Well now,

Howdy everyone, its been a while since we've had a good look at this particular version of Harry and Hermione hasn't it? I promised I had a sequel in mind, and I did then and still do. Real life up to this point has prevented me from working on it. If you all have read my other story, A Different War, you'd know why, my home was flooded in June, day before my birthday actually, and my family and I had to pretty much start over with the clothes on our back. But I'm about back on my feet now, and finally feel that stirring, that desire to write tales and tell stories, so here we are.

I won't hold you all up any longer, lets get things started.

Prologue: Boring is Overrated

Its always slow in the beginning. Those first few heart beats, those first couple of breaths. The release on the fog that blanketed my mind. I opened my eyes, blinking away the blurriness and took my first deep breath in several decades. It was freezing, ice crystals had formed on my eyelashes. I sat up stiffly, yawning from such a long rest and spoke in a cracked voice.

"Activate warming charms please." I heard a faint chime echoing and instantly felt the room around me begin to warm. I rubbed my arms with my hands, frowning as the metallic one was still cold. Next to me, a beautiful, curly haired brunette stirred. She stretched like a cat and blinked up owlishly at me. I smiled down at her. "We're here."

The change was nearly instant. I laughed as she sat bolt up in our bed, the sheet pooling in her naked lap. Mirth danced in my eyes at seeing that old excitement, and old thirst for knowledge and learning. She climbed over top of me, heading for a small bathroom located in our quarters aboard the ship. He cast a look at me over her shoulder and grinned. "What are you waiting for Mr. Potter? We have lots to do." I grinned and stood up before following her inside.

Hermione's tender care did more to wake me up and any hot shower ever could, both us us reentered out room, hair damp with silly grins plastered on our faces, gods above I loved this woman. We made out way through the ship, periodically checking that our samples of plant and animal life were still properly in stasis. Our human cargo was progressing nicely. A small trickle of knowledge and power had been dripping into them all at a snail's pace over the last few hundred years, and as we made our final approach, they were all nearly ready.

Hermione and I had been waking up in twenty year intervals. We'd spend a year awake on the ship, making sure everything was in proper order and working fine, before returning to rest. The stasis charms, carefully crafted over the course of ten years, prevented any form of noticeable aging. Truth be told the charms were really for the passengers, I wasn't entirely convinced Hermione and I aged properly anymore.

We sat down in the pilot seats, a funny name considered ninety nine percent of the ships features were designed to run automatically. With the flick of a few rune powered switches, the blank curved wall in front of us lit up with an amazing view of space. A reddish orange hue painted the inside of the cockpit, the star of this particular system was smaller than our own, newer, with more power and energy. As we approached this younger solar system, our ship had taken detailed photos of the planets and moons, as many as it could based off of our course. A small scale replica was displayed before us. Seven planets, three rocky worlds and four gas giants. The first world was so close to the sun it leeched a vapor trail of debris, creating a sort of odd wobbly ring. The next two were both located in the Goldilocks zone, practically next door neighbors on the cosmic scale. The second one would mark our home, I felt my breath catch in my throat at the sight of it. Massive chunks of land, covered in interesting greens with red spots near their center, were divided by massive elongated oceans, almost looking like big giant rivers from our view. The opposite side of the planet, where night would be, was covered almost entirely in water, with small islands dotting it throughout. I say small, but this world was eight percent larger than Earth, so I imagined everything would be a bit bigger than it seemed.

Two moons orbited the planet, one close and another farther away, being pulled out by our new world's 'sister planet.' I paid the gas giants little mind, they were so far off you'd need a powerful telescope to even catch a glimpse of them.

"Its beautiful." I smiled and looked over at her, like usual, she wasn't wrong. I flipped a few more switches, checking on the progress of our human cargo.

"Looks like they'll be ready to wake up in about a year's time, well, an Earth year anyway. You couldn't have timed that better Mione."

She grinned wolfishly. "I wanted to make sure we had time to look for a safe place to start a colony, we know nothing about this world, other than it obviously can support life. This will give us a chance to explore, look for the best place to set up shop so to speak."

I laughed, "I think you just wanted all this newness to yourself for a while, a chance to learn things before anyone else."

A pink tinge touched her cheeks. "No, if that was true, you'd still be sleeping." I laughed again and shook my head.

