Catching Up
Notes:
<words> Japanese
#words# Russian
That night, Harry was out with Urara. She was dressed for clubbing, and her laughter was infectious as Harry worked out her modern Japanese with his own very ancient Japanese.
"<Harry, I love how you squirm at the clubs!>" Urara exclaimed, tugging him along by his hand to a brand-new dance club that had opened the week before.
"<I have appropriate occasion for happiness>," Harry replied with a smile.
"<I adore your accent, Harry. It's like being with a stuffy professor who is muscular.>"
"<This one is honored that you think so,>" Harry replied, working through the modern Japanese (which was slowly improving thanks to Urara).
Three hours of dancing (and a little drinking; light cocktails for Urara, soda for Harry) later, and the pair sat down at a late night restaurant to catch their breath and refuel.
"<Harry>," Urara began slowly, sipping her soda, "<what do you think of us?>"
Harry blinked at that before replying, "<You three are...> Damn, I don't know the words," he ended in English. "Can I use English?" Urara nodded. "You three are amazing," Harry began, speaking slowly so that his friend could translate inside her head. "I feel like a normal guy when I'm with you. Dancing, movies, eating out, it's all a lot of fun."
"So you not be having more, er... <feelings>?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"I... don't understand," Harry replied, a bit confused. "We're all friends, right? We go, do things together, and have fun. Err... <We celebrate life, be good partners?> Did that come out right?"
Urara giggled at Harry's stumbling, but replied, "Is good, yes. We, all four us, celebrate! Later, we wish better celebrate, yes?"
"You know me, Urara. Whatever you three want to do is probably going to be fine by me."
The next day, Harry was up early. Parkour with Lotton and Yakumo (and an hour for the both of them to recover, as Lotton was of the opinion 'If you have breath to bitch, you're not running hard enough!'), the afternoon with Gurimurra (who was still annoyed at Harry not remembering the painkiller spell), and then movies in the early evening with Eva.
The pair took a tuk tuk to a local theater, and Eva asked, "Harry, how did last night go with Urara?"
"A little odd," Harry admitted. "I think she was asking about how I felt about you three, but the translation might be a bit off."
"She was," Eva replied, smiling a little while leaning back slightly. Harry swallowed hard at the sight of Eva's very lovely cleavage with a sheen of sweat. "We three have been talking. You are a sweet man, and we like having you as our friend."
"Well, I like having you three as friends too," Harry said, smiling back. "We all have fun, together or separately. I don't have a problem working around your schedules, and it's a good time for all of us, right?"
"This is true. #But we would like more#."
Harry blinked at that. "Sorry, my Russian isn't good enough to catch that."
"Never mind, Harry," Eva said, smiling mysteriously, taking Harry's hand in her own as she ran a finger up and down his palm. "Let's just enjoy our little date, yes?"
Two movies later (Empire Strikes Back and Die Hard), and Harry walked Eva back to the GoofFest. At the door, she bade him goodnight, gave him a peck on the lips, and disappeared into the back of the club, still with that mysterious smile.
On Thursday, Lotton picked Harry up, driving him out of town. A few miles down the road, they turned off onto a rough trail that the Range Rover was barely able to navigate. Fifteen minutes later, the dense jungle opened up into a glade. At the center was a man who was strikingly similar to Lotton.
They got out, and Harry approached the man, offering his hand. "Harry Potter, sir."
"Jonas Sayorahn," the man replied, shaking Harry's hand. "My son tells me that you can break Voldemort's curse."
"That's right, sir. I know what he did, and I know how to undo it. And before you ask," Harry said, interrupting Sayorahn, "no, I cannot tell you how I know. If how I have my knowledge got out, I'd never be able to safely return to Britain."
"I understand. So what do we do?"
"We negotiate the price," Lotton cut in. "Harry is willing to do this for us. Dad, what are you putting up?"
Sayorahn took a moment to consider the question. "Any training or tutelage you request, I will happily give. All my custom spells will be yours, and the methods that I used for my capabilities will be yours as well. In addition, you have but to ask, and I shall do everything in my power to assist you."
"That's agreeable," Harry replied as the two men shook on it, a glow from Harry signifying the informal arrangement being magically sealed.
An hour later, Harry was lying in the grass trying to catch his breath, as was Jonas. The ritual had been draining for Harry, while Jonas was waiting for his magic to stop convulsing after being released.
"Ohhh, that was bad," Harry groaned, slowly pulling himself upright.
"Can't disagree," Jonas grunted out, rolling onto his front so that he could try to get his legs under him.
Slowly, the pair got up from the grass to shakily stand. "So there's that," Harry commented to the now brown haired man. Oddly, Lotton's own hair was still solidly silver-grey.
