Librarian Scientists
Baker Street no. 221B, 4th May 2004
“If we got a Millennium Falcon for ourselves, it’d be awesome,” I remark musingly while the closing credits of A New Hope roll in on the projector, reflected on the white bedsheet spread from wall to wall that Justin uses to show the film.
The host himself, also the originator of this idea, which is a “movie night” shared between as many people as possible that can be stuffed into his flat plus office, which I handed over to him after the owners got no other takers, snorts but seems too busy crunching on his popcorn to join in.
Hermione’s the one who joins in, though she’s half-way busy with her own tub of popcorn. “I’d rather build Artoo-Deetoo.”
“A lightsabre would be nice and handy,” Sai’yo, seated on a cushion on the farthest corner of the living room as he is the tallest and ironically most sharp-eyed among us, ventures out quietly. He has improved some since I got him out of stasis early this year, but caution seems to be inherent in his personality, even when we all are sprawled haphazardly here, watching a “movie marathon” of Star Wars, with snacks provided by some enthusiastic elves.
“Why not a blaster?” Susan inquires, more seriously thoughtful than I am about a spaceship.
I straighten up from my comfy huddle among a few conjured pillows and a duvet and turn to her, who is seated across the way, past Zabini, Luna and Hermione. “Thinking of making it, Sue?”
She grins back at me. “We already use crystals to store and enhance magic,” she says. “Why not try to beam it out? Justin taught me about laser when we were still at Hogwarts. I think we can do something similar, just with magic instead of light.”
Aaand, Sai’yo perks up, just like in other times whenever someone talks about magic or lets him read about it. He just… doesn’t ask; something which somehow grates on Hermione, and it’s begun to bother me, too.
Before I can use the chance to prod him to ask whatever’s churning in his reputedly knowledgeable mind, though, Justin shushes us all, and the next film – The Empire Strikes Back – begins to play on our makeshift cinema screen.
Grimmauld Place no. 12, 5th May 2004
“We need a dedicated laboratory and library, Harry.”
“Huh?” Wha?”
“We need a dedicated laboratory and library, Harry.”
“Umm, I mean, yes I hear that, Mione, but… why?”
“You said yourself you wanted a spaceship. Susan wants a blaster and Sai’yo wants a lightsabre. I wouldn’t mind a safe cryogenic chamber, myself, in addition to a multifunction space robot. Arga believes that her sister is still alive somewhere, in whatever condition she’s in after Ra got her, and I want to help both of them – Arga and her sister, that is.”
“Huh? Ra? Got her? Condition?”
“Sigh. You know Arga is terribly old in our standard, right? You remember she knew Apophis personally – Teal’c’s lord?”
“Yes?”
“Ra is Apophis’ brother – well, sibling, really, since the symbiotes are genderless but for the queens – and was very powerful, even back then. He was forced to abandon this planet by a mixture of uprising and sabotage, and the perpetrators were mostly magicals. Arga and someone called Black led both in somewhat different times, but they met at one point. Arga and the others got captured for the troubles, and they were put into the Goa’uld’s version of stasis chamber, a stasis jar, and the Unspeakables got their handss on her stasis jar, recently. She’s worried that something similar happened to the others, especially Egeria, the most vocal rebel among them.”
“Your point, please? – Sorry, Mione, but Slughorn assigned me so many things to do, since I asked him to speed up the apprenticeship.”
“Sigh. The point is, a cryogenic chamber which could preserve living beings perfectly might be needed to safely transport and store Egeria and maybe the others too till we could heal her.”
“Why not a stasis disk or a stasis jar like Arga was put in?”
“Because a cryogenic chamber would be more accepted by the Muggles, Harry. You needn’t be in trouble with the wizarding world, with that. You got enough already at present. – Aren’t you going to sell things to supplement your income, someday? This chamber could be one of them. I’d like to contribute, in any case. I don’t want to be a freeloader forever.”
“You realise that, in money and property at least, I’m not exactly poor?”
“Humph! Your judgement is poor, if you’d go with your inheritance only, you know that already, Harry.”
