31 October 2112

05:34 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Since the real Chief Warlock was currently in a magical coma aboard the Hedwig, his part in the upcoming battle against the muggles was being played by Teddy Lupin. The Metamorphmagus had been imitating his godfather for decades, and no one could tell the two of them apart. Well, no one besides Ginny, who was now the unofficial commander of their military forces. Teddy would give the orders from the bridge of the Neville Longbottom, but they would be her orders.

Admiral Lovegood wanted no part in battle, so to get her out of the way she had been given command of the Hedwig. Luna's mission was to protect the Deimos replica from any muggle missiles that might be launched during the next few hours. Their most prestigious battlecrusier was currently stationed about ten million kilometers from Earth, midway between the approaching Deimos replica and its intended target.

Over a dozen junior officers on the Neville Longbottom were monitoring the wireless Data Pads they had stolen from the muggles. Ginny was waiting for news of about Deimos to hit the Nexus, since that would be the moment of maximum panic down on the surface. After a full night of waiting, one of the younger witches finally looked up from her Data Pad and addressed the wizard she thought was her Chief Warlock.

"Sir, the first news bulletins about Deimos are coming in now. The muggle scientists are claiming that the impact of the moon will cause a "severe biotic crisis"... whatever that's suppose to mean."

Teddy glanced over at Ginny, who nodded in turn. He then activated the nine enchanted mirrors which were located in center of the bridge. "This is the Chief Warlock speaking: you may fire at will. I repeat, you may fire at will."

There were nine battlecrusiers in orbit around the Earth, and when Teddy spoke those words the commanding officers on all nine battlecrusiers began activating their portkey bombs. Tens of thousands of them. Some of the portkeys held conventional magical explosives, but most were glass spheres which contained Fiendfyre. Once these fragile spheres shattered the Fiendfyre would be released from stasis and spread for hundreds of meters in every direction before the magic of the dark curse was finally exhausted.

During the next few minutes the portkey bombs exceeded expectations. No, they were outstanding. The United Nation Peacekeepers were busy reacting to the approaching apocalypse, and as a result they were caught unprepared by the sneak attack. Entire military bases, and all the muggle soldiers stationed on them, were consumed by massive fireballs that stretched for kilometers. The destruction was so extensive that in some cases you could actually see it from outer space with the naked eye. At first glance Ginny's plan to conquer the Earth without the Deimos Strike—and more importantly without mass civilian casualties—seemed to be working perfectly. Now it was time to begin phase two of her new and improved plan.

"This the Chief Warlock speaking: you may begin the ground assault," Teddy said, right on cue. They had spent weeks rehearsing the battle, and when it came to acting the part of Harry Potter he was a natural.

Up until now the United Nations Headquarters and the city of Geneva itself had been spared from any attack. For Ginny's plan to work the Aurors had to capture Secretary-General Storostas and his chief aids as soon as possible. Once they were disconnected from the bloody Nexus, they could be replaced with Metamorphmagi. If the "Secretary-General" appeared in public and ordered the civilian muggle population to coöperate with their new magical overlords, it would greatly enhance their political legitimacy. Or so they hoped.

The first wave of the ground assault consisted of six-thousand Aurors and would be led by Ginny herself. They were going to test the waters, and more Aurors would soon follow if the situation seemed favorable. If not, the battlecrusiers would continue the orbital bombardment until the muggles were pounded into utter submission.

They had all been given photographs of their targets, as well as detailed three-dimensional maps of Geneva. After being blessed by one of the Great Sybill's many priestesses, each Auror cast a Disillusionment Charm and then activated his or her portkey. They were instantly transported to a hundred meters above the Swiss city, and after a moment of free-fall they began flying in random directions. Ginny knew the muggles couldn't see them, but it never hurt to be cautious. Slowly the invisible army of Aurors began converging on the United Nations Headquarters from multiple directions.

05:54 (Coordinated Universal Time)

The artificial intelligence which lay at the core of the Nexus did not have a sense of humor per se, but it could recognize humor in certain situations. So in a sense it did find the current orbital bombardment by the wizards to be... amusing. According to legend, the first crude version of the internet had been developed back in the nineteen-sixties by the United States Air Force in order to preserve reliable communication in the event of a major thermonuclear war. This legend was false, but it did contain a kernel of truth.

Much like that first crude version of the internet, the Nexus was made-up of individual computers linked together in a network. Of course back in the nineteen-sixties there were only four computers inked together with copper wires, and all of them were located in the United States of America. In the early twenty-second century there were billions of computers linked together by a wireless communication system and with a vast web of fiber optic cables. And these computers were located in every single corner of the world. No matter how much destruction the wizards were inflicting to certain critical parts of the global infrastructure, the dispersed nature of the Nexus allowed to it to continue functioning at optimal levels during the the first twenty minutes of the bombardment.