"Oh, yes," Jonas agreed. "Now, for the first steps of repayment." Motioning, Lotton handed his father a backpack. Reaching inside, he pulled out a pair of hardbound books. "These are entry-level college books on chemistry and physics. They are the foundation of my entire methodology."
"I don't understand," Harry admitted with a confused frown. "I thought that it would be a combination of spells and philosophy."
Smirking, Jonas replied, "That's because Hogwarts is a poor school. No sciences, little history, no English language courses. These form the foundation because chemistry," he continued, holding up the books in turn, "describes what the world is made of. Physics describes how the world moves."
"Transfiguration and Charms, right," Harry muttered.
"Once you get practice with these, we can move forward to the more intent-based magics. Oh, how is your wand-work?"
"Passable," Harry admitted. "A couple of months ago I somehow learned to cast the Summoning and Banishing charms silently and wandlessly. I'm still not sure why it was so easy for me to do that."
Jonas chuckled at that as he leaned against Lotton's car. "Short answer is that Magical Britain lies to everyone. They claim that 'only the most powerful' can cast wandlessly. It's all bullshit, Potter. For example, there's a school in Africa that completely avoids wands. That gets them in a lot of trouble with the ICW because it's harder to pinpoint someone casting without the focus.
"Britain, and by extension MACUSA, essentially cripples it's population by making them almost entirely reliant on wands. Don't get me wrong, using a wand makes it a lot easier to cast spells. But it's spellcasting with crutches, you get me?"
"I get you. Although the healer I'm apprenticed to told me that I'm going to need a new wand, something custom to my magical output. My current wand isn't reinforced enough, and she's afraid that I'll go to full power on accident, and it'll explode or something."
Jonas nodded at that. "It's rare, but it has happened, mostly because of incompatibility or a sudden shift in a person's internal magic. Are you eyeing a replacement?"
"Yeah. I got the wood and the cores for two foci, a wand and a rod." At Jonas' raised eyebrow, Harry explained, "My first healer back in Britain used one to cast her medical spells. Now that I know some things, a magical rod the size of a walking stick can contain more than one wand core. I have three now, so I figure one in the wand, two in the rod. So I contracted my banker to get it all done; I'm just waiting on them to be delivered."
"Good, good. It's always best to have plans. Well, I'm feeling better. Lotton can give you my number, and once you've gotten a decent grasp of those two books, we can move forward."
The next day had Harry (still a little weak from the ritual) kicking back in his tiny apartment going through the Chemistry 101 book. Salim was fascinated by the advances that non-magicals had made in the Natural Sciences, and the skills that Tom had picked up made retaining the information a lot easier.
Harry's musing over a particular chemical reaction was interrupted by his phone ringing. "Hello, Harry Potter here"
"Mr. Potter, my name is Frank Morgan," came a rough, deep voice over the line. "My team was hired by Gringotts to evaluate your territory, as well as assemble a more comprehensive historical timeline."
"Oh! Yeah, great!" Harry enthused, sitting up. "How long have you been there?"
"Two weeks. Thankfully, the symbol we were given works, and we've been talking with the samurai. As it happens, the Stormguard were big on their own history, and the children were taught it all practically from birth."
"Ah. Right, that. Yeah, okay. Is there anything immediately important?"
Frank chuckled softly at Harry's discomfort, saying, "Nothing that can't wait for a personal inspection. We're getting down the histories and translating them; that's the slowest part of the process, and that only goes up to the closing of Yamatai. We've found the locations of the treasury vaults, and have patched together the buildings enough to begin getting a timeline on the shipwreck survivors since the fall."
"That sounds great. Your people must be really busy with that."
"We are. We charge a lot, but as the old saying goes, 'you get what you pay for'. Even the corpses are telling us stories. From various survivors to internal, tribal warfare, to World War Two, where the Japanese somehow battled the Australian forces at some point. The battleship is especially interesting, since I'm fairly certain that it can be magically repaired. Perhaps not to full service, but enough to float."
"Wow. That's amazing, sir. Anything else?"
"Jurgens arrived last week, headed directly for the radio station. She told me to tell you that the portkeyed satellite idea is sound, and whoever is hired for advising on that is a genius, especially with the remote-activated units.
"As for the installation itself, I'm told that, given the freezing temperatures, it's far more preserved than most of the bunkers on the island. We've determined that the damage to the bunkers is mostly due to the damp, as well as the earth shifting under and around the concrete. The communications center is mostly just water damage to fifty year old electronics. She tells me that, while it won't be cheap, it won't be terribly expensive to restore the complex. Given that the facility still has limited electricity access, it makes her job easier."
