Prologue
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Prologue
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International Confederation of Wizards, Earth, 2020
Harry James Potter, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, looked out across the serried ranks of the Mugwumps from his throne and thought back on the past two decades of his life as they took their places and settled down. It had all been so simple being an Auror and raising a family with Ginny, but then that fateful conversation with Hermione had occurred. Advances in muggle technology made it all but inevitable that magic would be discovered, and both were jaded enough to know the outcome of that. Wizards would never bow down to muggles or allow themselves to be ruled by muggle governments while the muggles would never be able to accept a millions strong population of demigods who could make a mockery of physics, twist muggle minds at whim, and ignore their laws at will.
No, it would have been war. On the one side, the muggles had numbers, nuclear weapons, and (potentially) engineered bioweapons. On the other side, the wizards had a great many equally potent spells and creatures that they could unleash if pressed. A death toll in the billions and a world thrown back into the middle ages was the best case outcome, more likely the human species would end up extinct.
So to save the world he, Harry James Potter, had done the one thing he swore that he would never do and become a politician. With his fame and power it had been trivial to become the Head Auror and then Director of Magical Law Enforcement. The seats on the Wizengamot for him and his closest allies who didn't already have them (Ron, Hermione, and Luna) had been gained with a few whispered words. Gaining his place at the head of the ICW had required him to wield the Elder Wand, its boost of power making up for the many decades of life experience and knowledge that his colleagues had on him, but needs must.
As the last Mugwump took their place he stood, a small wandless spell ensuring that everyone present would be able to easily hear his voice, "Welcome once again to these hallowed halls my fellow Mugwumps. We are gathered here today upon the petition of the Minister of Magic for the British Empire."
Glancing at the women seated in the VIP guest section, he continued "Minister Weasley, if you would present your case?"
Hermione Weasley, Minister of Magic of the British Empire, rose from her seat and made her way to the lectern facing the Mugwumps. Each and everyone of them had power - be it in magic, in wealth, in influence, - in their home nation and as a collective whole they ruled the magical world. It was an intimidating sight but she had prepared for this, and so with a subtle breath she began to speak.
"Thank you for the privilege of addressing this august body, Supreme Mugwump. I come before you all as the augury, the herald of a truth most grave. That truth is that the Statute of Secrecy is in imminent peril and will have almost certainly fallen within the decade."
The indrawn breath of the hundreds of Mugwumps was audible across the room, but these men and women didn't gain their positions by making emotional exclamations or acting without thought; so they waited for her to continue.
"Advances in muggle technology, specifically the smartphone, genetic testing, and automated data analytics are already making it increasingly difficult to conceal ourselves. Their governments notice when eleven year olds fall off the face of the world for ten months out of the year as they attend magical schools, they notice when witches and wizards without identities in their systems interact with the muggle world. Drivers licenses, tax records, credit cards, property records; the muggles record everything and those records are constantly being analyzed for anomalies. Even today, the only way that we, the British Ministry of Magic, has found to keep our people secret is by co-opting the various muggle intelligence services.
"That is only a stop gap measure though, and one that will fail in time. And we have all seen the reports; if the Statute of Secrecy falls then it will be war on a scale that imperils the survival of life on Earth.
"While I come to you as augury, I also come as phoenix. For the past twenty years I have made an intensive study of Lily Potter's Fidelius Charm, and with the help of various members of my government and other noted researches I have successfully modified it. Instead of protecting the secret of a location within the secret keepers soul, we have modified it to keep the secret that "Magic is real" and tie it into the souls of every witch and wizard. More precisely, it would make anyone who takes a specific magical oath into a secret keeper. Those oath takers would pledge their magic to support the secret, and in so doing allow the spell to last virtually forever at the cost of a virtually unnoticeable drain on the magic of those oath makers."
One of the Mugwumps caused a ball of light to float above him, and Harry said "You have a question Mugwump Sands?"
"Yes, Supreme Mugwump." the American said with a nod to Harry before turning to face Hermione. "What about muggleborns? Telling the secret to our children would be no bother, but would the muggleborns be prevented from realizing that they have magic until they are told?"
Hermione shook her head in the negative "No, one of the core tenets of the Fidelius is that it can only be cast by the one who owns the secret or with the consent of those who do. To avoid the need to get universal consent from every witch, wizard, and magical creature on the planet the charm has been modified so that it will only conceal the secret from those who have no claim over it. In the case of this secret, that would be those without magic. So a muggleborn could recognize that they are magical, but they would not be able to share that knowledge until they took the oath to become a secret keeper; and that is only possible after their magic settles and they become able to be bound to magical contracts."
The mugwump nodded and resumed his seat, only for another to indicate a desire to speak.
"The chair recognizes Mugwump Xian" spoke Harry.
The young women from China stood, "An interesting idea Minister Weasley, but why are you telling us about it? Is there a reason that you simply haven't cast the charm already?"
Hermione gave a wry smile "I could say that it was because I feel that I lack the right to make such a world spanning decision upon my own, but the truth is a matter of power. Our calculations show that to successfully cast this spell will take the combined magic of more than seven million witches and wizards."
There was another collective indrawn breath at that; the largest coordinated castings in regular use numbered in the hundreds, and the largest in recorded history was in the single digit thousands.
Xian gulped slightly before saying "Forgive my Minister, but that seems farcical. Even a full coven willing to give their lives and souls to the casting wouldn't be able to channel power on that scale. While your solution to the muggle issue might be ideal, and I will assume that your theoretical spell work is flawless, this just doesn't appear to be even slightly viable in the real world."
Before Hermione could say anything, Harry spoke "I can channel the power, and survive the experience."
"WHAT?" exploded from several of the Mugwumps, causing Harry to shrug slightly "As I said, I am capable of channeling the power needed. What I am not able to do is create the needed ritual circle and populate it with the 3,888,888 wizards and 3,888,888 witches needed to power it."
"How?" asked one of the Mugwumps is fearful awe.
Having no intention of telling any of them that it was a side effect of being the Master of Death, Harry shrugged again "A combination of unique magical phenomena."
---
They had raised an island in the Pacific and, after two years of work, the Fidelus had been cast and the knowledge that "Magic Was Real" was a secret hidden from every non magical entity across the breadth of the universe.
Potter Manor, Scotland, 2028
Harry Potter looked at the nervous twenty year old before him. Although he wasn't exactly sure why Hugo was nervous; if Harry had a problem with him and Lily being a couple then he bloody well would have done something about it sometime in the past five years. Still...his godsons hesitance had cost him that bet with Ron, so letting him squirm for a bit wouldn't go amiss.
After almost a minute of watching Hugo squirm Harry finally spoke "Of course you have my permission to ask Lily to marry you. What took you so long?"
Hugo gave a wide smile as the tension left him, "We wanted our Masteries first, sir."
Harry gave a nod of acceptance as he looked at the boy, no, young man before him. 'mione's brains certainly bred true. Double masteries in Runes and Potions along with a doctorate in political science from Oxford was nothing to scoff at. Perhaps...
It was almost six months since the idea had occurred to him, and two weeks past his daughters wedding, that Harry called the newlyweds - recently returned from their honeymoon - into his study.
"You wanted to see us pops?" asked Lily.
"I did. If the two of you are interested then I would name Lily Heiress Black and Hugo Regent Black." Harry said.
"What!? Why?" exclaimed Hugo.
"I thought Albus was going to get that legacy." questioned Lily, earning a slight grimace from Harry.
"He loves Miss Romanova more."
"Huh? What does his loving Anna have to do with him being Heir Black?" asked Luna.
"Anastasia is Lady Romanova. Her Oath of Ascension won't let her marry into another House, and for me to formally name someone Heir Black they have to take their own Oath. The two oaths aren't compatible." Harry answered.
"Then how did you become both Lord Potter and Lord Black?" wondered Hugo.
"Unique circumstances. When Sirius was named my godfather, and named me his heir, his brother was Heir Black and the House of Potter wasn't nobility. After Regulus died and Sirius was thrown into Azkaban, Arcturus didn't formally name anyone Heir Black. Without a named heir, the House fell to his natural heir; Sirius. When Sirius passed, the House again went to his only heir. At the time I was Heir Potter, but the House of Black is a Most Ancient House and its rules of inheritance care nothing about age; I became Lord Black the instant that Sirius died.
"Since I am the first Lord Potter, I was the one who got to devise the Potter Oath of Ascension and I worded it to avoid conflicts. That is also why, technically, the House of Potter is a vassal of the House of Black."
Lily blinked at that, "It is? How come we didn't already know this?"
Harry shrugged "Internal House affairs are just that; internal House affairs. It also doesn't really matter that much."
"Doesn't matter?! Dad, if you named me Heiress Black then it would mean James owes me fealty. I think that matters quite a bit." Lily exclaimed.
Giving his daughter a smile filled with weariness and regret, Harry sighed. "No, it doesn't. Thanks to my crappy luck and status as fates bitch I managed to stumble my way into true immortality when I killed Voldemort." Harry took in the stupefied faces of his daughter and son-in-law and gave another sigh before continuing "And the House of Black does not allow the abdication of its Lord, so I will be Black of Black, Lord of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, from now until the universes end."
"Immortal?" Hugo managed to choke out.
Harry gave a nod "Yup. I continued to age until I reached my physical prime and haven't aged since, and that Brazilian Dark Lord back in '04 managed to hit me straight on with fiendfyre and I simply fell out of the Veil of Death perfectly healthy. Actually, I came out healthier than I was before as my new body was at the peak of my genetic potential."
