"You know, I didn't think you'd go through with this. It was suicidal of you to meet William in a muggle restaurant of all things unguarded and unprotected." Remus made his displeasure known by glaring at him.
But Harry was not fazed the least by it. He had faced far worse when he faced off against Voldemort.
"It was a most enlightening and cordial conversation with Mr Gardner. We had dinner and talked over my proposal in detail. He even reached out with a letter asking whether it's possible to include a couple more werewolf pack leaders for the inspection." Harry said, waving a leaf of parchment before Remus' face with a smug smile.
"He did?" Remus blinked in surprise.
"Indeed. It's safe to say Mr Gardner has done half the work for me and made it easier by gathering more werewolf packs for the show and tell. Once I impress upon them the need to shift to Elysium, I'm confident they'll pack their bags and leave Earth in a jiffy."
Harry was obviously happy William was making the effort to gather more werewolves. It certainly made his job easier to recruit more werewolves for Elysium.
"You have to be careful, Harry. The werewolves you see with William have survived and thrived in the long shadows cast by wizards for decades. They'll not be as easily wooed by promises of a new home or whatever you offer." Remus warned.
"Oh, I'm planning on offering them more than a home." said Harry, sipping hot tea while staring intently at the two doors ahead of him.
"Please don't paint the whole werewolf community based on your experience with me, Harry. You'll be in for disappointment." Remus warned
"I think you're too pessimistic, Remus." Harry waved off Remus' warnings dismissively.
"I think I know what I'm talking about, seeing as I'm the werewolf between the two of us." Remus eyed with a deadpan stare.
"Your furry little problem does not make you wise, Remus." Harry said with a snort.
"We shall see soon enough." Remus grunted.
Their attention shifted to the large twin doors when they heard noises from the other side.
"Are you sure the simulation is safe?" Remus asked with a sceptical look directed at the twin doors.
"It's safe…" Harry muttered before hastily adding, "…mostly."
They waited with bated breath as the sound of spellfire, explosions, shouts and screams from behind the doors. It came to a point where it sounded like a few bombs were going off inside until, finally, one door was blown open, and Daphne rolled out of it with her boots on fire. She was followed by Tracey, Luna, and Terry Boot, whose robes were singed and were sporting some burn marks. The sole exception was Luna, who looked all right except for the ash clinging to her sandy blonde hair.
"Well, it looks like I get to say I told you so. Now, pay up." Remus smiled victoriously at him.
Remus looked far too smug for his liking, but a deal was a deal, and Harry was not one to back out. He handed over a small pouch from his pocket and shook it, making sure Remus heard the clinking of the coin before dropping it into the older man's outstretched hand.
"You bet gold against me?" Daphne looked affronted and shot Harry a seething look.
"Against us?" Tracey also looked murderous, as did Terry Boot.
"Oh, Harry seems to be suffering from a terrible case of Wackspurt infestation." Luna said breezily with a rhythmic movement of her head.
"In other words, he's gone bonkers." Terry Boot claimed with a huff while being tended to by Remus.
"You can't blame me for betting against you guys. Your group was the numerically weaker group, and I expected the Weasley twins to be an asset to Neville's team." Harry defended his position as he helped treat the burn marks with a salve he had prepared for this occasion.
As Harry and Remus were treating Daphne and her team for the injuries, the remaining door was blown open, and Neville and his team stumbled out. The doorway sealed itself shut while smoke and soot clung to the recently arrived team of Knights like a cloak.
"Oh, bollocks!" Fred gasped once his eyes settled on Daphne and her team.
"We lost!" George finished, and the twins fell on their asses against the floor with an audible sigh.
"Yes, you did. I guess you guys need to put more time in training." Harry suggested.
"Uhh…. I guess graduating Hogwarts early had its disadvantages." Alicia commented with a frown.
"Yep, we're out of shape and lacked proper training. It's a good thing Hary here finished off the Dark Lord. Otherwise, we'd have been in a tighter spot." said Angelina.
"It looks like you're out of it, Neville." said Harry, helping his friend to his feet.