"Let's check on our little landing boat, It'll be a few hours still before he can set the ship in a stable orbit around the planet. What are we going to call it?"

A crease formed between her eyes as she frowned in concentration. "I thought about naming it Fae, if you thought that was alright."

I grinned at her. "I Think that will do just fine."

My mind briefly cast back to Earth, a floating dead rock at this point. It hadn't been in good shape when we left, and that was centuries ago. I shook myself out of the memories, it wouldn't happen this time.

The two of us disembarked from the head of the ship and headed in the opposite direction. The initial landing ship was an ugly thing, boxy and a boorish yellow color. But it had its purpose. If everything went according to plan, the vehicle would expand into a full size, albeit small house. And of course with a little elbow grease and the liberal application of expansion charms, anything was possible.

We went through the entire landing procedure twice, a process that alone takes nearly four hours. I loved Hermione, I truly did, but sometimes I've found her to be a bit… extra thorough. At any rate by the time we were finished, we'd gotten close enough to Fae's surface to set a stable orbit. The first view of the surface this close up was mind boggling.

It looked like huge mountain ranges, with a massive ancient jungle growing along the spines. Radically different weather systems roared on either side. Something akin to a sand storm to the south, and a tsunami formed to the north of the massive mountain range. Long swirling oceans stretched the entire surface of the world, with many islands and isle chains dotted throughout. We were still to far away to see anything like distinct plant and animal life, but the whole world looked alive. The massive mountain range seemed to set on a plateau of sorts that ran across the surface of the world like a bad stitch. The forest that covered it was a darker green than any other plants we could see.

The world looked held together with magic, a crazy grin stretched across my features. I looked at Hermione. "Do you see this insanity?" I laughed softly, I felt an old curiosity itching at my blood, exploration of the unknown. I could see it on Hermione's face. She was dying to get down there.

"Magic is much stronger here than back home. Its this world's life blood more than anything else. The double moons have also protected it, and I'm sure done some crazy things as well. Imagine harvesting wolfs bane's under the effect of a double full moon?" A grin split her features.

"What could live on a world this? What does live on a world like this? Can you imagine?"

"I could, but I think I'd rather go have a look for myself." She stood and stretched again before heading out the door. She turned to look at me. "Come one, we've got to go pack, lots to do Mr. Potter."

I shouldn't have been surprised. Laughing, I stood up and left, heading off to pack up the few things that weren't already in the landing ship.

2.

I felt a bolt of nervousness reach in and tickle my bones. My heart was pumping, really hammering home like I was in a fight. I could feel the manic grin stretching my features, crinkling the scars across my cheek. I glanced left at the crazy beautiful, time traveling planet hopping woman next to me and laughed, I couldn't help it.

She quirked an eyebrow and smiled at me. "Something funny Mr. Potter?"

I kept laughing for a moment, flipping a few of the switches and feeling the magical engine hum beneath me. "Just our lives. Crazy doesn't even begin to cover it."

She laughed a little too at that. "As long as I don't wake up in a padded room every time I open my eyes, I consider it a good day."

My laughter softened into a smile. "I'd come visit, hell maybe we could get adjoining rooms?" The controls hummed and buzzed, coming alive for the first time in several decades. We'd test flown the craft several times back on earth, it wasn't the prettiest thing, basically an angular box with a coned nose. Thanks to a bit of magic under the hood it purred like a kitten though. Hermione finished her part of the start up, still laughing at me, and before I realized it the little landing ship was hovering patiently in place. 'Mione had an interesting idea on how to get our little landing vehicle out of the main ship. Short distance portkeys.

The station had large hanger doors that could be opened, when we brought everyone else down in a few months we'd use those doors to move most of everything outside. In the mean time our landing ship would work as a short distance portkey, taking us from within the ship to directly outside of it, in open space. The portkey wasn't blind exactly, but it didn't have a set destination, only distance. In a nut shell we pointed the ship toward our new home and crossed our fingers. I saw Hermione squeeze her eyes shut at the last minute before the strangest shifting feeling came over me. Riding in a giant portkey wasn't anything like holding one for the trip. In no time at all we reappeared outside of our craft, barely bobbing from the trip.

"You can open your eyes now." I heard her gasp from the sight of Fae. Viewing it over screens and photos is all well and good, but it simply cant capture the craziness of the world like your own eyes can. The Swirling storm formations grew closer and in higher detail as we approached the planet, creating intricate swirling patterns, similar to Earth's but more… primal in appearance. A huge grin had split my face some time ago, and didn't seem like it was going anywhere soon.

