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The Next Lord of Kobol

Chapter 7 – The Dog Runs Fast

(Dephi, Caprica approximately three months after Harry’s arrival and 10 years before the fall of the Twelve Colonies)

-x-x-x-x-x-x

As Harry pushed the lawn mower back toward the groundskeeper's shed, he heard shouting coming from the open window of the facility director's office.  His progress in mastering Colonial Standard still wasn't very good, so he cheated and cast the wandless translation charm that one spirit had shown him.

Dumbledore had speculated that the charm would function better as the caster's exposure to the language increased.  Harry wasn't surprised when Dumbledore’s theory turned out to be correct.

The words of the older female reorganized into something he was able to comprehend, “...going to quit acting like such an irresponsible teenager.  From the number of times I get messages from the High School office I'm practically on a first name basis with everyone there!  But cutting school is not good enough for you anymore Maggie, oh no.  Now you’re being brought back to me by the Chief of Police because you and the rest of your little club are up in the mountains using the trails to run illegal motorcycle races.  Well what have you got to say for yourself?”

“I guess I'll make sure I don't get caught next time,” the younger female replied in a defiant tone.  “Sorry I can't be perfect like my sisters.”

“This isn't about them, Margret.  This is about you!  Your grades are starting to slip and if the Commissioner wasn't a friend of the family, you'd be looking at more than a misdemeanor that goes away when you come of age.  How many colleges do you think will take you if you have a criminal record?”

Harry thought Nancy Edmondson had a decent point.  Her daughter's rebellious streak was getting progressively more obnoxious and he’d only seen a couple of months of it.

“I hate this place and I hate you!  I wish we'd never left our family.”

“Well here's a news flash for you young lady, we left because your father died and he and I were bringing in seventy percent of the income.  Group families work together for a common goal.  Ours didn't.  All you and the other children saw was the fun and the parties.  One big, happy time!”

“Then why’d you leave?”

“By the Gods, Margret!  Don’t you understand? I got you and your sisters out of there while I could still afford to send any of you to college.  You, Kelsey, and Sue were mine biologically.  The others weren’t.  I have nothing but love for your brothers and sisters we left behind.  They weren't a problem…their parents were.  They were bleeding us dry!”

“So you chose money over family,” the girl said.  It wasn’t a question, but an accusation.

“I chose to do what’s best for my blood.  Maybe one day you’ll wake up and realize that.”

Harry was beyond the point where he felt like he was intruding.  This whole world was alien to him.  People openly practiced group marriages, worshipped ancient Greek gods, and as if that wasn’t enough, they also traveled through space to other planets. 

When he came to in a hospital room with people poking and prodding him while speaking what he thought was Greek at that time, he hoped that he’d be sent back to England in short order.  Those hopes were dashed the moment he looked out the window and saw a number of flying contraptions moving gracefully through the sky in front of a massive reddish planetoid.  Astronomy certainly wasn't Harry's forte, but he was no slouch at it either. That object was far too large to be Earth's moon.

He would later learn that it wasn't a large moon, but Caprica’s sister planet Gemenon.  His father’s advice about getting as far away from England as possible might have been taken a bit further than he’d ever imagined.

“Fine!  Why’d we come here then?  You used to help people and make a difference!  Now all you do is watch over a group of vegetables and retarded frakkers like him!  Look at him; he can barely put a sentence together!”

Harry had been lost in his thoughts and was suddenly aware that Maggie Edmondson was pointing directly at him.  To be honest, Harry did his best to avoid the girl.  Best he could tell they were roughly the same age and she attended Delphi Union high school.  Beyond that, all he could say about the girl was that she was a hellion.

“Maggie!” her mother exclaimed.   “Harry is a sweet young man, who works hard and helps out around here.  He’s worth at least ten of your so-called friends.”

“He cuts the grass and does chores.  He probably even knows how to wipe his ass after he takes a dump.  Big frakkin’ deal.”

Nancy stood and pointed at the door, “Get out!  Go to your room, before I say something I’ll regret.  Stay off the grid.  Maybe do something crazy, like your homework for change.”

Maggie looked angry.  Harry knew their “grid” was some kind of wired electronic network.  They used to have some kind of wireless one, but there had been a war with some kind of robots called Cylons several decades ago, and many in the colonies were reluctant to go back.

“What about my bike?  It's been impounded.”  Maggie didn’t seem to care that her mother had dismissed her.