"Yeah. We lost our footing when a hill crumbled down thanks to a lava river changing course. It was one hellish place to survive." Neville said with a wince when Harry applied the healing salve on his left cheek.
"Are you sure there is a place like this out there, and are you sure you want to go there?" Alicia asked while pulling ash out of her hair.
"I definitely need to go there." Harry reiterated.
"What is in this place? I mean, what could survive an environment like this?" Neville asked with utter bafflement.
"Something necessary for securing our future." Harry said vaguely before turning his attention to Daphne's team. "Come. There is much work to be done."
Harry was not about to take Daphne and her team with him without some preparation of his own. After all, he was not merely interested in having a jolly ride on a lava-consumed planet. There were specific missions in his mind that needed to be completed, and that required more training and advanced gear tailored to the team's use.
Fortunately, he already had the tactical gear for the team.
******
"If you had these suits in storage, why did you make us use charms to navigate the fiery pit of hell?" Terry Boot asked with a glare as he adjusted the tight-fitting suit to get better mobility.
"Because I needed to know whether you were magically strong enough to withstand the natural conditions of the planet we're about to visit." said Harry as he led them towards an underground facility hidden away beneath the city being built on the ground.
The lift that was taking them several stories below suddenly became transparent after a certain distance. Light filtered into the moving lift as they came upon a huge underground facility where hundreds of House Elves and men were seen working tirelessly.
"Is that…?" Daphne gasped, her blue eyes widening as she took in the behemoths inside the secret facility.
"Yes, indeed. Welcome to the hangar of the newly built Elysian fleet. It's a work in progress, but I guess this will do for now." Harry said with smug satisfaction, seeing the gobsmacked look on the faces of his girlfriend and her team.
"Wow!" Tracey and Terry Boot had their eyes stuck on the massive metallic spaceships under work.
The moment Harry gained the necessary knowledge from the Ancient repository, he started recruiting House Elves from Britain and all around the world to build this hangar deep underneath a hill on one of the largest continents of Elysium. If everything went according to plan, he hoped to turn the city being built over the hanger into the capital of Elysium, with the newly budding fleet providing security to it.
The fleet was designed mostly with the aid of House Elves, who had undergone a short but immensely useful data crystal learning course on Lantean engineering. The House Elves obsessed with work were like a child in a candy store when he charged the Elves with the construction of several hastily designed ships. Of the three designs he made, only one was completed.
Even with the speed and work-obsessed happy workforce under his employ, the process of making a spaceship was tough work. The only reason they managed to complete one ship in a short time was because an intact Lantean puddle jumper was already present in Elysium. So, all the House Elves had to do was rework the ship to fit Harry's new design. After all, he was reminded of a meat roll whenever he looked at the Lantean puddle jumper.
Harry led Daphne, Luna, Terry and Tracey to the newly furnished ship by the House Elves.
The sleek black ship looked like something out of a sci-fi movie with its curving wings, sharp folds, and huge boosters at the back. Small cannons could be seen at the front, implying the ship was not just for transport but it could pack a punch should someone dare to challenge it to battle.
"Hey, everyone." Cedric came down from an upper workstation on a floating platform with a helmet and several robotic equipment beside him.
"Cedric!" Tracey gasped.
"In the flesh." Cedric grinned, waving a greeting at the group.
"This is where you work?" Terry asked, looking around in wonder.
"Yep. Harry initially assigned me the task of organising the control crystals for the command bridges, but now I get to work on Naquadah generators, which is really fun." Cedric said eagerly with a pleased grin.
"I don't know what any of that means." Daphne muttered before leaning towards Tracey, "Did you understand anything?"
"I understood something about crystals." Tracey whispered back.
"You'll understand what you need to understand once you properly organise your mind. For now, you'll be escorted by Cedric to the airstrip room to gain some flight experience. You'll need it before our mission." said Harry before allowing Cedric to take over.
Harry watched from a vantage point where the British RAF pilots took Daphne and her team on their Tornado ADV interceptor aircraft to give them the necessary flight experience for the mission. He felt a shift in the air but remained rooted in the spot and waited for the new arrival to make himself known.