I could see the glow from us breaking through the atmosphere, a force, ancient and primal slammed into me at nearly the same time. It felt like a massive ward, like the magic saturating the planet had formed some massive primordial shield. The presence swam around us both, invisible to the naked eye, but being able to feel it, intimately. After a few moments the energy began flowing around us properly, almost like a blanket.

It lasted nearly a minute as we broke through the upper most layer of the atmosphere. I glanced At Hermione, at the speed we were traveling it felt like we passed through it quickly, but it had to be several miles thick. "What the hell was the that?" It was hard to hear myself speak, the ship was built for this, but the ride was still bumpy and jarring.

"I haven't the fainest, but it was exciting, wasn't it?" I just chuckled and activated the manual settings, wrestling control away from the autopilot. The friction and heat had dissipated now, and we'd just pierced the clouds in a whoosh of swirling mist. My breath caught in my throat.

We'd planned our landing spot from the ship. We were going to touch down in a patch of green, a spot close to the edge of that massive twisting mountain range. We'd hoped the green was something of a clearing, perhaps a grassy area to set up a base camp. To say that we were wrong was an understatement.

At first I thought it was the ground, covered in some sort of low growing ferns, but it only took me a moment to see that it was actually tree tops. Tall skinny trees, many of them nearly a hundred feet tall, had created an overlapping canopy, that from space resembled a grassland. I spotted something small and white jumping across the tops of these strange trees. I pointed it out to Hermione just as it disappeared under a flap of leaves.

I slowed the ship down so we could take a real good look. The trees weren't particularly close together, and were extremely skinny. From a distance you could almost mistake them for palm trees. The leafy green tops spread out sort of like an umbrella, and were massive in comparison to the trunks. These sprouts, for a lack of a better word, interwove with each other, probably providing support to the trunks. The tops were so much larger than the trunks I'd imagine they'd fall over eventually without the support from the other trees. We began flying low over this strange forest, every once in a while catching sight of one of those strange hoping creatures. A small gap in the trees revealed orange bark with brown splotches. We'd have to land to get a better look. The pair of us started looking for a clearing, slowly meandering our way toward the crazy 'wall' that formed to create that elevated mountain range. From here it looked like a strange green wall. If you looked toward the top you could just see the jagged tops, most of them poking straight through the clouds.

I'd been looking at that mountain for a few moments, when a horrendous sense of dread filled every fiber of my being. My breath shortened and began coming a ragged gasps, a cold sweat broke out over most of my body and I felt instantly clammy. Fear crept up my spine and me teeth began to chatter. I looked at Hermione in bewilderment, and saw the same thing had happened to her. I looked forward again, my flesh hand suddenly slick with sweat and nearly screamed at the sight out of the window.

A wall of flame and smoke, easily large enough to engulf our entire ship five times over, was rushing toward us. A bellowing roar, like the laughter of demons made the landing craft vibrate in its frame.

"Ha-Har-" Hermione was desperately trying to get my attention, but I was completely focused on the hell storm in front of us. My human hand shook uncontrollably, to the point I couldn't even hold the yoke properly. My metal hand was still firm, and listening much better to the incoherent screaming my brain was doing than any other part of me. With a jerk so unsteady that we nearly crashed right there, I managed to get us out of the path of the hell fire. One of the blunt and square wings grazed the canopy as the behemoth came screaming passed us and I got an actual good look at it. Long and thick, with the massive squat legs of some monstrous vulture. It almost looked like a horrendously bloated worm in the sky. Two wings, obscured by the billowing smoke, stretched out in hundreds of feet in both directions. They were leathery, with small tufts of quills dotted throughout. Its skin seemed fleshly and molten, no scales or hair of any kind. Its head, or what I assumed was its head, was nothing but a massive opening that had smoke and fire trailing out of the opening. Now that I wasn't lined up with it that sense of dread had vanished entirely. I watched the thing warily as it continued on its path, waiting to see if it would turn around and try again. Hermione tapped me on the shoulders and pointed off in front of the beast.