Hugo gulped, glanced at his wife, and then asked "Why are you telling us this? Why now?"
Harry waved a hand over his face and released a small sigh, "Because I'm tired. I've spent the past thirty years being a politician and a living legend. For all that it was necessary, I hated it. Now, finally, the Veil has been cast and everything has mostly stabilized in the aftermath. No longer do I have to worry that some idiot with delusions of adequacy is going to shatter the Statute of Secrecy.
"My plan is to abdicate the Potter Lordship to James, foist the responsibilities of the House of Black off onto the two of you, step down from the ICW, and take Minerva up on her standing offer to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts."
Lily and Hugo gave one another a long look before nodding, facing Harry, and saying "We'll do it."
Harry broke into a broad smile "Great, now we just need to start getting things set up. I should be able to make Hogwarts this year, the muggle will only take a week or two and I do have almost two months."
"The muggles?" Lily asked as her father started thinking out loud.
Harry blinked "Oh, yeah. Someone's got to keep an eye on the muggles and make sure that they don't wipe us all out with nuclear weapons or something. Not to mention steal any good ideas that they have. Now that the Veil is up, you know that the worlds are going to diverge even more. A little magic is all it will take to get the House of Black established as a major power in the muggle world, and the two of you are clearly interested in the non magical world."
Hogwarts Headmasters Office, Earth, 2050
"...so I think Manswell's right. The muggles are tearing themselves apart and if they want to survive they probably do need to move their technical infrastructure off planet." wrapped up Hugo.
Harry leaned back in his chair and thought for a bit, "It's your call, but I don't see any reason not to help the muggles. And I am interested in seeing how magic interacts with other planets, and the void, on a long term basis. So if you want to invest in space based industry and habitats then it's fine with me.
"Anything else?"
Hugo sighed, "Just that Sirius completed that project he was working on."
Harry sat up straighter, his grandson had already proven himself a superb arithmancy Master when he had been inspired by some old science fiction author named Asimov. From there he had dove headfirst into both divination and time magic as he tried to develop psychohistory.
Hugo gave a nod "Yes, he got it working and the results aren't pretty."
"How "not pretty"?" questioned Harry.
"The probable total extinction of the human species within two hundred years kind of "not pretty"" his son-in-law replied.
Before Harry could say anything, Hugo continued "He's not sure what's coming but he is positive that some existential crisis is going to occur soon. He's also predicting that the muggles are going to almost wipe themselves out before unifying under one government."
"And the magical world?" Harry asked after a moments contemplation.
Hugo shrugged, "Unknown. You know how magic interferes with any kind of divinations. Predicting anything involving magicals is still firmly in the realm of Oracles and their prophecies."
Black Manse, O'Neill Cylinder in geostationary orbit over Scotland, 2070
Harry looked down on the beautiful planet he had called home his entire life. 'from here it looks peaceful, I can almost imagine that it's not riven by war, factionalism, and plague.'
After a long moment he turned to his grandson, and Black Heir as of three weeks ago with his father's passing, "Are you positive this is the least bad option? Manswell is a snake and the cause of most of that chaos, and you want to support him?"
Sirius grimaced in distaste but still gave a firm head shake "Yes, I've run the numbers dozens of times. Cass also agrees.", his wife of two decades was the granddaughter of Luna Lovegood and a full blown Seer.
"Humanity must be unified if it wants a chance of surviving the cataclysm, and of all the possibilities this is the one with both the highest chance of success and the best long term future for our species. Well, unless you think you can convince the magical world as a whole to go out and conquer the entire non magical world."
Harry gave a snort of laughter at that, no the magical world as a whole seemed to barely even remember that the muggle world existed. There was no way that even Harry could convince them to put forth the effort required to takeover the muggles, and that assumed that Harry was actually willing to embrace the goal himself.
Harry looked like he had swallowed something foul as he said "I won't stop you. I might be Lord Black in name but you, and your father, have been managing the House and the muggles for the past fifty years."
Zurich Holdfast, Luna, Sol System, 2074
Concealed from detection by the power of Death's Cloak, Harry found it more difficult than he expected not to kill most of these men where they stood. Manswell, Windsor, Chu, Eldfell, Ashland, Yamato, Coleman, Dragunov, Setras, de la Camara, Simons, Ngubane, Bekenstein, al Saud; fourteen of the most powerful, especially relative to their fellow muggles of the day, muggles to have ever existed and they stood there to declare themselves the supreme rulers of humanity with the justification that the people had proven incapable of surviving outside the rule of their betters.
'farcical, they actually believe the hypocrisy they are spouting even as all of them are fully aware that Manswell himself has orchestrated much of the chaos and death plaguing the world. or that none of them would be here if they hadn't actively and knowingly aided and abetted his crimes. Sirius and I might be just as guilty, but at least we lack the hypocrisy.'
Harry gave a snort, muffled into silence by the charms concealing his presence, 'what would I do if my seventeen year old self met me? I'm a manipulative murderer acting for the "greater good". I guess that saying about dying a hero or living long enough to see yourself become the villain has some truth to it. I miss Ginny.'
Once the Pact of Sol was signed, Harry popped out of the chamber and into another buried more than a hundred miles under the Lunar surface and concealed from detection by numerous magics. It was empty save for a single mirror. With a tap of his wand and a murmured "Hogwarts" he stepped through the glass and into his office nearly 250,000 kilometers away.
Black Manse, O'Neill Cylinder in geostationary orbit over Scotland, 2140
Upon stepping out of the mirror Harry gave his great granddaughter-in-law a hug of greeting before saying "So what's this about Katerina? Marius was light on the details when he mirrored me, just said to get my ass up here."
The young women gave a tinkling laugh, "He's getting you back for missing Alexi's birthday."
Harry winced, "I am sorry about that, I really didn't expect the potion I was brewing to be that finicky."
She gave another laugh before saying "Details." and waving a hand in dismissal. Then she reached into a pocket, pulled out a bar that shouldn't have fit, and tossed it to him.
Harry caught the bar with ease, only for his eyebrows to rise as he realized that whatever this bar was made of, it wasn't anything that he had ever seen before.
"The muggles found an alien outpost on Mars. That substance, the boffins are calling it Element Zero on account of it having zero electrons or protons."
"So Neutronium then?" clarified Harry as he started silently casting a number of specialized analysis charms on the bar in his hand.
Katerina shook her head "No, or not unless Neutronium can be made stable without extreme gravity or mass. Although that stuff does appear to be naturally magical."
"Oh?" Harry questioned as he threw some more spells at it.
"Run an electrical current through it and it will increase its mass, run the opposite current through it and it will decrease its mass. Except when you look at it with mage sight while doing that, you can see that the mass manipulation is a magical effect." she said, causing Harry to look up sharply.
"A natural, inert, non magical, non living, material that casts spells? Everything we know about magic says that should be just about the closest thing to impossible as there can be." Harry said.
Katerina gave him a head bob, and smiled widely "Yup, and yet that stuff does it. Interested in being part of the team exploring the outpost? Or are you going to take that bar and disappear into your lab to play?"
Harry looked at the bluish black bar in his hand with longing but finally sighed, "I'll go to Mars for at least a few years."
International Confederation of Wizards, Earth, 2152
Harry sighed as the various Mugwumps debated around him. He had hoped to be done with politics one hundred and thirty years ago with the concealment of magic but that had been a naive hope. Hiding out at Hogwarts, first as its Defense Professor and later as its Headmaster had been a nice reprieve but the truth was that for one of his power and infamy it was impossible to be "Just Harry". The rumors that he had a Philosopher's Stone and that is why he still looked to be a man in the prime of his life didn't help.
Really, did people have no brains? Or did they truly think that he would have let Ginny, or any of his other closest associates, grow old and die when he could have so easily prevented it? Oh, his studies of Alchemy (and the recalled soul of Nicholas Flamel) have given him the required knowledge to make a stone but he had no desire to pay the price its creation required - the sacrifice of millions of souls.
No, his immortality was the side effect of that choice he had made so very long ago in the Forest of Death. Everything that was born was granted a ticket into Death's realm, but as the Master of Death he had been able to miss his train and Death didn't issue multiple tickets. Harry knew that he would die eventually, just as he also knew that he would be the last living thing in the entire universe before he had that pleasure.
Still, it was time to get on with this and so he silenced the room with a hand wave. "We seem to be debating in circles, so I am calling a vote. Three years ago we decided to seed the Sol Alliance survey teams with our people in the hopes of finding other worlds with magic. That effort has yet to bare fruit but we have found that our ability to use magic off of Earth is unimpeded. In addition, it has come to our attention that Element Zero exposure has a deleterious effect on virtually all magical fetuses. With the various accidents the muggles have had, Earth is no longer a safe environment for us to breed. Sterilized environments and habitats have let us work around the problem but this isn't particuarlly viable as a long term solution, especially not for the various magical flora and fauna.
"As such a proposal has been put forward to claim a new world and solar system for ourselves. Most of the debate seems to be about the practicalities of the plan, so we shall now vote. If it proves practical to do so, should we relocate the entire magical world from Earth to an extrasolar location? Yes, or no?"
The vote was near unanimous; magic was leaving Earth. And Harry gave a sly smile, he was finally going to escape.
