as his loyal minion with the pain that she was in, Voldemort was soon fighting for his life as an enraged Order of the Phoenix bombarded him and Bellatrix when they came into the hall as well.

     With Dumbledore’s arrival to the hall as well as several Aurors, Voldemort realized he’d miscalculated. His escape route was blocked off by his crippling pain preventing him from Apparating out before the Aurors brought up their Anti-Apparation wards and the Floo terminals were being guarded by the members of the Order of the Phoenix.

     Snarling in hateful anger at seeing the jaws of defeat closing in around him once more, Voldemort fought through whatever was causing him excruciating pain to lay terrible curses at the Headmaster. Unlike what might have happened in another timeline though, Dumbledore had backup which helped him negate Voldemort’s deadly curses while also managing to subdue his one remaining follower.

     A stunner from Dumbledore finally brought Voldemort to defeat when the pain caused the Dark Lord to stumble. The sudden cessation of spells was deafening in how quiet the Ministry had become as they watched in awe the Defeater of Grindelwald taking down another Dark Lord.

     Dumbledore himself looked shocked and confused first towards Voldemort and then finally towards his own wand. How did that happen? He asked himself. The prophecy was clearly meant for either Harry or Neville to take down Voldemort. So how did I manage it?

     A sudden rush of the Aurors moving to more completely subdue the Dark Lord snapped Dumbledore out of his musing. Working to coordinate the capture of the remaining Death Eaters left in the Department of Mysteries, Dumbledore’s hands were quite full, and he wouldn’t have time to ruminate on that conundrum until hours later.

     Learning of Harry Potter and Sirius Black’s deaths from falling into the Veil of Death, Dumbledore made plans to regretfully inform Harry’s friends once they emerged from the Hospital from recovering from their wounds. It would be several days before he could do that however, so he decided to try and interrogate the captured Lord Voldemort.

     Arriving at the heavily guarded Ministry holding cell, Dumbledore requests an audience with the prisoner. Figuring that the man who’s now held in a higher esteem to know that he was telling the truth all year long despite the Ministry’s attempts to silence him, the Aurors grant him the interrogation guessing that he’s finding out how Voldemort came back to the land of the living.

     Sneering up at his hated foe, Voldemort glares angrily without saying a word. Magic suppressing cuffs are chained to all his limbs and a heavy collar is around his neck which connects them together while being anchored to the wall.

     “I find myself at a loss of words to how to address my question for you Tom.” Dumbledore admits.

     The Dark Lord silently rages at the Headmaster for calling him Tom, but keeps his mouth stubbornly shut.

     “You see, while your forces initially came here to retrieve the prophecy for you to hear in its entirety, I myself know the full contents of it.” Dumbledore went on. “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…” He offered to the shocked face of Lord Voldemort.

     “The wording of the prophecy heavily implies that you marked Harry Potter as your equal when you murdered his parents when he was a baby.” Dumbledore informs his former student. “Now, with your capture at my own wand, I’m confused about the prophecy and how I managed to defeat you.”

     “You didn’t defeat me.” Voldemort finally sneered back. “I was under a great deal of pain when I arrived at the Ministry and wasn’t able to focus my spells.”

     “And why were you under this pain?” Dumbledore questioned. “Severus told me your resurrection ritual went perfectly and that you’d managed to bypass Lily’s protection on Harry.” He stated confidently now that the Dark Lord had no hope of ever returning to tyranny.

     Growing angered at the traitorous double agent, Voldemort refused to answer Dumbledore’s question and instead asked one of his own. “And how is the little Boy-Who-Refused-To-Die?!” He snarled.

     Dumbledore felt a pang of failure at knowing he’d gotten another promising life cut short but told Voldemort what happened anyway. “Young Harry chose to follow his Godfather into the Veil of Death after Bellatrix shot Sirius through it.”

     At that news, Voldemort felt like certain dots finally connected in his head. No! He couldn’t have been a…?! Voldemort internally gasped. That’s why I was debilitated? Because one of my Horcruxes was being destroyed? He asked himself.

     Still, Voldemort couldn’t reveal to the Headmaster anything about his Horcruxes or else he’d truly be done for. Hearing the news of his prophesied defeater willingly jumping into the Veil of Death did bring a smile to his face though. “I guess we can now change his name to something more appropriate?” He taunted Dumbledore.

     While the barb certainly hit him, Albus knew that Harry’s sacrifice had done something to Voldemort to allow the forces of good to finally put an end to Tom’s reign of terror. Sending a lament to Harry’s soul to enjoy his next great adventure, Albus addressed Voldemort’s taunt. “Regardless of your mocking of the dead, Harry’s sacrifice enabled us to finally catch you and its only a matter of time before we find out how you came back from the dead.”

     “If you think my method could potentially bring back your little student, you’ll only waste your time as he’d need his body present and he’d have to have been alive for my own way to work.” Tom Riddle sneered.

     Hearing the reluctant truth in his failed student’s words, Dumbledore left the imprisoned man to start working out the “who, what, when, where, and how’s” of how Voldemort had come back from the dead. Albus had no desire to rip Harry away from his next great adventure by bringing him back but would still mourn the loss of a life that hadn’t had a chance to enjoy all that life had to offer in this world.

     The summer started up with more details about the events of the “Battle of the Ministry” as the media were calling it. Voldemort’s reappearance and subsequent defeat and capture took many by surprise. Finding out that Harry Potter and Dumbledore had been right made the country as a whole guilty for trying to squash the warnings.

     The arrest of several high-ranking members of the Wizengamot that had been caught wearing Death Eater regalia and had previously been cleared of wrongdoing in the Department of Mysteries alongside escaped prisoners of Azkaban further shocked the nation. Many were looking back on trials that had seemingly been rushed at the end of the first conflict with Voldemort in a new light and asking about potential corruption in the system.

     Voldemort’s arrest itself and subsequent trial had been a huge spectacle for Britain. With the previous method of Voldemort’s defeat only known to the late Lily Potter, and the Veil of Death out of commission, the method of execution for the feared Dark Lord had turned to Dementor’s Kiss.

     Albus Dumbledore’s defeat of Voldemort took more spotlight than the students that had rushed protect an unknown item from said Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries and Harry Potter’s death was practically overshadowed. The defeater of two Dark Lords held an interview where he tried to bring light to those that had paid the ultimate price in helping bring down Voldemort, but the spectacle that many had seen in the atrium quickly overshadowed anything Dumbledore had to say.

     This had a negative effect on the survivors, mainly Harry’s friends from Hogwarts. Having endured many of the same poor treatments from members of the Ministry and now seeing their friend pushed off into the shadows as another casualty in a war that wasn’t theirs to fight but which had been forced onto them, those that stood with Harry made several vows over that summer.

     Nevile Longbottom vowed to show more of an interest in government to help clear out the corruption that had seeped into the system. With the acquisition of a new wand, Nevile made stark progress in proving an adept wizard that people were now starting to take more serious.

     After Madam Umbridge was fired from her position at Hogwarts, Ron Weasley became the leading student of Defense Against the Dark Arts in his pursuit to not fall short of his allies’ needs when it came to fighting evil force again. While he’d considered going into professional quidditch in his early years, the death of his best friend hardened Ron into striving to make the world a safer place.

     Ginny Weasley was of a similar mindset to Ron when she thought about going into quidditch after Hogwarts, but now she’d been persuaded to follow her brother into combat related jobs. Instead of a simple Auror though, Ginny would be focusing on joining the legendarily hard to enter Hitwizard/Hitwitch corps.

     Luna Lovegood had been shaken at the death of one of the few students that had seen the Thestrals as she could. Harry had started to become her first true friend since she’d started Hogwarts, with the masses generally dismissing her wilder claims. Now she’d gained a harder view of the world with her friend’s deeds being forgotten by the rest of the nation. Working with many muggleborns that had been persecuted in the past, Luna vowed to revamp Britain’s media system with facts taking priority over sensationalism.

     Hermione Granger was particularly devastated at the loss of Harry Potter. While not harboring any romantic feelings toward the boy, she’d nevertheless developed a strong bond with the wizard that had saved her in her first year at Hogwarts.

     Helping stop Harry stop Professor Quirrell in first year, getting the message about the Basilisk to Harry in second year, helping free his Godfather Sirius Black in third year, sticking with him when everyone thought he’d put his name in the Goblet of Fire in fourth year, and now the events that had taken place this past year had solidified Hermione’s bond of companionship with Harry Potter.

     Now, thinking back to the events that had happened in the Department of Mysteries and the quiet report of Harry’s death in a room called the Death Chamber, Hermione was asking herself questions. She’d been unconscious when Harry had died, so she didn’t know the facts herself, but what she did have was a firsthand account of what happened in there.

     Asking Neville Longbottom about what he’d witnessed in the Death Chamber was made easier when Hermione was given access to a Pensieve in her sixth year for her outstanding grades in the classes she was taking. This device allowed Hermione to see things from Neville’s point of view without the chaos of the battle distorting his recollections.

     The Department of Mysteries is a notoriously secretive section of the Ministry of Magic and anything they researched was almost never talked about. That changed though with the Battle of the Ministry of Magic shedding more light on the place.

     Apparently, the Death Chamber, and the Veil at its center, was used in the past as a means of execution for particularly dangerous individuals who couldn’t be left alive. The criminals were pushed through the Veil’s archway and never came back. This led people to calling it the Veil of Death as no one alive ever returned. Once the pact with the Dementors had been sealed, the Prison of Azkaban took over handling dangerous individuals and providing executions when needed and the Veil of Death was discontinued as a means of getting rid of criminals.

     Doing more research as she was focusing on her sixth-year studies, Hermione came across every known usage of the Veil of Death as a means of execution. What she found was that it had been used only as a means of executing the vilest of criminals such as serial murderers or dark lords that had amassed too much power to risk letting them get out and continue their evil deeds. Because such individuals weren’t a high percentage of the population, the Veil of Death only ever handled a single person at a time.

     Harry jumped through right after Sirius though. Hermione thought to herself as she read that. Could the Veil have only had a certain level of power to take people and Harry overloaded it? She questioned.

     Unfortunately for Hermione, apart from the information that she’d found, the Department of Mysteries rarely publish their findings for the general public. Items like Time Turners that she’d used in her third year were heavily restricted and few knew about them. That was one of the reasons that she needed to keep it such a secret in her third year and seeing as how she’d shown them to Harry, Hermione figured she couldn’t trust herself to not tell someone else about them without risking getting caught and punished. So, she’d turned hers in at the end of the year.

     The setback of failing to find out more about the Veil of Death didn’t close the doors on Hermione’s investigation though, it only delayed when she’d be able to access that knowledge. This led her away from her original goal of trying to go into politics and change the world for the betterment of muggleborns, to research and development in the hopes that the Unspeakables would recruit her. Hermione vowed that she’d find out more about what had to Harry after he’d jumped into the Veil of Death and why it seemingly shut down immediately afterwards.

     Hermione’s single-minded focus actually caught the attention of those she was looking for faster than she thought. On the two-year anniversary of her friend’s death, Hermione was approached by a grey robed individual with an invitation to join the Department of Mysteries immediately after she graduated.

     Shocked at the unexpected speed at which they’d come to her, Hermione took several days going over the various secrecy vows and oaths the Department required of her before she felt confident that it was the career she wished to focus on. With her friends from Hogwarts going out in their own fields, Hermione started the specialization on what she herself wished to study in the Department of Mysteries.

     With Harry’s death through falling through the Veil, intense study had already been done on it as to why it might have failed. Spell tests, alchemical reactions, runic enchantments, everything that could be done by the Unspeakables had already been done by the time Hermione arrived. Hearing of the vast amounts of magic that Hermione only ever knew about based on theory, but which was actually practiced here, Hermione would have been deterred if she didn’t have a goal that she’d set out for herself before she started working here.