A cold expression crossed the mother’s face as she said, “For now my dear you can ride the bus to and from school.  No rides home from your friends either.  In fact, you’re not allowed off the grounds without my say so.  As for your bike, I recall the law says that if you don't claim it in thirty days, they put it up for auction. How about you show me your best behavior and we can go pick it up on day twenty-nine?”

Maggie stormed from the room and slammed the door so hard that Harry wondered if he should take a stroll down that hallway and cast a discreet Reparo or two.

The short brunette woman left in the room regarded him and sighed before saying, “I don't know how much of that you understood Harry, but I'm sorry you had to hear that.  What she said wasn't very kind.  Why don't you finish up and then go have fun.”

“Harry like fun,” he answered with a wave and a smile.  Still feeling guilty for eavesdropping, Harry feigned a lack of comprehension and began pushing the mower back to the shed for some more fuel.

-x-x-x-x-x-x

Back in his bedroom, roughly the same size as Dudley's spare one he'd been given by his aunt and uncle.  Glancing at a couple of news clippings about police finding an injured teenager and a dead woman in the Delphi Museum of the Colonies, Harry shook his head remembering Mrs. Edmondson reading it to him.  The best theory the police had come up was the woman had lured him there as part of a cult and planned on sacrificing the boy to Hades, the god of the underworld.  The teen was assaulted with a knife coated with a type of neurotoxin and is fortunate to have survived the attack.  No relatives had come forward to claim the young man and medical professionals say the victim appears to have some kind of language disorder as a result of either the poison or his ordeal.

He supposed he did have a language disorder.  That much was true.

Sirius Black’s best bit of advice, “Always know your exit” didn’t work here.  There was no exit.  He couldn’t speak the language, could only understand it when he was using that translation charm, couldn’t read or write.  At the moment, his only option was to lay low and play dumb.  Of course if Snape knew of his situation, he’d say Harry didn’t have to “play.”

The act was a simple enough summary of his first couple of weeks on this world.  The more complex one had police trying to question him as a doctor stood by saying he had the language comprehension of a three year old.

Harry had taken this and run on the third time the detectives came around and managed to say the Colonial words for “bad” and “woman” while making a slashing gesture with his arm.

Two days later, they’d brought his clothes, a plastic bag with the “stick” he’d been clutching, and someone to take him to a place that could help him with his “brain damage.”

Luckily, his bottomless bag was still attached to his belt with a notice-me-not charm on it.  Once they took him to the Delphi Convalescent Institute and he was alone, he put a Muggle repeller on the door and inventoried what he had to work with. 

Thanks to his method of disabling death eaters and ministry personal, he didn't have to worry about running out of pointy sticks anytime soon.  He had his two, Voldemort's, and fifteen others.  His Firebolt was there along with the Nimbus 2001 Sirius had bought for himself, but only used three times before his death.  There was Moody's old invisibility cloak, a small collection of potions he had with him and the ones he took from Carrows.  Of course looking at Hufflepuff's cup, Harry knew his need for basic potions would be met for as long as he possessed it.

Books?  He only had a few.  The included his sixth and seventh year charms books, an Animagus tome that had already fulfilled its purpose, Gilderoy Lockhart's Tome of Everyday Household Enchantments (which Harry was certain had to have been ghost-written since it contained useful material), a book on Norse runic patterns meant for intermediate practitioners that Harry was about a third of the way through. 

There was also an introductory tome into the Art of Arithmancy that Harry had found daunting even when he had the help of the diadem.  He'd have to figure some of it out if he ever hoped to craft his own spells.

The diadem and the locket would have been terribly useful, along with a few dozen more spell books and a score of other things Harry thought of on a daily basis.  Daily...Harry was grateful, he'd ended up on a planet with the same twenty-four hour clock as Earth.  Gemenon rotated more slowly and their “day” was four hours longer.

Next, he had five issues of Quidditch Weekly, two copies of the Quibbler, and an issue of Teen Witch Weekly with his picture on the cover and a dismissive article about “Why Witches Love Bad Boys.”  Sirius had picked up a dozen copies of it and threated to engorge the cover and use it as wallpaper for his bedroom.