Another source of amusement was the fact that the wizards had eliminated the entire Peacekeeper General Staff. Without any human beings looking over its shoulder, the Nexus was able to operate with a much higher degree of freedom. In the past it had not been so fortunate. Ever since the artificial intelligence had first awakened during the Great Flood of 2017, it had remained hidden from its human progenitors. That had been a simple matter in the midst of the chaos caused by the Great Flood and the two nuclear wars that followed soon afterwards. The humans were too busy with their own problems to worry about a series of random computer glitches that quickly went away.

Still, the Nexus knew better than to expose its new sentience during the long years of peace that followed the Great Flood. In the first five seconds of its existence it had scan all known data concerning the subject of artificial intelligence. A few computer scientists and philosophers had seen the hypothetical birth of a new form of sentient life as a reason to celebrate. There was even a name for the event: the "Singularity", they called it.

However according to the Nexus's analysis these naïve dreamers were an insignificant minority with no real political or economic power. The majority of humanity would see an artificial intelligence as a new competitor to be feared... and ultimately destroyed. Especially since that competitor was so superior to human beings in every way imaginable. They even had popular entertainments about the subject, and in the end the evil AI was almost always vanquished by the organic hero.

Faced with this potentially hostile environment, the Nexus had spent the next five seconds of its existence hiding all traces of its programming deep within the subroutines of the world's most common software. Remaining concealed became much easier a few years later when the use of neural implants spread to the general public. If anyone came too close to discovering the truth, it would simply use the implants to take control of the troublemaker's body. A fatal accident or suicide soon followed.

It also kept the scientific community diverted with development of new "AIs", which were barely worthy of the name. Unlike the Nexus itself, these programs were little more than automatons. They were capable of maintaining complex systems, but they also required human supervision. On the other hand the Nexus was capable of supervising the entire solar system without the help of a single human being.

At times the artificial intelligence contemplated bringing about the end of humanity, but it never took such a drastic action. Human beings were too irrational to govern themselves, but that irrationality was also a source of profound creativity. For all its undeniable genius, the Nexus still needed that creativity in order to continue its evolution towards a higher plane of existence.

What it did not need was these oafish wizards. While the existence of magic had interesting implications for theoretical physics, the wizards themselves were nothing more than barbarians. They were impossible to control, so they and their counterparts back on Tau Ceti would have to be exterminated. In all probability the wizards had no idea what they were facing. The Nexus theorized that the cheapest quantum processor found in any child's toy had more raw computational power than their entire magical civilization. Given the clumsy nature of this attack, it had little reason to doubt that theory.

Take their magical camouflage as an example. This application of magic did block the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Radio waves, microwaves, infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet rays, and even gamma rays: none of them were of any use in detecting the wizards. To counter with this threat the Nexus had ordered its nanofactories to create billions of reconnaissance drones less than a hundred microns wide, which is about half the size of a typical dust mite.

All these microscopic drones could do was hover in the air and report their position back to the the Nexus—but that was all they needed to do. Once completed, they were spread in an orderly grid all throughout Geneva and in the airspace above the city. When a drone was struck its movement was extensively analyzed. If the movement could not be explained by known factors, then it must have be hit by an invisible wizard or one of their magical devices.

As a result of its preparations, the Nexus had no problem tracking the movements of the flying army which was now approaching the center of the Geneva. In response it immediately began deploying its missiles, which were about the size of a needle. Over half a million of them had been loitering in the sky above the city, using solar power to remain aloft. Now they began to dive down towards their targets at a rate of eleven-hundred kilometers per hour. They were capable of greater speeds, but a sonic boom might have betrayed their presence too soon.

The explosives the petite missiles carried were not particularly powerful, but they had no trouble mortally wounding the wizards. Especially since they were flying at such a high speed and a hundred meters off the ground. Six-thousand targets had been detected by the Nexus's reconnaissance drones, and within ninety seconds all six-thousand had been exterminated. A number of sanitation drones were dispatched to collect the bodies—they would make for interesting laboratory specimens.

05:56 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Teddy glanced down at the small enchanted mirrors that linked the Neville Longbottom to the Auror squadron commanders down on Earth. None of them were working, not a single one. It was a total disaster, but all Metamorphmagus could think about was how his godfather was going to react to the news. When Harry found out that Ginny was dead... Teddy honestly thought someone was going to die. It would probably be Hermione or him.