     She had vowed to herself that she’d find out what happened to Harry after he’d fallen through the Veil of Death. Even though people who’d spent her entire lifetime researching the Veil couldn’t find out much about it, Hermione knew that she’d be the first in her pursuit to finally lay her friend to rest.

     Looking over the notes that others had left of their research into the arch for what must have seemed like the thousandth time, Hermione finally caught onto something. Everything they tried was magical in nature! She thought to herself.

     Rushing back to the empty Death Chamber, Unspeakable “Athena” as she was now known as when dealing with the public, scanned over every inch of the Veil’s archway structure. Pulling up her knowledge of what was inscribed along its surface, she came to several conclusions.

     Many scripts of runes had been added to the arch as the Unspeakables studied it. If every one of those scripts was added as a means of researching it, could the original have been unmarked? She thought to herself.

     Looking closely at the structure, Hermione noticed minute gaps going along edges which formed seams underneath the runic carvings. This only further pulled her theory along the lines of the structure potentially not reacting to magical inputs.

     Returning to her research, Hermione went to the earliest known description of the arch that the Unspeakables described it as. The text described it as a smooth archway that emitted a faint hum and made no mention of any runic inscriptions along its surface, further letting Hermione know that they had been added later.

     An idea then popped into Hermione’s head about how the structure might be entirely mundane. Leaving her garb as “Athena” behind to better blend in with the muggle world, Hermione visited an electrical substation to listen to it.

     There was a faint hum coming from it as she knew there would be, and this started a chain of hypotheses to go through her head. If the Veil Archway is a mundane creation, that would explain why magical effects weren’t doing anything to it. She started. It doesn’t explain why it didn’t short out as other electrical devices tend to do when in the presence of magic, so maybe it didn’t run on electricity? Hermione theorized.

     Going to a local outdoors supply store, Hermione bought herself a generator to think about her theory. What if Harry’s quick dive after Sirius drained all the power that the ancient device had before it could recharge? She asked herself as she went about researching other methods of power.

     Arriving back at the Department of Mysteries and redonning her “Athena” guise, Hermione went back to the Death Chamber and started examining the archway again. Looking along the seams didn’t reveal anything Hermione didn’t already see in her first inspection.

     Apart from those small gaps, there was no evidence that it could be a mundane contraption to add to her theory. Pointing her wand at one of the gaps, Hermione used a prying spell to pull along one of the edges on the archway. No noises of straining material met her ears, but a visible pull in her arm let her know that her spell was connected to what she wanted it to.

     Switching over to a mundane crowbar that she’d purchased, Hermione tried that method with similar results. Frustrated at nothing working, she looked at the point she’d been pulling at. A small glint had appeared where the metal chipped into it, but so far nothing.

     Wielding her wand to try another method, Hermione tried a bit of Transfiguration but stubbornly the material resisted that as well. What’s this thing made of?! She thought.

     Pulling the rest of her supplies out of her expanded pockets, Hermione jumped in fright when a panel suddenly opened up on the floor between the columns of the archway. Looking back to the things that she’d brought, Hermione slowly started putting things away until the hatch shut itself once she put the generator away.

     Could it be…does it need a new power source? She thought to herself as she brought the generator back out and the lid opened again. Looking into the hole that had been revealed, Hermione spotted a dull faded green cube that was plugged into several wires that branched off into the floor.

     Disconnecting the cube from the wires, Hermione stripped back their connections to access the wires themselves. It seemed like standard metal wires that transmitted some type of power, so Hermione placed the generator inside the slot and connected its own wires to the arch’s.

     Pulling the cord to start the generator, Hermione immediately got results from the arch when flashes of light started emitting from the structure. Comparing what looked like a dying system to what the descriptions of the Veil used to look like, Hermione realized her little generator wasn’t generating the right amount of power to fuel the archway.

     Still, this is farther than anyone else has ever gotten! Hermione internally cheered. I just need to find something that can make more power than this cheap little generator. She thought as she watched the struggling light show from the arch. How much power do I need for it to replace whatever that cube managed to do though? She thought.

Chapter Text

     Quickly throwing up a shield, Hermione ducked behind it as one of the more powerful mundane generators she’d acquired started emitting a great amount of sparks and smoke. She was just in time as parts of the machine glowed cherry red before a small explosion blew parts off in all directions.

     Sighing in disappointment again at seeing the fluttering energy field of the Veil of Death shut down once more, Hermione crossed off another item from her board of ideas. She still was convinced that the Veil needed a source of power that wasn’t magical in origin, but she was running out of things to try.

     After the simple gas-powered generator she’d bought had died, Hermione had gone to find more advanced models to try them as well. With the Department of Mysteries still receiving a steady funding from the Ministry of Magic to study advanced fields, Hermione had the funds to splurge on this since she was the only one to actively use those funds.

     With the advantage of magic, most mundane things that you’d need money for was mostly spent on acquiring magical ingredients or potions while Transfiguration or Charms turned menial things into trifles. Most money ended up going straight into the pockets of the Unspeakables and wasn’t used too often, so even Hermione’s usage in acquiring expensive mundane generators didn’t put a strain on the money she had access to.

     The Unspeakables had no reason to inform the Ministry that they didn’t actually need the money they were being given but for once, Hermione was glad for this bit of corruption they hadn’t managed to clear up after Voldemort’s final fall. It was technically now being used for the purpose it was originally intended for, so Hermione didn’t feel bad about using it in her research.

     Going back to what she’d used the money to acquire, every single commercial generator she could get her hands on had been hooked up to the connection she’d found at the base of the arch. She’d even tried hooking up multiple together using knowledge of how to do that by scanning the minds of several electrical engineers.

     Hermione had brought in mundane vehicles and tried hooking up their longer lasting generators in terms of their engines but that hadn’t worked. She’d tried using clean energy sources such as a wind turbine that she could have enchanted wind blown at it constantly or at hurricane level speeds, but the Veil only continued to flicker. The same went with water powered gravity generated sources.

     It had now gotten to the point where Hermione had used up all easily available sources of power generation that a civilian could realistically get their hands on. The dilemma caused a roadblock that she wouldn’t be able to easily get around. Everything she’d tried, hadn’t worked, and now she was left with one of the few options that might have the power generation she needed but which was the most restrictive source on the planet.

     Nuclear power.

     It was without a doubt, the most powerful energy source that mundane humans had ever created but which was so heavily guarded that gaining access to it would be a major headache. Nevermind the fact of just how dangerous it was, Hermione’s need to bring it inside the Department of Mysteries and hook it up to the power receiver would be a logistical nightmare.

     What am I thinking? Hermione moaned internally. I can’t just pop over to a nuclear powerplant and steal a reactor. She kept on. Every nuclear state in the world would be up in arms as soon as the information that there had been a theft of nuclear materials occurred.

     Yes, getting into the powerplant would be easy with the use of magic, but that kind of a catastrophe with no physical evidence would immediately bring the mundane government’s attention toward asking if the magicals could help look for it. Hermione realized. Then I’d get thrown in jail for the rest of my life and I’d never be able to finish this research. She despaired.

     Could I build a reactor instead? She asked herself before immediately shooting that idea down. No, no, no. That would take too long and I’d just risk doing something wrong and end up giving myself cancer or something. Hermione thought. I need to find a reactor that no one would notice going missing and raising an alarm.

     The Soviet Union collapsed a couple years ago. She realized. Could there be something out there that has slipped through the cracks? Hermione asked before beginning her research on post-Soviet era nuclear reactor status’s.

     Her research would take several days to weeks off of her quest to find something to power the Veil of Death as she scanned the minds of nuclear engineers and scientists. While she knew she was by no means an expert on the subject, even getting a cursory education on it would help her before she progressed. Magic would then be able to help fill in a lot of safety issues that she’d need to worry about.

     Transfiguring lead and then making a transparent viewport for her eyes on a fully enclosed suit would solve many of her more pressing safety concerns. Layering feather-light charms on top of the materials would mean that she could make it as thick as she wanted in order to avoid any radioactive particles that could emit from the reactor.

     She still was working on finding something that could work for her though while she was learning more about nuclear physics from the reactor workers in Britain. Despite this search though, it seemed that every commercial nuclear reactor was tightly controlled and monitored even in the more corrupt areas of the world such as the former Soviet Union.

     That was when she hit a brainwave.

     What about non-commercial nuclear reactors? She posed a question to the mind she was currently sifting through. As the Legilimency probe worked its way through the man, Hermione found the information she had spent days and weeks searching for.

     Throughout the age of nuclear expansion, there had been several accidents on nuclear powered submarines and several of them had sank to the ocean floor along with their reactors. A couple submarines were way outside of her ability to safely reach them as they were hundreds, if not thousands of meters underwater and hundreds to thousands of kilometers offshore.

     While skimming the man’s mind, Hermione came across a bit of knowledge that the International Atomic Energy Agency had gotten upset at the cost saving measures of the Soviet Union when they scuttled the nuclear-powered submarine K-27 in only thirty-three meters of water. Instead of properly disposing of it in the recommended three thousand meters of water, the Soviets sank it in an inlet off the coast of Novaya Zemlya.

     This was exactly what Hermione was looking for. Apparently, the Soviets were having leaking issues from the reactor and instead of taking it out of the submarine to be replaced, they simply sealed it up after they shut it down and proceeded to forget about it.

     While the reactors weren’t reliable for the Soviets and they leaked, Hermione felt more than confident that she could repair the damage and get them back into working order with magic. The location made it enormously easy to simply make a portkey to the coordinates and dive down to the wreck.

     Arriving in the tremendously cold environment of Novaya Zemlya, Hermione had to cast a warming charm before heading down to the beach. Not particularly looking forward to diving into freezing water, Hermione took a couple moments to psyche herself up.

     “It’s ok. It’s just a little bit underwater.” She told herself before taking a step into the water. Casting a bubblehead charm so that she’d be able to breathe, Hermione finally dove into the inlet. She’d thankfully come in the summertime so she didn’t need to pound through feet of ice that might have locked the area off.

     The water was still bitingly cold to the touch, even with a warming charm and Hermione had no intention of staying here longer than she needed to. Because of the shallow depth, a light spell wasn’t needed until she gained access to the submarine itself.

     The years underwater hadn’t been kind to the hundred-and ten-meter-long vessel and obvious signs of corrosion were taking place but were actually better than if the boat had been above the surface. Hermione had no idea where the reactor core actually was in the submarine, so she headed towards the Fin on the top as she’d seen enough knowledge to know that’s where most people entered a submarine from.

     Despite their seeming disregard for proper decommissioning of this submarine, the Soviets had still welded all the human sized access points closed so she had to use a cutting charm to proceed further. Entering the narrow and unlit passageways of the K-27, Hermione lit a Lumos charm so that she could see where she was going. Thankfully, unlike most surface vessels, you could really only go two directions when you entered a submarine, forward and backward, so Hermione wasn’t likely to get lost navigating the unlit vessel.

     The corrosion to the parts of the submarine that weren’t designed to be exposed to saltwater for long periods of time was more extensive than outside. There were still some Russian words visible that acted as labels but as she didn’t speak the language, Hermione had no clue what anything meant.

     Having a general idea that most ships had their engines in the rear where their propellers were, Hermione headed towards the stern after opening another door with her magic. That was when she remembered that she was in a scuttled nuclear submarine, and she quickly re-transfigured her lead lined suit and remodeled it a bit to hug her body in the tight confines of the submarine.

     The door revealed a machinery room of some kind which housed a massive bulkhead that had the universal sign for radiation printed on it in bright yellow and red. Figuring this was what she was looking for, Hermione began making cuts along the hull of the submarine in order to pull the whole thing out. Magic made for quick work for something that would have taken hours or days to do the mundane way.