"Sounds like everyone's working hammer and tongs, then."
"We are," Frank confirmed. "Given what Slipshard informed me of, we've put off certain areas that came under the heaviest damage. The village built into the cliffs, and the remains of the temple at the North end of the island are the two most damaged."
"You're not wrong," Harry admitted. "The cliff village got rattled and started collapsing because of a downed plane, and I personally blew up the temple to reset the wards to my command."
"Got it," Frank replied, a little distracted. "At any rate, we're still in the process of the histories, and we're looking into putting all of the loose artifacts into one place while we work. Do you have any suggestions?"
Harry frowned, worrying at his memory. "The loose artifacts, are they very big?"
"Not yet, but I can't guarantee that we won't have to move some big stuff at some point."
"There's a pagoda set into the foothills on the Eastern plain that should be empty. I had the Stormguard clear it out before I left, and they all live in other areas."
"Map, map... Got it. Say, that's a nice space... Big, open... Would you mind if we went and built a temporary warehouse just off of the pagoda?"
"By all means," Harry answered. "If it makes it easier, sure. Anything else?"
"Not at this point, Mister Potter. Well, except for the corpses. We're not sure what to do with them once we've recorded what we can from them."
Harry blinked at that, before saying, "Do you have any expanded space stuff?"
"We do. We can also turn a small building into an expanded space; that was the idea for the warehouse."
"If you use shrinking charms on the corpses, can you warehouse them for now?"
"I suppose," Frank warily admitted. "Not sure why you'd want to do that, though."
"I have access to a body disposal specialist," Harry stated, "and I want her advice on how to properly do it. After all, why waste the fertilizer?"
A dark chuckle rippled down the line at Harry's words. "I like that. Useful, and better than just vanishing the bodes. I'll get that started today. Are you planning on checking out the site soon?"
"That gets a bit touchy," Harry sighed out. "I can't magically travel out of Thailand because of politics, and non-magical commercial transport won't take an unaccompanied minor. Heck, I'm waiting on the exercises around North Korea to wrap up before I can get myself smuggled to Hong Kong."
"That's a rough time, man," Frank said consolingly. "Well, let me say that I know some people, and I'm aware of what happened in Hong Kong and it's fallout. A couple of months ago, the docks at Aberdeen exploded. The blast was so big that it could be seen from Mainland China. Experts from the SAS claimed that the only way to get a blast that size was to detonate no less than three shipping containers full of C-4 at the same time. More than half of the shallow water docks are just gone. The problem is that there was no chemical signature from any manner of known explosive found. Nothing. It was as if someone manifested a drop of antimatter, there was so little trace.
"That set off the British government, who started calling in the Americans from Japan, and the Japanese Self Defense Forces. China itself chipped in, and immediately started blaming North Korea; apparently, political refugees from North Korea have been slipping out for the last few years, using Hong Kong as a stepping stone to get away. North Korea has been making noises at Britain and China for years over this. With me so far?"
"I think so, yea," Harry replied, making notes.
"So that started the military exercises. A lot of naval power is there, as well as Air Force stuff from Okinawa; Kadena Air Base is the center of the United States' air power on the Pacific Rim. Hell, most of the military force is coming from Okinawa; there are a lot of U.S. bases there. Rumor has it that Navy Seals have already entered North Korea alongside SAS and SBS troops from Britain.
"So that's the bad news. The good news is that North Korea is keeping quiet about it, apart from denying anything at all to do with Aberdeen. Their diplomats keep saying that it makes no sense for North Korea to engage in an act of terrorism that has still yet to be claimed by any group. So the exercises are beginning to wind down. The way to Hong Kong should be clear by mid-October."
"That's a relief. Thank you, Mister Morgan."
There was a rustle of paperwork, and then Frank said, "I do have something else for you, a kind of potential from the histories. It seems that Yamatai traded extensively with various groups, and that their vessels traveled as far out as Australia, India, China, and Northern Japan."
"Okay. That was a thousand years ago. I'm not seeing how those could possibly still be anything useful."
"Normally, you wouldn't be wrong about that. But I actually recognize one of the groups involved, and I had another verified as still being around."
"So, what? I go and renew relations?"
"Basically," Frank answered. "The first group is the Oni tribe known as Ezogashima, out of Hokkaido. According to some of the earliest local histories, they were brought in by Himiko to build the first iteration of Yamatai. They were the ones who laid out the various palaces in the very beginning, built the bridges between the mesas. and so on. I made some calls, and the tribe is in the mountains of Hokkaido, hiding due to the Magical Separation Acts; apparently they were forced there during the Meiji Restoration in the mid-to-late 1800s. If you can convince them to help rebuild, things here would go a lot easier.
