Clarissa looked up as the
door opened and closed at the heels of a customer.
“I’m sorry, we’re not
open yet,” she greeted them, as she always did, and then froze.
Lucius Malfoy stood on the
welcoming mat – which welcomed him with a “Boldly Come!” Dressed in impressive
robes with a cane in his hand, he looked around with a sort of displeased
interest that made Clarissa’s stomach turn.
“So this is the new
establishment,” the man said, tapping his cane somehow impatiently against
the floorboards. He eyed the racks of space splattered robes and the
photographs and posters on display, his eye rested on the galaxy model for a
moment, a single eye brow arching before he turned his eyes to the shelves full
of knickknacks. “An astronomy store. Hm.”
Clarissa straightened her
back a little as he turned to her. She forced a smile. “I’m sorry,
sir,” she said. “We’re not open yet.”
“Who are you?” he
demanded to know.
“My name is Clarissa
Edgecombe, I work here.”
“Where are your
masters?”
Clarissa clenched her teeth
at that for a moment. It was the way he said it – like he was talking to a
house elf, not a person. The Weasley Twins were in the back, working on the
Vanishing Cabinet – Lee was at the ship. Harry Potter… who even knew.
“I’m afraid the owners
aren’t here, sir,” Clarissa said and held her ground against his frown.
“I can take a message if you have something to relate to them.”
“Hm,” Malfoy
answered, looking her up and down in her Milkyway robe and then looking away,
at the store again. “No need,” he said and scoffed. “An
astronomy store. We already have one on Diagon Alley. This one… I don’t expect
it to stay in business for long.”
He whirled around then,
robes billowing has he turned to leave. “Good day, madam,” he said,
and left. The welcoming mad bit him “Boldly Go!” fittingly enough.
Clarissa sat back down
slowly and took few slow breaths to calm her rapidly beating heart.
He had no idea, not the
faintest suspicion, she thought faintly. It worked. The shop worked.
It still took her a long
time to calm down enough to get up again to lock the door and head back to
inform the Weasleys about their recent most customer.
“Clarissa, just in
time!” George exclaimed when she entered the room and grabbed her by the
shoulders, drawing her closer to the cabinet that dominated the room. “We
fixed it! It works!”
The cabinet’s doors were
flung wide open and inside – no, on the other side – there stood Fred Weasley,
waving at her through the cabinet. From Hogwarts.
“You fixed it,”
Clarissa repeated. “It works!”
“It works!”
George agreed and threw a coin through the cabinet. Fred caught it in Hogwarts
and then threw it back, before stepping through himself.
“It took some doing,
but it works now,” Fred said with a wide grin. “Honestly thought, the
hardest thing we had to do was figuring out how to hide it in Hogwarts, seeing
as we can’t really put it in the ship – and it’s just too damned awkward to
hide it in the Room and then have to step out again and bring up another door
and so on, it’s just too much of a hassle. So, we twiddled a bit in Hogwarts to
hide the cabinet just across the Room.”
“The room?”
Clarissa asked.
“The Room of
Requirement – it’s how we get to the ship,” George said. “It took
some doing – it wasn’t enough just to make it invisible, after all – but we got
it done.”
Clarissa swallowed a little
at that. They shared information so freely with her now. It was both heartening
and utterly terrifying.
“Now we’re just
waiting for the Captain and Hermione to hash out the details of
everything,” Fred said and clapped Clarissa on the shoulder. “We’ve
almost nailed out most of the points, but the hiring standards are still bit up
in the air. Once they settle on it… we’ll start hiring.”
Clarissa nodded slowly,
staring at the Cabinet. “And what are we hiring them for?” she asked
slowly. “Just to join you on the ship?”
“Hm… Not
exactly,” George said and eyed her. “It’s bit bigger than just the
ship. I mean, sure, on the ship too. But it’s the whole thing that’s the, well.
The thing.”
“DSF,” Clarissa
said.
“Yeah,” Fred said
and smiled. “It’s going to be so much bigger than just the one ship, you
know. It already is. Hermione can tell you more once they’re done. Before that
though…”
“Do you want to see
D.S.S. Requirement?” George asked, grinning excitedly.
Clarissa’s eyes widened and
she stared at the cabinet. Across from it, in Hogwarts, she could see nothing
but a blank wall.