     Having cut the reactor core and its machinery away from the front part of the submarine, Hermione swam to the stern of the K-27 and started freeing it from that side as well. Not quite knowing all that she would need, Hermione cut off more of the submarine that looked like it was connected to motors of some kind. She knew she wouldn’t need the propeller itself, so she left the shaft, but when she was done, Hermione had a good third of the submarine chopped off.

     Trimming the unneeded outer shell off of the reactor and its components, Hermione also removed any inner workings like chairs, walkways, and connectors that led to other parts of the submarine. Once she’d done that, she was left with about a quarter of the submarine left.

     Since all the components were mundane in origin and no longer produced electricity that might flare if she used magic near it, Hermione shrank the entire structure down and added multiple featherlight charms to it so that she could take it out of the water. As soon as she was free from working underwater, Hermione cast Reparo after Reparo at the water corroded nuclear reactor.

     Years of decay started healing over but there were some things still on and inside the structure that Hermione realized were the Soviets’ solutions to prevent radiation from leaking into the environment. Figuring that she’d be best to leave those in place until she could get the whole thing into a warded chamber where mundane sensors wouldn’t detect a nuclear radiation leak, Hermione portkeyed the whole thing with her into her workplace in the Department of Mysteries.

     Ever since she’d expressed interest into continuing to research the Veil of Death, Hermione’s Unspeakable status as “Athena” gave her more amenities to keep her closer to her work. As such, Hermione was able to move a large portion of her office, along with a warded chamber that was now attached directly to the Death Chamber.

     Transfiguring all the walls into lead to prevent anything from getting out, Hermione then began the arduous process of removing the materials that the Soviets used to prevent the leaking reactor from spilling into the outside. While she was doing this, she also kept up her steady stream of Reparo casting until after a couple hours she’d returned the corroded mess into pristine nineteen sixties nuclear technology.

     That just left Hermione with one dilemma. “How do I start this thing and hook it up to the Veil?” She asked herself.

     Meanwhile, thousands of lightyears away, a much simpler project was going on. Harry was surrounded by five gigantic Matriarchs that were almost a quarter the size of their mother Luda now. The years spent exploring the areas around the underwater volcano had done enormous wonders for the formerly trapped mother, and her strength, which had been fading over the years, had grown back up with the large area she now had access to.

     Harry himself had fully grown up into his own adult body and the quintuplets were both amused and disappointed in how small he was. When he mentioned that he still technically had a way to change his size, the Matriarchs had demanded to know what it was.

     Over the years, Harry had spent a lot of time playing around with his magic and seeing what abilities the Matriarchs themselves could do. While they didn’t seem to be able to interact with his wand, he felt like there was still something that was missing that was more than just their telepathic abilities that they could do. They’d tried a couple things here and there, but when Harry mentioned a bit of magic called an Animagus transformation, they demanded he attempt it and show them.

     Unfortunately, Harry didn’t have access to the information on how to successfully do the magic. He remembered his godfather being able to turn into a dog, but Harry wasn’t sure if he would be able to figure out how to do it himself without any magical Earth objects.

     He’d ended up meditating on animal thoughts while focusing on Transfiguration since he thought that was the closest thing to the magic that he’d need. The Matriarchs themselves actually greatly helped with that process since they specialized in mental arts. It still took a long time, but finally after several years of careful exploration, Harry felt ready to take the final leap.

     “While I’m curious to see what animal shape you’d be able to take, if you are second guessing yourself on the safety of what you are about to do, its ok if you want to wait some more.” Luda encouraged gently.

     “No, I kind of do want to try it though.” Harry denied her. “I am a little bit nervous, but that’s just because we haven’t gone all the way through with this yet.” He told her. “Besides, I promised my “nieces” that I’d show them this and they’d be sad if I backed out now.” Harry grinned up at her.

     Luda tilted her head to look down at her bashful daughters that were conveniently ignoring her eyes. “Its not nice to pressure your uncle into dangerous things.” She rebuked them. They as one apologized, but Luda could still see in their eyes the excitement of Harry hopefully going through with it anyway.

     “Alright, I’m ready.” Harry told them and closed his eyes as the magic started to take hold of him.

Just putting this at the end here. The K-27 submarine does exist and is still currently at the bottom of an inlet.

The submarine is at these coordinates: 72°31′28″N 55°30′09.0″E

Sketch of Russia's first nuclear submarine, the Project 627/November class Leninskiy Komsomol (K-3). The features indicated are (1) torpedo compartment, (2) accumulator battery compartment, (3) central control post, (4) diesel compartment, (5) reactor compartment, (6) main machinery compartment, (7) electric motors compartment, (8) accommodation compartment, (9) aft compartment, (10) conning tower and (11) sonar antenna.

The K-27 was a modified November class submarine so its slightly different from the one in this diagram, but there is a picture of it sinking in the inlet that the Soviets took before they finished scuttling it. Hermione essentially took out everything from zones 4-6 on the submarine and Reparoed the crap out of it so that it doesn't leak radiation anymore and could function once she figures out how.

Chapter Text

     Walking out of her laboratory that she’d attached to the defunct Death Room that housed the dormant Veil, Hermione groaned in frustration at her lack of success she’d been having in trying to figure out how to operate the nuclear reactor she’d stolen from the scuttled Soviet submarine. Despite fixing the deteriorated mass that she’d brought, several things were making life difficult for her.

     The simplest thing was that everything was in Russian and one of the things that she wasn’t well versed in was that language, so she’d been carefully translating words and replacing their labels on switches and toggles that were on the machinery. But the biggest issue was that there were no operating manuals that had survived the scuttling of the submarine, or they were taken off prior, and so she had no way of understanding how things worked.

     This led to Hermione making some morally questionable decisions that could see her placed in Azkaban for an extended stay if word ever got out to the Ministry. Thankfully due to the Unspeakables’ highly secretive nature, she wasn’t at risk of being turned in by her fellows or even being audited by the larger Ministry.

     What Hermione had in mind was dangerous on so many levels, but she’d reached her wits end with the frustration at getting nowhere fast unless she wished to join a multiyear commitment to learning about nuclear technology. She was quite happy with what she was doing with magic at the time and so she needed to find a solution to her nuclear problem. That solution took the form in attempting to kidnap a nuclear scientist and having them run her device for her.

     Now, standing outside the Torness Nuclear Power Plant just outside of Edinburgh Scotland, Hermione was planning how she’d make her move. She’d read up enough about nuclear power to understand that she couldn’t just spell any random worker to help her with her project because she might get someone that had no clue what to do.

     Weaving Notice-Me-Not spells to avoid human detection, Chameleon spells to avoid cameras, Noise Cancelling spells to keep silent, and a special heat reflection spell that trapped her body heat inside to hide from thermal cameras, Hermione began her approach to the facility. Another application of a cooling charm prevented the heat reflection spell from overheating herself as she encountered her first bit of security for the facility.

     She wasn’t stupid enough to wait to apply her concealment until she was just outside of the facility, instead she walked down the road before coming to the gated and fenced parking lot outside the buildings. From there it was a simple case of equipping some dragonhide gloves and boots while climbing over the electrified fence. A security gate that mysteriously opened and closed without anyone visibly activating it would probably set off alarms and so she elected to go with the simpler option.

     From the interior service roads, Hermione followed signage that indicated several key locations that she wanted to try first. “Facility Control Room” sounded like a place where important individuals would be working so she headed there first. The walk took her through several doors that had cameras pointed outward but luckily there weren’t any looking at the door themselves, only the pathway to the door. She was then able to magically open the doors with a simple First Year spell and slip inside the building.

     Walking along the deserted hallways wasn’t too creepy since she knew that people were actively working in other parts of the building that was running with a gentle hum of electricity and air conditioning that she could focus on instead of the silence of her spells on her body. It also gave her a head’s up on if any workers or security were coming toward her in case she needed to stop to let them pass her.

     Several minutes of walking later, Hermione arrived at a door that was labeled as the “Control Room”. Not knowing if anyone was on the other side of the door, Hermione slipped a Department of Magical Law Enforcement Spy Optic that the Unspeakables had developed for them, onto the door in a corner. The device acted like a peephole that could be used to see through doors or walls without leaving lasting damage, but it could still be seen as a small eyeball on the opposite side, so Hermione put it in a corner of the door so that anyone that might be looking wouldn’t notice it right away.

     Placing her head up against the device, Hermione spied on about a dozen people at various desks and computers while they monitored readings and gages. No one was looking toward the door as they were focused on their work, so she removed the Spy Optic and silenced the door before opening it and slipping inside.

     From there it was a matter of silently slipping inside each individuals’ mind with a dose of Legilimency and finding out their expertise in the fields they knew about nuclear engineering. She couldn’t just settle for one person as she soon found out, because even though a lot of the mechanics were automated, each person had a slightly different skill set.

     Keeping her frustration at the plan growing more complex from getting to her, Hermione switched tacks to work out how she’d get a larger group to her secret project down in London. Kidnapping them was out of the question as that would create a massive panic amongst the Muggles if these men went missing. That didn’t mean that they had to go missing though.

     Comparing the information that she’d skimmed off the workers’ minds, Hermione picked four that she thought would be the most helpful to “convince” to come south to London. She’d spent long enough in the Unspeakables to learn certain “work arounds” when it came to compelling others to do your bidding, but muggles were infinitely easier to control than magicals.

     While an unskilled mage would probably resort to using the Imperious Curse to brute force an individual to follow the directions of their orders, that method was easily traceable due to the aftereffects it left on its victims. Victims could also break out of the curse if sufficient time had passed without the spell being reapplied, and since it was a high-level exhausting spell in the first place, most users of the Imperious simply used it once before disposing of the lackey.

     No, what Hermione was doing was more akin to surgery than the leash and whip of an Imperious. It took time to tie mental strands together, during which, most magicals with even a rudimentary skill in Occlumency would have detected it and pushed her out, but muggles had no such defense and Hermione had all the time she needed as she worked on the engineers covertly as they focused on their jobs.

     Sitting quietly in her corner of the room, Hermione wove false knowledge into the four minds while creating an elaborate illusion that they would think is pretend. Once she got the four of them to create a gap in their schedule to travel to London, Hermione made them believe they would be role playing controlling technology similar to Stargate. Unbeknownst to Hermione, that would be closer to the truth than she intended.

     The reason she had them believe that was because doing something that was close to the truth but spinning it in a fantastical way, would allow the subconscious mind to view it as such. This would allow Hermione to not need to worry about Obliviating the muggles which would have left further evidence of her tampering, which she’d be able to avoid by setting up her workspace in such a way to simulate a gaming environment similar to something like Laser Tag.

     Once Hermione could see evidence of how the engineers would hook up the reactor and run it, she wouldn’t need their further assistance as she’d be able to duplicate it with auto run spells. This meant that she would have to wait a little while longer for the engineers to get their time off, but she wasn’t in a rush anymore now that the hard part had been accomplished.

     Thankfully, getting out of the nuclear power plant was much simpler than getting in. Quietly slinking into an empty bathroom, Hermione apparated back to London to start work on setting up her “Stargate” for the engineers to run. To do that though, she’d need to get her project to an area that muggles would be able to access it. She wasn’t allowed to just bring muggles into the heart of the Ministry of Magic, so she had to get creative.

     Luckily, the Department of Mysteries had just such a tool for her to use. She’d need to head over to the Room of Doors and request the usage of one of the teleportation devices to link up with her Veil Room and a disused warehouse that she’d be sprucing up into an appropriately themed “Stargate” entertainment complex.

     After filling out the required forms, Hermione loaded up her door and began the process of hooking it up to the two location destinations. It would take some time to get everything ready, but the engineers weren’t going to get down to London until the middle of the next month.

     Meanwhile, many thousands of light years away, something a lot less stressful was going on in the waters of a currently unnamed water planet. Not quite knowing just what his Animagus form was, Harry couldn’t exactly tell the family he’d grown close to, what he was.