Atlantis, Aether System, 2152
The Fidelius was cast and the knowledge that the Aether system existed was now a secret that only Harry could share. One of the quirks of the Fidelius was that the secret keeper could spend only a limited amount of time under it and that every individual who knew the secret would become a keeper upon the previous generation of secret keepers death. No one who intended to live in Aether could be the secret keeper and the keepers eventual death would bring the charm down as everyone who knew the secret was residing inside of it.
Harry had been the ideal choice. His hand had carved the secret above the departure gateway so that any witch or wizard who left would be able to return, and his immortality had ensured that the charm would never fall. That it gave him a great excuse to avoid the magical world was a great benefit as far as Harry was concerned.
Shanxi, 2157
Bloody hell, never fails. Humanity makes first contact and it is lizard people who appear hell bent on our extermination. Well vacation is over I guess, and it was a nice five years. Even if this Sol Alliance of Manswells is a fascist shitshow of the highest order. Hermione really was right when she pushed for hiding magic.
With that thought Harry called forth his armor from the necklace that he always wore. Liquid, silvery, metal spread over his body and solidified; causing him to look much like the Silver Surfer of long forgotten comic book fame. Alchemically purified silver enchanted by Harry using the Elder Wand and refined countless times from the first iterations that he had created back in his Auror days; the armor provided nigh unparalleled protection while simultaneously enhancing his other abilities. A thought activated the plethora of concealment magics; spells to render him transparent to the entire EM spectrum, spells that kept the armors exterior the same temperature to the surroundings, more to conceal scent and sound, flight enchantments to keep him from touching the ground, space warping spells to cause air to flow around him as if he weren't there to interrupt its flow, notice-me-not charms to cause others to ignore any suspicions that they might have, and the Cloak of Invisibility to conceal his magic.
Mere seconds after he made the decision, Harry James Potter - the Master of Death, The Boy-Who-Lived, The Man-Who-Won, the Protector of Magic, Grand Sorcerer - went to war for the first time in nearly four decades. His first move was to gain intelligence, and so with a simple point me spell he found the location of a Turian patrol, turned their equipment to air via simple transfiguration, paralyzed them all via body bind, and proceeded to use Legilimency to acquire first their language, then an understanding of their culture, and only then their plans for Shanxi and humanity.
That initial Turian attack was beaten back but it was only a prelude to one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The cultural disconnect between humanity and the turians led to the Turians commiting what humanity considered war-crimes of the worst sort and a human populace that was defiant to the last. They would fight for every inch of ground, throw out every moral and ethical restraint on their actions, and ensure that while the Turians might be able to destroy humanity they would never be able to conquer humanity.
Harry was the only wizard to fight, the rest safe back in Aether, and for all his power he could not stop fleets and armies. In the end humanity was forced back to Sol itself, fighting what it knew would be its last fight, when an Asari fleet under the command of Uressa T'Shora showed up and forced the Turians to back down.
Humanity was saved, and Harry had learned a great many things in the two years the war had been ongoing. For one, biotics did not play well with magic. Transfigurations, and most charms, didn't take and their auras disrupted most spells. For another, there was a whole galaxy beyond his imagination out there to explore; and two whole species (the Asari and Krogan) who would live long enough that he could make lasting relationships.
Black Manse, O'Neill Cylinder in geostationary orbit over Scotland, 2159
"So what do you want me to do Harry? They want their heros and you were one of the shining examples of humanity in the First Contact War. With you being one of House Black's Knight Irregulars as far as the muggles are concerned, I can shield you from much of the pomp but there is no way that I can shield you from it all. And you know that these aliens are going to be building profiles on you." asked Marius after his great grandfather finally finished ranting about Maxwell Manswell and his desire to use Harry for PR and propaganda points.
Harry grunted "Should have wiped out that snakes line back in Victor's day. No, I think I'll disappear off to Aether for a bit and help George with his experiments."
Marius thought about it for a second, George Weasley was probably at least as inventive as his namesake and had spent most of the past two decades playing around with eezo as he tried to make better and better starships.
"You going to make a ship and then try and disappear into the greater galaxy?"
Harry gave a nod "Yeah, besides I haven't been back for a while and it will be good to catch up with everyone."
Katerina snorted "And you've been itching to make your own ship since '43 or so."
Harry smiled, "A man has to have some hobbies in his dotage."
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A/N:
I significantly reworked this and decided to go in a slightly different direction with some of the world building and plot.
No clue where I am going with this or how long it will hold my interest. It's basically Harry thrown into LogicalPremise's ME AU.
Prologue
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International Confederation of Wizards, Earth, 2020
Harry James Potter, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, looked out across the serried ranks of the Mugwumps from his throne and thought back on the past two decades of his life as they took their places and settled down. It had all been so simple being an Auror and raising a family with Ginny, but then that fateful conversation with Hermione had occurred. Advances in muggle technology made it all but inevitable that magic would be discovered, and both were jaded enough to know the outcome of that. Wizards would never bow down to muggles or allow themselves to be ruled by muggle governments while the muggles would never be able to accept a millions strong population of demigods who could make a mockery of physics, twist muggle minds at whim, and ignore their laws at will.
No, it would have been war. On the one side, the muggles had numbers, nuclear weapons, and (potentially) engineered bioweapons. On the other side, the wizards had a great many equally potent spells and creatures that they could unleash if pressed. A death toll in the billions and a world thrown back into the middle ages was the best case outcome, more likely the human species would end up extinct.
So to save the world he, Harry James Potter, had done the one thing he swore that he would never do and become a politician. With his fame and power it had been trivial to become the Head Auror and then Director of Magical Law Enforcement. The seats on the Wizengamot for him and his closest allies who didn't already have them (Ron, Hermione, and Luna) had been gained with a few whispered words. Gaining his place at the head of the ICW had required him to wield the Elder Wand, its boost of power making up for the many decades of life experience and knowledge that his colleagues had on him, but needs must.
As the last Mugwump took their place he stood, a small wandless spell ensuring that everyone present would be able to easily hear his voice, "Welcome once again to these hallowed halls my fellow Mugwumps. We are gathered here today upon the petition of the Minister of Magic for the British Empire."
Glancing at the women seated in the VIP guest section, he continued "Minister Weasley, if you would present your case?"
Hermione Weasley, Minister of Magic of the British Empire, rose from her seat and made her way to the lectern facing the Mugwumps. Each and everyone of them had power - be it in magic, in wealth, in influence, - in their home nation and as a collective whole they ruled the magical world. It was an intimidating sight but she had prepared for this, and so with a subtle breath she began to speak.
"Thank you for the privilege of addressing this august body, Supreme Mugwump. I come before you all as the augury, the herald of a truth most grave. That truth is that the Statute of Secrecy is in imminent peril and will have almost certainly fallen within the decade."
The indrawn breath of the hundreds of Mugwumps was audible across the room, but these men and women didn't gain their positions by making emotional exclamations or acting without thought; so they waited for her to continue.
"Advances in muggle technology, specifically the smartphone, genetic testing, and automated data analytics are already making it increasingly difficult to conceal ourselves. Their governments notice when eleven year olds fall off the face of the world for ten months out of the year as they attend magical schools, they notice when witches and wizards without identities in their systems interact with the muggle world. Drivers licenses, tax records, credit cards, property records; the muggles record everything and those records are constantly being analyzed for anomalies. Even today, the only way that we, the British Ministry of Magic, has found to keep our people secret is by co-opting the various muggle intelligence services.
"That is only a stop gap measure though, and one that will fail in time. And we have all seen the reports; if the Statute of Secrecy falls then it will be war on a scale that imperils the survival of life on Earth.
"While I come to you as augury, I also come as phoenix. For the past twenty years I have made an intensive study of Lily Potter's Fidelius Charm, and with the help of various members of my government and other noted researches I have successfully modified it. Instead of protecting the secret of a location within the secret keepers soul, we have modified it to keep the secret that "Magic is real" and tie it into the souls of every witch and wizard. More precisely, it would make anyone who takes a specific magical oath into a secret keeper. Those oath takers would pledge their magic to support the secret, and in so doing allow the spell to last virtually forever at the cost of a virtually unnoticeable drain on the magic of those oath makers."
One of the Mugwumps caused a ball of light to float above him, and Harry said "You have a question Mugwump Sands?"
"Yes, Supreme Mugwump." the American said with a nod to Harry before turning to face Hermione. "What about muggleborns? Telling the secret to our children would be no bother, but would the muggleborns be prevented from realizing that they have magic until they are told?"
Hermione shook her head in the negative "No, one of the core tenets of the Fidelius is that it can only be cast by the one who owns the secret or with the consent of those who do. To avoid the need to get universal consent from every witch, wizard, and magical creature on the planet the charm has been modified so that it will only conceal the secret from those who have no claim over it. In the case of this secret, that would be those without magic. So a muggleborn could recognize that they are magical, but they would not be able to share that knowledge until they took the oath to become a secret keeper; and that is only possible after their magic settles and they become able to be bound to magical contracts."
The mugwump nodded and resumed his seat, only for another to indicate a desire to speak.
"The chair recognizes Mugwump Xian" spoke Harry.
The young women from China stood, "An interesting idea Minister Weasley, but why are you telling us about it? Is there a reason that you simply haven't cast the charm already?"
Hermione gave a wry smile "I could say that it was because I feel that I lack the right to make such a world spanning decision upon my own, but the truth is a matter of power. Our calculations show that to successfully cast this spell will take the combined magic of more than seven million witches and wizards."