See the ship. The cabinet
was fixed now – she could go to the ship, now, and see what this all was about!
She could see… see what had changed her daughter so much.
“I'd… like Marietta to take me?” she more asked
than stared.
“Let’s call her
then,” Fred nodded and tapped the command stone under the label of his
robes.
“Um,” Clarissa
said to George while Fred informed the crew that the Vanishing Cabinets
were finished and the way to the ship was clear. “Lucius Malfoy just came
by. He looked around a bit in the shop and left. I think he bought the
appearance.”
George’s eyebrows lifted.
“Didn’t say anything about the muggle stuff?”
“I don’t think he
realised there was muggle stuff,” Clarissa admitted. There wasn’t that
much in the store – just some random novelty items, few Star Trek and Star Wars
themed cups and such. “He didn’t look around that closely.”
George nodded slowly,
thinking about it. “Good,” he said after a moment and smiled.
“We thought about putting up some Notice Me Not charms, you know. Thing
about those though, they’re damn noticeable when you know how to look for them.
It’s good to know we managed to camouflage everything just right.”
“Aren’t you worried
about him?” Clarissa asked. She certainly was.
“It’s shop owned by a
half-blood and bunch of blood traitors – of course they’re going to check it
out. They’ll probably keep an eye on the place,” George said and shrugged.
“We have ways around that one, though.”
“Oh?” Clarissa
asked.
George grinned. “You
noticed that the store is… a bit long, yeah?”
Clarissa considered the
floor plan. It was the store front, a long corridor leading to what she assumed
was the big office, and rooms on each side of the corridor. It was, now that
she thought about it, a bit long.
“It goes almost all
the way through to the muggle side,” George said. “There’s a shop
there too. And we own it.”
Clarissa stared at him.
“You… do?”
“Mm-hmm,” George
said and rocked on the balls of his feet smugly. “Old hair salon. Hermione’s
parent’s bought it just the other week – they’re going to turn it to a private
dentist clinic.”
Clarissa stared. “Ms.
Granger’s parents?” she asked faintly.
“Muggles,” George
said and looked at the cabinet. “We haven’t brought them in yet because, things
being the way they are… it’s just not too safe. The place is being renovated
right now – during it, we’ll crack a wall between us and them.”
Oh. That was… “So,
people going to the ship aren’t going to come through Diagon Alley at
all?” Clarissa asked. “They’re going to come through from the muggle
side?”
“Hermione’s idea. She figured
it would be safer that way. We still need a presence in this side – this is the
side we can recruit from, after all, and we need to do business here too. But
yeah, it’s safer if we don’t have suddenly huge influx of people coming to the Enterprise and never leaving,” George
said. “Bit less suspicious.
Clarissa nodded at that. It
made sense. She’d never even thought about it. "I didn’t realise this
wasn’t the only place the DSF owns,” she admitted slowly.
George grinned. “We
own six, actually. This is the only one we’ve been working on for now, there’s
just not enough people yet, but eventually we’ll have places open elsewhere
too. Hopefully by then we have direct way to the ship, and won’t have to use
Hogwarts anymore.”
Clarissa swallowed. And
just when she’d thought she had the scope of this thing nailed down…
Marietta arrived not much after that, and
she wasn’t the only one. Hermione Granger arrived too, with her ever present
book in hand, muggle pen at the ready.
“Ms. Edgecombe,” Granger
greeted her with a smile which only widened as she saw Clarissa’s new robes.
“You’re looking well, ma'am.”
“Thank you Ms.
Granger,” Clarissa said, giving her obviously excited daughter a brief
hug.
“Fred, George,” Granger
greeted the twins, looking at the cabinet. “I really thought it would take
you longer than this.”
“Thanks for the vote
of confidence,” Fred said with a sniff. “Really warms my heart that
does.”
Granger just shook her head
at that. “You secured the cabinet on the other side?”
“Invisible, imbedded
in the wall, covered in all sorts of charms, yadda yadda,” George said
with another sniff. “We were going to hide it in an actual room, but rooms
are easy find and easy to break into. Walls are bit more inconspicuous.”
“We need to hide on
this side too,” Granger said. “If someone gets into the shop they
have direct access to Hogwarts.”