     That didn’t disappoint any of the younger ones though as he finally had a form that could keep up with them without having to rely on the usage of magic. His size, while not quite to the same level as the quintuplets, and certainly still much smaller than Luda, was big enough that they could play rougher with him without fear of accidentally squishing him.

     At first Harry was worried that his form might not be ideal for living under the water, but his magic seemed to have adapted to his current environment and had given him something with gills, much to his relief. His four flippers made for excellent maneuverability and his powerful tail actually made him faster than the Matriarchs who thanks to their multitude of tentacles, had much more drag than his streamlined body. They might have had better acceleration thanks to their paddle arms, but in terms of speed, he could swim circles around them.

     However, as he quickly discovered, speed meant nothing when the mischievous quintuplets could surround him and box him in with their larger size. Their tentacles could also latch onto him which made games of dodge and evade much more difficult for him when he had to avoid thirty-five of them.

     These new playful games took the family beyond the familiarity of shallower waters, like the underwater volcano he’d first arrived on, and out to deeper waters as games of chase developed between them. Harry reminisced that he’d sort of become a Snitch and the quintuplets were all Seekers trying to catch him.

     Through these fun times with the family, Harry got to explore more of the wonders of the planet without constantly worrying about having his magic on to keep him alive. His new form only protested if he went exceptionally deep, but most of the things that the family of Matriarchs needed to eat were closer to the surface anyway, so they rarely went down there anyway.

     Soul Snares ate similar foods to the Matriarchs, but the lack of civilizations overfishing or creating pollution meant that there was plenty of food to go around. The only thing the family along with Harry had to keep an eye on were the larger carnivores that had a glowing lure that they used to bring in prey to eat. They could potentially eat Harry in a couple of bites, but they seemed to stick to only striking at lone targets and the family proved a good defense in numbers, even without resorting to any magic.

     Other predators were more opportunistic, such as a large black snake-like creature that had frills along its head that could open up like a flower. It was similar to the Soul Snares in that it was mostly transparent but thankfully it wasn’t too keen on tackling someone like Luda who was still slightly bigger than it. The big snake looked curiously at the quintuplets and Harry, but a blast of telepathic force from the six Matriarchs sent it careening away in obvious pain.

     Most of the time that they were in the open ocean, predators stayed away from the larger members of their family, and thus Harry as well, but sometimes the family encountered creatures that were too simple minded to be easily influenced. One of those were the bellowing whale-like creatures that had reefs growing on them, and the other were a type of pink floating mass that looked like what he’d seen underneath the island so long ago.

     They reminded Harry of Jellyfish from back home now that he could see them when they weren’t stuck to a land mass. The floating jellies created a pink glow to the normally blue hue of the ocean and their large numbers formed a pink umbrella effect that blocked out the normal yellow glow of the local star.

     Interspersed with playing around and exploring the planet, both deep and shallow, along with the occasional island, Harry added in some things he’d experienced back on his home planet. The quintuplets, Raidne, Pisinoe, Thelxinoe, Himerope, and Aglaonoe were always excited about “Story Time” with Uncle Harry, and due to their deeper connection, Luda was able to start viewing direct memories of his to match the words he used to describe them.

     “Story Time” also included magic shows that Harry would have to revert back into his human form for. The kids would then playfully comment on how tiny and adorable Harry was compared to them and would rather embarrassingly call him affectionate pet names. The ribbing and teasing was all in good fun though, and Harry knew the siblings were still in their growth phase similar in many ways to human children back on Earth.

     “They won’t be fully adults for at least another full rotation around our star.” Luda told him. “Until then, yes their minds will find joy in just about anything.”

     “Don’t act like you aren’t enjoying this just as much as they are, Luda.” Harry smiled towards his largest friend. “Age doesn’t matter if you’re still having fun, and don’t think I haven’t noticed your curiosity whenever you peak into my head.” He teased.

     Luda looked bashful in her own unique way before rejoining the kids’ activities of playing around with the magic that Harry cast about the shallows of an archipelago they’d stopped in for that day.

     While he sometimes expressed sadness at the fond memories of his prior home, Harry was slowly starting to accept this new world as something to cherish and embrace. Unbeknownst to the family though, a portal that had previously cut out after an overload on a planet that connected to the gateway that had brought him here, had suddenly jumped back online.

Chapter Text

     Today is the day. Hermione thought to herself as she witnessed the final checks the team of nuclear engineers that she’d managed to compel into thinking they were in a complex game of creating an interstellar gateway to another world were doing. Once the engineers finished what they thought of as their “simulated” game of connecting the structure to its end point, Hermione would weave a complex illusion where they would believe that they’d come to the end of the game and would be thanked for participating before explaining that the next things to come would be in the sequel.

     The final preparations began and the hum of the nuclear reactor and all its inner workings with support apparatuses filled the room. Hermione looked toward the Veil of Death and was met by a rippling green surface that contrasted with the hum of the machines with its own sounds. Taking a minute to make sure that the power wouldn’t overload or splutter, Hermione then finished up with the compelled engineers and sent them on their way.

     After weaving a stasis spell around the nuclear reactor so that it would maintain itself without supervision, Hermione went to discuss her project with her direct superior in the Department of Mysteries. To actually see a member of the Unspeakables display any amount of shock would have ordinarily been impossible due to their concealing hoods and spells, but the stumble when they saw just what Hermione or “Athena” as she was known in these halls had done couldn’t be mistaken for anything but shock.

     “And you would like to continue your endeavors in exploring the intricacies of what might be beyond the Veil even though no one has ever come back before?” The Unspeakable broke out of their stupor. “We’ve tried sending test subjects and volunteers in the past to see what is on the other side, but we’ve never succeeded in bringing them back.”

     “I understand the risk.” Athena replied. “According to my own research after the Veil’s failure when Harry Potter threw himself into it, the Veil was most likely operating on a reserve power source that only had the ability to send and not receive.” She told him. “Now with a stable replacement, I believe I’ll be able to come back once I’ve explored the other side.” She explained.

     Her superior was quiet as they processed. After a minute they spoke up again. “How long do you plan to be “exploring” the other side?” They asked. “I’m only asking so that we can know when to label you as deceased if something goes wrong.”

     That was something Hermione hadn’t anticipated when she’d first planned this project. She’d been so focused on just trying to get the Veil operational again and had simply not considered there might be unexpected dangers on the other side. The nagging feeling that had been plaguing her during her work was that Harry might be alive on the other side but that she hadn’t considered the many dangers that might have killed him. Her work with the stable power source had convinced her that it was a simple matter of things not being able to come back, which made her dismiss the idea of dangers. Now her superior’s question caused a little bit of doubt to creep back in.

     Despite new worries being brought to the forefront, Hermione hadn’t changed her mind on what she was planning to do. Now she just needed to be more careful as soon as she stepped through the Veil and be prepared for anything.

     “Give me a month to conduct any experiments I might need, and if I can, I’ll come back to explain my findings at the end of that month.” Athena told her superior. “I’ll need someone to maintain the stasis spell on the reactor to keep it powering the Veil while I’m gone though.” She added at the end.

     Her superior gave a nod of their head. “That can be easily arranged.” They began. “A few fellow Unspeakables might wish to renew their studies on it now that you’ve gotten it back to working condition, but don’t fear, they won’t change any preset settings you created for it while you are gone.” They told her.

     “After that month, however.” The superior went on. “I won’t be able to enforce that protection if your official status is changed to deceased.” They told her.

     Athena gave a grim nod. “I understand.” She told them, and with that, the superior withdrew to a safe distance as they watched her approach the glittering green wall of energy that emanated from the Veil.

     Steeling her wand in her hand and bracing herself for anything she might encounter, Hermione plunged into the depths of the Veil of Death. Immediately after touching the surface, her entire body was sucked forward and a sound and feeling of rushing water flowed past her as the dizzying array of green light streaked past her.

     After what felt like an eternity, Hermione was spat out into a darkened room filled with architecture that was vastly more alien than anything she’d seen on Earth. Not taking more than a moment to see the layout of the room, Hermione cast a shield charm to protect against projectiles hurled at her, and a bubblehead charm to prevent any foreign gases from affecting her if any were in the room.

     Now in a more readied stance, Hermione took her time investigating the alien room she found herself in. Immediately, she noticed that there were no dead bodies of any humans before her which would have indicated if the portal was instant death to them. That initial confirmation eased a knot of worry in Hermione’s chest that she’d been expecting to see Harry’s and Sirius’s bodies as soon as she crossed over.

     With nothing of note besides the glowing portal behind her, Hermione decided to hold onto that hope that had blossomed in her heart at not seeing Harry on the immediate other side of the Veil. Casting a point me spell with the intent of trying to find her missing friend, that blossom of hope reared up when her wand pointed in a specific direction. Previously when she’d cast this spell, it only ever pointed to the Veil of Death. Now that she was on the other end of it though, the wand did not point back to where she came from.

     Following the hallway that was connected to the room she’d arrived in; Hermione went along the path her wand pointed. Almost immediately, signs of things clearly being not of human origin stuck out as she maintained her focus on her surroundings. She supposed they might have been made by other magical creatures, but Hermione’s theories were rapidly changing with more of the technology she glimpsed.

     Her theory was eventually confirmed when she came across a window that led to the outside. Light from a giant blue star illuminated the alien landscape of the planet she found herself on, and the two heavily mined moons that hung closer than the moon on Earth were the final bit of evidence that she needed to know that the Veil of Death was simply a transportation hub to other worlds.

     I suppose its sort of like the Floo travel, just more technological instead of magical. Hermione mused as she continued her exploration.

     She eventually found a doorway leading outside where she was able to witness more of the deserted civilization she stumbled across. Signs of an advanced alien race with all the hallmarks of needed infrastructure and buildings dotted the roads and fields she walked past. The only thing missing was the aliens themselves.

     As she continued onwards, Hermione also noticed that the only things that seemed to be moving on the planet were insects. No birds, no small mammals, no reptiles, nothing that could be explained easily. Plants seemed to still exist, but something had clearly happened to have caused there to be no large lifeforms to live on this planet.

     It couldn’t be the radiation from the star. Hermione thought to herself. Otherwise, that would have killed off the plants and insects as well. She went on. A disease might explain it, but that would have had to have been an extremely potent and well mutating disease in order to affect everything larger than an insect and to have not been contained by the aliens’ own medical efforts to develop a cure for it.

     Knowing she’d have plenty of time to explore the remnants of the destroyed civilization on future excursions, Hermione focused on the primary goal she’d given herself when she decided to come here. Ignoring the draws to her mind that wanted her to learn everything there was to know as fast as possible, Hermione refocused on the point me spell she had pulling her toward Harry’s position.

     Hopefully whatever disease killed off this planet of its larger lifeforms hadn’t remained to infect and kill Harry for her to find his shriveled corpse somewhere. She thought morbidly. That would technically give the Veil its name back if it transported people to a world they still ended up dying on though.

     Many hours of travel later, Hermione encountered the same colossal feature with its piles of dead bones before it, that Harry had found on his first venture on this planet.

     Moving past the wrecked or disabled war machines and the bones of the people they had slain; Hermione entered the building that the point me charm was indicating her towards. She had to climb a walkway before she emerged in a darkened control room where her wand then pointed to a very similar arch that the Veil of Death was designed like, but which was clearly a later model.

      Releasing a sigh of disappointment, Hermione gazed at the darkened and unpowered archway that her wand was saying Harry was in the direction of. “I don’t have another nuclear reactor on me that I can just plug in!” She groaned in despair. “Where am I going to find another power source that I can just plug in and get this to work?” Hermione jokingly ranted, not expecting her wand to shift its position and point off to a closed set of doors.

     Blinking, “It was that easy?” She asked herself.

