Lily's Journal - Chapter 17

AN: Hey guys.

Merry christmas, happy holidays.

I'm sorry for the late update. I'm pretty sure if I stopped to count it would be quite likely that I spend most of last week without electricity.

I live in north-eastern Brasil, and there were some crazy storms here this last week. It is summer here right now, and we actually had hail last week, that's how crazy it was.

I also went back to my home city, Salvador, to visit some family. Even got to see Beyoncé on the beach, which was pretty cool.

This chapter we have a important experiment, as well as a meeting with a lot of science talk.

Hope you guys enjoy this one.

Chapter 17

"How exactly did you manage to put a portkey beacon in a satellite?" Dr. Völler asked, while he calibrated the machines and portkeys for the test.

"Remus helped me." Harry responded. "Apparently, there are a few werewolves working at NASA, they were able to sneak a beacon into the satellite."

"There are werewolves at NASA?" Harry could hear the surprise in Dr. Völler's voice, even if his hands never stopped working on the calibrations.

"It is less about NASA, and more about militaries in general. There is a lot of discrimination against werewolves in magical society, so they find jobs in the non-magical one, and most of the time those jobs are in the militaries of their nations." Harry responded. His hands busy making his own last minute adjustments. This test was going to be really important, and Harry wanted everything to be perfect.

"It makes sense. The curse makes the wolves a little more aggressive than a normal person, together with the improvements the curse makes to the body, it makes werewolves into almost perfect soldiers." Penny added. She was the only other person involved in this project, and she seemed excited to see if it would work.

"Why is it considered a curse?" Dr. Völler asked. "Apart from the obvious loss of control during the full moons, it seems to only bring benefits. The fact that there are ways to mitigate the loss of control like isolation or that potion you talked about makes it even better." He added.

"It does seem that way, but there is a major downside that isn't talked about, the fact that it halves the life expectancy of the afflicted. The average magical can live to around one hundred and fifty years, but a werewolf only lives for around seventy, eighty if they are lucky. The transformation puts a lot of strain on the body, and the afflicted usually dies during a transformation in their seventies." Harry explained, remembering the lessons from the previous school year. It was a little sad to remember how Remus showed no reaction during that lesson. It was almost like he was resigned to live just another four, maybe five decades. Harry decided that he would propose to the group to look into the werewolf curse, and maybe find a cure.

"That is a significant downside." Dr. Völler said.

They stayed in silence as they worked on the last preparations for the test. It was something that Harry thought about as soon as he discovered the RoR could make a millennium falcon. He wanted to understand how magic worked in space, but since they didn't have a spaceship yet, Harry decided to try and work with a satellite. He had some trouble figuring out how they could put something magical into a satellite, and that was when Remus helped him. Using his contacts with a few werewolves that worked at NASA, they were able to put a portkey beacon inside a satellite. It was perfect for what Harry wanted.

Harry then invited Penelope to work on the project. He didn't tell the others, since he wanted it to be a surprise, but he needed someone of age to cast portkeys. Penny was almost vibrating when Harry told her what the project was, she understood how important it could be. Finding out how magic works in space could show fundamentals of magic that were previously unknown.

But the two of them working together quickly realized that they didn't have the knowledge necessary to work on the project, so they invited Dr. Völler.

Lothar Völler, the German national was the chief astrophysicist hired by EE research division. He was mostly working with Hannah, who seemed to be a little obsessed with astrophysics ever since she started to learn it. When he wasn't teaching Hannah, he was working on his knowledge of runes, as well as the metallic hydrogen project, which were the major project that most of their scientists were working on.

Dr. Völler was able to show Harry and Penny a lot of things they were doing wrong, from their wrong calculations on the gravitational interference in the portkeys, to their many misconceptions about orbital mechanics, and even the interference of the earth's magnetic field in spells and enchantments, something that magical knew about for thousands of years but still had imprecise measurements.

With his help, they were able to move quickly with the project, and now they were ready to perform the first experiment before the first major meeting the group would have since the school year ended.