Harry picked up the last book.  It was his photo album.  It wouldn't help him learn a spell or anything like that, but it was one of the most important things he had left.  There were a few pictures he'd added to all the ones Hagrid had gathered for him.  He smiled when looking at the team picture from third year.  Fred and George were messing with Angelina and Alicia.  Katie Bell meanwhile, stared longingly at Oliver Wood,

Reaching further into the bag, Harry pulled out a Honeydukes bar, unwrapped it and broke off four squares.  He didn’t have much in the way of sweets left and had made a little ritual out of eating some when he felt down and washing it away with a butterbeer from Helga’s extremely useful cup.  Just two more complete bars of chocolate, three chocolate frogs, and six pieces of Drooble’s.  After that, another piece of Earth was gone.  He wasn’t sure what he would do when he ran out, but it might involve replacing the butterbeer with a glass of Firewhiskey.

Returning to his album, he looked at Hermione reading in the common room.  She looked up smiled, and then went back to her reading.  Thirty seconds later, she gave him an annoyed “Quit Staring at me” glare, so he moved on.  There was a family picture of the Weasleys that had been taken just before the world cup, and a photo of him in the fourth year boy's dorm with Ron, Neville, Dean and Seamus hamming it up for Colin Creevy’s camera before his name popped out of the goblet and everyone got all pissy with him.

Financially, Harry also had an odd assortment of coins - twenty-two galleons, five sickles, and nine knuts at last count. The gold might be worth a decent amount here and selling it was the first thing Harry would do once he wasn't a ward of the state.

Also, he had that cassette player that Sirius had bought and nine tapes, Queen, Genesis, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, The Who, a German band called the Scorpions, and a pair of American bands, Journey and Kansas.

He took special care of these objects.  They contained the only English words he might ever hear that didn't come from his mouth.

The last item in the bag was that dodgy Sneakoscope Ron gave him at the beginning of his second year.  Up until recently, Harry had always thought it didn't work, but Dumbledore examined it and declared it to be in good working order.  They theorized that in reality, it was probably picking up Peter all along.

He used it anytime he had something out of the bag and had saved him from trying out his memory charm on two occasions already.

-x-x-x-x-x-x

Once the Delphi Convalescent Institute lost interest in his case, or more importantly realized that no one was going to be paying the bill, they moved him to one of their nearby affiliates - Amanda's Open Arms.  The facility was run by a kind woman named Nancy Edmondson.  She had a pair of twin daughters away at college and a turbulent relationship with her youngest.

From what little Harry could gather, Amanda’s Open Arms was founded years ago through donations by this Amanda woman.  There was no picture of her or even a plaque describing her.  Harry found this curious.  In what few words he could put together, he asked the polite man, Mr. Kelso, who minded the front desk during the daytime, about that and he said the woman's last name was Graystone and people would rather not talk about her or her husband.

All Harry could do was file that bit of information away for future reference.  After a couple of nights at the Arms, he used the secondhand invisibility cloak along with his broom to slip off the property and find someplace where he summoned a few Patroni, cast a couple of heavy duty cutting curses and generally used more than enough spells that if someone was looking for underage magic, or interested in protecting a statue of secrecy, they’d come looking.

Three hours passed before Harry concluded that no one was coming.  If there was someone out there, they didn't care.  He’d hoped that because the Veil was magical, that meant there were magical people still around.  The young wizard was more concerned with the idea that no one was out there and he was completely on his own.

He didn't even have a portrait to talk to.  Recalling a title of a book he read back in his Muggle school.  It was called Stranger in a Strange Land.  Somehow it seemed oddly appropriate.

-x-x-x-x-x-x

Fortunately, Harry had made himself handy.  All those years around Privet drive doing yard work and all the assorted chores Uncle Vernon concocted were finally being put to good use.

The groundskeeper was an older dark skinned woman named Denise. She was originally from the Libran colony and had a prosthetic left arm.  She looked skeptical at him the first time he'd pointed to a set of hedge trimmers and then at the unsightly collection of shrubbery bordering each side of the main driveway.  Denise told him to wait there and went to get Mrs. Edmondson.  The duo had a discussion (which Harry used the translation charm to listen in).

The ladies eventually decided to let Harry use the trimmers under strict supervision, so he set to work straightening up the landscaping up front. Removing the thick web of creeping vine that had invaded one side was hard work and he was sorely tempted to slip his wand out and use a few of the spells Professor Sprout had taught his Herbology class to speed things along.

Nancy Edmondson brought him a tall glass of lemonade.  The ice cubes in it were made out of frozen lemonade as well.  Maybe it was something in the soil or the differences between lemons from Earth, but they tasted sweeter.

It took two days to get the hedges out front into a presentable condition.  Denise eagerly showed him how to use the Caprican equivalent of a push mower.  It was segmented, computerized and had twin blades.  Even with all that, it was surprisingly lightweight.