     Casting an unlocking charm on the heavy door, Hermione was met with shelves filled with various bits of alien hardware and technology. Her wand seemed to point to the objects that caught her own attention first though, which were the glowing green cubes that clearly did not look safe to touch barehanded.

     Using a levitation charm on one of the cubes, Hermione brought it back out to the room with the archway her spell said Harry was in the direction of. Since she already knew from her experience with the Veil’s power source, Hermione quickly found the access port that opened up at her approach and accepted the new glowing cube.

     Without having to wait more than a moment, the archway lit up in its customary green glow and hum. Before she went in though, Hermione levitated another cube from the storage closet to take with her before she entered the portal. The same rushing sensation from the first time she went through one of these transporters hit her, but this time she was more accustomed to it and smoothly stepped off the pad at the other end.

     The cool temperature of the abandoned civilization’s previous planet was replaced by a wall of humidity and the cacophonous roar of a massive thunderstorm. Looking around, Hermione took note that she was thankfully underneath some kind of overhang and so wasn’t directly exposed to the elements, although some water was still pooling inside from the howling winds.

     Looking back at the still powered portal she’d come here through, Hermione set the glowing green cube down in a corner furthest from the rain and edged closer to the cave exit. There didn’t seem to be any large creatures that might make off with her cube or damage it, so casting an impervious charm to keep her clothes from getting soaked, Hermione stepped out into the intense rain.

     She initially thought the storm was just a regular thunderstorm since the local plant life seemed to be easily holding up, but once she stepped beyond the safety of the rocks, a hurricane force wind almost blew her into a tree. Only a nearby massive mushroom stopped her flight before it could take her that far, but the impact drove the air from her lungs and canceled the focus she’d put into maintaining her spells.

     The bubblehead charm and shield charm seemed to have been holding back the majority of the heat and humidity and with their loss, Hermione felt physically drained when it came to breathing. Getting knocked into a solid mushroom also contributed to that, and Hermione desperately recast her spells as she rested against the orange mushroom.

     I guess I should wait in the cave until this storm passes. She thought to herself. Choosing the wise decision of not standing up again, Hermione crawled back over to the cave to keep her body profile small enough that the wind wouldn’t send her flying again.

     Once back inside, Hermione recast the point me spell for Harry’s location. Her wand spun until it was pointing outside and downward. Now, she didn’t get a good view of the outside, but she figured it probably was pointing downward because she was on some kind of hill or mountain and Harry wasn’t. Leaning back against the wall and waiting out the storm, Hermione’s hope of finding her old friend buoyed her spirits as this endeavor would hopefully bear good fruit.

     When the storm finally settled, Hermione got up and left the cave to head down the mountain. She’d experimented with releasing the bubblehead and shield charm and so far, no poisonous gases hurt her lungs, it was just hot and humid here. Looking down the mountain, Hermione saw a coastline and reassessed she was probably on a hill since she wasn’t too far up.

     Bizarrely, Hermione’s wand still pointed in a certain direction and down once she got to the coast. Walking along the alien beach, Hermione finally reached the end of the land that she could walk on before the ocean continued on as her wand kept insisting that Harry was in this direction. Recasting the spell, just to make sure, Hermione squinted her eyes to see if there was another landmass that she could make out, but no, just a huge expanse of ocean.

     “Well, I guess I can’t expect him to have stayed in one place for several years if wanderlust took over on an alien planet.” Hermione talked to herself. “Still, that means I’ll need to find a way to get to him.”

     Returning up towards some of the trees higher up on the island, Hermione went about fashioning a fairly large wooden structure that could serve as an ocean-going vessel that she could ride on as she propelled it forward with magic. It took several hours as she stopped to check its buoyancy and balance, as well as sample a few of the local fruits that she checked for toxins before deeming them safe, before she was ready to journey off to go find Harry.

     Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any more storms on the horizon, but with the vast expanse of water that she could see and the two moons, Hermione figured she’d probably wind up getting seasick with the tidal pulls in her search. And ocean storms could pop up out of nowhere fast, so Hermione made sure she had a cabin to hunker down in when that time came.

     Out on the water, Hermione recast her point me spell every little while to recheck Harry’s position, but it still was pointing downward and away from her. Is he just so far around the planet that it’s curving downward? She thought to herself. Pausing her ship, Hermione stepped down to one of the ladders she’d made in the side and popped a bubblehead charm on herself to look underneath.

     Nothing but endless blue met her eyes. Pointing her wand downward, Hermione shot a magic bolt to check how far down the bottom was from her. She expected it to maybe be a couple hundred or thousand feet deep since she hadn’t sailed too far away from the island yet, but when her spell kept going until not even the light returned from it, a sinking feeling gripped Hermione’s stomach.

     Just how deep is this ocean? She mentally fretted. Gripping the ladder and hastily climbing back up, Hermione missed when the spell made contact with something far below. Hermione was too busy, terrified at not knowing how deep the water was, to notice she’d let go of the spell keeping her ship in place. In her panic, she missed the receding outline of the island until a bank of low fog obscured it from view.

     “Ok.” Hermione began talking to herself to calm down. “So, the ocean here is super deep. That’s fine.” She went on. “Right now, the seas are gentle, lets just keep going and forget about looking down for the next couple hours.”

     Gripping her wand and pointedly not looking at the downward direction it said Harry was still in, Hermione resumed her sail forward. Clutching a round fruit that she’d taken from the island and munching on it to help settle her nerves, her voyage continued for another couple of minutes in silence.

     Her peace and quiet was interrupted when her ship jolted, and her wand was jostled out of her grip. Standing up to go get it, Hermione was jostled again and a loud crunching noise sounded from the lower portion of the ship. Running after her wand and snatching it up, Hermione was then sent flying when the entire deck exploded out from underneath her.

     A loud hideous shriek preceded the arrival of something monstrously huge, translucent blue, and with multiple yellow eyes that smashed through her ship from underneath. “EEP!” Hermione shouted in fear and instinctually turned into her Animagus form as she flew upward and away from the horrifying creature.

     The serpentine hammerhead creature made quick work of what remained of her ship as Hermione flew as high as her owl wings could take her away from that creature’s reach. Feeling her heart hammering in her little body as she desperately gained altitude, Hermione had one thought in her mind.

     Just what the hell else lives on this planet?!

Chapter Text

     The logistics of raising five children would have been hard on any parent, but with a species that traversed in three dimensions instead of the standard two that humans were limited to, Harry’s experience was much more hectic than what any human would have been subjected to. At least he didn’t have to worry about Luda or himself having to go to work to bring money to help pay for them, which allowed both of them to keep an eye on the adventurous youngsters.

     All of the young Matriarchs could eat their own food, which cut down on the stress a human would have had to make sure they were constantly fed, but there were still aspects of parenthood that they had to attend to. Teaching life lessons and explaining things about the world around them, as well as soothing any frayed nerves if annoyances occurred in the family had to be addressed.

     One of the things that helped the two adults raising the school of children was the ingrained use of their species’ brand of telepathy. Harry’s own magical abilities allowed him to join in on the communication where a standard human would have only been able to receive instead of being able to send.

     This made calling out to the young ones easier if there happened to be a situation where the adults needed to keep track of them. They made use of this quite routinely in the vastness of the open ocean and even the relative safety of shallower seas.

     Not every creature on Luda’s homeworld had the gift of intelligent or rational thought, however. Many of the predatory species had to be given physical deterrents if they were too belligerent in their pursuit of what they saw as potential food.

     Most of the larger predators that Harry had encountered in the waters of Luda’s home planet tended to be shaped in a specific way, so keeping an eye on them was relatively easy. They tended to be shaped similarly to eels that he remembered lived back on Earth, but they were simply much larger and most of the time they had body parts that glowed.

     The smaller predators were easy to keep away simply due to the size difference Luda, her children, and Harry in his Animagus form, had over them. A creature that could be considered similar in size to most large sharks on Earth was no match for something that was upwards of five times larger than a Megalodon, and that was just how big the quintuplets were.

     While Harry’s size was smaller than the quintuplets, his own lack of bioluminescent appendages helped him spot other lights in the water which would then enable him to alert the others if he saw a bigger predator. Case in point, there was a large black eel creature that hunted at night and in the darker depths of water which munched on anything it could get but was fairly easy to get away from if you saw it before it attacked you.

     Its large size was bigger than Luda by around three times, but it was a ponderous creature. The eel’s black body was propelled by six tentacles arranged around its head that provided the primary propulsion like a squid but without any jets of water. It could keep its momentum up, but it was more like a train in how it moved with its limited turning abilities.

     Harry wasn’t quite sure why most creatures on this planet had bioluminescent growths but if the gargantuan creature didn’t have those along its massive body, then it could sneak up on much prey in the ocean. With Harry’s unique biological advantages in his Animagus form over most other creatures, he could see the large creature coming and give sufficient warning to the family so that they could move out of the way.

     Speaking of his Animagus form, owing to his short time in the British muggle education system, Harry couldn’t say for certain what his animal actually was. He knew about dinosaurs and everyone in the UK knew about the Loch Ness Monster, but his creature didn’t have the same long neck that appeared in the picture.

     Even comparing the magical creatures he’d studied and read about didn’t give him a concrete answer. There were some things that were similar, like Kelpies, but Harry wasn’t shaped like the magical water horses either. His own body was more stocky and with shorter limbs than anything he could think of.

     Thinking back to his old human friends that he’d left behind many years ago now, Hermione might know what he was, but he didn’t know what became of her after their daring raid on the Ministry of Magic back in his Fifth Year. He didn’t know what became of Voldemort or if the Ministry was still denying the return of him and hoped the rest of the country could handle it when the inevitable shoe dropped on them that he’d been telling the truth.

     It felt like a lifetime ago since he’d come to this planet and been stranded here. Looking back on his actions on the connecting planet, Harry metaphorically kicked himself for not collecting anything from the technology there that he could have used here. He’d come across several other alien structures across the water world that Luda and her daughters called home, but apart from fixing various things that had been broken, many of the things that required a power source, Harry hadn’t been able to do anything about.

     Several places had power and things kept running, but there wasn’t much he could do with the devices without some clue of what they were for or how to gather information they might have stored on them. He’d occasionally gone inside to stretch his human muscles, and the quintuplets would pile into their shared telepathic link with him to view things through his eyes, but apart from asking the same questions he might have, they couldn’t contribute much.

     Whatever race created the structures and performed the experiments on Luda and other creatures in the past were completely distinct from Harry and the Matriarchs. Luda had described what they looked like from her memories but her view of whatever they did in their labs was lacking since she’d been confined to her prison. She couldn’t share her memory through their telepathic link and Harry himself had only ever heard of the branch of Mind Arts in passing from one of Hermione’s endless verbal diarrhea rants.

     It wasn’t a bad life for Harry living with the others and helping raise and protect the young ones, but there was a disconnect between them even with Harry’s Animagus form helping to smooth that disconnect. The simple fact of Harry being a human who, not being trapped in his Animagus form, still was a creature from the land and so yearned to be amongst his own kind.

     He loved all the adventures, and the family did their best to include him and not make him feel like an added extra, but the years away from human companionship was starting to weigh heavily on his mind. Talking helped, but he was in an environment without other members of his species and humans as a whole, are very social creatures, but it needed to be other humans.

     This slowly built up into background stress and worry that he tried his best to keep from affecting his interactions with the family, but it came out in somewhat rude interactions with anything that wasn’t part of the Matriarch family. Case in point, several smaller fish with large eyes had taken to following after their little group for mobile shelter and they occasionally created small swarms that blocked out Harry’s view of the water around him.

     He needed to eat every once in a while, and a few quick chomps got the group to scatter, but an uncontrollable bloodlust entered his system and he went and ate more than he was actually hungry for. The family knew his form was carnivorous and they weren’t bothered by it, it was simply a natural part of their world and upbringing.

