Chapter 10 - Power

"You ever do anything like this with that friend you mentioned," Tom asks, still carefully focused on putting the final pieces into place on their collaborative design. Harry watches Tom's steady hands from over the top of the boy's shoulder. Most people are bothered when someone's watching over the top of them like this, but he and Tom have found a very comfortable rhythm when they're working together.

"Momo?"

Again? It's not the first time Tom's brought her up since Harry mentioned her a few weeks ago. No matter how much Harry stresses that Momo was more of a sounding board than a design partner, Tom still seems insecure about the fact that Harry has worked with someone before him.

"No, definitely not. Like I said, Momo was great sounding board, and she used her creation quirk to help me with resources alot, but we never really built anything together." Tom doesn't say anything in answer, just leans closer to their prototype supercapacitor, trying to slide the final piece of ultra thin, transparent graphene into place. It's proving quite difficult, due to the element's unusual flexibility and the fact that its only a single carbon atom thick.

"If I'm really honest, the more I learned and the more complex my designs grew over the years, the less she seemed to understand. She got a little more disinterested over time, though she's always been nice enough to at least feign an interest.

Which is more than I can say for my parents…

"Good thing you found me, then," Tom says.

It's a good thing Tom can't see Harry roll his eyes behind him. For a guy so full of confidence, he's also strangely insecure, at least when it comes to he and Harry working together.

"It sounds to me like she might've been jealous," he adds.

Harry can't help it - he laughs. "Jealous? What on earth would Momo have to be jealous of? I did tell you that her quirk allows her to create any non-organic object, right?"

Tom leans back, resting the stubborn strip of graphene on top of the device for a moment. He shrugs. "You also said she needs to understand the composition of what she wants to create. I think it would be hard to have a friend as smart as you, and not want that brain for herself, especially when it can make her so much more powerful."

Harry shakes his head with amusement. "Yes, but she's certainly no slouch. Momo is still smarter than most." Along with being, tall, beautiful and powerful… Nobody in middle school would even dare cross Harry when Momo was around. There's no way she could possibly be jealous of him. "I think you're wrong."

Tom shrugs again, leaning forward once more and picking up the graphene. "Could be," he says. "Just making an observation. Ugh, finally!" Harry looks over Tom's shoulder once more to see the graphene finally in the right spot. It's the final piece needed to complete the prototype. All that's needed now is to test it.

"It's all set up," Harry says, stepping out of Tom's booth and moving towards the back of the workshop. Once again, they've stayed late, and the sun has long since set. As such, there's nobody else there.

Tom brings the prototype towards the back of the room, to where Harry has set up a number of cables connected to the power running the school. More than likely it would really only take one cable to charge the prototype to capacity, and if their theory proves correct, in less than a minute. But since it is the prototype, they're more interested in seeing just how much energy their creation can hold, which means as many cables as possible, all industrial strength rather than commercial.

After connecting all the cables, Tom and Harry walk over to both sides of the room, ready to turn on the power at the same time. "Ready?" Harry asks. Tom nods and begins to count down from three. When the countdown reaches one, they simultaneously flick the switches. For a few brief moments, it seems as though nothing is happening. Tom's watching the energy measurements intently with a small hand-held device of his own making.

Harry jumps back as the cables start to spark. The lights on the roof begin to flicker wildly before the glass bulbs shatter and fall to the floor. A high pitched whine fills the room for a few seconds before disappearing, leaving Harry and Tom in the silent darkness, outside of the occasional sparking cables.

"What the hell was that?" Harry all but yells. This isn't at all what they estimated would happen. A few flickering lights was to be expected, but not an energy surge of that magnitude.

"That's not possible," Tom whispers from the other side of the room. It's the last thing Harry expects to hear. Up until now, it didn't seem like Tom even thought something could be impossible. Harry reaches down to his pocket for his phone, activating the flashlight to make his way over. Tom's looking down at the energy readings with wide eyes.

"What's wrong? Did the prototype malfunction?"

Tom shakes his head. "No, it's fine. Measured quite above what we expected, though."

That explains why more energy was needed… It still seems strange that it would have needed that much energy, though. "Surely it didn't take all that to charge it?"

Tom lifts the reading towards Harry with a small shake of his head. "No, thats not it."

The reading is massive. Mind-bogglingly massive.

"What? No way," Harry says disbelievingly, snatching the reading out of Tom's hand and peering closer, as if the result will change before his very eyes. "There's no way that could be right."