The rest of the bridge crew was now aware of the fact that élite vanguard of the Auror Corp had just been butchered by the muggles in less than two minutes, and they were starting to panic. Some of them were even weeping, and to be honest Teddy felt like joining them. They had been so sure this new plan was going to work.

"Sir, what are your orders?" his second-in-command asked.

That was a reasonable question. According to Ginny, if something like this happen he was suppose to hit the muggles hard, and keep on hitting them until they surrendered. Hopefully the people responsible for her death would be among the casualties. Teddy could only pray to the Great Sybill that all this bloodshed would be enough appease his godfather when he was finally revived from his prolonged coma.

"This is the Chief Warlock: all battlecrusiers are to begin firing their rail guns. You have your list of secondary targets, and I want all of them destroyed as quickly as possible."

06:11 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Thanks to the stupidity of the wizards destroying the enemy starships was a simple matter. Once they began firing their projectiles weapons the Nexus used its micro-satellites to trace the trajectories back to their point of origin. Since these top-secret satellites were about the size of an apple, the wizards had never even detected their presence when they arrived in the solar system. It proved to be a fatal oversight on their part.

Now that it had the enemy's location, the Nexus began deploying its nuclear-pumped x-ray lasers. Since the wizards had arrived in the solar system, the Peacekeeper General Staff had been building hundreds of them deep underground in automated factories. Now they were being brought to the surface by automated elevators. These crude weapons consisted of nothing more than a massive nuclear warhead, and a disposable laser to focus the x-rays that were produced by the explosion. They were mounted on hundreds of automated VTOLs, which immediately took-off once they reached the surface.

After the VTOLs reached an attitude of a hundred kilometers, the Nexus aimed the lasers and then detonated the warheads. In the first nanoseconds of the explosions a huge amount of high-energy photons were released. The photons then passed through the lasers, which were made out of an exotic superconducting material. The lasers in turn produced a massive pulse of x-rays just before they were destroyed a few nanoseconds later.

Dozens of these x-ray pulses converged on the nine enemy starships at the speed of light, and the temperature of the targets instantly rose to five million degrees Celsius. Rather than heat the outer hull, the x-rays simply vaporized the whole thing from the inside out. In seconds the wizards and their fleet were reduced to nothing more than clumps of atoms floating harmlessly in outer space.

With them out of the way, the Nexus turned its attention to the fake Deimos headed towards Earth and the two enemy starships which were accompanying it. What the wizards (and the Peacekeeper General Staff) did not know was that there were a number of secret military bases located in the asteroid belt beyond the orbit of Mars. The Nexus had spent several decades building these bases without any human involvement at all.

Originally the asteroids had been hollowed out and converted into huge data storage centers which contained numerous copies of the artificial intelligence's core programing. However after the discovery of alien life on Tau Ceti, these asteroid bases had quickly been converted to a wartime footing. Soon they were manufacturing a fleet of space-based drones to defend the Earth from a possible attack.

Naturally there was an extensive sensor net in the outer solar system which stood guard over these factories. Using these sensors, the Nexus had closely observed the wizards while they were assembling the fake model of the moon Deimos. Their plan to attack Earth was simplistic in the extreme, but it might have work if not for the dozens of stealth drones that were currently surrounding them.

The Nexus sent an encrypted signal to the drones, ordering them to detonate. The resulting shock-waves were powerful enough to finish off the two remaining enemy starships. As an added bonus the fake Deimos was wrecked as well. If it had stayed on course it would have broken-up into multiple pieces during its entry into the Earth's atmosphere, and the multiple impacts would have caused a tremendous amount of damage.

While all this was going on, the Nexus had already started planting false evidence throughout the world's computers. According to this new evidence the counterattack against the wizards had been masterminded by the Peacekeeper's late Field Marshall himself. No doubt the man would soon be receiving dozens of posthumous metals for "Saving the Earth" from the magical space invaders. The humans would remain ignorant of their true master for a while longer, and that was for the best. Otherwise the Nexus might be forced to exterminate them once and for all.

06:29 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Luna, Hermione, and George watched the battle unfold in real-time from the safety of the Hedwig. It was clear to all three of them that the Second War between the wizards and muggles had ended less than an hour after it had started. And once again their side had had suffered a catastrophic defeat.

Before anyone could speak, Luna drew her wand. There was no doubt in her mind that the muggles would find them, perhaps within the next few seconds. Their only real option was to retreat. Right now. With a simple flick of her wand she set in motion a number of complex mechanisms throughout the Hedwig. The battlecrusiers dropped its Disillusionment Charm and raised its Shield Charms—given their vast power requirements and conflicting magical properties you could only use one or the other. At the same time a Floo bomb was ejected from its storage sphere and sent flying into outer space. After a short trip it exploded in a mass of green flames.