     There was a difference between his rational mind and the mindless predators whose only thinking action was to consume all in their sight. He’d helped save their entire family and they weren’t going to forget that anytime soon, so a meat-based diet, even though they themselves only ate microorganisms, was something that was easily accepted.

     Small fish were easy to deal with, he just had to either eat them or scare them away, but when it came to the creatures that matched or even sometimes surpassed Luda in size, Harry had to restrain himself lest he go chasing after something that could easily eat him if he forgot to use his magic.

     His magic…that was another thing that was both a blessing and a curse for his current situation. On the one fin…Urgh I’m thinking like a fish now. Harry thought to himself. On the one HAND, it’s something that’s familiar that I had access to before I came here. He began again.

     On the other hand, it’s gotten erratic with my recent stress and moods. He kept up. Using it against the less intelligent fish is fine…if a little explosive…sometimes quite literally, is fine. But I can’t afford to slip up and get angry at the kids or Luda. Harry fretted. I mean…I don’t think I’ll ever get angry at them, but I need to be able to control my emotions a little better.

     This went on for some time. Harry enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere the family exuded, stressed over non-sentient annoyances, and ached for the slightest evidence of anything that resembled a human.

     It finally came to a head when a pack of white shark-like scorpion fish, which Luda claimed were called Snatch Drakes, chose to try and make an easy meal out of him…again…for the third time that week. The first two times he’d simply used his magic to beat them up and swam away from them, but it seemed the message hadn’t stuck, and they needed a more persuasive response.

     Swimming straight at the pod of predators, Harry initially took them by surprise with his aggressive defense, but they recovered quickly and demonstrated that they were the superior swimmers compared to him. They were quick and agile, and it was only thanks to his magic that he wasn’t severely wounded in the first minute.

     Offensive magics that he had access to didn’t seem to have the required punch to do more than annoy the creatures. His defensive spells protected him from taking serious damage, but his volatile emotional state meant he wasn’t focusing as clearly as he should’ve.

     It turned into a very bloody fight by the time it ended, the Snatch Drakes appearing to have no self-preservation instincts when it came to attacking the prey they decided they wished to eat, which then left the pack of seven as drifting corpses in the rapidly clearing red misty water. Harry himself was torn and bloody but still in one piece.

     The family of Matriarchs however, had finally noticed that the happy times were not as “Sunshine and Jellyrays” as the past few years might have led them to believe. While yes, Harry’s time spent with them was enjoyable and informative on all the different perspectives he could talk to them about, it was now clear that he was going through something.

     Luda, being the oldest and thus the one with the most life experience, was more able to deduce what was bothering Harry. He’s the only one of his kind here. She sent privately to her children along their telepathic channel when they inquired about what might have been itching at him.

     In a way, I went through something similar when I was imprisoned all by myself for those long years in the alien facility. Luda told her children as they politely kept their distance as Harry recomposed himself. I, however, was focused on a mission of trying to either get out or find a way to get you out…Harry doesn’t have a concrete goal anymore and can’t distract his mind from the things it now craves. She told them.

     I thought he was having fun living with us? One of her daughters, Raidne mentally spoke back.

     Luda released a great stream of bubbles from her mouth. It’s not that. She denied. Harry adores each and every one of you, but the hardships he’s under have shifted and he’s relaxed. Luda went on. But that in itself is part of the problem.

     How? Pisinoe queried. How can being relaxed cause him to be like how he is?

     She knew how she wanted to phrase it, but her daughters would have a hard time grasping the concept since they’d known Harry their whole lives. Luda herself had a greater understanding of what Harry was and where he’d come from.

     Harry didn’t come here intentionally. She began. He’s not from this world and he lived a life before he found himself here. Luda went on. With no clear goals ahead of him right now, he can’t distract himself from what his heart is yearning for, and that is companionship with his fellow humans. She told her daughters.

     And he knows where they are but can’t get back to them? Thelxinoe accurately guessed.

     Yes. Luda acknowledged. It’s not that he wants to leave us, he genuinely loves us, but he’s all alone in his head and heart here and seeks what every creature wishes for.

     Himerope takes up the chain of telepathy. So, if he interacted with another human, you think he’d heal from this heartache he’s suffering from?

     Most likely. Luda confirms. There’s not much we can do, apart from being supportive like what we’ve been doing.

     Her final daughter, Aglaonoe, floated quietly as they kept a discreet eye on Harry as they waited for him to come back to them. Could we start heading back to where Harry first contacted you mother? She eventually asked.

     What for? Luda asked her.

     What if we can find something in one of the alien structures that could help Harry? She started up.

     Or what if we work on making some things that resemble some of the human things he’s talked to us about before and gift them to him? Raidne piped up.

     Ooo! That sounds like a great idea…but how would we go about making something like that? Pisinoe shoots back.

     Well, we can all work together. Thelxinoe answers. It doesn’t need to be perfect; he’ll recognize the attempt we’re making is to cheer him up.

     Yes, and some of us can hold whatever we’re working on while others are finding things to add to it. Himerope adds. A bunch of the alien stuff is pretty durable, so it won’t break if we need better grips on something.

     Aglaonoe broke back into the brainstorming session. While I think that’s a sweet idea to help Harry, it wasn’t what I was originally going for. She informed her sisters and mother.

     What were you suggesting then? Luda asked her.

     Aglaonoe twisted her tentacles nervously. Well…he found himself here from that area…what if…we find a way for him to get back to his home planet? She hesitantly asked.

     The six Matriarchs were quiet as they contemplated that. Luda looked over at Harry in his “Animagus” form and frowned. She felt a little selfish in hoping that Harry would stay with them for much longer, but she could see the mounting stresses that he was trying to contain by making sure that they were happy over his own peace of mind.

     We’ll need to talk to him about, but for now let’s just float the suggestion of traveling back down south to warmer waters. Luda told her children. We can still gift him those presents whenever you get around to working on them but leave any big suggestions for when we have a more rock strength plan.

     It will be difficult finding something that could give him genuine hope that he could be reunited with his people, but I suppose a quiet search in those safer waters is a good enough plan for now. Luda thought privately. I’ll search the depths around that landmass to see if there are any alien structures he might have missed and hopefully if we can’t find a solution, he’ll know he can still rely on us as his dorsal fin to cling to.

     The family didn’t bring up Harry’s noticeable cracks in his mental state, but they did swim closer to him as they journeyed back south toward the Volcanic Island that housed the Alien Prison Luda was trapped in, and the Archway that Harry had found himself trapped here as well. Many jokes were used to distract Harry and the Matriarchs kept requests for stories at a minimum and instead focused on how he might suggest they as a species could work with creating things. He wouldn’t know they planned on gifting him something, but he didn’t seem to have any major relapses on their way south.

     Meanwhile, further south and heading northward to their own location, Hermione had finally found a creature that didn’t actively wish for her death. It took a couple more tries with attempting to make a boat only for it to be smashed to pieces by the ridiculous amount of megafauna here, before she came across what she was going to call a “Reefback Whale”.

     These gentle giants floated near the surface and seemed to graze just like whales back on Earth. She couldn’t physically direct them to go in the direction she wanted, but it seemed the massive predators left them alone for some reason. So it was, that Hermione used a combination of a summoning charm and a barrier spell to lure in the tiny creatures that the whale seemed to eat and slowly fed the creature by putting the food in the direction of travel Hermione wished to go.

     This did mean that Hermione had to stay underwater for long periods of time, but since she was near the surface, and the whales were slow, she managed to keep a small boat attached to the Reefback for her to sleep while she made her way safely north to Harry’s signature. As long as she kept above the large creature, predators left her alone and Hermione didn’t have to thing about the massive depths that were below.

     Blissful ignorance in simply believing the ocean was only a hundred meters deep and didn’t contain anymore scary monsters helped Hermione sleep as she listened to the gentle rumble of the large Reefback. One day she noticed that several smaller Reefbacks had also joined sometime and the safety in even larger numbers finally started to truly relax her as she dedicated more brainpower to her plan of looking for Harry.

     It was several weeks into her slow ponderous journey northward, surviving on fish and the plants that grew on the backs of the whales, that she came across something unexpected. A VERY loud Legilimency conversation was being broadcast to anyone that could hear it without any kind of moderation at all.

     It was such a shock to her brain, that it took Hermione a couple seconds to make out the words that were being broadcast in a way that should have only been between two individuals and not to a crowd, before she recognized words in the conversation, “Uncle Harry, do you think this coral looks pretty on my head?”

     Unthinkingly, and without knowing how exactly she was able to when she thought on it later, Hermione blundered into this multilink conversation. “HARRY?!”

Chapter Text

     Harry jerked to a sudden stop when he heard a voice that didn’t belong to the six Matriarchs that he’d been swimming with for the past several years. The others, similarly, ceased movement when the additional entity joined the discussion the various members of the family were having. Having grown accustomed to only the seven of them talking throughout the shared gestalt, there was a collective spook when that eighth voice spoke one of their names.

     As the one who had been addressed, Harry was the first one to recover and respond to the voice that had called out his name. “Yes? Hello?” He tentatively called back to the unknown being that had inserted herself into their mental link.

     However, whatever seemed to have allowed that initial exclamation of Harry’s name from that individual wasn’t followed up on. After waiting a few moments to confirm this, Harry tried again. “Hello?”

     “Why aren’t they responding?” One of the quintuplets asked after another gap of silence.

     “Maybe they’re shy?” Another voiced.

     “Or we just hallucinated it.” A different daughter piped up. “I mean, there are those Rainbow fish in the shallows that cause us to see pretty colors. Maybe it was one of those?”

     “But to affect all seven of us?” Dissenting opinionated voice number four joined in. “We would all have to be looking at the same fish from the same angle at the same time for all of us to hear that voice calling out Uncle Harry’s name, and to my understanding it only called out once.” She stated her theory. “Unless any of you heard it repeated?” She left the theory open to the others.

     “Or was it one of us playing a prank and now we’re just tricking ourselves into thinking it was someone else.” The final daughter voiced.

     “No, it was definitely someone else.” Luda denied. “I know each of our voices and I can say with certainty that none of you have the capacity to fake the accent that spoke Harry’s name.” She told her daughters as well as Harry. “Besides, it might have come from someone inexperienced with mental projection and they don’t know how to repeat it.”

     “Maybe another Matriarch?” One of the daughters questioned. “What if they only just encountered the prerequisites to hatch, and now they’re lonely and recognized a name and got excited!” She quickly added on.

     “Oh no! What if they’ve been by themselves this whole time and all their other sisters died in the egg!” Another daughter morbidly added on. “Quick! We have to go find them!” She told the others and started swimming at top speed in a random direction.

     “Wait! Come back here missy!” Luda called to her overeager daughter. “We’ll start by doing a spiral pattern up to the surface and down to the floor to see if they are even at our level.” She gave the basics of a plan to her daughters before they swam off. “After that, we can go to just beyond our range of vision and do the same thing in a line to cover more water and then repeat in a perpendicular line from that one to form a more comprehensive search then just swimming off in a random direction.”

     Harry then joined in once he caught the basics of Luda’s plan. “If any of us find the voice’s owner, we’ll call out to each other to come to our location and go from there.” He informed the group as a whole.

     With the new plan in motion, the family spread out and started their search patterns for the mysterious voice that had called out Harry’s name. It didn’t take long before one of the daughters noticed something strange when she breached the surface.

     The young Matriarch had just encountered a couple Restless Reefs floating along the surface eating up sunlight and little food particles when she heard a loud shriek from above that sounded startled. Curious as to the strange noise, she broke the surface to spot the origins of the cry.