"That's not all in our supercapacitor of course, but thats how much electrical energy was just pulled into this room," Tom explains. "There must be something powering the school, it's the only thing that could explain these readings."

Harry pinches at his chin. "You think the rapid drain of energy pulled on a surge from some sort of reactor?"

"How else do you explain what happened, especially with how fast the energy subsided once it began? It must have activated a failsafe."

The energy readings back up the theory. Unless Tom's device is broken, which doesnt seem likely, there's definitely something powerful hidden away in UA.

"There's only one way to find out," Tom says. "You're a good hacker, right? Think you can get the school's blueprints?"

"We should not be doing this," Harry says for probably the thousandth time.

"So you keep saying, yet here you are."

It hadn't been at all difficult for Harry to get access to the plans for the school, even with his minor reluctance due to it being just slightly illegal. In the end though, his curiosity has him ignoring his usually more authoritative logical side. Really, it could get them both expelled, even police action taken against them, considering how seriously UA takes its security, but Harry's confident enough in his skills that the hack was untraceable. Even if he's a brilliant designer, programming and computer science has always been his greatest skill.

"I hope this is actually where it is," Harry says. It only took a quick analysis of the blueprints to reveals the most likely location for whatever it is they're looking for.

"A giant room underneath the school that doesn't look to serve any other purpose? Where else could it be?" Tom says.

They turn through the dark hallway, leading to the centre of the school, not far from the cafeteria. It's still eerie to be walking by themselves through the empty school, but being up so early and staying late every night has Harry almost used to the feeling. They're just outside the cafeteria, on the support building side, when they spot the door that leads down to the basement.

"Are we sure this is the right door?" Harry asks. "It's very unassuming… a student could easily walk in there by mistake." It seems rather irresponsible to leave a door leading to an energy reactor simply unattended and undefended, if indeed that is what is down there.

"Maybe that's the point. I know that I'd be curious if there was a door that was more heavily defended than any other in the school. Maybe they decided the best idea was to hide it in plain sight?" Tom suggests.

That could be true, too.

"Do you think it's alarmed?" Tom asks.

Harry shakes his head, looking around the door for clues. "I don't think so. There's no keypad, or any camera or sensor to pick up anything that would allow them passage." He reaches out to open it, but the handle won't budge. "It is locked, though."

Harry turns to see a smirk make it's way onto Tom's face. "Shouldn't be a problem." He kneels down in front of the door and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a multitool pocket knife. He sticks one of the tools into the lock, the tip of his tongue sticking out from between his lips.

"Where in the hell did you learn to pick a lock?" Harry asks.

Tom continues jiggling the tool, until there's a loud click, and the door swings open. "It's not all that difficult, really?" he says, stepping in through the now open door. "Are you coming?"

Well that didn't answer my question at all. Nevertheless, Harry steps inside the door behind him. It was definitely the right door. Inside is a stairwell, dimly lit, that looks to lead well below the school. From a quick look down the centre over the handrails, its at least ten levels below ground level.

"What do you think we're going to find down here?" Tom asks. "The only reactors in the world that could produce that much energy are far too big to fit under a school."

"We don't know that there's anything down here," Harry says. He was uncertain even before how easily they'd gotten through the door that there's anything in the basement, but now?

"Oh cmon! That power came from somewhere, and it's far too much to have come through the regular power grid. That means there is something on the campus itself powering the school. There was nowhere else on the blueprints that could even possible house something with a energy density of that magnitude."

That's true, too. With how fast the lights had overloaded, and then how fast the energy had dissipated, there's nothing else that really explains it. But even if it's true, he can't come up with a good reason as to what he's doing searching for it. He's dreamt of attending UA almost all his life, and now that he's here, he's doing something that could be throwing it all away.

"Well," Tom says. "I don't think I'm going to be able to pick that lock."

At the bottom of the stairs reveals the truth. If there's not something hidden behind this door, Harry will eat his own shoe. It's tall, and looks unbelievably thick, and made of the strongest metal. It looks like the entrance to a panic room, guarded by a keypad and a camera above it.

"Uh, no, I doubt it," Harry says.

Tom turns to face him with a serious look. "You brought your laptop, right? Think you can get us inside?"

Maybe…

"We should probably turn back. We're already on camera…"

"It's literally on the other side of this door. You can't tell me you're not curious!" Tom says. "A reactor with that much energy output in such a small size as that it will fit under a school? That's Nobel Prize stuff. We need to see it."

