Breaking Fast

Ginny,

Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote, but things have been a little hectic. I now have a brother, and he's absolutely adorable. Though he likes my teddy bears rather too much. And he can fly. Mum and Dad visited England with The Lotus and Harry, so while they were out, I took the time to do some exploring. The scolding I got when they got back was worth it.

I've just seen my first Equinox, it was glorious, equal amounts of light and dark.

Because I've shown I'm capable of looking after myself, especially with Wisp with me, Mum's letting me explore a nearby sacred grove. I'm going to try and find the Queen of the Fae. Not that one, the one Shakespeare mentions.

Got to go, I need to help Auntie with something.

Luna.

"Mum," Ginny says softly, "I don't think Luna's coming back."

"Of course, she is. I spoke to Pandora yesterday while they were packing up the Rookery. She's still enrolled in Hogwarts, so you'll see her next year."

"I don't mean physically. Look."

"I've got wet hands, it will have to wait until I've finished the washing. Start feeding stuff through the Mangle, mind your fingers though. We don't want another trip to St Mungo's."

"Yes Mum."

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Harry sits in his Titania while he sleeps in the pod. To pass the time he's reviewing the first year books now that the Dictionary has finished processing. The meaning of quite a lot of the books has changed massively, granted mostly in the History parts. That makes sense, as the language they found to translate on the Orokin computer wasn't quite English even if it had a very similar evolution. That does beg the question on how they are so similar. It takes him an hour to pull her attention back to his school books after that thought, only because she runs out of possible research material in his railjack.

It's approaching dawn when she'd frown if she had facial features, there's something wrong with the potions text and she knows she's seen the answer somewhere. Quickly scanning through the other books they bought, she finds the answer in 'The animated guide to potion making: A home refresher on potion making'. Of course, the scan isn't animated that would obviously be too easy, so she sends a message off to Ironclaw's slate. Idly noting that they have a much more comprehensive network now. To the point where it might actually be challenging to try and break in.

Hoping that she remembered to bring it, she gets up and searches through her stuff looking for her captura camera. Not finding it, she has the forge produce a message baton, something that she came up with her mum. It's a short metal rod with a tiny drone inside it. The drone has a small anti-gravity unit as well as wireless access along with a holographic emitter. It also contains enough internal storage to hold 1 hour of holographic recording at visual definition. Unaware of the fact that the Goblins are using space expanded trunks for the same purpose, she considers how her mother is going to send the camera back. She puts together a design for a slightly larger baton that contains a small regenerating battery, this will always provide enough power to prevent the crystal memory from destabilising, which is important, as matter contains a lot of energy. She also adds enough crystal memory to store an archwing. This means that the drone needs to be modified to have enough bandwidth to be able to transmit the data and energy stored in the digitised object store.

When her alarm goes of she's halfway through designing a bracer that will combine a data slate with enough digitising storage to hold several decently sized items along with a simple interface to emit and re-absorb items that have been stored in it without needing all the implants that Tenno have. Reluctantly, she puts the research to one side and loads the blueprints for the first baton into her message to her mother. Taking her lander back to the school, along with her kavat, she makes her way to the owlery and sends the message to her mother. As she hands the baton to the owl she sees her hand and curses before launching herself out of the window to the edge of the forest where she leans against a tree and transfers out.

Cursing to herself, Harry disables the civilian locks on his amp and void jumps most of the way back to the Gryffindor quarters. The locks are back in place by the time she enters the common room, fortunately the first one to arrive. Heading up to his quarters, he explores the bathing facilities, which is where Neville finds him, trying to work out how the showers work.

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Hermione comes down the stairs expecting to be the first one up, instead she pauses on the last step as she spots Harry and the shy boy, Neville! From yesterday sitting at a table with Harry's tutoring painting. Neville is scratching the head of the strangest cat she's ever seen, with its emerald green fur and golden highlights. As the painting starts to berate Harry for not paying attention she's sure that if it had a ruler it would have just rapped his knuckles. Turning around she heads upstairs and grabs her dictionary as well as the book she was going to read with him before heading back.

Nervously, she makes her way over to the table. "Hey."