     Floating in the air above was a brown and white speckled bird with fluffy wings that looked unlike any other bird that she’d ever seen when visiting the surface near land that could support them. What’s more, this bird was so far away from any land that the chances of its survival alone out here unless it was intelligent were slim to none so she assumed this might be the owner of the voice.

     Keeping her eyes on the strange bird, she called back down to where her family were still searching. “I think I found it!” She began. “But I don’t recognize what it is, I mean, other than a bird of some kind.”

     After what she expected in hindsight was a burst of accidental magic that had allowed her to join in on the conversation, future attempts to confirm she was real, were met with a mental block that Hermione wasn’t able to get around again. What’s more, she was only able to get snippets of the conversation, but she recognized Harry’s name mentioned and there was a male voice in the predominantly female group that was talking, but it had been several years since she’d last heard his voice, and it wasn’t conclusive to her findings.

     In her human mind, Hermione hadn’t been thinking in a three-dimensional direction when it came to where Harry might be. She’d originally thought that any human living on a primarily water world would have a boat of some sort, so she’d been looking more towards the horizon when the rough movement of something big approaching from underwater started rocking the Reefback she was sitting on.

     Not wanting to encounter another apex predator that wished to eat her, Hermione quickly changed into her Athene Noctua, or Little Owl, form and took to the skies. Her decision to evade the creature proved timely as not even ten seconds later a truly massive animal poked its head out of the water.

     Unlike the sea serpents that looked like ghostly Hammerhead shark eels, this one was dark scaled and had blue eyes, with two large scythe arms that it used to prop its head up out of the water by pushing the water down. It quickly zeroed in on her before taking a moment to decide on whatever its next action was.

     Hermione dearly hoped it wouldn’t jump out of the water to eat her, and her rational mind tried to help that theory by saying she was too small of a meal for it, but her hammering heart and animal instincts that came with being in her Animagus form were saying to stay as high as possible just in case.

     Another moment passed before a mental projection voiced out to what Hermione thought were other members of its species. “I think I found it!” The voice erupted inside Hermione’s mind like a trumpet. “But I don’t recognize what it is, I mean, other than a bird of some kind.” It spoke in a quieter voice when it noticed Hermione stutter in the air from the first projection.

     Instead of going back towards the other members of its pod, the large creature kept eyeing Hermione where she was desperately flapping her wings to stay as high as she could while looking for any patch of thermal to help elevate her. But, alas, her Animagus form was not meant for long distance ocean flights and was quickly becoming tired with nowhere to land.

     “You can land on me if you’d like.” The voice spoke inside her head again. “I know I’m big compared to you and I must look scary, but I promise I’m mostly an herbivore and you wouldn’t be much of anything to my stomach to attempt to eat you.” She spoke into Hermione’s head.

     Hermione had no way to verify that statement as a fact or fabrication and so settled for determinedly staying in the air. How do I know I can trust you? Hermione thought down toward the creature.

     Unexpectedly, the creature’s face morphed into one of pleasant surprise. “Oh! I knew you were intelligent!” The large creature rumbled in her head again. “Were you the creature that called out Uncle Harry’s name earlier?” The female voice asked her. “We’re looking for it and you’ve been the first one we’ve found.” She told Hermione.

     Hermione’s brain screeched to a halt again at the mention of Harry’s name. Could this be the same Harry I’m looking for? She thought but once again it seemed that her magic wasn’t working right when the creature just kept looking at her without confirming anything. Once more trying again, Hermione desperately hoped her magic would carry it across, but she imbued a bit of Legilimency into her message to help it along.

     “Who’s Uncle Harry?” Hermione thought down to the creature and this time it did react, so she assumed her message sent.

     “Oh! He’s a wonderful human magician that helped our mother escape from a horrible prison and helped hatch us several years ago.” The creature began explaining, unknowingly confirming Hermione’s earlier hope that she might have found a lead toward her long-lost friend.

     “He wasn’t able to find a way back to his home planet, but we’ve helped him settle in with us and he’s now one of the family!” She joyously told Hermione. “Give him a minute, he might be more agile than us but he’s a little bit of a slower swimmer, so he might not get here before the others.” The creature spoke and Hermione finally decided to trust her and settled down on top of her head.

     A little while later, several other creatures similar to the one who’d introduced herself as Raidne, started breaching the water and more introductions were conducted wherein Hermione found herself in the midst of a family with classical names of water nymphs or mermaids. The final one to arrive was also the biggest before a dinosaur from ancient Earth times emerged as well.

     “Is this her?” The only male voice asked with a distinct British accent and Hermione’s final questions were answered, at least for the moment, she’d come up with more later.

     “Harry Potter?” She called out with Legilimency again.

     The mosasaurus’ eyes almost popped out of his head when Hermione called his last name, but it was when Hermione transformed back into her human shape that the final nail was hammered in. “Hermione!?” Harry called out in shock accompanied by the squeals of excited Matriarchs that they got to see another human up close.

     Instead of proper reunion that the two humans probably should have received first, childlike curiosity sparked, and the younger Matriarchs desperately had dozens of questions for the second human they’d ever encountered.

     “Are you what female humans look like?”

     “What’s your last name? Harry has one as well.”

     “What’s your favorite food? Harry says he likes Treacle Tart but obviously we don’t have that here, so he just eats fish.”

     “What was that animal you turned into?”

     “How old are you?”

     “Why is your hair brown while Harry’s is black?”

     “Why are you smaller than him, I thought females were supposed to be bigger than males?”

     “Ooo! Your eyes are different colors as well! Do all females have brown eyes and males have green eyes?”

     “Do you lay eggs like us? Harry wouldn’t say and kept getting a red face whenever we asked him about human females. Do you have any little humans running around? Wait, I used that word right, correct? Running around is what you do on the surface land, right?”

     Before any more chaotic questions or queries about anatomy could be asked, Luda saved Hermione the task of having to clear anything up by shooing her children away. “Leave her alone for a minute, she’s obviously just found Harry and they need their own time together first. Raidne, if you’d please hand Hermione over to me, I’ll hold Harry and her together while they get reacquainted with each other. The rest of you, back off for a couple minutes and I’ll call you back when Hermione’s up for CALM questions.” She scolded her children.

     Mercifully, the younger Matriarchs respected their mother’s request and backed off for the two humans to reunite. That was when Harry was able to shift back into his human shape and climb up Luda’s head to talk to Hermione outside of the water.

     Logically, Hermione knew Harry would have grown up into a man if he survived the Veil of Death, but Hermione’s perspective of just what that would be was scrawnier than reality. He’d managed to enlarge and preserve his clothes, so he wasn’t in a birthday suit, but the new muscles he’d gained from constantly swimming certainly filled out what would have otherwise been previously baggy clothes he used to wear.

     There was a little bit of awkward standing around as neither knew just what to say, but Hermione finally initiated the first exchange when she launched herself into him and wrapped him in a bone crushing hug. “Its good to finally see you again Harry.” She wept into his shoulder that was now much higher than her own.

     Unexpectedly, Hermione felt wet spots on the top of her head that didn’t come from Harry’s swim through the ocean, and it took a moment for her to realize he was crying too from the reunion. “I’m glad you finally found me Hermione.”

     The pair of humans kept the embrace for an indeterminate amount of time before Hermione started asking questions about his experience on this planet.

     “So, a mosasaurus?” She asked him about his Animagus form.

     “Is that what it is?” He asked her. “I wasn’t sure, and I don’t exactly have an encyclopedia for a brain like you do.” Harry joked.

     “Prat!” She cheerfully pushed him, but it was like swatting a wall and he hardly moved. “Although its certainly bigger than regular fossils we have of them. Could its increased size be as a result of the larger oceans and the magic reacting to suit the environment?” She asked.

     “I don’t know, you’re the smarter one.” He deferred.

     “Oh, hush you! You’re plenty smart on your own.” Hermione chastised. “What’s this I hear about you freeing this family from a prison and helping hatch the babies?”

     At that, Harry’s face both lit up and darkened as a memory returned to him. “There was a disease that an alien race was working on a cure for, but they couldn’t communicate with Luda here.” He began.

     “They found she could help fight the bacteria but when they imprisoned her with trying to work on the cure, she wasn’t able to get her children to where they needed to be in order to hatch.” He told her.

     “While I was able to fight off the disease myself, I couldn’t produce enough in my old age to help others. Only my children would be strong enough, but I couldn’t communicate with the aliens for them to understand that my children needed to hatch in order for them to help.” Luda gently added in.

     “Eventually, the disease wiped out the last of the aliens and Luda was stuck in the prison that the aliens made to research her for a very long time. Luda and I don’t know for how long, but it wasn’t until she was able to contact me that I was finally able to dig my way down and free her and her family.” Harry explained.

     Hermione listened in to what had happened in the time that Harry had been away and explained the things that had happened on Earth in the time he was gone. Voldemort’s final execution and Harry’s own funeral that had taken place were shocks, but he was glad the madman was finally defeated.

     “I guess this means I’ll get another nickname now when you bring me back.” Harry joked. “The-Boy-Who-Lived and the Man-Back-From-The-Dead.” He laughed before another thought came into his head. “Or you could be called The Resurrector.”

     “Please don’t joke about that! I’m already called “Athena” at work, and it doesn’t help that my Animagus form is an owl either.” She grumbled.

     Once the reunion had settled down somewhat, the other Matriarchs could begin their renewed interrogation of Hermione, and it was well into sunset on the water world by the time the family arrived at an island for Hermione to rest on. She hadn’t even noticed their traveling, but she rejoiced at not having to brave the open waters and the terrors that lurked under it.

     Hermione informed Harry of the time limit she was under to find him, and they set course the next day to find the portal that Hermione came through to communicate back with the other Unspeakables about her success in finding Harry. This then led Harry potentially having a way back to Earth and the Matriarchs were visibly excited for him but saddened as well.

     “Are you going to come back to us?” One of the daughters asked.

     Before Harry could answer, Hermione had something that was even better than his own response. “He most certainly will!” She went on. “And there’s nothing stopping us from working on a way to bring you to Earth as well.”

     “WHAT?! We could go to Earth?” Another asked.

     “Of course you could.” Hermione agreed. “Hasn’t Harry talked to you about animate to inanimate Transfiguration and back to animate?” She asked them. “If you don’t want to risk that, it would be quite simple, if a little more time consuming, to get an expanded trunk, fill it will water and carry you back through the portal that way.” Hermione explained to the flabbergasted Matriarchs.

     “Sorry Uncle Harry, Aunt Hermione is now my new favorite human.” One of the quintuplets stated.

Chapter Text

     The group swam, or were carried in Hermione’s case, back towards the portal that Hermione had reactivated when she arrived on this planet. When they got there, the witch spent an hour transfiguring a rock into an expanded trunk and filling it with water. She’d demonstrated animate to inanimate and back again transfiguration on a passing fish, but the Matriarch family ultimately decided they’d prefer not going through that change.

     Once Hermione had finished, Harry swam up to the entrance of the trunk first to show that they’d shrink automatically when they got close to it and waited for them inside. One by one, each member of the family got into the expanded trunk after Harry repeatedly showed them that they would return to full size as soon as they emerged. With that, Hermione picked up the trunk and Harry shifted back into his human form to come through the portal he’d arrived on this planet from.

     “I just need to warn you Harry, things will be a little hectic when we get back.” Hermione mentions as they approach the glowing green alien arch. “I work for the Department of Mysteries and they’re the people that worked in that complex full of unusual things when we were fighting against the Death Eaters in back in our fifth year.”

     “So, you’re a researcher or a scientist?” Harry asked. “Honestly, from what I remember that seems like the kind of thing that suits you Hermione.” He admitted. “So, I’d be asked a bunch of complicated questions from a bunch of boffins for a couple hours?” Harry checked.