There was another collective indrawn breath at that; the largest coordinated castings in regular use numbered in the hundreds, and the largest in recorded history was in the single digit thousands.
Xian gulped slightly before saying "Forgive my Minister, but that seems farcical. Even a full coven willing to give their lives and souls to the casting wouldn't be able to channel power on that scale. While your solution to the muggle issue might be ideal, and I will assume that your theoretical spell work is flawless, this just doesn't appear to be even slightly viable in the real world."
Before Hermione could say anything, Harry spoke "I can channel the power, and survive the experience."
"WHAT?" exploded from several of the Mugwumps, causing Harry to shrug slightly "As I said, I am capable of channeling the power needed. What I am not able to do is create the needed ritual circle and populate it with the 3,888,888 wizards and 3,888,888 witches needed to power it."
"How?" asked one of the Mugwumps is fearful awe.
Having no intention of telling any of them that it was a side effect of being the Master of Death, Harry shrugged again "A combination of unique magical phenomena."
---
They had raised an island in the Pacific and, after two years of work, the Fidelus had been cast and the knowledge that "Magic Was Real" was a secret hidden from every non magical entity across the breadth of the universe.
Potter Manor, Scotland, 2028
Harry Potter looked at the nervous twenty year old before him. Although he wasn't exactly sure why Hugo was nervous; if Harry had a problem with him and Lily being a couple then he bloody well would have done something about it sometime in the past five years. Still...his godsons hesitance had cost him that bet with Ron, so letting him squirm for a bit wouldn't go amiss.
After almost a minute of watching Hugo squirm Harry finally spoke "Of course you have my permission to ask Lily to marry you. What took you so long?"
Hugo gave a wide smile as the tension left him, "We wanted our Masteries first, sir."
Harry gave a nod of acceptance as he looked at the boy, no, young man before him. 'mione's brains certainly bred true. Double masteries in Runes and Potions along with a doctorate in political science from Oxford was nothing to scoff at. Perhaps...
It was almost six months since the idea had occurred to him, and two weeks past his daughters wedding, that Harry called the newlyweds - recently returned from their honeymoon - into his study.
"You wanted to see us pops?" asked Lily.
"I did. If the two of you are interested then I would name Lily Heiress Black and Hugo Regent Black." Harry said.
"What!? Why?" exclaimed Hugo.
"I thought Albus was going to get that legacy." questioned Lily, earning a slight grimace from Harry.
"He loves Miss Romanova more."
"Huh? What does his loving Anna have to do with him being Heir Black?" asked Luna.
"Anastasia is Lady Romanova. Her Oath of Ascension won't let her marry into another House, and for me to formally name someone Heir Black they have to take their own Oath. The two oaths aren't compatible." Harry answered.
"Then how did you become both Lord Potter and Lord Black?" wondered Hugo.
"Unique circumstances. When Sirius was named my godfather, and named me his heir, his brother was Heir Black and the House of Potter wasn't nobility. After Regulus died and Sirius was thrown into Azkaban, Arcturus didn't formally name anyone Heir Black. Without a named heir, the House fell to his natural heir; Sirius. When Sirius passed, the House again went to his only heir. At the time I was Heir Potter, but the House of Black is a Most Ancient House and its rules of inheritance care nothing about age; I became Lord Black the instant that Sirius died.
"Since I am the first Lord Potter, I was the one who got to devise the Potter Oath of Ascension and I worded it to avoid conflicts. That is also why, technically, the House of Potter is a vassal of the House of Black."
Lily blinked at that, "It is? How come we didn't already know this?"
Harry shrugged "Internal House affairs are just that; internal House affairs. It also doesn't really matter that much."
"Doesn't matter?! Dad, if you named me Heiress Black then it would mean James owes me fealty. I think that matters quite a bit." Lily exclaimed.
Giving his daughter a smile filled with weariness and regret, Harry sighed. "No, it doesn't. Thanks to my crappy luck and status as fates bitch I managed to stumble my way into true immortality when I killed Voldemort." Harry took in the stupefied faces of his daughter and son-in-law and gave another sigh before continuing "And the House of Black does not allow the abdication of its Lord, so I will be Black of Black, Lord of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, from now until the universes end."
"Immortal?" Hugo managed to choke out.
Harry gave a nod "Yup. I continued to age until I reached my physical prime and haven't aged since, and that Brazilian Dark Lord back in '04 managed to hit me straight on with fiendfyre and I simply fell out of the Veil of Death perfectly healthy. Actually, I came out healthier than I was before as my new body was at the peak of my genetic potential."
Hugo gulped, glanced at his wife, and then asked "Why are you telling us this? Why now?"
Harry waved a hand over his face and released a small sigh, "Because I'm tired. I've spent the past thirty years being a politician and a living legend. For all that it was necessary, I hated it. Now, finally, the Veil has been cast and everything has mostly stabilized in the aftermath. No longer do I have to worry that some idiot with delusions of adequacy is going to shatter the Statute of Secrecy.
"My plan is to abdicate the Potter Lordship to James, foist the responsibilities of the House of Black off onto the two of you, step down from the ICW, and take Minerva up on her standing offer to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts."
Lily and Hugo gave one another a long look before nodding, facing Harry, and saying "We'll do it."
Harry broke into a broad smile "Great, now we just need to start getting things set up. I should be able to make Hogwarts this year, the muggle will only take a week or two and I do have almost two months."
"The muggles?" Lily asked as her father started thinking out loud.
Harry blinked "Oh, yeah. Someone's got to keep an eye on the muggles and make sure that they don't wipe us all out with nuclear weapons or something. Not to mention steal any good ideas that they have. Now that the Veil is up, you know that the worlds are going to diverge even more. A little magic is all it will take to get the House of Black established as a major power in the muggle world, and the two of you are clearly interested in the non magical world."
Hogwarts Headmasters Office, Earth, 2050
"...so I think Manswell's right. The muggles are tearing themselves apart and if they want to survive they probably do need to move their technical infrastructure off planet." wrapped up Hugo.
Harry leaned back in his chair and thought for a bit, "It's your call, but I don't see any reason not to help the muggles. And I am interested in seeing how magic interacts with other planets, and the void, on a long term basis. So if you want to invest in space based industry and habitats then it's fine with me.
"Anything else?"
Hugo sighed, "Just that Sirius completed that project he was working on."
Harry sat up straighter, his grandson had already proven himself a superb arithmancy Master when he had been inspired by some old science fiction author named Asimov. From there he had dove headfirst into both divination and time magic as he tried to develop psychohistory.
Hugo gave a nod "Yes, he got it working and the results aren't pretty."
"How "not pretty"?" questioned Harry.
"The probable total extinction of the human species within two hundred years kind of "not pretty"" his son-in-law replied.
Before Harry could say anything, Hugo continued "He's not sure what's coming but he is positive that some existential crisis is going to occur soon. He's also predicting that the muggles are going to almost wipe themselves out before unifying under one government."
"And the magical world?" Harry asked after a moments contemplation.
Hugo shrugged, "Unknown. You know how magic interferes with any kind of divinations. Predicting anything involving magicals is still firmly in the realm of Oracles and their prophecies."
Black Manse, O'Neill Cylinder in geostationary orbit over Scotland, 2070
Harry looked down on the beautiful planet he had called home his entire life. 'from here it looks peaceful, I can almost imagine that it's not riven by war, factionalism, and plague.'
After a long moment he turned to his grandson, and Black Heir as of three weeks ago with his father's passing, "Are you positive this is the least bad option? Manswell is a snake and the cause of most of that chaos, and you want to support him?"
Sirius grimaced in distaste but still gave a firm head shake "Yes, I've run the numbers dozens of times. Cass also agrees.", his wife of two decades was the granddaughter of Luna Lovegood and a full blown Seer.
"Humanity must be unified if it wants a chance of surviving the cataclysm, and of all the possibilities this is the one with both the highest chance of success and the best long term future for our species. Well, unless you think you can convince the magical world as a whole to go out and conquer the entire non magical world."
Harry gave a snort of laughter at that, no the magical world as a whole seemed to barely even remember that the muggle world existed. There was no way that even Harry could convince them to put forth the effort required to takeover the muggles, and that assumed that Harry was actually willing to embrace the goal himself.
Harry looked like he had swallowed something foul as he said "I won't stop you. I might be Lord Black in name but you, and your father, have been managing the House and the muggles for the past fifty years."
Zurich Holdfast, Luna, Sol System, 2074
Concealed from detection by the power of Death's Cloak, Harry found it more difficult than he expected not to kill most of these men where they stood. Manswell, Windsor, Chu, Eldfell, Ashland, Yamato, Coleman, Dragunov, Setras, de la Camara, Simons, Ngubane, Bekenstein, al Saud; fourteen of the most powerful, especially relative to their fellow muggles of the day, muggles to have ever existed and they stood there to declare themselves the supreme rulers of humanity with the justification that the people had proven incapable of surviving outside the rule of their betters.
'farcical, they actually believe the hypocrisy they are spouting even as all of them are fully aware that Manswell himself has orchestrated much of the chaos and death plaguing the world. or that none of them would be here if they hadn't actively and knowingly aided and abetted his crimes. Sirius and I might be just as guilty, but at least we lack the hypocrisy.'
Harry gave a snort, muffled into silence by the charms concealing his presence, 'what would I do if my seventeen year old self met me? I'm a manipulative murderer acting for the "greater good". I guess that saying about dying a hero or living long enough to see yourself become the villain has some truth to it. I miss Ginny.'