“We’re gong to ward
the room, and once Requirement has another break, we’re going to conjure a
Cloak for the cabinet here,” George said and folded his arms. “For
now, I’m going to stay here, cover your backs.”
“Commander
Granger,” Fred said, stepping back with on overly stiff salute. “You’re
cleared for transport, sir!”
Granger rolled her eyes.
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” she said and looked at Clarissa and Marietta. “You two ready to go?”
“Yes!” Marietta said excitedly, clutching onto her
mother’s hand. “Come on, let’s go,”
Clarissa hesitated. She
kind of wanted to ask if it was really safe, if it was wise, what if something
went wrong… but these kids had been doing this for weeks, for months probably. And
her daughter had been there with them the whole way.
So instead she took a deep
breath and nodded. “We’re ready.”
They stepped into the
Vanishing Cabinet, and then through it.
It was rather anticlimactic
emerging on the quiet Hogwarts corridor. Clarissa looked around, trying to
reign in her nerves, as she looked up and down along the corridor – but there
was no one there. It was weird, being there again – it had been so long since
she’d been a Hogwarts student, but something of the castle always stayed with
you.
It felt strangely like
coming back home. It also felt a little like breaking and entering. She was
fairly certain that were they caught here, it wouldn’t be good for any of
them.
And for some reason she
suddenly found herself wondering, just who owned Hogwarts?
“Hold on for a
moment,” Granger said and then paced back and forth a couple of times
while Fred Weasley cast a couple of spells at the corridor, checking it for
people. Marietta leaned closer to Clarissa.
“You’ll love this, Mum,”
she promised. “I swear, it’s so amazing. There’s nothing like it.”
Clarissa swallowed and
nodded, holding onto her hand as she breathed in almost forgotten but so
familiar scent of the castle and tried to calm down.
Then, a door opened on the
wall behind Ms. Granger.
And Marietta was right.
It was beyond anything.
The ship, Ms. Granger told
her, had been named D.S.S. Requirement, after the original defence club they’d
had. “It stood in the beginning for Dumbledore’s Space Ship, because we
were the Dumbledore’s Army,” Granger said. “But that might have some unfortunate
connotations for the future, so it stands for Defence Space Ship now, and we
are the DSF, the Defence Space Force. It’s a little more neutral.”
“Very neutral,”
Clarissa agreed. She’d been watching Star Trek with her daughter lately, and prefix
of USS Enterprise stood for United Space Ship, which tied it to the Federation
it came from. D.S.S. and DSF weren’t tied to anything but the concept of
Defence.
They could be coming from
anywhere, from anyone.
She pointed that out to
them.
“We thought about it,
later,” Marietta said. “About making it Wizarding Space
Ship or Magical Space Ship. Or even tying it to UK. HMSS had a nice ring.”
“I was the one who
suggested Wondrous Wizarding Wessel, but I was shot down,” Fred said with
a sigh.
“But chances are that
some point in the future we’ll run into muggles in space,” Granger said.
“Or even aliens. The fact that this ship exists is big proof that they’re
out there. Having that sort of tie back home… cause problems. So we decided
that neutral was better.”
Clarissa didn’t answer. She
was too busy staring out of the window of the corridor they were standing on.
There, right at their left
side, floated an enormous blue expanse of a planet. It glowed against
the darkness, vast and overwhelming and unspeakably beautiful. And right in
front of them there was a semi skeletal structure of… something metallic,
floating in space. It was big, even at this distance she could tell it must be
at least several hundred feet in length.
As she watched, light
flashed here and there on the structure – adding in on it.
“It’s so far along
already?” Marietta asked with surprise, stepping closer to the
window.
“Not that far along
actually – we ran into couple of problems which are slowing it down a bit,”
Granger said with a sign.
“Yeah, turns out the conjuration
we have here isn’t actually designed for big construction and constant work,”
Fred agreed. “It has to stop every eight hours to vent the excess heat.
Which worked in the end fine, since during the heat venting we can use the
conjurator for smaller projects – like conjuring stuff for the shop – but yeah.
It’s going a bit slower than we hoped.”
“You mean – you’re
making that thing?” Clarissa asked, pointing at the thing. “What is
it?”
“Space station,”
Granger said with a proud smile. “And a mining platform. We’re hoping to
finish it by the time summer holidays end.”