“Andy helped me convert most of the wizarding money lying around in the vaults into pounds. We even bought most of the mundane money lying around Gringotts for a pittance. Did you know that the goblins usually burnt the Muggle currency that didn’t get used by them or us after the Muggleborn exchanged it with the Wizarding one?”
“Sigh. Not the point, Haryyy.”
“It’s the point, Mione. I got so much money now that I don’t know what to do with it, even after setting aside a healthy sum for the Jaffa and the research for their cure.”
“Invest in space travel, exploration and combat, then? You can spend and earn money, then. The universe is huge, you know. You might need the money, as items, for barter….”
“…And that boils down to the first point. Neat.”
“Harry!”
“What?”
“You you you… prat!”
“Happy to help, Mione.”
“Harry!”
“All right. Bye!”
I skedaddle out of the potions lab, out of the house, and out of England entirely, with that.
After warding my potions lab against tampering, of course. A needled and vengeful Hermione is… unpredictable.
Black Lodge, 5th May 2004
“Saiii-yooo. I’m baaack!” I yell in a sing-song while entering the Black property in Norway that’s quickly becoming home, as per usual.
And, also as per usual, I find the other semi-permanent occupant of the house inside the library, smiling a little when I stroll in, with the books that I assigned him to read – basic overview of the magical and mundane societies, as compiled by “the gang’s” consensus – stacked neatly all round him on the not-so-small tables.
“Huh.” I look bemusedly at the numerous tomes. “You read those yet?”
“Half of them, my lord,” he confirms, in the same quiet tone he likes to use, with a small smile still plastered on his face. “Would you like to read my notes?”
“Oh? You took notes?” I switch my bemused stare to him, now, while perching myself on the edge of one of the tables. I can freak out about his superspeed in reading later.
“Should I not, my lord?” He looks unreadable, now, losing his smile; his version of a cautious and apprehensive look, I’ve long realised that.
I give him an exasperated glare, in return. “What you shouldn’t do is making notes on these books,” I grumble. “But if the books happen to be yours, do whatever you want with them.”
I suspected and expected that he’d bond fast with Hermione, by now, and she’d draw his real personality out, or at least loosen him up a little. But he withdrew further instead, when they met for the first time. And Arga postulated in confidence to me later that, having spent so long sneaking round the Goa’uld in pursuit of knowledge and for his life, Sai’yo has been conditioned to treat all “blended individuals” – humans or other beings who got hitched up with the snake-like beings in their brains – as the same, evil or not. Assigning him books to read seems to draw him out a little when the book assigner – usually Susan or Justin, by advice of Hermione and Luna – asks him what he learnt from those books, but he clams up more often than not when it’s me or Hermione doing the post-reading interrogation. Just like now.
Prodding further usually just makes him withdraw even more, from my experience, so I stretch out a hand for his notes instead, in hope of being able to discuss them with him afterwards, to get him more used to me as equals.
Aaand, he hands me a stack of them: large, labelled Muggle binder notebooks, full of neat handwriting on the lined sheets and sketches or diagrams – some of which are coloured – on the unlined ones.
Somebody or three must have supplied him well and thoroughly. And this must be his accumulated notes since the first time we put him on this programme, because this stack is nearly a quarter of the books he’s presently surrounded with.
Oh, damn. What did I get myself into? Where should I even begin?
I stare wide-eyed at him, openly clueless and apprehensive.
And his smile returns, though a little dimmer than before. Success.
Well, I don’t look forward to reading all these, but….
“Whoa.” I take it back. The first sheet of notes alone represents how magic can be incorporated into mundane Earth items in a potentially long-lasting use by Muggles.
And, as I flip further and further into the first binder notebook alone, the ideas continue, now also incorporating what might be alien technology into the mix.
It’s not all about weapons or defence, either.
My. Teal’c didn’t exaggerate when he said that this bloke is knowledgeable. No, he understated things, instead.
All these potential breakthroughs, in less than half a year….
This bloke might even come up with a cure for himself and his folk, on his own.
“Ah, Sai’yo,” I blurt out, half to myself, still very much floored, “you want a job? I’m hiring you to make these!”
And, wonder of all wonders, his whole face lights up, like a Muggle Christmas tree newly attached to an electricity outlet, for the first time ever in our acquaintanceship.
Bingo.