Once the Pact of Sol was signed, Harry popped out of the chamber and into another buried more than a hundred miles under the Lunar surface and concealed from detection by numerous magics. It was empty save for a single mirror. With a tap of his wand and a murmured "Hogwarts" he stepped through the glass and into his office nearly 250,000 kilometers away.
Black Manse, O'Neill Cylinder in geostationary orbit over Scotland, 2140
Upon stepping out of the mirror Harry gave his great granddaughter-in-law a hug of greeting before saying "So what's this about Katerina? Marius was light on the details when he mirrored me, just said to get my ass up here."
The young women gave a tinkling laugh, "He's getting you back for missing Alexi's birthday."
Harry winced, "I am sorry about that, I really didn't expect the potion I was brewing to be that finicky."
She gave another laugh before saying "Details." and waving a hand in dismissal. Then she reached into a pocket, pulled out a bar that shouldn't have fit, and tossed it to him.
Harry caught the bar with ease, only for his eyebrows to rise as he realized that whatever this bar was made of, it wasn't anything that he had ever seen before.
"The muggles found an alien outpost on Mars. That substance, the boffins are calling it Element Zero on account of it having zero electrons or protons."
"So Neutronium then?" clarified Harry as he started silently casting a number of specialized analysis charms on the bar in his hand.
Katerina shook her head "No, or not unless Neutronium can be made stable without extreme gravity or mass. Although that stuff does appear to be naturally magical."
"Oh?" Harry questioned as he threw some more spells at it.
"Run an electrical current through it and it will increase its mass, run the opposite current through it and it will decrease its mass. Except when you look at it with mage sight while doing that, you can see that the mass manipulation is a magical effect." she said, causing Harry to look up sharply.
"A natural, inert, non magical, non living, material that casts spells? Everything we know about magic says that should be just about the closest thing to impossible as there can be." Harry said.
Katerina gave him a head bob, and smiled widely "Yup, and yet that stuff does it. Interested in being part of the team exploring the outpost? Or are you going to take that bar and disappear into your lab to play?"
Harry looked at the bluish black bar in his hand with longing but finally sighed, "I'll go to Mars for at least a few years."
International Confederation of Wizards, Earth, 2152
Harry sighed as the various Mugwumps debated around him. He had hoped to be done with politics one hundred and thirty years ago with the concealment of magic but that had been a naive hope. Hiding out at Hogwarts, first as its Defense Professor and later as its Headmaster had been a nice reprieve but the truth was that for one of his power and infamy it was impossible to be "Just Harry". The rumors that he had a Philosopher's Stone and that is why he still looked to be a man in the prime of his life didn't help.
Really, did people have no brains? Or did they truly think that he would have let Ginny, or any of his other closest associates, grow old and die when he could have so easily prevented it? Oh, his studies of Alchemy (and the recalled soul of Nicholas Flamel) have given him the required knowledge to make a stone but he had no desire to pay the price its creation required - the sacrifice of millions of souls.
No, his immortality was the side effect of that choice he had made so very long ago in the Forest of Death. Everything that was born was granted a ticket into Death's realm, but as the Master of Death he had been able to miss his train and Death didn't issue multiple tickets. Harry knew that he would die eventually, just as he also knew that he would be the last living thing in the entire universe before he had that pleasure.
Still, it was time to get on with this and so he silenced the room with a hand wave. "We seem to be debating in circles, so I am calling a vote. Three years ago we decided to seed the Sol Alliance survey teams with our people in the hopes of finding other worlds with magic. That effort has yet to bare fruit but we have found that our ability to use magic off of Earth is unimpeded. In addition, it has come to our attention that Element Zero exposure has a deleterious effect on virtually all magical fetuses. With the various accidents the muggles have had, Earth is no longer a safe environment for us to breed. Sterilized environments and habitats have let us work around the problem but this isn't particuarlly viable as a long term solution, especially not for the various magical flora and fauna.
"As such a proposal has been put forward to claim a new world and solar system for ourselves. Most of the debate seems to be about the practicalities of the plan, so we shall now vote. If it proves practical to do so, should we relocate the entire magical world from Earth to an extrasolar location? Yes, or no?"
The vote was near unanimous; magic was leaving Earth. And Harry gave a sly smile, he was finally going to escape.
Atlantis, Aether System, 2152
The Fidelius was cast and the knowledge that the Aether system existed was now a secret that only Harry could share. One of the quirks of the Fidelius was that the secret keeper could spend only a limited amount of time under it and that every individual who knew the secret would become a keeper upon the previous generation of secret keepers death. No one who intended to live in Aether could be the secret keeper and the keepers eventual death would bring the charm down as everyone who knew the secret was residing inside of it.
Harry had been the ideal choice. His hand had carved the secret above the departure gateway so that any witch or wizard who left would be able to return, and his immortality had ensured that the charm would never fall. That it gave him a great excuse to avoid the magical world was a great benefit as far as Harry was concerned.
Shanxi, 2157
Bloody hell, never fails. Humanity makes first contact and it is lizard people who appear hell bent on our extermination. Well vacation is over I guess, and it was a nice five years. Even if this Sol Alliance of Manswells is a fascist shitshow of the highest order. Hermione really was right when she pushed for hiding magic.
With that thought Harry called forth his armor from the necklace that he always wore. Liquid, silvery, metal spread over his body and solidified; causing him to look much like the Silver Surfer of long forgotten comic book fame. Alchemically purified silver enchanted by Harry using the Elder Wand and refined countless times from the first iterations that he had created back in his Auror days; the armor provided nigh unparalleled protection while simultaneously enhancing his other abilities. A thought activated the plethora of concealment magics; spells to render him transparent to the entire EM spectrum, spells that kept the armors exterior the same temperature to the surroundings, more to conceal scent and sound, flight enchantments to keep him from touching the ground, space warping spells to cause air to flow around him as if he weren't there to interrupt its flow, notice-me-not charms to cause others to ignore any suspicions that they might have, and the Cloak of Invisibility to conceal his magic.
Mere seconds after he made the decision, Harry James Potter - the Master of Death, The Boy-Who-Lived, The Man-Who-Won, the Protector of Magic, Grand Sorcerer - went to war for the first time in nearly four decades. His first move was to gain intelligence, and so with a simple point me spell he found the location of a Turian patrol, turned their equipment to air via simple transfiguration, paralyzed them all via body bind, and proceeded to use Legilimency to acquire first their language, then an understanding of their culture, and only then their plans for Shanxi and humanity.
That initial Turian attack was beaten back but it was only a prelude to one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The cultural disconnect between humanity and the turians led to the Turians commiting what humanity considered war-crimes of the worst sort and a human populace that was defiant to the last. They would fight for every inch of ground, throw out every moral and ethical restraint on their actions, and ensure that while the Turians might be able to destroy humanity they would never be able to conquer humanity.
Harry was the only wizard to fight, the rest safe back in Aether, and for all his power he could not stop fleets and armies. In the end humanity was forced back to Sol itself, fighting what it knew would be its last fight, when an Asari fleet under the command of Uressa T'Shora showed up and forced the Turians to back down.
Humanity was saved, and Harry had learned a great many things in the two years the war had been ongoing. For one, biotics did not play well with magic. Transfigurations, and most charms, didn't take and their auras disrupted most spells. For another, there was a whole galaxy beyond his imagination out there to explore; and two whole species (the Asari and Krogan) who would live long enough that he could make lasting relationships.
Black Manse, O'Neill Cylinder in geostationary orbit over Scotland, 2159
"So what do you want me to do Harry? They want their heros and you were one of the shining examples of humanity in the First Contact War. With you being one of House Black's Knight Irregulars as far as the muggles are concerned, I can shield you from much of the pomp but there is no way that I can shield you from it all. And you know that these aliens are going to be building profiles on you." asked Marius after his great grandfather finally finished ranting about Maxwell Manswell and his desire to use Harry for PR and propaganda points.
Harry grunted "Should have wiped out that snakes line back in Victor's day. No, I think I'll disappear off to Aether for a bit and help George with his experiments."
Marius thought about it for a second, George Weasley was probably at least as inventive as his namesake and had spent most of the past two decades playing around with eezo as he tried to make better and better starships.
"You going to make a ship and then try and disappear into the greater galaxy?"
Harry gave a nod "Yeah, besides I haven't been back for a while and it will be good to catch up with everyone."
Katerina snorted "And you've been itching to make your own ship since '43 or so."
Harry smiled, "A man has to have some hobbies in his dotage."
-x-x-x-
A/N:
I significantly reworked this and decided to go in a slightly different direction with some of the world building and plot.
No clue where I am going with this or how long it will hold my interest. It's basically Harry thrown into LogicalPremise's ME AU.
-x-x-x-
Prologue
-x-x-x-
International Confederation of Wizards, Earth, 2020
Harry James Potter, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, looked out across the serried ranks of the Mugwumps from his throne and thought back on the past two decades of his life as they took their places and settled down. It had all been so simple being an Auror and raising a family with Ginny, but then that fateful conversation with Hermione had occurred. Advances in muggle technology made it all but inevitable that magic would be discovered, and both were jaded enough to know the outcome of that. Wizards would never bow down to muggles or allow themselves to be ruled by muggle governments while the muggles would never be able to accept a millions strong population of demigods who could make a mockery of physics, twist muggle minds at whim, and ignore their laws at will.