“You're… you’re making
a space station,” Clarissa said, and then it finally caught up with her.
They were on a space ship.
They were on a space
ship.
“We’re on a space
ship,” Clarissa said out loud, her voice very small.
“Yeah, Mum, we
are,” Marietta said and squeezed her hand. “Welcome to
D.S.S. Requirement.”
Marietta was almost relieved by the time
they headed back, through the magical door way and then the invisible, hidden
Vanishing Cabinet and finally back to the Enterprise. Her knees were still shaking after
the tour she’d been given on the ship, during which she’d seen… a lot of things
she had no way of putting into words.
Things like what looked
like quarter of Hogwarts Library. More furniture from Hogwarts than she could
easily count. The mysterious conjurator which was source of all the
Requirement’s crew’s wealth. Star chars
and command centre and actual armoury and the power core and – and it was just
a little too much.
“So, what do you think?”
Marietta asked nervously, when they headed back home, the shop having been locked
for the rest of the day – the twins were now transporting materials bought from
Diagon Alley back to the ship where they could be duplicated with the
conjurator eventually.
“I…” Clarissa
started and then stopped, unsure. “It was amazing,” she then admitted,
staring at the command stone she’d been given. She could not communicate with
everyone in the crew. She could even call Harry Potter himself, if she needed
to. It was amazing.
It was also much bigger
than she’d feared.
It was all starting to make
sense now. It had always been so big, bigger than it had any reasonable right
to be. The wealth, these kids, their incredible, terrifying plans… it was
actually bigger than any of it.
The crew, Clarissa was
starting to realise, probably didn’t even realise how big it really was.
They had access to not only
to space itself, but the tools to build an infrastructure of… of something
huge. Something truly enormous. A wizarding space agency, Ms. Granger
had said, but oh boy, was that not ever all of.
They had near unlimited
resources with their ability to mine planets and asteroids and moons. They had unlimited
capabilities thanks to the conjurator and what Clarissa understood were the
building plans of highly advanced alien race. That alone was a heady mix – but at
the base of it all… they had muggleborns and half-bloods.
They had an enormous group
of currently malcontent magicals, who she knew would grab a chance like this
with both hands.
With this, the crew could –
and inevitably would – build an empire.
They were building
infrastructure – soon, they’d start screening and hiring crewmembers, who’d be
quickly drawn into this truly alien culture the current crewmembers were
already subsumed into. There’d be people, Clarissa already knew, who would want
to live on the ship, or on the station, who’d want to leave earth behind.
Magical world hadn’t been kind to a lot of muggleborns – they’d be happy to
leave it behind.
And then they’d have their
DSF. They’d have their space force. And then, like Ms. Granger had said,
there’d be muggles. Who were doing space exploration of their own.
It was the dream and
nightmare of lot of muggleborns and half-bloods – the day the Magical and Non-magical
would finally meet. It was coming, they all knew it – muggle technology would
see to it. But Clarissa knew now – it wouldn’t happen on ground.
It would happen in space.
DSF would drag them all into a new era.
And they probably didn’t
even realise it right now.
Clarissa laughed and ran a
hand through her hair. No wonder George hadn’t been worried about Lucius
Malfoy. Compared to all of this, Dark Lords and Dark Wizards seemed such a small
concern.
Still, there’d be
opposition. When the truth behind it all would break out, and the magical world
– and the Ministry – would find out about space and the DSF, there’d be
opposition. There’d probably be some very soon anyway, just because of who
owned the store and who manned it – blood traitors and half bloods and muggleborns.
The Ministry and the likes of Lucius Malfoy would start pushing back, even
before they would know what they were pushing against.
Clarissa looked at her
daughter, shining brighter than ever after their brief stint into space – brief
visit to what Clarissa realised was going to be her daughter’s life’s work. Marietta was… she was a spaceborn now, same
as everyone else in the crew. And maybe because of that, she couldn’t see what
was really happening, couldn’t see what she and her crew represented.
They were beautiful and the
traditionalist wizards would come after them, it was only matter of time.
And when they did, they’d
have to go through Clarissa first.
- - - -
Okay I can either end this part on this lovely note or write one more chapter and end it in a terrible cliffhanger. Hmm.