"Everything seems to be in order. Are we ready to conduct the tests?" Dr. Völler asked.

"Yes, everything is ready." Penny said, earning a nod from the German man.

"You can start it when you're ready, Mister Potter. I will be keeping an eye on the data." Dr. Völler said.

Harry prepared himself for activation of the portkeys. He checked if they were all ready again, and when he saw that there wasn't anything wrong, he started activating them. "Activate one, activate two, activate three..." He kept going, saying the pretty basic passwords all the way to one hundred. It took a lot of time for Penny to cast all those portkeys, but they needed those numbers to have a larger sample size for the experiment.

"All portkeys reached the target. We should have the data in just a few minutes." Dr. Völler said.

"Do you think your theory will be proven?" Penelope asked.

"I hope so. It would be a major thing if it is true, but we still are going to need others tests, the distance is small, so if it is proven, it will be in the milliseconds range, maybe even lower." Harry responded.

Harry's theory was quite simple. Ever since he heard that portkeys worked slightly faster in the Himalayas and other high altitude regions, he theorized that gravity might interfere in how they worked, making them slower. He made a few initial calculations, and they seemed to prove his theory, but mathematical evidence wasn't enough, especially when some of his math was wrong, like Dr. Völler proved. He needed evidence of portkeys working with even lower gravity, so the satellite experiment was born.

"You should really thank Catherine, Mister Potter. This program she developed can compile data faster than anything I have seen before." Dr. Völler said, working on the keyboard. The portkeys were back, after the quick trip.

"I will be sure to thank her Dr. Völler. Now, what does the data says?" Harry said, a little impatience in his tone. He wanted to know if his theory was right.

"I have to say again that we will need other tests, there is too little evidence with just this one. But... I think we just saw history in the making here." Dr. Völler said, and Harry felt the excitement growing inside him. "The difference is in the millisecond range, but it seems that every single portkey achieved faster-than-light travel at MEO, around twenty thousand kilometres above sea level to be exact." He added.

Harry jumped, cheering loudly. He was right, and now they found a way to travel faster than light. There were many ramifications about this discovery, but Harry didn't care about that at the moment, he only wanted to tell the news to Hermione and see her face once she realized that they had achieved something so important. He hugged Penny, and the two of them laughed, sharing each other's happiness with the discovery. Once they broke the hug, Harry looked at the astrophysicist again, and while Dr. Völler only had a small smile on his face, Harry could see by the glint in his eyes that the man was dying to start working with this discovery.

"We will need to perform other tests. First to prove that it wasn't a machine error, using machines to measure the speed of magical transportation was never done before, we need to ensure that the machines are actually doing what they are supposed to do, and not measuring something else completely at random. And then we need to perform the same experiment with a satellite in HEO, to see if the acceleration stays the same, or if it grows. It is possible for the portkeys to move even faster as they get further away from the gravity well." The astrophysicist said, the tone of his voice showing how much he wanted to start working on those experiments as soon as possible.

"That will depend on when we can put another beacon in orbit. We will need to keep an eye on all NASA launches, maybe even look for some contacts in France or Russia. We will try to put a beacon on the next HEO satellite, a moon launch or even a launch to other celestial bodies. Once we have a beacon in place, we will be able to conduct other experiments." Harry said. He also decided that building their own space capable vehicle just became another priority, something that he will have to talk with the others later, because it wasn't the only recently added priority.

"You should join us tonight when we break the news to the rest of the group, Dr. Völler. We will meet here in the lab's meeting room at seven." Penny said, and Harry nodded his head in agreement.

"I will be there. It should be fun to see the faces of the youngsters when we tell them the impossible has been achieved." Dr. Völler said, chuckling a little. At sixty one years of age, he was the oldest among the scientists, so he called everyone youngster.

"We will see you there then." Harry said. The experiment was nice, but he had a date with Hermione soon, and he needed to get back home to make himself presentable. The problem now was how to stop himself from telling his girlfriend about what they found out, but he would need to find a way to do it. It would be better to tell Hermione about it later during the meeting, or at least, it would be more fun.