Something blue was perched in top of the canopy. It was bigger than those strange white jumping creatures we'd seen. Whatever it was didn't seem to even notice the huge sky beast traveling in its general direction. The blue creature spread its own wings, I could make out four of them, but they seemed transparent and it was hard to tell, and jumped upward, using the top of the canopy as a sort of spring board.

We watched in morbid fascination until it rose into the air, and moved into the path of the flying fire. It froze in midair, wings beating madly as it seemed to struggle with itself, fighting to stay airborne, but paralyzed with fear at the same time. The winged fire simply kept on its path, completely engulfing the smaller being without even slowing. It turned then, slowly and surprisingly graceful considering what it was, and began meandering toward that raised mountain ridge.

My heart was still beating hard in my chest, I didn't feel that rush of fear anymore, but my body was still calming down. I looked at Hermione and noticed a few tears had escaped her eyes. I brushed them away with a thumb. "You okay? I don't know about you, but I think I might have actually had a heart attack." She gave a watery chuckle.

"We've been here for five minutes, and have already been nearly eaten by a flying dragon dementor monster. Must be Tuesday." I laughed at that, more to help steady my nerves than anything else.

"Did you feel the power coming off that thing? I suppose we can definitely consider it a magical creature, Nothing that big could ever actually fly without it. Not even considering the fire it was bellowing out."

"I wonder if its like that all the time? Or maybe just when its hunting, it has feet, so we can assume it lands and must have some sort of nest or den-"

I placed my hand over hers and smiled. "Breath, we'll track down and study that thing later, lets find a place to land first, before something else tries to kill us." She grinned sheepishly as we continued looking, this time staying closer to the trees, and looking up as often as we looked down.

3.

We looked for nearly an hour before finding a suitable spot to land. We'd had to travel much farther that we thought, ending up within a few miles of the strange rock wall. We'd flown close by earlier, mostly to get a good look, and confirm what we were looking at was what we thought. It was extremely steep, would be difficult and dangerous to climb even with equipment. After rising several hundred feet at that steep incline, it leveled out slightly for nearly half a mile before the mountains began to rise again. The structure ran across the entire planet, something akin to a crooked belt that didn't quite touch on either end, and nearly bisected the planet in half, causing extreme weather differences on either side. The raised plateau was several hundred miles across. As we began to touch down in our clearing, I sent a silent prayer skyward that the smoking behemoth stayed mostly to those strange mountains.

The closer we got to that mountain range the thinner these trees became, and the clearing we found was large enough to comfortably fit our landing ship inside and give us some room to set up camp. The constant subtle vibration of the ship ceased as we touched down and shut off the ship. It took only moments, with it being powered by magic it took little more than the press of a button to completely cut power. We sat together in the silence of the cabin, little more than lights and life support running at this rate. Hermione had pulled up a screen, showing what the air outside was like.

"Close to Earth's, Seventy percent Nitrogen, twenty nine percent oxygen. The rest our trace elements." I grinned, she was in library mode.

"Time to pop the hatch love, I know you want out there as badly as I do." She worried her brow and frowned slightly, biting her lip.

"What about germs, pathogens that we're not used to?"

I shrugged. "We were all scrubbed clean as we got on the ship, you know magic keeps most mundane germs out. We'll just have to deal with it if someone gets a space cold." Hermione rolled her eyes at me but unstrapped and headed for the door anyway.

I could hear her muttering under her breath, something about a recklessness, as she approached the door. Hermione punched in the buttons needed to unlock the door, and stopped short with her hand on the handle, suddenly looking nervous.

I placed a hand on her shoulder. "Its now or never, don't you want to be the first human to step onto the alien soil of another world?" That little prodding was all it took. She turned the latch, and threw open the door with near reckless abandon.

The air that rushed inside to greet us was the cleanest I'd smelled in many of my lifetimes. The heat coming in was a little unexpected, it was a much warmer world than our original home, but not unwelcome. The sound is what really got to me though.

Chirps, chittering, rustling. The sounds of a forest, a living forest, were everywhere. We'd already seen signs of animal life, and the plant life was clearly abundant. But to hear this forest, a forest never heard by human ears… there was true magic here.