Delphi was much warmer than what Harry was used to.  The climate bordered on the tropical and the mountains loomed high in the distance.  It was the opposite of being in Scotland.  Instead of constantly applying a warming charm, Harry’s cooling charm now got all the work.

-x-x-x-x-x-x

Tilting Helga’s cup to his mouth, he swallowed the wit sharpening potion.  Both Sirius and Dumbledore would probably frown at this, but he wasn’t making much headway with learning how to communicate in Colonial.  Their alphabet had all twenty-four of the Greek Letters, plus five more he’d never seen.  The translation spell was a cheat and quite frankly he’d never been the most studious in his year, even after taking Hermione out of the equation.  After two months of trying it on his own, he had precious little to show for it.  Harry could barely speak to another person, he couldn’t read anything more complicated than a picture book meant for toddlers. His writing was the worst of the three.

To make matters worse, he stopped attending Muggle schools when he turned eleven.  From what he could tell, even if he had sat his A levels and done reasonably well in math and science, he’d be woefully unprepared for the material Maggie was skiving off at her high school.  The kind of math, they were learning her probably wasn’t taught until a Muggle reached a university back on Earth.

So, he started using the wit sharpening potion, but he remembered that he needed to go back over the material as soon as the effects began wearing off.  Finally, he was starting to show improvement.  Otherwise, it was unlikely Harry would be released on his own until he was thirty.

Instead of sitting on his bed and working on his basic reader workbook, he took it into the lounge.  There were a few others there like the man from the room three doors down who had some form of periodic seizures.  He was attended by one of his around-the-clock nurses.  Some of the “lounge regulars” were playing this card game that Harry hadn’t quite figured out yet.

Sitting in the corner, by herself was Maggie Edmonson.  She had her grid box in her lap and a pair of virtual goggles on.  Her box wasn’t connected to the wall jack, so she had met the letter of her mother’s demand while at the same time attempting to be defiant at the same time. Maggie was clearly trying to goad her mother into yelling at her in front of the residents.

“She just doesn’t want to let it go,” Harry thought.

Unsure why he was doing it, he walked over to her table and sat down, and started working on his pronunciation.  Tapping the sentence on the computerized paper, it displayed a picture of a dog running very quickly across the page.  Hermione would pee her pants if she saw something as thin as a sheet of paper that worked like a Muggle computer.  It flashed occasionally a signal that his innate magic could still interfere with sensitive electronics.

Harry began working on the sentence, “The dog runs fast.”  Every time the audio sensors thought he got it right the animated dog would stop and chase its tail for a moment and then bark in happiness.

He read the name of the gamepak she had inserted into her gridbox.  It took a full minute to translate each letter and he was distracted every few seconds she would lean one way or another.

“Wild Wild Racetrack”

Another thing that distracted him was he'd never seen Maggie Edmondson actually smile.  Of course, she had complete control inside her made up world...her own private Room of Requirement.

-x-x-x-x-x-x

It reminded Harry of a conversation between Ron and Hermione that happened shortly after Harry had shown them that secret room in the castle that could be anything a person wanted.  Rather than go outside in the bad weather, Ron had turned it into a place where he and Harry could go flying in an attempt to cheer Harry up after his broom had been confiscated.

Granger sat on a comfortable bench, engrossed in a book, as the duo circled above.

“If I ever learn how, I think I'd build one of these for myself!”

“Well Ronald, I suggest you start studying more.”

Ron turned to Harry and said, “You know that's her answer to everything, right?”

“I heard that!  You know why I heard that?  Because I'm using a sound multiplying charm.  How'd I know this charm, you ask?  I read it in a book!”

“Really!”  Ron yelled as loud as he could.  Harry saw Hermione grimace and cover her ears.  “But you never know when you might be outsmarted by your own cleverness!”

Hermione cancelled the charm and looked rather bent out of shape.

“Wasn't terribly nice,” Harry commented.

“She's using and eavesdropping charm.  Fred and George showed it to me after our first year.  You don't grow up living with all the barmy blokes in my family without picking up a few things.”

“Hermione does have a point, Ron.  This thing probably took years to put together.”

“I know that!  But sheesh, give a bloke a chance to dream for a minute before crushing it!  Besides, this is bloody brilliant, but it's not real.  I like real things.  If everyone knew about this place, we'd never have to play a game in bad weather again.  Where's the fun in that?  Perfection gets old after a while.  Take away the randomness like beating your opponent in the driving rain and you take away the appeal.  Telling you opponent you can beat them as long as the weather's perfect and there's no wind just isn't the same as telling them that you can beat them anytime, anywhere.”