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

"How's everyone doing tonight?" Tonks asked, as she pulled a chair and sat down. She was the last one to arrive to the meeting because of her work as an auror, and she was only invited because Harry wanted her advice in one of their new priorities.

"Everything is good, She-who-must-not-be-named. We were only waiting for you." Harry responded, enjoying the annoyed look that crossed her face when she heard his name for her. Harry thought that she would give up soon enough and allow him to call her Nym.

The meeting was different from the others Harry had attended since the start of the holidays. The other meetings were all about the business side of things, this one was for their group to update each other in their many projects. It was something they did in Hogwarts once a week, but the schedules made doing it during the holidays a lot more difficult, so this would be their first meeting since the school year ended.

It was also different because they had the attendance of some of the scientists hired by EE. Not all of them had the time to join, or the desire to talk about things that weren't related to their respective fields. But a few decided to join the meeting. Dr. Völler was there to talk about their discovery earlier in the day, Angelica Castro, their chemist, was there to help explain the improvements she helped Harry make in his alchemical transmutation, and Hermione's cousin, David, as well as their robotics expert, Catherine, were there because Harry told them that he would be showing a sample of his new attempt at Vibranium.

Others attending the meeting were Padma and Parvati, who also said they had some news about a joint project. Hermione, who had the preliminary reports of her generators. Sue Li, who also had a report about her own, less powerful generators. Those were the ones that were actually being used in their test facility near Lancaster, and with the facility starting operations at the start of the week, those reports were really important. Hannah also had something to talk about, something she was working on, with the help of Dr. Völler. Harry only knew it was some kind of improved lens for telescopes.

Then there were the big ones.

Luna apparently performed another experiment together with Dr. Lehmann, and she said this one was even more interesting than the owl blood transfusion they had done before. Harry only knew that it was something to do with dragon blood since Dr. Lehmann asked for the funds to buy around a litre of it, which was pretty expensive. Maybe they just wanted to look at the blood under a microscope, but Harry was willing to bet it was something similar to the owl experiment, injecting some muggle lizard with dragon blood and see what happens. It was the kind of thing that Luna would like to do, and while Dr. Lehmann was a little more cautious, she was still a bit of a mad scientist.

Neville also said he had something big to talk about. Harry remembered that he was working with Luna, Dr. Lehmann and their agricultural sciences specialist, Enzo Martinelli to understand GMOs, and how to apply it to magical plants. It would be really good if they manage to find a way to make a few rare plants more productive. It could low prices of potion ingredients, from Wolfsbane to some of the rare healing potions.

And finally, the one that promised to be the biggest talk point of the night, at least it was before the discovery of earlier in the day. David, Ginny Megan and Hannah said they had a new electrical engine to show. One that was reinforced by magic, and that could probably work with one of Hermione's lightning bolt generators, if they managed to miniaturize it. This could be big news, a way to produce electric cars, even if they still wouldn't be able to sell them because of the magic being used. If they had a working engine, they could improve on it enough to make them work without magic being a part of it beyond the production.

"Who wants to start?" Harry asked.

"We will." Padma responded. "We have been working on improving the recording balls."

"It took a bit of work, but we managed to improve on the quality of both audio and video. There was some loss when transferring the audio to the mirror TV, it was dipping pretty close to 20Hz whenever there were many different sounds going on, and as some of you know, that is the limit of human hearing. We found a different way of enchanting the orbs that helps it deal better with multiple sounds. We had to learn a little about audio frequency, particularly transmission loss and sound intensity, but in the end, we managed to deal with it." Parvati said.

"It should make our orbs a little more attractive for the consumers. I know we already sold a lot of recordings of the quidditch world cup, but with this we should be able to sell a lot more, and maybe we can finally use those orbs in the camera configuration for a proper magical TV station." Padma said, and Harry could see e few impressed looks from the others.