No, it would have been war. On the one side, the muggles had numbers, nuclear weapons, and (potentially) engineered bioweapons. On the other side, the wizards had a great many equally potent spells and creatures that they could unleash if pressed. A death toll in the billions and a world thrown back into the middle ages was the best case outcome, more likely the human species would end up extinct.
So to save the world he, Harry James Potter, had done the one thing he swore that he would never do and become a politician. With his fame and power it had been trivial to become the Head Auror and then Director of Magical Law Enforcement. The seats on the Wizengamot for him and his closest allies who didn't already have them (Ron, Hermione, and Luna) had been gained with a few whispered words. Gaining his place at the head of the ICW had required him to wield the Elder Wand, its boost of power making up for the many decades of life experience and knowledge that his colleagues had on him, but needs must.
As the last Mugwump took their place he stood, a small wandless spell ensuring that everyone present would be able to easily hear his voice, "Welcome once again to these hallowed halls my fellow Mugwumps. We are gathered here today upon the petition of the Minister of Magic for the British Empire."
Glancing at the women seated in the VIP guest section, he continued "Minister Weasley, if you would present your case?"
Hermione Weasley, Minister of Magic of the British Empire, rose from her seat and made her way to the lectern facing the Mugwumps. Each and everyone of them had power - be it in magic, in wealth, in influence, - in their home nation and as a collective whole they ruled the magical world. It was an intimidating sight but she had prepared for this, and so with a subtle breath she began to speak.
"Thank you for the privilege of addressing this august body, Supreme Mugwump. I come before you all as the augury, the herald of a truth most grave. That truth is that the Statute of Secrecy is in imminent peril and will have almost certainly fallen within the decade."
The indrawn breath of the hundreds of Mugwumps was audible across the room, but these men and women didn't gain their positions by making emotional exclamations or acting without thought; so they waited for her to continue.
"Advances in muggle technology, specifically the smartphone, genetic testing, and automated data analytics are already making it increasingly difficult to conceal ourselves. Their governments notice when eleven year olds fall off the face of the world for ten months out of the year as they attend magical schools, they notice when witches and wizards without identities in their systems interact with the muggle world. Drivers licenses, tax records, credit cards, property records; the muggles record everything and those records are constantly being analyzed for anomalies. Even today, the only way that we, the British Ministry of Magic, has found to keep our people secret is by co-opting the various muggle intelligence services.
"That is only a stop gap measure though, and one that will fail in time. And we have all seen the reports; if the Statute of Secrecy falls then it will be war on a scale that imperils the survival of life on Earth.
"While I come to you as augury, I also come as phoenix. For the past twenty years I have made an intensive study of Lily Potter's Fidelius Charm, and with the help of various members of my government and other noted researches I have successfully modified it. Instead of protecting the secret of a location within the secret keepers soul, we have modified it to keep the secret that "Magic is real" and tie it into the souls of every witch and wizard. More precisely, it would make anyone who takes a specific magical oath into a secret keeper. Those oath takers would pledge their magic to support the secret, and in so doing allow the spell to last virtually forever at the cost of a virtually unnoticeable drain on the magic of those oath makers."
One of the Mugwumps caused a ball of light to float above him, and Harry said "You have a question Mugwump Sands?"
"Yes, Supreme Mugwump." the American said with a nod to Harry before turning to face Hermione. "What about muggleborns? Telling the secret to our children would be no bother, but would the muggleborns be prevented from realizing that they have magic until they are told?"
Hermione shook her head in the negative "No, one of the core tenets of the Fidelius is that it can only be cast by the one who owns the secret or with the consent of those who do. To avoid the need to get universal consent from every witch, wizard, and magical creature on the planet the charm has been modified so that it will only conceal the secret from those who have no claim over it. In the case of this secret, that would be those without magic. So a muggleborn could recognize that they are magical, but they would not be able to share that knowledge until they took the oath to become a secret keeper; and that is only possible after their magic settles and they become able to be bound to magical contracts."
The mugwump nodded and resumed his seat, only for another to indicate a desire to speak.
"The chair recognizes Mugwump Xian" spoke Harry.
The young women from China stood, "An interesting idea Minister Weasley, but why are you telling us about it? Is there a reason that you simply haven't cast the charm already?"
Hermione gave a wry smile "I could say that it was because I feel that I lack the right to make such a world spanning decision upon my own, but the truth is a matter of power. Our calculations show that to successfully cast this spell will take the combined magic of more than seven million witches and wizards."
There was another collective indrawn breath at that; the largest coordinated castings in regular use numbered in the hundreds, and the largest in recorded history was in the single digit thousands.
Xian gulped slightly before saying "Forgive my Minister, but that seems farcical. Even a full coven willing to give their lives and souls to the casting wouldn't be able to channel power on that scale. While your solution to the muggle issue might be ideal, and I will assume that your theoretical spell work is flawless, this just doesn't appear to be even slightly viable in the real world."
Before Hermione could say anything, Harry spoke "I can channel the power, and survive the experience."
"WHAT?" exploded from several of the Mugwumps, causing Harry to shrug slightly "As I said, I am capable of channeling the power needed. What I am not able to do is create the needed ritual circle and populate it with the 3,888,888 wizards and 3,888,888 witches needed to power it."
"How?" asked one of the Mugwumps is fearful awe.
Having no intention of telling any of them that it was a side effect of being the Master of Death, Harry shrugged again "A combination of unique magical phenomena."
---
They had raised an island in the Pacific and, after two years of work, the Fidelus had been cast and the knowledge that "Magic Was Real" was a secret hidden from every non magical entity across the breadth of the universe.
International Confederation of Wizards, Earth, 2152
Harry sighed as the various Mugwumps debated around him. He had hoped to be done with politics one hundred and thirty years ago with the concealment of magic but that had been a naive hope. Hiding out at Hogwarts, first as its Defense Professor and later as its Headmaster had been a nice reprieve but the truth was that for one of his power and infamy it was impossible to be "Just Harry". The rumors that he had a Philosopher's Stone and that is why he still looked to be a man in the prime of his life didn't help.
Really, did people have no brains? Or did they truly think that he would have let Ginny, or any of his other closest associates, grow old and die when he could have so easily prevented it? Oh, his studies of Alchemy (and the recalled soul of Nicholas Flamel) have given him the required knowledge to make a stone but he had no desire to pay the price its creation required - the sacrifice of millions of souls.
No, his immortality was the side effect of that choice he had made so very long ago in the Forest of Death. Everything that was born was granted a ticket into Death's realm, but as the Master of Death he had been able to miss his train and Death didn't issue multiple tickets. Harry knew that he would die eventually, just as he also knew that he would be the last living thing in the entire universe before he had that pleasure.
Still, it was time to get on with this and so he silenced the room with a hand wave. "We seem to be debating in circles, so I am calling a vote. Three years ago we decided to seed the Systems Alliance survey teams with our people in the hopes of finding other worlds with magic. That effort has yet to bare fruit but we have found that our ability to use magic off of Earth is unimpeded. In addition, it has come to our attention that Element Zero exposure has a deleterious effect on virtually all magical fetuses. With the various accidents the muggles have had, Earth is no longer a safe environment for us to breed. Sterilized environments and habitats have let us work around the problem but this isn't particuarlly viable as a long term solution, especially not for the various magical flora and fauna.
"As such a proposal has been put forward to claim a new world and solar system for ourselves. Most of the debate seems to be about the practicalities of the plan, so we shall now vote. If it proves practical to do so, should we relocate the entire magical world from Earth to an extrasolar location? Yes, or no?"
The vote was near unanimous, the magic was leaving Earth. And Harry gave a sly smile, he was finally going to escape.
Atlantis, Aether System, 2152
The Fidelius was cast and the knowledge that the Aether system existed was now a secret that only Harry could share. One of the quirks of the Fidelius was that the secret keeper could spend only a limited amount of time under it and that every individual who knew the secret would become a keeper upon the previous generation of secret keepers death. No one who intended to live in Aether could be the secret keeper and the keepers eventual death would bring the charm down as everyone who knew the secret was residing inside of it.
Harry had been the ideal choice. His hand had carved the secret above the departure gateway so that any witch or wizard who left would be able to return, and his immortality had ensured that the charm would never fall. That it gave him a great excuse to avoid the magical world was a great benefit as far as Harry was concerned.
Shanxi, 2157
Bloody hell, never fails. Humanity makes first contact and it is lizard people who appear hell bent on our extermination. Well vacation is over I guess, and it was a nice five years. Even if this System Alliance of Manswells is a fascist shitshow of the highest order. Hermione really was right when she pushed for hiding magic.
With that thought Harry called forth his armor from the necklace that he always wore. Liquid, silvery, metal spread over his body and solidified; causing him to look much like the Silver Surfer of long forgotten comic book fame. Alchemically purified silver enchanted by Harry using the Elder Wand and refined countless times from the first iterations that he had created back in his Auror days; the armor provided nigh unparalleled protection while simultaneously enhancing his other abilities. A thought activated the plethora of concealment magics; spells to render him transparent to the entire EM spectrum, spells that kept the armors exterior the same temperature to the surroundings, more to conceal scent and sound, flight enchantments to keep him from touching the ground, space warping spells to cause air to flow around him as if he weren't there to interrupt its flow, notice-me-not charms to cause others to ignore any suspicions that they might have, and the Cloak of Invisibility to conceal his magic.