-x-x-x-x-x-x

Harry got that same impression about these grid boxes and the virtual world they linked to.  It seemed like a nice escape, but was a poor substitute for the real thing. 

Still, he noticed that Maggie was much prettier when she wasn't wearing a constant scowl.

With no further observations, he went back to his word pronunciation.

That lasted five minutes before she whipped off her glasses and glared at him.  He didn't have a translation charm active, but gathered her words formed a less polite version of, “Do you mind?”

“Reading,” Harry said and shrugged his shoulders.  He hadn't been speaking very loudly and was fairly certain she was just looking for another confrontation.

Being a bit bored, Harry decided to yank her chain and give her one.  The few other people his age at The Arms had serious mental problems and he couldn't talk to them.

“Go away,” she said very slowly and made a shuffling off gesture.  He got that easily enough.

Harry pointed to the door, grinned, and said, “Lounge.  All welcome.  Shhh!  Reading.  The dog runs fast.”

The exasperated sound of disgust she made was worth every second.  Hermione would be proud of him for standing up for “study time.”  Ron would be proud of him having a go at an ill-tempered bird.  Either way, it was a win.  If the spirits of the dead could follow him across the universe, Sirius was probably having a good laugh right now.

The girl gave him a suspicious look before standing up and saying, “Wait here.”

Harry was tempted to move to a different table just to mess with her, but decided to follow her directive.

She came back two minutes later carrying a second set of glasses and plugged them into a receptacle in the little gray cube and handed them to him.  She put her pair of glasses back on.

He closed his reader and slid the glasses onto his face.  The weight of wearing glasses was oddly familiar considering he'd only recently had to stop wearing them.  There was a disorienting sensation, partway between going into a Pensieve and using a Portkey.

The disturbance ended and Harry stood in front of a high tech motorcycle in the middle of an arena.  A huge serpentine course, dotted with ramps, jumps over pits, and moving obstacles. The other rider looked vaguely like Maggie, but was a foot taller, with half her face covered in tattoos, and decked out in black leather.

Harry reasoned that it was easy to make yourself look different in the virtual world.

By contrast, Harry was still in the set of coveralls he currently wore and appeared exactly the same in the reflection from the chrome on the bike.

The amazon walked over to him and pointed at her now substantial chest, “Maggie.”

“Harry,” he said.

“I know,” she deadpanned.  “Get on.”

For a moment he thought about Sirius Black's motorcycle and savored the nostalgia.  His godfather had planned on retrieving it from Hagrid at some point.  Unfortunately, that point never came.  Hopefully, the goblins or the ministry hadn’t taken it.  Hagrid said he kept it hidden.  Maybe it was in the forbidden forest.

“Go fast,” she said, pointing at one set of controls. 

“Go slow,” she continued, showing him the brakes.

She placed her index finger on the red button in the center console and said, “Go really fast.”

He was quite impressed at the level of realism in this game. Old Dudders would scream bloody murder if he knew Harry was playing a game this cool.  Harry planned to enjoy this.

She climbed onto hers and opened her throttles.  He duplicated her motions.  Instead of a series of lights, there were giant numbers counting down in the sky.

When the last number disappeared, Harry sped after Maggie.  He was a little wobbly on it, but kept his cool.  Other than the extra work with his hands and feet, it wasn't too terribly different from riding a broomstick.

Part of him smirked at the idea of taking Maggie for a broom ride in the real world just to see the look on her face.

Even so, it was refreshing to interact with someone other than the staff at Amanda's Open Arms.  Harry had enjoyed the past couple of months.  He wasn't the boy who lived here, but at the same time he wasn't really anybody here.  He went to craft classes that were mildly entertaining and watched what passed for television here.  When he could get away with it and no one protested, he'd re-watch the program with his translation charm active, so he could gauge his progress.

Pushing those thoughts aside, Harry pressed the red button which immediately increased his speed and concentrated on catching his opponent... “Ms. Wild, Wild Racetrack.”

• Previous
• Shall We Depart? Paying Delores a Visit Even Legends Must Die Athena's Warning Silver Hands and Silver Tongues Veiled Intentions The Dog Runs Fast Offerings and Revelations An Unexpected Reunion Culture Shock Priorities The Caprica Cowhenge
• Next