It was a minor thing, just improving on already existing tech, but it should help a lot with their consumer products. Sure, they were making a lot of money already, the international sales of the mirrors, both communication and TV, meant that they were almost always out of stock, but the sales of the recording orbs were a little slow compared to the TVs. This should hopefully start to solve that problem.

"That will hopefully improve sales. Now we just need content for those recordings. We currently only have the quidditch league and duelling tournaments. We can only sell so much of it, and I don't think anyone will want to watch Wizengamot meetings." Hermione said, and something clicked in Harry's mind, something so common that he almost kicked himself for not thinking about it earlier.

"What about movies?" Harry said, and the others looked at him, some with recognition in their eyes, already thinking the same thing he did, and others still a little confused. "If we invest in a movie studio, we could sell movie recordings in a similar way to VHS." He added, and the few confused looks turned into understanding ones.

"That is a brilliant idea, Harry. We should talk about it with Remus in the next business meeting." Hermione said, giving him a smile.

"We will look into it. Sci-fi movies could be a good way to introduce some science to the general magical population. Great work girls!" Harry said, receiving smiles from the blushing Patil twins, and nods from the others.

"I guess I will give my report now." Hermione said, and then started to pass papers to the others. Harry look at the one he received and saw that it was the numbers from the test phase of Hermione's generators.

"As you can see, the generators are performing within expectations in energy production, but we will need to continue to test them for another month since we saw a small issue with the metal casing. The runes are working perfectly fine, but they are also degrading the metal faster than expected. We don't know if it is the magic of the runic array, or the lightning bolts, but in the current configuration, the generators would only last for around five years before needing replacement." Hermione said, and Harry looked at the data, knowing how much Hermione preferred to put things in writing, instead of talking about them.

"I know you used Harry's laser crystal to carve the runes on the metal. But, have you tried to use a magically infused metal instead of the non-magical ones you used?" Angelica asked. She wasn't exactly an expert in metallurgy, but, as a chemist, she knew the importance that the materials had in this kind of thing.

"It will be our first test. We are already building a new generator using magically infused metals. We are only waiting for Harry to provide us with the metals from his alchemical transmutation." David said. While the research was almost all Hermione's, he was helping her with building the generators.

"I should have it ready in a few days. The transmutation is a magical process, but it doesn't produce magically infused metal. I have to do it separately." Harry responded when everyone looked at him, Hermione giving him an understanding smile since she knew how busy he was these days. "We really need someone else with alchemy knowledge." He added.

"Maybe we should ask Daphne. I know she dabbles in alchemical potions, so maybe she knows a bit about transmutations." Hermione said, and Harry thought it was a good idea. He was mostly interested in transmutation and he still knew a little about alchemical potions, so it was only logical for Daphne to know about transmutation.

"I will ask her when I have the time." Harry said. "Now, Sue. What do you have for us?" He asked.

"I have the reports from the new power plant." Sue said, passing a few papers around. "As you can see, the generator has been performing within expectations. With a nameplate capacity of a little over 2,000 MW, it is one of the largest in England at the moment." She added.

Harry looked at the report and saw that the power plant was performing at 100% capacity, unlike non-magical power plants that always have a more variable output, especially the thermal ones running on fossil fuels. The steam generators developed by Sue were a true marvel, able to generate electricity with zero emissions. Sure, they were already a bit obsolete when one considers the lightning bolt generators that Hermione developed, but they were still a major help in energy production.

"Well, I'm sure our 'esteemed partners' within the government will be happy to hear that." Harry said. The government was a major help with setting up the company, allowing them to actually sell products that had magical process in the manufactory, but they were already causing troubles. The 'observers' that were put on both Marauders Inc. and EE were caught by the wards in Lancaster and in Diagon alley, no doubt trying to learn how both the generators and the mirrors were built. It was mostly annoying, since it was impossible for them to pass through the wards, but the MI5 agents kept trying to do it since they were allowed to 'observe'.

"Is there anything that could be improved?" Hannah asked.