     Hermione nodded. “They’d probably also want to ask the Matriarchs a bunch of questions.” And potentially dissect them but I’ll handle preventing that. Hermione thought to herself. “But exposing the family to them would be up to you and I’ll let you handle whether or not they actually want to do that.” She told him before handing over the trunk for Harry to carry.

     “It would probably be best to let them settle in before I give them too big of a culture shock.” Harry agreed.

     The pair of them stepped through the disorientating effects of the teleportation portal before arriving back on the dead alien planet.

     “I didn’t really have time to explore this place when I was looking for you.” Hermione admitted. “I bet it would be a treasure trove of knowledge to pick through their remains.” She mentioned to Harry.

     The wizard beside her had an uncharacteristic scowl on his face though. “These were the people that trapped Luda and almost doomed her entire species when they imprisoned her.” He spoke in a low voice.

     Sensing a sensitive topic he probably was connected to the other aliens with shared history, Hermione put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Let’s get you and the family to Earth before anything is done with this place.” She offered. “It’s not going anywhere and if you or the Matriarchs need to vent against what looks like a dead race, we’ll find stuff that has more than one of its kind so that we can learn from the stuff that you don’t want to destroy.” Hermione suggested.

     Harry released a calming breath at that. “You’re right, its not going anywhere, but I’ll hold you to that for allowing us to come back here if we want.” He told her with a firm expression.

     “We won’t need everything here, so I don’t see the harm in keeping that promise.” She soothingly replied.

     The pair walked for a little while more until they eventually came to the transfer hub that the Veil of Death initially transported victims through to. Inside, the glow from another working portal arch illuminated their path to the correct path back to Earth.

     Having been away from his home planet for several years now, a wave of nervous emotions took hold of Harry as the final step to a return to his childhood now stood in front of him. Even with Hermione with him, the full implications hadn’t settled until just this very moment.

     Growing up with the Dursleys, who he had no intention of going back to, had been a shaping point of his early development. The mutual hatred meant that Harry practically leapt at attaching to the magical side of his life and his time at Hogwarts had been like finally experiencing a life he should have had ten years prior with a loving family and wondrous wonders. Now, having grown used to the way of life on Luda’s home ocean planet, and the realities away from the stresses of dealing with Voldemort, Harry worried if the life he remembered would feel foreign to him and if he was stepping into someone’s life that was no longer his.

     He’d changed living so long away from human companionship, and the thought of interacting with so many faces that might remember him and expect him to act a certain way or expect him to remember them in the first place was a daunting thought. The Matriarch family was familiar and a comfort. This was going into an unknown that should have been a comfortable, known quantity for him, but simply wasn’t at this step before the portal.

     “Harry.” Hermione spoke softly next to him. “It’ll be ok.” She encouraged. “You’ll get through this and if you need some time to adjust before the world knows of your survival, I can try and get my colleagues to give you a week or two.” Hermione offered before going on.

     “The rest of the country doesn’t really know what the Department of Mysteries does, and they have no idea that I was trying to bring you back in the first place.” She told him. “If you’re worried about swarming throngs of people, don’t be. At worst, there will be a couple of my coworkers on the other side, and I can quickly talk them down into giving you some time to recover.” Hermione offered.

     Hearing that, Harry’s nerves settled more, and he gave a nod of thanks. “And you’re sure this won’t spit us out on another world entirely?” He joked. “It would suck if it sent us to a desert planet.”

     Hermione snorted at that. “I’m quite positive these portals only act between two locations, and this was the one I came out from.” She told him.

     Harry grinned before taking another fortifying breath. “Ok, let’s go.” And together, the two of them stepped through the last teleportation portal arch taking them back to Earth.

     Stumbling out into another indoor chamber, Harry was met with the sight of multiple pieces of Muggle technology scattered about the room. Wires and tubes crisscrossed between machines and leading to hookups that were inscribed with various glowing runes that connected to the Veil of Death.

     “Not quite as advanced as the aliens made it?” Harry jokingly asked.

     Hermione at this point had started putting her Unspeakable robes back into place since she was technically back at work. “For now.” She agreed with her voice coming out of her hood in a distorted manner but still clearly feminine and familiar to those that knew what to look for. “I had to find a power source strong enough and ended up dabbling with nuclear for the result you see here.”

     Harry’s eyes widened at knowing what was powering the devices around him now. “How’d you manage that?” He asked. “I can’t imagine the Muggles not noticing one of their reactors going missing, or did you make this yourself?”

     “I stole something they abandoned in the Arctic Ocean, fixed it up with the help of some compulsion spells on some Muggle nuclear engineers and worked on hooking it up to the arch.” She explained. “I’d go into more detail, but I need to check in on my superior and let him know that I’m back. If you could come with, this shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes, and I’ll explain your situation to him so that we can get you out of here without the press hounding you.”

     With that, Hermione led Harry through several passages before arriving at a nondescript door that could have looked like it just led to a maintenance closet. Inside, however, was an indoor garden filled with magical plants that defied the laws of physics. Some were floating like zeppelins, others were crawling across the floor playing with a ball as their tendrils smacked it back and forth, while yet more were making exhalations that sounded suspiciously like a language.

     Sitting behind a desk made of stone and taking notes was another Unspeakable and to whom Hermione made her way over. Harry, cautious of disturbing the moving plants, simply waited by the door.

     “You’re back.” A masculine tone spoke from underneath his hood before looking up at Harry waiting by the door. “And you succeeded. Good job.” He congratulated Hermione.

     “Thank you, sir.” Hermione replied. “I’ll power down my experiment soon, but I would like to, in the future, conduct more forays into the worlds beyond.” She went on. “There are untapped treasure troves of things to study and for that I’ll need access to my machines and the Veil.”

     “Well, seeing as you brought back someone clearly thought to have been dead, the things we thought we knew about that Veil are clearly wrong.” Her superior spoke up. “I’ll allow further expeditions, but I’d like to see what’s on the other side first.” Holding up his hand to forestall any of Hermione’s attempts to explain, her boss simply continued. “It’s more a selfish reason on my part to see these “worlds beyond” before any of our other compatriots do. Not an attempt from me to demand you explain the reasoning it would be good to keep going.” He lightly jested.

     “Now, regarding Mr. Potter.” He went on. “What were the two of you planning on doing now that he’s back?” He asked. “Does he wish to finish his final two years of schooling, or does he need some time to settle back into life on Earth?”

     “Probably the latter of the two.” Harry piped up from his position by the doorway where one of the more adventurous plants had taken to climbing up his leg. “Are these things dangerous?” He questioned.

     “Not unless you give them peanut butter and then refuse to give them more from a jar that you might hold.” Hermione’s boss informed him. “Is there anything I need to know from someone who lived firsthand on one of the worlds that Hermione reconnected us to?” He asked Harry.

     At that, Harry gestured to the trunk he had dangling from a string around his neck. “There were intelligent magical creatures on the world I was stuck on, as well as other aliens that had died out, that were fighting a virulent disease.” He went on. “The creatures I ended up helping, were able to fight off this disease but I don’t want them to be exploited just to get more of the cure that they produce. I want them to have a safe environment that they can live in and if they need to be interacted with, they can be asked for more if it is needed.” He told the Unspeakable.

     “You’d like to make a sanctuary similar to what we have with Dragon Sanctuaries?” The man asked Harry. “That can be done, but what kind of creature are they? Land, aerial, or aquatic?”

     “Aquatic and leviathan sized.” Harry grinned.

     “Just how big is “leviathan sized”?” He questioned with an impending headache that was forming as he calculated the space an aquatic creature would need. There were reasons Muggle aquariums didn’t contain many large sharks or whales, they were inexorably expensive to maintain, and the animals ended up dying from lack of space.

     “They’ll probably need at least an ocean.” Harry kept grinning.

     “AN OCEAN!?” The Unspeakable spluttered.

     “Ideally, they’d just need some Notice Me Not charms on enchanted items they can carry.” Harry offered an easier solution now that he had his initial fun. “I plan on staying with them and you can always send a patronus message to me whenever you have need of them.” He went on. “As for how large they are or can get, they are bigger than the largest Dragons on Earth.”

     The Unspeakable was rubbing his temples as he processed that information. “And the ocean would allow them to get what nutrition they need without us having to constantly bring in more for them.” He then released a sigh. “Ok, we’ll work on those items but if you’ll be wandering the oceans we won’t be able to help if you run into trouble.”

     “There shouldn’t be anything in these waters that could seriously harm the Matriarchs.” Harry replied. “Besides, the Matriarchs have their own defensive abilities that can ward off predators.”

     “I’d like to eventually meet them then, once you’ve settled in.” The Unspeakable added. “Will you be eventually rejoining the Wizarding World as a whole sometime in the future?” He asked.

     “From time to time, maybe.” Harry allowed. “There are some things I want to try with the Matriarchs, and I would need access to some magical things to experiment with.”

     “Harry, if you’re going to be experimenting with living creatures, I will insist you have me looking over your work.” Hermione interjected. “I actually graduated Hogwarts, and I’d prefer using my knowledge of hypothetical theories over the guesswork you might do if you want to dabble in complicated matters.” She informed him.

     “Well that’s great!” Harry agreed readily. “I was wanting to work on seeing if they could use a modified Animagus transfiguration spell to walk on land with me. That way they could see a whole lot more than just gazing into my mind telepathically and viewing things that way.”

     “Do they even have magic to do that?” The Unspeakable boss asked.

     “Sort of, but its not the same as anything we have here.” Harry replied.

     “We’ll see what’s possible.” The man let out another sigh.

     Flash forward, a year from that point.

     “I swear that Orca was mocking us.” Luda complained to her children as they were relaxing near an iceberg where more of the black and white aquatic creatures were trying to hunt seals off of its surface by flooding it.

     “To be fair, we’ve never seen one of those human submarines before and it didn’t react like a standard fish when we approached it.” One of her daughters consoled her.

     “Still, it was kind of rude the noises they made when we bumped into it to see if it was alive or not.” Luda grumbled.

     “It certainly startled those humans when they took off at best possible speed when you shook their vessel.” Another of her daughters laughed.

     The family of Matriarchs had settled into their secondary home quite well since arriving. They’d even confirmed to Harry when he’d conveyed Hermione’s questions of if other aquatic species on Earth had close to the same level of intelligence as they did, to see what scientific discoveries could be explored.

     When they’d first tried talking to Blue Whales, the closest Earth-based animal that approached their own size, both sides were startled at the revelation the other could talk back. The accents were difficult to get through, and the way of thought was alien to anything Harry could understand, but plenty of translations meant that despite Harry’s predator form, he was able to hold comfortable conversations with other creatures besides the Matriarchs.

     They’d gone on to test their theory on other whales and it worked on most of them, but the snag came when encountering dolphins and their relatives. There seemed to be a disconnect between the communication and whether or not they were actually understood or not.

     Hermione insisted that they just hadn’t found the right “frequency” while Luda’s daughters thought it was a massive conspiracy that the dolphins were pretending to play dumb while laughing behind their backs. They’d tried to listen from a distance to see if any of them would slip up, but annoyingly, it seemed like any dolphin that might have the ability to talk, also had the ability to sense when someone was nearby that might understand them and hushed up at the last moment. It turned into an exercise in frustration, but Luda was persistent in catching one of the pranksters in the act.

     “Well, I’m looking forward to Harry’s return from land so that we can finally try that spell of his that will let us walk on land.” Another daughter spoke over Luda’s musings about the recent failures she’d had with the Orcas.

     That at least broke the old Matriarch out of her funk and a new sense of excitement bloomed. “You’re right! I am looking forward to see if that will work. Can one of you go to shore and wait for him?” She asked. “I’m going to try and sneak up on those Orcas again and have a listen.”

     “I’ll do that mom.” One of them replied. “But you know those Orcas are just going to keep leading you around, this is all a game for them.”

     “I know and its annoying, but I will catch them slipping up, I just know it.” Luda vowed.