Damn him. Harry's never been the most persuadable person, but Tom always knows exactly what to say to turn him to his point of view.

"Fine," Harry grits out, pulling a thin laptop out of the bag hanging at his side, and opening it up in his arms. "But I don't even know if this door is even connected to the school's systems, let alone whether I will actually be able to get us in."

"You got the blueprints easily enough," Tom counters.

"Yes, because I didn't have to hack into UA's system to get them. The blueprints had to be lodged with the city council for approval, so it was far easier to hack them from there than from UA itself. I'd imagine their system has much better security."

"But you can still get into them, right?" Tom asks.

Harry shrugs. "I'm not sure. Even if I can, I'd probably have to write a dedicated program to get this door open, and that would take time…" Harry begins.

But there might be a better way…

Tom looks deflated before Harry's continuing. "I might have an idea. Just wait a sec," Harry says. He makes sure Tom can't see his screen before he's opening up his own program, Omni.

"Omni, do you think you could get into UA's system? Undetected?" Harry types.

"I'll try," comes Omni's instantaneous response. It only takes about ten seconds, and UA's system, unlocked, comes onto the computer screen. Harry scans through it until he finds the door they're currently standing in front of. If it's on the screen, then clearly it's connected to the system.

"Do you think you can open this door, with no alarms?" Harry types. Without a response from Omni, the door light flashes green, and it begins slowly sliding open.

"You were talking like it was going to be difficult," Tom says happily.

If Harry were doing it himself, it would have been. It might have taken days, at least, and Omni managed to do it in a matter of seconds. As always, Harry is surprised by how efficient Omni can be, despite being the one to design it. "Sometimes I even surprise myself," he ends up saying.

When the doors are fully open, Tom is the first to step inside, Harry only a moment behind him. It opens up into a massive area, far bigger than Harry was expecting, about three storey's high, and very, very wide. In the centre of the room is a sphere that looks to be made of some sort of glass, inside of which is a pulsing light, glowing blue. Cables stretch out from underneath it, connected to four tall metal pylons.

"What the hell is that?" Tom asks.

Harry has absolutely no idea. It's definitely not like any reactor he's ever heard of. If there was a reactor underneath the school, Harry had guessed it might be some sort of miniaturised fusion reactor, not whatever the hell this is. Still, from the hum of the electrical energy that can be heard, it's definitely still a reactor of some kind. The light in the sphere begins to grow larger, almost completely filling it, before it immediately shrinks back down again.

"This makes no sense," Harry says, stepping a little closer to the strange machine. "There's no evidence of anything even fuelling it. How can that even be possible?"

"It looks like pure energy," Tom says, awed. It's still strange to see him like this. Tom always seems like he believes anything is possible, and nothing is surprising. If anything's going to amaze him though, it's going to be this.

"Right you are, Mr. Riddle," a voice says from behind them.

The unexpected sound makes Harry jump, and he turns to see Professor Dumbledore stepping inside behind them.

Oh, shit.

"Any ideas on what it could be?" Dumbledore asks, looking between them.

Harry does have one, can only think of one theoretical reactor that would appear to generate pure energy, but as far as he's aware, it's impossible with current technology.

"It couldn't be…" Harry starts, "but then… is it a matter/anti-matter reactor?"

Dumbledore's only answer is to raise an eyebrow above his twinkling eyes.

"Surely not. I mean, yes, it looks like pure energy, but where would you get enough antimatter to fuel it? It costs a fortune, and you would never get enough for a sustained and prolonged reaction," Tom adds.

Dumbledore shakes his head, but it appears to be in amusement, rather than him disputing it. "You boys are something else," he laughs. "Twenty years this has been here, and no student has ever made their way down here. You've made the discovery in just a few short weeks. Not only that, but you've managed to guess what it is."

"But… how could it be?" Harry asks, curiosity taking over from his fear of expulsion. "Tom's right, antimatter is so unbelievably rare, and expensive, and I can't even see where you would put it to fuel this reactor in particular. Not only that, but a matter/anti-matter reactor would need an effective way to separate the two to at least have some semblance of control, and this one doesn't at all. It seems to control and fuel itself… wait, is it-"

"There's a quirk involved here, isn't there?" Tom asks, finishing Harry's thought for him.