"We are working on it, but at the moment it seems unlikely." Sue responded. "By the way, thank you for hiring my parents. They are really happy to be working on something like our generators." Sue added, giving Harry a smile.

"It wasn't any trouble, Sue. We are magicals, and while we are working on mostly tech at the moment, we still have to keep some magical traditions alive. The purebloods would be proud of us for our nepotism." Harry joked, earning a laugh from everyone.

"I guess it is my turn." Hannah said, and Harry nodded towards her, giving her the floor. "I worked together with Dr. Völler, Penny and even my mother gave me a few tips, and we were able to build a telescope with an improved lens." She added, to the interested mutterings of the others.

"It is less about clearer image and more about additional information. We used a bit of arithmancy knowledge in spell creation, and were able to develop a new spell to transmit information. It is similar to the spells used in dicta-quills and other self writing quills, but specialized to work on enchanting a lens, since the quill enchantments didn't work when we tried it." Hannah added, drawing even more interest from Harry. A new spell like what she was describing seemed really versatile and Harry was already thinking of ways it could be used for something else.

"The enchanted lens ended up working in a similar way to a HUD." Dr. Völler said, and Harry could see Hermione perk up a little. "When Penelope cast the spell with the information she knows about the planets in mind, we could actually see that information appear in the lens when we looked at said planets." He added, drawing impressed looks from the others.

"We are now working on connecting that enchanted lens to something that holds the information, and then make it take the information from there." Hannah added.

"That sounds amazing!" Hermione said, visibly excited. Harry could almost see Hermione's mind working on ways to use a spell like that, and he was proven right when Hermione said. "We could use a spell like that to make an enchanted book connected to all the books in the Hogwarts library. We could read all the books from a single one."

There was a bit of laugh at the predictable way Hermione thought of using the spell. She would always think about reading first, before anything else. Although, Harry could see a hungry look on Padma's and Sue's faces when Hermione gave her idea, even Luna perked up a little. The ravenclaw thirst for books catching them all.

"I'm thinking more about the uses a spell like that could have for Padma, and her magical computer project. A magical computer would be perfect to hold the database for the lens, while the spell itself could probably be of some use in developing the computers." Harry said, adding his own thoughts to the discussion.

He almost laughed when he saw the looks on Catherine and Padma's faces. They seemed both shocked at not having thought about it before, and thankful for the idea Harry gave them.

"Let's start with the big ones." Harry said, moving the conversation forward. "Luna, what do you have for us?"

"Angela said that dragon blood has stem cells in it." Luna said, getting right into the important parts as she usually does.

Harry had to stop himself from opening his mouth in shock. That was big. He didn't know much about biology, but he knew how important stem cells were. Dragons having them in their blood seemed like something that could have a lot of ramifications.

He looked around the table and saw that he wasn't the only one realizing how big this was. Hermione had that look that said her mind was far away, thinking of all the ways something like that could be used. Padma also seemed distracted, as well as the scientists, and even Nym had a reaction. Harry didn't know what she knew about stem cells, but she probably knew something, judging by the look on her face.

"Luna, we are going to need a little more than that." Harry said, once he recovered a little. Someone always needed to ask Luna for more information, or else she would just say the big thing and leave them guessing about how it happened.

"We did all the research, and discovered that there are cells in dragon blood that behave in a similar way to embryonic stem cells. They are highly adaptable, and we theorized that they can change in a number of different ways. It is probably what gives dragon blood it's twelve uses." Luna said, and Harry nodded his head. It seemed likely enough. "We also decided to test them in a non-magical animal. So we put them in an Iguana embryo and now we have a baby fire-breathing Iguana. I call him Iggy." She added, in a happy tone.

Harry groaned, his head hitting the table, and by the sounds he heard, his wasn't the only one. They really needed to put someone responsible to supervise Luna's research, or else they will end up with an animal based apocalypse. He really thought that hiring Angela Lehmann would solve this problem, but it seemed the Swiss geneticist was only encouraging Luna.