Hermione stepped outside, making a slight noise of surprise as her feet touched the ground. I followed closely behind and quickly discovered what had surprised her. At first glance the ground looked covered in a light brown dirt, with random scrubs and fern looking things dotted around. I could feel the ground give slightly beneath me, a sponginess, and I realized it was some sort of plant. It seemed almost like moss. It moved and breathed very subtly, barely noticeable unless you looked for it. I ran my hand across the top, feeling the soft, almost fleshy tendrils that tangled together to make this 'floor.' It looked and saw we'd landed on a large patch of it. There were bare spots, and areas of other vegetation, but this brown, tangly moss stuff was everywhere.

"Interesting. Doesn't seem to be hurting any of the other plants around."

"We wouldn't know what they look like sick Harry. These tree like constructs might normally be purple for all we know." She had me there.

"Well, at least it doesn't have teeth, or belch huge walls of fire." A little tickle of unease went through me at the memory of that… what ever the hell it was.

I stood and looked to Hermione. Her curiosity was in full bloom, and looked nearly ready to burst. She was looking everywhere at once, trying to see, hear, and smell everything at the same time. I walked over and placed and arm around her waist, resting my hand on her hip.

"We've got the rest of our lives to explore every inch of it." She turned suddenly and kissed me full on the lips. I felt a grin forming and picked her up, spinning her around on the spot. She squealed and swatted me. After dropping her gently to her feet I headed back toward the ship.

"Come on now, lets get camp set up, then we can do a bit of exploring." I didn't have to look to know she'd was following quick behind. A smile stretched my face, life was looking up.

We had a set of tents that we'd brought with us, similar to wizarding tents in the old world, these were far more robust. Not far from where we'd set down the ship, Hermione and I found a patch of bare ground big enough to set up our tent. It didn't take long to get up, looking like a standard four person tent on the outside, on the inside it had a small kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, with a little hub room that doubled as a living room. We probably wouldn't be spending much time in the tent anyway. The two of us worked in quiet companionship, and soon had a small base of operations of sorts.

I sighed and plopped down into a fold out chair I had stuck at the mouth of the tent. A strange orange and green bug buzzed passed my head. It looked something like a large mosquito with an extra set of wings. It landed on my metal hand and began crawling around, much quicker than I thought it would. I held my hand up, looking at the little beast. It had what looked like a duel proboscis, and was tapping at the metal, attempting to bite me.

"Fascinating." I jumped, I'd been paying too much attention to the bug, and not enough to Hermione. She had snuck up next to me and was peering over at the insect, staring intently. "Capture it Harry, I want to study it. Besides, we should check and see what kind of diseases it might carry. Our biology might be different enough from the natural evolutionary path this planet took that any viruses simply wouldn't know what to do with us."

I nodded, following along with her logic well enough, while I conjured a glass jar and shook the offending insect into it. I snapped the lid into place and watched as it began tapping on the glass. Looking for a way out. I drilled a few micro holes into the jar for air and placed an unbreakable charm on it before handing it over to Hermione. She grinned at the little bug, something a tad unsettling in that smile.

"Thank you Harry." I watched as she practically skipped back off into the tent. That woman scared me sometimes. It didn't take long for her to come back out, sans bug. "Come on then, you can be lazy later, We're in the middle of an alien forest, hundreds of light years away from Earth. Let's poke around and see what kind of trouble we can get in to."

I've been a bad influence on her, I know I have. I stood and stretched, wiping away the sweat that had formed on my brow, and shouldered a small pack I'd kept at my side. The two of us set tracking charms to the tents and the drop ship, and tied them to my metal hand. Now I'd know exactly where they were, no matter how far we walked.

I looked down at Hermione and smiled, stretching out my human hand. She took it and the two of us were off into the unknown.

A/N:

Well there's chapter one, out of the way. I'm going to try to get something out every few weeks for now, so keep your eyes peeled. For a few story relevant notes. Our wonder couple were pretty damn powerful near the end of the Future of Ruin, and they still are. I want everyone to keep in mind, channeling that kind of power 24/7 is simply impossible, even with what these two had done to each other. They'd burn out eventually and die. It also takes intense concentration to bring to the surface and then wield, they're a bit better off what with absorbing all the energy from the ward stone, but don't expect them to go dropping mountains on anything that tries to eat them.

Also, keep in mind that magic is naturally stronger on Fae than it is on Earth, that means Every magical creature is naturally stronger than things you'd find on Earth. So crazy powerful monsters are way more common. Basically I gave Harry a power boost, in turn everything must get tougher to not make it too easy on him. You lot have a good day.

-Harkon