"So, throwing your friends into the hands of the muggle military men for training without any warning. Even I must admit you operate in strange ways, Mr Potter." Croaker said from a step behind Harry.
If the man thought that was supposed to exude a mysterious aura to the lead Unspeakable on his secret base, the man was so wrong.
"I seek only results. I don't care how it's obtained." Harry said dispassionately.
"I suppose there is something terribly efficient with such outlook. Nonetheless, you realise this project of yours may not stand scrutiny once the ICW forms a proper governing council. After all, using muggles as little better than slave labour may not be tolerated by certain sections of our society." Croaker cautioned in an overly concerned tone, but Harry did not fall for it.
"Let me worry about the politics, Saul." Harry switched gears, using the man's first name in an overly familiar fashion, "How is the time dilation field holding?"
Though Croaker looked unhappy at the switch in topic, the man didn't push his luck.
"Steady for now, but we must pull the wards down soon as holding the field for too long is not good for this area. We have yet to properly study any aftereffects caused by long exposure of time dilation fields on wizards and muggles." Croaker said, watching the RAF pilots take the children in their most unholy aircraft.
Croaker winced at the reminder of his own experience. Anyone working in the airbase was supposed to gain flight experience, including elves, wizards and witches. No exceptions were given, just as the muggles working in the base were also similarly trained. Not all were pre-trained pilots of the RAF, considering many of the muggle workers were Russian or German citizens. Some were even engineers, but Harry insisted on at least a ten-hour flight training among the workers.
He insisted on such a condition to cultivate a good pool of space mission candidates for the future. It was still a work in progress, but Harry had high hopes for the budding fleet. Constructing a fully fledged professional fleet capable of projecting Elysium's power into the stars would take time. But time was no longer a detriment.
"If our magical power is not enough to keep the time dilation field active, then perhaps it's time we employed technology." said Harry, his thoughts straying to the Lantean knowledge over time-related technology into the forefront of his mind.
******
Fortunately for everyone involved, Harry only insisted on the stipulated ten-hour flight experience as a prerequisite for the mission. The time dilation field over the airbase maintained by the Unspeakables ensured that Daphne and her team had all the time in the world to complete the training exercise. The extreme G-forces they endured with the tactical suit provided by Harry gave them the minimum experience needed to survive space flights. Harry was also careful to assess each member of the team and how they held on to the training. It was only after he was given the green signal by the RAF trainers that he allowed Daphne, Tracey, Luna and Terry to become part of this mission.
Harry waited by the ship's entrance and watched Daphne, Tracey, Luna and Terry arrive with their tactical suit on.
"Are we going to get knocked out when it takes off?" Daphne asked cautiously, eyeing the ship with trepidation.
Luna, Terry and Tracey winced at the reminder of them getting knocked out in their ten-hour flight training experience.
"No." Harry shook his head, "This ship is designed to keep artificial gravity and pressure within its bridge. The reason I insisted you feel the G-forces in a muggle aircraft is to drive the point of risks involved. Space is an unpredictable domain. It'll not be your friend, and you'll hardly have time to react with magic. So, I wanted to give you all a small taste of what can be expected."
Harry looked at each member of the team in the eyes to drive the seriousness of what was happening.
"Knowing all this, are you ready to embark on space missions? This will be the first mission outside Elysium's airspace, and we'll be the first ones to do so in the recorded history of wizardkind." Harry gently reminded them.
"We're ready." Daphne said with her blue eyes shining with resolve and eager to get her name put at the top.
Tracey and Terry were also on the same boat, their eyes shining with ambition and excitement despite the warnings of danger involved. Luna was taking it all almost breezily, content to let everyone else worry. At the same time, she played with a lock of hair and stared almost childishly at the blinking lights and other such trivialities inside the secret airbase.
'It's a strange combination for a team supposed to take on interplanetary missions.' Harry mused with a shake of his head.
His thoughts were cut short when he felt a familiar presence enter the edge of his senses. It didn't take long for that familiar presence to make itself known to everyone.