"The second group is out of China. Called the Joketsuzoku, they currently are in the mountainous Qing Hai region of Western China. Apparently there was some sort of deal with them, but the translation is tricky. It means either Trade or Tribute, and the context isn't helping clear it up. But, I do know that the Tribe Matriarch is currently in Japan, in Tokyo. Her name is Kho Lon, and she's ancient.
"Given that, instead of portkeying from Hong Kong to Britain, you could easily take the ferry from Hong Kong to Okinawa, the ferry from Okinawa to Japan itself, and trains from there. There's a ferry to Hokkaido as well. And then take the public bi-weekly portkey from Tokyo to France, and a local one to Britain. Y'know, if you're interested in that."
Harry paused for a long moment, his mind spinning at the implications. Slowly, he asked, "How would I go about getting in contact with these people?"
"I can take care of that," Frank replied. "I have my investigators still local to both groups. If you write some letters, get them to your banker, and I'll get them delivered. You'll need a rough arrival date for them, though."
"Well, knowing that the exercises will be done by mid-October helps. Would a period within two weeks be seen as rude?"
"All things considered, probably not, especially if you include the details of your travel difficulties."
"I'll get on that right away, and get them to Slipshard. Is there anything else, Mr. Morgan?"
"Not that comes to mind, or has any urgency that can't be put off for a few years," Frank admitted.
The following day had Harry dropping off mail at the Embassy before he met up with Zara for an afternoon grazing.
"I'm happy to have the day off," Zara said, her enunciation slow and deliberate, looping her arm in Harry's. "This week has been very busy for us. It's a very good thing that Bao has been supporting us against moron customers."
"How bad has it been?" Harry asked as they entered an Italian restaurant.
"Very," she admitted, shaking her head as she picked up the menu. "Too many college people, too much haggling over sessions. A day off with you is wonderful."
"I'm happy to help," Harry responded with a smile, taking her hand before the waiter came up for their order.
"Harry," Zara began once the waiter left with their order, "the others tell me that they've talked with you about things. How are you feeling about this?"
Harry blinked at the question. "Confused? Urara said a lot of modern Japanese, so I didn't catch most of it. And Eva said something in Russian before telling me not to worry about it. What's up?"
Zara sighed, bowing her head for a moment. "As Mother once told me, 'Anyone who tells you that you need to be subtle to catch a man needs to be shot'. Harry, we three like you very much. You are kind, polite, generous, and aren't with us because of our jobs."
"Well, no, of course not," Harry sputtered out. "That would be really rude of me, being friends with you because of that. Not to mention shallow."
"Precisely," she smiled, teeth brilliantly white. "We three have been talking, and as long as you're in Roanapur, we'd like to be your girlfriends."
Harry blinked once, slowly, processing what she said. After taking a sip of water, he spoke. "I don't understand. All three of you want to date me?"
"Yes. Shared boyfriend," Zara clearly spoke. "Non-exclusive. We three share you, given our schedules. When possible, all four of us go out, be more intimate. We can be intimate separately as well. However, given what we do, we do not expect you to be exclusive to us."
Harry's sputtering response was save as the waiter arrived with their food. After a few minutes of the two eating, Harry replied with, "I don't understand why I wouldn't be exclusive. I know what you three do for a living, and I'm okay with that. That's work, and work is different than off-work. I can keep that separate. But I don't understand why I'd be ranging out."
Zara chuckled before devouring a meatball. "It's because of our side work. All workers in our trade have our main job, and then the side work. Regulars that don't come into the clubs, but we see on our days off. I do the Girlfriend Experience, where my regulars take me out, buy me things, and pay for my time at the end. Urara does similar, and is exclusive to Japanese businessmen professionally. If she did her Compensated Dating with any but a Japanese, she would lose most of her customers. Eva performs personalized, non-sexual bondage and domination services for her own customers, and makes quite good money for it.
"While we have our regulars, we wouldn't be comfortable with limiting our actual romantic boyfriend. Hypocrisy, you see? So when we three are working, feel free to go and satisfy your needs. But when you're with us, you'll be with us."
Harry forked up a mouthful of some flat noodle in a tomato sauce (he had forgotten the name; the picture in the menu looked delicious) as he considered what the girls were offering. He then nodded, saying, "I think that I can work with this. Mind you, I've never had a girlfriend before, or really gone on any dates, so I might be really bad at this."
Zara giggled, saying, "Oh, Harry. We've been dating you for more than a week. Just do what you've been doing, and everyone will be happy. The only change will be the intimacy."