Mere seconds after he made the decision, Harry James Potter - the Master of Death, The Boy-Who-Lived, The Man-Who-Won, the Protector of Magic, Grand Sorcerer - went to war for the first time in nearly four decades. His first move was to gain intelligence, and so with a simple point me spell he found the location of a Turian patrol, turned their equipment to air via simple transfiguration, paralyzed them all via body bind, and proceeded to use Legilimency to acquire first their language, then an understanding of their culture, and only then their plans for Shanxi and humanity.
That initial Turian attack was beaten back but it was only a prelude to one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The cultural disconnect between humanity and the turians led to the Turians commiting what humanity considered war-crimes of the worst sort and a human populace that was defiant to the last. They would fight for every inch of ground, throw out every moral and ethical restraint on their actions, and ensure that while the Turians might be able to destroy humanity they would never be able to conquer humanity.
Harry was the only wizard to fight, the rest safe back in Aether, and for all his power he could not stop fleets and armies. In the end humanity was forced back to Sol itself, fighting what it knew would be its last fight, when an Asari fleet under the command of Uressa T'Shora showed up and forced the Turians to back down.
Humanity was saved, and Harry had learned a great many things in the two years the war had been ongoing. For one, biotics did not play well with magic. Transfigurations, and most charms, didn't take and their auras disrupted most spells. For another, there was a whole galaxy beyond his imagination out there to explore; and two whole species (the Asari and Krogan) who would live long enough that he could make lasting relationships.
Earth, 2159
'Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to laugh in the face of that jumped up wanker.' Harry mused as he fought his way out of the estate of one Prince Maxwell Manswell.
Harry's antics in the First Contact War had brought him to the establishments attention and they had decided to reward him with a shiny medal, a Knighthood, and nobility. Harry was willing to admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that under their standards he had earned the accolades and that Manswell had been sincerely trying to reward him for his actions in defense of humanity; but there was no way in hell he was going to be making any oaths of fealty to some muggle with delusions of grandeur.
Deciding to prank the man, Harry led the guards chasing him into a generator room and then blew it up while apparating out.
Manswell got the last laugh though. Later that night Harry was watching the news in his hotel room when the anchor, Vivianna Travers, came on with a breaking news story.
"I bring you sad news tonight. We here at Westerlund News have just been informed of an assassination attempt by terrorist elements on His Grace Maxwell Manswell. He was meeting with noted resistance leader Harry Potter to formally induct Mr. Potter into the Supreme Order of Knights of United Earth as a Knight when the attack happened, and only Mr. Potters quick action stopped the terrorists from achieving their goal. I am grieved to report that Harry Potter fell in his defense of the Savior of Terra.
"We go now to a formal statement from His Grace."
The screen changed to show Maxwell, artfully dolled up to look like he had only just escaped a brush with death.
"Citizens of the Systems Alliance", he shook his head, "No, my fellow men. Today we lost an exemplar of what it means to be human with the death of Harry Potter. From that first attack on Shanxi all the way through to the final defense of Sol he was on the front lines, fighting to save our species. Time after time he managed the impossible, from his single handed infiltration and destruction of the Turian Dreadnought Valkar's Fury over Berkenstein to by time for its evacuation, to his liberation of the prison camps on Horizon; he proved to be everything, and more, that we demand of Our nobility.
"His last act was saving my life at the cost of his own when a handful of Brazilian separatists managed to infiltrate my estate using captured Turian equipment. It is with a heavy heart that I, Maxwell Manswell, Prince of the House of Manswell, Grand Master of the United Knights of Earth, High Lord of Sol name Harry James Potter, Sir Harry, Knight of the Supreme Order of Knights of United Earth, first Lord of the House of Potter, and award him with the Star of Sol.
"Many may consider this an empty gesture as Sir Harry had no offspring or spouse, but it is nothing of the sort. The House of Potter died to the last man fighting for humanity and with this acknowledgement, it will forever more remain among the ranks of the Court of Sol; honored besides those other Houses that have rendered the ultimate sacrifice for humanity."
Shutting off the display Harry gave a wry chuckle and head shake. "Well played Maxwell, well played. Now what would he say if I showed up alive somewhere down the road? Perhaps in time."
It was time to leave humanity behind for a while and explore the rest of the galaxy.
-x-x-x-
A/N: No clue where I am going with this or how long it will hold my interest. It's basically Harry thrown into LogicalPremise's ME AU.
Prologue
-x-x-x-
International Confederation of Wizards, Earth, 2020
Harry James Potter, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, looked out across the serried ranks of the Mugwumps from his throne and thought back on the past two decades of his life as they took their places and settled down. It had all been so simple being an Auror and raising a family with Ginny, but then that fateful conversation with Hermione had occurred. Advances in muggle technology made it all but inevitable that magic would be discovered, and both were jaded enough to know the outcome of that. Wizards would never bow down to muggles or allow themselves to be ruled by muggle governments while the muggles would never be able to accept a millions strong population of demigods who could make a mockery of physics, twist muggle minds at whim, and ignore their laws at will.
No, it would have been war. On the one side, the muggles had numbers, nuclear weapons, and (potentially) engineered bioweapons. On the other side, the wizards had a great many equally potent spells and creatures that they could unleash if pressed. A death toll in the billions and a world thrown back into the middle ages was the best case outcome, more likely the human species would end up extinct.
So to save the world he, Harry James Potter, had done the one thing he swore that he would never do and become a politician. With his fame and power it had been trivial to become the Head Auror and then Director of Magical Law Enforcement. The seats on the Wizengamot for him and his closest allies who didn't already have them (Ron, Hermione, and Luna) had been gained with a few whispered words. Gaining his place at the head of the ICW had required him to wield the Elder Wand, its boost of power making up for the many decades of life experience and knowledge that his colleagues had on him, but needs must.
As the last Mugwump took their place he stood, a small wandless spell ensuring that everyone present would be able to easily hear his voice, "Welcome once again to these hallowed halls my fellow Mugwumps. We are gathered here today upon the petition of the Minister of Magic for the British Empire."
Glancing at the women seated in the VIP guest section, he continued "Minister Weasley, if you would present your case?"
Hermione Weasley, Minister of Magic of the British Empire, rose from her seat and made her way to the lectern facing the Mugwumps. Each and everyone of them had power - be it in magic, in wealth, in influence, - in their home nation and as a collective whole they ruled the magical world. It was an intimidating sight but she had prepared for this, and so with a subtle breath she began to speak.
"Thank you for the privilege of addressing this august body, Supreme Mugwump. I come before you all as the augury, the herald of a truth most grave. That truth is that the Statute of Secrecy is in imminent peril and will have almost certainly fallen within the decade."
The indrawn breath of the hundreds of Mugwumps was audible across the room, but these men and women didn't gain their positions by making emotional exclamations or acting without thought; so they waited for her to continue.
"Advances in muggle technology, specifically the smartphone, genetic testing, and automated data analytics are already making it increasingly difficult to conceal ourselves. Their governments notice when eleven year olds fall off the face of the world for ten months out of the year as they attend magical schools, they notice when witches and wizards without identities in their systems interact with the muggle world. Drivers licenses, tax records, credit cards, property records; the muggles record everything and those records are constantly being analyzed for anomalies. Even today, the only way that we, the British Ministry of Magic, has found to keep our people secret is by co-opting the various muggle intelligence services.
"That is only a stop gap measure though, and one that will fail in time. And we have all seen the reports; if the Statute of Secrecy falls then it will be war on a scale that imperils the survival of life on Earth.
"While I come to you as augury, I also come as phoenix. For the past twenty years I have made an intensive study of Lily Potter's Fidelius Charm, and with the help of various members of my government and other noted researches I have successfully modified it. Instead of protecting the secret of a location within the secret keepers soul, we have modified it to keep the secret that "Magic is real" and tie it into the souls of every witch and wizard. More precisely, it would make anyone who takes a specific magical oath into a secret keeper. Those oath takers would pledge their magic to support the secret, and in so doing allow the spell to last virtually forever at the cost of a virtually unnoticeable drain on the magic of those oath makers."
One of the Mugwumps caused a ball of light to float above him, and Harry said "You have a question Mugwump Sands?"
"Yes, Supreme Mugwump." the American said with a nod to Harry before turning to face Hermione. "What about muggleborns? Telling the secret to our children would be no bother, but would the muggleborns be prevented from realizing that they have magic until they are told?"
Hermione shook her head in the negative "No, one of the core tenets of the Fidelius is that it can only be cast by the one who owns the secret or with the consent of those who do. To avoid the need to get universal consent from every witch, wizard, and magical creature on the planet the charm has been modified so that it will only conceal the secret from those who have no claim over it. In the case of this secret, that would be those without magic. So a muggleborn could recognize that they are magical, but they would not be able to share that knowledge until they took the oath to become a secret keeper; and that is only possible after their magic settles and they become able to be bound to magical contracts."
The mugwump nodded and resumed his seat, only for another to indicate a desire to speak.
"The chair recognizes Mugwump Xian" spoke Harry.
The young women from China stood, "An interesting idea Minister Weasley, but why are you telling us about it? Is there a reason that you simply haven't cast the charm already?"
Hermione gave a wry smile "I could say that it was because I feel that I lack the right to make such a world spanning decision upon my own, but the truth is a matter of power. Our calculations show that to successfully cast this spell will take the combined magic of more than seven million witches and wizards."