"I hope you weren't internationally keeping us away from this historic moment, Harry." Perenelle said, breezily walking into the hangar with Nicholas Flamel by her side and the ship's pilot, Adrian Corbyn.
Adrian, a man in his early forties, looked anything but comfortable standing next to the two immortals. Considering the pilot was aware of the tensions between the two factions dominating Elysium, the former RAF pilot was put in a bind. Adrian was one of the few pilots in the base with the Lantean gene, which was a necessary precondition to operate a ship in the Elysian fleet.
"Of course not, Lady Flamel. As you've no doubt guessed, it was not a chance encounter that you came across Adrian here." Harry said smoothly, nodding at the former RAF pilot who was supposed to pilot the ship for this mission. "So, shall we begin?"
Adrian just nodded and hastily climbed into the pilot seat. The control systems in the ship activated, sensing the Lantean gene within Adrian.
As one of the few muggle pilots with the Lantean gene in the base, Adrian was a familiar figure to most wizards and witches present on Elysium. Although, most just thought he was a muggleborn. Adrian was also among the few muggles to whom Harry chose not to apply the memory charm. After all, Harry directly recruited the man, and he realised early on that Adrian was desperately looking for a second chance to start anew due to some personal tragedies in life.
Now, Adrian was one of the frontline hopefuls to get the altered Lantean gene to kick start the evolution into a wizard. This alone made Adrian worthy of knowledge about the wizarding world and about the wider galaxy. This was why Harry selected the man to pilot the expedition.
"We shall observe this most interesting mission from the command centre. I hope there is something interesting in this mysterious destination." Perenelle said with a peculiar grin that set everyone on edge for a brief moment before she turned around and walked away.
"Hope you find what you're looking for, Harry." Nicholas said with a short nod before following his wife.
"That woman is really creepy." Tracey commented once the Flamels were out of earshot.
Harry couldn't agree more, and that was why he extracted a vow from Perenelle never to expose their relationship to anyone else. He exchanged a look with Daphne, and fortunately, she got the message.
"Leave that and concentrate on the mission. We have much work to do." Daphne said, bringing the focus back to the task at hand.
Adrian was quick to fire up the engines of the modified Lantean ship powered by a Naquadah core once he sat on the command chair. The brand-new engine of the ship hummed to life, and its boosters and thrusters ignited with power thrumming in them.
Harry, Daphne and everyone else settled into the ship's command bridge behind their pilot. The ceiling of the airbase slid open while Harry installed a data crystal containing the location and all other information about the destination into the ship's interface.
"All right, Captain Corbyn. The ship's in your hands." said Harry before leaning back in his seat with an eye on the controls of the ship.
"Here we go then." Captain Corbyn muttered as the man energised the thrusters to take off from the base with a thought.
Not one iota of G-force was felt by anyone in the team as the ship maintained artificial gravity in its interior and swiftly shot through Elysium's atmosphere. The boosters on the ship lit up with thrusting force, taking the ship swiftly out of the planet's pull into space.
"Engaging hyperdrive." Captain Corbyn said before powering down the boosters, and a low hum of the hyperdrive coming online was heard inside the ship.
The space around the ship distorted, and they were pulled into hyperspace without any delay.
"We'll reach the destination in twenty minutes." Captain Corbyn said, his shoulders sagging with some relief.
"So, now that we have some time on our hands, I think we need to get some things straight." Daphne said seriously as her eyes bore into Harry's, "Where are we going?"
"Praclarush Taonas." said Harry.
Tracey, Terry and Luna stared at him as if he had grown another head.
"Lost in fire." Daphne muttered, translating the Ancient language into modern English after a moment of thought. "What does that mean?"
"It means the planet we're about to visit was lost in fire. It was once an outpost hosting a forward base of the Lanteans millions of years ago. They abandoned it when the Lanteans migrated to the Pegasus galaxy."
"So, we're going to an abandoned outpost of the Lanteans, hoping to bring everything they left behind to Elysium. So, why did we train to survive lava in the RoR?" Terry asked with a perplexed look.