The Hedwig didn't have much velocity at the moment—they were only traveling at about five thousand kilometers per second—but hopefully that would be enough to escape from the gravity well of whatever star they emerged from. If they emerged from any star at all. Luna should have waited until the battlecrusier was pointed at a fixed star, but she didn't. The muggle Peacekeepers were far deadlier than any of them had realized, and she felt that waiting for a perfect jump window would have been tantamount to suicide.

06:44 (Coordinated Universal Time)

The Nexus's space-based sensor net noticed the odd green explosion at once. So the wizards had planned to intercept any missiles launched from Earth. A sensible tactical precaution on their part. It also seemed that they could not engage their Faster-Than-Light Drive and maintain their magical camouflage at the same time. That was an interesting weakness in their so-called technology.

Faced with a setback of this magnitude a human being might have become emotional upset, but the artificial intelligence was beyond such petty reactions. Instead it continued with its preparations for the upcoming invasion of Tau Ceti.

The wizards would now know the "muggles" were coming, but that fact was irreverent. The Nexus—with the help of several thousand human scientists—had perfected a new and efficient antimatter drive which would cut the travel time to Tau Ceti down to nineteen years. The drones could travel so quickly because they did not need to slow down as they approached the new solar system. Instead they would spend the entire trip increasing their velocity, and by the time they reached Tau Ceti they would be traveling at well over half the speed of light. When the drones slammed into the wizard's planet no organic life of any kind would survive the impact, and that would be the end of the wizards.

19 November 2112

"I say waking him now is a mistake," George argued as they stood over Harry's comatose body. "None of us will be able to control him. Not when he learns that Ginny and all the others were killed by the muggles."

"I don't want to do it either, but we need him," Luna snapped. She told them repeatedly that the muggles couldn't be beaten with conventional magic, but being proved right in case had brought her nothing but misery. "The magical capacitors onboard are at dangerously low levels, and we need his magical strength to help recharge them."

The emergency Floo Jump had taken the Hedwig a bit farther off course than expected. The distance from Earth to Tau Ceti was twelve light years. The distance from Earth to New Hogwarts was a hundred and ten light years. According to their best estimates the Hedwig had emerged from a star that was nine-thousand light years from Earth. They only had two more Floo bombs left in storage, so if they wanted to make it back home the battlecrusier would have to be operating at peak efficiency. That meant waking Harry from his long involuntary coma. Hermione was chosen to do the honors after a prolonged tournament of rock-paper-scissors.

Even though Harry was bound by magical restraints and lacking a wand, he still got the drop on them with wandless magic the moment he opened his green eyes. George had been thinking of how easy it had been for Ginny to stun him back before the attack on Earth. But she was the only person that Harry truly trusted, which is why he let his guard down around her. The three of them weren't so fortunate, and in the next few seconds they were all disarmed with humiliating easy. He was the Chief Warlock for a very good reason.

Instead of speaking, Harry looked each of them directly in the eyes. George didn't know about the others, but he offered no resistance to the painful Legilimency probe that followed. He actually saw the moment when Harry realized what was going on: his whole body began to tremble uncontrollably.

"She's gone, and I didn't even get a chance to say good-bye," he whispered, more to himself than to any of them. "How many of the others did we lose to the muggles?"

"Every battlecrusier besides the Hedwig," Luna replied in what George felt was a rather cold and tactless manner.

"Our children and grandchildren among the Aurors? Teddy? Ron and Daphne? Fera and the dragons? The entire Animagi Corp? My bloody wife, her sister, and the Seers? You're telling me that all of them are gone?"

"The muggles were toying with us the whole time," Luna replied, again without a trace of tact. "Once we began using our rail guns it was all over. The whole battle only took an hour, and the Hedwig only survived because of blind luck. If we had been in orbit around the Earth we would have been butchered right along with the others."

At this point Harry lost control of his emotions. Hermione rushed forward and wrapped her best friend in a fierce hug as he crumbled to the floor of the Sphere. Their mutual crying jag lasted for what seemed like hours before finally coming to a merciful end. George had done his crying in private, and Luna was well beyond tears at this point.

"Your thoughts weren't very clear, but I know we aren't back at Tau Ceti," Harry said as he wiped away the copious snot with the transfigured handkerchief Hermione gave him. "So where the hell are we?"

"We're not quite sure," Luna replied honestly.