Harry and Neville look up at her, so she puts on her confident face and says quickly, "Would you like to try reading that book with me. I'm sorry we didn't get to start it before."

Harry looks confused for a moment, and she realises that she spoke too fast. His eyes light up when he sees the books she's holding and he places the painting face down on the desk.

"I would like, thank you."

Neville starts to get up, and she blurts, "You can stay if you want, I'm helping Harry learn English by reading with him."

While she's reading with them, and looking through the dictionary, it dawns on her that Harry's hand is different to the way it was yesterday. When there's a moment that Neville takes over, she leans back and takes a good look at him. His hair's longer and now has purple streaks running through it, and his face is less masculine.

"Harry? Did you do something with your hair?" She gestures with her hands to indicate the subject of her question.

"Yes, needed change. Like?"

"Yes, it's nice. Just not expected."

It was then that the other students who stayed in that dorm started coming down, starting with the older students who were doing NEWTs this year and put paid to any learning English as Harry was peppered with questions and conversation requests. Harry then gains a limpet in the way of a red headed boy who won't actually slow down enough for him to understand him. He's not actually sure what his name is supposed to be, as it could be Ron, Lon, Won, Wes, Lee, Wheeze, or a couple of other versions of the name. Even when they were led to the great hall for breakfast he couldn't escape, or ask Hermione or Neville what the various items of food were. Let alone how to use the tools they were using to eat. He was almost resigned to relying on his nanites to provide sustenance, which would mean returning to the Railjack earlier than normal later, when Minerva came along with timetables.

"I have your schedule here. Is everything alright?"

"Not really, I have no idea what anything is, and the red headed child beside me is monopolising my social space. I don't have the language needed to get him to stop, and I have no idea what he's talking about. I've moved twice and each time he follows me."

"Go ahead and move, I'll make sure he stays put this time."

Gratefully he stands up and moves over to sit opposite Hermione, who is nose deep in a book.

"Mr Weasley, where do you think you're going?"

The boy looks up at Minerva in surprise, "I'm gonna sit with 'arry."

"No you are not, sit back down. Harry does not wish to sit with you."

"He could have just said something."

"He tried, but he's English isn't good enough to make you understand."

"Corse it is, everyone speaks English."

"Mr Potter doesn't, now sit down and finish your breakfast."

Hermione looks up as Harry sits down opposite her, when she hears Professor McGonagall berating Ron she hesitantly says, "Are you OK?"

Harry looks up, "No, I know not what this is."

"I have my dictionary here, would you like me to show you?"

There's a pause before Harry nods, "Yes please."

"This is porridge, it is made from oats boiled in milk."

The boy next to them says, "Me Ma says that I should eat me porridge as it's good for my bones. I can't stand it though."

"Oats?" Harry asks.

Hermione glares at the boy daring him to say something, "Seeds from a grass like plant called Oat."

"Milk?"

"The liquid produced by mothers to feed their young. This comes from an animal called a cow."

"Ok."

"This is bacon, these are sausages, and this is black pudding. They all come from an animal called a pig. Personally, I do not like black pudding." She indicates her own plate that has the remains of bacon, eggs, mushrooms, and sausages.

Nodding, Harry reaches out to take some when Hermione says, "No. Like this."

She then uses the fork on the plate and spears a couple of sausages before picking up her own knife and fork and demonstrating how to use them to eat. This is very different from the way the Orokin used to eat, where they had bowls and plates of food, and you used your fingers to eat straight from the bowl or plate. Of course, Natah didn't really bother with the eating thing, especially to start with. He clumsily starts to eat the way he was shown, to the sound of laughter from the table with green trim.

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Just before the end of breakfast, two owls appear above the table and land in front of Harry. Recognising Tau, he materialises his data slate and reads the message. Seeing that his mother was able to implement his blueprint, he activates the materialise function and gets a second message baton along with a Captura camera.

"Thank you Tau, I don't have a return message."

Tau bobs his head before snatching a couple of rashers of bacon and disappearing. Removing the package from the other owl he sees it's a letter from Ironclaw wrapped around a tiny book.