There was another collective indrawn breath at that; the largest coordinated castings in regular use numbered in the hundreds, and the largest in recorded history was in the single digit thousands.
Xian gulped slightly before saying "Forgive my Minister, but that seems farcical. Even a full coven willing to give their lives and souls to the casting wouldn't be able to channel power on that scale. While your solution to the muggle issue might be ideal, and I will assume that your theoretical spell work is flawless, this just doesn't appear to be even slightly viable in the real world."
Before Hermione could say anything, Harry spoke "I can channel the power, and survive the experience."
"WHAT?" exploded from several of the Mugwumps, causing Harry to shrug slightly "As I said, I am capable of channeling the power needed. What I am not able to do is create the needed ritual circle and populate it with the 3,888,888 wizards and 3,888,888 witches needed to power it."
"How?" asked one of the Mugwumps is fearful awe.
Having no intention of telling any of them that it was a side effect of being the Master of Death, Harry shrugged again "A combination of unique magical phenomena."
---
They had raised an island in the Pacific and, after two years of work, the Fidelus had been cast and the knowledge that "Magic Was Real" was a secret hidden from every non magical entity across the breadth of the universe.
International Confederation of Wizards, Earth, 2152
Harry sighed as the various Mugwumps debated around him. He had hoped to be done with politics one hundred and thirty years ago with the concealment of magic but that had been a naive hope. Hiding out at Hogwarts, first as its Defense Professor and later as its Headmaster had been a nice reprieve but the truth was that for one of his power and infamy it was impossible to be "Just Harry". The rumors that he had a Philosopher's Stone and that is why he still looked to be a man in the prime of his life didn't help.
Really, did people have no brains? Or did they truly think that he would have let Ginny, or any of his other closest associates, grow old and die when he could have so easily prevented it? Oh, his studies of Alchemy (and the recalled soul of Nicholas Flamel) have given him the required knowledge to make a stone but he had no desire to pay the price its creation required - the sacrifice of millions of souls.
No, his immortality was the side effect of that choice he had made so very long ago in the Forest of Death. Everything that was born was granted a ticket into Death's realm, but as the Master of Death he had been able to miss his train and Death didn't issue multiple tickets. Harry knew that he would die eventually, just as he also knew that he would be the last living thing in the entire universe before he had that pleasure.
Still, it was time to get on with this and so he silenced the room with a hand wave. "We seem to be debating in circles, so I am calling a vote. Three years ago we decided to seed the Systems Alliance survey teams with our people in the hopes of finding other worlds with magic. That effort has yet to bare fruit but we have found that our ability to use magic off of Earth is unimpeded. In addition, it has come to our attention that Element Zero exposure has a deleterious effect on virtually all magical fetuses. With the various accidents the muggles have had, Earth is no longer a safe environment for us to breed. Sterilized environments and habitats have let us work around the problem but this isn't particuarlly viable as a long term solution, especially not for the various magical flora and fauna.
"As such a proposal has been put forward to claim a new world and solar system for ourselves. Most of the debate seems to be about the practicalities of the plan, so we shall now vote. If it proves practical to do so, should we relocate the entire magical world from Earth to an extrasolar location? Yes, or no?"
The vote was near unanimous, the magic was leaving Earth. And Harry gave a sly smile, he was finally going to escape.
Atlantis, Aether System, 2152
The Fidelius was cast and the knowledge that the Aether system existed was now a secret that only Harry could share. One of the quirks of the Fidelius was that the secret keeper could spend only a limited amount of time under it and that every individual who knew the secret would become a keeper upon the previous generation of secret keepers death. No one who intended to live in Aether could be the secret keeper and the keepers eventual death would bring the charm down as everyone who knew the secret was residing inside of it.
Harry had been the ideal choice. His hand had carved the secret above the departure gateway so that any witch or wizard who left would be able to return, and his immortality had ensured that the charm would never fall. That it gave him a great excuse to avoid the magical world was a great benefit as far as Harry was concerned.
Shanxi, 2157
Bloody hell, never fails. Humanity makes first contact and it is lizard people who appear hell bent on our extermination. Well vacation is over I guess, and it was a nice five years. Even if this System Alliance of Manswells is a fascist shitshow of the highest order. Hermione really was right when she pushed for hiding magic.
With that thought Harry called forth his armor from the necklace that he always wore. Liquid, silvery, metal spread over his body and solidified; causing him to look much like the Silver Surfer of long forgotten comic book fame. Alchemically purified silver enchanted by Harry using the Elder Wand and refined countless times from the first iterations that he had created back in his Auror days; the armor provided nigh unparalleled protection while simultaneously enhancing his other abilities. A thought activated the plethora of concealment magics; spells to render him transparent to the entire EM spectrum, spells that kept the armors exterior the same temperature to the surroundings, more to conceal scent and sound, flight enchantments to keep him from touching the ground, space warping spells to cause air to flow around him as if he weren't there to interrupt its flow, notice-me-not charms to cause others to ignore any suspicions that they might have, and the Cloak of Invisibility to conceal his magic.
Mere seconds after he made the decision, Harry James Potter - the Master of Death, The Boy-Who-Lived, The Man-Who-Won, the Protector of Magic, Grand Sorcerer - went to war for the first time in nearly four decades. His first move was to gain intelligence, and so with a simple point me spell he found the location of a Turian patrol, turned their equipment to air via simple transfiguration, paralyzed them all via body bind, and proceeded to use Legilimency to acquire first their language, then an understanding of their culture, and only then their plans for Shanxi and humanity.
That initial Turian attack was beaten back but it was only a prelude to one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The cultural disconnect between humanity and the turians led to the Turians commiting what humanity considered war-crimes of the worst sort and a human populace that was defiant to the last. They would fight for every inch of ground, throw out every moral and ethical restraint on their actions, and ensure that while the Turians might be able to destroy humanity they would never be able to conquer humanity.
Harry was the only wizard to fight, the rest safe back in Aether, and for all his power he could not stop fleets and armies. In the end humanity was forced back to Sol itself, fighting what it knew would be its last fight, when an Asari fleet under the command of Uressa T'Shora showed up and forced the Turians to back down.
Humanity was saved, and Harry had learned a great many things in the two years the war had been ongoing. For one, biotics did not play well with magic. Transfigurations, and most charms, didn't take and their auras disrupted most spells. For another, there was a whole galaxy beyond his imagination out there to explore; and two whole species (the Asari and Krogan) who would live long enough that he could make lasting relationships.
Earth, 2159
'Perhaps it wasn't the best idea to laugh in the face of that jumped up wanker.' Harry mused as he fought his way out of the estate of one Prince Maxwell Manswell.
Harry's antics in the First Contact War had brought him to the establishments attention and they had decided to reward him with a shiny medal, a Knighthood, and nobility. Harry was willing to admit, in the privacy of his own mind, that under their standards he had earned the accolades and that Manswell had been sincerely trying to reward him for his actions in defense of humanity; but there was no way in hell he was going to be making any oaths of fealty to some muggle with delusions of grandeur.
Deciding to prank the man, Harry led the guards chasing him into a generator room and then blew it up while apparating out.
Manswell got the last laugh though. Later that night Harry was watching the news in his hotel room when the anchor, Vivianna Travers, came on with a breaking news story.
"I bring you sad news tonight. We here at Westerlund News have just been informed of an assassination attempt by terrorist elements on His Grace Maxwell Manswell. He was meeting with noted resistance leader Harry Potter to formally induct Mr. Potter into the Supreme Order of Knights of United Earth as a Knight when the attack happened, and only Mr. Potters quick action stopped the terrorists from achieving their goal. I am grieved to report that Harry Potter fell in his defense of the Savior of Terra.
"We go now to a formal statement from His Grace."
The screen changed to show Maxwell, artfully dolled up to look like he had only just escaped a brush with death.
"Citizens of the Systems Alliance", he shook his head, "No, my fellow men. Today we lost an exemplar of what it means to be human with the death of Harry Potter. From that first attack on Shanxi all the way through to the final defense of Sol he was on the front lines, fighting to save our species. Time after time he managed the impossible, from his single handed infiltration and destruction of the Turian Dreadnought Valkar's Fury over Berkenstein to by time for its evacuation, to his liberation of the prison camps on Horizon; he proved to be everything, and more, that we demand of Our nobility.
"His last act was saving my life at the cost of his own when a handful of Brazilian separatists managed to infiltrate my estate using captured Turian equipment. It is with a heavy heart that I, Maxwell Manswell, Prince of the House of Manswell, Grand Master of the United Knights of Earth, High Lord of Sol name Harry James Potter, Sir Harry, Knight of the Supreme Order of Knights of United Earth, first Lord of the House of Potter, and award him with the Star of Sol.
"Many may consider this an empty gesture as Sir Harry had no offspring or spouse, but it is nothing of the sort. The House of Potter died to the last man fighting for humanity and with this acknowledgement, it will forever more remain among the ranks of the Court of Sol; honored besides those other Houses that have rendered the ultimate sacrifice for humanity."
Shutting off the display Harry gave a wry chuckle and head shake. "Well played Maxwell, well played. Now what would he say if I showed up alive somewhere down the road? Perhaps in time."
It was time to leave humanity behind for a while and explore the rest of the galaxy.
-x-x-x-
A/N: No clue where I am going with this or how long it will hold my interest. It's basically Harry thrown into LogicalPremise's ME AU.
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