"And where is Iggy now, Luna?" Hermione asked, and Harry could hear in her tone that she was dreading the answer.

"In the lab. I gave him something to eat before coming here. A nice, big beef." Luna responded, still in her happy tone.

"Great. We have a carnivorous, fire-breathing iguana in the same building were we work." Catherine said sarcastically.

"Luna, I will visit your lab later. I want to meet Iggy." Harry said, and Luna gave him a big smile.

"That's great, Harry. Iggy can help protect you from the nargles." Luna said, and she seemed even happier than before.

Harry would need to call a few others to that visit. He, Hermione and Penny had tried to put limits on Luna before, but she always gave them that sad puppy look and they caved, giving her just a warning and a small punishment that didn't really stop her from dangerous research. They needed someone immune to Luna's puppy look, the problem would be finding someone like that.

"Nev, what do you have for us?" Harry asked, trying to move things forward. It wasn't going to be any help if everyone stayed focused on Luna's antics. Luna would always be Luna.

"We had some success with using genetic modification in a few plants." Neville said, and finally the others stopped worrying about Luna's animals and started paying attention to Neville. Improving production on magical plants would be a big deal, so everyone wanted to give this news their full attention.

"It still in its early stages, and we are going to need a few months for testing, but it seems like we have a viable way of improving a few rare plants. We focused on the plants needed for Wolfsbane, since most of the workers are werewolves, and we already had some success with improving both quality and quantity of the plants needed for the potion. They are growing faster and in a quality rarely seen before." Neville added.

"This could really help the auror department." Nym said, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. "While most of the wolves in Britain are already working for Marauders Inc. There are still a few that refused the offer of work, believing it too good to be true. Cheaper Wolfsbane could help lower crime, since wolves won't have to steal just to pay for their potion." She added.

Harry thought that this would be a good thing, a way for Marauders Inc. to improve the community that the mirrors just didn't do, and judging by what he saw from the others, he wasn't the only one thinking that. Hermione had a small smile on her face, similar to the way she smiled whenever they talked about ways to improve the lives of house elves. Padma, Hannah, Sue, everyone was smiling, thinking about how much this could improve magical society, making things safer and potions cheaper.

"This is amazing news, Nev." Harry said, smiling at his friend and receiving a smile back. His friend had really changed since he joined the group. In the old days, he would blush and look down whenever he received a compliment. Now he had a lot more confidence in himself, so he just smiled, nodded his head and kept his back straight.

"You should make this your priority. And congratulate Enzo on the good work when you see him." Hermione added, earning a nod from Harry. It was a good idea to make this research a priority.

"Now for the flying crew. What do you have for us?" Harry said, drawing the attention of everyone to the trio of Ginny, Megan and David.

"Our news isn't flight related today." David said.

"I figured that was the case, since Ron isn't here." Harry quipped, earning a laugh from everyone that knew his redheaded friend. Ron was obsessed with anything that flew.

"We are still working on an electric plane engine, so he will probably be here in the future." Megan said, defending Ron a little too quickly, and making Harry and Hermione share a quick look and a smile. They really liked the fact that Ron and Megan became so close during the last school year. It helped deal with the fact that they were spending less time with Ron once they started their research.

"Yes, we are still working on plane engines, but we decided to test the magic used in the design and build a car engine." Ginny said.

"The engine is quite good." David started. "I believe that if put in a traditional sedan, it would achieve a maximum speed of around 280Kmh. The magic used to reinforce the internal structure of the engine makes it highly efficient compared to currently available electric engines, but if we take into consideration the current battery tech, it would only achieve a maximum range of a little over 250Km." He added.

"That is a major improvement. I believe it would be enough for a commercially viable car, if it was limited to cities." Dr. Völler said, earning a nod from David.

"It is, and that is my thinking as well. But it would be a hard sell, because the engine has active magic in it, so the ICW could have some troubles with it." David said.