"Because the planet has been lost in fire quite literally." said Harry.
"Huh?" Terry blinked owlishly.
Harry stifled the laugh that struggled to escape his throat at the look on the face of Terry Boot.
"The sun in the planet's star system has turned into a red giant nearing its end. The planet is riddled with high radiation, and its surface is covered in lava, turning it into the most hellish place in the galaxy." said Harry.
"If that's true, shouldn't anything on this planet be destroyed?" Daphne asked.
"A good assumption, but we're talking about the structures built by the most advanced race the universe has ever seen. They built their constructs to last millions of years. Trust me, there is much to salvage on the planet, no matter its current condition." Harry said confidently.
"What was the planet's real name?" Luna asked curiously.
"The Lanteans called it Asars."
"We're here." Adrian announced as their ship exited the hyperspace close to their destination.
The video feed of their ship projected before them on a screen showed the fiery planet below them, but it was not a pretty sight. It looked like a thousand volcanos decided to explode at the same time. The entire planet was consumed in fire, with lava freely flowing in every direction. The ship's sensors started scanning the rivers of molten rock stretched across the surface, and geysers of superheated gas erupted into the turbulent atmosphere.
"That's certainly a hellish place." Tracey said, gulping at the terrible sight before her eyes.
"Start scanning the planet's surface. There should be a facility powered by a high-density power source buried somewhere under all that. Once we find it, we'll need to retrieve the power source, and after that, we need to find the stargate of this planet." said Harry, adjusting his tactical suit while standing up from his seat.
Adrian frowned from his command seat.
"Given the extreme temperatures and seismic instability, landing isn't an option. We'll have to transport you down close to the site."
"Have you found it?" Harry asked.
"Give me a minute." Adrian muttered with his eyes screwed shut in concentration.
After a few minutes, the screen flared up with a ping, showing a highlighted structure beneath the lava.
"It looks intact, and the sensors are definitely picking up a strong energy signature," Adrian said.
"It's time." Harry said, turning to his companions.
Together, they activated the security measures of their tactical suit layered with protective runes before being beamed down to the surface. Immediately, Harry activated the suit's flight mode to hover above the fiery lava below. This was followed by Daphne and the others.
"We'll need to remove this lava to safely secure the facility intact. Start pulling everything out and vanish anything that does not look like part of the facility." Harry ordered.
Together, they started freezing the lava and vanishing the solids that formed out of getting supercooled lava. Sometimes, they had to blow up the surface to push into the facility. Slowly, more and more of the smooth metal surface of the research facility was unearthed. Daphne and Luna set up a ward to keep off the poisonous fumes, radiation, and superheated air.
Once the entire facility was unearthed from the lava and molten rocks, Harry and Terry started drawing runes carefully with magically infused ink. Their magical energy infused into the ink as they covered the metallic surface completely with the runes before activating them. With a flare of white light, the runes lit up with magical energy before the entire facility started to shrink into the size of a suitcase. Harry held the shrunken facility with a hovering charm and nodded at Daphne.
Daphne contacted Adrian on the ship and safely transported the shrunken facility into the ship's storage hanger.
"Adrian, run a surface scan on rare minerals listed in the data crystal I plugged into the system. The planet should be teeming with some if we're lucky." Harry spoke through the comms.
A minute later, Adrian contacted him, and his words put a smile on Harry's face.
"It looks like our work is not done. Are you guys ready?" Harry asked, looking into the somewhat freaking eyes of his friends.
"Whatever it is that you want to do, we have to hurry. I don't think I want to spend too much time watching this hellish place." Tracey said after taking a deep breath from the safety of her tactical suit.
Harry chuckled, but he agreed with Tracey. Despite knowing the suit would hold back anything the planet could throw at them, he wanted the mission to be done as fast as possible.
"Let's finish our mission as fast as possible." said Harry, and they worked in earnest, guided by Adrian, pinpointing the locations on the planet.
AN: To read ahead of the update schedule; pat(r) eon. C (O) M/Dragonspectre.
For artwork related to the fic:
https://discord.gg/Nw2JH25fJf