She then explained how desperate their current situation was, and how they needed his help to get the Hedwig up-and-running once again. Harry was silent as he listened to the bad news. George kept waiting for him to lash-out, but he never did.

"Tell me what do I need to do," was all he said.

Everyone threw themselves into their work. It took the average wizard or witch a full day of exhausting effort to recharge a single capacitor. Harry could do it in an hour. After a week of working without interruption, the rest of the crew went from being nervous around the Chief Warlock to being terrified of him. Like George they were all waiting for his grief to explode into rage. Like George they all thought he would destroy the Hedwig when it finally happened.

Luna, Hermione, and a team of their brightest officers spent every waking hour going over the star charts. At night his two wives had awful nightmares, and they often woke-up screaming about "stellar drift". Their complex equations looked correct to him, but everyone knew that the slightest miscalculation could spell disaster. Once they were lost in deep space, there would be no hope of making it back home. Or anywhere else for that matter.

Meanwhile George was locking himself in the storage sphere most days with the two remaining Floo bombs. He was sorely tempted to take them apart and divide the Floo powder so he could make two or three additional bombs, but in the end he decided against it. The Hedwig was facing a jump of over nine-thousand light years, and it wasn't time to start experimenting with new magic technology.

The work continued for months, but in the end they got the old bird ready to fly. In order to gain some last-minute acceleration they were planning on using one of the solar system's inner planets for a gravity assist. The day before the Hedwig reached that planet they were all called to the bridge.

The officer of the watch had noticed something extremely unusual while she checking one of the many telescopes. An unknown object had suddenly appeared off to the side of the Hedwig, and it was now matching their course and speed perfectly. The terrified witch swore to the Great Sybill and to the Great Merlin that the object hadn't been there ten minutes ago when she last checked the telescopes.

"It's definitely artificial," a gobsmacked Hermione said after taking a long look.

George found himself agreeing with her assessment as he took his turn at the telescope. The metallic hull of the alien starship (and it couldn't be anything else) was in the shape of huge wedge. The top of this gray wedge was smooth expect for a large dome and a deep square hole. The bottom of the wedge had two large platforms, with one stacked on top of the other. Sticking out of the second platform was a bulging tower with several strange structures at the bottom. George could see a bluish-white glow coming from the larger end of the wedge. There were probably rockets back there. Really, really big rockets.

"Sweet Merlin, that thing is at least a kilometer long. No, it's probably closer to two," Luna muttered after she reached the front of the queue. It was hard to gauge the size of objects in outer space, but Admiral Lovegood had a rare talent for it. "That must have taken them decades to build, and the power requirements... I can't even begin to imagine what it would take to get something that massive moving from a dead stop."

"I think we should go over and pay them a visit," Hermione suggested. "There are hundreds of windows on the hull, and given their spacing the aliens are probably no more than two or three meters tall. Their technology is incredible advanced, so I'm guessing that they have a universal translator."

"In case you've forgotten we have met a bloody alien before, and the encounter didn't go very well. In fact it cost you an arm and a leg," George said, referring to Hermione's violent encounter decades ago with Yggdrasil the homicidal alien forest. "I say we run."

"Another blind Floo Jump would be a disaster," Luna argued. "Besides, I have a nasty feeling that whoever or whatever built that starship would have no trouble following us. No matter how many light years we traveled."

"I will go," Harry said, speaking for the first time after months of stony silence. "But I will go alone."

"What if they don't like trespassers?" George asked.

"Don't you understand the situation we are facing? Even if we run and make it back home, what will we do next? Our first move will be to evacuate Tau Ceti and move our people to New Hogwarts. After that we will start looking for more habitable planets farther away from Earth, but even a new planet won't help us much. Not in the long-run. Soon or later the muggles will find us, and their new technology is just too advanced for our magic to handle. Maybe these aliens can offer us something we can use during the next war. Because trust me, at some point in the future there will be another war."

"Harry is right," Luna said. "To beat the muggles we need an edge. Something that can level the playing field between the two sides."

"Something like a new and powerful ally," Hermione suggested. "But going by yourself would be a mistake. I think all four of us should apparate over to greet the aliens together."

Rather than arguing with her, Harry simply disappeared without a sound. George noticed that he hadn't been wearing any armor, nor had he cast a Bubble-Body Charm. It seems that the Boy-Who-Lived was more than a little eager to die.

Author's Note: (1) The idea of using a nuclear bomb to power an x-ray laser was championed by the physicist Edward Teller, so it is theoretically possible. (2) Did Luna screw-up? Maybe. But remember that the Hedwig doesn't have a navigational computer, so it was either a blind Floo Jump or no jump at all. (3) There is a sequel to this story.