"We could also easily adapt the engine to work with fuel cells, but I believe that project was scraped once we started working on metallic hydrogen." He added, giving Harry a questioning look.

"It was." Harry confirmed. "Metallic hydrogen shows more promise since it could also be used as rocket fuel, so we are focusing on it at the moment. Maybe we will look into fuel cells again in the future, but it seems unlikely." He added.

"That's what I thought." David said, nodding his head. "Anyway, we could also adapt one of Hermione's generators, if we manage to miniaturize it enough. That would give us unlimited range since the vehicle would be producing all the energy it needs. But again, it would limit the potential sales, because it would contain even more active magic in it." He added.

"We should still look into it, at least for our own use." Harry said. "I really hate the statute of secrecy." He added, shaking his head and earning sympathetic looks from the others.

Things could be so much better if they didn't have to take the statute into consideration. The amount of change they could bring to both magical and non-magical society would be immense. All those developments they are making could be freely shared with the muggles, and access to non-magical education could probably increase the amount of magicals looking at things the way they are doing, trying to merge magic and science.

"I guess now is my turn." He said, drawing the attention of the others. He could see the smirk on Dr. Völler's face, but he would be starting with the bad news first.

"I have good and bad news." Harry started. "I will start with the bad."

"As you all know, there was a death eater attack during the quidditch world cup. We had to fight, and Penny almost died. So I spent the last few days thinking about it, and I think we should start working on military tech." Harry said. And as he expected, his news was received with loud protests from some within the group.

Hermione seemed to think for a few seconds and then she gave him a nod and a small smile. Megan, Ginny, Luna and Neville didn't even stop to think about it, they just nodded their heads. It made sense, since they were also involved in the fight. Sue Li seemed indifferent, and Nym was a little interested.

On the other side of things. Padma and Parvati seemed against it, and the look of betrayal that Padma was giving him hurt a little. They had become close since they started working together, Padma was a lot like Hermione, so it was only natural for him to become her friend. Although, Harry expected that they would be against it. It might be stereotypical, but Harry expected the Indians to be peaceful.

David and Catherine seemed to be deep in thought, but at least they weren't complaining about it, but Lothar and Angelica were even louder than Padma and Parvati. Harry heard words like 'atomic bomb' and 'chemical weapons' being said by them, but most of their complaints were merging together and becoming impossible to tell which was said by who.

"Let me explain!" Harry said, subtly using his wand to cast a sonorus on himself. Once the noise went down, he continued.

"I'm not talking about selling weapons, or even the basics of our tech to the military. What I'm talking about is having something to defend ourselves with. One of our own almost died, the only reason Penny survived is because we..." He said, pointing at himself, Hermione, Ginny, Megan, Luna and Neville. "Decided to go against what the adults told us and joined the fight. If we hadn't done that, we would be mourning Penny right now."

"I understand what you're saying, Harry. But I'm still uncomfortable working on weapons." Dr. Völler said.

"And that's why everything we work on will be put under magical contract. We won't be releasing it to anyone." Harry explained, and he could see that he gained some ground with the four, so he kept going while he was ahead.

"She-who-must-not-be-named, I want you to work with me on this. I have some knowledge in defence..." Hermione snorted a little, and Neville and Padma outright laughed. Even Nym was giving him questioning look. "Alright, more than a little. Anyway, you have more experience than me, so I want you to look over my ideas, and tell me what could be improved."

"Sounds like fun. Count me in, Wonder boy." Nym said, winking at him while her hair changed from pink to red and then pink again.

"Thanks, Nym." Harry said, enjoying the annoyed look on her face once he called her Nym.

"Now for the good news." Harry said, and Dr. Völler looked at him with a smirk again. "Earlier today, Dr. Völler, Penny and I, conducted an experiment... And we might have discovered faster-than-light space travel." He added, enjoying the open mouths and disbelieving looks on everyone but Lothar.

AN 2: Possible FTL achieved, and Harry start to prepare some weapons for the future.

A lot of small things also developing at the same time.

I will see you guys in the next one.