"Very good boys, very good indeed. Yes, there is a quirk involved here. Time loop, it is called. We only needed enough antimatter to trigger the reaction, before the creator's quirk trapped the reaction in an endless loop," Dumbledore says. "This reactor is the life's work of my predecessor, Nicholas Flamel. It was created to bring sustained, clean energy for this city, and eventually, the world. Unfortunately, this was not meant to be, at least not during his lifetime."

"Why not?" Harry asks. "It looks like it works."

"It does, but when it was completed, we had a decision to make." Dumbledore says. "I'm sure you understand the danger that something like this could pose. Limitless energy… in the wrong hands, it could prove catastrophic. Nicholas and myself came to the conclusion that the world isn't ready. There are too many in the world that would wish to use it as a weapon, and that is something that we could not abide."

To Harry, it makes perfect sense. Tom though, begins to argue. "You've been hiding something like this away for twenty years? This would have won a Nobel Prize - could solve the world's energy crisis. Hell, with this in the world, is it even fair to say that there is an energy crisis?"

"It was a difficult decision, and is still a difficult decision," Dumbledore concedes. "I believe in scientific progress, but until there is a way to secure it more fully, and ensure that it never becomes a weapon, it needs to remain secret."

Tom scowls.

"Then is this really the most secure place for it?" Harry asks. "I mean, we found it, and if it's so dangerous, shouldn't it be somewhere else?"

"It is quite secure. I was alerted the moment you unlocked the door upstairs, though remarkably, not when you gained access to this room…" Dumbledore locks eyes with Harry. From the look that lingers between them, it's clear that Dumbledore knows exactly how they managed to gain access. Harry awkwardly rubs the back of his neck.

"Beyond that, even if it does somehow manage to break containment," Dumbledore says, "These four pylons are enough to temporarily halt the energy in time for us to get here and destroy it completely."

Destroy it completely?

"How on earth would you actually do that?" Tom scoffs. "It's pure energy."

"We have precautions in place, never you mind," Dumbledore says. "I am more concerned about what to do now that you have found it."

Oh no.

"Do I have your word that you won't say a word to anyone about what you have seen?" Dumbledore asks, now seeming less like a wise old man and more a stern former hero. His eyes aren't twinkling, now.

"Yes, Professor," Harry says. he means it, too. What the headmaster says is utterly true. As much as the reactor could be a positive influence in the world, there is too much potential for destruction for it to be public knowledge, at least yet.

"And I have your word that you won't be breaking any more rules? I have ample reason to expel you both right now, but it would be a great loss to the school, and I would be quite upset if I was forced to do that."

"Yes, you have my word," Harry says.

Tom though, looks conflicted. Harry elbows him in the arm, and he looks up at Dumbledore. "Yes," he says simply.

Well that was believable…

Still, Dumbledore seems to accept it. He claps his hands once. "Very good. Now, it's quite late, and now that the two of you are done with your supercapacitor, you should get some well-deserved sleep."

How does he know what we've been doing?

Before Dumbledore can walk away, Harry has to ask. "But… is that it? You're just going to make us promise? There's no punishment?"

Tom looks at Harry as though he's grown a second head. Logically, it probably is a stupid thing to ask, but it also seems a little irresponsible for Dumbledore to let them off with no more than a warning. They broke more than just the school rules to get down here, after all.

"Curiosity is not a sin. I encourage it, even," Dumbledore says. "But it should always be tempered, lest it get away from you. You should both remember that in future."

Notes

So this took a while! Believe it or not, I've actually been spending quite a bit of time working on fics, both this one and others. Rewrites mostly, going back and fixing mistakes and just trying to make them read better. In this fic especially, chapters 1-4 have been changed a bit - nothing plotwise though. Anyway, I should be back to somewhat more of a regular schedule, now that I've finished with the rewrites both for this fic and others. Thanks for being patient, and I hope you enjoyed the chap.

Thanks for everyone who's followed/favorited, and especially to those who have taken the time to review.

Review Responses

Brachiosaurus - Still not completely decided on the pairing. One option is slash while the other isn't. It won't be with Momo, though.

Dragonfighter11 - When I decide on the pairing, I'll let people know if it's going to be slash.

A Little Lost 1 - Thanks very much! I'm glad you're enjoying it. I don't want to reveal too much about what's going to happen with Tom and Harry, but Draco will appear at some point.

Have a Little Feith - I don't expect anyone who doesn't like slash to keep reading. That said, it's not going to affect my decision. If it's right for the plot, it might be slash, or it might not. Either way, Momo isn't going to be an option for Harry.